Jonathan V. Last (2:52)

Now we're in year nine, buddy.

Richard Rushfield (2:55)

Oh, Jesus Christ. That's too many.

Jonathan V. Last (3:00)

There's at least three and a half more.

Richard Rushfield (3:05)

Maybe not for me, but we'll see. So I, it's fitting we had you in here today because with, with the news last night about Jimmy Kimmel, Hollywood, including myself about it is in something of a, of a full blown panic and freak out tempered by total defeatism and catastrophic and give up. So I right here, the man from Washington that you can tell us, hey, this is, I know culture votes seem like a big thing, but this is just the process and, and don't worry your pretty little heads about works itself out and everything's fine. So, so you're here to reassure us that it's all going to be just fine, right?

Jonathan V. Last (3:55)

I mean sure in the long run everyone's dead, we're all food for worms. But this is what Hungary looked like a decade and a half ago, right? This is how it goes. This is, I mean it just is fascism. Somebody Molly White, who's a very funny tech reporter put something out on social and she's like if only we had a simple one word term to describe anti, anti fascism. But this is, you know, this is how again nobody should be surprised. One of the things people actually talked about in January of this year was well, we'll see how our late night comedians handle the turn. America's turn into authoritarianism and two of the four of them have now lost their jobs. So I mean I should say that's not true. Kimmel may not. Maybe Kimmel survives. But I like his contract is up in 2026. Does anybody think he could resign with ABC?

Richard Rushfield (4:58)

I don't, I mean very difficult to see him coming back and just happily leading the late night slot for ABC after this. And that would be awkward, shall we say.

Jonathan V. Last (5:14)

And I want to put what's really dangerous about this, Richard, I mean the whole thing is dangerous. But I was gonna say what's really alarming is that the extortion didn't have to be done in the shadows. Right? The FCC chairman didn't have to like do a dead drop, you know, have a courier drop a message with a fish wrapped in newspaper to Bob Iger or something. He was able to Just go on a podcast and say this is what we want you, the local affiliates to do. This is what we want you, ABC Disney to do. And if you don't do it, there are consequences. And the fact that they are, they feel as though they are able and they are in fact able to carry out these threats in public shows how strong their position is. You don't have to hide.

Richard Rushfield (6:08)

So what I wrote today is in all my sort of. I'm a history person, I've been making concoction scenarios of when the fascists come to power since I was a child here. And none of them do all the good progressives and all the blowhards and everyone else in Hollywood just say oh, all right. Oh, you want that? Yeah, sure, you got it.

Jonathan V. Last (6:35)

Turns out that's how it really does work.

Richard Rushfield (6:36)

Right? Yeah, it's, you know, there be someone setting up a little barricade on some, on some, you know, second tier street there or that. But no, in the Disney Brinkar made these insane statements and, and, and the this, you know and it all like that. The next star people who provoke this have this big. I think it's a six billion dollar merger pending right now as a. For you know, Christopher last month and he's that so, so it's the money, it's the fealty, it's, it's, it's everything. I'm searching for a, a little ray of light, but at least it's not. I mean what. So, so what would you say?

Jonathan V. Last (7:39)

Would people say I'm sorry Richard, you have come to the wrong person if you're looking for. Raise a light, buddy.

Richard Rushfield (7:44)

I know, I know I were the. Sorry, but what would you say coming from Washington? There will, there are people here who I fellow columnist of mine, who I'm sure will write on this very day. Look, it seems like a big deal but, but the late night shows weren't working out. They're, they're really not. And in truth I don't, I never watched them. You know, the average audience 170 years old and so in the damage that could be done from big fight with the FCC and your affiliates is enormous. So if you're planning to remove these shows, what's the harm? Or just doing that a year earlier than you were planning to?

Jonathan V. Last (8:28)

Yeah, well, I mean the harm is that you either have to maximally capitulate or at some point you have to fight. Right. And so every, every business has to decide well which is it right? Are they going to at some point try to maintain independence from the regime or not. And many will decide there's no reason to have independence from regime because the regime is so transactional. We can simply go along, get along, right? So long as we do what we. As long as we, like Tim Cook, make up some big gold award and give it to Trump, then we'll basically be able to get what we want. And if your company can do that, then you don't ever need to fight, right? If you don't care. But if you think that there are parts of your business that you want to control, like, for instance, the creative output of your animated film division or the hiring practices at your theme parks, at some point, the regime is going to want to have a say on those things, too. And so this is why I just feel like if you're Disney and you think that this is the easy way, I mean, you're fucking stupid. Well, they, you know, like, you're going to have to fight this eventually. You might as well fight it over Jimmy Kimmel right here when everybody's watching it.

Richard Rushfield (9:49)

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I think they thought settling the Stephanopoulos suit was the easy way. Like, we're settled. We're. We're good with, we're good with these people. They know, they know they can do business with us. It's fine. And I, you know, we. Hollywood. For the first time in its history, Hollywood has been strangely silent on everything that has happened. I mean, Hollywood get, you know, goes to the ramparts, like, every time, you know, someone misuses a semicolon in this world. But for the last, for the last eight months here, they've had virtually nothing to say, certainly the division and I, I have been, I have been writing that you. They are. If you think Hollywood is not on the list of priorities, you're out of your, you're off your rocker, out of your damn mind. Right?

Jonathan V. Last (10:48)

And, yeah, you're, you're out of your mind if you think that. And the, the fact that Hollywood has been eaten by tech to the extent, which is what you've been writing about now for a decade, and, and that tech has consolidated so much into, you know, the, the big four or five. Although I guess, you know, Count OpenAI is among that now. Right. David Ellison is now going to own a big part of Hollywood. It is unclear if he has, like, ideological sympathies with Marc Andreessen or if he's just looking to make moves on the street and thinks that this is the, you know, these are the guys who you have to accommodate at this point. But this stuff is all. It's all coming. It's all come down the mountains. Like I would say, this looking for dissent is actually a pretty good proxy for how serious the threats are. Because when the threats are not especially serious, everybody dissents because it's free.

Richard Rushfield (11:50)

Right.

Jonathan V. Last (11:51)

There's no. There's no price to get. And, and look, I am not a defender of George W. Bush. I didn't like George W. Bush. But the truth is that people were able to jump up and down and scream about George W. Bush because they knew that George W. Bush was never going to send masked agents to their house to arrest them.

Richard Rushfield (12:05)

Yeah, right.

Jonathan V. Last (12:06)

And that's why you understood that you don't like it, you. You think things are bad, et cetera, et cetera, but you aren't actually in anything like fascism. This is not an authoritarian state. He's not going to stay in power for forever. There is much less dissent now because people understand that there are stakes and it isn't free. You don't get to just say stuff and understand that your livelihood isn't going to be affected, your freedoms isn't going to be affected. You saw what J.D. vance said last. Frank. Yeah, yeah. You've. You've seen what, what Pam Bondi said about how they were going to. What you're gonna. What was it?

Richard Rushfield (12:45)

Who? Who? No way.

Jonathan V. Last (12:46)

I mean, I'm speaking off the cuff. Somebody said that they will take your property, take your employment, and if you've broken the law, take your freedom.

Richard Rushfield (12:56)

Right.

Jonathan V. Last (12:56)

This is, you know, that's just textbook authoritarianism. Right. And they're saying this isn't even about the law. Right. We'll use the law as a pretext to jail you if we can, but we're going to use the power of government to ruin your life in every other vector just because. And we can. How are you going to stop us? Oh, is it Stephen Miller? Yeah. Thank you, guys.

Richard Rushfield (13:20)

God bless him. Native. Grew up a mile from one of your people.

Jonathan V. Last (13:25)

Yeah. Yeah. Yikes.

Richard Rushfield (13:28)

The. So I. For 30 years now, I've been saying, whenever Hollywood made a stink about some cause, I've been saying my general advice had been shut the hell up and write checks. Because when Hollywood opens its mouth, it has an unnatural ability to do harm to its own cause. And certainly there's nothing that, that Trump would love more than make this a fight between him and some actor, some movie star. But, you know, they. For 30 years, they never took my advice about this, and. And now they're taking my advice strangely. But is Is that. I mean, are we at the case, Are we at the place now where there is no, like, everything helps and there's no silence, doesn't do any good even if, you know, given. If Hollywood starts talking, they will say some very stupid things that are going to come out of their mouth. Sure. So what's the best route for us?

Jonathan V. Last (14:41)

So, I mean, I don't know that there is anything affirmative that any of us can do to stop this train. Because the problem, the root of the problem is that the American people are rotten. The American people wanted this. They voted for it. Donald Trump did not hide the football. He did not pretend that he was going to do something different. He talked about all of this shit constantly.

Richard Rushfield (15:08)

I will be your vengeance.

Jonathan V. Last (15:10)

And half of the people. In a time where everything was great, we were not in a great Depression. Unemployment, historic lows for 36 months. We had 14 months of inflation, but that was long in the rearview mirror. Everybody had jobs, everybody's stock portfolios were doing great. Was life difficult in many ways?

Richard Rushfield (15:33)

Yes.

Jonathan V. Last (15:33)

Is life in America difficult in many ways at all times and in all places? You better fucking believe it. Put on your big boy pants. This is life. This is the show, you know, like, these fucking people are like the price of eggs that fucking get bent. And in the case where there was no war, there was no depression, there was nothing like that. The American people looked at Trump, having seen him, having watched a million people die, the way he handled Covid, and heard how he campaigned, and they said, we'd like that, please. And now, as it's all happening, his approval is still like 44, 42%. And this is why I say if the country is like that, then there is no way out, right? I mean, if people, if 40% of the country wants this, then we are going to get it.

Richard Rushfield (16:22)

Why is 40. 40% is not. Is not 51%. Why? Why is that enough to say?

Jonathan V. Last (16:27)

Because you need 50% if you are waging war, political war, on accepted liberal, democratic grounds. If you are attempting authoritarianism. History is replete with examples that, you know, you needed 20,000 communists to take over Russia, right, for the Russian Revolution. You do not. If you are using illiberal means, not mean 51%. 40% of America. Hell, if it's 20% of America who wants fascism, they're going to get it. Because 20% of 340 million is a lot of fucking people.

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Richard Rushfield (17:40)

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Jonathan V. Last (17:52)

Goodbye, Truckee.

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Jonathan V. Last (18:03)

Yeah, and so. But here's what I'd say to people. To answer your question, does gas going out and protesting and making speeches and whatnot, is that going to help? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. The only thing I can say is, and this is the Timothy Snyder thing, do not surrender in advance and don't surrender when they come to push you make them fight for every inch of ground. This is the big thing, right? And this is why I, I just think if you're Disney, just from your own perspective, like, you have to think that history ends this afternoon in order to make the decision you made yesterday and think that that's where you come out on the black, right? If you are looking at all into like the next year, two years, three years, you have to realize that putting up a fight is where your advantage is because that's the only way you have any leverage, right? The only leverage you have is if you're fighting and pushing back. So, like, don't surrender in advance. Do not be part of this. And the other stuff is to the extent that you can hurt individual people, like, the Tesla boycott was enormously helpful, like an incredibly successful operation. To the extent that you can organize in ways that. So people, I see people saying we cancel Disney.

Richard Rushfield (19:27)

So what is Disney? Hulu boycott? Do you think that's.

Jonathan V. Last (19:31)

I don't know. I kind of think no. But I would not go to Disney World. And I think the theme parks are probably a little more, a little softer targets economically than streaming services are. But also those are hard because that's a corporation. It's easier to hurt Elon Musk by driving down the price of the stock. Which is the backbone of his fortune. If there are ways you can find to protest there. And I would say then the other thing is mass mobilizations and protests. You should take part in those. So like the no Kings protest, like the, you know, at the end of the day, history suggests that these things are only ever really stopped by just bodies.

Richard Rushfield (20:14)

Right?

Jonathan V. Last (20:14)

Masses of bodies. And so, you know, does it help posting something on Instagram? On Instagram or having an actor come out and say like, I don't know, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But the other stuff being part of mass movements like people power, that's very important. And not surrendering and forcing the bad guys to fight. Very important.

Richard Rushfield (20:37)

The, the, that's, that's good to hear. Gives, gives, give it a path to salvage self respect. I mean, but I, the, I've suggested some alternative paths Disney could have gone on. I mean they have, they, they spent the last 10 years building up this giant screening service or streaming service for at billions of dollars cost and massive disruption. So if all their affiliates say they don't want them, just say okay, we'll put them on Hulu, great, well we'll keep them going there. Or they can alterly tell the FCC, go ahead, pull ABC's license. See, let's see who, who the American public likes better. Abbott elementary or Brendan Carr. Let's, let's, let's put that to a test here.

Jonathan V. Last (21:30)

I mean honestly, here's what I don't understand. If you're nextar right, you need Disney content much more than Disney needs your carriage fees, don't they?

Richard Rushfield (21:42)

Absolutely. Yeah.

Jonathan V. Last (21:44)

So Disney. But again, this is Disney not understanding where their leverage lies is I think just a strategic miscalculation. And you're absolutely right, they should be. I mean the FCC doesn't have a lot of say over like streaming, right? It's not on Spectrum.

Richard Rushfield (22:02)

It's, you know, so, but imagine Brendan Carr went through with this and he, he said we are canceling the broadcast like license for abc and ABC goes off the air and where's that leave next star?

Jonathan V. Last (22:17)

I would much rather have that fight if I was Disney than have this fight that they're having now having caved.

Richard Rushfield (22:23)

But the problem is. So we had three incidents. They had the Stephanopoulos suit, we had the 60 minute suit and then we had the Colbert thing. And every one of them, the CEOs who made the decision paid no price whatsoever. Like the people, there were a day of, there was a day of like, you know, blue sky, hated them for a day. And and if they didn't click on Blue sky that day, they, they wouldn't even notice that anyone cared about, about anything they did. So I just, we need to tell them that there's some sort of, there needs to be some sort of counter pressure. How about the progressive affiliate owners, if there's still any out there threatening to, threatening to pull Disney or something like that? I mean, there's no, but there's nothing on the other side that makes them.

Jonathan V. Last (23:20)

I mean, part of it is that we do have a concentration of oligarchs.

Richard Rushfield (23:27)

Who are.

Jonathan V. Last (23:29)

Who are basically fascist curious.

Richard Rushfield (23:32)

Right.

Jonathan V. Last (23:33)

Or at least who are not opposed to fascism because they believe that they can prosper under it.

Richard Rushfield (23:39)

Right.

Jonathan V. Last (23:39)

I mean, Tim Cook does not seem especially alarmed about any of this. He seems to think that Apple's going to be able to operate pretty well. Mark Zuckerberg seems to have figured out how to work. Elon Musk was, you know, was allowed to run the American government for three months. And so this is, you know, a lot of this. I don't want to sound like a commie. The concentration of wealth is a real problem. Like, it's a real problem. And yeah, I just don't know that there's any way out of that, you know, at least not in the near.

Richard Rushfield (24:09)

Term, you know, and I, I, I think people have a, out. I, I think the sense of what Hollywood is, that it's all these, all these commies running around and running their film studios and just sneaking in liberal messages is very, I mean, I, I kind of did it back on the envelope of all the cameras rolling today around the world, paid for by Hollywood, I guess. 70. When you put Amazon, Apple, Netflix and now Paramount in the tech thing, about 70% of them are funded by the tech world. So that's, you know, we're, we're a vassal state now. That's not, oh yeah. And, and, and for, for, for Disney, who I think is, I, I have predicted for years now is considering going down that route or hoping to go down, down that route. You know, this is all, this is all part, they can't just sit that out. And then you have, then you're, then you will be left with two studios, Universal and Sony, that will be independent of that. So the, the tech world's priorities are what we have to live with here. And my sense is those priorities are not very good.

Jonathan V. Last (25:30)

I mean, at, at best they are purely mercenary and at worst they are interested in a kind of feudalism that is antithetical to the American experience. I don't know what else to say about that. You know, like it. Am I this. Is that crazy? Is that a crazy thing to say?

Richard Rushfield (25:50)

No, because it feels like they're in just like almost a. The mopping up phase of the war. Like I mean all the different industry. I'm talking to Met Solar, who's having a meeting with, with the dentists. The dentists, they're buying up all the dentist's office and all the dentists are going to become tech employees. It's like I, I mean I, we're. The entire economy is on the road to being, you know, under, under the control of 10 people.

Jonathan V. Last (26:22)

Yeah, well, and this is a thing which happens under fascism, right? Because so when you are in a liberal democracy, liberal democracies depend on robust capitalist free market systems that have lots of competition. And so. Because you need for prosperity.

Richard Rushfield (26:40)

Right.

Jonathan V. Last (26:41)

And competition is the backbone of prosperity. And so there are lots of incentives in. And when I say liberal, do I just mean like everything in America prior to 2016, you know, I mean under Reagan, under Clinton, under FDR, all of it. And when. So there's incentives to, to keep consolidation at bay at least a little bit. Once you wind up in a fascist or authoritarian system, the incentives all go the other way. Because the authoritarian leaders need the business community to be loyal. They don't need prosperity. They need like a very bare minimum level of prosperity to keep people from having bread riots. What they need is loyalty from the business class. And so one of the ways to get loyalty is to give away consolidation. And like this is just where we are, you know, and it's been speeding up and I don't know, it's all very bad. I mean we're at Mark Andreessen and David Ellison owning Tick Tock. I'm sure that'll be fine. Like, you know, how's that going to work going into the 2026 election, you know?

Richard Rushfield (27:52)

Yeah. This hydra they're building, it's. It feels like there's some sort of plan behind it and you can't quite get what it is except conquering the world. I want to talk to you though about your experience because you were many of these people, these were your friends and colleagues and, and co religionists or whatever you call it. Fellow wound. What is that? What is it like to see people just turn into the body statures? Like, like what has, what has that all been like, like how do you understand what's happened to these people? What is your.

Jonathan V. Last (28:36)

So. So it's weird as shit. It's. It's Not a lot of fun, I would say, for, for people who don't know me, which I assume is 98% of the. The people who are your audience. So I spent literally my entire adult life at the Weekly Standard. I, I showed up there like in year three, I think, and I stayed there until it was shut down. I was never Republican, like really never Republican. I am not a joiner. I don't mean I'm voted for God, God knows, put it for John Kerry. And, and I was conservative, but my conservatism is really like deeply temperamental, you know. My view is that however bad things are right now, they are probably going to get worse. And so we should try to preserve the status quo before because whenever you try to improve things, you often wind up with unintended consequences. And in a Catholic. But also I believe in then all the social justice stuff about like, you know, feeding the hungry and quoting the poor and welcoming the prisoner and the immigrant and stuff. So I always sat in like a weird, uneasy place in the way that social justice Catholics do. But what I. I mean, so I. I don't know, a lot of it is I have realized a bunch of things that were true about the world that I just didn't realize when I was younger, you know, one of which is like the centrality of race in understanding anything about American politics. How I missed that, beyond me. I mean, it was just fucking stupid and sheltered.

Richard Rushfield (30:10)

Do you think, do you think in the people who were actually around you, who you work with, who have gone over to that side, that was a. The sort of latent issue for them?

Jonathan V. Last (30:21)

No, I think that that was a latent issue that was bubbling underneath that created the popular support for MAGA is what I think.

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That's what they said.

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Jonathan V. Last (31:30)

Does your guest support democracy?

Richard Rushfield (31:32)

Google me, Laura.

Jonathan V. Last (31:34)

You can find that out.

Richard Rushfield (31:35)

It's.

Jonathan V. Last (31:36)

And, but the other thing is, I. I came to realize that for many of the people I knew, and not all of them, and frankly, at the Weekly Standard, I mean, God, but, you know, my. My hero at the weekly stand was Bill Crystal. I've been working with Bill Kristol since I was 22. I'm 51 now. Bill wasn't like this. Like Bill. Bill has always believed shit, and his beliefs are sincere. And he. When he's right, he's sincerely right, and when he's wrong, he's sincerely wrong.

Richard Rushfield (32:05)

And.

Jonathan V. Last (32:06)

And Bill was exactly who I thought he was. And that has been incredibly reassuring. And many of my Weekly Standard colleagues were like that. A few were not. But in general, within the conservative world that I was sort of, you know, covalent with, a lot of those people turned out to not believe in anything. Like, for them, it was. It was just like a. A job, I guess. And when the job allowed advancement to, like, go and do something else, they were just happy to do that. And that has also been true of the voters. Like, the voters turn out to, at least Republican voters turn out to not believe any of the shit that they've been saying. And there are a lot of lessons for us here, one of which is, I mean, this is probably not of interest to your. Your audience, but I'll say it anyway. A big part of what happened has to do with the collapse of institutional power. And the biggest of those has. Has to do with the political parties. Because it turns out that what the political parties did was they prevented people from being allowed to choose fascism. And, you know, I. I assume it being Hollywood, maybe this is prejudicial. I'm sorry if it is, that many of your people in your audience are not Republicans and have never liked Republicans. But the truth of the matter is that the Republican Party prevented Republican voters from being allowed to choose a fascist as president for a really long time. And this is because the party had various levers of power and ways to prevent the Republican voters from fully expressing what they want. And then it turned out that, you know, and this happened, the party process starts getting opened up in 1976, right with Carter. And it becomes more and more democratized. The parties begin to lose power. As the parties lost power, it turned out that when you allowed Republican voters to have the full say over this and you really marginize the power of the party itself, then voters got to choose Donald Trump and they really, really wanted it. They really, really wanted it. And that's, I don't know how you put that genie back in the bottle. Right. Because all of the people in the Republican Party have like, they got the message right. They've, they've seen what their voters want. And I don't think it's a one off. If you wanted to be optimistic, you could say Donald Trump occupies a unique place in America because he was famous for 40 years and that this is more about celebrity and cultural muscle memory than fascism. Most people are stupid. Most people are not particularly engaged. They think he's a businessman, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. My work wife Sarah Longwell gives this as the bull case for America often. I don't think I buy that. I'm not convinced it's wrong. But if you forced me to bet a dollar, I wouldn't bet on that proposition. I would take the opposite, which is that a determinative percentage of the Republican cohort has now seen fascism and likes it in that fascist tendencies used to be equally distributed among the electorate in the same way that like conspiracy theorists were equally distributed among the electorate. And, and like anti vaxxer, the anti vaxxers were equally distributed among the electorate. And those things, those three things, both anti vax sentiment, conspiracy theorizing and affinity for fascism, have all now coalesced and polarized on, on one side in the Republican Party. And with that, like, I just. How are you gonna get them to choose liberalism again? Like, I just, they don't want it. They, it's not, it's not that they're deceived. It's not that they don't understand. I think they do. They just don't like it. And like, I don't, I don't know, I don't know where to go from there.

Richard Rushfield (36:28)

Well, my, my unsatisfying response to that because it's probably much too late and much too little to be talking about things like this. But you know, when you talk about how people, people that you knew for, in the end it was just a job for them, it was just about career advancement, you know, here, similar in Hollywood. I, I thought we all loved movies. I thought we all loved entertaining. I thought, I thought that was, that was why you came here instead of going into pharmaceuticals or petroleum or God knows what else. Turns out people just want to build big companies and then hopefully sell them. And, and for a long time I've been writing about this way before Trump that, you know, stock price became, you know, it wasn't even a movie being a hit anymore. It was the stock price became everything to an entertainment company just became so. It's. The world lost its meaning. The people driving it had no sense of purpose or meaning. And every then, this time of like, just nihilism and, you know, the. I call it the fire hose that you just get stuck spewed over you just to. So the, The New Agey answer is somehow find a way to restore meaning to the world. And, And. And that's where you build up from. I have no idea how you do that, but.

Jonathan V. Last (37:58)

Yeah. Well, I mean, the other optimistic case I'll try to be some optimism is that we have been to a similar place once before in American history. There's a really good book called the Age of Acrimony. I would highly recommend you guys reading it. It's sort of that post Civil War period when we actually almost fought another Civil War. Things were very unhappy. We were at each other's throats. The mark was very divided, and then it all just kind of went away. And this is so, you know, you know, in Shakespeare in Love, that scene with Jeffrey Rush and Tom Wilkeson when he, you know, he's like, the. What. What is the. The. The inevitable path? You know, the course of every production is inevitable, insurmountable obstacles on the way to inevitable ruin. Is that somebody in the.

Richard Rushfield (38:52)

That sounds right.

Jonathan V. Last (38:53)

And then he says, so what do we do? And Jeffrey Rush says, you know, funnily enough, we do nothing. He says, well, then how does it. It's a mystery. You know, it all works out as a mystery. And it is. It is possible that you just look at this from a systems point of view. Culture is an ecosystem that is so big that there are no buttons really, that we can push. There are no levers to pull, and that these things will just work themselves out. And that is deeply unsatisfying because that is a sort of like. Well, we all fight as hard as we can, and either it works out or it doesn't. Yeah, I don't love that as an answer, but I also fear that that may be the answer.

Richard Rushfield (39:33)

I mean, what was.

Jonathan V. Last (39:34)

I don't know. What do you think?

Richard Rushfield (39:36)

What's the. The. The church rule said God. God protects children.

Jonathan V. Last (39:41)

Children, drunks, in the United States of America.

Richard Rushfield (39:44)

I mean, I, that's kind of my, my hope there, that, that there's a divine providence that wants us to see it. And, and you, you, you talk about this a lot. I mean there is something satisfying to like, you talk about the hot, the hot stove scenario, telling people, no, you don't want to touch that stove. You don't want that to saying finally like, okay, you want to find, you want to see it, go ahead, touch the stove. Let's see. Let's see.

Jonathan V. Last (40:11)

Yeah, and I will say this also. In American history, we do not often solve our problems, right? Like we, we get a problem for a generation and there's never really a resolution to it. We just sort of bulldoze over it and build our next set of problems on top of it. You know, so I, when I say, I look at this and I don't understand how it gets fixed. Like, well, maybe it doesn't get fixed. It just sort of, we move on. You know what I mean? Like, there's no Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There's no, like, things just go back to normal. Ish. Maybe. Again, I'm grasping at straws here, Richard.

Richard Rushfield (40:49)

Well, so the one, the one, one thing that I see in Hollywood where we're very interested in casting, I look at a conversation between JD Vance and Stephen Miller and just say neither of these beady eyed weirdos are ever going to win a national election, even a fixed national election for anything. And a party that's putting like a little Renfield person like, like, like Stephen Miller out there in public is, it might be in a good place now, but they're not, that's not playing to win. It's a way. And I just, and just, you know, what is it, Russia? They, they, they, they, they always depended on Colonel Winter would comment. And, and for me, Colonel Winter is like their incompetence like that they, everything they touch, they will, if they decide that they want to repaint crosswalks, they will screw it up somehow. They will, every crosswalk will go diagonally and the lines will, so that's my hope that they will so deeply screw up everything that they come into contact with. Because even people, even very smart people with good intentions who try to do things in government usually fail.

Jonathan V. Last (42:13)

Yeah. So I think there's a lot to that. And I would say the nature of their coalition has a contradiction built into the heart of it, which is that Donald Trump is not a Republican. He did a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. He has spent most of his time in the public spotlight, waging war against the Republican Party. We have seen in election after election that his voters will turn out for him, but they won't turn out for other Republicans. They view him as separate from the Republican Party and not part of the system. His voters are the least educated and the least engaged people. They have the lowest propensity to turn out like it does. So how does that transfer? Right. And so my, my thesis has long been that because it doesn't transfer, the Republican Party will understand that it has to run Trump again in 2028. And I promise you the Supreme Court will let them. I promise you that if Donald Trump wants to run, then the Supreme Court will let him. How happened is that the Constitution is what five people says it is.

Richard Rushfield (43:25)

And John, Robert, why is John Roberts, when you get down to something like that, that is really just like day and night like we have?

Jonathan V. Last (43:36)

Because, because he is concerned about popular legitimacy. And if he was going to take the ability to choose Donald Trump out of the hands of voters, he had three opportunities to do it before. Now, you know, he's not going to do it in 2028. And so. But the other option then, should Trump be incapacitated or did he decide that he can't do it again, is Don Jr. And I, again, if you asked me to go bet a dollar who the next Republican nominee is, I would say it'll be somebody named Donald Trump, either with Junior after his name or not. Because Dynasty is the only other answer to this problem for the Republican Party.

Richard Rushfield (44:15)

Yeah. So you have, you have a better version of Don Jr. Who's called Tucker Carlson.

Jonathan V. Last (44:23)

You do, but he isn't, he isn't actually dynastic. You know, like, again, just have it again. History is replete with the Perons. And, you know, if you have something with the same name, it's very powerful.

Richard Rushfield (44:37)

Is there a Trump that Carl Tucker can marry and then change his name to hers? And. Or in the Roman Empire, the emperors.

Jonathan V. Last (44:46)

Would adopt, adopt the names of the old Caesar.

Richard Rushfield (44:50)

Well, they would. No, they would adopt their young proteges as their child. And they would, that would, they would be like Augustus was adopted by, by Julius there.

Jonathan V. Last (45:01)

I think that's unlikely.

Richard Rushfield (45:03)

I think it's, Can I, can I give you, I have a few wild plans, but I, I feel like they could work and kind of just bounce off, choose them down, but if they're good, take them to Washington and. Okay. I was just up in Toronto in Canada for the film festival, and the proposition that I put to my friends up there Some local film critics was maybe you were a little quick to say no to that idea of joining the American Union here, that if we suddenly have Canada absorbed no more, that will tip the balance in a big way and no MAGA person will ever win again. And not to your interest to have a failed state of 300 million people to yourself. So, so, so maybe you maybe consider taking them up on it. What do you think of that?

Jonathan V. Last (46:02)

I think unlikely that Canada would ever decide to do that. And also unlikely that, I mean, look, we live in an age of minority rule. I do not believe Canada came tomorrow to the Trump administration and said we're in, let's do this thing. It will be gerrymandered in such a way as to make sure that it does not impact the long term staying power of the Republican Party. I promise you that.

Richard Rushfield (46:25)

I said the pill they should put in and this will actually fix everything is they should say, we will come aboard, we'll join you. All government activities have to be held in French. From now on. The government will see Britain. And I think that would end up fixing that down the road. That would. My, my other long term plan is, I'm sorry, this wouldn't help you, but you come try. This is for Southern California to secede and take with it Las Vegas, Hawaii and Baja would secede from Mexico and join us and that we could be one entertainment and resort layout. And I think that's a very viable country there.

Jonathan V. Last (47:10)

I think unlikely, but I would not. I believe that if we get out of this fix that we're in right now, a bunch of very structural changes to the way the American political system works are going to have to happen. And I believe the expansion of the Supreme Court is going to be part of that and adding states is going to be part of that because there is just no other way to have long term stability until you reduce the power of the minority to attempt authoritarian takeovers of the country. And so California being split in two absolutely on the table, D.C. statehood, I mean D.C. state was just going to happen. I think if there's, if there is ever another case where, where we have Democrats holding power and maybe that won't happen, Puerto Rico becomes on the pal. I just think there are a whole bunch of very big structural changes which people will wind up having to get their heads around because you can't, you can't run a free society where every four years, this is paraphrasing whatever the French foreign minister, where every four years, whether or not you're going to attempt to Become fascist is dependent on 40,000 people in Wisconsin.

Richard Rushfield (48:34)

You just can't.

Jonathan V. Last (48:34)

You can't live like that.

Richard Rushfield (48:36)

Is there, is there something positive too, that from the, that, you know, there's a lot of problems in the country and, you know, the college admissions thing, which you and I are, have children that need to think about that, is a profoundly broken thing. And I don't like the way Trump has attacked colleges, universities, at all. But from the rubble of this, we can fix these sort of intractable problems that seem like they're everywhere in our society. You know, when we get somehow to the other side, is that, is that a bright side we might look forward to?

Jonathan V. Last (49:17)

I mean, this is like, this is what Mamdani is selling, right? This is the, the young, the young progressive pitch to America is, look, we gotta focus on what we're gonna build next because we're gonna. We're out of the rubble. We're gonna build something better and more sustainable. And I just don't think that that's a view of how mature societies typically work. I don't think new stuff really ever gets built. Immature society, right? It's. It's like mature companies versus, you know, stage one companies. And so, you know, maybe we'll. Maybe we'll try. Maybe we'll make a run at it. Maybe we'll start taxing the highest, like, 50 people in America in ways to discourage the concentration of wealth. Maybe we will nationalize SpaceX, which is just something that obviously should happen. It was an enormous mistake to privatize the aerospace industry in that way. But I don't really buy that argument that, like, you know, oh, from the ashes, it'll get better. I think the best case scenario is just that we all find a way to muddle through and that when you look back on American history, most of the time what you would describe, if you could describe it extemporaneously and not looking back through the long lens is things weren't great, but people found a way to muddle through. This is so I. One of the ways is I. One of the reasons I say that, like race, the centrality of race to American history was just utterly lost on me. So I believed all of the shining city on a hill and I believed all of the. And so I, you know, when the Trump thing started happening, I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe this. America's gonna stop being free, you know, and it. It took a minute because, again, because I'm an idiot. Like, African Americans are like, oh, really? Welcome to the Party, you know, we. We were slaves in this country. And even then, after slavery, it was five minutes ago that we didn't have authoritarian systems of government systematically attempting to repress us in, like, violent ways, attached also to legal structures through half the country. You know, it hasn't always been a Chinese, like, all these. Yeah, this is. I'm just like, telling you two plus two equals four. And you're like, yeah, sure, right, obviously. But because I'm an idiot, I didn't realize this stuff. And so things are always a little bit fraught. And I feel like the best we can really hope is. Is like Ed Harris in Apollo 13 when he's, you know that. That scene in. In Mission Control when everything's going wrong and he just sort of puts his head in his hands and he goes, what do we got on the spacecraft? That's good. That's where I am about America right now. Everything is, what do we got on a spacecraft? That's good. And what we have is an economy that is still functioning at a very, very high level, even though it's tipping into recession. We still have pretty good R and D and education, although that's all under assault. Right. We still have excellent public health. That's a problem I can use, you know what I'm saying? Like, all the things that I'm telling you we have that are good are things which are Currently today, on September 18, under active assault by the Trump administration. So, like, I don't know where. Where it goes from there.

Richard Rushfield (52:54)

What, bring us home here? You've had to live with this every day for nine years and see your old friends have their bodies stashed and all this. What. How if. How have you. How do you stay sane during this? If you have. What is. What is the happy place you. You're able to go to. To shake this off for a few minutes and keep going.

Jonathan V. Last (53:23)

Boy. I mean, I don't ever, like, I just don't. I don't turn it off. You know, I do this 18 hours a day. And that's not. That's not true. I'm not doing this 18 hours a day. But, like, you know, I do two things in my life. I do this and I do my kids and my family and, like, there aren't. I don't do anything else. I don't build model ships. You know, I don't have any hobbies. This is, you know, you don't find light faults.

Richard Rushfield (53:49)

Baseball is similar.

Jonathan V. Last (53:51)

Yeah. I mean, you know, we have it on in the. In the background, but it's like I don't get to a lot of, don't get to a lot of games anymore. And I just, I don't know, like I, I feel like this is important. It's real. It isn't politics as game. It's not a, it's not a thing where we're in this bouncy house where the Constitution is going to protect us and nothing truly bad can ever happen. We have federal officers in masks without badges kidnapping people off the street. I mean this is as real as it gets. And I would say to this, I would say this to your audience. Think back, have a real honest conversation with yourself and think back to January 20th of this year and what you thought the worst case scenario would look like by mid September. So after nine, what did you think by nine months it would look like? I'm a pretty dark guy and I know what I thought it would look like because I wrote a piece about this and we are way past, way past what I thought the worst case scenario was.

Richard Rushfield (55:02)

I would have said they'll, they'll try to do a lot of things, but not really. It will be more noise in the end. They'll be just sort of flailing.

Jonathan V. Last (55:12)

Yeah, it's worse. So I don't, I don't know what to tell people on how to nod. I would say don't take a job where you have to do this every day like I did. That's, that's my best advice, right?

Richard Rushfield (55:23)

So that's excellent advice. Final question for you. Our big final question. All our guests are given the opportunity to assign reading to everyone who works in entertainment. What. What these people should know to be citizens of entertainment and of America and the world. This is required reading. They will be tested on this so, or, or viewing whatever, which, whichever you care to. Or it can be a walkish take. I give the, I give the floor to you. Your syllabus for Hollywood, Jonathan Fee.

Jonathan V. Last (55:58)

Last I have an answer that you guys aren't gonna like. Sorry. The book Witness by Whitaker Chambers. So Whitaker Chambers is. This was, this is like a big 80s and 90s conservative touchstone. But let me, let me explain to you why. So Whitaker Chambers is a guy who comes out of the communist movement. He is a member of the Workers Party. He is a red. He is sort of a Soviet style agent and he switches sides. He's also a writer and an essayist. He switches sides and then goes, and this is at the height of the Red scare, is naming names and he names Alger Hiss as a high level Soviet Agent within the State Department. There is a long trial over this. Chambers testifies, names his. We do find out later that his was in fact stone cold guilty. And Chambers writes his memoir about his life and his experience. Here's why I would tell you guys to read it, even though I know you are going to say no, thank you.

Richard Rushfield (57:05)

Pass.

Jonathan V. Last (57:08)

I found the explanations of why he became a Communist to be unbelievably compelling. And they all had to do with.

Richard Rushfield (57:21)

The First World War.

Jonathan V. Last (57:23)

I really believe that Americans are blind to the centrality of the First World War in getting us to where we are now. World War I. Much, much more important than World War II, much more determinative than World War II, because the scale of the slaughter and the senselessness of the slaughter, it was an accidental conflagration. It was like somebody set the entire fucking world on fire because they just fell asleep holding a cigarette in bed. It made everybody, entire generation of people terrified that it could happen again. And they reached for anything they could grab onto. And this is why the world split into fascists and communists. It wasn't because these were people who just naturally wanted authoritarianism, although we now know some of them were. Yeah, but the reason it became broadly popular, both fascism and communism at that moment in time, was because people thought the old system didn't work. Millions of people just died in a blink. We can't do that again. We'll try anything to avoid doing that. And the reason I would tell you, I would tell people, go and read that and now compare that to right now, because right now we have people choosing fascism and authoritarianism not being under duress, but it's just out of decadence.

Richard Rushfield (58:47)

Right?

Jonathan V. Last (58:47)

Things are basically as good as they've ever been. And so that difference, the difference between the world the chambers and the people lived in the 20s and 30s as they were going through this communist fascist divide, where you had again, First World War, followed by a Great Depression. You can see why people would choose things that turned out to be dangerous. But over the last 10 years in America, to have the people of this country choose what they have chosen, it speaks to how totally different this moment is. And the reason I would tell you to go read Witness is so that you can really meditate on the difference in the situations and that. That that incongruity might help spark your thinking and understanding about why it is that we are where we are now, who our fellow citizens are, what they're really looking for. I'm not saying I'll give you answers. If I had answers. I would give them to you myself, but I don't. But I think witness and especially the sections leading up to. And then going through like 1940. So if you don't want to read the whole book, you don't have to. But the. But the first half especially is very, very helpful for understanding today because not because it. It gives answers, but because it provides contrasts.

Richard Rushfield (60:14)

There you go, Hollywood. That is. That is required you. This will be counted towards final grade. So going. Thank you so much for joining us. Incredibly clarifying not, you know, not, not. Not the ray of sunshine. But. But. But make sense of this moment to us and best of luck there. And. And please keep yourself healthy and sane during. During. We need you and everyone. Everyone here should subscribe to the Bulwark. It's really important, indispensable for the.

Jonathan V. Last (60:48)

It's very nice for you to say. I. I would just say that I have been. I think I was probably one of the first hundred people to subscribe to.

Richard Rushfield (60:55)

The Ankler and I think you may have been. Yeah. Before.

Jonathan V. Last (60:58)

Before was. And I am so inspired by what you guys have done and I just. It's great. I love having. I love that you and the Ankler exist in the world and I read it every day and it makes me happy.

Richard Rushfield (61:14)

You're too kind and very much. Back to you. Thanks for coming and we will talk soon. Good luck, everybody.