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- [00:00]
Phil
Since 2020, Donald Trump has sued at least 10 media outlets at least 15 times for defamation. And these lawsuits have come from reporting on his taxes, releasing recorded audio of him saying he lost the 2020 election, publishing critical op eds and polls he didn't like, editing an interview of Kamala Harris for a promo, giving Pulitzer Prizes to stories he didn't like, and now publishing a birthday card that he allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein. And all of these lawsuits have, for the most part, been dismissed because President Trump is a very public figure. And in order to fame a public figure, you really have to try to do it. But here's essentially how it works. Imagine you're President Trump and you're suing Good Faith podcast for defamation. You first have to prove that what I published is factually false. You then also have to prove that I did it with actual malice. And actually, even before all that, if what I said was clearly my opinion or a joke, exaggeration, satire, or if I was quoting something from the public record, it doesn't count as defamation. And then, I mean, if you get that far, you now have to prove that I have harmed your reputation in a real, measurable way. And the burden of proof is actually on the most powerful, not the media. And this standard is relatively new in America and was fiercely fought for. In 1733, the royal governor of New York, Bill Cosby, sent the police to arrest John Peter Zenger of sedition, malicious libel, after he published information that was critical of him. You see, his New York Weekly Journal revealed that Cosby was trying to rig elections and stealing tax money and firing members of the government responsible for keeping him in line. Which also makes me wonder, why is.
- [01:14]
Alex Perlman
It always a New Yorker?
- [01:15]
Phil
But Zhangary goes on trial, and the case is pretty straightforward. It is seditious libel to criticize the Crown, regardless if what you're saying is true. And he had already admitted to publishing it, but his lawyers, they argued that while he may be guilty, the truth should be a defense against libel, and therefore he shouldn't be punished. And so the judge actually shuts this down and tells the jury to return with a guilty verdict, but the jury returns with a not guilty verdict, saying that you shouldn't be punished for telling the truth. And that ruling would actually go on to inspire the creation of the First Amendment. And then 200 years later, Southern officials began suing northern newspapers for libel in an attempt to get them to stop covering the civil rights movement and the police brutality that was being subjected on so many people by bankrupting them and eventually this reaches the Supreme Court in Sullivan v. New York Times, which is a case where Sullivan, the city commissioner of Montgomery, he was suing the Times over an ad that they had run saying that the city had arrested Martin Luther King Jr. Seven times when they had actually only arrested him four times. In the court. It sees what the south is up to here and flips libel laws on their head, saying, if we're going to be society, you have to be able to criticize the government without fear of being sued, and reporters have to be able to publish information that they believe to be true in the moment. And so they set up the current standard for defamation. But the issue is that recently no one's been willing to defend it. You're seeing things like ABC settling with Trump in December last year for $15 million after George Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump had been found liable of rape when he had actually been found liable of sexual abuse. And you had many experts saying that if ABC had actually fought that, they almost certainly would have won. But they ended up settling, and it opened up the floodgates for Trump to begin suing many more outlets. And so you're seeing things like earlier this month, Paramount settling Trump for $16 million over what appeared to be a false accusation that they had deceivingly edited. Kamala Harris, 60 Minutes interview with Again, experts saying that if Paramount had let CBS fight the case, they probably would have won. But all of this is also Paramount is trying to complete a merger that Trump can block, and it's widely believed that that's why they settled. Or with many seeing this as an attempt to appease a president who uses the powers of the government as if he was a dictator. And that is, others believe that all of this has led to things like the firing of Stephen Colbert, the end of the Late show, and the muzzling of 60 Minutes. Now you've got Trump suing the Wall Street Journal, its parent company Dow Jones, and their parent company, News Corps, and their owners. The along with three journalists because of their latest story titled Jeffrey Epstein's friends sent him bawdy letters for a 50th birthday album. One was from Donald Trump, with Trump reportedly speaking to the editor and Rupert Murdoch to try to kill the story before it was published. And when that failed, he ended up suing the paper for defamation, seeking $10 billion in damages. So it appears that we're in a situation where the president is simultaneously an institution beyond the reach of criminal law and also a private person who can file a defamation suit when he dislikes a news article, you know what happens here, it could determine the future of America. And if the Murdochs roll over here, I mean, to be honest with you, everyone's probably in grave danger. At least for now, it appears that's not happening because the Dow Joneses pledged to back and defend the Journal's reporting in what should be an easy win for them, with some experts saying that Trump may have actually bit off more than he can chew here. For one, at least as of when I'm recording this, Trump's representing himself in the case. It's not clear if that's actually going to happen, but as of right now, it is. And with all this, he'd have to submit to discovery over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and undergo a deposition, because, remember, it is on Trump to prove that he didn't send that birthday card. And the man that he's up against is Rupert Murdoch, the inspiration for Logan Roy. You're talking about a man who's been described as a bastard who loves to fight.
- [04:12]
Guest
Right.
- [04:13]
Phil
And all of this is the long could become a test to the power structure in the Republican Party. Murdoch owns Fox News, and many argue that if it wasn't for Fox, Trump wouldn't have become president in the first place. Murdoch could very easily have Trump's favorite channel turn into his biggest critic. And it could be argued that Trump needs Fox more than Fox needs him. However, if Trump is able to force his most powerful supporter into capitulation, then who really stands a chance? So, as we're watching all of that.
- [04:33]
Alex Perlman
Play out, my guest today is Alex.
- [04:35]
Phil
Perlman, also known as Perlmania.
- [04:37]
Alex Perlman
He is a man, I will say.
- [04:38]
Phil
That uses his First Amendment to its fullest extent. He's also the host of the Too Many Tabs podcast, and at times, he.
- [04:44]
Alex Perlman
Feels like my anger translator.
- [04:46]
Phil
So there's a lot we've got to talk about today.
- [04:48]
Alex Perlman
I am actually, I'm more interested.
- [04:49]
Phil
First, before we dive into that, yesterday you said that Jubilee is a psyop.
- [04:56]
Alex Perlman
And so I wanted you to explain.
- [04:59]
Guest
Explain why you think that.
- [05:00]
Phil
What? Yeah, just explain that.
- [05:02]
Guest
Okay. Well, I'm actually gonna. That's very funny because this is a great tie in. For now, I can tell people about my podcast, Too many Tabs, which they can find right here on YouTube, because that is this week's episode. This week's episode. And I was sitting out here last night taking a look deeper and deeper into Jubilee. But I've always had. I've had a general feeling since I first found out about Jubilee and My way of finding out about them is violently different than the average YouTuber's experience. I found out about Jubilee because Jubilee reached out to me to ask me to be on the show, and I didn't know what it was.
- [05:32]
Phil
Have you been on it?
- [05:33]
Guest
No, I have not been on it, and I'm not going to go on it. I didn't know what it was at the time. They reached out to me and my management team was like, oh, you should have a meeting with Jubilee. And I thought, I didn't know what this. You know, I just. Is this a brand? Is this a nonprofit? What is this? And so I go into the meeting and they start describing the show to me and I'm like, okay, well, does it film in New York? Because I'm in. I'm in Pennsylvania. And like, no, we film in la. And then immediately we discovered where my line is, which is, I refuse to fly to LA for free. And that is kind of what came through from the producers, because I didn't realize I was really in an audition. I thought this was just a general meeting. Again, because I didn't know. When you say the term Jubilee to me, I think of Jubilation. Lee from the X Men yellow coat. Fireworks from the hand. I didn't know about this whole. The middle ground. I didn't know about the One V20, the One V20s was the new idea they were working on at the time. Because this was, I want to say, was like fall of 2024. And I was just like, I hate this. And I got very combative with the casting producer immediately, because I immediately was like, you want me to come out so you can get Google AdSense money. But my feeling with it in general, Jubilee has. Jubilee has sub. Obviously, everything has a subconscious bias. But specifically with Jubilee, their framing of what the middle is is automatically shifting the Overton window. So right now you can go on to. I almost don't want to say it too early because I don't know if they'll remove it before my episode comes up, pops up.
- [07:04]
Alex Perlman
But I think they'll actually remove it.
- [07:06]
Guest
I don't know. Your show's pretty big. But they might listen. But they. Their casting lists are listed on their website. And when you go on there, right now, they're casting. If you go to the Jubilee Media Group's website, go to casting, they have the next surrounded already list. They're doing one with. They're looking for conspiracy theorists, they're looking for Christian conservatives. Those are in plural. And they're looking for a Single anti capitalist. And what I found interesting in those is the conspiracy theorists. One was like, what do you think about conspiracy theories and the conservative Christian ones? It was, you know, what are your thoughts on Christian nationalism? What do you. What do you think about this? Like, tell us what you believe. And then when it came to anti capitalism, it was a defend yourself against that. Capitalism is good. Like, it's already framed very much in this fair and balanced type of Fox way. And this is a general thing that happens. The secondary factor of it is just Jubilee initially was founded as a nonprofit. The guy, Jason Wiley, when he put it together, he. It was a very Obama, hope hashtags can save the world type of thing. If you go, the videos are still up there. You can scroll all the way back to Jubilee back in 2010. And it's very much of like, he's in Philly. He's trying to, you know, get people to. To notice people as people look up from your screen type of stuff. And then in 2017, they flipped from a nonprofit to a for profit. And in that, I found some interviews with him where he talked about going and getting VC funding. There is a few other researchers I went into and looked into if, like, you know, they raised $650,000 to get this show going. And that's fine, that's all well and good, but that means that it's an entertainment product. This is a product. And who are the investors? What is the editorial byline? What is the aim of any of this stuff? And that's kind of what I mean by Psyop in general, because there's so many people who are like, it's important that we go on these shows. It's important that we meet people. I'm already seeing people, specifically with the Mehdi Hassan interview. I didn't realize that there was this many people out there who thought this. I don't know that there was. I know that casting directors were able to find 20 of them. I don't know if that means that there's more than 20. I really don't. And there's a lot of people who are treating Jubilee 1v20s and Middle Grounds and others like that. They're more than just Jerry Springer casting. Because the people who are going on there are playing characters. The people who are going on there, they have specific things they look for. They don't go and they don't go on and cast Phil or Alex. They cast conspiracy theorists, they pass conservative, Christian, they cast anti capitalist, they cast poc, anti feminist. That's a Real show. They've had like, they have like all these different things that they go down and it's. They want to check off all these boxes. The funniest thing I found on their casting form, by the way, was seeing that conservative Christians do have to both list their pronouns and also list their gender, which there are 10 of.
- [10:05]
Alex Perlman
See, I mean, when I watch it, I definitely don't think of it anything as anything else other than an entertainment product. And maybe something where people go. And I look to everything now as people are just looking at what they can clip to go like, oh, our guy won or our girl won. And then I don't.
- [10:22]
Phil
And then I don't know how many people consume the whole thing.
- [10:24]
Alex Perlman
Like this morning, once I, once I saw what you said, I was like, okay, I gotta, I gotta watch this Mehdi Hassan thing. And I made it halfway through and then I, you know, had a side of clips and I was like, what the fuck is happening? Like, it's, it was. I mean, I already knew that we were at a place where people were a lot more comfortable saying these things out in the public and not with, you know, avatars that just hid who they were. But it's, it's.
- [10:53]
Phil
It's wild.
- [10:54]
Alex Perlman
It's very wild to see. And then you see the confidence building from having the room full of people that are there. Every now and then you get a few glances like, wait, what?
- [11:05]
Guest
Yeah, in those moments, you have 20 people there. They're all trying to one up each other because typically out of the 20 people in the circle, one, maybe two launch a whole career. Like if you look. I mean, there was the one. The Charlie Kirk interview that they. The Charlie Kirk one 1v20, when I don't remember her name, but the, the. The girl makes fun of his gums. And that launched the meme about Charlie Kirk has the pentagons of just like how crazy they look. And that moment for her soft launched her into, you know, she has an opportunity at that moment. Do you want to then become an influencer? Do you want to go start your own clip channel? Do you want to go become a twitch streamer? It launches you and it gets your socials out there. I mean, a big part when I had my, my audition with them that I didn't realize was an audition via Zoom, it was very much being sold to me of this is the way to get you in front of a new audience. This is very much a way to get you exposure. And I was like, again, but how much are you paying? Because people die. Of exposure. And I worked in comedy for 20 years and I got paid by too many drink tickets. Okay, the. There, there is the. The guys who were on that show, in particular the Mehdi Hassan one. There's a guy there named Kai. Kai was banned from TikTok, I want to say, two or three years ago for hopping into a conservative hype house. And he started talking about like, race realism and all this weird shit. He's a Nick Fuentes guy. The other one who said that he's a. When he was like, oh, I would say you're a fascist. And the guy was, I am a fascist. And he giggles all crazy. That. Which is now a meme that's going everywhere. That guy, again, works heavily with or at least volunteers and does stuff with America first with Nick Fuentes. These are groipers who are from a very specific subsect of the Internet. And yes, he did get fired in the last day or so, but now he has a GoFundMe up he. Or give send go or whichever one. He's now trying to raise $15,000. And what he's going to do is he is now going to be a martyr for the cause who has now proven that he can at least fill two or three minutes and speak without saying too many times, he is clippable. He has X amount. And at the end of the day, I mean, you and I both know when it comes to any of these platforms that we get any of our news, our entertainment, how we touch the world, it's not a matter of whether or not anything's good, valuable, or even worthwhile. It's a matter of how much engagement does it get. And in the case of jubilee and in the case of everyone in that circle, they got engagement the same way on Jerry Springer you could have. The Klan would get just as much engagement as somebody coming on to tell their story as being a survivor of a victim, you know, of. Of a sexual assault or any of those different things. And I think that's. That's what I mean by psychological operation. I don't know if necessarily even the people running the org understand how badly they're doing it, but it is moving the needle in ways that a lot of people aren't processing right now.
- [14:09]
Alex Perlman
So, I mean, do you think that.
- [14:10]
Phil
So you think it is a.
- [14:12]
Alex Perlman
An overwhelming net negative or just slightly or. Where would you. Where would you kind of gauge it? Because I know that.
- [14:20]
Guest
I think that there should be a warning label on it. That's it. I think much like cigarettes, much like sugary drinks much like any of these things. Just like be aware this is an entertainment product. I know that Jubilee Jubilee is never going to put that label on there. It's the same way when people watch Love island and think these people are actually in love. It's not. It's a game show. It's edited. Jubilee is Love island and Hoda is annoying in both.
- [14:45]
Alex Perlman
How dare you.
- [14:46]
Guest
I know.
- [14:46]
Alex Perlman
Dare you clip that.
- [14:48]
Guest
Clip that.
- [14:50]
Alex Perlman
No. So, okay, so actually, wait, before we get, I really do want to get to the, the, the Murdoch Wall Street Journal, Trump Epstein of it all. But I do now have to ask on a, on the scale that we're creating, where does Jubilee Jubilee land versus the Nelk Netanyahu interview that dropped this week?
- [15:08]
Guest
I think, I think, well, I think Nelk Netanyahu is more of a negative for their brand. I think, I think the big difference is all the stuff the Nelk boys and the full send guys and especially all the podcast bros, it's now becoming more apparent to their audience of how much of that is openly commercial advertising and maybe even when it comes to the political realm, straight up propaganda. I mean, I just did an episode about Andrew Schultz and everything that's going on with the flagrant podcast. And really just in general, how a lot of these guys got used so easily and openly by Trump and the MAGA movement. I mean, Donald Trump and the people that he was surrounded with took a look at Joe Rogan and the Nelk boys specifically and they, it's, it's a tales all the time with Trump, right? Nelk boys thought, oh, we're going to use him and then we're going to make a lot of money. And then Donald Trump said, I'm going to use you and I'm going to get the White House and I'm going to make a lot of money. And at the end of the day now Trump has moved on. He's going out and hiding lists, whatever he wants to do. And the Nelk boys are now trying to go chase how to keep that number up. And so they thought, hey, I guess we'll, I guess we'll put on Netanyahu thinking this is going to be a pop, a big rating and not realize that this is going to make more people block them and more people flip out about it. I mean, the fucking interview is insane.
- [16:35]
Alex Perlman
I didn't watch their argument. A big part of their argument was, hey, we'll have any world leader on. And then when pressed on that by several people, they said that they would have Hitler on And that it would. They would do it as a neutral interview, which was just a wild thing.
- [16:50]
Guest
To say, brought to you by a gambling app. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, which. Which that, like, I do a podcast. We have sponsors. You know, you have to think of how. What are you pairing with these things. At the end of the day, the biggest goal of their podcast is to. Is to sell ad space. That's what all of these things are. So when. When we have that, that's. That's why I don't believe them. It's not like they're going to be. It's not. They're. They're not 60 minutes. They're not. This isn't Walter Cronkite. This isn't any Terry Gross from NPR or anyone else who's been fired or defunded recently. It's the Nelk Boys. Their job is to sit there and talk about, like, oh, man, that's crazy. When you got CTE that time. Anyway, I think Bud Light's woke now. Like, that's their show, right? Isn't that it? And you're talking to a man who's currently. Who's currently created more child amputees than anyone else per capita in a region of the world. You're talking it to me. Having Netanyahu on the Nelk Boys is like having Netanyahu have. Do a 1v20 against child caskets. Like, that's. That's the level. I'm sorry. That's the level to me. Have fun editing that one.
- [17:57]
Alex Perlman
What do you know?
- [17:57]
Phil
I'm not going to edit it out.
- [17:58]
Alex Perlman
I want you to. I want you to be you. That's why I'm having you on. But no, I. Because it's just.
- [18:03]
Phil
It was so jarring.
- [18:04]
Alex Perlman
Because what do you think about their argument that, hey, you're selling. He was saying this. It was like the main guy, he was saying to the audience, he's like, I think that you guys are selling yourselves short.
- [18:16]
Phil
You.
- [18:16]
Alex Perlman
We're having people on. And sure, we're not the greatest interviewers, and we weren't, like, well equipped for this, essentially. But our whole thing is we get someone on, they say their. And then you be the judge, though. They're, you know, they're not contesting anything except McDonald's versus Burger King.
- [18:35]
Guest
Yeah, okay. All right, great. So we're gonna let a literal poisonous viper into this classroom, and then the kids will learn to stay away from poisonous vipers. Like, I mean, like, that's. That's the thing with all of these different guys, that's why I got so mad during the election, especially at guys like Rogan and Theo Vaughn. Andrew Schultz is the one I'm actually the angriest at because he's the one who claims to be the smartest. And they, they know what their audience is. All of these guys know. All of these guys have websites. On my last episode of Too Many Tabs, we went to the flagrant media co's website. They talk about how their audience trusts them. And so a lot of these guys, when they're listening to podcasts, because I listen to podcasts when I was at my job. Everyone else I know, if you have a. You're walking the dog, you're mowing the lawn, you're. You're doing a data entry job, you have a job where you work at Target, you put stuff back on the shelves. Are you talking to your co workers? Are you talking to somebody else? Are you on the phone? Probably not. What you are is you have two AirPods in or one AirPod in secretly that you're hiding and you're listening to people have conversations. So it feels like you're building, being emotionally and intellectually fulfilled throughout the day. Those people also have advertising during it and they also have agendas. And when they hide their agendas under, I'm just a dude, I'm just doing this. And they have a man on who's currently wanted by the International Criminal Court who is, has an outsized influence on the entire world and is currently starving however many million. And I do mean however many, because at one point I think Gaza had a population of 2.2 million. And now even Israel's own numbers saying as low as 1.8, but even that fluctuates. So we, we, we're looking at this and that they're trying to sell a, a sports gambling app, like during it. Like, don't they. They can claim all they want. At the end of the day, they are, they think that they're platforming these guys so they can pop a rating to sell a different product. And the guys who are coming onto that platform are coming on to sell their product. And in the case of Netanyahu, that is an ongoing apartheid, that is an ongoing genocide, and that is an ongoing. Just general corruption and evil shit. I mean, shit, the other day he, he bombed Syria to move a fucking court date and then claimed he had food poisoning. Like, this is. Benjamin Netanyahu is evil on a level that a lot of people I don't think understand because he cheats at everything. And there's a. There's so much that happened with him right before October 7th because he was facing court trials in Israel, he was on corruption charges, all these different things. And when I look at everything going on, at the end of the day, there is the evil forces that want to obviously remove everyone from Gaza, kill everybody in Gaza and take that land. But there's also the side of Netanyahu is just trying to stay out of jail. So he's like, I'll just keep the war going. I'll just keep this thing going. And. And this, this is where he's walking into. And the Nelk boys don't bring up any of that shit because why the fuck would they ever know it? They're the Nelk boys.
- [21:40]
Alex Perlman
Like seeing them afterwards. Yeah, seeing them afterwards where they're like.
- [21:46]
Phil
Oh, damn, that's a good comment.
- [21:47]
Alex Perlman
This is like if we had Hitler on, damn. And I was just like, what?
- [21:51]
Phil
The fucking realization is that.
- [21:53]
Guest
Here's the thing, I don't think it is a realization. I think it's a double down on a character of being stupid. And that's a lot of these guys. I think a lot of these guys ignorance, I think, well, yeah, I mean, listen, how many narcissistic narcissists and abusers do this, right, where they pretend they don't understand what's going on. The Nelk boys have a multimedia as you have a multimillion dollar media empire. The Nelk boys were the ones who actually were able to get young men to register to vote. A Republican, like, out of how many, how many years have we seen Republicans backslide? The Nelk boys stepped in. I didn't even know this was happening during the election. The Nelk boys were pretty fundamental in making sure that they, they created a call to action for all of the listeners. And that was then repeated across all these different podcasts, which is, hey, a lot of guys are 18 to 35. A lot of guys weren't registered to vote. I didn't see the voter registration push the same way I'd seen, like Obama in 2008. They made sure they went to college campuses. All these different things. You have the Nelk boys, Charlie, Kirk, all these other ones, really hyper targeting young men, 18 to 24. And so now everyone has these different beliefs of what these guys, what 18 to 24 year olds believe, when in reality the only people that were heavily targeting them, where they were at the time and doing it so quickly were guys like the Nelk boys who are advertising geniuses when it comes to pushing these products. That's, that's my deal. And if you want to like that. Too many tabs.
- [23:24]
Alex Perlman
And here I was going to, I was going to warn. I was like, hey, wait, wait to push the podcast until 20 minutes.
- [23:29]
Guest
No, never know.
- [23:31]
Alex Perlman
I want to, I want to, Hey, I respect it. You're talking about a marketing genius. You got it in the first 20 seconds and like 18 minutes. And I want to transition to Bibi's friend Donald Trump. Do you think that he is actually going to be going forward with this, this lawsuit against Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal giving like what it could potentially expose if it goes further than a shakedown? That is settled.
- [23:57]
Guest
I think this is another part. I don't even think it's a shakedown. I think this is another part of the Epstein cover up. I think that Donald Trump not going down the lengths that Donald Trump goes to is in general for when he's trying to bury a story. It would be weirder for him to not sue Rupert Murdoch than to sue. I think that this is one my favorite thing from the first Trump administration that everybody forgot about was three weeks. Remember that? Everything was three weeks. We'll get back to it in three weeks. Infrastructure week was like a year long. Everything was, well, you know, we're working on that. Get back to us in three weeks. Because three weeks is typically what a classic news cycle length is for almost any story. I mean, you look at anything from Luigi Mangioni to almost every war. I mean, even the Ukrainian war, when it first started, everyone was, it was, it was breaking, it was breaking. By the time we got into the second month, it was, it's, it's moved to page three, it's moved to page four. It's moved to the lower half of the screen unless there's a major new breaking point in it. And I think him doing the threat against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch in particular is just that it's a smokescreen. It's bravado. It's also a signal to all of the other news organizations and media organizations, which is, if you go down this rabbit hole, I'll go after you. Look what I'm doing to my best friend. Like, I mean, and obviously Rupert and Trump have had back and forth before. In 2020, when Fox News finally declared, I think it was Arizona for, for Joe Biden, Donald Trump lost his mind on Rupert, all these different things. But Rupert also is one of those ones where he is a cold, calculating psychopath and he, I part of Me wonders whether or not the release of the information about this birthday card, because everyone calls it a letter, it's a birthday card. Whether or not it was released in a way that actually wouldn't push it further in the media. Because remember when the story was initially released, it's a written description of a card that you could just take a photo of. You could have just scanned it and uploaded it. And so we had about a 48 hour thing where it's like, oh, that's weird. He said what, he did this? Well, I don't know. Did he actually do it? And then finally, like now the image has started to show. At least I think that's the real image that started to show up in different places.
- [26:23]
Alex Perlman
Is it the real image?
- [26:25]
Guest
I don't know. I saw it and I thought it was. I couldn't figure out where it came from. I know I saw Rick Wilson had reposted it on a few different places, but then again, it's Rick Wilson. So I'm like, I don't know, you know, the Lincoln Project guys, I trust them as far as I can throw them and I'm very weak. So that's, that's, that's kind of my feeling about it. But in general, when they were describing it, I couldn't picture it in my mind because the way they were describing it felt so weird. And that's a, it's. We're in it. We're in a visual medium. Like all of news now is visual. All of news is on short form video. Short form vertical video is how most people get all, most of their breaking information now. Right. And so having a newspaper type out a description of a doodle of a naked woman when you have a picture of the doodle, that doesn't make sense. Like, it doesn't, it just doesn't make sense. And so I think in that there's something, there might be something there, I don't know. But my feeling of knowing Rupert, which is like, hey, we can't catch and kill this because it's known by too many people, but we can get out first and that's a way to release it. I mean, this is what J.D. vance had. J.D. vance had the meeting with them before or after they.
- [27:43]
Alex Perlman
I have to double check on the timeline.
- [27:45]
Phil
I do question.
- [27:46]
Alex Perlman
I, you know, I hadn't really thought of it as being part of the smoke screen because I saw it more as the, the administration and Trump just kind of their continued campaign of, of pressure and scaring. And it will be interesting then to see what happens three weeks from now? Because I, I've found myself. And I feel like a lot of people have found themselves in this situation where they're like, wait, are we. We're having to root for Rupert Murdoch's lawyers and we're having to root for Harvard and we're having to. And, and, and it's like all these.
- [28:16]
Phil
It'S not allies, but all of a.
- [28:17]
Alex Perlman
Sudden, these people where it's like, okay, well, they are probably the most equipped and positioned to actually try to fight back. And if they don't, then it's only been just a little over six months, right? And so what the fuck happens when not only do you have all the, the lawyers that have capitulated and you have these, these media empires that are capitulating because they're wanting, potentially doing it in connection to a merger going through or something else happening.
- [28:46]
Guest
A merger with Larry. A merger with Larry Ellison's son. Sorry, I just, that, that keeps being left out and it drives me crazy. The merger with, like, with cbs, Colbert, that and Skydance. Skydance is owned by the son of Oracle founder and board chair Larry Ellison. That is how his son was able to purchase Skydance. Like, that's how his son has so much outside money. This is, that whole thing has this deep connection and no one ever mentions Larry Ellison, or I think his name's David Ellison, I can't remember, it's Daniel. I'd have to check. But he, he is in charge of this. And this is, this has been stretched out for over a year. And, and like, that connection there is is crazy. Like, because again, going back to Nelk boys and Netanyahu, Larry Ellison offered Netanyahu a board seat at Oracle in case Netanyahu lost power. Larry Ellison has deep ties with the Trump administration. In the first. Was it the first couple of weeks after Trump won the White House? Larry Ellison was the one who came there and stood at the podium in the Roosevelt Room and said that they were going to start the Stargate project. You know, and I, in these moments, like, I did an interview recently, someone's like, yeah, you know, somebody like you is like, conspiracy minded. I'm like, I'm not conspiracy minded. I've just. I see stuff and I ask why we're not bringing that part of it up? And like, why. Why aren't these connections being made? And then they're like, I don't know, man. You're like, kind of conspiracy minded. And I'm like, okay, do I have a board? Yes. Okay, yes. Do I have A board with connections of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and all the members of his first and second term and maybe the evidence that's missing and all those things. Yes. Is that a conspiracy? No, I'm just drawing. It's called connections, Phil. This is how we draw connections.
- [30:36]
Alex Perlman
So in connection to that, do you think with everything that we're seeing with CBS and Paramount, do you think that what happened to Colbert is connected to the merger and not like they said, it's based on his financials.
- [30:49]
Guest
I think it's 100% a financial decision.
- [30:53]
Alex Perlman
Okay.
- [30:54]
Guest
Yeah, yeah, it's a financial decision to make sure the FCC will approve it. That's controlled by, to close a 9 billion doll deal. Yes, that's the baby. Yes, it's, it's the highest rated late night show. If you were going to get rid of late night shows, you would have already talked about how they would have already been floating out for months that, that Colbert is losing all this money. They would have already floated out all this, I mean, all of these different things. Look at, look at what happened to Conan back with Jay Leno, right? When, when, when Jay Leno stole the Tonight show back from Conan. How much info did we all have going into that fight? Right? We have arguably very, very similar. Same thing with when Johnny Carson was, was retiring and it was Leno versus Letterman. There was so much different stuff in the media. This is, this is all of these different things. You mean to tell me that nobody in the history of the entire media, the entire media watchdog groups, any of these different reporters who only cover the media or late night beats seats, any of this different stuff. None of them had any idea of this to the point where this was being floated anywhere. It's just suddenly one day Stephen Colbert comes on and goes, yeah, I guess we're, this is, this is our last year where they're firing 200 people, don't notice Larry Ellison over there, that's fine. And then we move on with our lives. Like that's, that's, no, it's, it's 100%. And then on top of that Trump coming out and then again saying all these different things. I think people pointing to the moment and the timing, I think that's the part that's different. I've always, I've been waiting for when they were going to go after the Jon Stewarts and Colbert's of the world. I think the question that we have at this point is not so much are they going to. And by they, I mean this administration and their allies Are they going to continue to go after journalists and media figures and comedians that speak out against them? My question is when it's going to move from civil and business to when it moves to judicial and physical. That's my question. I mean they've already done that to the woman. What's it she up in Massachusetts? I don't remember her name. Remember the green card holder who wrote an op ed about Gaza and she was, you know, speaking out against her school and then they pulled her green card and mass ICE members grabbed her and the State Department themselves and ICE and all these reviews, they said it was specifically, it was because she wrote this op ed and that's why they're revoking her green card. I mean that is they, they start with the ones that they think they can do it to and they keep pushing the boundary on it and that's what we're looking at right now. They started, I don't remember her name off the top of my head, but they started with her. They started with Mahmoud Khalil. And now we've moved into a direction where they're going to start by trying to silence people like Stephen Colbert. Trump himself said Kimmel is next. They'll start pushing on some of these other different things. Before you know it, you'll, you might see people like Jon Stewart, you might see more editorial direction on people like John Oliver. You've, you've seen a difference on places like cnn. You might start to see just small moves here and there. We don't talk about these certain topics. We don't bring up the big board anymore as jokes on our podcast. You know, stuff like that. Because there is then also going to be a freezing effect. I mean I'm a content creator, right? I take brand deals, I take sponsorships. I've had brand deals and sponsorships just run away from me because they know in this political climate, specifically allying with a, a well known liberal voice, an outspoken left voice, any of those different things could then open them up for targeting. That, that is scary to business. And when it comes to how we do communication in this country, whether it be on YouTube, whether it be on podcasts, whether it be on television, it is all advertisement based. Unless people have a Patreon like I do@perlmania500.net where you can get ad free listening to the too many tabs podcast plus paywalled parasocial pearl maniac podcasts like vibing with the food idiot it for my wife.
- [35:08]
Alex Perlman
It's going to be, it's going to be great in post when it is blah, blah, blah, no one's going to be able to see. So I think with Colbert, you bring up a really good point of how there was, at least to my eyes. And, you know, I'm not on variety and specific reddits and subreddits and stuff like that every day, so I'd have to see, but that it just did come out of nowhere. And so I think that's a really good point. Also the fact that you wouldn't try to figure out how you take something that you're. Even though, you know, it's, it's, it's not crazy to think that that industry is struggling, but if you're at the top of it, that you wouldn't try to go like, okay, well, how can we do this in a different way that saves us? Or like, brings us back to eating?
- [35:48]
Guest
How do we cut budget? How do we maximize this? How do we do a different level of it? How do we open up a special paywalled section of Paramount? Plus, I mean, like, there's so many different levels. It's a 30 year institution. What's next? SNL, you know, I mean, like, they.
- [36:03]
Alex Perlman
Saw, I saw Jon Stewart last night going like, I think I'm safe. Like, maybe, maybe we'll see. But there's been talk of, you know, what happens there. I don't know, man.
- [36:13]
Guest
I, I mean, look, look at Jon Stewart with Apple. The reason why Jon Stewart's back at, at Paramount is because of what happened with Jon Stewart and Apple. He did a story they did, he wanted to cover a story they didn't want him to do. And I think that that came down to. Was it microchips or something? It's something that had to do with Apple as a company that like touched on that. And then Jon Stewart and they had a disagreement and they had a conscious uncoupling, as we've all learned from Coldplay concerts recently.
- [36:41]
Alex Perlman
But they, I think, didn't talk about that. I, I missed, I missed it. And then I was like, and then, and then I started feeling like, why is Axios reporting on this? And I was like, I feel like I'm missing something, but I'm already a week late on it.
- [36:55]
Guest
But it was the greatest story in the history. It's the only unifying story that we can all agree with. We all hate a cheater. We all, none of us like management and we all hate the, the lady who runs hr. Everyone who's ever worked a corporate job is like, and she looks like the lady who runs every hr, she looks exactly like the chief people person at places that I've worked before. And I was like, oh. And then the fact that what they did was crazy. And then the, like, I didn't know. So the one thing when my. My wife and I made a video of it and like, us discussing it, that. The CEO thing, I thought it was a kiss cam. It's not actually what Coldplay does during those concerts is they actually do focus on the people. And then Chris Martin sings songs about them, like he's doing an improv song type of thing. And it's this fun little moment. And so that's why the reason they turn and ran away, they were trying to get off camera as fast as possible, and people were like, oh, it's a kiss can. Oh. And afterwards we found out more, and I was like, Jesus. But yeah, that is. That is the baseline. That video is also exactly what my podcast is like. It's my wife and I screaming about a topic back and forth at each other.
- [38:02]
Alex Perlman
Well, the thing that threw me off is like, one of my first introductions to it was I saw Matt Walsh saying that adultery should be illegal. And I was like, this is so crazy coming from the man that literally, like, just carries so much water for Donald Trump.
- [38:16]
Guest
Yeah.
- [38:17]
Alex Perlman
That you're like. I'm like, what is. Where is your thinking? I understand that you probably believe that. Where does the disconnect happen?
- [38:25]
Guest
Yeah. I find being on the opposite spectrum of Matt Walsh is always a good idea. Oh, no.
- [38:30]
Alex Perlman
See, I have to thrust myself into these worlds. My big thing for, like, the last two years has been what are people saying? Why are they saying it? Trying to understand it. When I am around Trumper in laws, I become a social psychologist, maybe an anthropologist. I don't know. I'm like, I want to learn what roads lead to a certain way. And, you know, sometimes it's the one that's glaring. It'll be like religion and then, like, how that gets used and manipulated to a certain way. And then others just sometimes, you know, it's that it is that that pipeline of content online. But, yeah, it's. It's an interesting world.
- [39:11]
Guest
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of. There's a lot of logic leaps that happen and those different. Those different things. And I think that. That your general curiosity you're talking about is the baseline of what the. The mission statement is of Jubilee, which is why I. I don't like what you're saying is. Is good and what people should be doing. We should be trying to find common ground with people. We should be trying to cool down the conversations, bring the temperature down. We should be trying to find common humanity between each other. But I don't believe that Jubilee does that. I believe that it's.
- [39:45]
Alex Perlman
Jubilee is an entertainment product. Jubilee is an entertainment product. And.
- [39:48]
Guest
Exactly.
- [39:48]
Alex Perlman
And my impact is secondary.
- [39:51]
Guest
Yeah. My biggest.
- [39:52]
Alex Perlman
In my opinion.
- [39:53]
Guest
Yeah. My biggest problem is that they sell themselves as not an entertainment product. And I think when I look at specifically their. Their slogans, one of which is provoke, understanding. That's. That's not how this works. No one's understanding has never been provoked. I've never prodded empathy out of someone. You know what I mean? Like, that's provoke under. Like, that is such a. That's such a marketer term. That's such a public relations thing. Like, I could see that on the side of a bus being driven, you know, in. In the Bay Area. Oh, come. Provoke, understanding. Jubilee. What the fuck does that mean? And that's exactly what it is. It's much like, you know, fire humans with the AI type of shit. It's just one of those ones where it drives. That's what drives me crazy about it. It's. It's very similar. Quick aside, which is just my entire life, I went to the Borgata Casino, Borgado Casino in Atlantic City. This is way back in, like, 2012, when. Even before that, actually, it was right around when Texas hold' Em was becoming very popular with some friends of mine. I don't like casinos. I went to Borgado, and it was very creepy because, like, it's all about you. We love you and this money, money, money. And, oh, you're such a great person. And, oh, my God, you're so pretty. And I was like, this is weird. And then we went down the Strip a little bit at the Atlantic in Atlantic City, which is a shithole. We go down the street, the Strip a little bit, and we go to the Tropicana. And we walked in, and the first thing a pit boss said to me goes, do you have cash? And I said, yeah, all right, you can sit down. And I was like, that's what I want. I want everyone. I just want. Don't. They don't. You don't need to spit in my face, but don't pretend I'm special. And I think that's what my problem with a lot of these very insidious products. It's my problem with some of the way the podcast bros marketed themselves. I'm just a regular guy. Are you you have a hundred million dollars in a Spotify contract. Joe Rogan, are you still normal? Like, I'm just a normal guy. Okay. How much are you getting from that? Like, once these guys get to a certain level, I'm like, I'm not saying you can, you have to deny everything around you, but there's a breaking point. Like, there's a, there's, there's a true breaking point where trying to stay, trying to say that, that you're, you're at the same eye line is just weird. And I think that's my problem with Jubilee.
- [42:07]
Alex Perlman
So wait, I mean, because something that you said regarding, like the Schultzes, Rogans and then Nelk boys of the world, and I think that there is, there's a spectrum there. Do you, do you equate all of them? Is, do you believe that they all have the, the same intent? Like, when you look at a Schultz or Rogan, do you think that there is, is there, is there that real intent of. I'm wanting to learn.
- [42:30]
Phil
Right.
- [42:30]
Alex Perlman
And the, because the big mention or defense there will be like, well, then they'll have Bernie on. They'll have. I think the other day they talked to like the pod save guys. Schultz did like, is that in your eyes, window dressing or a way to deflect from the criticisms or it is part of them trying to, to find out more but being in maybe your mind ill equipped for it?
- [43:01]
Guest
No, I think it is. It is a marketing scheme. It's a marketing scheme because, I mean, again, a lot of them are talking about, oh, we're going to have these guys on. So in the future. I mean, they all, they all planted their flag when it was the most important, and that was in October of 2024, was when it was the most important. September, October, and even into the last week of November of planting the flag, planning the flag, planting the flag. I mean, that is when the end of that campaign was. And that's the political campaigns are marketing campaigns. It'd be the same way as saying, like, oh, well, it's okay. I know, I know Rosie sold Tickle Me Elmo's last year, but this year she's, she's no longer pushing Elmo. Like, that's, that's, that's my view of it is, is that that cycle is over. They've moved on to another cycle, and right now the cycle is backlash against Trump. And it's the new meta.
- [43:53]
Alex Perlman
In gaming terms, yes, 100% it's the new meta.
- [43:56]
Guest
But the other part of it is, is I view them all slightly different. I mean, Schultz is the one that's. That's in the most outsized problem because he originally pushed himself very hard as being kind of an edgy lib, an edgy New York liberal. He used to make fun of Trump, all these different things. We talk about it a lot on, on our last episode, but the. When you look at a guy like Rogan, I mean, Rogan's had what, 3,000 episodes right now? Something like that?
- [44:23]
Alex Perlman
I mean, I mean, I'm in two of them years and years and years ago. That's all.
- [44:26]
Guest
Are you?
- [44:26]
Alex Perlman
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:27]
Phil
Okay.
- [44:28]
Guest
Three thousand. Three thousand plus episodes. Okay. And he hasn't learned anything. Like, that's, that's my problem is like his. I understand that he's. He thinks he's doing like a Socratic method of like, I'm just a dumb little baby and every time the show starts, I'm learning something new. But like, he's not. He's. He's a man in his mid-50s who has got, I think, close to a quarter billion of dollars at this point. If you start working out where all these ad. Ad deals and everything goes to. Right. So he's a quarter billionaire. We should start bringing that. We should bring that term out. Quarter billionaire. He's been a multi millionaire. He has outsized influence now in the entire standup comedy community through both the mother's mothership, how he books his shows, who he aligns himself. He has a. He has a media empire. He loves how everyone fawned over him in the falling out of this election cycle. And about Rogan the kingmaker. And we need to find a lib Rogan, I mean, he was. Joe Rogan was of the left. You know, he was a California leftist or Democrat or even a libertarian back in the day. But as time has moved on and as the money has gotten better, he's had to defend that spot longer and longer. And so conservatism is defending of a hierarchy and defending of money. He has both those things. He is the top of the hierarchy and he has a lot of money to lose in his mind, even though he has more money than he'll ever be able to spend. The other part of it that I've been thinking a lot about has been a shift in people's empathy. And I look back a lot on 2015, and I keep thinking, like, was it. Was 2015 really that bad that people saw Donald Trump come down a golden escalator and thought, yeah, this will fix it. And when I think back there's two major things that happened during it. It was the legalization of gay marriage nationwide in 2015 and also in a lot of states, the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. And I think in that has, has ruined a lot of empathy for white people's ability to process empathy for oppressed peoples. And what I mean by that, and I've been trying to figure out how to say this correctly, so I'm going to try it here on your show in front of a nice large audience, kids. But basically a lot of people in 20, like with gay marriage, the fight over gay marriage. And you know, remember 2008, California banned gay marriage via vote. From 2006 to 2015, a lot more people realized they had gay family members, they had gay friends, they knew people. They started hearing the stories of gay gay couples and what marriage equality would mean for them. And in that, they started to see the humanity of gay people and they could see an oppressed people that they could view themselves in. And the same thing with people who had been busted for pot. Oh, my son got busted for pot. He just had a joint on him and now he has to go to jail for two years and he's lost his job and he has to go to drug court, he has to pay all these different fees. And they start to see the inside of the criminal justice system, right? A lot of that, that is gone for a lot of people. And that's why when I meet a lot of Trump supporters, I've met gay pot smoking Trump supporters, and I'm like, bro, what are your thoughts on George Bush? And like, I hate him. I'm like, how the fuck are you a Republican? Like this. It's, that, that's part of the sliding scale, and that is Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan was very outspoken about gay marriage. And, and, you know, love is love and all those different things. Joe Rogan smokes a ton of pot, even though Texas wants to recriminalize it and, and all these other different things. And he has these moments where he wants to be, you know, the Joe Rogan that we all know from news radio. But at this point, he has to defend hundreds of millions of dollars being the top dog and now a title of kingmaker.
- [48:10]
Alex Perlman
I never really. Yeah, I never really thought about it. I mean, is there a possibility then if you're talking about the, you know, those laws at that time, making it so that people could have empathy? I mean, is there a world where the, the immigration crackdown that we're seeing or, I mean, it doesn't even feel right to just call it that. Like just the insanity that we're seeing there is. Does that potentially have a humanizing effect when we're seeing, you know, you think so?
- [48:37]
Guest
It is. I mean, the polling is starting to show that the shift is happening on immigration. I mean, when a few of these guys have talked, Joe Rogan himself specifically said, like, I didn't vote, I didn't vote. I didn't sign up for, you know, Alligator Alcatraz or the, you know, I call them concentration camps because they're concentrating them in a camp. But in these moments, he's, I didn't sign up for this. And it's like, yeah, they held up signs at the Republican National Convention that said mass deportation. Now people don't understand what a lot of the terms are when they're throwing them around. Mass deportation always looks like people being rounded up in the streets. It always looks like people being thrown into, whether it be armored buses. In, in Germany it was trains. Now we use planes. That's the difference. That's why Alligator Alcatraz is built on an abandoned airfield. It's because they're going to be putting people into planes instead of trains. All of these things, once the reality of it starts, then people go, oh, I didn't want this. It's, it's buyer's remorse now. And that that's where we're getting into it with. I think most people don't have as much time as you and I do. And this is a big part with a problem, I think, with the media in general. When you have, when you can make your full time job of looking at the world, then you actually get a disconnect from the people who live in that world. And it's very hard to remind yourself that, oh, it's April or it's March. This is when most people have their annual reviews. That's why so many people are fucking pissed off right now. Not that in like a lion, out like a lamb. It's actually the barometric presser. Oh, it's, it's this, this time of year is when a lot of people go on vacations. This time of year like this. There's these different things that are happening in the economy for actual people who have actual jobs. Like, that's why I get mad at Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro. They love to tell me what the working man thinks. They've never had a real job. Never had a real job. They've never. Charlie Kirk has never worked a fucking shift job. Maybe he worked at A grocery store when he was 14, breaking eggs as he shoved them into a fucking bag. But like, Ben Shapiro has never had a real job. These fucking people. And then when. The reason I get mad at the podcast guys is because I've done stand up for 20 years. I have a comedy special up right now on my YouTube. It's called Daddy's Day. It's 26 minutes and it's great. It's the only thing I've ever been proud of was stand up. We're actually releasing something on fucking anything. Please go check it out. But I've done stand up for 20 years. The job. I used to tell stand up comedians what the joke is of stand up comedy. The joke of stand up comedy is every person in that fucking audience had to strive all week to come to your show. They had to go to a job they fucking hated. They had to get stuck in traffic they didn't want to be in. They had to eat a lunch that was shit and overpriced. They had to go deal with customers they didn't want to fucking deal with. Maybe they have a manual labor job. They got an injury, their wife, Same exact story. They have kids. They had to pay a babysitter. They had to ask their, their mother in law, who they fucking hate, to come over to go watch this fucking kid. They then had to go drive into the city, probably at 45 minutes or an hour, again, get stuck in traffic. They pay for parking. They go into a comedy club with a two item minimum. Is that per person or is that per table? I don't know. The waitress isn't being helpful. She's on coke. And then some guy gets up and spends an hour talking about his dick and makes more money than you've made all goddamn year. That's the joke of stand up comedy. And so when I hear people in the podcast world, especially the Joe Rogans and especially all these other guys, we're the last stand up. We're philosophers. We're these things. You don't, you don't do a real job. We yap into a microphone and then people show up and then hand us money for a cpm, which is cents per thousand. That's what this is. And that's, that's, that's what I get mad about. And this is why usually my wife is sitting across from me in the room, calming this down a little bit, making it just a little bit more funny. On our podcast, Too many tabs where you can listen to this is.
- [52:24]
Alex Perlman
This is very much. This is Very much like my back and forth with my wife. I just like, I'm just like, just let, just I'm, I'm like I will eat all that anger. Just give it to me. Because for me it's usually like I've been like in the, in the. I've been dealing with the news and then trying to figure out how to like evenly talk about certain things and then navigating language because I want to convey a point, but I also don't want to get sued. Like I'm like going through all this and so I'm just like feed it to me.
- [52:52]
Guest
There's so much of that. I mean that's, that's the, that's the other thing is in all of this. The, that's why I said the Rupert Murdoch thing is a, is part of the COVID up. Right? If he didn't sue, then it's definitely real because it's Donald Trump. So if he doesn't do it because everybody be like, if it's, if it's fake, why didn't you sue? Right? Like we've always had so many of those different things.
- [53:13]
Phil
Yeah, but then I guess the question.
- [53:14]
Alex Perlman
Of does Rupert does. Does Murdoch feel comfortable openly, transparently, at least. I think many people's perception would be that he's like Donald Trump's bitch if he, if they, they settle and they don't fight this now, does he actually care?
- [53:28]
Phil
Does he, does he, does it? Does it.
- [53:29]
Alex Perlman
Have you ever seen a higher over perception? What were you saying?
- [53:32]
Guest
Have you ever seen a picture of Rupert Murdoch at the beach? I don't think he cares.
- [53:37]
Alex Perlman
No.
- [53:38]
Guest
Pull up a picture. What? Rupert Murdoch looks shirtless at the beach with his.
- [53:42]
Alex Perlman
I gotta see if there's a picture.
- [53:45]
Guest
There's. It's. He is a 90. What? 4 year old man. Mr. Burns does not care. It is. That is, that is not the body of a man who gives a.
- [53:56]
Alex Perlman
According to Google's AI overview, Rupert Murdoch. Wait. Oh no. It says it's difficult to definitively say if Rupert Murdoch is happy based on public information as happiness. God, AI is so fucking. Their AI is so fucking useless.
- [54:09]
Guest
How many polar bears did you just kill for that information?
- [54:13]
Alex Perlman
Who knows? Every, Every day. Every day. Sometimes I talk to. Sometimes I talk to chat GPT's AI. Like it's, it's, it's not my friend, but someone that I work with don't.
- [54:25]
Guest
Get, don't get GPT psychosis.
- [54:27]
Alex Perlman
No, no, no, no, it's not, it's not. It's like I need something to bounce against the wall while also understanding that it's like a sycophant that wants me to be happy. And so I'm just like, it's GPT.
- [54:40]
Guest
Is your Stephen Miller. Yes, yes. The, the I, I, I, you know, I was, it was funny when I was shocked you actually saw my threads post about Jubilee because I just reposted another one about the, the Big Titty Grok. That's what I call it. The, oh, the, yeah, yeah. Mecca Hitler. Putting on an anime girl bouncy skin. Because I had a post that I actually said about this because I've come down to my greatest conspiracy theory, and this is my Alex Jones Level one is that the tech elites are slow, are algorithmically making young men lonelier and fueling the male epide loneliness. That's why it's so weird that it's.
- [55:25]
Alex Perlman
Coming from Elon Musk.
- [55:28]
Guest
This way. Elon can sell them the, the AI girlfriends and then he can brainwash them more. That's my belief. And that's his whole thing.
- [55:37]
Alex Perlman
His whole thing is like, everyone needs.
- [55:38]
Phil
To be fudgeing now.
- [55:40]
Alex Perlman
He's like, have babies as much as possible as he's.
- [55:44]
Guest
As he's rolling out a diner that serves popcorn with robots. The robot popcorn diner. Oh, we need all these people. Also, we should get rid of 100 million people. We should remove 100 million people from our country and then we'll replace them with robots that may or may not being being piloted from India. I don't know.
- [56:04]
Phil
Okay, that's, that's, that's one of the.
- [56:05]
Alex Perlman
Things that frustrates me about the, the immigration stuff, because it feels like there's this weird and there's all these different arguments, but they're like, okay, so the people that we said we were going after violent criminals, but actually it's just people that are working on jobs that, that, yeah, well, that a lot of people wouldn't want to do or haven't historically done. And you know what? I've seen some people arguing that the people that are going to lose Medicaid.
- [56:30]
Phil
They, they could do some of the.
- [56:32]
Alex Perlman
Fucking jobs that are being done by the people that are going to get kicked out. When, like, when all there's all this.
- [56:38]
Phil
Talk about and it's connected but a little bit separate.
- [56:40]
Alex Perlman
When people are like, oh, we're bringing factories back to America. I have friends that are invested in companies that, that it's not just AI, it's right, like the fucking humanoid robots that are going to replace human beings in these manufacturing plants.
- [56:53]
Phil
There's Going to be so few actual.
- [56:55]
Alex Perlman
Human beings working in these places. If we get manufacturing back here, that AI is the threat. AI is a million times more of a threat than fucking clearing out Home Depot parking lots. It's insane.
- [57:08]
Guest
I don't know who these billionaires expect to be selling things to if no one has a job. That's the part that keeps getting me. It's like, I don't understand if, if we're replacing. So I had, before social media took off, I had a data data analyst position where my job was to take documents and input them into Excel spreadsheets that could then be printed out to be handed to managers who did not know how to read the initial documents. My job literally was to translate documents to old people who did not understand both Excel spreadsheets or how to format a PDF. That's why I had a job and I loved the job. It was great. Every day. Work came in, work came out. It was awesome. My boss kept being like, you need to do this, you need to become better. And then one day I had to take a meeting because my boss hated taking meetings with a product integration company. And they were like, they thought I was my boss. And I was like, whatever, I'll let you believe that. And then they proceeded to show me an AI device that would make my job disappear, where they're like, you can take this document, this form that everybody touches, and you can just drag and drop it. And then it printed out a whole. It did better than what I did because I was very lazy because I did not like the job, because I'm a human being with needs and at that point, a very heavy cigarette addiction. I was outside smoking like six times a day because they never, as someone.
- [58:27]
Phil
That runs a company, is sound like a speed bump.
- [58:29]
Alex Perlman
Alex.
- [58:30]
Guest
I was, I was a very big speed bump in the road of capitalism. And thank God I took that meeting because in that moment I was like, oh, my job has no future. I was a. I was a senior data analyst, which sounds great, but that was a very easily replaceable job. But also it was a job that was an entry point into later areas because it was what everyone I talked to at my company, every single person that had this job at some point, because this was the part of the stepping stone. So we're removing an entry level position and then still demanding that the managers still have experience in this. We're going to still demand all these different things. I mean, when you look at. When I worked at one point in a loan department, we had what used to Be there was a position that used to have 16 different people involved with loan portfolios, involved with approval of process, involved with just reviewing the applications alone. All of that became one program. And the approval process came down to one guy who they would come in and 75% of them were auto approved. And his job was to look at the ones that were yellow and to look at reds that had been appealed. That was it. Greens were good. Greens were automatically good. And if there was a problem, that would be on the company that runs the program, not on the lending department itself. And it's like these types of things have slowly happened over time where these jobs have vanished. And then you add into AI, add in the Zillow ification of it, all, right? Like, we all know you can see private equity gobbling up homes. I mean, during the Biden administration, they pointed out how many these corporate landlords and even small landlords were using AI programming to raise rents like this. There's so many background stuff and that this, none of this ever came up in the general election. The choice came down to they're eating the dogs and cats. And that lady laughs weird. Like, that's what the final election came down to. And meanwhile, Larry Ellison's in the background going, I'm going to buy CBS and get rid of Colbert.
- [60:30]
Alex Perlman
I think, okay, I, I was like, I do have to, I do, I do. I do have to detach a little bit and say it was. It involved a lot more. I think that there were definitely a lot of, there were a number of disheartened Democrats or people in the middle that were like, they felt robbed of their, their ability to go through some sort of primary and have a say. And I like, I see. And there's a number of things, but I do think that Trump has been a master of really finding and fielding, especially during his, like, his rallies, of what's going to connect with people and then amplifying it to the nth degree online. But to loop it back into, you know, it covers the podcast stuff, it covers what's happening with tv. I mean, do you think that Americans still actually value the role of a critical press or largely only when it aligns with their views?
- [61:24]
Guest
I think the Americans who do value the role of the critical press are currently paying for it in paywalled situations. So whether that be on substacks, whether that be actually getting a newspaper subscription or joining a Patreon or doing any of those different things. And I think that the general public, the majority is being fed whatever's free and running headline to headline, because we are. We have less and less time in our day. I think that the idea of technology was to make our lives more simple. And what that has really done has made more and more of us universal representatives, universal customer representatives. So again, going back to my banking thing, I got a job originally as a teller and was working as a teller. A teller's job was to take money, maybe cash a check. That was the job. By the time I left that role, I had 47 different things I had to do, including, like, resetting online banking passwords, being able to print debit cards, maintain an ATM machine, a coin operation machine, all these different things. Our jobs, there's less and less people in our jobs and there's more and more work to be done, and we're more and more burnt out. And so most of us, the way we get the news these days is ding. Oh, that's a crazy Apple push notification. I mean, I get. Honestly, you've replaced the evening news for me for national news. I watch you. I know. I do. I do. I put it on. I go, if it. If I don't have time to watch the full thing, I at least get, like, the very beginning. I'm like, what does Phil think is the most important thing? Things.
- [63:03]
Alex Perlman
Because it's the first 30 seconds, you're just like, I don't want to deal with the rest of the poison.
- [63:07]
Guest
No, no, because you'll tell every now and then you hit one and go, all right, well, do I really give a shit about Asmon Gold? I should, I should. It's. I really should. I think there's more people need. Like, we've spent a lot of time on the podcast, guys, but we didn't talk at all about Asmongold, Aiden Ross, Kai Sinat, even Hassan or any of these other guys. They're gonna have. As time goes on, they're gonna have a more outsized role. The same way when, I mean, I'm 41, when I talk to people who are in their early 30s or late 20s, you and Hank Green usually come up. They're like, oh, yeah. When I was growing up watching Phil or Hank Green, and I'm always like, that feels weird because, like, I. I remember I was there. I was there when YouTube opened, and I was like, I. I was already out in the. In the working world. And I was like, oh, what's this new thing like that?
- [63:55]
Alex Perlman
I mean, half our audience has been watching for like 15 plus years, which is like, I think a testament to growing together. And the Trust. Hank's definitely one of those creators that I trust. He's also someone that I'm like, I don't know how that man hasn't burnt out. Like, I compartmentalize. That man looks like he feels everything. And I think I also see him as someone that is smarter than me. So then also more emotionally devastated. Like, I feel like I have a slightly lower intelligence than him, so it makes it easier for me to separate stuff from my feelings. But yeah, I don't know.
- [64:34]
Guest
I think there's a lot when I go back and I look at, especially like 2010, I look at those Obama era YouTubers and YouTube in general. What a bunch of naive, hopeful kids. Everybody was like the hat, like again when I was looking at this jubilee thing, which set up for this week's video, looking back on the founder Jason Wiley, when it was still a nonprofit, of like what he wanted to do and all these different things. The idea with Hank Green, with Crash Course of like bringing education to people, I was telling my wife last night, I think this is actually an area where the left specifically is really failing. When we look at things like baseline philosophy, right, like talking about Nietzsche or talking about classical philosophy or any of these different things, a lot of if you go on YouTube or if you go in a lot of these spaces, you will end up. These are mostly right wing people who are covering this. So if you're a young man and you have an interest in philosophy or you want to know more about stoicism or you want to know more about these things, there is no there, there might be a couple left wing people covering it, but they don't have anywhere near the play that the right wing will have or grow on it because there isn't the same network to like lean on, on and all these different things. I mean, this is kind of a broken thought, but I just get really, really disheartened because I know in my heart that billionaires will always have money to create conservative media. And while the left wing will always be begging desperately for a five dollar Patreon or YouTube membership or all these other different things, while money can flow in, in the background on the other side.
- [66:14]
Alex Perlman
Yeah, I mean, that's something that we've always talked about internally. Like it used to be like a joke back in the day where it was like, if we ever have to, if we were ever struggling for money, we could do. You could switch teams and just the, the cash would flow through Insane.
- [66:28]
Guest
Caleb Heron has a great joke. He's like, if you ever see Me switch to becoming a Christian comic. I want a jet. I listen, I had a few friends.
- [66:37]
Alex Perlman
Hilarious.
- [66:38]
Guest
He's so funny. He's so funny. Every time he, Every time he shows up. If I'm scrolling, if he. He's immediate pause. I'm like, tell me. Yeah, but yeah, in general, I mean, I know. Listen, I've told so many people where I'm like, listen, you're a good guy at the end of the day, just go take the money. Like it's hard to be. I mean, we. I've talked to my wife. I told her what my number is. It's 12.5 million. You hear that? You hear that? Conservatives, billionaires. You come to me with 12.5 million, you get me for two years and then I banish because that's to me enough money to get live off the interest. I can live off of 50k. Maybe not on the Trump economy, not the way he's tariffing everything, but I can live off of. I live off the interest.
- [67:16]
Alex Perlman
I got to be in the nine digit club.
- [67:18]
Guest
Nine digit. Jesus.
- [67:20]
Alex Perlman
Well, I used to say, I don't know about switching teams, but if you, if you gave me 50, I'd leave the Internet.
- [67:29]
Guest
You'd leave the Internet?
- [67:30]
Alex Perlman
Yeah, but double that to switch team. No. Yeah, switch team.
- [67:34]
Guest
Yeah. I'm much too.
- [67:37]
Alex Perlman
I want to rein us back in. Sure. I'm having too much done.
- [67:41]
Guest
You've done such a great job reigning me in so far.
- [67:43]
Alex Perlman
Oh, yeah. So I've. No, I was. You're like. I'm more like. No, it doesn't work. I was gonna say I'm like a rodeo clown and I'm just trying to dance around the. The raging bull. That's why you need.
- [67:54]
Guest
You see, you gotta bring. It starts with.
- [67:55]
Alex Perlman
They just keep bringing it back.
- [67:57]
Guest
This one. Ghislaine Maxwell.
- [68:00]
Alex Perlman
Well, actually. Okay, beautiful. Thank you for the transition because. So people that are on Apple and Spotify are probably going to be hearing this on Tuesday on YouTube. This will still matter, but I'm going to probably test podcasts on Sunday. So just note on whatever fuck had happened in the news cycle since then. But as we were starting up, the DOJ is saying that it's meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell to, quote, find out what she knows. And also there are reports that are saying that her lawyer said she is needing a commutation of her sentence to speak. Do you think that we're. I mean, Trump said he wished her well. And I don't know how. How more well you could do than a Pardon for Maxwell. Like, do you think we're gonna see some sort of pardon? Do you think we're gonna see a testimony? Is it exchange for silence? Is it an exchange for pointing a finger to someone else? That's just Name doesn't rhyme with Trump.
- [68:58]
Guest
I think that I don't. It's. I. Let me go. Let's just go with the funniest one. That's. That's why I've decided, oh, the Elon.
- [69:08]
Alex Perlman
Musk of it all, where you say whatever the funniest outcome is going to be is going to be the one.
- [69:11]
Guest
Probably going to be it. I mean, God damn, I hate that.
- [69:14]
Alex Perlman
That'S an Elon thing side by side.
- [69:16]
Guest
Well, it's slowly becoming true. I mean, that's been the part that is kind of like what's the most darkly funny thing? And I think it would be Trump giving her a commutation, thinking that she won't rat on him. Her fleeing the country and then releasing a memoir called like if I Did it, like an O.J. simpson style memoir or maybe a primary color style one where she's just slightly changed all the names. I mean, here's. I don't think that there's. There might be only a handful of people in D.C. that actually want to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and find out what Ghislaine Maxwell already knows. Because so many of them either have. Know what. What happened. They have connections to people that would, specifically funders and donors that know what happened. And they also have, they also have their own biases and their own agendas to keep the story going. I mean, it's driven me crazy. I really, I made my video with the chart. It was on my Instagram and tick tock Pearl Mania 500. Thank you so much. You can follow me anywhere. But when I made mine, I. It's been driving me crazy. For the longest time, it was. Donald Trump was president United States when Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody. No conspiracy. Alex Jones never once brought up that all these different Republican congressmen who love to go and they, they print, they would be. Epstein didn't kill himself. Remember the memes we have Republican congressmen writing at one point, I can't remember which one it was, but it was one of them. And he released a press release and it said Epstein didn't kill himself in letters. Was the first letter of each row, like, as a code? He was like, read the first letter, each word like, because he was like, oh, no one's gonna notice it. So he still had to, like, tweet, to be like, oh, look at how funny I am. But they've had how many memes about this, right? And all because they wanted to pin on the Clintons, because they wanted to make it a Democratic scandal. It's not, it's a, it's, it's not even a bipartisan scandal. It is, it is a layer of corruption among the, the richest 1% and elites. And it's a, it's a Wall street corruption scandal. It's a Victoria's Secrets corruption scandal. It's of the powered and the moneyed and all of these guys. I mean, we won't know what really happened with this for decades until there are enough people who would be enough people are gone to actually have an impact, world impact. I mean, you know, there's just so many layers. I mean, fuck, the British monarchy is somehow involved. You know, Prince Andrew's involved. Like, this just keeps going. Like there's so many. And he, he was such a prolific networker among. Jeffrey Epstein a prolific networker among, being a prolific pedophile among being all these other different things. That's been the part that's been shocking to me, which is people want to pin it on one or two people. When I'm looking at the President United States was his best friend for over a decade. The President United States ran multiple teen girl beauty pageants. And why is David Copperfield there? Like, there's just so many, there's so many layers. And we mention it, we talk a little bit more about this on, on this week's episode of the pod. But, but the, I think, I think Trump is desperately, desperately trying to change the subject. And we've seen him try to do it in every single way possible. He has gone back to the hits on everything. He restarted the Rosie feud. We watched Israel bomb Syria. He released the MLK files, he brought back up the Washington Redskins name. I mean, that shit's. That's settled. He's, he's trying to just bring back all these old things. So anything the DOJ claims that they're going to try to do, I, I take with insane cynicism. And I, I say look to your conspiracy friends and family and especially your favorite ones that you hate watching, and watch them figure out what their new narrative is going to be, because I guarantee you none of them are going to point it directly at the feet of Jeffrey Epstein's best friend of a decade.
- [73:30]
Phil
Yeah, well, so I think that's the.
- [73:31]
Alex Perlman
Thing is I walked into this going well, I don't think that there's really anything. I still, I take Trump at his word, and I think he was seeing into the future of, I could shoot someone and my people would still be with me. I think that, that there is a lot of noise, and some of the noise is coming from, like, the Candace Owens of the world. And whereas some have very much gotten back in line. And we saw after the Wall Street Journal article, a lot of going like, oh, wait, that's right, we hate everyone else. And he's kind of just said, hey, let this shit go and I will continue punishing your enemies. Right, yeah. And him on the offensive, I think, I think he's. It is a social contract that he's thrown out there that I think that a lot of people are gonna sign on for. I mean, I know non conspiratorial people that were initially very concerned when, when all of a sudden Trump was like, attacking his own supporters for caring about the thing that he and his people have been promoting for years and years, talking about them being weaklings and past supporters and having conversations with people that are like, well, well, why just repeating Trump talking points. Why didn't the, why didn't the Biden administration do it? Why? I bet, I bet Clinton's in it and it's like, okay, great, if it is, release it.
- [74:57]
Guest
Release him up. Lock him up. I'm okay with Bill Clinton going to prison forever. I don't care. I don't care. Like, there, there is, I think the other, the other thing that the Democratic Party has lost, besides chutzpah, besides balls, besides a winner take all attitude has been, we have lost our conspiratorial wing. All of our conspiratorial wing of the Democratic Party of people who would look at stuff and say, like, oh, that's pretty sketchy. Have all gone to Trump.
- [75:25]
Alex Perlman
Is this, is this a resurgence, though? Is this is a resurgence of that or is it. I think we should have it.
- [75:30]
Guest
I think it's healthy.
- [75:31]
Alex Perlman
Or do you think, or do you think that we're kind of seeing people largely use the situation as like a bat to hit someone with? Because I think the whole thing that I always come back to is like, this is a very real situation with very real victims. And, like, and everyone's.
- [75:44]
Phil
Well, not everyone.
- [75:45]
Alex Perlman
There are a number of people that are just going for, like, political points and it's just. I don't know, the whole situation fucking stinks. I. And I do wonder because we're, you know, we are. We were talking. You were talking about everything's a news cycle over three weeks. But it feels like, you know, that's been expedited over the last year where there's just a new thing. At the beginning of the administration, a whole show would get by. By halfway through filming, it was just like. And then there's 12 other things. And that other thing that you filmed already changed. Now it's starting to even out. But even the fact that this has gone into a second week is. It's the first story like that. That's not that. Like, just like the bombing of a country and even that.
- [76:30]
Guest
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I've actually always wondered when I've been watching your show because we. We record our shows on a Thursday and then we post them Sundays at noon.
- [76:38]
Alex Perlman
So dangerous.
- [76:40]
Guest
Exactly, exactly. Because I'm like, oh, and then there'll be a thing. We've literally had one. We had one where we did a whole show about the Trump Elon and how I didn't think the breakup was real. And we finished recording it. I walked downstairs and my wife went, what do you mean? Elon just said, trump's in the Epstein list. And my foot, I. My foot had just hit the first floor and I went, everybody turn around. We gotta record again. I was like, what the fuck are we doing? Because I've always wondered like, what, what time you guys get all your recording done to get it? Because you guys posted what, six, six p.m. yes, Eastern.
- [77:13]
Alex Perlman
Six. Six Eastern. It's supposed to be like five to six. We started doing six because I started making the shows really long. I uploaded a 17 minute show this week and people were like, taking it easy. And I was like, that used to be great for you. I was like, I was making more content for the week. Yeah, but yeah, no, we, we start around, I want to say, nine o' clock Eastern. There'll be some feelers the night before of like, where we think certain things are headed, so that can get started early. So that was easy. Like, we were like, let's really dive into. Or let's try to dive in. A lot of stories end up getting cut if we don't think the full story there or something changes or we could have done it better or there's not enough of a differentiator. But like, but it was easy to go, okay, we should definitely talk about Nelk Netanyahu. There's a larger conversation to be had around new media and why Netanyahu would. Or a lot of these people would go to the fucking Nelk boys over actual journalists. Because it's a place to pedal. But also what is the, the audience reaction? Tell us about the moment and in general. But yeah, so it'll start at nine and then the one good thing. Well, one of the good things about having remote work is we can have people on the east coast that are starting early and then people for more breaking news in the day that are starting on the west coast. And so, yeah, it's an all day affair. I try to. There was a period a few years ago where I was like very disconnected from the process because especially when I was like starting taking care of myself, I was like, okay. In my head, I was like, if I don't go on this two to three hour hike every day, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go back to where I was. And so I was at a weird place. But now it's, you know, I think since the election, I, I'm. I'll have already released this video. Going into the election, if Kamala Harris had won, I was gonna probably end the show in six to 12 months because I thought, hey, we'll enter some sort of stable or close to stable situation, depending on the makeup of Congress, things might not even be able to fucking get done. Like, we might be looking at a situation where, you know, there were government shutdown threats looming. That happens fucking every year. We'll see. Let me focus on maybe just doing a weekly interview, bringing on different voices, stuff like that. Maybe go back to finding out who I am as a person outside of someone that's constantly having to react to the news and make it consumable. So I don't know.
- [79:48]
Phil
It's.
- [79:49]
Alex Perlman
Yeah, it's all strange, but I say yesterday or two days ago that in this chaotic time, I do feel like I have found my purpose again and trying to make sense of everything for people, for myself, for trying to get through it. Because, yeah, a lot of people are going to be scared and, or they're going to misstep and open themselves up to being hit and making themselves someone that can't help the cause of trying to get the truth out there. Because there are a lot of tools that are going to be used and manipulated and abused to take down.
- [80:32]
Phil
People.
- [80:32]
Alex Perlman
That do far more than me and even less.
- [80:36]
Guest
So.
- [80:37]
Alex Perlman
I don't know, it's. We'll see. I actually. One of the things that I do want to. This is. It's separate from it, but I was interested because I know you have a relationship. I wanted to know what your thoughts were about your, Your boy Hunter Biden's Channel 5 interview. I, I wanted to make sure I asked that before. I want to make sure I asked that before.
- [80:57]
Guest
Let me hit it again for the people just because, because my boy Hunter Bide pal. Yeah, I, I, I was walking around. I, I'm, I've been, I'm, I've hired a DJ to remix them into hype beats music. I mean listen, he's, he's, he's been a punching bag for a very long time. A lot of people have very. I, psychologically I've been thinking about it. If I had to go through what he went through in the media, I wouldn't be here. I, I would have, no, that would have been it for me. I mean just he started listing when he started in that interview, he started listing all of the different conspiracies that different people and who pushed them and specifically like rich moneyed men. And he listed how many different, he's like, he went down the list of all the different committees and the FBI and the different district attorneys and federal prosecutors that investigated him and all these different things. I'm not saying Hunter Biden is a perfect person. I'm not saying he's a good guy. I am saying though, after watching and listening to his clips from that interview, I completely understand why somebody would smoke crack with him and listen to Fleet Foxes. That dude is cool as fuck. But also it's one of those things where I actually talk about it in my stand up special, Daddy's Day, which you can listen to on YouTube. It's a, it's a big part of it actually was meeting Hunter Biden at the White House Christmas party in 2024. I got invited along with a lot of other content creators and we all went because they had basically, they had a new media day and they had a traditional media day. So like Wolf Blitzer was there like the day before. And then they had like me and like Brooklyn dad and a bunch of other different people were also like floating around and it was, it was very interesting because the only reason I, I went was at the summation of paycheck. Well, that was the number. George Soros was there handwriting out the bitcoin receipts. He was like, this is, this is the wallet number. That way we can't track it. No, the, for me I was treating it basically as like a, like a class reunion of all the different people I'd met that year. So whether it be like I met you at the dnc, but I had met so many other different creators, Democrats.
- [83:18]
Alex Perlman
I'm So outside of that world, though, going to the DNC was a bit of a. A wild one for me because it felt like, you know, there were just all these different people. A number of them were familiar with me, but I just constantly say no to. To showing up to things to the point where it's like I'm annoying people that are asking or that, you know, it gets to a point where they stop asking and that. But it was such a moment in time. I was like, I gotta see what the fucking D and T is gonna be like this year. But yeah, yeah, that whole situation, I feel like I'm an outsider, but people know me. It's weird.
- [83:53]
Guest
Well, because you like Hassan are actual. You actually are trying to get to the truth and you're actually trying to see what is happening. I think obviously Hasan Piker has his own bias, obviously, very clearly. But at the. At the end of the day, he also will try to call a ball and strike. And I think you do the same exact thing, do it with a less biased degree. Does that make sense?
- [84:16]
Alex Perlman
Okay. Okay. I was like, I was like. I think Hassan and I are in completely different worlds, but I think I.
- [84:22]
Guest
I think that you are closer to a classic journalist that people expect to from back in the day versus Hassan is more of like a. More like an MSNBC Fox News style of. He clearly has a bias. But this is also where I can get information from. I view myself more. If I was to be put in the news thing at all. I am more of an opinion writer. My stuff is always very clearly from my opinion. My. The language I'm choosing is very definitely from a bias. I'm very open about my bias and I want people to understand that that's where I come from. But we all, I think we all have biases.
- [84:57]
Phil
Yeah, we all, We.
- [84:58]
Alex Perlman
We all have our opinion. Yeah, I, I think I just, I bend over backwards to try and separate it from the coverage sometimes to like, the detriment of, like, what people think that I have an opinion on. But.
- [85:11]
Guest
Well, you post whatever the CIA tells you to. But that's fine.
- [85:16]
Alex Perlman
That's fine. Someone's just gonna clip that.
- [85:19]
Guest
Be like, see, See, I told you. I told you. Him and aocia. All right, the. That's my. There. I. I will say before I get to this hunter bodied story, I. When they, when someone on the left gets pinned with a nickname, they. It's. It's over, buddy. Like, that's, that's when it's done. When the nickname sticks, we're done. And that's the one thing. Donnie's been really good. Who's Teflon Don? They tried a few times. Any of these different things for Trump. Like, I. I've No.
- [85:49]
Alex Perlman
Thing I hate about Teflon Don is I was. I had this fucking beautiful rant, and I. And I said, teflon Don's not just alliteration. And my fucking audience was like, it's not alliteration. Dumb. And I was like, oh, my God. I was saying the moment.
- [86:04]
Guest
Well, I mean, yeah, there's so many that stick. You get. You got to get a good alliteration going. I mean, I. I would love to just call him Donnie Dumbass, but, like, it just doesn't work. And also then immediately it's like, oh, well, that's going to get down ranked because of the cursing. But anyway, so I go to this White House Christmas party, and it was. I got to see all these people that I've made friends with and all this different stuff. And I was sitting. I was talking to somebody, and then someone comes running into one of the rooms. They go, hunter Biden's here. And I later found out, like, that wasn't supposed to happen. Hunter Biden was visiting. Joe had stopped by the White House that day, and then he heard that Flavor Flav was there. And he came down to say hi to Flavor Flav and then just started taking pictures, everybody. Because he's like, I'm, you know, as a politician's son, especially as president's son, and like a mini celebrity himself. He knows selfie time, selfie time. So I'm like. I turn to. I'm like, I gotta go. I gotta go. I. At the minimum, getting a picture with Hunter Biden will be the absolute funniest goddamn thing in the world. So I get over there, and there is an informal photo line happening. Hunter Biden does not have a Secret Service agent, like, with him because they're inside the White House. He's not behind the line. He is just loose in the crowd of the East Room. And we're all just like, we? What the fuck? And so I walk over and this guy's about to get. I was like, I'll take the picture for you. Which is my way of sneaking to the front of the line. That's really what I'm like, I'll take the picture and then I'll.
- [87:30]
Phil
Oh, now you do me.
- [87:31]
Guest
Like, that was. I'm. I'm not waiting behind these 70 other people who have no idea what they're in line for. And so I'm taking the picture. And Hunter Biden has his arm around this guy and he looks at him, he goes, gotta be honest, dude, I don't know who the fuck you are. And the guy's like, what? And then he points at me and he goes, you have to have a distinct look, like this guy over here. And I think he's making a ginger joke. I have long red hair, I have red beard, I'm pale, I have glasses. Like, I, I, I'm spotted. I've been spotted while wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses and a mask. And somebody still like ran me down in a Walmart, like Pearl Mania. What are you doing here? And I was like, what the fuck? So I'm just like thinking he's making a ginger joke. So I do the trade and I go. And I stepped forward to get my picture and Hunter Biden looks me in the face, he goes, I'm being for real. I watch all your stuff, I follow you on everything, even YouTube. And I was like, what? And so I have a picture of me like grabbing my own chest, like, shut up. He's like, no, you're great, man. When you said I should have been pardoned, that was so funny. Which I only said once. The day Joe Biden dropped out, I made a video because I was like trying. I had a stand up comedy show in San Diego and I was walking. Joe Biden dropped out at like 11am Pacific. I had a show for 430 matinee show. And I knew my audience knew that I would know and they would expect material about it. And so I walked two miles down the side. I just, I didn't get an Uber. I was like, I need to walk this out. So I walked two miles down the side of a highway, stopped at a pizza place and it was just thinking of like what to make. And then I got to the show and they're like, oh, what are you gonna do with the show? I don't know. I know I have to address this though, right now until people are waiting for me to make a video on TikTok. So I went in the bathroom and I cut one and my whole thing was just like, all right, Joe, since you're done, just, just pardon Hunter. Like that was, the video was like, listen, there's no rules for you anymore. Pardon Hunter. Like Trump won his way out. He how many co conspirators did Trump pardon at the end of his last term, right? All these different dudes. He's your son. This is fucking weird. Just pardon him. And so knowing that his dad, Hunter Biden's dad had like, you know, made this difficult decision. Hunter sitting there wondering how much of all this ever stuff. And then I popped up on his feed going, you know, your dad should pardon you, though. Like, that's. It's the least. It's so insane. It was so insane in that moment. And I'm sure this will be an example used in the trial against me with J.D. vance as judge.
- [90:06]
Alex Perlman
They're like, well, obviously he put Hunter Biden's name. He used the auto.
- [90:10]
Guest
Yeah, obviously. Yeah, he used the auto pen. He freed Hunter. That was. No, we. I talk a bunch about it in my standup special. And. And yeah, when I posted the pictures on Instagram, I just was losing my mind about it because I was like, this is just the funniest thing.
- [90:28]
Alex Perlman
Yeah, I saw a lot of people reacting to the interview saying they're like, you know what it. Dems don't have a front runner. Just let this guy run. And I was like, I mean, I guess he's pardoned from the federal charges. I mean, but. But. No, but I was like. I was like, I think it's this energy. I think it's energy that people are craving.
- [90:47]
Guest
It's what people. I have a very split audience. I have. You have analytics say. Well, I have analytics. I can look at my audience. My audience is 50, 50 male, female. And earlier on, before the 2024 election, I actually had closer to a 60, 40 split. 60%, I'd say, lib left, left and 40% conservative right. And the. I lost the right wing audience. Not because I changed my politics or anything like that, because they thought that I might flip. They were hoping I would, and when I didn't, they had written a headcanon that I was on this journey to become right wing, like Tulsi Gabbard or like RFK or like Andrew Schultz or like Joe Rogan. And when I didn't do that, flipped a lot of them out. And so they were like, oh, he's doing it for the money. He's doing that. No, I'm doing this because I have a. I have a kid and I have my beliefs and I have my feeling of how I believe our country has backslid, especially since the Florida 2000 decision by the Supreme Court. And I always want to get back to the dream of 1998, which is, you know, playing Super Nintendo and not having to pay a mortgage.
- [92:02]
Alex Perlman
I like. I like hearing. I like hearing the specific moments in time where people want to go back. In that interview, Callahan is Mentions he's like, I just want to go. I get this depressive thinking where I'm like, I just wish I could go back to 2008. So I like that there's just a 10 year gap. Everyone's got their different moment.
- [92:21]
Guest
Oh, it's so funny. I mean, I said 1998 as a joke, but in reality, my wife And I, it's 2013, really, that we have a running joke about how 2013 is the peak. And. And part of it is because of 2012, because I knew so many people who thought the world was going to end in 2012 because of the Mayan calendar. I knew so many people who maxed out their credit cards, who ended relationships like that. Oh, no, listen, listen. But let me tell you something. It's. It's a good story, though, because those people in 2012, because they thought it was over, they Carpi DM'd every day, buddy. They went hard in the pain. So a lot of people are like, I have all these regrets because I didn't do these different things because I thought I was saving up for a better day. They were like, listen, I gotta get all of this in before 12-31-20 or 12-12-12, or whatever the number was. I gave all this in by this date. And they. They did a lot and they lived a lot. And so, you know, they. Not like these Gen Z kids were just staring. Don't. Don't perceive me. Why you got it?
- [93:17]
Alex Perlman
Why you gotta do that?
- [93:18]
Guest
Why we gotta. We gotta.
- [93:19]
Alex Perlman
Villain.
- [93:20]
Phil
Yeah, that's the way you're gonna get the youth back.
- [93:21]
Alex Perlman
Pearlman, just fucking go. Oh, Gen Z stare losers.
- [93:25]
Guest
I gotta hit the button. There we go. That's all that's. I gotta do. What are your.
- [93:31]
Phil
What are your.
- [93:32]
Alex Perlman
What are your thoughts? I. I get. I get. I'm so. I'm with this podcast, all right? I'm talking to different types of folks, right? I had Buddha Judge on first, then Tim Miller, now you.
- [93:42]
Guest
What a. What a slide.
- [93:44]
Alex Perlman
What a slide. It's all downhill.
- [93:46]
Guest
You start out with Pete Buttigieg, and then you go with the Bulwark, and then you're like, all right, I guess we'll get this pale lib to come on here.
- [93:55]
Alex Perlman
Yeah. Where do I go from here? It sounds. It's. There's just a. There's just a slide down. It's not even slide in popularity. It's a slide. And I'm just gonna. That's what I'm gonna do. The Nelk boys, they said, we're gonna talk to someone with the opposite view of Netanyahu, who I'm so fucking excited to see who they, who they bring in.
- [94:13]
Guest
Oh, God, it's just gonna be.
- [94:15]
Alex Perlman
Today we are joined by the leader of Hamas.
- [94:17]
Guest
No, it'll be Ms. Rachel. They'll have Ms. Rachel on and she'll be like, put it in, put it in, put it in. Netanyahu to the International Criminal Court.
- [94:27]
Alex Perlman
Is that maybe the best person they could interview?
- [94:30]
Guest
I think, I would say, I think Ms. Rachel is Ms. Rachel, beyond the fact that she's my co parent and I love her in a way that is inexplainable to people who don't have kids who have grown up watching her. And it's a big thing. It's one of the reasons I get mad actually at a lot of. One of the reason I got mad at Schultz and a few other different people I've been looking into recently who have kids my age. We're all learning, I believe, similar lessons at the same time as our children. Like when I sit and watch Sesame street or I sit and watch Ms. Rachel and she is trying to teach a child how to share on the playground. Like, how do you not take that lesson and extrapolate that to Medicaid or land rights in Gaza and Israel and like, all these different. Like, how do you. How do you not say, don't be good? Like, how is be good? Like Superman's woke because he says punk kindness is punk rock. Like, how? How what? Anyway, I think she has done such a very good job and has actually moved the needle on her socials, especially when it comes to being willing to speak out about the horrors that we're seeing on this every single day. I mean, she is somebody. She got that Netflix money, but she had already spoken out about it. And the thing I, like a lot of people don't understand about Ms. Rachel's story, and I think you covered it pretty early on. Was this all started because she was like, I'm just doing a fundraiser for Save the Children. And she mentioned children in Israel and in Palestine and people went so far so feral in her comments that she would even mention that there were children in Palestine that needed help. And that's why she was doing cameos. She was doing like $50 or however much cameos. And she sold them out, like, in a second. It was this thing. And that was it. That is the thing. If they hadn't gone so fucking crazy at her, I don't think that she'd be daily posting now or even like, you know, with how much that she's doing it, but they, they really. That is the type of Christian that I want to see because she is, she is a person of faith. She's talked about it before, about how she met her husband at church and all these different things. And you can see it. She's the type of Christian that I was, I was raised to believe should exist. You know, whether it be speaking out about non binary and trans people, that they're human beings who deserve to have a place to poop, that all these different, just, just different things in general where she just sees suffering in the world. Suffering should end. You shouldn't be pro these things. Like, I think if I was the Nelk boys and I was going to go for the opposite of Netanyahu, that's who I would go with. Not, not the leader of Hamas or not anything else. Because at the end of the day, what Netanyahu stands for, beyond a genocide and his government and the corruption and the horrible fucking shit he's done, he also stands for a craven worldview that says that we. That no, that we don't have to work together. Together, that I can get mine and fuck you to everybody else. And I think bringing on somebody like her or if you could dig up the grave of Mr. Rogers, you know what I mean? Like, she is our modern day Mr. Rogers for the YouTube generation. And as PBS gets defunded, we're going to be leaning on her more and more.
- [97:47]
Alex Perlman
That is really interesting. It does feel like the state of the world is, yeah, is greatly shifted and it's always been the case in certain places, but now we're feeling it and seeing it and more people are adopting it. That it is just hard power over everything. There's like, what's the point of soft power and working with people when you can just stomp on someone's head or have the threat of it always there and no one's gonna come.
- [98:11]
Guest
And that's why Gavin Newsom will be the 2028 nominee. Like, I mean, probably he's a demon. I.
- [98:18]
Alex Perlman
People are so. People are so fucking all over the place. He's either like, I'll talk to Democrats and they're like, he's a monster, but he's our monster. And yes, that's the one.
- [98:29]
Guest
He looks like a demon. I think I've said this, I've said this on my show repeatedly. When do you ever watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
- [98:36]
Alex Perlman
I've seen an episode.
- [98:38]
Guest
Sorry, the TV show back in the day. Okay. You were. Watched a drama that was on cw, right? And there's a character shows up with slicked back hair, teeth that are too perfect, Right? And then later there's a reveal where it's like, he's bad makeup. He's actually a demon. Like, he's literally a demon from hell. Like, Gavin Newsom is who you would cast. Gavin Newsom is exactly who you would cast. And like, that's just. I think that one going back to the very beginning of this episode when you asked about my post about Jubilee being a psyop. I think part of the push right now is to make Democrats and the left as cynical as people on the right, and that that is happening repeatedly to a lot of different people, of trying to figure out the Machiavellian way to try to defeat this true evil. There's a lot of people who view Donald Trump as the own. I see it online all the time. I push back on, on people a lot. A lot of people view that Donald Trump is the only evil. And I'm like, it's not. He's a symptom. He is incredibly evil, don't get me wrong. But he is a symptom of a greater issue that we have inside of both our politics and inside of our economic systems and anxiety of how we view our worlds and maybe even religion or all these different things. But, like, if there wasn't Donald Trump, there would be. There is still a JD Vance, there is still a Ron DeSantis. There is still all these other different people on the outside. And we need to figure out a way to get the Republican Party to stop nominating psychopaths like this and get us back to a position where we can have open dialogue. And we don't think that the world's going to be secretly run in the background by a Roger Stone stipulation type type character who's trying to rat everybody. Because, I mean, a big thing I hear from Republicans getting back to what the people view about stuff is, you know, that idea of every accusation is a confession that a lot of the things that will accuse Donald Trump of, because we have evidence they did, they'll be like, well, you're doing it too. So it's not bad. It's just, we both have guns, so it's fine. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. He, he keeps shooting people. But like, you have a gun to shoot back. And it's like, that's not what I like. I don't like that. And. But then when people, like, who would shoot back? Gavin Newsom. It's Gavin Newsom. He would shoot Back. He would shoot back. He would shoot through a homeless encampment to hit one Republican. And a lot of people on the left, what I'm not wrong. A lot of people on the left would be like, that's terrible. I don't want the guy who's going to do that. But there are now people who are willing to sacrifice. I mean, look what he said to trans people about what he said with the Charlie Kirk interview. Early on, he was immediately willing to abandon the trans argument. He's been immediately willing to abandon arguments about homeless. He's immediately willing to see territory on these things strategically. And that's where you get stuck is the moment AOC is having right now. But this Marjorie Taylor Greene vote, that is because she's making a strategic move. And then other people are looking at it idealistically that that's, that's where this argument is. That's where we're standing here.
- [101:45]
Alex Perlman
So it's thinking about strategically, do you think long term, the bad move?
- [101:49]
Guest
I think right now, I think that none of them. I don't think anybody understands where, how anybody's value sets are anymore. I don't think. I don't think anybody does. And I think right now a lot of the strategies are written at a time that, for a time that no longer exists. And I think they're being written for voters that don't exist anymore. A lot of people like the Epstein shit. Why didn't Democrats bring up the Epstein shit? Part of it's because of loyalty to the Clintons. But the other part of it is people don't think that their, the mom that lives in their head wants to hear about that the President has connections to a pedophile. They don't want to talk about that at all. And they think that would, even having that conversation would turn people off. They, they believe that, that on immigration, what exactly what Hunter Biden said in that interview on immigration alone, that you have all of these different guys like Rahm Emanuel, like David Axelrod and like, like actually many strategists I spoke to at the Democratic National Convention and during the campaign in 2024 to not even bring up immigration, that they, it doesn't poll well. So instead of reminding people that an immigrant, whether legal or illegal or whether being born, whether a dreamer or having come here yesterday, is a human being who does not deserve to be locked in a cage and then mailed off to some fucking dictator, like that is a person like they weren't even willing to have those conversations because the analytics pointed to Them and said, this guy, this guy who was a blue collar worker in Ohio who should have been one of our people back in 2004, now says that means he'll vote for Trump. Like that is. That's, that's myth.
- [103:33]
Alex Perlman
Yeah. And that's the only, I think, where I end up agreeing is with seeing Newsom saying, you know, if they're going to use certain words or like they were. People were going after him because of his social media team calling Stephen Miller cuck.
- [103:48]
Guest
No, I agree with that.
- [103:49]
Alex Perlman
And he was like, he's like, we have to meet him at the fucking. Where they've moved things. Like, he's like, you have to not become them. But like, there's no, there's no playing nice. I think, like that I, I'm like, I think that makes sense. I think him saying, hey, we don't want to fucking do this, but if Texas is going to all of a sudden change their districting to, to try to manipulate the midterms, then we have to look at what's fucking happening here. Because it's the ball game. Like the, like there's some people that think the fucking game's already over. Like, we're just, we're just seeing the, you know, the full toppling happen.
- [104:20]
Guest
But, but we'll know, we'll know, we'll know in November 2026 if they think.
- [104:26]
Alex Perlman
Yeah. During the midterms.
- [104:28]
Guest
I think, I think we'll know if, if, if the public still believes the midterm is a free and fair election. That's what we'll know. It's not a matter of whether or not it happens. It's not a matter of whether or not the Democrats want to. If the public still believes 2026 is a free and fair election. That did not have, that wasn't influenced directly by the, the executive branch. And I say executive because Donald Trump is 79 years old.
- [104:49]
Alex Perlman
Dems need to go into the midterms with the fucking. They need to be like, we have to make it so big. They can't. Like all the, all the rallying cries of 2024.
- [104:59]
Guest
Yeah. Which is why we need to bring the charts out. Okay. Because when you start pointing to the charts, then where's Alex Jones going to be? Right? I mean, I mean, like, that's. No, we need to. The Democrats. I understand. It's been six months. He's been, he's been president for six months now. The election was what, eight, nine months ago? Okay, everybody, we've had our little cry. We've had our feel bads. We had our seasonal depression. It's now time to, to, to stop triangulating and trying to, to plot it and to actually start making moves. And the big thing to me is going into the 2026 election, I want to see more millennials run and primary Congress people especially than ever before. I think more people need to look into how to get involved at a local level while they still can. Because even if they aren't trying to put a thumb on it, how many of these people are running unopposed? How many of these people are not being challenged? A lot of people point to Zoran, but I think, you know, and others, a lot of people point to AOC when she first got elected. They thought that this was going to be a big tide and suddenly there was going to be all these new people running. There's. It takes a lot of money to run for Congress. It takes a very big commitment to run for Congress. But I think the threat of the primary alone would actually help reset the Democratic Party party right now, especially when it comes to Israel and Gaza, especially when it comes to the outsized influence of tech bros and AI, especially when it comes to just immigration and all these other things. If Democrats are being primaried harder from the left, then they are going to pivot more into making sure leftward voters actually get what they want because they're going to lose a primary. They then pivot back to the right because that's who they're facing in the general. If they're not facing anyone in the primary, then the only thing they have to pivot to is the right, which means they have to only pivot towards the center. So I think that getting more people to run is the, is, is what the Democratic Party should be doing. And I don't think they're doing that. I don't think they know how to do that. I don't think they have a thought process on how to do that. And I think the ancient old monsters that are currently on walkers in Capitol Hill don't want to do that because they don't want to threat their insider trading portfolios right now.
- [107:25]
Alex Perlman
Nancy Pelosi, allegedly.
- [107:32]
Guest
I could have hit this button. Oh, I.
- [107:36]
Phil
Well, thank you.
- [107:37]
Alex Perlman
Alex Perlman, A man who remembers fondly the times of a Mitt Romney candidate. A man who looks back and goes, remember those simpler times?
- [107:47]
Guest
That was the peak when the biggest threat to the world was Mitt Romney. God, don't tell me, oh, 2025 is better. Mitt Romney was your big bad. Come on, let's go back.
- [107:59]
Alex Perlman
Alex. Thanks for being on here.
- [108:01]
Guest
Thanks for having me, buddy.