The Riyadh Comedy Festival

Summary

It Could Happen Here: "The Riyadh Comedy Festival"

Date: October 7, 2025
Hosts: Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, Mia Wong, James Stout

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Overview

This episode dives into the controversy around the Riyadh Comedy Festival, a star-studded standup event in Saudi Arabia. The Cool Zone crew scrutinizes Western comedians, including high-profile names, who accepted massive sums to perform for a regime notorious for human rights violations. They discuss the broader implications around "sportswashing"/"artswashing" and highlight how such events are used by authoritarians to launder their reputation for a global audience, while much of the Western media response is uninformed or misfocused.

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Major Discussion Points

1. The Comedy Festival Backlash

Timestamps: 01:11–05:36

• The festival features top American and European comedians, many earning up to $1.6 million for a single performance.
• Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K., Mo Amer, and Pete Davidson are mentioned as participants.
• Some, like Shane Gillis, initially accepted but later withdrew.
• The festival is overseen by Turki Al Sheikh, chair of Saudi’s General Entertainment Authority, noted for his ties to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and for being the namesake of a "torture wing" in Al Hayr prison.

Garrison Davis (02:00):
"We will be getting paid hundreds of thousands or over a million dollars to pretend that the Saudi regime does not execute dissidents, reporters, civil rights activists... and doesn't run a torture prison."

Robert Evans (02:46):
"Comrade Shane Gillis declined the offer... You get a variety of responses from people who were invited to this fucking thing."

2. Morality and Complicity: Comedy as Whitewashing

Timestamps: 05:36–08:46

• The hosts distinguish performing “in a country” from performing "at the behest of" an authoritarian regime, especially when the government directly benefits.
• Specific attention to how comedians become part of a government PR strategy: "sportswashing" and "artswashing" their international image.

Garrison Davis (06:47):
"Tim Dillon went on and, like, talked about this on a podcast, talked about, like, why he agreed to do it... He said that he was paid $375,000 for one performance."

• The hosts play a clip of Tim Dillon making flippant remarks about slavery in Saudi Arabia, followed by harsh critique:

Tim Dillon (07:47):
"So what? They have slaves. So what, my friend?... I imagine the slaves in those countries are good at what they do."

Garrison Davis (08:24):
"That's one of the most off putting things I've ever seen... And it got him fired from the show."

3. Hypocrisy and Historical Parallels

Timestamps: 11:03–15:12

• Deep criticism for comics like Bill Burr, who previously called out celebrities for entertaining dictators, but now take similar gigs.

Garrison Davis (11:14):
“Bill Burr in 2010: She [Beyonce] takes a million bucks to go sing at some private party for Gaddafi’s kid... That’s the hypocrisy... These celebrities, they’ll take any gig if the check’s big enough. ...Yes, Bill, it is."

• Discussion of rationalizations by performers:

Garrison Davis (12:22):
"Bill's response... the royals loved the show... The comedians that I've been talking to are saying, 'You can feel that the audience wanted it.'"

• They stress that this isn’t a critique of performing in general in “bad countries,” but of participating in direct regime whitewashing.

Garrison Davis (15:12):
"There's an argument for like, well, people in countries with fucked up governments deserve to laugh. That doesn't mean you have to take the money from their fucked up government and say nice things about their fucked up government..."

4. The Bigger Picture: Saudi "Sportswashing"

Timestamps: 19:43–23:26

• Saudi Arabia’s strategy involves not just entertainment but also global sports (e.g., WWE, esports, soccer), all funded by government wealth to normalize the regime and distract from ongoing atrocities.
• The “genius,” per the panel, is that Western entertainment journalists focus on narrow issues (like individual murdered journalists), missing broader crimes:
  • Use of Sudanese child soldiers in Yemen
  • Airstrikes on civilians (e.g., school buses, funerals)
  • Genocide involvement and ongoing war crimes

Expert Panelist (19:43):
"The genius... was that they were able to control the backlash because they ensured the backlash... would be done by sports journalists, entertainment journalists who don't know anything about the Saudis... Even focusing on the Saudis' domestic human rights record is a victory for the Saudis because it means that nobody’s talking about... the Sudanese child soldiers that they were deploying in their war in Yemen..."

• Calls for more informed journalism, specifically on Yemen, rather than superficial coverage.

5. Media and Social Implications

Timestamps: 23:44–24:27

• Several media outlets have covered the scandal, but the hosts are skeptical it will affect major careers, though embarrassment and shaming is expected.
• Hope is expressed that this attention will at least force uncomfortable questions and increased scrutiny.

Garrison Davis (24:27):
"It's a shameful thing to do. It's a bummer. I wish people had not made these choices because, man, it's depressing."

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Motivations:
  "If the check's big enough... where's my private jet? It's ridiculous. This sucks. Yes, Bill, it is." (Garrison Davis quoting Bill Burr, 11:14)

• On Saudi "Sportswashing":
  "This has been the really successful thing about the Saudis specifically targeting sports... the people covering this do not know anything about Saudi Arabia." (Expert Panelist, 21:56)

• On Moral Lines:
  "Taking money directly from the hands of the guy with the torture prison, I think that crosses a line." (Garrison Davis, 16:32)

• On the difference between performance & complicity:
  "The problem is that you're performing at the behest of the Saudi government, at the behest of the regime." (Garrison Davis, 14:52)

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Memorable Moments

• Tim Dillon slavery exchange (07:47):
  A shocking flippant defense of performing in a regime with open slavery — used by the hosts to illustrate the deep cynicism or amorality at play.
• Bill Burr’s 2010 quote (11:14):
  Used to highlight hypocrisy and the erosion of legacy.
• Discussion of Pete Davidson, whose father died in 9/11 (16:32):
  "It should have crossed a line for Pete Davidson, whose dad died in 9/11, but apparently not."
• Satirical sign-off (24:36):
  The hosts joke about “headlining” at a future Hungarian regime comedy fest, lampooning the issue’s absurdity and contemporary resonance.

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Episode Structure & Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Point of Discussion | |----------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:11 | Introduction from Riyadh Comedy Festival | | 01:27 | Naming headliners, highlighting the payday | | 02:46 | Shane Gillis and performer responses | | 04:00–07:42 | Tim Dillon's offer and justification | | 11:03 | Bill Burr's past quote and present hypocrisy | | 14:52 | Distinction: performing in a country vs. for a regime | | 16:32 | Kevin Hart and TikTok praise of Saudi royalty | | 19:43 | Saudi sportswashing & PR strategy analysis | | 21:56 | The media's superficial focus | | 23:44 | Coverage by Guardian, Hollywood Reporter | | 24:27 | Concluding remarks – shame, legacy, moral lines | | 24:36 | Satirical sign-off about Hungary |

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Tone & Takeaway

The hosts’ tone veers between incredulous, angry, satirical, and deeply critical, with moments of grim humor. Their key insight: what’s at stake is not simply the individual moral failing of comedians, but a larger pattern by which authoritarian regimes co-opt Western culture to rebrand themselves — and the credulous, shallow response from much Western media gives cover to far more insidious crimes.

For listeners:
This episode contextualizes a trending headline within decades of repression, foreign policy, and global propaganda—reminding us how easily entertainment gets weaponized by the powerful, and how the stakes are far more serious than the punchlines.

Transcript

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[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Media.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Welcome to a very special episode of It Could Happen here. Reporting live from the sunny beaches of Riyadh, I'm Garrison Davis. This episode, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout. And presenting our special report, Robert Evans.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

I am so happy to talk about our favorite time of the year, which is, of course, the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which occurs from September 26 to October 9.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

It's the highlight of my year each year.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Yep, happy to say all of Cool Zone will be there performing in Riyadh immediately, getting arrested. It's gonna be really good. Very much excited. Like all of your comedy favorites. Dave Chappelle, D. Bill Burr, Aziz Ansari. We will be getting paid hundreds of thousands or over a million dollars to pretend that the Saudi regime does not execute dissidents, reporters, civil rights activists, whoever, and doesn't run a torture prison. Yeah. So that's what's happening this week. There's been a big backlash against a bunch of very prominent comedians. Louis C.K. uh, it's like a mix of guys. Louis D.K. has fallen the ovar.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Not his first rodeo.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Okay. Not surprised David Chappelle. I'm surprised that old David Chappelle would do this, but I'm not surprised that current David Chappelle would do this.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Bill Burr is disappointing.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Bill Burr is disappointing. That one hurts. Mo Amer, who is a Palestinian American comedian who lives in Houston, has also agreed to go to Riyadh and perform. Not great.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Comrade. Shane Gillis declined the offer.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Yeah, Shane Gillis said yes and then said no. Let's be real clear on what Shane Gillis did. Okay. I believe he's the one that said yes and then said no. You get, you get a variety of responses from people who were invited to this fucking thing. And I'll make it clear kind of where my moral line stands. I don't actually believe it's inherently wrong to perform inside the bounds of any country. It kind of depends on what you're doing and how you do it. And this is the wrong way to do it because these are not just people. If someone had just shown up at a nightclub in Saudi Arabia to do a standup set, I don't particularly care about that, even though there are Les Majeste laws. Like, I wouldn't care if someone did a stand up comedy set that couldn't make fun of the king of Thailand, right? Which is a crime in Thailand. You know, people perform in parts of the world that have different or bad laws. The US has bad laws. We do bad things. I don't think it's inherently evil to just perform at a random club there, which is not what the people who are performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival are doing. This whole convention is being put on by a guy named Turki Al Sheikh. Turki is the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority, which is a Saudi government department. He grew up with Mohammed bin Salman playing League of Legends and his kind of, like, key to bin Salman's plan to, like, make Saudi Arabia cool, to like, bring it into the global entertainment and like, social network without modernizing its laws or allowing people to, you know, make fun of Mohammed bin Salman or his friends for an idea of the kind of dude who hired Bill Burr and all of these other guys and paid them so much money. There is an entire wing of the Al Hayr prison called the Tutu wing, which references Al Shaykh's nickname, Tutu, where prisoners that he specifically pointed out, often people who made fun of him or made jokes that he did not appreciate are put in, tortured. This guy has an entire torture prison named after him. That is who's writing checks to fucking Pete Davidson, whose dad died in 9 11. Fuck. It's fucking shocking the fact that Pete Davidson is at this thing and he has been, he's been like, questioned about it. And his answer, basically, I'll say this for Pete, was basically like, yeah, but there's a lot of money, right? And I'm separating in my head to a degree. I think it's bad to take money from the Saudi government to do something like this that is being used to, like, whitewash their human rights record to make them look like a cool Part of global society, even as they this week executed another journalist. I think that's bad. I think it's worse if you're someone who stood for something. This doesn't change my opinion about Theo Vaughn, who sucks. And it's like, yeah, he'll take money from Saudi Arabia. He's a huge asshole. I'm just. I'm not surprised. Right?

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

Yeah.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

And there's some other guys in this that I'm not necessarily, like, shocked about.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Did you see Theo Von's beef with ICE this week?

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Oh, does Theo Von have beef with ICE this week?

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, they used video of him without his consent in one of their marketing videos.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Yeah. Great. So Jim Jeffries on August went on Theo Vaughan's podcast to talk about agreeing to do this show. And he said, one reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I'm gonna die on. Jesus. And argued that freedom of speech machines like himself would do good by, like, you know, making jokes in Saudi Arabia and keying them in on the freedom of speech thing. Basically, it'll be a net positive for freedom if I go speak at this thing. And in the funniest possible follow up, he was removed from the festival lineup because he acknowledged that they killed a reporter. And that's not okay at all to Saudi Arabia. You can't even do that on your own fucking podcast or fucking Theo Vaughn's goddamn podcast. I want to play a video clip of Tim Dillon, because Tim Dillon is another guy who agreed to show up and perform at this. This fucking nightmare event. And Dylan is why we know kind of how much money is on the table at this thing, because he has said that he was paid for 375,000.

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

Oh, my God.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

He was offered 375,000 for one performance to be there. He said that kind of the lowest number people were being offered was about 150,000. And the most, like, highly paid people were being offered up to $1.6 million. So, I mean, it's possible some people were getting more than that, but I'm guessing that's closer to, like, where the Bill Burrs, Dave Chappelle's are getting, right? Like, in the 1.6 million. So these guys were offered an insane amount of money. And Tim Dillon went on and, like, talked about this on a podcast, talked about, like, why he agreed to do it and defended. And it's very funny. He, like, brought up, like, slavery in Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia has slaves as a way to, like, to segue into a defense of why it's fine for him to do this. And this is just one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Well, they have slaves.

[Tim Dillon (comedian, based on context)]

Then they kill every.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

[Tim Dillon (comedian, based on context)]

Get over it. Get over it. So what? So what? They have slaves. So what, my friend? I. Not a friend. Somebody I don't even know. I bumped into them in Tribeca and he goes, I would never do that because I don't want to interact with slaves. I'm like, well, why not? They'd be deferential, right? I mean, I imagine the slaves in those countries are good at what they do.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Okay, so that's, that's the clip I just wanted to have.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

That's one of the most off putting things I've ever seen.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

And it got him fired from the show.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

He's good.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

He's defending them. He's big. Like, slavery's not so bad. And he still got fired.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

That's the level of censorship. That's like, yeah, it's nuts.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Oh my God. Like, it's really bad.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

To cleanse our minds of whatever that was. Here's an ad break.

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[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

You know how waking up from a.

[Podcast Announcer]

Dream a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Get back, everyone.

[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

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[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

The Devil Walks in Abbostown.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Okay, we're back, Robert.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

The degree to which everyone involved in this has just nuked whatever credibility they had is shocking. I want to read you a quote from Bill Burr in January of 2010.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Also make me sad.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

This is from a set he did at the time. This is him talking about Beyonce. She's out there singing about girl power, telling you to put a ring on it, all that crap. And then what'd she do? She takes a million bucks to go sing at some private party for Gaddafi's kid, Muammar Gaddafi, the guy who's been blowing stuff up and running a dictatorship forever. Like, what the hell? You're going to jet off to St. Bart, shake your ass for some terrorist dictator's family, pocket a million, and then go back to preaching about empowerment? Come on, man. That's the hypocrisy of this whole thing. These celebrities, they'll take any gig if the check's big enough. It's like, oh, I'm all about the people. Until some crazy dictator waves a stack of cash and then it's, where's my private jet? It's ridiculous. This sucks. Yes, Bill, it is.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

This sucks to be a Bill bar defender for years.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

I love this Bill.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Truly the first great, the first actual stain on Bill Bear's legacy, which is.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Or someone, a very good comedian.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

What a remarkable fucking stain.

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

All comedians are evil. It's just. It's that easy.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

He. He addresses. It's, you know, part of it is that. And if all. And unfortunately, I kind of think the response of some of the scumbags in comedy has been fair, where they're just like, man, it was too much money. It was just a shitload of money. Like, I'll do fucked up shit for a crazy amount of money. And it's like, that's bad, but at least you're honest.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Bill's response to this was like, it was great to experience that part of the world and to be part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia. The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians that I've been talking to are saying, dude, you can feel that the audience wanted it. They wanted to see real standup comedy. It was a mind blowing experience. Definitely top three experiences I've had. I think it's going to lead to a lot of positive things. Now, he did talk a little bit about, like, the rules that they had to abide by and said that, like, when they were first handing around contracts, he pushed back and was like. Or people pushed back, or like. Like comedians did and were like, you can't have all these restrictions. And that they whittled them down to just a couple of things, which Bill sums up as, don't make fun of royals and religion right now. As pointed out by the fact that Tim Dillon got canceled for talking positively about slavery in the kingdom. There were more restrictions than that. I do want to read from a Hollywood Reporter article talking about, like, Bill's response to this because it gets even worse than what I've read already. Bill first described going to the island country of Bahrain, which is more socially liberal than Saudi Arabia, where a customs agent immediately clocked his anxiety about doing stands up in the region and gave him grief about it. When I was landing in Bahrain, like, I'm fucking nervous, right? And then the agent says, you tell jokes about the Middle east, you think you're going to come over here and get beheaded, right? After a successful show in Bahrain, Burr was at a bar where he was watching interactions among locals and decided, I'm like, they're just like us. I don't speak the language, but I get it. When he flew to Saudi Arabia, Burr's nervousness crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. You think everyone's going to be screaming, death to America and they're going to have fucking machetes and want to chop my head off, right? Because this is what I've been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense, and I'm thinking, like, is that a Starbucks next to. To a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to a McDonald's? They've got a fucking Chili's over. And yes, man, they have stores in the Middle East.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

You can buy food, has restaurants.

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

That specific combination of countries like the Saudis. The reason the current government of Bahrain is in power is because the Saudis rolled tanks across the border to crush the uprisings there in 2011. Like, hideous.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

There's so much that's fucked up. Just being like, well, to prepare for abiding by the laws of the fucking royal family of Saudi Arabia, I went to Bahrain. Like, they're not the same place.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, I went to check out some brown Muslim people. Turns out they're people that seems to be the Gist of what he's saying here. And they like pizza too.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Fuck me. You could go to again, like Iraq and perform in fucking.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, you could go to Erbil and it's nice, it's nice.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

And you're not going to be performing at the behest of the fucked up government. Right. You'll just be performing in a country with a fucked up government. And there is a difference. Right. I'm not angry at the idea that some rando might perform at a nightclub in Saudi Arabia. The problem is that you're performing at the behest of the Saudi government, at the behest of the regime.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, that's a different thing.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

I do think there's an argument for like, well, people in countries with fucked up governments deserve to laugh. That doesn't mean you have to take the money from their fucked up government and say nice things about their fucked up government like Kevin Hart just did. Because Kevin Hart was also a part of this show and he posted a video on TikTok talking about how fucking awesome Saudi Royal Turkey Al Sheikh is. And Turkey Al Sheikh has now been sharing that video on all of his social media accounts. Like you're holding water for people for a guy, he was a wing in a torture prison named after him. That crosses a line for me. You know, when we're talking about entertainment, we're talking about being ad supported, all this stuff. There's compromises that everyone makes in this business. There's compromises in what company you fucking work with. Right? Yeah. Like if you're talking about, you know, make it a TV show for Amazon's TV division or Disney's, you know, fucking streaming division. Right. Well, there's, there's a degree of moral compromise there and I think depending on what you're doing and whatnot can be justified by the fact that number one, like that's just the way television works. There's no working with anyone completely clean in a company that has the ability to fund, you know, a production like that. But taking money directly from the hands of the guy with the torture prison, I think that crosses a line. I think that crosses the line for a free speech activist. It should have crossed a line for Pete Davidson, who's dad died in 9 11, but apparently not.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

That is a wild one.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

I. That's the craziest one to me, that Davidson went over to Saudi Arabia.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Oh man.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Are you going to wonder, is his mom still on the scene?

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Oh man, she's probably getting a lot of money if she is. So it's fine. Fuck me, it's fine. I don't know like how much. And it is one of those things I get the people who are like, okay, but you know, the US Is fucked up too. And it is. And so if somebody is getting paid directly by the Trump regime to perform at the White House, I'd say pretty fucked up. But like, that doesn't mean it's immoral to perform at like a nightclub in fucking Chicago, you know.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, and none of us are going to Guantanamo Bay to like entertain the fucking prison guards, right?

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Like, yeah, well, hopefully none of us will be going to Guantanamo Bay for any reason as long as we keep playing these ads.

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[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

There's a vile sickness in Ambas Town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

You know how waking up from a.

[Podcast Announcer]

Dream a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

Get back everyone and if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

[Podcast Promo Voice]

As a warning from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc T. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

The Devil walks in.

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

We're back. I want to talk about this from the Saudi perspective because they have been doing really for the last half a decade, a Fallout PR Blitz, right? We've seen this in wwe. We've seen this with a whole bunch of professional sports stuff. Like most of the esports is run out of the esports World cup in Saudi Arabia now. Like, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund just helped Jared Kushner buy ea, just one of the largest video game companies in the world. Right? They've been doing this sort of whole sports washing strategy of using these things to sort of normalize, normalize the regime. And I think the actual genius of this, right, was not that you can buy legitimacy with, like, sports and with comedians. The genius of it was that they were able to control the backlash because they ensured the backlash to. It would be done by sports journalists, entertainment journalists who don't know anything about the Saudis and thus assumed that the Saudis were attempting to whitewash their, you know, horrific domestic human rights record. And they were to some extent. But even focusing on the Saudis domestic human rights record is a victory for the Saudis because it means that nobody's talking about the stuff people were talking about last decade when they talked about the Saudis, which was things like, for example, the Sudanese child soldiers that they were deploying in their war in Yemen. These Sudanese child soldiers were drawn from their connections, bolstered by the uae, to the Sudanese Rapid Support forces, a group that is almost entirely composed of the militias who did the genocide in Darfur. So these are the ground troops that they're deploying in Yemen are Sudanese child soldiers drawn from the people who did the genocide in Darfur in 2018, which was not that long ago. Like, I remember 2018. So do you, statistically, if you're listening to the show, they carried out an airstrike on a school bus that killed 26 children. Right? No one is talking about the airstrikes on funerals that they absolutely love to do. Like, for example, there was a huge one in 2016 where they killed 140 people in one airstrike, after which the area was described by a rescue worker as a, quote, lake of blood. And this is. This has been the really successful thing about, about the Saudis specifically targeting sports and specifically targeting entertainment is that the people covering this do not know anything about Saudi Arabia.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Right.

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

And this is also partially what was going on with Bill Burr, because they're just racists or they're attempting to do a backlash and they're trying to do a backlash with things like, okay, they killed a journalist, which is really bad, right? But like, Jamal Khashoggi was one guy out of thousands and Thousands and thousands of people that they were killing and are continuing to kill to this day in Yemen. Right. And this is one of the reasons people have been able to get away with this, right, is that no one has been walking up to them and going, what do you think about the Sudanese child soldiers? Because nobody knows about any of that. And this is one of the things that I want to just say at the end of this, which is I know for a fact that journalists and editors listen to this show and please for the love of God, find someone who knows literally anything about the Saudis war in Yemen. Yemen. And have them write this piece on sports washing for you. Literally anyone. This is what, this is what makes me insane about all this coverage is that like if you even a little bit paid attention to what they were doing in the 2010s and what they are continuing to do now in Yemen, you know, about so many. I'm not even, I'm not even, I'm not even talking about the starvation genocide here. There are so many things that they did, you know, and like one of the common defenses is like, oh like, you know, like we live in the us It's a fucked up country, right? Like, who cares about authoritarianism? And it's like, like, I don't know, it's harder to make that argument when it's about Sudanese child soldiers.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Well, it's just again, we're not pissed because some guy performed at a nightclub in Riyadh. It's, it's that you're taking money from the government to whitewash the government.

[Expert or Analyst on Saudi Arabia]

No, it's because they took money from the government. All of these, all of these things, all of these, all of like wwe, like all of these sports events. These are funded directly by the Saudi Sovereign wealth fund, which is the wealth fund of the Saudi government. The people who were dropping bombs on school buses and sending child soldiers with fight their war in Yemen.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, there has been some good reporting on sportswashing, I will say, like Ian Trello's done some excellent stuff.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

The Guardian has a good article on this where they really collate some of like the very worst responses written by Seth Simon. So I liked that. This does seem to be blowing up. Hollywood Reporter's piece was pretty good too.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Hollywood Reporter, my friend was editor of that publication for years and they have consistently done some stuff that you wouldn't expect looking at the title of the publication.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

Yeah, I'm not going to be silly enough to be like, I think this is going to cost any of these people their career because I don't think it is, but it does seem to be causing them some embarrassment, so. I don't know.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah, I mean, I hope they get called out on it and shamed like it's. Yeah, it's a pretty shameful thing to do.

[Host (likely Garrison Davis or main commentator)]

It's a shameful thing to do. It's a bummer. I wish people had not made these choices because, man, it's depressing.

[Guest Commentator or Panelist]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Guest Reporter (possibly Robert Evans or Garrison Davis)]

Well, luckily I have some news to lift our moods after this depressing episode. I am pleased to report that Cool Zone Media will be headlining at Viktor Orban's new comedy festival, Hungry for Laughs next year, 2026 market in your calendar. Cool Zone Media presents with Viktor Orban, Hungary for Laughs. That's all for us today. Edit Could Happen here. See you next year in Hungary. Goodbye, everybod.

[Podcast Outro Announcer]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[Narrator (Havoc Town Trailer)]

There's a vile sickness in Apostown. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut.

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It out from iheart Podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Havoc Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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This is an iHeart podcast.