3605 - Republican's Losing the Shut Down & Fearing No Kings w/ Heather 'Digby' Parton, Film Guy Matthew

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3605: Republican's Losing the Shutdown & Fearing No Kings

Date: October 17, 2025
Guests: Heather "Digby" Parton, Matthew Film Guy

Overview

This episode of The Majority Report, hosted by Sam Seder and Emma Vigland, focuses on the ongoing government shutdown, Republican political turmoil, messaging struggles within both parties, the No Kings protest movement, and current right-wing authoritarian strategies. The first segment dissects key political events of the week, particularly the shutdown, Project 2025's plans, and the Democrats’ opportunity to shift the narrative. The second half features a special discussion with Heather "Digby" Parton, followed by a return appearance from Matthew Film Guy, who delivers a darkly resonant movie recommendation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Current Political Climate & Government Shutdown

• Status of the Shutdown:
  • Day 17 of the ongoing government shutdown with mounting chaos and layoffs, especially of federal workers ([07:51], [24:43]).
  • Democrats (notably Bernie Sanders and AOC) are maintaining unity and keeping public attention on Republican mismanagement.
• Project 2025 / Russ Vought’s “Administrative State” Plan:
  • Russ Vought, Trump’s budget director, is overseeing potentially illegal layoffs ('pocket rescission'), part of a broader right-wing plan to dismantle federal agencies ([07:51], [24:43], [32:21]).
  • Sam Seder underscores: “Russ Vogt says he wants to traumatize federal workers, and when he traumatizes federal workers, he’s traumatizing the people they serve. And that is the American public.” ([34:09])
• Messaging Battles:
  • Democrats are centering their messaging on threats to ACA, health care, and the dysfunction/chaos of the GOP.
  • Heather Parton notes:
    “One of the reasons why the health care thing…is creating tension…is because House Republicans are panicked, panicked. They’re all up in 2026, and…those ACA tax credits expire, that’s 4 to 5 million people who could lose coverage…” ([31:16])

2. Bernie Sanders & AOC Town Hall Highlights

• On Republican Strategy:
  • AOC: “What they are doing is hurting Americans and they are hurting this country.” ([08:18])
  • Bernie Sanders:
    “Why would I not…feel okay if somebody in a Republican state died because they couldn’t get health care? I would hope not. I hope nobody feels that way.” ([12:35])
• On Health Care Messaging:
  • AOC: “I want MAGA to have health care.” ([13:28])
  • Emma Vigland: (On improved progressive messaging) “This is what can transcend the darkness of fascism, which is the principle of neighborliness and of standing up for your fellow American.” ([13:52])

3. Democratic Party Dynamics & Progressive Momentum

• Progressive Victories:
  • Moderates have repeatedly lost Senate races in states like Maine; the base is shifting leftward ([17:05]).
  • Victories like those by Platner (Maine) and Mamdani (NYC) provide narrative oxygen for progressive politics.
• Party Tension:
  • Discussion about Hakeem Jeffries facing pressure from the left and polling against possible progressive challengers ([38:10]).

4. The No Kings Protest Movement

• Conservative Backlash:
  • GOP figures, notably Fox News’s Caroline Levitt, are smearing protestors as “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals.” ([39:57])
  • Heather Parton: Points out the hypocrisy of Republicans decrying ‘civility’ while labeling all dissenters as terrorists ([40:48]).
• Authoritarian Tactics:
  • Fears of provocateurs and provocations by police/agitators at protests; Greg Abbott is sending National Guard to Austin ([42:29], [43:39]).
  • Recommendations for protest safety: “If anybody is trying to incite you to do anything violent or illegal, definitely don’t. It could be a provocateur.” – Emma Vigland ([44:11])

5. Right-Wing Surveillance & IRS Weaponization

• IRS & “Political Policing”:

  • Trump places IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley (of Hunter Biden fame) in key positions, raising alarms about targeted audits and intimidation ([47:33]).
  • Heather Parton:
    “They actually have a police state in action in the Department of Homeland Security, which has been given a blank check apparently to do whatever they want. And they are cracking heads…” ([65:36])

• Glenn Beck’s Conspiratorial Role:

  • The FBI is reportedly seeking advice from Glenn Beck, infamous for his “puppet master” and antifa paranoia segments ([51:02], [53:15]).
  • Clip breakdown of Beck-style demonization of left groups as terror threats ([54:49–62:00]).

6. Historical Perspective & Warnings About Authoritarianism

• Lessons from ACORN and Obama-era Failures:
  • Decimation of community organizing by both Republican attack and Democratic abandonment (ACORN example) ([53:40]).
• Broader Aims:
  • Tying current right-wing tactics to a global pattern of democratic erosion and scapegoating.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump/Base Separation:
  “The Trump voter thinks like that he's going to get Republicans in line from cutting your health care. That's insane.” – Emma Vigland ([31:16])
• On Threats to Organizing:
  “They're just going to be, you know, very chill protests. A lot of people are going to get out there, you’re going to hear some speeches… But I think they're nervous about this idea…” – Sam Seder ([45:42])
• On Authoritarian Drift:
  “A lot of this stuff is just standard authoritarian playbook. Get some examples out there. Arrest James Comey. Threaten people with IRS audits. At the same time, though, they actually have a police state in action in the Department of Homeland Security.” – Heather Parton ([65:36])

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Deep Dive: Heather "Digby" Parton's Analysis ([24:43]-[66:06])

• Democratic Messaging:

  • Democrats are succeeding, for once, in holding Republicans responsible for the shutdown.
  • The centrality of the ACA is more resonant now, as ongoing chaos and overt threats to health care mobilize the public.
  • The “Russ Vought Gambit” is a trial run for destroying federal protections/benefits and defying budgetary law.

• Disinformation & Right-Wing Media:

  • The right is proactively smearing protestors, using standard tactics of intimidation and fear-mongering.
  • Glenn Beck’s bizarre but influential “antifa” conspiracy acts as a prototype for current right-wing crackdowns.

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Film Segment: Matthew Film Guy Returns ([68:21]-[94:02])

• Matthew’s Update:
  • Edited new feature film Act One (directed by Sophia Takal).
  • Runs online film appreciation class open to all listeners.
• Coping Through Cinema:
  • “If it wasn't for my ability to consume cinema, I would be absolutely a wreck… Film at the best films are empathy creating machines…” ([75:03], [77:24])
• Recommendation of the Week:
  • The Act of Killing (2012, streaming on Peacock, watch full-length version)
    • A mind-bending documentary about perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1960s communist purge recreating their atrocities through cinema.
    • “It’s a warning for where we could be headed… The end result of naked, absolute authoritarian violence.” ([85:45]-[94:02])
  • Parallels drawn between Indonesia’s dark history and the present American political moment.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:02–06:00: Opening banter; headlines; show intro
• 06:54–17:00: Sanders/AOC town hall; shutdown strategy; progressive messaging
• 24:43–38:55: Deep dive with Heather Parton: shutdown, right-wing chaos, Democrat strategy
• 39:57–47:33: No Kings protest; right-wing smear tactics; protest security
• 47:33–65:42: IRS weaponization, Glenn Beck/FBI conspiracy, authoritarian patterns
• 68:21–94:02: Matthew Film Guy's segment: coping through film, The Act of Killing
• 94:02–98:51: Show outro, fun half, light-hearted banter

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Tone and Language

The episode maintains its characteristic irreverence, critical commentary, and comedic asides, but remains focused and urgent about the threats of right-wing authoritarianism and the Democrats’ need for bold action. The interplay between hosts, Heather Parton’s deeply informed analysis, and Matthew Film Guy’s broader cultural context combine to deliver a bracing, accessible take on an unstable political moment.

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Conclusion

This episode puts the American right’s ongoing authoritarian experiments and the Democratic response under the microscope. It illustrates why narrative control and grassroots engagement (as embodied by the No Kings protests and progressive momentum) are critical as old institutions and norms are undermined. For those worried about democracy’s prospects, the recommended film serves as both a warning and a call to vigilance.

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Quote Highlight:

“Film at the best films are empathy creating machines…putting you in sympathy with your fellow humans, even the ones that are maybe prickly or sort of dark or negative, and that to me is…a lifesaver.”
— Matthew Film Guy ([77:24])

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For more:

• Read Heather Parton at Salon.com and digbysblog.com
• Join the Discord at mainvancediscord.com for protest organizing
• Matthew Film Guy’s class info in episode description

Stay vigilant, stay connected – and, as always, Left is Best.

Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar where every day casual Friday. That means Monday is casual. Monday, Tuesday casual Tuesday, Wednesday casual hump day. Thursday casual Thirs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday, October 17, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, Downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Heather Parton, calmnessatsalon.com you may know her as Digby, publisher of the Uber blog hullabaloo@digby's blog.com also on the program today, Matthew film guy, filmmaker, film guy. Also on the program today, the head of the U.S. military Southern Command steps down in the wake of the multiple killing of Caribbean boaters and revelations of a CIA coup planning in Venezuela. Also on the program today, day 17 of the shutdown. Democrats stay united as Republicans begin to fear a health insurance tsunami. John Bolton surrenders to authorities as Trump again gets his. One of his bet noirs charged Trump to hold Putin meeting in Budapest as Zelensky seeks more weapons. Hackers, docs, hundreds of dhs, ice, FBI and DOJ officials looking for their supposed Mexican cartel reward. Mom Donnie tops New York City mayoral debate as Curtis Sliwa undresses Andrew Cuomo.

[Emma Vigland]

No kings.org Good image Sam.

[Sam Cedar]

No kings.org Protests around the country on tomorrow as Republicans fear they'll be filled with millions and millions of hamas. New report, ICE has detained or arrested more than 170 US citizens, including 20 children, two of whom have cancer. Republican congressman says he was deliberately fooled into hanging a swastika laden US Flag picture in his office. More investigation to follow.

[Left Reckoning]

Trickster.

[Sam Cedar]

Another one who's just a kid. All right, another a youthful Republican congressman. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

[Emma Vigland]

It is casual Friday.

[Sam Cedar]

Casual Friday. Thanks so much for joining us at the end of the week. Obviously a lot of stuff to get through. I would say that every day because it's true. We're getting a lot of like Curtis Sliwa comments. He was fun in that debate.

[Emma Vigland]

He is a like so representative of a New York Republican that you can't even hate on it. Like what he's, he's such a long shot that he's not open to corruptability really? Or like actually within any of the Republican apparatus. So he can just act like I don't know every guy from Staten Island. And that's his whole energy.

[Sam Cedar]

I think he's also really just interested in beating Cuomo. I think that's what he really wants to do.

[Emma Vigland]

Everybody hates Cuomo and that was obvious last night as Zoran was continues to be very smart and basically didn't even go after Sliwa, which he shouldn't. And it caused this like at towards the end, basically this team up thing between the two of them, which was glorious to watch.

[Sam Cedar]

It was also interesting too. I mean we'll play some clips later in the fun half, but Sliwa in the middle really I think changed the dynamic between. You really get the sense that Cuomo was planning one of those things where he walks over to mom Donnie or something like that, blocks his shit.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, looks like a tough guy, but he really looked weak. And we'll get to it. But he made some comments like it's not getting enough attention where he said the Zoran was not an observant Muslim or like wasn't the right kind of Muslim. Can. They're like, can people who are like, it's really just Zionists. Can Zionists stop telling Jews and Muslims what kind of Jew and Muslim they are? Like leave it alone. You're not, not, you're not, you're not something you need to be concerned about.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I, if I remember correctly though, isn't Cuomo a Muslim and a Jew and a Catholic and a black and a woman and a gay? I seem to remember that.

[Emma Vigland]

But he's all things. He's God.

[Sam Cedar]

He's all things to everybody. In the meantime, let's look back. This happened two nights ago. There was a CNN town hall with Bernie Sanders and AOC hosted by Kaitlan Collins. I mean you gotta wonder. The Democratic establishment seems so angry with the idea of progressives in their ranks. They are fielding a, they're fielding a 78 year old candidate who will be 79 years old on the day that she is sworn in in Maine, despite the fact that Graham Platner has.

[Heather Digby Parton]

As.

[Sam Cedar]

She enters the race is still out polling her directly. And in terms of Collins, you gotta wonder why there's no sort of like Democratic establishment figures who are out there making this case about the government shutdown. We are on day 17 and here is Bernie Sanders and AOC. This is. Let's start with the first one. The idea of Russ Vogt who if you listen to this program for any amount in the run up, particularly to the inauguration, you heard a lot about Russ vote and Project 2025's plans. Listen to this clip crisis that they've created.

[Emma Vigland]

Okay, so you think Republicans will come.

[Heather Digby Parton]

To the table sooner rather than later. The White House has not indicated as much.

[Emma Vigland]

And today the budget director, Russ Vote.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Said that north of 10,000 federal workers could be laid off during this government shutdown.

[Emma Vigland]

Does that make Democrats rethink their strategy at all?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

I don't think so. I think that what Russ Vote just. Just announced today in the laying off of federal workers, we learned today a judge has put a temporary restraining order because it is likely illegal what he and the Trump administration is doing. The problem is that this administration, the Trump administration, folks like Russ Vote, they think that destroying our health care, making sure that housing is too expensive to live in, that, jacking up the costs of our groceries. They think all of this is about hurting Democrats. What they are doing is hurting Americans and they are hurting this country.

[Heather Digby Parton]

And.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

And if Mike Johnson wants to say that this shutdown is going to last a long time, it is because he is choosing to punish the American people. And we cannot stand for it and we cannot allow it. And we also cannot enable it by acquiescing and enabling the behavior of bullies. So it ends today.

[Bernie Sanders]

If I could just add to something.

[Sam Cedar]

Alexandria, go ahead, Senator.

[Bernie Sanders]

This is the cynicism of the speaker of the House. Where are your Republican colleagues tonight? The back here in Washington negotiating.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

That's an excellent question, Bernie. Right now, House Democrats are in Washington, D.C. senate Democrats are in Washington D.C. even Senate Republicans, I believe, are still in Washington D.C. the only people who are not in Washington D.C. are the over 200 elected Republicans in the House of Representatives because speaker of the House Mike Johnson refuses to call the House in session. He refused.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, that's a great point bringing that up. All Democrats should be screaming about that.

[Sam Cedar]

And also anybody who's interested in the idea of getting these Epstein files released. I mean, the. This is a two for. For Mike Johnson and he is terrified. And we'll talk more about this with Digby. She's written a piece on this. But he's terrified, I think, of the government shutdown ending because then he loses his excuse for having dismissed all of Congress so that he can pretend like he can't swear in Gravalha, the new. I mean, the elected congressperson from New Mexico. Arizona, Arizona, sorry, but she also, the.

[Emma Vigland]

Attorney General in Arizona is threatening to sue the government because on the basis of fair representation, because right now the. Her constituents have no representation and that is unconstitutional. And by the way, they'll use this example of Nancy Pelosi not seating somebody during the COVID era. These were Covid ERA restrictions that caused that delay. It's not what they're actively doing here which is to keep the Epstein cover up going.

[Sam Cedar]

And just a reminder, the reason why this is protects the Epstein files is that a couple of Republicans and all the Democrats are willing to sign a what is known as a discharge petition which can force a bill to the floor without the approval of the speaker of the House. So that's what's going on there. Here is second clip from that AOC Bernie Sanders town hall talking about what's going to happen with the ACA in just a really matter of weeks at this point in terms of like massive increases in health insurance that's going to bleed through the entire system. I mean, everybody's going to see we're used to health insurance rising in cost each year, but the rate in which it rises is going to go back up. Here is part two.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Hi. On the issue of health care, a lot of the clinics and hospitals that are negatively affected the most under the one big beautiful bill are located in rural, mostly Republican areas. A lot of the increases in Affordable Care act premiums that Democrats are fighting to prevent are concentrated in more rural Republican areas. If the Republicans are so insistent on sticking it to their own voters on this issue, why don't the Democrats just let them?

[Bernie Sanders]

I think Alexandria touched on this before and that is we are, you know, one of the things and this really annoys me about Trump is dividing this country. Why would I not? You know, when we hit the road, we were in Idaho, right? It's the most conservative state in America. I think we had many thousands of people coming out. We are Americans. What you think I would feel okay if somebody in a Republican state died because they couldn't get health care? I would hope not. I hope nobody feels that way.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

And I think it also speaks to a big difference between someone like Trump and someone like me or someone like Bernie, which is that Trump believes that if you don't vote for him, he doesn't have to be your leader, that if you didn't vote for him that you don't deserve good things to happen to you. I don't care if someone voted for me or not. I don't care if someone is a Republican or an Independent or a Democrat. I don't care if someone likes me or not. That will never change the fact that that I'm going to fight for them to have health care. I want MAGA to have health care.

[Emma Vigland]

I this is just such an improvement on messaging in the past. And frankly, a lot of liberals after Trump got elected, said things like, well, maybe they just have to feel the pain. And this is a big problem with the constituency that the party has developed really since 2016. We've talked about it ad nauseum. Chuck Schumer saying that for every suburban Republican we pick up or rural voter we lose, we'll pick up a suburban Republican. They have tried to cultivate a base of professional class, upper middle class, upper class liberals that are largely insulated from the effects of these kinds of things. And it's created this disconnect where there are regular folks who feel like the Democrats aren't fighting for them. And they've also sidelined voices like Bernie Sanders and, and aoc. And you hear Graham Platner embracing this as well, where this is what can transcend the darkness of fascism, which is the principle of neighborliness and of standing up for your fellow American. And that was amazing.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, it's well said. I'd be curious. I mean, I wish there was a way to sort of get like a focus group and get a sense of how people are reacting to this, but this is, you know, this is what the progressive wing of the party has to do. It has to both assume a leadership role in the context of the party and also simultaneously expand the base of the party and show an opening. And in many respects, you know, that's what a Mamdani win will do, just purely on a narrative basis. That's what a Platner win in Maine will do. It will create space and oxygen essentially.

[Heather Digby Parton]

For.

[Sam Cedar]

Both for progressives and for sort of like, you know, moderates and even conservatives will have to tack left in some way because they will see that's where the energy in the party is.

[Emma Vigland]

And the fight is, and the winning is Right. Like we've talked about this too. The winning is as important as anything because the myth that, like the moderate centrist is going to be the defeating the Republican that had been internalized by the Democratic base for 30, 40 years and unwinding that is a longer process than it should have been. But I feel like we're finally here now. And that's why Zoron's victory is more than just New York City, commie blue area, whatever. It was the first moment where you see that this politics actually expands the base. It's a winning message and it's something that creates a snowball effect where people want to be on the winning team. There is like a. The Democratic propaganda about Bernie made it so, like, people were like, ugh, I don't want to get my hopes up because he could never win. Well, now maybe these people can win and that gets people energized.

[Sam Cedar]

And to your point, the record of.

[Left Reckoning]

Losing from the folks who have been in charge.

[Bradley]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I mean, that's that.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, to that specifically in Maine, I think it's been four candidates in a row, five, I'm thinking, that have been sort of handpicked by the D, the Democratic Senate campaign committee. And they all have lost despite like having a tremendous amount of resources. And so that's what makes that main race so important as well. But we'll see. We should really try and have Platner on again in a minute. We're going to be taking a break and talking to Heather Digby Parton about the news of the week. First, a word from one of my favorite sponsors. That is of course, sunsetlakeseba day.com use the code left is best. You'll get 20% off. 20% off. White, you say, Sam? Well, you'll get 20% off of tinctures, tinctures that help you sleep, tinctures that help you relax, tinctures that help your pet relax, gummies that will help you sleep. The gummies that some with a little bit of toh say and maybe even some Delta 9 gummies with Sebede ones that help you sleep, some with melatonin, some without also smokables. They got flour, they got pre rolls, they got keef, they've got Saba Day infused coffee and Saba Day infused fudge. There's all of their Sabaa is third party tested. When you buy it, you get like a sheet of what it's broken of all of its components. They don't use any pesticides. They use integrated pest management. And they are they have great business practices, $20 minimum wage, mostly employee owned, great farming practices with regenerative farming that they work with the University of Vermont up there near Burlington on growing. And they also are movement partners. They have donated tens of thousands of dollars to like things like strike relief funds and Planned Parenthood and refugee resettlement and carceral reform. They've engaged in mutual aid. Just an all around great company and an all around great product. Sunsetlakesabade.com use the code left is best. You will get 20% off. All right, quick break. When we come back, we're going to be talking to Heather Digby Parton. Just a reminder, the AM Quickie amquickie.com you get three days of emails in your inbox at 9am with the biggest stories of the day from a decidedly leftyish of center perspective. It's sort of a corrective for those other news emails that you might get. And for a couple of bucks, you can also get it five days a week. Am quickie.com check it out. You will not be disappointed. Very quick 5 minute read, but all the information you need for the day. And why not join our [e-mail] we got well over 15,000 now. I think in that discord, it's massive and a great place to get resources as this no Kings is happening. Great place to find people who might be going to one in your neighborhood. But we'll talk more about no Kings with Digby. Quick break. We'll be right back with Heather part.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Sam.

[Sam Cedar]

It.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Sam, are you ready for some tv?

[Sam Cedar]

I like it.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And always remember this in the a more a a a much more innocent time. Heather Digby, always a pleasure. We're back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, and back with us, Heather Parton, the proprietor of Hullabaloo and of course, columnistatsalon.com Heather, there's like probably like 12 things that we could talk about on any given Friday over the course of the past, I don't know, certainly 15 years on this show and the 20 years we've been talking about, any number one of any one of these would have been a full discussion. But that's the nature of Trump Administration 2.0. The assaults on our government are laws. Like, I'm just thinking, like as we went over stuff at the break, we didn't even mention like, oh, we're probably planning an invasion of Venezuela and we're just unilaterally blowing up boats in the Caribbean of what appears to be, at least by reports from, from the, you know, Venezuela and other places, just, you know, for the most part, fishermen, we really don't know. But let's, let's start with the government shutdown. This is the I have to say that in terms of like the messaging and in terms of Democrats maintaining some cohesion and unity and also getting out the message. You know, we just played a clip of AOC and Bernie from their town hall Wednesday night and there was an opportunity to talk about how Russ Vogt is illegally firing all of, you know, the 10,000, the latest tranche of employees, which of course, has been going on for eight months, but hasn't gotten the sort of like the urgent coverage that it deserves. And now we're seeing that. What's your sense of how this is.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Going well, I think. I mean, I just wrote a piece about this. I think so far the polls have been showing that people are blaming the Republicans at least slightly more than the Democrats. And, you know, that's logical. They're in charge of everything. You know, the Democrats have ciphers, you know, up until now, so you can understand why people even, you know, Republicans would say that. So I, you know, I think that. That it's, you know, amazing but wonderful that the Democrats have decided that they needed to actually take a stand on something and that they are pulling together and that they're doing that and that they're messaging pretty effectively. I think, you know, when, when they, we heard that they had chosen this healthcare, you know, framework for their, you know, the ACA subsidies and the Medicaid for their, you know, for their reasoning, for their rationale for shutting it, for refusing to vote for the continuing resolution, I was a little skeptical because I thought, you know, it just doesn't seem big enough. It seems too ordinary. It seems like something that happened, you know, this could have been 10 years ago talking. And it was in 2013. We had a shutdown over the Affordable Care act, and it was seven. It lasted 17 days. I mean, this, you know, it seemed like, you know, a little Groundhog Day to me, but I'm really realizing as I'm watching this go on that it's actually have. There's a different resonance now, and it has to do with what you said, Sam, about the fact that these layoffs, which we've never seen anything like this before in a shutdown, the idea of we're just going to fire everybody, we're not Trump even out there saying it's going to be all Republican programs, we're going to get rid of them permanently and stuff like that. No one ever said that before. But it's more than that. I think one of the reasons why the health care thing, aside from the, the grim reality of these subsidies going up and people starting to get notices that are going to say, you know, these, these gargantuan price hikes that they're going to get on the ACA subsidies and the notion that there's been more press, I think, than we realize on the local level about the effect of the Medicaid cuts on rural hospitals and things like that, that that word has been kind of seeping out ever since the Big bill was. Was passed. So I think that that's all to the good, but I think there's something bigger than that. I think a lot of this is just the dysfunction, shouldn't even call it dysfunction, because it's really not. The chaos of the Trump administration so far is starting to make its way into the public consciousness. People who aren't paying a lot of attention, people who are just going, wait a minute, what the hell is going on here? And I think that some of that in terms of health care has to do with what I'm calling the RFK effect, what he's doing. I mean, this is no longer just about health insurance. It's no longer about your bills. It's that, you know, you like your kitchen table issues. There's a kitchen table issue out there, you know, called cancer research. Pediatric, you know, cancer research. Things like Donald Trump going out in front of the, standing behind the podium and screaming, don't take Tylenol. Like, you know, what the hell is he talking about? This weird stuff like what they did yesterday with Dr. Oz and Trump out there saying, have more babies, you know, and I think this stuff is starting to sort of look like it's not just about health insurance, it's about the whole health care system. And that makes people very, very nervous because as much as people hated American, the American health care system in terms of lack of access, they're really going to hate it when they find out that it's really a terrible, terrible system because we no longer have the best and the brightest doing research. The universities, they're all, there's, you know, research centers are being shut down. So I think there's, it's a subtext, this chaos. The fact that they're taking, tearing down the whole health care system, the fact that you have this Russ vote thing. I know that everybody's, you know, the press is being terrible about explaining the Russ vote gambit. I think, because we knew, we talked about it, all of us talked about it before the election. That project 2025, what it was, and this was the main thrust of it was the, you know, what Steve Bannon used to call the dismantling of the administrative state. Right. This was what he said. And this is going back to 2016. And Russ Vot wrote it all out on paper. We all read it and it was in, you know, very accessible English. And any reporter could have read it, too, which said that they were going to do exactly what they're doing. And they started off with doge. Russ votes carried it on. All of this idea that somehow this has something to do with the shutdown is nonsense. Russ votes been doing it. He's going to continue doing it. And right now they just think they're being cute and they're blaming the Democrats for the shutdown and it's their fault that people are being fired. But I don't think people are buying it. I wrote a thing, it hasn't published yet for Salon, where in the AP Nork poll, the AP story about their poll, they quoted a woman Trump voter, big Trump supporter, said, well, you know, they're all to blame and blah, blah, blah. But you know, I expect the Republicans to do this. I mean, Donald Trump, he's the strong leader and we depend on him to go down there to the Congress and tell them exactly what we, what he wants and make them do it.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, that's interesting to me though, Heather, because I'm trying to pull it up. But it's from a few weeks ago. Here it is, actually. There was a poll from YouGov that showed that only 22% of Republicans are buying the party's arguments on why they're shutting down the government. And the prompt was to expand Medicaid benefits to immigrants who are. Sorry, why the Democrats are to expand Medicaid benefits to immigrants who are in the US illegally. And only 22% of Republicans agreed that that was their goal, like in the voting base. Right.

[Sam Cedar]

And they've stopped using that. I mean, I don't see it as much. And partly, I would imagine, is also because of the sort of flood of images of ice going after report out today. 170 US citizens have been arrested.

[Heather Digby Parton]

That's just what they could find because nobody's keeping data on this because that was just what ProPublica found in public, you know, publications and what have you.

[Emma Vigland]

Right, but that just means. Right. Like the voter that you're talking about sees Trump as the fixer of even the own Republican Party. This is the thing we've been saying for years on this show and Sam's really been on this about the separating of Trump from the Republican brand. Yes. The Trump voter thinks like that he's going to get Republicans in line from cutting your health care. That's insane. And so but the ACA thing is fascinating because like I wish they were pushing for more, but why I think it's creating the like the tension you're describing is because House Republicans are panicked, panicked. They're all up in 2026. And if at the start of the year these ACA tax credits expire, that's 4 to 5 million people who could lose coverage, let alone when we're looking at the increase in premiums that would go like Crazy. So they time those Medicaid cuts after the midterms. This is the pressure point. And it seems like at the very least, Schumer and Jefferies understand that.

[Heather Digby Parton]

They do seem to understand it, which, you know, is surprising. I mean, I, I, well, you know, look what what happened last spring and we were all, you know, our hair was on fire over what they did by you know, not doing this the first time they had the chance. The logic was and I think in the and it has worked out, although I doubt that it was planned this way. The what happened in the interim, of course, was, you know, all the Doge stuff, really, people understood the Elon Musk weirdness that happened in the first months. But it was also the passage of the one big beautiful bill. And I think that that really kind of focused the Democrats. But the big thing that focused the Democrats was Russ vote doing the pocket rescission and just saying, I don't care what you guys appropriate, you go ahead, you do you, but I'm going to do me and what I'm going to do is rescind whatever I feel like I'm going to reappropriate money in any way I want. And when he did that, he showed the Democrats and this argument, I'm seeing it in the media and I think it may be starting to, you know, maybe, I don't know, I have no proof of this, but it may be starting to penetrate what this really means. We can't make a deal with these people because they don't honor agreements. They don't even honor laws that we pass and that Donald Trump signs. They won't even. So how do we make a deal here? What's the point of any of this if they won't do it? So they're standing there going, no, Ross Vogt is out there saying, I'm going to cut whatever I want. What are you going to do about it? And they're kind of going, well, then we're stuck because unless you reign this guy in, we're going to have a problem. And.

[Sam Cedar]

They have not been able to square this circle, it seems to me fully. I mean, I think we're headed in that direction you're talking about. But there seems to me to be such an opportunity to say Russ Vogt says he wants to traumatize federal workers. And when he traumatizes federal workers, he's traumatizing the people they serve. And that is the American public. That to me seems like a very easy connection to make. And then what you're also Doing in that is you're able to tie it into, you know, never mind the cuts they want to do on, on the aca. There aren't going to be people to work on. On healthcare. They're gonna. They're traumatizing Medicare officials, they're traumatizing Social Security officials. Like you can go forward with this, and particularly at a time where they're putting a versions of Chuck Schumer saying stuff that he had not said. Maybe it was written in an article, you know, but.

[Heather Digby Parton]

But I don't think so. I think they made that up.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, either way, it doesn't matter. Like, they don't seem to understand that the, the rules are off there. And to. It is not a, a big leap to say that Russ Vogt wants to traumatize everybody working in the federal government. I mean, he's literally said that it's on film.

[Heather Digby Parton]

They've got, they've got footage of him saying, and we want to traumatize.

[Sam Cedar]

There's such an opportunity to roll this into any pain that people are feeling from the government shutdown and roll it into a situation because, look, in the event that we have elections in 2026 and that they're representative of how people vote, and by that I mean, you know, redistricting, et cetera, et cetera, and in the event that we have a 2028 election and in the event that Democrats take some power over some part of government, they're going to have to. The work done here. This is not going to be. This is not, you know, Biden coming in during COVID and passing one bill. The amount of work that's going to need to be done. You know, our government is in rubbles and in tatters. And you need to now start to build a narrative that government is important in people's lives. And you have a perfect example right now of, of a Republican Party that wants to assault government and thereby assault the American public. They're doing it their immigrate. Like, we just had the Fed chair, I don't know, two days ago, on top of like, the Fed chair was out there saying that the immigration policies are hurting the economy. You know, Goldman Sachs is saying, you know, that the immigration policies are taxing Americans an extra 88%. And incidentally, those that tax money is just being sent. $40 billion is essentially being sent to Argentina. I mean, there just seems to be a lot of material to work with. And I look at it just like, why is AOC and Bernie Sanders the only people who seem to be able to like seeking a national platform to make this argument. I mean, I guess Hakeem Jeffries has said that he would debate Mike Johnson, but, but frankly, you know, despite the fact, the facts, I'd be a little bit nervous. Nervous about that.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Although I give, I give Jeffrey's credit. This morning he came out against, you know, talking about Carolyn Levitt's crazy commentary yesterday, and he said, she's out of her mind, there's something wrong with her. I mean, he really used some very direct language to describe her. And I thought, but isn't it a start?

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, like, but isn't it four months too late? I mean, it just feels like he's, he's reacting to the pressure. Yeah, they leaked. And just to put that Chiyo se, who is like a New York, I forget, is he in a city assemblyman or not an assemblyman? He works in the city. City councilman. Either way, he's floating a primary challenge against Jeffries and they put out a poll about how he's 50 points behind already. And, but the point is, why are they already polling internally for Hakeem Jeffries?

[Left Reckoning]

Like against a council member.

[Emma Vigland]

Against a council member, yeah. So sorry, Heather.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Good. No, good.

[Heather Digby Parton]

That's a good question. I hadn't heard that. But, yeah, it shows that there's something going on.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's play this clip of, of Caroline Levitt because I, I'm curious as to what your feelings are, as to why they are so, like, what is it? What's their angle on the no Kings thing? You know, like George Bush famously, when we had millions of people in the street in the run up to the Iraq war, he said, you know, I'm not going to decide on a, on some type of, what did he call it, like, focus group testing on whether I should go to war or not. I mean, of course, the other way to say that is like, well, we live in a democratic country and, you know, if the people aren't interested in, you know, you avenging your father's honor, maybe we shouldn't do this. But they seem to be very, very worried about this no Kings rally or they think they can make something of it. Here's Caroline Levitt, White House Press Secretary. Yesterday on Fox News proved that the.

[Emma Vigland]

Democrat Party's main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals. That is who the Democrat Party is catering to. Not the Trump administration and not the White House and not the Republican Party, who is standing up for law abiding Americans, not just across the country, but around the world. And that proved that the Democrats, okay.

[Sam Cedar]

First off, they're standing up for Americans all around the world. The expat constituency or she just, you know, she's just like in overdrive.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Maybe she wants open borders.

[Sam Cedar]

They have been spending. They have been spending a lot of time saying that it's all going to be Hamas people showing up at the.

[Heather Digby Parton]

No Kings and terrorists. What's that?

[Sam Cedar]

What is your sense of their angle with this?

[Heather Digby Parton]

Well, it's clearly a talking point. We know that much because every single.

[Sam Cedar]

Every single one of them has come.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Out and used this kind of incendiary language. So, I mean, it's, it's, you know, first of all, let me just. The rank hypocrisy. And I know that hypocrisy no longer applies. Shamelessness is their superpower, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the idea that after what they did, after the Charlie Kirk murder, going out and, you know, ordering their, you know, foot soldiers to dox and, you know, track down and inform on anybody who said something sideways about Charlie Kirk and get them to fired and do all that because. And then with their big sanctimonious, you know, pay ons to civility and how we have to stop the terrible language. The fact that the whole leadership of the Republican Party is out there calling Democrats, not, not the politicians, the actual people, you know, the protesters, the voters, people like us. We're all Hamas now. We're all terrorists. We're all antique. That's basically what they're saying. It's, I mean, the overwhelming, you know, hypocrisy of that is beyond. Especially after that, you know, just don't call them deplorables. That's the only thing word you can't use. But in any case, why are they doing it? I think there's possibly two reasons. The first is I think that they may be trying to intimidate people into not coming out by saying, you know, making it into this big thing. The second is, you know, I don't know what. There might. There might be some plans. I mean, I know that Greg Abbott said today that he's sending in the National Guard to Austin for the, for the no Kings protest.

[Sam Cedar]

I gotta say. No, I gotta say. And we were talking about this before the show. The likelihood. I mean, look, we know, we know they have. That we have seen in the past. We saw this even during blm. You will get agitators, instigators who will be in these crowds. At times I've seen images of, of like conservative influencers you know, all dressed in black, like, like they're going to do, you know, like cat burglars going out there to represent antifa, you know, soldiers or something. The idea that there would either be a concerted effort to infiltrate these protests and create and make them violent, or the idea that there are conservative sort of self appointed warriors who would go in there and attempt to make it violent, seems to me to be more.

[Emma Vigland]

Than likely they did it in Trump 1.0. Trevor Aronson had great reporting on FBI agents or undercover informants being sent into Black Lives Matter protests and trying to get them to incite violence. You think that with this FBI Cash Patel, they're not trying that many, many times over. So if you're going to one of these protests, I just want everybody to be extremely careful. If anybody is trying to incite you to do anything violent or illegal, definitely don't. It could be a provocateur.

[Sam Cedar]

And make sure also that, you know, you're videotaping what's going on there. You got your phone and whatnot. But I mean, our adopted catchphrase for this show, Left is best, which was started as a joke because in the wake of Trump's victory in 2016.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Some.

[Sam Cedar]

Dude from Connecticut went to a school and vandalized the school and wrote all over it like, you know, anarchy and left his best. And I, you know, the day that.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Was done, like a yearbook thing.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, we started laughing because like that is not a, that is not. And Matt, I think you're, you're looking it up, but we can pop that up there. And so this is an impulse by these people. Even if it's not the FBI, there is an impulse amongst these people.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Oh, think of the Proud Boys or the Boogaloo Boys or these kind of PIP folks. And they're still out there. In fact, they're reinvigorated.

[Emma Vigland]

Here we go.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, here it is. A grown man in Connecticut says he graffitied a playground to embarrass liberals. Left is best was the slogan, which is a, of course, the cred of.

[Heather Digby Parton]

All around the world gets me going every time I hear it.

[Sam Cedar]

You vandalized a free library. But this is, this is the impulse that these people have. And you know, I want to encourage people go to these protests. They're going to be, they are, if they're anything like the last one, they're just going to be, you know, very chill protests. A lot of people are going to get out there, you're going to hear some speeches depending on, you know, where you Go. Somebody was asking, would you go to a protest at a capitol versus a small town? And my answer is probably, I would probably go to where there's, you know, more likely gonna be media. Obviously, if you can't drive, it's, it's, it's still good to go out to your local protests because you're gonna build, you know, within that community more people. But either way, you know, I think that, I think they're nervous about this idea because in part two, because of, there's a lot of authoritarian stuff that's going on and authoritarian regimes do not like there to be sort of like the opportunity to protest them. I mean, we're watching right now. They're, they're, they're installing at the IRS the failed so called whistleblower who had the. Hunter Biden. Yeah, go ahead, tell us a little bit about that guy. Because they've been active in, they've been, seem to have no compunction in saying the IRS is going to go after ActBlue. It's going to go after all sorts of indivisible.

[Heather Digby Parton]

The group that's, I mean, they're not sponsoring the Nokeem. All they're doing is organizing online, providing the mechanism for people to sign up for protests and to see where they are. That's really all it is. And some messaging coming out. Every once in a while I get some texts, but it's not, that's all it is. Of course, you know, Trump says they're antifa. This is the antifa network that Stephen Miller is going after as indivisible, which you'll recall was put together after the Women's March. And it was basically just an upstart grassroots organization that, you know, one of those that came up after when Trump was elected that was about to get out the vote. And it has, it has grown into this organization which organizes protests around the country. I mean, it could not be more, you know, innocent. There's absolutely nothing about indivisible. It's mostly, and it was started, I think, by a bunch of suburban women, if I'm not mistaken, that came out of the Women's March. This is. So this guy Shapley was an IRS employee who blew the whistle on Hunter Biden and he was a big MAGA hero. They put him in and shockingly, when Trump came in, they put him in as the IRS commissioner. Everybody went, holy. What are you kidding? And he only lasted three days. And I don't know that anybody has ever figured out exactly what happened there, but he's back and he's in the IRS again. And he is apparently going to be running this operation which they say will include thousands of agents from the Criminal Investigation Unit. These are IRS agents who, you know, like carry weapons and stuff. I'm surprised they're not rousting. Well, that's how many could be left.

[Sam Cedar]

Because they are literally out on the streets, you know, patrolling D.C. at different times or, you know, tearing mothers away from their kids.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Exactly. They're going to have a full plate, let's put it that way. And of course, and then you have Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary. He's also saying crazy stuff. I mean, right on those same talking points we were just talking about. He was going, he went on CNBC and I think it was some podcast, maybe it was the Charlie Kirk podcast. I think that he went on and, and started talking about the antifa and the, you know, the, the terrorists and how they, they're going to go after him like they went after Al Qaeda and they're going to use the IRS to do it. I mean, you know, so he's totally bought into this strategy, whatever it is. And you know, I think they're fairly serious about this. They talk. Who are the things they name? It's what you said, Act Blue. George Soros. Of course, I mean the Poor guy, he's 95 years old. But, you know, whatever, you know, he's the leader of our resistance movement, Act Blue and indivisible and you know, some others. Well, here's the real kicker and it just cracked me up. Apparently the FBI went to go Glenn Beck and asked him for advice on who they should go after. And I don't know, I don't, I don't know if this goes back before you were, you're paying, you know, close attention because it goes back maybe 20 years. But Glenn Beck, it wasn't even that long ago.

[Sam Cedar]

Cnn, right? This is when. Or was it on Fox? I can't remember where he moved to Fox.

[Heather Digby Parton]

And he, and it was super popular. His show was like, it was the big one. I mean it was like the Tucker Carlson of it, like day. And he would do this thing where he had. Dude called the Puppet Masters. He had a blackboard with his board.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. Oh, I'm, I'm enough of a sicko to remember that even as a 12 year old or whatever, if I'm not.

[Sam Cedar]

Mistaken, it involved like he thought like, you know, in the rock in Rockefeller center there was a mural that laid out all the plants. Back then it wasn't you know, Antifa, as he calls, was Saul Alinsky. And everybody was in a. Everybody was an Alinskyite and that was it. Do we have this video? Let's play this video. I know we have it. It's very long, but I think.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Do you have the one with the puppets? Because he, you know, he called it the Puppet Masters and he would have these marionettes come flying down from them.

[Sam Cedar]

What do we got? What's, what number is it, Brian?

[Matthew Film Guy]

I didn't add it on there, but we're pulling it up right now.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. From the Hollow Blue blog.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Yeah, I guess I found it. Yeah, I found it the other day. Jon Stewart did a whole parody of, of this that was just hilarious. He did this whole Glenn Beck thing. So I mean, it's nuts, right? I mean it was.

[Sam Cedar]

The FBI actually showed up at his, at his.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Yeah, actually I do. This is Cash Patel's FBI, right?

[Sam Cedar]

That's true.

[Heather Digby Parton]

I think they probably did.

[Sam Cedar]

We need some.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Probably Cash himself raced over on the private plane, you know.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, and that's right. I'm getting reminded that Glenn Beck was, was obsessed with acorn. And for people who don't know, I mean this is one of the sort of like forgotten failures of the Obama administration and of that era. You know, people talk about don't criticize Obama now, blah blah, blah. There was a lot to criticize contemporaneously. But in retrospect too, the loss of Democratic lawmakers on a state level was just massive governorships, state houses, on and on.

[Heather Digby Parton]

It was a massacre. It really was terrible.

[Sam Cedar]

And there was a whole attitude of like every person for themselves. And so when acorn, which was a key organization that would organize low income people, particularly through like tenant organizations and community organizations, ACORN was targeted by.

[Emma Vigland]

What'S.

[Sam Cedar]

His name, o' Keefe from Project Veritas and they just folded the entire government.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Wasn't that the thing where he dressed up like a pimp? I think that was. And I think it was Lila Rose, the anti abortion, you know, activist. She dressed up like the street prostitute.

[Sam Cedar]

And they went into one local like.

[Heather Digby Parton]

I think like health clinic New Orleans or someplace. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

And ACORN was completely decimated. The funding for these organizing groups was destroyed with the complicity of the Democratic Party. And it really fundamentally undermined was get out the vote organization and fundamentally undermined the get out the vote process and getting people who are underrepresented to actually get to the polls. Do we have that? Let's play some of this. Walk us through some of this. Heather, I want to show you just.

[Bradley]

I mean, this was just off the cuff. Okay. This is how. This is how hard it really is. Okay, so let's just speculate here for a minute. Let's call it a starting point for people at the FBI or Justice Department as they begin investigating leads. For far too long, the people potentially supporting antifa have remained in the shadows. That's what Trump is going to end. Is antifa more than just a decentralized and leaderless organization? Well, I've split antifa up into three different categories. Street groups and soldiers, that one, support groups and funding sources. But let me start right at the top.

[Sam Cedar]

We should just say, you can keep them up there. But we should say, you know, kudos to him for actually calling it antifa as opposed to antifa. That's how, you know he's done his research. Yeah, he knows how.

[Heather Digby Parton]

He does his own research.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, he knows how the indigenous antifa people pronounce it. It's anti fascist. Maybe we should just get the antifa Politburo to change the name to anti fascist.

[Emma Vigland]

I like. Go ahead.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Sorry, go ahead. No, no, go ahead.

[Emma Vigland]

No, I have a very stupid remark. Except to say, like, this whole aesthetic is like, it looks like CSI right, where they're about to say, you know, where. How they're gonna go after the bad guys. And it feels like he's trying to evoke police, a police chief, as some sort of authority figure for his very elderly audience.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Exactly. And I didn't even know Glenn Beck was still around, to tell you the truth. I mean, I, I mean, where's he been? He. I know he started his own. His own media company that kind of has, you know, sunk into oblivion. It's the Blaze. I don't. Does anybody, you know, do anything with that? And the antifa part, I think, is really interesting because it used to be that antifa was a bad. Was a good thing, Right. In fact, they used to, you know, they used to call the people who went over to Spain to fight in the revolution against Franco, they were sort of put down as kind of commie lefties, whatever. And they called them premature anti fascists, which suggested that being an anti fascist, they just did it too early. But anti fascism was a good thing, right? Because we beat the Nazis, et cetera, et cetera. Now suddenly it's bad to be anti fascist. Go figure. Interesting, don't you think? Who's in charge and who's saying that? I mean, you know, just don't call us fascists. Okay, well, you sure ain't anti Fascist. That's.

[Bradley]

Because this is where the politicians, the media and the think tank say, you know, that's the investigation. You just can investigate these guys, nothing else. Don't look here, but the groups are all over the news going back to around 2016. Groups like Rose City, Antifa, Portland, Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club.

[Sam Cedar]

What happened around 2016?

[Bradley]

Eugene, Antifa, Oregon, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Antifa, Refuse Fascism, Jane's Revenge. Now you've seen the carnage of these groups all over something bans. We continue to see it every day in places like Chicago and Portland. But this is where we're supposed to stop looking. I mean they can't find anything because trail goes cold there. Antifa is decentralized.

[Emma Vigland]

I see a cop.

[Bradley]

Well, if that is true, are these guys who don't work, a lot of them are on drugs, crazy. Are they self funding all of these things? Because how do we get to the next category, which is support groups? For instance, the National Lawyers Guild. This is the legal arm for Antifa. You know, if you've been in a riot or seen anything on tv, you're watching on the side, there are people standing on the side and they're wearing the green hats, okay? That's the National Lawyers Guild. They openly brag about how they provide.

[Left Reckoning]

Shadows hiding in plain sight with their bright.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, we got the wrong green. We wanted camo.

[Sam Cedar]

They're making sure that people are following the law.

[Bradley]

Legal support to the street soldiers.

[Sam Cedar]

Huh?

[Bradley]

But there's no organization in that. No. Next we have Antifa International. This one's kind of hilarious because the people who describe Antifa as decentralized and leaderless. You have an Antifa International. I mean it's like BLM Inc. From an Antifa fundraiser. Again, who do you write the check to? They're described as quote, an international anti fascist collective with years of experiencing of experience managing the International Anti Fascist Defense Fund and other anti fascist prophecies project. So you have no central control, no base of operations or anything else, but you have years of experience in managing. Really. How about Antifa International? Antifa International helped fundraise the legal defense fund for the militants that attacked the ICE facility in Texas. And while we're at it, take a look at Community Justice Exchange.

[Emma Vigland]

One second.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Come on now.

[Emma Vigland]

Like the he is bullshit. Funding the legal. Funding the legal defense. Funding the legal defense is very, very different than funding them to protests. Like there are nonprofits, there are things like pro bono work. Although the Trump administration is, has waged war against that.

[Left Reckoning]

For all that pro bono work.

[Emma Vigland]

For me, like the aclu, they sometimes defend people who have done hate speech or back in the day protecting the free speech rights of people. Even if it was stuff that I would think is racist or reprehensible.

[Heather Digby Parton]

They defended Nazis.

[Emma Vigland]

They defended Nazis. But. And that is a very equivalent service to the one that he's describing. But apparently this is some international network.

[Left Reckoning]

I mean everyone who has looked at any footage of these protests knows that we actually should have people there monitoring the people cracking heads so that they can. So that people aren't just victimized by them. Willy nilly it.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm sorry, did you say the aclu? Yes. But you also notice that is the first and last letters in antifa. And then also.

[Heather Digby Parton]

There you go.

[Sam Cedar]

Look at that. Emma. Interesting. Just go. Keep going. Let's keep going.

[Bradley]

National Bailout network. They were bailing people out during the summer of rage of George Floyd riots. They're probably worth looking into specifically due to their major partner which is. Oh my gosh. The Tides Foundation. Our old friends at the Tides Foundation. Look, these. These connections. These organizations are legion. We are legion. Yeah, that's probably what they say anyway.

[Sam Cedar]

Get it Christian.

[Bradley]

Remember, as per all the politicians, media experts, no centralized organization. Okay, but you have the support groups that are supporting them with no organization. And then you have this funding sources. Now this is interesting again, who do you write to check to. This is split between non profits and foundations. Also crowdfunding sources. Now I already mentioned the Tides Foundation. One of the darkest of the dark left wing radical money funnels on the planet. You know who knows all the trails that lead back to Tides. But just for starters, let's. Let's look at these heights foundation funds an organization called alliance for Global Justice. Money for mayor. They. So this is refunnel money to group.

[Left Reckoning]

This is just a big list of all the groups that Glenn Beck has been freaked out about for like the entire entire career.

[Sam Cedar]

It is. It is finally come together.

[Left Reckoning]

They finally been written on a blank blackboard next to the word antifa.

[Heather Digby Parton]

And the FBI is listening at long miles. They are putting their faith in the man who did the work and did the research.

[Emma Vigland]

He's one of those volunteer sheriffs.

[Heather Digby Parton]

He's like those volunteer, you know, Herschel Walker, whatever.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, Dean Kane. Whatever happened to him at ice. Is he still there?

[Matthew Film Guy]

I think he was the guy who.

[Sam Cedar]

We watched fall fall over the other.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Day and his gun went flying on down the street.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, yeah.

[Heather Digby Parton]

So this is the state of where we are in the. In the antifa. Antifa investigation. And they put this guy Gary Shapley in the irs, which I would say he's just maybe a step below Glenn Beck as far as credibility is concerned. That doesn't mean that they're not going to do something because they will. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt that they can. You know, they'll get rid of anybody who objects to breaking the law. And the law is very clear that they're not allowed to do any of this stuff in terms of investigating people just because of their, you know, whatever their political disposition is, but they're going to do it anyway. And, you know, I think mostly it's a PR thing. I think they're probably going to, you know, maybe they'll go after an indict or audit some. Some of the groups. But mostly it's just a matter of threatening people and in threats and intimidation, which is what they're doing across the board. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just standard authoritarian playbook. You know, just use. Get some examples out there. Arrest James Comey. Arrest Letitia James. You know, threaten people with IRS audits. You know, and a lot of that is just that. At the same time, though, they actually have a police state in action in the Department of Homeland Security, which has been given a blank check apparently to do whatever they want. And they are cracking heads. They are hurting and killing and shooting and killing people in the streets of America. That is happening. And so you put that combination together of all these threats of using the Department of Justice, the irs, and then what's happening in the streets, and we are. We're there now. I mean, you know. Yeah, that's. It's. It's far. Of antifa. It's full. We're full FA now.

[Sam Cedar]

Heather Parton, always a pleasure.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, this was fun. Yes, yes.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Getting some Glenn Beck in there. It's been a while, so that was kind of.

[Sam Cedar]

But as always, thank you so much. We will link to your Salon.com columns and, of course, hullabaloo. Really appreciate your time today.

[Heather Digby Parton]

And folks, see you all in the streets tomorrow.

[Sam Cedar]

Exactly.

[Heather Digby Parton]

We're all going.

[Sam Cedar]

All right.

[Heather Digby Parton]

We're gonna take pictures.

[Sam Cedar]

We're gonna take a quick break. Yes, take pictures, folks. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, the triumphant return of Matthew Film Guy. We'll be right back after this. Sam Cassavetes on Netflix and other such things. Maybe on the Watchman and learn a few things. Please recommend me a movie to stream. Matthew. Matthew. Please recommend me a movie to stream. Matthew. Matthew Guy. Yes, ladies and Gentlemen, I'm back. It has been way too long. Emma Viglin, Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. And joining us is Matthew Film Guy. Matthew, how I. It's been a long time.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

How long?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Over a year. Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

No, no. Are you serious?

[Matthew Film Guy]

I think it Was May of 2024 was my last appearance.

[Sam Cedar]

You're kidding.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Wow.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, a lot of shit's gone down since then, so I believe.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I'm sorry. It didn't seem that long, to be honest with you.

[Matthew Film Guy]

With all due respect, time is a flat circle at this point. A lot of shit's happening.

[Sam Cedar]

What was it that Cernovich said that got him kicked off of Infowars?

[Left Reckoning]

Like the time is delayed.

[Sam Cedar]

Time is delayed, yeah.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Time is definitely time delayed.

[Sam Cedar]

We are in the singularity now. Matthew Film Guy, what have you been up to over the past. Over a year?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Well, geez, since the last time I saw you, I edited a feature film that's going to be making the festival rounds coming up soon, called Act One, directed by Sophia Takal.

[Sam Cedar]

Whoa. Okay.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Very cool. Since then I've. I've. Honestly, I've just been reading a lot of scripts from my agents and no projects have landed quite yet. But meanwhile I've been doing my amazing online film appreciation class, which I don't know if you know, but your system fully online now? Yes, it's fully online.

[Sam Cedar]

I guess it's been that way for the past five or six years.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yes, since the pandemic. We moved to fully online and that's why I can offer it to every viewer that is listening to the sound of my voice. You can go to the link that's hopefully in the description and join us. We're halfway through the. I guess it's the fall session right now, but you can jump on at any time. We watch challenging movies. We watch movies that require a little bit more concentration, a little bit more effort. And then we meet on Tuesdays at noon and have an hour and a half to two hour discussion about the movies that I.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, that's why you're called a Matthew Film Guy and not Matthew Movie Guy, even though the alliteration would have been better.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I mean, you coined the term term Sam, so I'll go with whatever you decided. But you called me Matthew.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, that's why I coined it that way, because you're a film guy.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I mean, right. Guy would have gone too, but. Gone too.

[Sam Cedar]

I was gonna say we could have gone Matthew Sinist Guy, but that would have been too like. It just. I don't know how to spell it. I wouldn't.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, cinematic.

[Heather Digby Parton]

That's.

[Matthew Film Guy]

That's maybe like my wrestling name or something.

[Sam Cedar]

Cinematic.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't know.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I mean, Matthew Thumb guy. It works. It's what my letterboxd is called. People can follow me on letterboxd and see all the various movies that I watch and give little caps and your, Your, Your.

[Sam Cedar]

Your. Your film appreciation appreciation class is. It's, It's. It's a lot of like, you know, boomers. Right?

[Matthew Film Guy]

I mean, well, it started out as. It started out as a.

[Sam Cedar]

The greatest generation.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I think it was extended education class. Yes, that was the original impulse. So there is a healthy proportion of them are of senior citizen age, but they're all extremely.

[Sam Cedar]

Nothing wrong with that. I mean, do we get a discount? Because I'm like, I'm. I'm right on the edge of getting a discount.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah. You know what? If you say that you're.

[Sam Cedar]

You.

[Matthew Film Guy]

You heard about it from the show, you can get the members price.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, okay.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

So. All right, tell us about this movie though, before we go. You know, before you give us some ideas of what we should be watching at this time. Tell us about the movie you edited.

[Matthew Film Guy]

It's called Act One. It's about a girl who joins an acting class. She's a high school girl that joins an acting class, and the woman that runs it is somewhat of like a Svengali, and she sort of is putting her at odds with her family. It's kind of an interesting sort of take on the sort of teen drama. It's very weird. It's. It's. It gets sort of esoteric and sort of darkly sexual. I want to say she. She starts to sort of push her into these sexual realms. So I don't want to give away.

[Emma Vigland]

Too much about it, but it's definitely typical Hollywood degeneracy.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Typical falling petition. I mean, no, it's definitely an independent film of the highest order. But yeah. Yeah, that's exciting.

[Sam Cedar]

Now, in my ruining OPSEC by saying that you are. I think you're a constituent of Zora Momdani's. Is that correct?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, I am, actually. Yeah. He is the assembly member. He. His office is right above my grocery store, so I walk by his office every other day when I go buy some more half and half for my coffee. And actually there was a protest outside his office a couple months ago that was pretty exciting. Was a bunch of Sliwa supporters chanting you're a communist and go back to the Middle east and all this crazy crap. And so I Had to endure that for a second there. But, yeah, he's definitely my representative, my assembly member.

[Sam Cedar]

All right. Did you watch the debate? I mean, are you excited for Mamdani or.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I'm totally excited for Mom. Donnie. I'm voting for him as many times as possible. And I, you know, I didn't watch it live, but I watched a lot of the clips, a lot of the repeats. There's nothing he could say that would make me like him anymore. And there's nothing that Cuomo could say that could make me like him any less. So I didn't necessarily need to watch it live.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, you did miss them asking about can't, if they've ever been to a cannabis dispensary. Yeah, we have that. And Zoran very sheepishly admitted it, although I don't know why in 2025, this is some sort of issue. They were chanting, go back to, to the Middle East. Like, it's really annoying me that people, he's, he's, he's from Uganda, right. And his family is ethnically Indian.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I know.

[Emma Vigland]

It's like the difference, it's driving me crazy.

[Sam Cedar]

They're just, People genuinely want him to travel. They just genuinely want him to travel. And because after they said go back to the Middle east, they also said, then also visit Ontario.

[Matthew Film Guy]

It's nice to realize how important Hajj is to your religion. Yeah, I think that's what they had in mind. The Hajj make the Hajj, buddy.

[Sam Cedar]

So, Matthew, how have you been? Like, what, how is your state of mind? Like, do you, you.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I'm losing it, bro.

[Sam Cedar]

Are you losing it?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, I'm losing it, bro. I mean, listen, I, I listen to the show practically every day, so I'm well aware that. Tick tock. Of the destruction in this goddamn country.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm losing it, bro.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Exactly. That is where I'm at. I mean, honestly, I, if it wasn't for my ability to consume cinema, I would be absolutely a wreck. You know, I, I, I'm, I'm clinging to, I mean, this class, it gives me so much. Honestly, it's not just what I'm giving to the students, what they're giving back to me in terms of an analysis of the state of the emotional, the heart of humanity. You know, I always love quoting the famous quote from Ezra Pound. He said that literature, although I apply it to film, is news that stays news. And it just feels to me like if it wasn't for my ability to explore the, the deeper realms of human consciousness, I would absolutely be basically Standing on a ledge, ready to jump no matter how.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, all right, well, hang in there.

[Emma Vigland]

But no matter how depressing, like I. Someone said this to me, or maybe I saw it on Twitter, which is even more depressing. But like, the idea that even if life gets so bad, there's always a new movie to watch. That's like a good way to look at.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Look at things. And honestly, for me now, not even a new movie, but the whole history of the realm of cinema, which is at our fingertips now in this day and age. You know, you can look at my diary on, on letterboxd, and I'm watching things from all over the globe, all over the timeline, from silent movies of the teens to, you know, actually a great movie that we just watched in class two weeks ago. The latest movie by Mike Lee, which is called Hard Truths, was just an amazing humanistic portrait of a woman going through anger issues that really, you know, it expands your ability to sympathize and to have a conscious connection to your fellow humans. And that's something that I think is missing from politics in general. It's all about beating the other person and domination. Even when you're a partisan for the left, you know, it has this kind of antagonistic tone to it. Whereas film at the best films are empathy creating machines, you know, putting you in sympathy with your fellow humans, even the ones that are maybe prickly or sort of dark or negative, you know, and that to me is. It's a lifesaver. Believe me, that's.

[Sam Cedar]

That's what I felt when I watched the Mi. Mi 7, the final of the Mission Impossible series.

[Matthew Film Guy]

You know, I have yet to get to that. That is, that is on my list. But yeah, listen, I can. I consume the brainless Hollywood entertainment as well, you know, the Marvel movies and so on. So I, I have a spot in my heart for just disconnecting my conscious brain and enjoying that as well. So I could see you.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I mean, okay, it sounded a little backhanded, but that's okay. You know, I have a 12 year old, you know, as you know, I am.

[Matthew Film Guy]

And I have an inner 12 year old, right. That I'm still in connection with.

[Sam Cedar]

Matthew, what is. Before you get to suggestions for us as to what we should be watching in this era, which is a pretty unique era in terms of, I think American. Well, it's somewhat unique in terms of American history. I don't want to overstate it, but in terms of the authoritarianism.

[Matthew Film Guy]

That is.

[Sam Cedar]

There'S, I guess it's really more. Its victims are more widely distributed, let's put it that way. Or potentially could be. What, what's the most recent new release that you have watched?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Oh, my God. You know, I, I'm so. I get so turned off by Cat trying to catch up on the newest movie. So I don't know the newest movie that I've seen.

[Sam Cedar]

This thing?

[Matthew Film Guy]

No. Woman under the Influence.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, exactly.

[Matthew Film Guy]

No, that is my favorite movie or one of my favorite movies. But no, that's 1974. So that I've seen something newer than that. Actually. It might be Mike Lee's Hard Truths, which just came out last year. That was a 2024 movie, so it could be actually that one, the one that I just mentioned, Legend, I think I also saw, I saw this comedy called Friendship. I don't know.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I saw that.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, that was pretty dark and twisted. I like that one.

[Emma Vigland]

I love that. Yeah.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Hilarious.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Paul Rudd, right? And who's that other dude?

[Emma Vigland]

And Tim Robinson. You didn't see one battle after another? We got a IMS about it.

[Matthew Film Guy]

No, I have not seen that yet. You know, it's that.

[Sam Cedar]

The Paul Thomas Anderson one.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah. It's not a secret that I'm not the biggest Paul Thomas Anderson fan. I sort of see him as a, a film school fabulous guy playing with the genre more than making a sort of deep connection to the human condition.

[Sam Cedar]

But kicking the desk.

[Emma Vigland]

I didn't start kicking. I just tapped my foot slightly.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, but I heard, I've heard. How amazing.

[Sam Cedar]

Did you see the new Superman movie? Because Emma thought that was great too.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yes, I did.

[Emma Vigland]

I won't. I, I, I. By the time I'm done with this career, I don't think I'll like anything anymore.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I'm not, I'm not here to dump on anybody's taste, really. I'm here to support what I like and try to be a champion for something different. But I'm not.

[Emma Vigland]

But you haven't seen it. But you don't like it preemptively.

[Matthew Film Guy]

No, no, I didn't see it.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Okay.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Honestly, that's Sam, the, the movie of his. Yeah, Sam put those words in my mouth.

[Emma Vigland]

I saw that.

[Sam Cedar]

You and I share a similar, like, skepticism of Paul Thomas Anderson along those lines. Now, I haven't seen nearly as many of his, you know, films. Like, I think, though, there was one or two in there. I remember liking Punch Drunk Love, actually. Yeah, I love that movie.

[Emma Vigland]

Movie Nights is incredible. There Will Be Blood is like one of the best ex like, movies about American, American capitalism ever made or.

[Sam Cedar]

But it was sort of. I don't know.

[Matthew Film Guy]

None of these movies thrilled me, to be honest. They're impressive on a craft level. And as a. As a technician, I think he's really remarkable and extremely slick and honestly give him credit for being more intelligent than the latest Marvel movie and whatever. Like, thank God we have a guy like him making mainstream movies. So I appreciate him on that level. But honestly, Punch Drunk Love, I didn't. That it was so. It seems.

[Sam Cedar]

So maybe I thought, to me, Adam Sandler was actually pretty good in that. I think maybe that that was what it was. I mean, I haven't seen it in.

[Emma Vigland]

Probably 15 years, so it's amazing in that when. When Adam Sandler wants to be dramatic, it's actually like, quite good. I would say.

[Sam Cedar]

Matthew, Film guy is not having any of this.

[Matthew Film Guy]

So, honestly, the movie of Paul Thomas Anderson's, if you want to talk about a movie of his that I love, was the Master. That movie was. Was legitimately weird and legitimately esoteric in a way that I don't think he's ever approached before. It certainly was thematically rich in a way that I. You know, it didn't make necessarily conceptual sense. Like, a lot of his movies are sort of quoting other movies and sort of repackaging other cinematic touchstones. But that one, to me, felt genuinely, legitimately authentic and sort of reaching for something personal from him that I hadn't seen before. So that one I really loved.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay.

[Emma Vigland]

Phantom thread is very personal, too, in a way that I thought that was daring. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's one of my favorite movies.

[Matthew Film Guy]

You know, again, it was technically proficient, but I didn't really connect with it, I have to say.

[Sam Cedar]

Matthew. So let's. Let's get to your picks before we do. Before we do. Andor. Have you watched Andor?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yes, I have watched Andor.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, what do you think? Awesome, right?

[Matthew Film Guy]

I mean, super cool. Star Wars Story. I mean, I love the whole.

[Sam Cedar]

Why'd you got to do it that way?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Because it is a super cool.

[Sam Cedar]

It's part of the Star wars franchise, but it really is really. It stands on its own.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, no, and I appreciate this.

[Sam Cedar]

You don't need the Star wars part of it at all, as far as I'm concerned.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, no, there's no force using. There's no lightsabers, so it sort of avoids all of that sort of side the world. So. Yeah, no, I didn't mean to denigrate it. It's just that's. I'm telling you how I feel.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay. All right, we'll say how you feel. I got, I got thrown off when you said Star Wars.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I, I, look, I, I appreciate it's sort of fascist storytelling and the sort of anti fascist. Yeah, antifascist. Yeah, that, you know, showing how they lure everybody into the square and then they start shooting them. Not to be.

[Sam Cedar]

Dude, what the heck?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Hey, if you haven't seen it by now, I'm sorry, but it's, it's a great, it's a, it's a great sort of metaphor for our current time. So I give them credit for being able to produce such a thing at Disney. So that, that to me is a.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I, I think it's a good, I like, you know, you know me, I like a sci fi that it has like some type of interior stuff going on.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah. Like Battlestar Galactica.

[Sam Cedar]

Like Battlestar Galactica. Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate your, I appreciate you remembering that. All right, so, Matthew, now for what everybody has been waiting for while we go on all of these detours and distractions, what movie we should, I should tell people this. You are one of the, like, one of the first guests on the show probably 15 or 16 years ago. And the idea was I, you know, my kids were much younger at that time and I could never go out to see a movie. It turns out I still don't go out to see movies, but, But I could never go out. And they had this new fangled thing called streaming by Netflix and so. And then of course, over the years, you know, we were able to see DVDs and stuff like that. Do you, do you still get like criterion DVDs or. No. Or do you like, Are you like all streaming? Okay, interesting. No Blu Ray disc.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Maker will have a Kickstarter that'll help them find an independent film. Like, Hal Harley just had a independent Kickstarter to fund his new film. So I bought that Blu Ray that way. So the rare occasion, do I buy a blue.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Okay.

[Sam Cedar]

And so you would give suggestions. What do you suggest that folks watch that is relevant if in this era.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Okay, now I just spoke about how I'm watching all these films that uplift the human soul. So I'm gonna make a left turn here. Talk about a movie that is extremely dark and challenging to watch. It's a movie from 2012 called the act of Killing. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's a documentary. I don't know if anyone here has seen it, but we watched it in class. There. It's streaming on Peacock, and I recommend you watch the full length version. There's a. There's a truncated version that they had to cut down for domestic audiences here in America. But the full length version, it's about 2 hours and 40 minutes. But it's an absolute mind fuck of a movie. It's basically following two of the murderers of the Indonesian communist purge of the early mid-1960s in modern day times. And the filmmaker has sort of, in a kind of Sacha, Baron Cohen esque way, tricked them into recreating the actual murders that they've committed. So they're staging them as these big cinematic tableaus and they're making references to all these other movies like gangster movies and westerns. And it's this surrealistic sort of mix of celebrating. They, you know, they go through town and they try to cast people to play the communists. And they're all super scared. Because the current atmosphere, at least in 2012 in Indonesia, was such that anyone even associated with communism was absolutely feared for their lives. And basically, I don't know if you know the story, but In Indonesia, the 1960s, there was this huge mass murder. It could be up to a million people were killed under the guise of fighting communism. And they use these gangsters, basically. And the main character in this movie is this guy, Anwar Kongo. And he's now this older grandpa kind of guy. And he's still venerated as this hero of this purge. And his sidekick is this guy, Herman Cato, who's a current gangster. And he's in this group called the Pankasila Youth, which is basically paramilitary group that was instrumental in carrying out these murders. And it's just a remarkable look into the psychology of this guy because everywhere he goes, people are like, oh, you're this great hero. You did this stuff. And he's actually recreating these murders. And he slowly, very slowly starts to feel some remorse. And it's very twisted the way he starts to. To understand the violence that he enacted. And it just. I. I can't describe how surreal it is because they put them into these tableaus where they're like, dressed up like movie gangsters. The. The original name for these guys were the. The movie gangsters. They actually called them movie gangsters because they started out hanging out outside movie theaters and selling bootleg tickets, scalping tickets. And they got hired to basically be these thugs, these, you know, sanctioned murderers. And he demonstrates how he chokes them. He said, I used to beat them in the head, but there was too much Blood. Then I figured out, oh, I learned in the movies that I could choke them with a wire. And he demonstrates it. It's absolutely horrific the way you're asked to sort of enter into the mind of this murderer. And it actually is a wide picture of the entire system because they go through all these other different officials. There's the governor of North Sumatra that they interview. There's a newspaper publisher who was part of the sort of the killing pipeline. He would sort of rat on people and call them out. And people are giving these speeches about how we need gangsters. Gangsters are what keep this country free. And God hates communists. And one of the major scenes is they go on this talk show because apparently word got out that they're remaking this movie which is depicting the heroic acts of murder of all these communists. And they go on this talk show and the talk show host is going, oh, he made a good way of killing communists. He's. He's such a hero. And it's like, it's. It's so chilling to see the sort of end result. And this is what I sort of relate to what we're going through now. The end result of naked, absolute authoritarian violence and the sanctioning of violence similar to what we're seeing with ice, but on a much more overt level of these paramilitary sanctioned gangsters just enacting the political will of the majority and just killing anyone who's even associated with being a communist or a trade unionist or a leftist of any kind. And it's absolutely still reverberating till today the effects of this extreme purge. And this documentary is just so he gets such access to these people and they're sort of proud of what they did and they're going around sort of being celebrated by the local populace. Some of them, you can see, are very afraid of these people. But there's all these.

[Sam Cedar]

Sounds like a perfect movie for me to watch with my son.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Yeah, exactly. Definitely watch it with the family. Get a big bowl of popcorn, pull up a blanket and cuddle up with this movie.

[Emma Vigland]

No, there is going to be. There is going. That sounds. I remember hearing about that film and I wasn't. It was either in the conversation for Oscar documentary or something like that. Like it was getting awards buzz at the time. And what it is, when Sam and I went to that Zateo documentary like a year ago, right. It was obviously it was a short. I don't think it was a full length feature, but it's similar territory of like Zatteo interviewed a lot of basically Israeli soldiers about the crimes that they had committed. And like it just when you're describing this, of course, all I can think about is the genocide in Gaza too, and what future documentarians are going to have endless footage to choose from to see people explain their crimes in chilling detail. But the intimacy of what you're saying might be even harder to find as well. Where you see somebody eventually start to have a bit of remorse, like that is probably. That's cinematic in a way that we may not even have with this genocide.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I mean, this is going back whatever, 60 years. So it's, it's a sort of. There's maybe enough time for this guy, you know, at the end of the movie, this isn't necessarily spoiling anything, but at the end of the movie he's watching footage and the filmmaker films the guy watching footage that they shot of him in this movie set sort of world where they think they're making a movie. He tells them, we're making a movie celebrating what you did. But obviously he's peeling the layers back on what he did. And, well, they're watching the footage of it and he says to his grandson, come here, watch grandpa getting choked. Watch grandpa, watch. And the filmmaker's like, should he be watching that? He's like, yeah, it's fine. And then that's when he starts to sort of choke up and sort of realize like, oh, now I understand what they went through. And the filmmaker says, well, you don't really understand what they went through because they were actually going to die. You know, it's a movie. So it's, it's such a twisted, sort of extremely complicated foray into this man's psychology that I cannot recommend any more highly. But it definitely is a challenging watch. It's not necessarily a relaxing watch, but it can, it's a, it's a, it's a warning for where we could be headed.

[Sam Cedar]

Actually, that's how I took it to Matthew film guy. Great recommendation. I'm gonna put it on my list. I have 10, 12 years of lists of movies of yours that I gotta catch up on. But I'm getting there are getting close. Kids, you know, the kid's going to age out of this era of action films all the time.

[Matthew Film Guy]

So by the time you get to this movie, he should be old enough to appreciate it.

[Sam Cedar]

Wonderful. Matthew Film guy, always a pleasure. We got to do this again soon.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Definitely. Sam. Thank you guys. Great to talk to you.

[Emma Vigland]

Great to talk to you.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, we're going to take quick break, head into the fun half. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, you also get the fun half. Don't forget AM quickie our discord and just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off all of their coffee. You can get the majority report blend. Check it out. But awesome. Awesome Roasters and co OP in Madison, Wisconsin. Matt left Reckoning.

[Left Reckoning]

Yeah, left [e-mail] LeftReckoning if you sign up, you can hear the Sunday show this weekend where we're gonna get into Graham Platner's Reddit posts and why it looks like desperation for Janet Mills who is going to lose that primary.

[Sam Cedar]

It's early to be that desperate, but she's getting there quick. Yeah, she doesn't have much time.

[Left Reckoning]

Pull the lever. So patreon.com slough reckoning for our patrons.

[Emma Vigland]

That should be her angle. I will act with urgency because I don't have a lot of time left.

[Left Reckoning]

Although the filibuster stays.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. For some reason the Reddit post that. I'm sorry, but just, just want to say, like they are dumping that way too early. Did I say this earlier? It's been a long.

[Sam Cedar]

That's before the show.

[Emma Vigland]

Okay. Okay. Yeah, like they are freaked out if they. This is the oppo research that they're already putting out there.

[Sam Cedar]

But okay, see you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow, but what is that going on? It's nuts.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Wait a second.

[Sam Cedar]

Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Fun hack. Matt.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Boom.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Fun hack.

[Sam Cedar]

What is up, everyone?

[Matthew Film Guy]

Fun hack.

[Sam Cedar]

No M key.

[Matthew Film Guy]

You did it. Fun hack.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Fun hat.

[Sam Cedar]

Bradley, you want to say hello?

[Bradley]

Sorry to disappoint everyone.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigland]

No, I'm sorry.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Women.

[Sam Cedar]

Stop talking for a second and let me finish.

[Emma Vigland]

Where is this coming from, dude?

[Sam Cedar]

But dude, you want to smoke this seven egg? Yes. Hi, me. Is this me.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Is it me?

[Sam Cedar]

It is you.

[Bradley]

If it's me, hello, that's me.

[Sam Cedar]

I think it is you. Who is you?

[Heather Digby Parton]

Go south.

[Sam Cedar]

Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Heather Digby Parton]

I'm gonna discuss that.

[Sam Cedar]

Like libertarians. They're so stupid.

[Left Reckoning]

Stupid.

[Sam Cedar]

Though common sense says of course.

[Emma Vigland]

Gobbledygook.

[Sam Cedar]

We nailed him.

[Emma Vigland]

So what's 79 plus 21?

[Sam Cedar]

Challenge.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Matt, I'm positively quivering.

[Sam Cedar]

I believe 96.

[Matthew Film Guy]

I want to say.

[Sam Cedar]

8572-103550-11389, 11.

[Left Reckoning]

For instance.

[Emma Vigland]

$3,400. $1900. 5 4.

[Sam Cedar]

$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually.

[Emma Vigland]

You're making think less.

[Sam Cedar]

But, but let me say this. You can call it satire.

[Matthew Film Guy]

Sam goes satire. On top of it all. My favorite part about you is just.

[Emma Vigland]

Like every day, all day, like everything you do.

[Sam Cedar]

Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[Emma Vigland]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I, I, I don't know.

[Emma Vigland]

But you should know.

[Heather Digby Parton]

People just don't.

[Sam Cedar]

Like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it.

[Emma Vigland]

I do love that.

[Sam Cedar]

Gotta jump, gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o', clock, we're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigland]

Outrageous.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you.

[Heather Digby Parton]

Bye.

[Sam Cedar]

Love you.

[Emma Vigland]

Bye.

[Sam Cedar]

Bye.