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Today.
As we mentioned before, is October seventh. That means it is the anniversary of the October seventh Comas attacks.
Let's go ahead and put this.
Up on the screen. Our producer Griffin compiled some of the most striking and shocking images from that day. You can see rockets being fired. This is from Gaza City. You can see these images and I don't know if you guys remember where you were or how you felt learning this news, but I just remember being absolutely shocked.
Here you can see one of probably the most notable images, which is Palestinians using a bulldozer to take down part of the barbed wire fence raise a wire fence surrounding Gaza. The way that this attacked unfurled, they were able to use commercial drone technology to take out some of the surveillance systems and the automatic there's automatic weapons trained in facing in at Gaza. They were able to take that out. Then they were able to infiltrate Israel, taking over two
hundred hostages. You can see this elderly woman who has taken hostage and they're driving her back to Gaza. You can also see very quickly the beginning of the response from Israel. This is they blew up multiple apartment towers here in Gaza City. And it's also kind of heart wrenching to see. This is also Gaza City the most structures they are still intact. Of course, now here we stand a year later, and you know all you would see in Gaza scenes of just total and complete annihilation.
So Hamas succeeds in this attack, I think beyond their wildest expectations. At the end of the day, we can put this up on the screen. You have some twelve hundred individuals who were killed, six hundred ninety five Israeli civilians, three hundred and seventy three who were IDF and seventy one foreigners. Now we've since learned that some number of
those We have no idea how many. All indications are that an overwhelming majority were killed by Hamas and affiliated groups, but some number of them were also killed by the IDF instituting the so called Hannibal directive. And it appears that Hamas succeeded beyond their wildest expectations because of massive Israeli security failures leading up to that day. For one thing, you had a number of IDF troops who were repositioned to the bank to protect effectively rampaging settlers there.
That was part of the project of.
You know, Smo Church and Ben Givier and these Netnyahuu coalitional partners. You had a group of women, idea of soldiers who were you know, doing the surveillance in Gaza. They were, you know, looking at spotting within Gaza and say hey, they're planning for something big, and they were ignored and not listened to. There were actual the actual plans that the Israeli government were able to get their
hands on in advance. That they also didn't believe because they didn't think that Hamas had that level of capability. And in terms of the world stage, you know, at
that point, Sagur the Palestinine cause was basically forgotten. Trump had struck these Abraham Accords, where basically the deal was, we're going to make these security deals with Golf States to effectively forget about caring about Palestinians, and that was cited as part of the motivation for Hamas to engage in the extraordinary attack on Israeli society that really shook
that country to the core. Now what we have seen since then has been just scenes of devastation and annihilation and terrifying escalation into a broadening war that even the greatest cynic myself included, I don't think really could have imagined. After Ox October seventh. You know, anyone with a brain knew that the response was going to be brutal and barbaric, because we've seen what Israel has done in the past when they've gone in in these mo the lawn type operations,
but we've never seen anything quite like this. Let's go ahead and put the next graphic we have. I believe it's D four the number of Palestinians who were killed. To be honest with you, we really don't know. These are the official numbers. This is courtesy of Euromed Monitor the official number is fifty two hundred and ninety two killed in Gaza. A majority of them have been women and children. By the way, I want to say, you know, there's this sort of shorthand of assuming that only the
women and children are innocent. Of course, there are many innocent men who are also killed as part of this, but some experts, many experts, believe that the number is a lot higher than this. You have no ability of Western journalists, very little ability of aid workers to come in and operate and actually assess what the true death toll here is in the Gaza strip. Let's put this next piece up on the screen. There's a group of doctors and healthcare workers that recently pend a letter about
the horrors that they have seen unfolding there. And they write this letter and the appendix show probitive evidence that the human tole in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the US. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than one hundred and eighteen thousand, that is an astonishing five
point four percent of Gaza's population. They also write in this letter that there is effectively not a single person in Gaza who is not sick or injured in some way.
After a year of this just.
Utter campaign of annihilation and this horrific onslaught, it's not that we haven't known what's going on either, not just because of the work of brave doctors such as these, but also because of the idea of soldiers themselves who have gone around on social media routinely bragging about the war crimes that they have committed in the Gaza strip.
Let's go ahead and play guys.
D three Al Jazeera put together a documentary that was just about the idea of soldiers who were posting through it and bragging. Here they're bragging about the burning of a Palestinian neighborhood, saying this is what we will do. Not a memory will be left of them. We will annihilate them to dust. I'm sure you've seen some of these images before. This is a Palestinian who is blindfolded and being beaten and dragged. You can see these images of the station. He says, look at it. We're going
to show you his back. He was tortured to make him speak. Lots of people say that the Israeli forces shouldn't be allowed to take phones into combat. But this expert says, listen, I'm actually glad they do, because at least it gives us some window into what's happening here. And sager, that's part of what has been uniquely horrifying,
is it's all there for the world to see. And yet you know, our government has consistently turned a blind eye pretend, you know gas let us tried to pretend like, oh no, we care about international law, we care about these humanitarian goals, we care about US law, I mean
our government. Now we've had plenty of evidence and reporting to convince everyone that our government is knowingly violating our own laws about continuing to ship weapons to Israel, given what they have done in the Gaza strips, specifically the fact that they we have State Department reports that prove that they were in fact inhibiting aid, keeping aid from
getting to what is now a starving population. And so now we sit here a year later, and as I said, you know, I don't think that the greatest cynic could have possibly imagined what would unfold in that time, and that it would still be ongoing now with no in insight.
I think for.
Israel, it was just clear immediately afterwards, when Biden gave that famous speech and he's like, look, you have two choices. You can do what we did after nine to eleven, and you can escalate this and turn this into a generational style conflict which could eventually subsume and destroy you in the long run, or you know, you can deal with this in a more targeted manner. It was clear what they decided to do, both for political purposes but also in terms of where we stand right now with
the expansion of the war against Hezbola against Eiron. But also I think this has revealed a lot about the American political system. It's been very clarifying to me. You know, everyone talks about APAC. I think ADL may arguably be one of the organizations. I finally understood its purpose and all that groundwork that they laid on censorship previously, working with the Facebook, Google, YouTube, and all of those others, so that they could kick into gear to serve their
true master. Whenever October seventh happen, not only in the protest movement but just generally, we've seen mass censorship happen all across the US. But most importantly, I've just seen the entire political system become completely obsessed with this foreign nation, which at the end of the day is not that important to the United States. Hundreds of billions of dollars likely lost now from the US our own soldiers, three of whom who died, don't forget that, on the Jordanian
border with Syria. Also the two aircraft carriers. But the general political orientation around this conflict and the complete obsession. You probably saw that Lindsay Graham clip where he's like, I'm here in South Carolina responding to this hurricane, but we can't forget about our friends in Israel. It's like that it was so I don't I always suspected it was there, but to see it like so openly and nakedly has been really disturbing for me.
To go back to some of what we've seen unfold over the course of the past year. And it's if you remember, if you go back to the early phases of the war, they'd engage in these long like Israelis to engage in these long propaganda campaigns to justify like attacking a hospital, right, And it seems almost quaint at this point because now at this point, the entire medical infrastructure has been destroyed, not to mention schools, refugee camps, everything,
everything is basically destroyed. We can put D seven up on the screen showing the number of buildings that have been destroyed in the Gaza strip. I mean, it's just there's virtually nothing left. Two thirds two thirds of all of the structures mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, private homes two thirds destroyed, one hundred and sixty three thousand different buildings damage or flatten. A third of those actually
were high rises. And we had reporting from plus nine seven to two magazine early on about how part of their impetus, part of the strategy here was to intentionally target civilian infrastructure with the idea of if we cause enough pain to the civilian population, then maybe they'll rise up against Hamas. Obviously, there is no predicate in history of that actually happening. What happens instead is that they
hate you more. And what happens instead is you create more people who want to kill you and who are terrorists and have militant ideology. But that has not stopped the campaign of utter annihilation because BB Netanyahu and the rest of the Israeli government establishment, they needed to bring some win after this tremendous security failure. They needed to bring some wind these Raeli people. And the wind is basically like blood and death and destruction.
That's the win.
That's why you see their soldiers bragging about it without impuna. I remember all the conversation about like why don't they just take their phones? You know, why are they doing this? And it's because it's popular. These soldiers who post these things, they are celebrated at conferences throughout Israel.
They are cheered.
This is finding exactly the audience that they want. And the other goal is for Israel to, you know, in the very clinical terms, re establish deterrence, meaning prove that they can be even more brutal and barbaric than anyone else in their quote unquote neighborhood. And so you know, that's what we've seen. Just to give a sense of the grim, death toll and horror unfolding there, Euromed Monitor put together this map of mass graves within the Gaza Strip.
What you see is some selected number of unmarked mass graves that now exist in the Gaza Strip. They're over one hundred and twenty newly established mass graves across Gaza strip. It's a landscape of death, that's what it is. And we've watched it on TikTok, We've seen it in our social media folds.
We've seen it.
Sometimes occasionally few images on television. You know, certainly if you watch you know, Al Jazer or other non Western media, you've seen these images. So no one can say they didn't know what was going on. No one can say that they weren't aware of the level of atrocities. And yet, you know, you continue to have the US government pretending like they don't know and like, oh, this is just
Israel defending themselves, which is utterly preposterous. Now the war has expanded, there have been threats from the beginning of effectively we're going to turn Lebanon into Gaza, and Israeli is now making good on that threat.
You've had.
In just the past couple of weeks, two thousand Lebanese killed. We don't know how many are has a lot, how many are civilians. We do know there are quite a large number of women and children also among these deaths. We also know that in just the strike that was used to take out I shouldn't say strike, the strikes that were used to take out the Estrallo is the head of Hesbola. They dropped more bunker buster bombs in that one strike than we used in the entirety of
the Iraq invasion. In that one strike, over eighty two thousand pound bunker buster bombs to get one guy. So the bombing of Lebanon continues, the bombing of Gaza continues, and you know, in terms of the there was a lot of conversation early on about the quote unquote day after in Gaza could put D nine up on the screen.
You know, they're finally becoming pretty clear about what the plan is here, this is your island, talking about how this new plan that is gaining a lot of traction within Israel of hey, we're going to close off all of northern Gaza and we're going to say you have to leave. So once again, these people have been displaced before. Now you know, let's displace you again. Let's ethnically cleanse this whole area. And if you don't go, we're just going to assume you are a quote unquote terrorist and
we're going to murder you. And once this area has been cleansed, then we can come in and as certain control of course, we know there have been conferences attended by uh Lacud party ministers and other government allies in which they're planning out specifically how they're going to resettle the entirety of the Gaza strip. You have a huge invasion in the West Bank, you have even they're talking about, hey, let's establish a buffer zo, let's go ahead and take
some Elebanon's territory while we're at it. And so again, the most cynical projections of genocide, ethnic cleansing and all the rest at this point in time undeniable that whether that was the goal at the beginning or not among everyone, that is certainly.
Where things are heading.
And we all just shouldn't lie that those plans have widespread acceptance and support within the State of Israel. And yes, there is protests within the State of Israel, because the hostages at this point have been completely forgotten, completely erased
from bb NANYAHUO even pretending to care for them. But has there been outcries about the brutality with which Palestinian civilians have been treated, about this massive death toll, about the campaign of complete annihilation, Not much, very little, very very little upset about.
That, especially compared to Ukraine, right in terms of the way that the initially the US support for Ukraine and all that was sold to US. So I think that there's a lot to it be said, you know, and revealed about US foreign policy and our own objectives, and also about the realignment of the world on the Ukraine in Israel front and the way that our own words
will be looked at in the future. But a lot of it really just comes back to this whole idea of like what American power is used for, what the American media is used for, what our own politics are captured by, and then very inconvenient facts and others account against that that are just dropped and that are not emphasized in favor of something is just a very your agenda.
Here in the US, we're facing you know, bombing of Bay Route, and we're facing this massive escalation vis a vis Iran. These are some of the you know, massive bombing campaigns that are going on right now, Israel bombing the city of Bay Route. You have a huge portion of the Lebanese population at this point that is also completely displaced. And again, you know, US government saying this
is all fine, and Israel has a right to defend itself. Reminder, Hesbola and Lebanon had nothing to do with October seventh, and yet here we are. So where we are now is basically waiting to see how Israel is going to respond to Iran's response to their latest provocations. And you know, there's all this debate in the US about which which
assets should Israel strike. The israelis promising some sort of overwhelming response which could certainly plunge the entire region into a war, which would certainly drag US into that war, given that the FIDE administration has made it clear that we would back up Israel on that front. Joe Biden, who's barely sentient at this point, got asked about Israel potentially striking Iranian oil infrastructure, which would obviously be quite significant given how much of the Iranian economy is reliant
on that oil infrastructure. Let's take a listen to his less than impressive response.
Word discussion, I think that would be a little anyway.
His answer is, I think that would be a little anyway. Yeah, cool, great, great response.
His brain is completely cooked.
It's crazy. The whole thing is totally nuts. And I mean it's one of those where his both ffecklessness and his dementia are like the worst case scenario at this point because it's both a blank check and an incoherent ability to articulate any boundaries or any of that. Like even a more pro Israel president I'm just convinced would be at least somewhat more like sentient and is command to the facts. Here where this whole like, oh well, we're discussing that, and anyways, it's like, what what.
Are we possible? It just bails out.
It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy, esecially in the context of put this next one up there, because this is so nuts from I mean, the report is here from the Jerusalem Post the US to give Israel quote compensation if it hits acceptable targets in Iran. So instead of withholding any resources in response for not doing what we think that they should do with our weapons, we would instead crystal pay them and offer them a quote compensation package
if they do what we desire. And also, you know, by the way, in this response, these weapons will be ours, these planes and all these will be ours. If they do hit it and there's a response, we will be the ones who are ultimately incurring the costs, So that seems like plenty of compensation if you were to just.
Ask me, why should the Israelis take this seriously? They're like, we already get everything we want from you, Well more can you give us?
So No, we're good.
We got everything we need, and we know you're going to continue to ship us everything we need. So we're going to do whatever the hell we want to do because that's what we've been doing the entire time. We also got some troubling answer from Donald Trump about whether Israel should target or runs nuclear facilities. Lest you think that we have a better, less hawkish war anti war choice on the ballot this fall, let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Biden says that Israel should not target Iranian nuke facilities.
What are your thoughts on that? What should Israel respond?
I mean, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. It's the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear. I mean to make this statement, please leave their nuclear alone. I would tell you that that's not the right answer. That was the craziest answer, because you know what, soon they're going to have nuclear weapons and then you're going to have problems, and he.
Of course has always been extremely hawkish when it comes to ron assassinating a costum soul of money, something that Jadie.
Vance once criticized him for sure different chores.
Yeah, I haven't heard that critique from Jade Vance in a while, but.
Obviously we do.
He's supposed to critique. He's running me.
Obviously, the belligerence towards Iran continues to this day, even going beyond what Joe Biden has said would be appropriate in terms of an Israeli response. Also worth just taking note that the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon continues.
We can put this up on the screen.
Lebanese authorities have said that that those Israeli bombs have killed fifty health workers in the past four days, as Israeli fighter jets continue to attack medical facilities, mosques and other buildings that they claim are being used by Hesbala militants.
Same playbook what we saw with regard.
To Hamas you know, disclaim, oh they've got an office in the hospital, so we're going to you know, we're going to take over the hospital. We're going to destroy the hospital, We're going to displace all the civilians there, we're going to you know, arrest the doctors, et cetera. Same playbook here, the civilians are being used as human shields quote unquote. The mosque is really a you know, Hesbala militant.
Officer, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's where we are.
The last thing that I'll point out here can put this up on the screen is you know, it's it's not obviously we're not causing Israel to pay any sort of a.
Price for what they've done to the Gaza strip or throughout the region.
But this was an interesting note picked up here in Al Monitor. On the sidelines of a golf meeting, Saudi foreign minister said, we intend to close the book on disagreements with the Run forever and develop relations between us like two friends around in Saudi Arabia or swell.
Arch rivals buried the hatchet in.
Twenty twenty three, following eight Chinese mediated The deal helped to re establish diplomatic relations as well as gives Saudi Arabia some protection against attacks by Yemen's Iran backed Huthis. However, Golf states remained spooked by comments made by US President Joe Biden that Israel's and discussions to attack Iranian oil installations. Golf leaders worry that their own energy assets may now be exposed to Iranian tit for tat proxy attacks by
Houthis as well. So I mean, basically they're looking at this gloves off approach from the US, the fact that Israel is, you know, just operating with absolute impunity. They're becoming worried about their own assets. They also have to worry about you and their own population, which is very very pro Palestinian. And so you know, the Chinese and the Israelis have helped you accomplish something that would have been seen as far fetched previously, which is this Saudi Arabia Iran reproach.
Mop Yes, And I think it's actually quite interesting because it just highlights what I was talking about earlier about the diplomatic realignment and how things can be really working against the US. If you consider all the damage that was brought to our reputation both with the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fallout of that, the Israel situation
has turned it up by fifty. It also just shows you the stupidity of thinking that you can resolve all of this just through some grand power politics with the Abraham Accords, like the Saudis are going to act that was in their best interests and everybody always thinks that they're all real politic. No, they have to satisfy the most Islamic hardcore population in the world. They and their population is looking on what's that, But what's happening in
Legaza and in Lebanon every single day. That's why they're here in this partnership with Iran. So if you think you can just buy the Saudi's offer any of that, it's just not going to happen. There's nothing about their past warm policy that indicates that, and if anything, is just further isolating us from any potential to be able to resolve this or whatever in the future. And it also tells you that where for years they were some of the most belligerent people against Iran, but in this case,
look what they're doing. You know, it just tells you about where the US falls on the side of this. Well, so it's terrifying.
Yeah, I don't think the US or Israel is probably excited about, you know, helping us foster this.
This new alliance.
And you know, there's a lot of other things that long term are going to be a problem for Israel. There's pulling domestically within Israel. Some quarter of their population is just thinking of leaving the country because it's you know, bebing Netnyah who has helped to make it a much more dangerous play place in spite of all of the you know, rhetoric about from Joe Biden about how it's
the only place Jews are safe. I think Jewish Americans are probably much safer, not probably definitely much safer on these supposedly very dangerous American college campuses than they are in Israel right now. So you have a significant portion of the population, especially among secular Jews, who are thinking of leaving. You've had a massive economic hit. You have a country that is increasingly becoming more hard line and more isolated on the global stage, where you know, increasingly
we are their only friend. Even Crown and France like briefly floated in arms embargo before completely collapsing. But the fact that you see even that being floated at this point from a European country is noteworthy in and of itself. There you go, all right, We're gonna go ahead and get to Gabe Sherman, who is standing by fantastic media reporter who has now he's on with a movie, The Apprentice, about the origin story of a man we all know some love, Donald Trump.
Let's get to that.
So we're now joined by Gabriel Sherman. He is a Vanity Fair special correspondent, also author of the New York Times bestseller The Loudest Voice in the Room, and as I just mentioned, is out with a new movie on the origin story of Donald Trump called The Apprentice, which will be in theaters nationwide this Friday. Welcome Gabe, Nice to have you here.
Good see man, Thanks for having me.
Let's go ahead and take a look.
We got a little bit of the trailer of this movie to give people a little taste.
Let's go ahead and take a look at that.
Yeah, this is Donald Trump from mister Cohne. Thank you so much. Donald Who roy Ton, nice to meet you.
As you roy Ton, You're brutal.
If you're indicted, you're invited. I know I'm talking. You have a yes, you got to work on that.
Your face look like annoying.
You have to be willing to do anything.
To win, all right, So, for better or worse, This is a man we all know very intimately at this point, more than we ever wanted to know about him. So what did you want to communicate in this film that is that we don't already know about Donald Trump?
Yeah, well it's a great question.
I think, you know, you you talk about things that we know that really I think was referring to information. I think what's so revelatory about this movie is that it is an experience. This is not about if you want to learn facts about Donald Trump. Anybody can read Wikipedia and find out information. This Really this movie is a the emotional rollercoaster ride about how he came from his you know, kind of anonymous queen's background and set
himself on the course to becoming president. It's the origin story. It's a Frankenstein story about how Roy Cone, played brilliantly by Jeremy Strong from Succession, taught Donald Trump the lessons molded his personality in a way that he displays every day today. The movie ends in nineteen eighty seven, so
it doesn't touch anything to do with current events. But over these two hours you see all of the lessons that when you watch the news today you'll have an entirely new understanding of how Donald Trump, why and how he talks the way he does. It's really the ghost of Roy Cone speaking through Donald Trump.
Yeah, it's fascinating. I've recommended your book at the top of our show today, the loudest voice in the room. And with this movie, could you talk about some of the lessons maybe that you brought from reporting for so many years on Roger Ayles into Donald Trump and that monoculture era, how they both of these two characters kind of form to become so influential.
Yeah, I mean both are obviously Ales and Trump are larger than life, you know. I think what they're both sort of Shakespearean characters who have these operatic rises and falls. And Roy Cohne, who was Donald Trump's mentor, is one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century. His shadow continues to loom over all of us today. The scorched earth politics, the zero sum politics, the idea that you never admit defeat, you never back down, and you
always counter attack. All the things that we see transpiring in our politics today are the lessons that.
Roy Cohne taught Donald Trump.
So I really think this is a movie where you go on this in crazy rollercoaster ride with these two characters through the gritty underbelly of New York City in the nineteen seventies. And you see Donald Trump slowly over the course of this movie going from kind of an insecure, awkward son of a real estate air a real estate developer, to becoming this kind of egomaniacal personality. It's an incredible transformation. And Sebastian Stan from all of the Marvel movies disappears
into this role as Donald Trump. I got to know Sebastian well during the shooting, and when I was on set, it was like, it was really uncanny because I've spent a lot of time with the real Donald Trump, and there were just moments where I forgot I was even watching an actor.
So Donald Trump.
Is obviously the most divisive figure in American politics, but one of the most divisive figures probably in political history. How did you not navigate the politics of this? In other words, like, is this just a movie for resistance libs or do you think that there are some Republican Trump supporters who might get something out of it as well?
Yeah, I mean that's a great question, and I think it's a question that kind of animated this entire project when I started writing it in the spring of twenty seventeen. I wanted to write a movie that was a film, not not propaganda and not you know, it wasn't trying to advance one side or the other. It's a movie where I as a as a writer, was trying to
understand what is the what is the backstory? How did this person who you know is looming so large in our lives on our TV screens every day, Where did he come from? What are the forces that actually shaped his personality? And so you know, there are parts of this movie where you know, resistant hashtag resistance members would be, you know, saying why this movie is, you know, too
sympathetic to Donald Trump? And I'm sure there's aspects of the film where you know, people in the maga world will say that it doesn't you know, fit their image of Trump as the Second Coming, and that's okay. I think what I'm so fascinated by is I want people to experience this movie and they can take away really whatever they want from it. It's not it's not a takedown of Donald Trump, and it's not a love letter. It's really trying to treat him like a movie character.
You know, it's so interesting about our politics today where things are so polarized, because if you take, you know, look at these kind of legendary, iconic movies that tried to capture a certain subculture or a world like The Godfather, per se. Right, we don't say is The Godfather an anti mob movie or a pro mob movie. We all talked about it as this iconic movie and these Michael Corleone and are these larger than life characters.
And that's what I was trying to do with this film.
I think of Donald Trump, regardless of what you think of his politics, is he's this you know, epic character that has changed the change of the culture, and so I think he's worthy of a cinematic treatment in the same way that any other you know, great movie character.
Is Yeah, totally, I totally agree. I think he sees himself that way in some aspects, which is why it was interested let's put F two please on the screen. As the movie has debuted, they've apparently sent a seasoned to SIS letter try and block the film's release. What do you think is behind that?
Exactly?
You know, you've, as you said, you've interviewed Donald Trump before you spend time around as people, what's the impetus behind the Season Desists?
Well, well, two things.
First of all, he's never he hasn't seen the movie. No one in his campaign to my knowledge, has seen the movie. When this letter was released that you're putting up on the screen. Yeah, this was hours after the movie had its world premiere at the can Film Festival in May, so that was the first time anybody outside of our filmmaking team had seen this film. Donald Trump clearly hadn't seen it. So this was just sort of
sight unseen firing off a letter. And in fact I was kind of laughing at the time because it was an instance of really life was imitating art because in the film, Roy Cone teaches young Donald Trump the number one lesson, which is always to go on the attack. And so this Season Desists letter was the perfect exit, real life example of that. What I think is going on there, I mean, he hasn't seen the film, so you know they're launching this attack without really having any real information.
So I hope. I guess.
My wish is that people reserve judgment and they're welcome to weigh in, but way in after you see the movie.
Don't just attack something that you haven't seen.
Sure, I know you say.
The film ends before the current political moment, and the film focuses on kind of the psychological forces and character influences on Donald Trump's personality. But I wonder if you also put thought into the cultural moment that also helps to enable Donald Trump's rise to become you very unlikely president of the United States.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think the movie, yes, it explores this this intimate relationship between Roy Cone and his protege, his apprentice, Donald Trump, which is the you know, inspiration for the title of the film. But it really also exposes the system, the system of corruption, and the rise of media and tabloid culture in New York City in the nineteen seventies, in the nineteen eighties, which Donald Trump really learned how to harness.
There's this great scene in the film where Donald Trump's mother is reading a New York Times profile of Trump, which was the first major newspaper profile of Trump that was published in nineteen seventy six, And she's sitting with him in the family living room and she's reading how the New York Times writer compares Trump to quote Robert Redford and how good looking he was. And I was struck because that scene is based on the actual real article.
I just quoted verbatim from what the New York Times wrote about Donald Trump in nineteen seventy six. So the irony is that, you know, Trump bashes the media, Trump attacks the failing New York Times.
And yet this.
Movie really shows how the mass media culture of the nineteen seventies and eighties was responsible for building up the myth of Donald Trump. Donald Trump benefited from the media.
You know that I want to run by you this theory that I have about Trump and his evolutions since he burst on the political scene. I mean, he'd been sort of in the political scenes before this, but in twenty sixteen, in twenty sixteen, he's very.
Clearly like a product of the tabloids.
Right sensational list, right outrageous, but kind of finger on the pulse still, but you know, it's very tabloid. Way in twenty twenty, he feels more to me like sort of like Fox News Grandpa. You know, he's been swimming in the circles of like traditional mainstream conservative Rupert Murdoch media, and then now he feels to me, like Twitter under
Elon and there's a whole New York Times analysis. We actually pulled it, we could put it up on the screen, But they did a whole analysis of his speeches now versus twenty sixteen, and it's longer now, it's angrier, and it's more rambling and whatever. And they frame it as a question of age. That is probably part of it, But I also feel like it's also a question of the type of media that he's consuming and playing into, perhaps as much as it is a question of his age.
Yeah.
I mean, I think you just have sort of chronicled the the last you know, almost decade of Trump's performance as a public figure. We you know, when I spend a lot of time with him, I found him to be, you know, obviously you know, very aggressive, and but he's I think the one thing that really enabled Trump in especially his early political rise in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, was he was funny.
I think I think.
Humor and and and comedy really underpinned all of you know, and helped to soften his you know, scorched earth style of politics.
And I think unfortunately, what has happened.
Over time as he's gotten older, or perhaps as he's only just you know, sort of consumed right wing media, is that his speeches have become less there. You know, there's there's a less of a lightness or a comedy to them.
He's just it's just pure rage. It's pure anger.
And you know, that might appeal to the really core MAGA base. But I think the things that made Donald Trump appealing to people who didn't follow politics so closely in twenty fifteen was the sense that he was making politics entertaining. And he's just if you just judge him as a entertainer, he's less entertaining now. He's not as good of a performer as he was, you know, five
eight years ago. So I think you're onto something. And I read that Peter Baker piece in the New York Times very closely, and I thought that the analysis was fascinating. How he's using angrier words, he's they're longer, his sentences don't track. So if he in fact does not win the election in November, I think one of the takeaways could would be that he was just less a skilled communicator.
I think Donald Trump's communication power was so central to his rise, and if he doesn't win it will be a sign that his communication power has faded.
Yeah, I think that's a really good insight. Well, I'm excited to see the film. It's out on what does it just say? Friday?
All theater Friday and movie theaters. Please tell your friends all.
Right, I'll be there. I'll be watching with my AMC credits. So thanks for having Okay, thanks for coming on.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Great to have you, Gabe, Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching.
We appreciate you. Take advantage of that discount if you can, otherwise, we will see you all tomorrow.