You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Buck section Show. This episode, we have Amanda Milius with us. She is a filmmaker. The Plot against the President one of her films which got a lot of acclaim A lot of you, I'm sure have seen it. She also was an appointee at the State Department under the Trump administration,
so she has stared at the deep state. She knows what it is like. Amanda, is there a swampier agency? I know everyone the FBI is trying hard these days, but I know from the CIA side of the house, the State Department a nest of commis and.
Useless ones too. I mean, at least at CIA. I mean I could eat my words on this, because I fight with the concept of CIA all the time. But State Department is just it's like a playground for people that don't they don't need to be there. You could cut that place by the twentieth and run it out of a van in the parking lot, and you do better than what they've got. I think it's like seventy
thousand people or something. I mean, it's absolutely insane, and like, you know, the I actually went there because I was so dumb to think we still did diplomacy, and then I got there and I was like, oh no, it's just programs for people that want to work in the government.
Yeah, what does the State Department really just for everybody out there? I mean I could say, as as a little context for a State Department CI side of the house, I was there for but five five years in change, and ten percent of that building does cool stuff. Ninety percent of the CIA just sort of shows up analyst side, operator side, you know, you name it, like case officer side. Very few people do a vast majority of the work.
So you could go full Twitter on this thing under Elon and cut it from you know, eight thousand employees down to a fraction. What really goes on at State in general same.
I mean, you could you could cut every single embassy down and the entire main state down, because it's it's the Yeah, it's the exact same thing. It's like ninety percent dead weight of because once they create a program, I'm sure you're really familiar with this, Once they create a program, and if that program at least your guys's programs were kind of like you know, at least they're kind of I mean, I assume.
That some of them more interesting, legitimate interesting, but like.
Ours, you know, state department programs would be like you know, women's bead making empowerment, like economy building in Botswana, and like that would be a program filled with fifty people and it will exist forever. You'll never kill it no matter what, Like Botswana could become like the most like perfectly well run country in the world that needs no bad making classes or whatever, or how to sell artisanal pots or I don't know what these people do, but
like it could be they don't ever change. And I mean, especially when you looked at this stuff and read that were actually important, like when you look at what was going on in Afghanistan and we used to make the joke or the good appointees and the good the good
guys would have this framed joke because it was real. Though, of lesbian puppet shows for countering violent extremism, now that to me is a state department program that's the perfect like LGBT puppet shows to encourage countering violent extremism that was perfect. That's State Department.
I do remember when they went from the g WATT, which had a nice ring to it, the Global War on Terror a little vague, fine, but kind of people. Everyone knew what we're talking about. Two yeah, programs to counter overseas extremism or something. It would be. It was so.
Violent extremism and anything could fall under it. That's why I'm saying, like you could put if you just put CVE at the end of your program idea, it would get funded.
So here's the thing, because I sit here, we've seen recently obviously that the indictment of Donald Trump by the DOJ, the total sweetheart deal for a hunter. Sweetart deal doesn't even cover it. I mean it is. It's a cover up, right. There's there's low level charge and then there's actually low level charge that ignores the real charges that are already provable because those charges would also lead to you know, the president of the United States. So it's it's full on,
full on cover up mode. But everyone keeps saying, you know, we're gonna we're gonna drain the swamp, and then they ask me, how do we do that. I'm gonna put that to you because I'm actually curious how anyone who thinks, because you know, you were there on the Trump administration, how does the swamp get drained? Can it be drained? I'm not convinced.
I'm we got to. Yeah, a couple of things. A I learned a lot since I left, one of which is that I prefer to call it the administrative state because and we get you know, I know, it's fun to call it the deep state and the swamp and stuff like that, but it allows us to rely kind of lazily on this idea of the they as though this were something that was like run by a few competent people, which I don't really think it is. I
think it's a ghost ship that runs itself. And that's fifty years of administrative changes and administrative law that turned what was a constitutional republic into a bureaucrat run ghost ship, which is what our country is at this point. So it's basically, you know, whoever knows where the levers of the ghost ship are, like the Bidens and the Democrats. You know, there's there's an order and the Democrats are
above us, but the bureaucrats are still above them. Like that would be what would be deep state about it. I mean, I think we saw that in the Afghanistan pull out. That was the only time I ever SEU because you know, I consider CNN or or most of these stations to be the Comm's department of the Intel agencies. So when you see you know, Anderson Cooper for a whole week playing in color TV on everybody's TV screens, the disaster that was the Afghanistan pull out, that is
not in the white that current White House's interest. So that was the there's a there's a few times I've noticed the admin State going away from even the Democrats and kind of swatting them when they get out of line. And so I think it's like a hierarchy more more than anything, and we're at the bottom, like the Trump administration was at the absolute bottom, because I mean, these
people wouldn't even uh. I've made this point before too, which is that the real problem with like, for example, the Russia Gate thing, which is my sort of wheelhouse, is it wasn't just everyday Americans that we're hearing this. All the bureaucrats of Washington, DC went home and watched CNN and were like, oh, I don't have to listen to these trump because they're probably getting their orders from
Putin or something. So you couldn't get anything done because you were either like either they would just outright just you know, oss manual you to not do. You know, the stuff we used to deliver to the Soviet Union, like how to not how to not do something in an organization. I mean, they got that down and or they or they just would be like no, they'd be suspicious because they they'd honestly think that you were like an agent of Putin. So to put it, how do
you how do you get rid of that? I mean, you have to have full willingness to when we finally came up at the last year with Schedule F, which was a way to redesign government employees to avoid the which should be absolutely illegal unionization of them if they deal with policy at all, which is the Schedule F EO. And again that's an executive order. It's not legislation, it's not it's not something that couldn't be As with all executive orders, they're written in sand like we have to
do more. It really comes down to having like an Actualcongress that's willing to take the country back to the way it was supposed to be run. But the first step would be to do something like that, an executive order that makes it possible to fire government employees because as of right now, you can move them around, you can reshuffle the deck, but it doesn't matter. They're still there and they're still just wasting.
I was told I was told by an honest and in the case of federal government that increasingly just means funny when I think back to it, conservative, but an honest manager within the federal bureaucracy. At one point he said, he said, buck, if you showed up and refused to do anything, but you didn't break any laws, and you were here when you were supposed to be here, which
goes into up breaking laws because of time and attendance fraud. Right, But He's like, if you sit in your chair when you were supposed to be here, refuse to do any work, it would take me almost two years to get you fired. I've said, I saw something worse.
Than that, which is so now you've got the telework thing. So when I first heard the word telework was when I first got to State and I was like trying to run my team, which was a content team and you know, the world moves in twenty four hour increments, right, it doesn't go from nine to five. So I was like, well, where's the night team? And they were like, we don't
have a night team. And I was like, so you just put out like messaging during America like East Coast nine to five, Like that doesn't make that's not even we're talking to the global audience. That doesn't make any sense. Like I'm not that smart and that doesn't even make any sense to me. And and then and then I was like, all right, we'll find where's the where's the graphics guy? And they were like, oh, he's teleworking today And I was like tell what and they were like, teleworking.
We have a really great telework program in this bureau. And I was like, do you know what my boss would have done to me if I said one of the independent production companies I used to work at that I was going to telework that day. I would be like telefive. I mean it's there. There's in the film industry. Like I actually got a lot of gained a lot of respect for it because I was like, they're hardcore, Like there is no not showing up, there are no
sick days. There's no, there's no like, you're every minute is a million dollars, so you're not you're not wasting any time. But no, it's not only could they they not get fired. I think someone could walk up and punch their own boss in the face and it would take five years to fire them. When I found out that. When I came down, we merged the bureaus. At one point I went down to the broadcast unit, which was in a different area than my bureau, and I was like,
all right, cool, we got a broadcast unit. Let's let me meet all the editors. I was like, I bet I'll like these guys because they were older, and you know, I used to work in traditional broadcast when I worked for Network TV. And I was like, all right, let me talk to these guys. And they were like, oh, well, only two of them come in the office of like twelve, and I was like, well, where are the other ones?
And they were like, they can't come into the building, but they're still getting paid because they're in litigation with the department because they all got caught watching porn on government computers down here, and it's like in the basement,
so the whole and this this thing. This broadcast unit handled the broadcast for like I think most American agencies satellite, and there were two guys running in and we couldn't hire any other you know, young contractors to come in and just like fill the gaps until we finally fix that because it's like again ghost ship. It's like you try to move the machine and it takes like a year to do anything, and it's so it's super frustrating. So that's that's one of the things I've kind of
mouthed off on Twitter about. You know, like a lot of people are like, we're just going to drain the swamp because we're just going to do it, and it's like, yeah, we get a lot of people that were really really willing. It wasn't about It wasn't a question of will, It wasn't a question of intelligence. You're up against fifty years of pretty much unconc institutional law that's just been passed under our nose, and we live in a bureaucracy run country now.
Yeah, it is the fourth branch of government. I think there's no question about that. I want to ask you more about the Plot against the President, which was your documentary. What brought you to it and how current events you feel like perhaps are reflected of it in some of the messaging and some of what you had in the documentary. But just quickly a word from our sponsor, Chalk, take the guesswork out of where you're going to find the energy and focus to make every day a solid one.
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a man to the plot against the president. You made the movie a while back, but the plot against the president continues.
Yeah, no, it's uh. I mean, the main thing that's frustrating is okay, so we Lee Smith wrote the book, right, Lee Smith, the great, great journalist and author.
Interviewed him many times. Really really sharp guy.
Yeah, I mean, the guy is amazing. So he he was the one that was actually, you know, got the story down in such a way that it was following people, not documents. I have publicly made my opinion known about a lot of conservative content because I think a lot of conservative and you know, I really want there to be more culture war stuff.
Are you suggesting, Amanda that when conservators make a movie it shouldn't look like a high school film project.
I'm kind of I'm kind of saying that.
Yeah.
So basically I have a problem with homework on video. I don't consider that cinematic or film. And being somebody who was raised in that world and worked in it for as many years as I did, and then went to the best film school in the world, I can really see it when I see it, and I'm like, it makes me want to bar so I tend to call it out even though I want to applaud and say we should have more voices, not less right Andrew Breitbart.
But there are a lot of good up and coming conservative or right wing or whatever you want to call it film directors that I am looking forward to working with that are actually really really good. And you know a lot of guys that worked with Tucker for example, a lot of people just on their own. IM not
super fond of the homework assignment on video vibe. So anyway to do why I was attracted to Lee Smith's way of telling something so complex as Russia Gate, which is extremely complicated, Like you got to make explaining to
a general audience what a FEISA warrant is interesting? Okay, Like that's that goes to like you know, when they had Margot Robi naked in the bathtub with the champagne explaining the stock market in the big short, that's that's that's a cinematic tool of like you have to get through some really dry exposition, like how do you do it well? With us? What we did is we had the most charismatic people explain it, and on that one in particular, we broke it down. Mike Cernovich did it.
We had deep throats lawyer from Watergate, and a lot of the people who were affected by it, like you know, Don Junior and people like that. So so basically we we put this movie together based on Lee Smith's book. Because Lee smith book is a noir spy thriller, which
is what Russia Gate is. It should be like our version of All the President's Men, which was the you know, classic nineteen seventies movie about Watergate, which sort of created the lore of these like detective journalists, like the Washington Post detective journalists. And so we're sort of we sort of did the opposite of that, right, I mean, we're dealing with undoing that work, but it's the same creepy vibe.
I mean, Washington, DC really is a noir city. The streets are always wet, it's dark, bad things are happening, you don't know who to trust, everyone's two faces. I mean, if you study film noir like I did in college, it's the perfect city for a noir movie. So that's what I tried to do, is bring that aesthetic to the concept of Russiagate, and it worked really well. We
were really lucky. I mean, we filmed it during the beginning of the you know, COVID shut down and everything, so conveniently, all the streets were empty and everything was just like kind of at our disposal, and we had it. We had a grand all time. But yeah, and we got it out before the twenty twenty election. And the frustrating thing now is is that I'm watching this Durham
stuff and the hearing yesterday. I was so entertained by Matt Gates just tearing up Durham because we've been told that Durham was going to spend four years finding new information and there's not one single thing in his report that isn't in our ninety minute movie where I'm like,
I could have saved you four years. And there's this one part in the in the hearing where he's whining about how he had to spend four years away from his family to investigate all this stuff, and You're like, Okay, well I could have saved you that you could have sat down with your family and watch a plot against the president and you wouldn't have had to do anything because you didn't do any when he's talking about how he couldn't find misfued. We could find him, right. But
I'm I'm me. I'm not hired by the Department of Justice. I don't have the power of the state behind me. I can't subpoena anybody. I can just call them and ask them if they'll be interviewed in my movie, and most of the bad guys are gonna say no, Like unsurprisingly James Comey was not interested in being interviewed by me. But you know, this man had the power of the DOJ behind him, right, like he had an assignment, and it's unbelievable that he got the same interviews I did.
I mean cash Pttel tells the story of the sixty five people coming in, all of the heads of agencies who would have known about the Russia collusion had there been any how under oath, every single one of them, when asked, have you found any evidence of the Trump administration or campaign colluding with Russia? Every single one of them said no, you know, behind closed doors under oath
until it was declassified by Rick Ernell. And the fact is we've known that we so Lee put that book out in twenty nineteen at least in manuscript form when I optioned it. We put the movie out in twenty twenty, which, by the way, that's an insane turnaround time that I'm never doing again. I'm never making a movie in less than a year again. So no one asked me. It's just it's crazy. You're not supposed to do it that way.
But we did, and it went really well. You know, it's like still like, it's the number one documentary on Amazon per reviews, still doing. Really it's just it's it's broken through to people because it's not conservative. It's not just conservative red meat, right. It actually explains the story that you get engaged with. That's how you change hearts and minds. You don't just tell them facts. Don't care about your feelings. Here's the facts, and we're conservatives, so
we're correct because here's the facts. Like I don't know if anyone studied propaganda, but that doesn't that doesn't work. You have to change people's hearts, like it's not it's I don't know if I'm more attuned to that because I started in the arts or I'm a chick or something. I don't know, but I don't ever start out with here's the PAISA warrant, and here's what was wrong with it. It's like, no, here's the man whose life was destroyed and his family and his kids and this and that,
and this is why this matters. If this can happen to him, it can happen to you.
I'll never forget the first time I met Carter Page, you know, the target of one of the FISA warrants. And he's for anyone who hasn't met you know, well not met, but remember he's you know, when he sat down, he's like, hey, it's like, you know, I hung out with your dad for a day at the Harvard Club once and I was like, wait, I'm interviewing him on set. It was like a social setting, like right before the cameras turn on, and I was like what. And then
I'm like I'm like wait hold on. He's like, oh yeah, your dad's so fun, like you know, he's just really like matter of fact that kind.
Of nonsout, like.
Oh guy, But I remember I called my dad that. I'm like, Dad, did you He's like, I think I did hang out with the Carter I know. It's like this whole thing. I'm like, Dad, that's the guy like you were talking to the Russia Gate guy at the Harvard Club, like this is before all that stuff happened. But I was like, you guys are you know, they're at some event about US China policy, you know, one of these things where guys show up whatever. And my dad was there, you know, because he likes to learn
about the world. And anyway, it was just kind of funny because I was like, Wow, the world's a very small place. I want to ask if you're gonna make another movie like this or what the next project is. But first I got to talk to people at Gold, Amanda, because precious metals very important out there. All right. If you're worried about the disruptions I could hit the global economy, how do you diversify I own I've got some right here with me. Exactly. She's got some gold, She's got
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three zero buck. That's a three three four three zero b uc k A three three four three zero buck. Call the Oxford Gold Group. Get some gold, Get some silver. Take action today so that you're ready, because I think the economy is actually gonna get really ugly for the latter part of this year. All right, Ms Millius, Why can't we just make really cool movies about stories that people care about on the right anymore? Like why is it like I sit here like I can just tell you.
I know that I'm a civilian, so you can tell me I'm silly, But I'm just like, why, you know, fine, I don't know these things, But like Ridley Scott making a movie about the Great Siege of Malta or something like, there's so many awesome concepts out there, and instead like Disney is giving us fire and water because fire is being racist against water or you know that just happened, right, Like that's elemental, that's what just happened. Why can't we get good stuff made anymore?
I talked about this since I think before I went to film school because I saw it. Look Hollywood first of all, a couple of reasons. Hollywood was the first industry that China purchased. It was their toe in the water of the American market. Granted, they were messing around with a bunch of land stuff for a long time, but people, you know, when I was at State Department again, I remember getting briefed on China's involvement in Hollywood, and
I was like, uh, yeah, bro, I know. I remember, like my dad made Red Dawn and then they did the remake. They had to change it to North Korea as to not offend the Chinese markets. So okay. One of the reasons is China.
Owns Wait, can you tell the audience real quick who your dad is, just so they know because they may not.
Yeah, right, my dad is John Millius. Great film writer and director. I mean really the greatest writer of our generation. I feels weird saying that, but I leave it. He's awesome. He did. He wrote Apocalypse Now, wrote and directed Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, wind in the Lion, the TV series Rome, which is really interesting.
I love that series.
Yeah, I watched it once every two or three years. Because I just have to.
I think, I'm sorry, I'm actually now fan boying a little bit. I think that is the most underrated scripted series that I have ever seen. Not that people didn't realize this, but like it just didn't get it was too expensive, so they didn't make the third season whatever, but like that's a phenomenon.
They changed HBO had a female CEO come in. That this is people. Some people are like, oh, they canceled the last because Rome could have gone on for ten seasons, right, because my dad could write Roman history for every single Caesar, right, every single leader all the way to the decline of Rome and beyond. Probably my dad's a massive history buff and he'll throw and all kinds of wacky stuff from his own personal point of view that is really fun.
But they they canceled it because he really didn't get along with them. You know. That show was probably the second hour long drama that did really well because I think it was around the time of the Sopranos, which this is when I mean those pre mad Men, so it had it was. It was really before people got to this point where they were like the quality storytelling, acting, and production is in this hour long drama on either HBO Showtime, you know, certainly not Netflix at that point
or anything like that. Netflix didn't kick that off until House of Cards. But all of that stuff was new. That was a new format. High high quality, hour long programming was not a thing until the Sopranos. So it's it just it was really ahead of its time. And between that and Conan there certainly wouldn't have been a Game of Thrones, but there were many There were quite a few years between those shows, but yeah, they had they changed CEOs. My dad was politically. I mean, people
say I'm to the right of him. I think he's to the right of me. It's hard to tell. We just sort of trade off, but we're both pretty right wing, and you know, things were starting to change. Like in the seventies, nobody cared. Like all his best friends were all the film school of brats, right, like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Koppola, all these guys, like, they didn't
they they didn't think about politics. In fact, nobody really thought about politics, at least from what I could remember, until like twenty fifteen or sixteen did it become a defining part of who you were. It was just like unless you worked in politics or in the government, it wasn't nobody cared really. But anyway, so you know, you're coming up onto the era where people start to care. Hollywood cared before most. So there's another reason why it sucks.
They don't just care about making money. If they did just care about making money, they would have made a gazillion versions of American Sniper, because that was one of the most profitable movies that was appealing to the entire country. Top Gun, even from last last year, I think, was fairly unpolitical and did very very well. I don't they're not making action movies like that. They're making female James Bond, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.
I think I talked about that on Breitbart for like an hour. I just like exploded with rage about like the death.
Well, you know, they they kind of ruined Indiana Jones just by making a really bad version or you know, addition to it, and now they've got a female lead and apparently it's like they've exhumed the body of Indiana Jones after they killed Indiana Jones and are now lighting it on fire. And some kind of like ritual post mortem sacrifice, like the Well kid, that's the British shit's.
That's what they're doing to all of our favorite That's what they're doing to our whole culture. I said that about the James Bond thing, where I was like, they had to take the ultimate masculine. The whole point of James Bond is he is the male fantasy of a guy with cool gadgets, guns, a license to kill, always in a cool foreign country, doing sexy stuff, always waking
up next to a new chick, like whatever. Whatever. The male fantasy of this sort of dapper character was part of part of the whole culture, and they had to make him a total cook in the last before they finally kill him. They had to they had to ruin who he was as a character, because you're not allowed to think like that anymore. You're not allowed to That's no longer an acceptable fantasy. And that's what they're doing yet.
I mean Indiana Jones, like again, like the Adventurer, the the discoverer, like this thing boys would dream about of being, like, you know, I'm going to be an archaeologist and find weird cool stuff and swing from ropes and dah da da dah, Like all of these male fantasies have to be murdered before they put them to bed, before they change these characters over, and it's it is an assault on our country. I think this is this is kind
of where I started to go. I did a speech about this at nat CON, comparing something like the current James Bond to the Searchers or something. You know, great movie that really meaningful. In my family, my dad's favorite movie. He named my brother Ethan. I didn't get any cool names, but but his sons did. They were older than me,
so they got all the cool names. But they you know, it's you compare the movies that were made at that time, and these a lot of those movies, you know, in the thirties, forties, fifties, you know, even in the sixties were made by immigrants, a lot of Jewish immigrants, a lot of German immigrants, a lot of just a lot of of people who were just so pro America because they were getting the hell out of where they were, and so they made some of the most patriotic movies
of all time. Italian Oh, well, you've got the Sergio Leoni Ones, which was just an homage to the American West as a concept. I mean, Sergiolioni is awesome. Like just I copied so much of that for my student my thesis film, my first one. But anyway, so yeah, the film and the reason this matters, it's not just culture war stuff. It's because my argument is that this is the most important export America had. Right the Cold War, we could argue was won by blue jeans, rock and roll in American.
Films, not by ICBMs.
Yeah right, Like so so now when we're only exporting things that tell the world that were a racist, terrible place, that sexist, and all of these other awful things. I mean, the only benefit to it I can think of is maybe it'll stop people from constantly trying to immigrate here and like across the border. But it doesn't seem to be working. But that's not China's not telling mythology to its itself. That's terrible about itself. We're the only ones doing that.
Like, China is actually delusional about its recent history as a country and does not allow anyone to talk about When I tell people that forty to sixty million people died in the middle of the twentieth century, in China in a man induced famine. They're just like, no way, your numbers are right, and I'm like check them. How do they not know that? Yeah?
Great, I mean that you know they know the way I learned that was so my dad's last script that he wrote was Genghis Khan, and Genghis Khan has mentioned in almost every one of my dad's movies, and so of course he's obsessed with Ganghis Khan and he thinks he is Ganghis Khan and he wrote this amazing, amazing, just epic script can't get made for a variety of reasons,
like most of my dad's unmade scripts. But I do remember when I was a kid, the first time I saw this is he walked out of a room full of Chinese dudes because one producer had somehow secured funding through China. This is the beginning of all this. This is like many years ago. I was like a kid, and my dad was like, I wouldn't take notes from American executives about my scripts, Like screw these guys. I'm late,
we're leaving, and we just left. And they were trying to correct the Ganghi's con story to match their version of that history, and that was the beginning of my exposure to China. Just absolutely purchasing Hollywood, and like I said, I go on about it because no culture or nation can survive if the mythology they're telling itself about itself is that is as bad as what Hollywood is saying to us. It's it's it's bad for women, it's bad for men, it's bad for all racial categories, it's bad
for everything. So it's yeah, it's it's a I That's why I'm like, Okay, fine, I'm not going to pick on the conservatives making movies too much, like make more movies. It's good. Yes, it's all conservatives. We need to be making movies, but.
Like I also think there need to be more more. You know, we've we've lost some even it's not even necessarily overtly political, although there's some of this and stories in good vies, just good stories that aren't woke crap meant to brainwash people into hating themselves in the country
that they live in. I mean, I even put you know, whether it's Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, like some of these authors, I mean, Crichton turned very hard against for example, climate change really, because you know, he's a Harvard trained MD, and he's just like, this is idiocy, Like all these people walking around saying this, he's like, and he's like, I'm a smart guy, I'm super rich. I don't care. The climate change stuff is crap. And they went bonkers
on him, of course. But I you're you're really in the NBA, right am? I right about this?
I'm into the very into basketball.
Yeah, right in the NBA. Yeah, Like, we're gonna tell.
Me not college basketball were really good. You're gonna let me talk about basketball.
Just how we're gonna close the show out. So I'm gonna ask you tough questions. I used to be in to the basketball until I realized I was never gonna be more than scraping the bottom of six feet like five eleven and three quarters. But we will tell you.
You missed out. You could have stuck through it because this is the era of the You could have been the Steph Curry of your college. How do you know? I mean, you could have been suddenly the best three point shooter of Like I don't I don't know where do cia guys go to college?
I'm gonna tell you, uh, I mean you know, like more CIA directors went to amhers where I went than any other school, which is kind of a funny fact about Amherst. Yeah, so there you go. We've got we got three of them. We'll get to basketball in a second. But this is not as fun a topic, but it's important topic. Life insurance. My friends. People are relying on you to be there for there's no way to not do that. As a hard tournament. People are allowing you
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Our final topic on this pot am end of the and does that work if you.
Want to take a policy out on your spouse without them knowing, just asking for a friend and sorry, keep grying.
Which I'm sure I don't know. So the NBA I grew up, I don't know. I don't know how old you are. I'm gonna guess you're twenty five, because I'm told now that all all young ladies are you know, if you're on TV with them to say they're twenty five because they can't get mad at you. But yeah, right, exactly, So I don't know how old you are. You maybe, though slightly in the same generation. What's up? It's classified classified, right you? Maybe? Though not too far away from my direction.
I'm gonna say I think you're a fellow millennial. How about that, you're fellow millennial. I'll put that out there. That sounds probably correct. So yeah, right, yeah, that covers it. Yeah, that covers it, right, because I grew up watching the New York Knicks when they were this like fun and honestly been watching on TV. I would go. I had an uncle who had season tickets a few years. So I didn't go all the time because I'm out of some but I would go till some of the games.
I went to, I don't know, probably twenty or thirty Knicks games growing up, which is not a ton, but for me that was a lot because I have them into like a basketball game, and god, I don't know now twenty years so I don't go anymore. I can't stand the NBA because of its politics.
Okay, let me let me fix you.
You gotta help me with this because I used to watch. I mean, I go back to Charles Oakley and Ewing and Anthony Mason and the bomb squad and the whole thing, like I was all about it.
Michael Michael Jordan's saying Republicans buy sneakers too is the key, right, Okay, So here we go the year in the bubble. We don't count that because it is And I say that as a diehard Lakers fan. Okay, I'm willing to give up that flag, right, I could give a crap about the bubble year, it doesn't count. I don't accept Lebron as a Laker. I it's very conflicting for me because I still want the Lakers to win. I just want him to be on the bench and out of my sight.
But I you know, I grew up in Los Angeles, so I am about basketball is my sport, Like that's just how it is. We have like ten basketball teams in California. So and I grew up watching Kobe, and I'm I'm I don't know if anyone who's been on my Twitter knows I'm oked with Kobe Bryant. Like Kobe Bryant, I've read every book that he's involved and related to the Mamba mentality surmises what my dad used to teach
me as a young girl. How to be you know, brave enough to be hated by people, and how to direct that energy into something that's productive and unbeatable, and how to be the best and this whole thing about discipline. Like the other day I was doing we were doing a film review on this other podcast, The Backwall, which is the cinema sports cast that I do with my friends. We're doing he Got Game, you know, Spike Lee's movie from nineteen ninety eight. Amazing period of time, amazing message
in that movie. By the way, I encourage you to revisit that movie. The message about parenting in that video is absolutely gone from American culture. It's incredible. Anyway we ignore the year of the Bubble, even if the Lakers won a championship this year. I returned to the NBA because I am so sick of the political infighting that was going on on Twitter that I was like, I just want to watch something purer. Sports I always loved
because it was pure. As long as they continue counting points and there is a winner any loser, and they don't give trophies to everybody. As far as I'm concerned, it's still pure. They don't have the BLM stuff written on the court anymore. Now you gotta worry about baseball. Basketball has cleaned itself up completely. There is no politics in it anymore. That was like one year where yeah, I didn't I didn't watch well. When I was in government, I didn't have time to watch anything. So I missed
four years with the movie five years of Basketball. So I literally at one point asked the guys that I do the sports cast the sports Ball cast with I was like, whatever happened to Anthony Davis? He's on the Lakers, dude. I was like, oh, awesome, all right, we got Anthony Davis. Cool. So like, I'm not, like, you know, trying to be some absolute expert, but by the end of the season, like I can, I can out bit basketball talk anybody, because I mean, it's just my it's my blood. I mean,
it's it's I just live for it. And as long as it's like the comforting sounds of a of a game on in the background, would you rather hear that or the news? Like, I don't want to hear the news anymore. I know all those people that sounds. It sounds like being in a room full of people I know arguing with each other. I just want to hear the squeaky shoes and the low, steady voices of the announcers with the occasional excitement about a three and and
I'm good. Like that's that. Basketball is just beautiful to me. It's my It's like my favorite art form. I can, I can, I can watch it.
One we're compelling pitches for it I've heard in a long time.
So I mean, and look you men have strip clubs to go to. I gotta watch professional sports like I don't know how to explain that any better.
I'll take it. Amanda Milius, everybody check out her on Twitter, uh you know. And and Amanda, we gotta get you come back some time. You gotta get you on the on the radio show with Clay by the way, we would have a lot of fun with three of us talking about things you will. That would be really good stuff. So we'll set that up. Thank you so much, and everybody will talk to you soon.
Thank you. Thanks for having me on