The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz ｜ Feeding the Dragon

00:00:00.000 Now, it's time for the Anchorman Podcast with Matt Gaetz and Dan Ball.

00:00:18.060 Welcome back to Anchorman. We are going to do a deep dive episode into some of the issues facing

00:00:23.280 the Trump administration on the economic front and on the cultural front that relate to China

00:00:28.340 and the reckoning the United States is having. I've got a tremendous expert with me who's got a

00:00:32.860 really, really great book out on the subject, but I want to tell you why we're talking about this.

00:00:37.200 We got into this first 100 days of the Trump administration, and the core promise that

00:00:42.480 Trump made was that he was going to secure the border, this won him the election. And he doesn't

00:00:47.700 get enough credit. We don't talk about that enough, but he does the thing on the border. You see a

00:00:52.720 border that is very well orderly and maintained at this stage of the game. And then Trump turns

00:00:58.960 his attention to the economy. And what he's got to do is he's got to get his bill passed. Now,

00:01:04.320 you could quibble with his bill. You can have issues with the spending level. But at the end of the day,

00:01:08.520 the bill achieved a number of Herculean successes with the majorities we have. He gets his tax cuts

00:01:14.140 extended. He fulfills his campaign promises on no tax on tips, gives seniors a big rebate to offset

00:01:20.500 taxes on Social Security. And he's able to do all of this while fighting a multi-dimensional trade

00:01:29.380 war that the United States has largely surrendered prior to Donald Trump's ascent to the presidency.

00:01:35.420 And so Trump gets that done. And now with the bill in hand, I think that the relationship between

00:01:43.480 the United States and China is the number one thing that is going to shape our economic prospects

00:01:49.940 probably over the next five to 10 years, but maybe even over the next five to 10 months.

00:01:55.660 And for people looking at the midterm elections, nothing could be more important on how China is

00:02:00.340 making their moves, why they're making the moves they're making right now. And that's why I brought

00:02:04.560 on the program, Chris Fenton. He's got this great book, Feeding the Dragon, Inside the Trillion Dollar

00:02:10.320 Dilemma, Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business. And what I would say is it's almost the

00:02:16.900 modern day answer to Kissinger's book on China, because Kissinger makes this argument that it all

00:02:26.460 is going to be rosy if we bring China close to us. They'll be just like us. There'll be a McDonald's 0.99

00:02:31.780 on every corner. And this will lead to a democratized capitalism that will encircle Russia, 0.91

00:02:38.840 in fact, with China on our side. But what you write about is a corporate class in our country

00:02:44.640 that has been seduced by China. And they have been seduced by China's market, by their productive

00:02:52.140 sectors. And it doesn't always lead to good things. So Chris Fenton, we're joined as always by my good

00:02:59.260 friend and occasional co-worker Vish Burra. Vish, thanks as always. You're playing the part of the

00:03:04.620 homeless guy this week. No, I'm kidding. He was great. No, we love Jackie. But Chris, tell me why you

00:03:09.440 wrote the book and how corporate America and the United States are feeding the dragon.

00:03:13.880 Well, thanks for having me. I love the show. And if you talk about seduction, all of us in the U.S.-China 0.98

00:03:21.480 trade, since Kissinger and Nixon first got there in 1971, have been seduced by the idea if we help open

00:03:29.320 that market as much as we can, no matter what it took, to our products and services that we make here

00:03:34.220 in the U.S., we would spread the aspirational qualities of democracy in that country. And we

00:03:39.640 would essentially create revenue streams from a market that we never had open that would build our

00:03:45.560 GDP and grow jobs here in the U.S. And that was like a higher calling that a lot of us had. I mean,

00:03:52.360 don't get me wrong. It was a very lucrative opportunity when it came to moving your career

00:03:57.720 into that trade, that bilateral dynamic. But at the same token, it was really nice to know that we were

00:04:03.980 essentially opening up this market. We were opening up minds in that market to the idea that maybe

00:04:09.600 democracy was a better system of government than what they had. And it felt like we were actually

00:04:15.300 doing something for the greater good of the United States of America. Except at some point, we all ended

00:04:20.900 up getting that smack in the nose moment. And I call it the smack in the nose because Matt Pottinger

00:04:25.300 talks about how it happened to him in the early 2000s. Unfortunately to me, it really didn't happen until

00:04:30.940 later in 2019 when the NBA got in a lot of hot water for something that Daryl Morey tweeted.

00:04:37.420 And we can get into that. Yeah. It's a fascinating story.

00:04:40.340 No, I want to get into the sports angle. But before we look at the different vectors,

00:04:46.660 let's start with a high level. You're China right now. What do you think their goals are

00:04:52.500 as they see the world today and as they see the posture the Trump administration has taken?

00:04:57.420 Well, it's interesting because, I mean, the beauty of what Trump did in his first term was that he

00:05:02.040 pulled the fire alarm on the China issue, right? No one was really willing to talk about it.

00:05:07.420 It wasn't even an issue. It wasn't an issue. All of us knew there was something awry and it wasn't

00:05:13.400 quite going the way we expected. But we all kept our head down for that greater good, that greater

00:05:18.420 mission, that greater purpose. And it was him, guys like Matt Pottinger, Robert Lighthizer,

00:05:23.820 Peter Navarro. They all got behind this idea that, hey, we got to change the course here because

00:05:29.640 it's going really wrong. And if we don't fix it, it's going to be too late. So that was the fire

00:05:35.880 alarm that occurred. And then if you look at, I think, and this is where I'll differ from our

00:05:41.440 mutual friend, Steve Bannon, where I don't think China's goal is to overtake the world and be the

00:05:47.480 world leader. I think they've realized that that can end empires pretty quickly. What they really want

00:05:53.420 to do is be the regional power. But the part that's really scary is the fact that they have

00:05:58.860 a scarcity of resources there. Energy, food, water, minerals, you name it, they can't harvest

00:06:09.400 enough to satisfy 1.4 billion people inside their borders. And that's where we're seeing that Belt 0.97

00:06:16.320 Road Initiative. We're seeing fishermen off the coast of Chile or Madagascar. We're seeing all

00:06:23.800 kinds of reach into the Arctic region. But wait, doesn't that mean that they don't want to be a

00:06:28.800 regional power? If you want to extract resources from a Honduran jungle, if you want to fish off the 1.00

00:06:36.840 waters of Chile, doesn't that mean you have to have an ability to make things happen globally?

00:06:41.620 That's a good point. But I think actually all they care about is that self-serving interest of

00:06:48.220 taking care of their 1.4 billion people.

00:06:50.100 So it's true colonial. It's kind of less, like China doesn't care what Chile's values are in a

00:06:57.600 way that American colonialism kind of does now. We have this values-based colonial. We want to colonize

00:07:02.960 you with our pride month and our pronouns and whatever else. Whereas China simply wants to get back 1.00

00:07:10.480 to just like good old-fashioned resource-based colonialization. Is that how we should think

00:07:15.060 about it?

00:07:15.320 Yeah, I think it's a real self-interest and the idea that the more you spread yourself thin,

00:07:19.900 the more apt you are to lose power and lose influence. So they know that they have 1.4 billion

00:07:25.300 people they got to satisfy. They got to make them just happy enough that they don't revolt. They

00:07:29.120 don't want another Tiananmen Square. So how do you do that? You provide just enough of what they need

00:07:33.960 and this aspiration that they can get a little more of what they want within the system that is the best

00:07:39.380 in the world. And that's why, and we'll talk about Hollywood and soft power influence, but the fact

00:07:45.280 is their goal is to make sure that their people think their system is the best in the world and

00:07:50.500 the system of democracy or the republic that we are here in the United States of America is the wrong

00:07:56.720 system and it won't support what their needs are. So give us the power, give us the standing

00:08:02.260 committee, which by the way, Xi Jinping has brought down to just a single digit amount from what it used

00:08:08.200 to be. You got 92 million CCP members there now. They're all embedded in all of the different

00:08:14.740 sectors of the economy. And that is the system that they want their people to believe in.

00:08:19.760 What you've said, I think is so poignant. And I think a lot of people in Washington in the

00:08:26.040 policymaking space miss it. China pitches alongside their bribes, reliability as a governance model.

00:08:34.460 They say, we are a more reliable partner than the Americans. Think what you want about Trump or

00:08:39.460 Biden. It changes too much. Whereas like we are, we are at least steady Eddie on the global stage.

00:08:45.340 And I, you know, you said it far better than I did, but understanding that that's part of their pitch

00:08:50.480 is so important. And I think not a lot of our, of our policymakers do. So you write about China's

00:08:55.260 influence in Hollywood, the NBA and in corporate America. Where do you think it is highest among those

00:09:01.840 three? Well, I, I think they, if you look at the art of war and the way they look at the ability to

00:09:09.600 essentially get what they want around the world without ever firing a bullet, a lot of that has

00:09:14.380 to do with influence. So I would say the power that they saw with Hollywood and being able to tap

00:09:21.020 into that soft power propaganda was crucial to them because I'll use a perfect example. I mean,

00:09:27.940 I grew up, I'm 54. I grew up in the eighties. Everything I thought about when it came to the

00:09:33.540 Soviet union was what Hollywood and our geopolitical complex here in the United States wanted us to

00:09:41.260 visualize the Soviet union has drab, never sunny, always raining. Avon Drago. Yes. I mean,

00:09:48.800 Gorky park. You never saw a movie that portrayed Russia with blue skies and gleaming skyscrapers and

00:09:55.640 happy people. It was always dreary. It was always drab. But when China started to get his, uh, it's, 0.97

00:10:01.660 it's tentacles into Hollywood, not only because they had a market that Hollywood coveted, but they

00:10:07.440 also were bringing money investing in Hollywood. They immediately said to Hollywood, you can't show

00:10:12.480 crime. You can't show things that are bad about our system. Only good things. You can only show our

00:10:17.380 gleaming infrastructure, our high rises, our technology advanced cities. Um, people like the last time

00:10:24.280 there was like a gritty, crimey scene, like with a Chinese feature. I think it was like the opening 1.00

00:10:29.460 scene of an Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. And they got in a lot of trouble for that too. Right. Right. I

00:10:35.120 mean, we had, so you think that was the key? Cause, cause, cause Vish, you talk about this a lot, how

00:10:39.320 the actually culture is upstream of politics and policymaking. Yes. And it seems like, like what,

00:10:46.440 what Chris is saying is that China understood that in film. Yes. And, and injected it. Or how would you 0.55

00:10:53.440 rate the success of it, of, of that project on China's port? I think that it's, it's been very

00:10:58.220 successful. I mean, where, I thought, you know, when I watched Maverick, uh, the Top Gun movie and

00:11:04.160 they had this nameless country with this base and they were talking about fifth gen, you know, 0.83

00:11:08.780 fighters and all this stuff. I thought that they were, this was maybe the closest that

00:11:12.780 Hollywood ever get to portraying China as the, as the enemy. But it turns out actually it was kind

00:11:19.060 of more like Iran. It actually came true. The plot of the movie Maverick came true. Right. And 0.92

00:11:24.560 that's, that's another part I want to get into, but you know, that was when I, when I, when I

00:11:29.340 thought maybe it came closest, but you don't really see any portrayals of China in this manner where

00:11:34.700 it's like adversarial. Whereas, uh, Chernobyl, the HBO series, when it shows Russia and the Soviet

00:11:41.660 Union to this day, it's still gray. The gray tones on, on the, on the shot, you know, and

00:11:47.740 everything's drab and every, you know, uh, every place looks like a 1900s hospital or something like

00:11:54.120 that. You still see that today. So I think obviously China understood this and is excelling

00:11:58.680 it, not because of what you see, but what you don't see. Well, what about Bond movies or born,

00:12:03.320 born identity movies or whatever? They're never going to have China, um, infiltrating the Taiwan

00:12:08.400 airspace with a WMD or whatever, like that's going to blow up from a hot air balloon or whatever it

00:12:14.460 is. Right. But you're just saying China bought that. They a hundred percent bought it. You can't,

00:12:18.660 is that for sale for everyone, by the way? Like if, if the Saudis, if the, uh, Emiratis,

00:12:25.160 whomever wants to come in and just buy that type of Hollywood soft power, if China bought it,

00:12:30.660 why can't anyone buy it? Well, the beauty and, and I've worked in the Middle East too. And,

00:12:35.340 and the Middle East has a lot of money, a lot of investment dollars, but they don't have a market,

00:12:40.260 right? It's a two, you have a two way street of money when it comes to China, both from what you

00:12:46.440 can get from that market as far as consumers, but then what you can get from that market as far as

00:12:51.760 investors. And that is something that the Saudis will never have. I mean, Saudis have 30 million

00:12:57.240 people. That's it. And most of them are tribal or immigrants from somewhere else building things or 1.00

00:13:03.120 whatever. There's not a lot of money in a, it's a very, well, no, but that's fascinating. The value

00:13:08.560 proposition in China is that it's the market lashed to the investment and that, yeah, that you don't get

00:13:13.900 that with the rich Gulf monarchies. So if that was the Hollywood play, let's talk about the NBA.

00:13:20.180 I've talked about this on, on pods before the hypocrisy of the NBA on China. How do you see it?

00:13:25.840 Well, it was, that was my smack in the nose moment because I'd just come back from, um, taking some of

00:13:32.480 your colleagues from, uh, from Congress over there. I, I hosted congressional delegations and it was

00:13:37.580 the end of China in 2019. Yeah. Um, I'm a board member with the U S Asian Institute. So we had

00:13:43.560 Dina Titus, um, Fitzpatrick from Arizona and Lowenthal here from California. We went over to see the

00:13:51.000 Hong Kong protests. We were in Beijing, Chengdu, Xi'an and, and, uh, Macau. And I just got back

00:13:58.040 and Daryl Morey tweeted that thing out. I wasn't even on Twitter. Somebody showed it to me on, uh,

00:14:03.060 the sideline of a kid's soccer game that I was at. And it said, fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.

00:14:08.360 And I looked at it and I was like, I don't know who Daryl Morey is. And then I looked him up and I was

00:14:12.520 like, oh my God, he's the GM of the Houston Rockets. And somebody was like, is that a big deal? And I go,

00:14:16.960 yeah, it's Yao Ming. It's a Houston Rockets. They mean everything in China that is going to crush 1.00

00:14:22.780 the NBA. And somebody was like, really a tweet. And I go, trust me. And literally within days,

00:14:29.180 that thing blew out of like any sort of proportion we expected. And I was sitting there going, well,

00:14:35.940 I guess I know China pretty well. Cause I predicted that. But what got me with that smack in the nose 0.99

00:14:41.300 was the fumbling and bumbling that Adam Silver and the NBA had in terms of how to respond to it.

00:14:48.220 Right. We're a first amendment country. Uh, Daryl, I believe tweeted that in Japan. He wasn't even in

00:14:55.080 China. Um, it seemed pretty obvious that we were supposed to get behind Daryl Morey, but they didn't.

00:15:00.500 And then they did. And then they didn't. And then LeBron James, who was in Shanghai, comes back

00:15:04.980 on the tarmac at JFK and it fumbled and bumbled with that response. And I'm sitting there going,

00:15:09.840 wait, doesn't this guy have access to every PR exec there is to try to come up with what to say when

00:15:14.780 you land. And he didn't, he, it was crazy. So that was the moment where I go, wait a minute,

00:15:19.880 maybe I've been complicit in two decades of this crap because I've been standing up for things that

00:15:25.280 probably weren't all that American, just trying to get more products and services in that country. 0.95

00:15:29.720 And that was the moment where I go, wait a minute, we've all been doing this really wrong for a long

00:15:35.480 time. Uh, what about the, uh, the Nets owner, the Alibaba CEO? Is that, does that showcase

00:15:41.540 another troubling Chinese invasion into kind of the athletics corporate space? 0.99

00:15:47.740 Well, first of all, Joe Tsai is a big benefactor of the sport of lacrosse and I'm a big lacrosse

00:15:52.500 fan. So it's a little tough to talk about it, but I will say people will defend lacrosse.

00:15:57.520 We will defend lacrosse. We are not giving up. Look, it's one of the last places we could send

00:16:03.420 our children with a competitive shot. No, but Joe Tsai did create a massive conflict

00:16:07.000 of interest for the NBA, also for his team and that whole thing. And, and that was a

00:16:12.020 real problem when it came for the NBA to really stand up for what we all wanted them to stand

00:16:16.880 up for, but realized how much money was on the line not to do it.

00:16:20.540 Joe Tsai has blocked me on X. Did you know this? He blocked Joe Tsai. Unblock me, man.

00:16:27.080 You're friends with a lot of my friends. You host a lot of Republicans at your games, but

00:16:31.840 you have blocked me because during the COVID pandemic, he, he was all up in arms at Kyrie

00:16:39.680 for not taking the VACs. And I was, I was team Kyrie.

00:16:43.100 I was team Kyrie too. But you know, that's, it kind of, again, it just shows you like these

00:16:47.540 markets that they're infiltrating, right? Like the Brooklyn, he goes and gets the Brooklyn 0.80

00:16:51.320 Nets, right? And like that. And why would you do that? Well, there's actually a massive

00:16:55.280 Chinese population in Brooklyn too. And obviously New York placement, lots of visibility.

00:17:00.620 That's going to play well back, back in, back in China. And so, but, but is it wrong that

00:17:05.560 you let the owner of Ali, the guy that owns Alibaba or the CEO come and buy an NBA team?

00:17:10.880 I mean, I, is that cool with you?

00:17:12.560 By the way, he's pretty much bought Yale University too.

00:17:14.860 Well, by the way, I'm definitely more okay with that.

00:17:17.580 By the way, who were the owners of the Nets before that? Russian oligarchs.

00:17:23.340 That's right. So as far as I'm concerned, the oligarchization of the Brooklyn Nets had

00:17:31.320 already occurred. Yeah, it already had occurred. So, you know, I don't want to like, yeah,

00:17:35.200 I mean, I would rather neither, right? I'd rather an American owner, but this is how the 1.00

00:17:39.320 system was. And again, you, like you said, most people didn't even really notice until

00:17:44.020 about when Trump started really putting this thing out in the open, out front. And then things

00:17:49.100 like when it got cultural, right? When it got, when it got to the NBA and the Houston

00:17:53.820 Rockets owner tweet and LeBron, you know, essentially saying, you know, the Houston Rockets owner

00:17:58.820 should mind his own business or something to that effect. Right. So that, and people didn't

00:18:02.840 really realize it until now.

00:18:04.320 Well, the ballsiest move though, in all of it was like, eventually the NBA did get, uh,

00:18:09.960 essentially Daryl Morey removed from the Houston Rockets. It took a while and there was a lot

00:18:14.940 of pressure in China to do that. And what happened? Cause Daryl Morey's really

00:18:18.960 good at what he does. I mean, really good. The Sixers just went and hired him and like,

00:18:23.560 game on, let's go. And they did not care one bit about China. And that was a really

00:18:28.800 ball city of the Liberty Bell. What you tapped into though, was the fear that, that the, the

00:18:35.700 self-censorship really that occurred from the NBA. It wasn't like China was sending out

00:18:40.180 messages from their ambassador about this or seeking some like full frontal confrontation

00:18:44.960 with the United States over it. It was the, the legitimate fear on the part of the NBA

00:18:49.340 that, Oh my gosh, if we, if we make them mad, then maybe we can't sell as much merch there.

00:18:53.920 It wasn't fear. It wasn't fear at all.

00:18:55.620 Okay. Tell me about it.

00:18:56.340 They took them off the air.

00:18:58.620 Okay.

00:18:59.340 Canceled all the airings of everything that happened.

00:19:02.200 Oh, that occurred then?

00:19:03.340 They long. Oh, immediately. Oh, wow. And on top of it, any Chinese partner that they had 1.00

00:19:08.180 on the brand merchandise, you know, marketing side was told, get lost. Do not touch the

00:19:14.060 NBA. And then for a long time, it was like a warning plan before COVID dude. And imagine

00:19:19.060 what you're talking about, Hollywood talk, talking about, Oh, I got, you know, possibly

00:19:22.700 a billion viewers that I'm losing out in that market. Imagine a billion less shoe sales,

00:19:27.980 right? Like that, that also happening. Yeah, no, definitely. I could see it.

00:19:31.660 Well, not only that we created the CBA, which is the NBA in China, which is allowed to have

00:19:37.700 a couple of our players over there play on all those teams. They learned the process and

00:19:42.180 the way to run a league really well. So the second they took the NBA off, they put a lot

00:19:47.060 of effort into building the CBA. Now the CBA is a huge competitor to the NBA over there.

00:19:52.720 So really that's what, that's what happens.

00:19:54.700 Brand parity?

00:19:55.400 Yeah. And then that's the same, like, and you still look at, okay, our market isn't that

00:20:00.280 big for Hollywood in China now for a particular movie. I mean, we went from like 80 cents on

00:20:05.420 every dollar made over there was a Hollywood film. Now we're down to about five cents on

00:20:09.800 every dollar. So it's gotten crushed, but you still have Disney over there with one of the

00:20:14.500 largest theme parks in the world in Shanghai. It's 57% owned by the Chinese government, but

00:20:20.160 Disney's got a lot of, a lot riding on that mark, on that market and on that theme park.

00:20:24.900 And then Universal built a huge one up in Beijing. They only own 30% of it, 70% owned by

00:20:31.220 Beijing, but they got to make sure that thing works.

00:20:35.000 Disney's choosing whether to invest in Florida or China. And they're like, we're going where

00:20:38.340 we face less draconian challenge from the executive.

00:20:43.360 That's so good. But that, that's so that, but that, that expansion by, you know, all like,

00:20:51.720 like you said, Universal, uh, and, and Disney like that. Well, what can we do though about

00:20:57.340 the, do these execs have any, uh, incentive to try to, you know, kind of sever that relationship?

00:21:03.800 If you're saying only five cents on the dollar is coming from China these days in their movies,

00:21:08.080 like, why even bother? Well, a, there's the promise that it could open up again for our,

00:21:13.260 our, our stuff. There's always that golden goose that could start to spread its wings again. So

00:21:18.100 there's that hope. And then on top of it, you have massive consumer products, businesses that

00:21:22.980 these studios have the theme parks and various other things. So there's still a lot of money

00:21:27.140 riding on it. Um, where we need to all just start to focus. And it's really simple is just think

00:21:33.740 about patriotism before capitalism. That's all right. If, if we're American companies and we've

00:21:39.820 been born and raised here and we have certain values and principles that we need to hold dearly,

00:21:44.100 or they get commandeered by a country that's not like ours, that's a problem. So we should have 0.99

00:21:50.220 engagement with that market, but we just need to think about this reckless form of capitalism that

00:21:54.520 we had for so many years. We need to abate and we need to start putting our principles ahead of it.

00:22:00.040 Chris, if in New York, someone walks into their board and says, we've made a decision to, to,

00:22:07.480 to, to not access the Chinese investment, you know, capital markets or consumer markets,

00:22:13.200 and we've done so on the basis of patriotism, that board would have that CEO on cleaning out

00:22:18.980 their desk before the bagels arrived for the morning coffee. That's if they don't throw them out

00:22:24.140 to the 80th floor. The interesting part is that China is doing it for them right now. I mean, 0.69

00:22:29.520 we're, we are getting weaned out of there slowly, but surely. So everybody's starting to notice that.

00:22:36.100 And then there's good messaging for Western consumers. When you start to say, Hey, there's

00:22:41.320 certain things that we did with that market that we're not happy we did. We're going to change the

00:22:45.800 course. And you can actually look like, Hey, you're taking the higher road. You're doing the right

00:22:51.700 thing. And you could probably amplify what you're doing in various markets while knowing you're

00:22:56.220 already losing the China market anyway, whether you do it or not. So I think there are ways to

00:23:01.460 straddle that, that are realistic and practical. Trust me, I've been in the private sector my whole

00:23:06.320 life. I get where those issues are, but it's, there's an opportunity now to do the right thing.

00:23:11.200 I could be wrong about this, but I would probably bet perhaps naively that it would be the market

00:23:17.540 forces there, like on China's impact on the market from their government side that would force that

00:23:23.780 more than this organic immersion of corporate patriotism. That's a hundred percent the case,

00:23:32.300 right? It's always about the dollar. But what I'm saying is that the dollar lost in China could be

00:23:37.520 made up elsewhere by looking like you're doing the right thing and using the right narrative and

00:23:41.920 messaging and your marketing and promotion in those other markets. So I do think we're seeing a

00:23:46.620 little bit of a tipping point occur here, which is going to help. Okay. Given your experience in

00:23:51.380 these areas, if you're sitting there across the table from Trump right now, as he's devising his

00:23:56.140 strategy in these trade talks and, and the talks with China are the most dispositive trade talks

00:24:00.720 without a question. What are you telling him to do? What tactics, what key levers or pressure points

00:24:08.000 would you focus on? Well, I think they're already doing this really well. And by the way,

00:24:13.520 I'd love to be a part of those just to hear what's happening and throw in my two cents, just from my

00:24:18.680 point of view of 25 years. A lot of them listen to this show. So you're talking to them. But the choke

00:24:24.600 points are crucial to know in the supply chain. And we have ones that we've known were issues since

00:24:30.740 probably 2008, 2010, which rare earths are the big ones, right? Trump seems to know that. Yeah. He a hundred

00:24:38.480 percent knows that. And he knows that their choke point is semiconductors, the chips, right? So we're,

00:24:43.640 we're trying to essentially use the game of chess against each other. And I think we do have the

00:24:49.880 pressure points that are going to allow us to maintain the supply chain areas that we need to focus on and

00:24:56.640 still get a supply from, from China while they're going to still get what we need. But we have to put

00:25:02.680 forward an industrial strategy that gets us off of that teat as quickly as possible.

00:25:09.460 That, that is so critically important. Like I, I cannot tell you the number of briefings I got on

00:25:16.700 the armed services committee where I'd be complaining about weapon system X or Y and not getting parts

00:25:23.800 enough and not having enough of them operationally capable, whatever it is. And you get, you know,

00:25:28.320 behind closed doors and you start really pulling, why is this deficiency? And so much of like the

00:25:35.740 base core material we need for the stuff for our military is part of the Chinese supply chain and,

00:25:44.600 or they have such influence on those markets that they can put one of your domestic, uh, subcontractors

00:25:53.360 in a real jam by like screwing with a cobalt mine in Africa or, you know, impacting where tungsten is

00:26:01.240 coming from.

00:26:01.840 Well, their foreign ministry, Wang Yi actually spilled the beans openly, which was really surprising

00:26:06.760 about their desire to have the Russian Ukraine conflict continue as long as possible.

00:26:11.940 Totally.

00:26:12.320 When you realize our F-35s hold 50 pounds of Samarium cobalt magnets inside of them,

00:26:17.840 you realize why they want that to continue, right? If, if you extrapolate that to various other

00:26:23.040 military components that we're shipping over to Ukraine and that NATO is using in Ukraine to keep

00:26:28.120 that war going, we're losing a lot of that resource to that war. And we don't have the production

00:26:35.040 capabilities to replace it. China knows that. So the weaker we get because of these wars that are

00:26:40.760 prolonged, the stronger their leverage gets. And quite frankly, the more war weary we get here in

00:26:47.380 the U S so that if they ever do quote, reunify Taiwan, I don't think the American public is

00:26:53.940 going to care enough to try to push us into that war and try to protect Taiwan.

00:26:58.500 I certainly hope nobody on this set cares enough. I, I, and it's not that I don't care about Taiwan.

00:27:04.160 I just simply think it's easier to import Taiwan to Arizona than to go fight an away game over an

00:27:09.440 island right off the coast of China against the most sophisticated anti-aircraft weapon systems that

00:27:15.360 Yeah. It's not like it's Catalina right offshore either. I mean, you're playing an away game for

00:27:19.740 something you could definitely just import otherwise. And what, how many Americans should

00:27:23.820 have to go die for the, because of what flag flies over Taiwan, which by the way, is already basically 0.80

00:27:30.760 controlled by China anyway. The Taiwanese government is in the Taiwanese military has been so infiltrated

00:27:36.380 by China. I think that is a red herring. Oftentimes they're like, we have to defend Taiwan, 0.99

00:27:42.480 make Taiwan a porcupine. All of that is just a veneer to justify higher top lines for the defense 0.88

00:27:50.880 industrial complex. Well, you know, your former colleagues, Gallagher and Christian Morthy,

00:27:55.800 they ran how many war games trying to see if there was a way to actually defend Taiwan without losing.

00:28:01.100 Right. I don't think a single war game came up in our favor. No. I mean, I know how the ones

00:28:05.300 that are classified come out, but what I could tell you is that it didn't surprise me a lick

00:28:11.240 when I saw that all the ones that they'd done publicly showcased that we could never get enough

00:28:16.680 materiel into the fight. You know why? China can hit a moving target with a hypersonic weapon and we 0.80

00:28:22.100 cannot. And that really reshapes how you think about deterrence and getting materiel across the

00:28:26.860 Pacific Ocean. So, uh, and is there any desire of the regional allies that we have over there to jump

00:28:31.720 in the middle of that too? I mean, or do they get attacked? I mean, there's a world in which

00:28:35.660 they get preemptively attacked, but your, your thesis at the beginning of this discussion was

00:28:42.260 China actually doesn't want that. They want to be able to dominate their sandbox and to continue to 0.98

00:28:48.720 make it a little bit bigger each and every day. But this notion that they are blood lusting for some

00:28:54.680 like kinetic conflict, or as our friend Steve calls it, uh, you know, uh, unrestricted warfare,

00:29:00.020 uh, you're not, you're not as bought in on that. I do want to talk to you a little bit about TikTok

00:29:04.080 because so many young people resent the fact that Gen Xers and boomers who aren't on TikTok are

00:29:13.500 lecturing them about the dangers of the platform. I'm not on TikTok. Maybe I will be one day. I don't

00:29:19.400 know. I don't think you are, but like they, I've had a lot of young, young people be like, well,

00:29:24.300 let me get this straight, Matt. Uh, I got like kicked off of Twitter for saying that vaccines

00:29:31.380 could give you side effects. I got like thrown in Facebook jail because I said, build the wall.

00:29:36.860 And then I supported the second amendment. But what you're really telling me is it's the Chinese I

00:29:41.820 have to worry about. Like the American tech oligarchs have actually done worse to me. Now I know behind

00:29:46.960 that there's a whole data collection and there's a really sinister, um, uh, operational capability

00:29:54.220 that comes out of what China is doing. But do you at least get how like Gen Z looks at this

00:30:00.040 and sees a lot of, of, uh, being patronized? I can see, look, if somebody wanted to take Twitter

00:30:08.600 away from me, I'd be upset about it too. But the fact of the matter is Twitter is not run by one of

00:30:13.600 our four foreign adversaries as defined by the U S government. Imagine if TikTok were run by North 0.97

00:30:19.040 Korea or run by Iran or run by Russia. I think we would all look at it a different way. Right. But

00:30:24.700 for some reason, they would say like, do you, but, but Saudi and you know, Saudi hacks up journalists 0.80

00:30:29.960 and they own a bunch of Twitter and you know, Qatar is like the home base of Hamas and they own part of

00:30:36.000 Twitter. So why shouldn't we be worried about that? Well, because the, at least they're not designated

00:30:40.460 as foreign adversaries, right? Number one, but number two is they're not, they don't own and

00:30:45.220 control it and are, are looking to essentially that the reality is, and I've been on TikTok because

00:30:51.820 I want to talk about it and know a lot about it. Yeah. Twitter is really interesting the way that I

00:30:57.500 actually get frustrated because my feed feeds me too much of what I, it thinks I want to read. And I

00:31:03.120 always have to go try to proactively find other voices to hear like other parts of the equation.

00:31:08.800 Cause I don't like confirmation bias. I like to get all sides of it. TikTok is that on steroids 0.81

00:31:15.040 times a thousand, right? You, it's almost impossible to find other points of view.

00:31:19.160 Okay. But, but if the critique is a critique of like the algorithm being bad, one would say,

00:31:25.400 well then fine, apply that critique domestically.

00:31:28.600 Right. Except domestically, we're not trying to. I mean, we've got a lot of fat people who shouldn't

00:31:34.000 have Uber Eats. Right. But China wants to divide us a hundred percent. The more divided we are, 0.96

00:31:43.320 the weaker we are. But I can, DoorDash wants to, wants to play, like wants to play into our gluttony.

00:31:48.560 Like I could argue that every single app that exists is there to feed one, one of our vices,

00:31:55.540 right? Yeah. You know, Tinder, Lust, Uber Eats and DoorDash gluttony. Probably TikTok is like some form

00:32:03.800 of, you know, vanity or, or, or pride. And so, you know, yeah, like all of these things do that.

00:32:10.680 They're all bad, but we, but people resent the isolated attacks on TikTok and China because they

00:32:19.400 don't feel threat. So let's go to Brendan Carr in the FCC and say, Hey, if China wants to buy ABC,

00:32:24.760 NBC, F, you know, Fox, they can go buy it and own our networks. Right. There's a reason why we don't

00:32:31.820 allow that. Well, I mean, yeah, but, but one, and I, and again, I, I, someone's going to clip these

00:32:37.060 clips up and they're going to be terrible because they're going to be me saying things as straw man

00:32:41.160 arguments here, enjoying my discussion with, uh, with Chris. But, but what if the, the people would say,

00:32:46.260 well, look, uh, ABC, NBC, you know, they're owned by like terrible Americans who censor us. What do 0.92

00:32:51.880 we care if it's terrible Chinese who censor us or terrible Americans? I think it's just how you 0.97

00:32:56.440 define, look, there's terrible Americans. Obviously we can't say all citizens are fantastic, but I will 1.00

00:33:03.560 say that there are things that we should protect as far as a sovereign nation, uh, under God. That's

00:33:10.080 a nation that we're supposed to be proud of and be okay with the fact that we're essentially

00:33:15.980 in control of our own destiny. Why are we allowing the largest source of news and information by

00:33:22.300 people under 40, a platform that is supplying that under 40 to be controlled by a foreign

00:33:28.840 adversary. That doesn't make any sense to me. That's, uh, you know, I mean, I guess if you're

00:33:34.100 a complete globalist and you said there's no borders and we don't care who's involved with anything

00:33:38.540 that's influencing us or pushing in us in directions.

00:33:41.820 Well, if you were, if you were a fatalist to globalism, maybe if you weren't a globalist

00:33:46.540 in your heart, but if you surveyed the landscape and said, you know what, everything has been

00:33:50.940 globalized. Our labor markets have been globalized. Our information flow has been globalized. Hell,

00:33:56.260 our elections have been globalized. I'm sure you've got thoughts on how, you know, how China's

00:34:00.360 influencing our elections well beyond even, even just the, the core pillars of the book.

00:34:05.640 And, uh, you know, that is the way of the world. And so you can be naive about it and you could try

00:34:11.680 to build little walls around turf, but at the end of the day, they get deconstructed because

00:34:16.840 China develops another app that you don't know that they control. Like remember when people were 0.93

00:34:21.180 worried about TikTok going down, all those other crazy Chinese apps got millions of followers 1.00

00:34:25.960 because people were voting with their feet. And so like, I actually think the most compelling

00:34:30.800 argument against TikTok is no one else. And you touched on it. No one else uses the data this

00:34:38.020 way, right? You could say what you want about Twitter and Facebook and all the problems they've

00:34:42.860 had, but none of them are like centralizing the data and then using similar faces and then sending

00:34:49.820 fake IDs into the country so that 30,000 people can vote. They're like, weren't supposed to be voting 0.54

00:34:56.020 in our elections. And, and the use of the data is, is really what, what makes TikTok worthy of that

00:35:02.200 type of, of, of attack. Well, there are, there's, there's two, I mean, national security interests and

00:35:07.960 experts that, that look at the TikTok issue do seem to be divided a little bit of, is that the data

00:35:13.580 that's the big national security issue or is it the propaganda from a foreign adversary? Yeah. I come

00:35:19.160 from a storytelling narrative background. So I think the storytelling, I mean, even look at here in

00:35:27.580 the U S I mean, the fact that we have issues like, um, I don't know if it's the Epstein thing, suddenly 0.97

00:35:33.360 if you're, you're like, wow, that's weird. And they call you a conspiracy theorist, like right off the

00:35:38.600 bat, even though we've been following this for whatever, a decade, or if you, um, are dealing with

00:35:44.720 this border debate, suddenly immigrant is supposed to cover both illegal and legal, right? How did it 0.96

00:35:52.060 become? No, it was a migrant. Yeah. We, we merged it into migrant. Yeah. Remember that? No one talked

00:35:56.580 about migrants. But you look at the power of words, you look at the power of narrative and how it tears

00:36:01.100 people apart and takes different perspectives that aren't that different and make them completely

00:36:06.120 polarizing. Right. And then you put it in the hands of a foreign adversary and you realize, wow, it's

00:36:11.400 pretty easy to win a war without ever firing a bullet. That, that has my mind go to like what

00:36:17.900 other foreign adversaries have the money that want to buy narrative power. And the assumption is

00:36:23.820 probably all of them. Yeah. And I mean, Chris has done a great job explaining how China is uniquely

00:36:27.700 positioned to do that, but you don't have to choose. You can be against TikTok for both of these

00:36:32.160 reasons, but it is different. It is interesting that we find different things most troubling because

00:36:36.920 I'm almost a fatalist on the narrative thing. I'm like, oh heck, you know, who, whose hands do you

00:36:42.280 control the narrative in? Nobody's not, not any of these American oligarchs, not any of the foreign

00:36:47.780 oligarchs either. Uh, and so all you can do is really democratize information. And then the, the 0.98

00:36:53.960 greatest threat that that faces is the elimination of platforms. And so if you're eliminating platforms,

00:36:59.540 it always gets, gets the hair on, on the back of my neck stood up a little bit, but you're a person

00:37:04.460 who spends a lot of time thinking about the power of the narrative formation. Yeah. Is Chris right

00:37:10.420 that that is actually scarier than the data? Because I'm more scared about the data. Well,

00:37:15.740 yes, I think Chris, I think I'm, I'm very much someone who believes like, uh, language control

00:37:21.500 is mind control. So that's why I believe in the power of narrative and all that. And I think that

00:37:26.020 that's important. But for me, what I, what I think is, is more, uh, of an aspect to focus on is

00:37:31.700 how is it that China that, you know, for really has like this reputation of not being able to invent 0.94

00:37:38.640 anything that, you know, they didn't steal from somebody else, essentially, how are they the ones

00:37:43.580 to come up with the best app? And that turns out to be the number one source of news for young people

00:37:50.280 in America. I'm, I'm a guy that believes that America leads diplomatically on the globe from a

00:37:55.980 cultural aspect, but you're telling me Silicon Valley can't come up with one app for entertainment

00:38:02.420 that could beat out Tik TOK. What are all these geniuses in Silicon Valley? It's an amazing point

00:38:06.780 because you've seen Zuckerberg try to do with threads and that didn't work. Even reels is sort

00:38:11.860 of an attempt at it, but that didn't work. Right. Why didn't those work, Chris? Well, I'm not a tech

00:38:17.600 expert, but it just doesn't seem as crazily addictive. Yeah. But I have no idea why, like, if someone

00:38:22.980 asked me why Tik TOK worked and reels didn't, I honestly couldn't tell you. Well, it's, I think

00:38:29.080 that there's part of it is still like the woke stuff. I think Tik TOK, like, yeah, there's still

00:38:33.720 censorship on all these platforms, but Tik TOK seems the least censorious of all the platforms.

00:38:39.900 And so whatever allows the, the, the creator to make their content and be monetized in a proper

00:38:48.620 way for it. Uh, that's the, the, um, platform that's going to win again. One of the big parts

00:38:53.920 about why Tik TOK won in this marketplace is because of the monetization is because they were

00:38:59.200 paying creators who were coming onto their platform and a competitive way. They're still

00:39:04.060 paying them the best. There's no, if you're a creator, you know, in this kind of like short

00:39:08.080 video format, there's still no, no platform that pays you better. That's right. But the platform

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00:40:06.780 forward slash Matt stock up and protect your family today. Welcome back. I am not Matt Gates.

00:40:12.620 I'm Vishborough, the cohost on the anchorman here, and I am with Chris Fenton, uh, the

00:40:18.000 author of feeding the dragon. Great book. I recommend everybody get it, but you know,

00:40:23.860 less about China. I'm really focused, you know, that I'm really interested in like you're

00:40:28.940 working Hollywood. Like what movies have you worked on that? Like we all know, well, I've

00:40:34.340 worked on a lot of bad movies and I've worked on some good ones. I mean, the largest movie that

00:40:38.360 I did, which happened to also include China in the mix was Iron Man three. Um, that movie

00:40:43.860 did about $1.3 billion. Um, I've worked on, I made the mistake of, of making a movie that

00:40:51.420 now seems to be a cult classic, which is the remake of Point Break. Um, a lot of, uh, younger

00:40:57.580 generation people are starting to find it and think it's pretty cool. Um, I did a movie that

00:41:02.260 was really proud of called Looper with Ryan Johnson. Yes, I've seen Looper. Fantastic movie

00:41:07.380 that was done for a price and did a lot of business. That's Joseph Gordon-Levitt and

00:41:11.800 Bruce Willis. Yeah. Who played the same character one, one 30 years older. Yeah. Um, I did little

00:41:18.260 movies like Waiting, which was, uh, you did Waiting? I did Waiting. No kidding. I love

00:41:23.220 Waiting. I used to be a waiter. So every time I was a waiter too. And so was the writer

00:41:27.640 director of that movie. And that was, uh, Dane Cook sort of first foray in the movies.

00:41:32.780 Yeah. Had Ryan Reynolds and Justin Long and Anna Faris and Luis Guzman. It was an incredible

00:41:38.600 cast. And then we made the sequel of that called Still Waiting. Um, which was, uh, which

00:41:43.780 was also a funny movie. We did, uh, Blockers, which was a big one. That was John Cena. Um,

00:41:49.780 he didn't do his Mandarin speaking in that, uh, but, um, that movie was, uh, you know, it's

00:41:55.220 like these, these films that maybe some of the people haven't seen that are listening to

00:41:59.180 this, that, um, are big, they're, they're big sort of revenue generators based on the

00:42:05.100 fact that their budgets weren't big, right? So Blockers was a comedy we made for about

00:42:09.040 20 million. It did almost a hundred million in box office. So it's like one of those movies

00:42:13.780 that I'm really proud of. Um, I was talking to Matt earlier about a movie called Chappaquiddick.

00:42:19.800 Yes, I've seen Chappaquiddick. Um, Chappaquiddick was an unbelievable process to get that, um,

00:42:25.760 into movie theaters. We had a lot of interesting sort of threatening calls about ever making that

00:42:31.680 movie. Tell us about that. Um, cause it's about a Democrat. It's one of the most famous,

00:42:36.380 right? Ted Kennedy. It was about Ted Kennedy, but it was about a very tragic situation in his life

00:42:42.140 that also was, um, spurred a lot of controversy, right? Because he, um, he is somebody that worked

00:42:49.720 in his staff. He accidentally killed and he was drinking and driving. He ran from the scene.

00:42:55.080 They found her way later. Um, maybe he could have saved her, maybe not. Um, and it also happened

00:43:01.600 at the same time that we landed on the moon. So it was an interesting news cycle back then. Um,

00:43:07.240 and we talked, uh, the idea around the movie was a, we adapted it. Um, the writers who were

00:43:13.320 fantastic as they write it, they wrote it, um, as an adaptation of the police records. So, um, and we

00:43:19.620 did a lot of fact checking around everything we possibly could. That was the primary source.

00:43:23.860 That was the primary source. And, um, what was interesting is that most of us that made

00:43:29.720 that movie, we're not like Republicans are hard, right? It was, we wanted to tell the story

00:43:34.560 of the fog of war of being the son of a very difficult father, being part of this legacy

00:43:41.020 family and this pressure for him to essentially run for president someday and how that clouded

00:43:48.440 so many bad judgment calls that he made over the course of that period and, and how there

00:43:54.220 was a victim, um, that ended up passing away during that time too. And we did it with such

00:44:00.500 a sensitivity that actually, even though we were, you know, there were people affiliated

00:44:05.860 with the Kennedy family that were threatening theaters that were carrying it. Um, we got many

00:44:11.140 calls as we were progressing into production to not make the movie. We had various actors

00:44:17.120 that wanted to do it, that were told not to do it, that ended up not doing it. And, um,

00:44:23.040 eventually when the movie, we got through all that, we made the film and people saw it,

00:44:27.240 both Democrats and Republicans loved it. It was a really thoughtful piece that actually,

00:44:32.980 I think, created a sympathy around Kennedy. It probably showcased maybe the guilt that he

00:44:38.280 had throughout his life and career to do some of the good things that he did for this country.

00:44:43.340 Right.

00:44:43.680 So I, I'm proud of that film, but boy, was it a process to get it on the screen.

00:44:48.420 I could imagine, man. I, I loved that movie. Particularly what I loved was like kind of

00:44:52.760 towards the end where like they get all of Kennedy's power brokers and everybody, and they're like

00:44:58.020 sort of spinning. And this was before I really got into like the nitty gritty of politics. And,

00:45:03.420 and, you know, I was just thinking like, Oh, is that how it goes? Like, you know,

00:45:06.680 that's, you know, all these people get in the back room, all these power brokers,

00:45:09.480 and they're just kind of spinning what, what they're going to make reality. Right. And then,

00:45:13.500 you know, kind of eventually I find myself in rooms like that eventually too. So that was really cool.

00:45:19.400 Part two is we didn't have permission from like the Kennedy's to like shoot shots of the Kennedy

00:45:24.640 compound and all that stuff. And there wasn't great stock footage. So, um, actually, uh, fellow

00:45:30.280 producers on a Campbell McGinnis and Mark Chiarity, they were there the day where we were getting drone

00:45:34.960 shots of, of the Kennedy compound without permission. And there were all kinds of secret

00:45:39.880 service, like, you know, coming after us and all that kind of stuff, shutting down the production

00:45:44.780 and everything. But it was, it, you know, we're really proud of that finished product and the

00:45:49.860 way it got through, but it just goes to show that people, you know, free speech is important,

00:45:55.640 right? You're talking about TikTok earlier. Um, you know, the ability to tell that story,

00:46:00.940 the ability to tell it the way we wanted to ended up being great for the movie and great

00:46:05.240 for the audiences that digested it. So I think that the fear of what that was going to be for

00:46:10.420 a lot of people is what tried to prevent our ability to have creative freedoms, which I'm

00:46:15.720 glad we worked through and got past. You know, we talk about creative freedom and you mentioned

00:46:19.700 that you did Iron Man three, right? And that was the Mandarin was the big villain in that.

00:46:23.540 Right. And I, I've noticed that a lot of these big budget films, right? They, they, they, they

00:46:30.400 kind of, I feel like they've gotten blander and, um, and my, tell me if I'm wrong, my theory

00:46:36.160 of the case, especially like movies, like the new Kong movies, right. And, and these big monster

00:46:42.520 movies or, or even Legos and stuff, stuff like that. I feel like the material has gotten, uh,

00:46:49.860 less America specific and kind of, it almost seems like it's meant for like a global audience,

00:46:55.280 right? Like the primary kind of viewer that these production companies or studios are thinking

00:47:01.920 about is like the global citizen, as opposed to like, we're making American movies for Americans

00:47:06.700 that we sell overseas. Right. And so do you think that that's kind of taking place in why we,

00:47:11.320 we see our biggest, most highly budget movies have like very simple subject matters, uh, that,

00:47:18.400 that they're kind of based on and not, you know, you like, I wouldn't expect, I, maybe you don't

00:47:23.100 need $200 million to make Chappaquiddick, but would Chappaquiddick ever get $200 million,

00:47:28.060 right. To, as a, as a global movie that we're going to distribute to everybody? No. Right. But

00:47:33.720 the King Kong movie might. Right. And so is that, is that like the paradigm now where everyone's

00:47:38.920 kind of looking for the lowest common denominator sort of subject material that they can then

00:47:44.880 distribute to the world? Well, I, I, I, sometimes I liken it to food, right? Like if you're a big

00:47:49.740 Italian fan, maybe you like Mario Batali, like restaurants or, or something that's like a four

00:47:55.880 or five star restaurant that's super good, but, but niche because it's, you know, it's high end,

00:48:01.760 maybe it's cost a little more than what the average person wants to pay for it. But you're just like,

00:48:06.420 I got to have great Italian food. That's where I'm going to go. Hollywood a lot of times says,

00:48:10.720 well, you know, we're trying to, this movie costs so much. We can't make the Mario Batali restaurant

00:48:16.520 because not everybody loves super spicy marinara sauce or whatever it is, or truffles on their

00:48:22.680 thing. So they go try to make the Olive Garden because we know the Olive Garden is loved all over

00:48:29.540 the country, you know, and it brings in the masses, right? It's a big, big business. So the goal sometimes

00:48:36.320 gets lost on trying to find the easiest way to create the Olive Garden. When the fact is,

00:48:42.960 if I look at Iron Man three and the reason why Iron Man three, you know, was projected to make

00:48:47.800 like 650, 700 million worldwide, and it did double that. And why did it make double that? Well,

00:48:54.260 it's because it had, yes, all the special effects like Godzilla versus Kong and all that stuff that

00:48:59.840 gets people excited to go to an IMAX theater and yell and scream and be excited. But it had also

00:49:05.800 a human emotional core to it, which was really about Tony Stark and this guy who literally

00:49:12.780 believed the only reason people adored him and needed him and loved him was because he was able

00:49:19.200 to be Iron Man. And in the middle of that story, he loses the power to be Iron Man. He almost dies

00:49:25.300 himself, right? And he has to come to grips with the fact that he might not ever be Iron Man again.

00:49:30.400 He has to be just Tony Stark. And it's that growing that you see of that character go through it that

00:49:37.020 a lot of people can relate to. Yeah, not a billionaire arms manufacturer, but like that ability

00:49:43.100 of like, oh, I lost my job. Like, will anybody like me because I lost that position? And you go,

00:49:50.100 well, who am I as a person? Why do people like me? Is it because I sat in a really important chair?

00:49:55.600 Or is it because of who I am and the way I am and and how I believe in myself and believe in others?

00:50:01.380 Right. And that's that that was that emotional attachment that got people excited to go see that

00:50:06.700 movie, not just once, but multiple times. And that's how you get to those billion dollar box office

00:50:12.080 levels. It's got to really be gripping. Well, let's hope that, you know, the human condition is

00:50:16.900 still a central focus in some of our best and most favorite movies. Right. Yeah. Well, and and for me,

00:50:22.840 like having done so much international stuff, like we just finished production on this movie,

00:50:27.300 Bad Counselors, and we shot it all in the United States of America and North Carolina and Nashville. 0.85

00:50:32.720 We used a pretty much an all American cast and all American crew. And it's an American story that

00:50:38.880 sort of combines like a lot of the fun stuff that happens in college and in summer camp. And it was

00:50:44.600 a blast. And I hope that the movie actually translates outside of this country and people go, wow,

00:50:50.660 I like love it. It's hilarious. The cast we have is so fun. But it really felt good to be able to

00:50:58.200 provide jobs for people in the United States, manufacturing what we're the best in the world

00:51:03.500 in, which is movies, but then also make something that's culturally really relevant to everybody in

00:51:08.920 red states and blue states and everywhere in between. So I'm hoping that movie works. And

00:51:14.300 I'm really proud of the movies that we do that do the same thing, right? Like cater to everyone,

00:51:19.500 because all we want to do with Hollywood is be entertained for the most part, be touched and

00:51:24.440 felt like we don't, we're not looking to be politically agendized, right? So I'm hoping to

00:51:31.000 be a part of that crusade to get Hollywood back to just making great entertainment. And I think we're,

00:51:36.200 we're getting there in a lot of ways. Well, Chris Fenton, I hope you and your effort to make

00:51:41.960 Hollywood great again works. And I hope Bad Counselors is as amazing as you're hoping it to be. And

00:51:49.100 we're all hoping it to be because we want the American movie industry to be burgeoning again

00:51:54.040 and to be the gem, the crown jewel of the world and of our country in terms of cultural production.

00:52:00.800 Because my belief is that America leads through cultural production and ruling the global culture.

00:52:08.180 Thank you so much for coming on the show, Vish. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate

00:52:12.420 it. It's so good to see you. All right.

00:52:14.840 Want to see more great videos like this? Click on the link below to subscribe to OAN Live and watch

00:52:20.180 Dan Ball's Real America and the Matt Gaetz Show on Dish Channel 212. Tune in, subscribe and watch today.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - July 17, 2025

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz ｜ Feeding the Dragon

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