How the Pandemic Changed Us (ft. Greg Gutfeld)

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Jessica Tarloff.

Today we're doing something totally different.

I have the King of Late Nights since 2021 and an OG host of the five since 2011 with me.

He's also one of my favorite people at Fox, even when he's antagonizing me from across the table, which is basically all the time.

The one and only Greg Gutfeld.

We're going to be discussing what the movie Eddington gets right and completely misses about how the world changed after the pandemic.

I am recording this.

The movie, written and directed by Ari Aster, takes place in a small fictional town in New Mexico in May of 2020.

In the early days of the pandemic, Joe, six feet, and the outset of the Black Lives Matter protests.

No justice!

What do we need to do?

No peace!

No racist!

Police!

No justice!

No peace!

No racist!

Slavery was illegal.

During slavery, it was illegal to free a slave.

What about the Navajo logmok?

What we did to them and the Apache?

That's all the same.

You can always tell when somebody is learning something new in social studies.

Joaquin Phoenix plays the sheriff Joe Cross, who hates the fact that stores are closed and everyone's yelling at him to put on a mask.

Excuse me, Sheriff.

I'm sorry, but you need a mask if you're going to be in here.

That's okay.

It's okay.

I don't.

Pedro Pascal plays the mayor of Eddington.

How are we doing?

Okay, mayor, I think.

Who's a concerned liberal with a KN95 mask on?

You know,

if a healthy person with a mask

gets exposed to a COVID-19 person without a mask,

then they got a 70% chance of catching it.

But he's working with some shady tech finance people to bring a new data center to the desert.

Why doesn't he explain about the water and energy these data centers consume when we're in a historic drought?

We're always in a drought.

And we're making up for the energy and water with the solar that we're bringing in.

Okay, so.

The movie really makes it feel like life did back then.

Desolate streets, confused and angry people six feet apart, and everyone on their phones checking social media.

Replacing your businesses with their super farms.

Solid gold magic card.

Look it up.

This is deep learning.

That is deep fake from the deep state.

But then, as everyone's paranoia becomes extreme, the movie goes to wild places.

Spoiler warning ahead.

It's an important movie that still has a lot to say about our politics today, and I encourage you to watch it.

Please, welcome to the show, my good friend, Greg Gutfeld.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

Are you?

I gave you some homework last night.

You did?

I said you had to watch Eddington because I saw it like a couple of months ago and I can't talk to anybody about it who's like on another kind of political side.

I think it's a fantastic mess.

Yeah.

But I was curious.

what your takeaway was from that movie.

Because, well, I guess I should explain the movie is the really, the first COVID movie.

Yeah.

I think it's the first COVID movie.

And it takes place in a desolate town.

It's like a neo-Western.

Yeah.

And it amplifies the paranoia and the suffocation of the lockdowns and the and the restrictions by having it there and not in a city.

It was

like the moment the movie starts, you,

did you get the feeling that you were back in 2020 when you're watching it?

Totally.

Well, I mean, first I want to say that

the fact that you gave me homework.

So I invited you on my podcast.

And I was like, I came up with all these topics.

We're going to talk about this.

And then you're like, have you watched Eddington?

It's two and a half hours.

I know you have little kids.

Just make sure that you do this by 11 a.m.

tomorrow, which we did.

And Brian was excited to watch it.

So it was all good.

What did he think of it?

He loved it and.

is bummed that he isn't able to have this conversation with you.

He's like, we got to meet up with Greg and talk about this.

And he had been wanting to watch, so he was glad that I was being pushed into watching a movie because I'm usually like, let's watch a show because it's, you know, it's only an hour and it's long.

But it totally took me back to COVID and that it starts with a crazy man, right?

Like that's almost the beginning of when we started to fear people on the street.

And I understand this takes place in, you know, rural New Mexico.

So it's not the same as like where we live.

But that feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next that hasn't gone away in the five years since COVID was super jarring to me.

And I totally got why you were obsessed with this movie because it's equal opportunity in,

I don't want to say making fun of both sides, but the overreaction of both the right and the left to COVID.

And it just showed.

to me at least and I need to talk to you about the third act because I felt like the first two acts made a lot of sense and then it went completely bonkers, which I guess is Ari Astor's thing, the guy who directed it.

Yes.

But it just like painted this portrait of a broken country.

And I feel like we're totally still broken.

Yeah.

And the thing is, I was thinking about this because the first time I saw it, I was kind of distracted.

My wife just had a baby and I was feeling guilty being in the movie theater watching it.

I remember when you went and did that, like all the other new dads, where you're just like, I'm going to go to a movie.

Yeah, it was, I was invited.

So I'd never go out.

So I thought I would go.

And I was just sitting there going, God, this, this movie's long.

And so I thought the movie was going to end before the third act.

That's, and so when the third act started, which is absolutely bonkers,

I was like, kind of like sitting there losing my cool.

So I, I, so last night I watched the thing.

My feeling about what he was saying was that the problem before COVID and before BLM, and BLM plays a big role in this, before those issues, there's an underlying mental issue going on.

We can't forget social media.

What social media did when COVID came, when BLM came, was it exacerbated problems that were already there.

So you had Joaquin Phoenix's mother who is kind of a crackpot, whose crackpottery is kind of energized by the internet and and COVID.

Then you have these young teenagers who are looking for some kind of identity who are energized by the BLM movement.

So they bring

the

Derek Chauvin thing into their community of like 200 people.

But it's like all of these things kind of preyed upon existing mental problems.

And that's why, I mean, it's a pessimistic movie in that sense, because it doesn't say, well, this will never happen again.

It's saying that until we examine what's underneath and we begin with that insane, that mentally ill homeless guy, I think for a reason, kind of saying, like, we've got problems.

And then, I mean, one of the funnier parts in the movie was when they were having that BLM protest, and the homeless guy shows up again and just drives them crazy.

And it was like this, this conflict between idealism and reality.

And

I wanted to talk to you about it because the only other people that saw this movie were movie critics.

And I don't trust movie critics because they tend to put themselves in front of the movie because they are writing a review and they want to be known as a writer.

So oftentimes

they try to go all in on a movie to out describe something.

And I don't trust them.

And so when I was reading the reviews of this movie, I'm going like,

I don't know if they're being honest.

I watched a lot of interviews with Ari Astor to just get inside that head.

I think everybody should watch it, but I also think that it may not,

I don't know if it helps.

Like, I don't know if it helped me going back to that era.

The problem with COVID movies, the reason why there aren't any is it's so fresh and it's so shameful.

I think, I mean, I feel shame for not being assertive enough.

Like I had a writer on my staff who refused to come in because Fox was doing these mandatory testing things.

He's like, fuck that.

And it's like, well, and then I talked to my other friends who are saying, Godfrey, just nobody wants to do this, but if you want to do a show, you got to.

And I go, I get it.

But I like, I think everybody has a feeling going through that period that I can't.

believe I let people do this to me.

I can't believe I stood six feet apart from people.

I can't believe I washed my Amazon packages.

I can't believe I wore a fucking mask.

You know, I'm watching this movie and I'm remembering being on American Air and I was asleep and I'm jostled awake by a flight attendant who wakes me up to tell me that my mask was below my nose.

Which they talked about a bunch of times in the movie.

Right.

Yeah.

And I'm like, you woke me up for that.

And she, you know, she said, if you don't comply, you're going down on this list.

It was like zero to 100.

That was, and true to the movie, it showed the need for people with no authority to suddenly exercise authority.

So you had those kids shouting at their parents, like the kid at that great scene in the dinner table where the kid's lecturing his dad.

about white privilege.

And it's like, now I have agency or somebody yelling at somebody about pulling their mask up.

People who have no authority suddenly could tell the sheriff what to do.

And that feeds into something that it could happen again.

I keep thinking this could never happen again.

It could never happen again.

But I don't know.

I mean, what else could come down the pike where we exercise pressure on people all the time to accept your opinion.

I was thinking about this too.

You probably might agree or disagree.

The mask pressure is very similar to the pronoun pressure that you could just leave me alone.

I'm not going to, I don't need to acknowledge these pronouns.

That's a speech thing.

But there were people that were compelling you to do it.

And that creates this thing inside you where you go, fuck that.

You're not telling me what to say.

And I feel like that is kind of a parallel thing to the masks where, you know, if I'm in a hospital, yeah, I'll put on a mask, but I'm outside in New Mexico on a desolate street.

You know, I'm not going to do that.

But it was the, when somebody wants to compel you to do something, you instinctively resist.

And so you end up with everything becomes, you know, A versus B.

Mask, no mask, pronouns, no pronouns, when really it should be just leave me the fuck alone.

That should be, that is the American creed.

You know,

let me do me, you do you.

And if you're doing terrible, we'll try to help you.

But don't tell me what to say.

Don't tell me what to do.

Don't tell me what to put in my body.

You know, so many fights about COVID, the COVID vaccines.

And, you know, where was I?

I don't know.

I'm going off topic, but.

No, it's well, it's all on topic.

And I definitely know how angry you get when people try to compel your speech because we have had fights about pronouns where I said, well, what does it really bother you, right?

If it makes someone feel better.

And I feel like

anytime somebody compels you to do something and you can feel in your heart that it's wrong, it's wrong.

And it may be a small thing, but it's a little window open to a bigger room where they can have you do other things, where they can have you, you know, don't cross the street because we have a mural painted on there.

You have to walk around it.

All of a sudden, you have these silly, fucking performative, bullshit, virtue-signaling, symbolic crap that is meant as an avenue for power from people who just want to fuck with you.

I think that's a little catastrophic for some of the things that are.

No, no, no, but that's isn't that what it's about?

That is where the movie went.

But one thing that I was acutely aware of, because I figured that you were going to say things like, they made me mask, right?

Or whatever about the vaccines, like everyone's COVID experience was so different.

And what was interesting is that there were no cases of COVID in Eddington, which was like the underlying problem there.

And why Joaquin Phoenix's character, who played the sheriff was so upset by all of it.

He's like, You don't even have sick people here.

Yeah.

But my COVID experience was my dad was sick.

He was in an ICU with sepsis.

His cancer had come back.

And then he was moved to a nursing home

where he was one of the first people that was able to get the vaccine.

But we were scared out of our minds

that he was going to end up with COVID and it wouldn't be the cancer that killed him.

It would be this.

And, you know, it's so easy now for people to poo-poo what went on.

We had mobile morgue trucks.

And I get it about them masking outside.

And I had, you know,

okay, because I went through a similar situation with my brother-in-law who passed away during COVID.

It wasn't just the hospitals, the

experimental vaccine, whatever you want to call it.

It was that they separated you from your loved ones.

Did that happen with you at all?

Because it happened in my family.

He died, you know, with basically just holding the finally being able to hold the hand of his wife yeah you know my sister they were kept apart all the time and they were treated like

and he died but don't you think that there's something that deserves a bit of credence or respect in all of this that like the information was changing so quickly and the movie captured that right because everyone was getting their social media updates and i think social media and isolation and the tech overlords because this is about a data center, right?

That's moving to this random nothing town.

Right.

And for me, that's the plot line of all of this, right?

That Peter Thiel and those guys are the puppeteers behind everything that's going on.

Peter Thiel.

What?

No, George Soros.

Sure.

No, no, George Soros is in it too.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

But he's not a tech overlord.

You can't do this.

It's my show.

You introduced Peter Thiel when in the movie,

the people that came down in the private jet had protest signs and weaponry.

That's not Peter Thiel.

That was the Antifa that was flown in.

100%.

Yeah, who paid for that?

But the data center

is Silicon Valley.

Oh, wait, wait, wait.

Okay.

I see what you mean.

Okay.

Thank you.

So you're saying that

the other

storyline is that it was Silicon Valley.

that sent these guys in to wreak havoc.

No, I think that the Antifa overlords who I don't associate with Silicon Valley were responsible for that.

And that's part of the messy third act aspect of this where I feel like Ariaster just wanted to actually have a horror movie.

Yeah.

I'm saying that the fact that this is a dilapidated town that is going to get a shiny data center that is being sent in by

tech overlords is the major plot line because all of these regular Americans that had a life, right?

And this is, you know, happens in mill towns, seal towns.

We talk about this with coal miners, right?

Like everybody who's essentially being put out of work or has no meaning in their lives anymore, at least professionally, is up against the idea that they are going to rib and cut something like a data center, which can run on its own, right?

And the robots are coming and they're not going to have a place in modern America.

And that was the underlying story on the villain side, at least to me.

Social media is what is getting you on a daily basis.

and you can't stop updating and you get like the lunatic that austin butler played i thought he was great wasn't he mapped after russell brand just the mannerisms i think so even with like also the the vibes of his tattoos yeah the way he moved his hands and the kind of the free-flowing nature he was really good but a very brief i thought that was an interesting side thing but what was interesting about that thing so this this kind of evangelical cult like figure comes down was that it was telling you how social media can enter your home and take a person.

Literally take them to the house.

Take a person.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It could be any issue with, like, I always talk about trans.

Trans and trans was not spread by person to person.

It was spread through social media, amplified by activists.

In this case, we're talking about conspiracy ideas about child.

massive pedophile rings, which is very big on the right.

There's these pedophile rings everywhere.

You don't know the half of it.

And he said that he was like in a weird area.

It was like he was describing, I can't remember that camp in Northern California where rich people go, but he was basically saying a bunch of men hunt kids.

And it's very unbelievable.

And he's probably lying.

But it's pervasive.

Yeah.

And that's, I mean, I did think that it was equal opportunity, which I appreciated and going after the left and the right for this.

And I thought, just from a casting perspective, I understand that it's a director that people are excited to work with, but it is meaningful that folks like Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, and Emma Stone, who are to some degree avatars of the left, wanted to be in this movie that is going after the left and the mismanagement of COVID.

Good point.

Because they have a choice, right?

They can do whatever movies or TV they want.

And they wanted to tell this story.

And they wanted to center social media and online addiction and the isolation that it creates and the way that it destroys your mind and it frays all of your friendships and your relationships romantic and otherwise.

What did you, what was your favorite scene?

Because I have one.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it's the, it's the use of the song Firework when he, uh, Joaquin Phoenix goes to the fundraiser for the mayor and they keep turning up and turning down.

The Katie Perry, the way that was done was

one of those, I think it's one of the great moments and just the way he used that song.

But that is also, that's a moment he really snaps, right?

I mean, you see this progression that he's losing it, but there's something about going to an event, which I think was supposed to mirror Gavin Newsome going to the French laundry.

Yes, right?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

And they used Newsome as an avatar the whole time.

You know, New Mexico would be following California's lead, et cetera.

That's where the director grew up.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay.

Yeah.

By the

uh

i don't want to give away the ending but this the way joaquin phoenix ends up is a parallel to joe biden great you feel yeah no

i do not feel that and we're not going to give away the ending though there are spoiler alerts in all of this but i'm just going to of all of the absurd things that you have said it is not that he ended up like joe biden i want that on the record that you have now gone too far i know i wanted to put that in there because because you're obsessed with that plot.

What a weird moment for frontal nudity.

I was horrified by it, but that's also about the period.

Like, that's actually what's about the ending then.

The home health care worker.

Yeah, the home health aide, right?

Yeah, that is strange.

But I love that line when she's coming in and she goes, How are you?

And he says, I may have drank too much.

And he's the home health care worker.

I thought that was like, again, in COVID, just little things like that.

Everybody drank too much, including the home health care worker.

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Welcome back.

Like, it's obviously interesting.

It's spurring a lot of conversation.

I, because I did my homework and then I did more homework reading reviews.

And the fifth column guys were talking about it.

They were also talking about Yuan Fallon.

Very complimentary, by the way, which I want to talk about a little bit.

But

Camille Foster and Michael Moynihan and Matt.

Yeah, they're great.

But what do you think for today?

So like the conversation that we've just had for the last 20 minutes, I feel like is a pretty good summation of the opposing sides right now, politically speaking, in a friendly sense.

But, you know, there's one side, and this is you, that I feel like wants to rewrite COVID and just basically be like, everyone got a cold, but over a million people died in the United States.

That's you totally mischaracterized.

That's a mischaracterization of how I feel about it.

But I don't want to re-litigate that.

I don't, I, I I never said it was like a cold.

In fact, I took it, I took it seriously before anybody

like when it happened, but I don't want that.

But people are in the movie as well, the dismissiveness of the vaccine begins, right?

The questioning of mRNA vaccines.

And now we have, you know, Bobby Kennedy out there, our HHS secretary, saying we shouldn't be funding them anymore when they saved millions of lives.

And you've even said this, that Operation Warp Speed was a massive accomplishment of the Trump administration.

And you should lean more into that.

Well, the thing is, it was a massive accomplishment that none of the Democrats wanted.

And then all of a sudden they got in power and they flipped.

So it always became a political question.

He was able to cut through the red tape.

The interesting thing about vaccines that a lot of people don't realize is they generally don't do placebo.

controlled trials because they think that's not

humane.

It's not like, I'm going to come up with a drug that helps with erectile dysfunction or balding.

We're going to do placebo-controlled trials because life doesn't depend on it.

Generally with vaccines,

they have a belief that there's a track record, that the principle works of introducing something to build your immune system, to fight it, works.

So if you talk to your doctor when they, when they,

this is something I didn't know until like pre-COVID.

I was talking to my doctor and I go, hey, I haven't got the flu shot.

And he goes, it's not that important.

This one sucks.

And he says, this one sucks.

He says, it's probably got a 30% chance I wouldn't do it.

And I never thought, wow, I mean, like, they don't know until they're used whether they are effective or not.

What Trump did was he removed the red tape to get something out there.

hope that it saved lives on the upper echelon risk factor, like people like your dad,

but they were unnecessarily forced upon young people.

And that's a crime because we all knew that young people were fine.

The number of deaths, but anyway, see, we're going to go in that direction.

No, no, no, I don't.

I just want to add on the vaccine part because, yeah, my doctor says the same thing about the flu vaccine, but there are seasonal vaccines and then there are core vaccines, which, like, we should not be going after the polio vaccine.

Okay, so I think you're getting, are you getting at the point of like, where does this leave us?

Well, it obviously wanted to say something about where we are as a society.

And I feel, and I know you do too, just from, you know, being friends and obviously working together as well, that like we're in pretty dire straits in terms of how we interact with each other, how we understand how other Americans live.

And social media is the major source of that level of isolation and anxiety for people and how depressed they are.

And there was not a character in there that you thought was going to have a decent and good life.

Like from the kids that were performatively part of these BLM protests

to the oldest character, you know, what happened to Joaquin Phoenix and his mother-in-law.

So, so this is maybe the only, I mean, not only, but major criticism of the film.

And I think you might have even alluded to it at the beginning, is that

it exaggerates the conflict.

For example, we are in the media.

Maybe it's not as bad in the rest of the country than it was because we were covering it so we think it's that way and ari aster is in entertainment and in by extension media so he sees it as far worse and he's very pessimistic but maybe

maybe it's not as bad however

it was pretty bad i think the thing that we have to grapple with is how do we god i'm gonna sound like such an old father.

How do we protect our kids from social media?

That's like I got an eight and a half month old baby, and I feel like it's the one area where a parent is super vulnerable.

Used to worry, you know, my kid shouldn't go out and play in traffic, or my, you know, at the playground, there's a strange man in a panel van, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Now it's like, what faucet is on that is spraying this shit into my child's bedroom that I don't know about.

And what is it doing to her?

And can I stop it when I know that if you provide resistance to a child or a teenager, they will often then-the rebellion.

Yeah, if you don't like your daughter's boyfriend, she's gonna like him even more.

You know, it's it.

And so I think maybe, I mean, maybe we're gonna naturally evolve to understand

what this is, what social media is.

The use of phones in that movie made me me so

i don't know like it made me seasick

there were times when like phoenix would when something didn't work out he'd just roll over and look at his phone and everybody was on the phone it's like we are different animals now we're not we can't go back we can't go back you can't you have these articles like limit your kids on screen presence to so so so you know stuff like that but it's like we're like dealing with something that is i mean i would get phones out of the schools as soon as as possible.

Well, they're doing that.

Yeah.

And I mean, a lot of what you're expressing is, you know, Jonathan Haight and the anxious generation, which you should definitely take a look at.

But I think a core component of the problem, it's not just what the kids are consuming, it's that we're turning to the phone to answer every question.

Absolutely.

You know, parenting used to be, to some degree, at least, this is what I think, right?

Or I'm feeling something, or this is what my mom did, or my dad did.

And now we're checking every single decision that we're making, even up against like chat GPT.

I mean, the amount of people that are parenting off of chat bots.

I do it.

I know.

I mean, I have an injured hand from a pressure injury and I like just go there and I am like 90% of the way there.

And the doctor says, yeah, that's what it is.

Or that, you know what I mean?

And it's like, it does kind of work.

That's the scary part.

But then you're never happy like having a baby, having an infant.

You know, it can be totally reassuring.

What if my baby makes a wheezing noise when she laughs?

You know, you'll get this beautifully concise thing is that this is normal because oftentimes their throat is hoarse from crying.

But then it's like, but it could be, it could be croup.

Go to the doctor immediately.

Right.

And I spent the night in the hospital.

So, I mean, the thin line between this is totally tolerable and fine to you have to get yourself to a pediatric ER right now is very slim.

And also, you're going to have to deal with the litigating possibilities that you should say go to the ER, because if you don't and the baby dies at home, do you sue AI?

Do you sue the company?

Do you sue Google?

Do you sue Grok?

What do you do when they said, you know, take two aspirin and call me in the morning and then you die?

Can you sue them for malpractice?

I'm going to sue somebody for malpractice for my hand.

Anyway, you wanted to ask me about Fallon.

Yes, i would like to i mean more so the reaction to it which i found to be so fascinating that like everybody talks a big game about like the way we were right and that we should be able to talk to people that we disagree with and like you know we're hanging and hang at work

and

i was really disappointed to hear that you got criticism you know, from the right, like you were going to show up at someone else's show and be an asshole to them, or that you should have been anything but charming and nice and, you know, talk about what you were there to talk about.

I would say that was minimal.

I mean, it was a few people on Twitter, but like the left was really harder on Fallon again.

For platforming you?

Yeah, it was like, it was like almost every article from the Daily Beast, Media Matters, if that exists, but the idea that

softballs.

Yeah.

What was it?

I can't remember if somebody says he got on one knee and kissed the ring you know and it was it was like you can't win um i think most people saw it as fun it was interesting fallon did a really nice thing he understood that maybe the audience there present audience didn't really know who i was and just basically said it was almost like get acquainted with greg and he was very incredibly generous and i wanted to tell that drinking story because it shows that like we're we have a way, way more in common than we do differences.

And I don't even think he's political.

I think he got drafted into the culture wars.

He didn't enlist.

You know, I thought that we were both surprised before the interview, what a big deal it was.

It's like the producer comes to say, why is this a big deal?

And I go, dude, it's like, I don't know either.

I said yes to this months ago and I forgot about it.

And then it's all of these articles.

And I love this.

There's this douchebag.

He wrote the late shift.

Bill Carter said something.

He wrote a piece going like, oh, Gutfeld's going to go in and he's going to be an asshole.

And then, of course, that doesn't happen.

And then he writes an article about what a bummer it was that I wasn't.

It's like, you can't take these people seriously.

I mean, they're the same ones, Jessica, behind the Find People Hoax, Russian Collusion, all your little fantasies.

Isn't that a great way to just jab you for no reason at all?

It is.

It's a beautiful end to this.

But I want to ask you, I do have a question that I ask at the end.

What's one thing that's currently making you rage and one thing you think we should all calm down about?

Ooh, those are good.

Thank you.

Okay,

what's a thing that makes, well, you know, it's amazing.

I don't really rage much anymore.

I'm always going to rage.

You are a lot calmer.

Oh, I think I will always, until hospitals stop performing gender mutilation, that's always going to be the number one thing on my list.

And I think it's fairly obvious one would be outraged about this i'd like to see people go to jail over that i think it's one of the worst profit driving monstrosities in medical science okay now things that i think people should calm down about do do do do do let me think

i i would maybe say kind of the remaining vestiges of wokeism

I think that it's been kind of slaughtered and the idea that we have to still kind of like expose each little woke thing.

I mean, they're good summer stories because you can just, hey, this guy, this professor says this.

And that's a nice little D block for the show.

But generally.

It's like Shark Week.

Yeah, it's like Shark Week.

Woke week.

Perfect for your show.

Yeah, but it's like, there's no woke anymore.

I mean, there is still wokeness, but it will probably come back under a new name.

But maybe it's kind of like, I think they get the message.

I think they realize it didn't work.

And speaking of work, I do have to go to work, Jessica.

And so do you.

Are you on today?

No, I'm not.

Yes.

Now I can finally watch the fight because Jessica's not on.

And then when you're not on, they still tweet about you.

Well, they say, I turned it off.

And I'm like, you.

I'm not even on.

I'm not even on.

But you know what kills me about that whole mentality?

These are people, if they went to a James Bond movie and there was no Bond villain, they'd be like, why am I in this movie?

And they don't understand.

They don't understand that the only way you get your arguments better, it's like going to the gym to lift weights.

You need resistance.

Imagine going to the gym and there's no weights.

That's every show without somebody with a different opinion.

I'm going in to see if my ideas can lift weights.

And when you're in there, you force me to work out.

So I've said this to you before offline, that you're kind of my muse when I'm coming up with

my perspective.

I'm going, okay, I'm going to be facing Jessica.

She's very feisty.

She is, it's like, if we were playing basketball, you throw elbows.

And that's just the way you play.

It's just my style.

You know, Harold doesn't throw elbows.

He's more of a finesse player, but you throw elbows.

I have to realize, okay, how do I deal with that?

Now, if I didn't have that to aim for, I would be.

intellectually lazy.

My arguments would be weaker.

The show would be boring.

And I don't think viewers that get so crazy about you don't understand that.

They don't understand

that you're helping them think about their ideas.

You're helping them see the holes in their ideas, even if the holes aren't really there, Jessica.

But we like that, we like you prodding.

So I think I try to tell people when people come up to me, I go, look, if the villain is weak, the movie is weak.

You know, you go to a gym to work out.

The five is a place where your ideas work out.

And they don't get strong without resistance.

And generally they kind of get it.

But the only thing I think they get ticked off about you is a, it's a liberal problem, which is the superiority face that people put on when they're going, oh, whereas Jesse does that to you.

It's like the, oh, you Republicans.

Well, you know, it's, I think they will always see liberals as thinking they're better than Republicans or conservatives.

And that.

pisses them off.

Anyway, I got to go, but I thought that would be helpful to just point that out.

It was, and it was very nice of you, inclusive of the liberal resting bitch face that I tend to support.

Your resting superiority face.

Okay.

We're going to leave it there, Craig.

Have a great show.

I'll see you tomorrow.

You got it.

I'm going to be throwing elbows.

Thanks a lot.