1/20/26: ADL Crackdown, Shapiro Vs Kamala, Shawn Ryan Rips Trump, Ben Affleck Shreds AI

25:50And especially how this will play in the midst of what are likely to be some insurgent victories in 2026. Oh, yeah. That's horrible, right, to basically betray a huge part. And then that could lead to, you know, the feelings of betrayal, replay of the whole 2016 candidacy. Which is, I mean, I would say that's like the modal outcome right now is that there's going to be a huge fight. Who knows? I never count out the Democratic establishment or the ability for a lot of people to just like go along. Trump, J.D. will be the boogeyman of the, you know, he's Trump, but actually he's worse. And everybody will kind of come together.

26:24And then who knows, you know, from there, there may be enough people who are not willing to buy the boogeyman argument and you could potentially see some sort of close election all over again. I have no idea. Let's get to Epstein. Yeah. So this is, I think, a very noteworthy development. So podcaster Sean Ryan, who I think had Trump and J.D. vans on in advance of the election, you know, has been outspoken about. He voted for them. You know, he he he truly believe. I mean, what I get from this, he truly believed the hype that they would they would reveal the secrets. They would release the Epstein files.

26:58Clearly something that he feels passionate about. And he is thoroughly disgusted with the cover up, had an extraordinary conversation with Ro Khanna, who, of course, has been at the forefront of pushing to get the Epstein files released. And in the context of that, went aggressively after the Trump White House. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. Why is the White House protecting pedophiles? Why is the White House protecting pedophiles? I just don't understand it, Ro. I can't fucking get it through my head why we would protect pedophiles. I mean, I fucking voted for this shit. I voted to get these damn files released and it's like a total 180 just happened.

27:38They are legitimately, proactively protecting pedophiles. They are protecting pedophiles at this point. By redacting the abuser's names. The White House, listen up everybody, the fucking White House is protecting pedophiles. You hear that? They're fucking protecting pedophiles. That's what the fuck they're doing. So making sure that everybody heard, hey, just so you know what these people are doing. Let's put the next one up on the screen because he's been going in on Twitter as well. So this guy, Donald Trump's quote, spiritual leader, Robert Morris, was just sentenced to a pathetic, by the way, six months in prison after pleading guilty to five counts of sexually abusing a 12-year-old child.

28:28And Sean Ryan weighs in and says, yeah, and he'll probably get a pardon with this administration. So he's, you know, pretty aggressive going after them here and rightfully so. And we have, you know, to back him up, we have some new legal moves from this administration as well. They are telling the courts, the DOJ is arguing that no court can actually force the release of the Epstein files. According to Brian Allen, he says their position is basically the Epstein Transparency Act doesn't create an enforceable path in federal court. so judges cannot compel compliance translation. We'll release what we want, when we want, and you can't stop us.

29:02It has now been a month since they were supposed to have released everything, and there is a tiny sliver of files that have come out. And, you know, I thought we were going to get a drip, drip, drip. We got like a drip, drip, and that was it. Nothing else since, what, December is the last time? Nope, it's been a month. We got any sort of release. And those releases, even though they were redacted, even though they were insufficient, they were still very damaging to Trump and very revelatory in general about, you know, what Epstein was doing and, you know, implicating all sorts of people. So even with this very constrained, tiny amount of information that we got, there was still noteworthy information contained there.

29:47So they're completely stonewalling. They want to wash their hands of it. They want to argue in court. They don't have to do anything else. And they're flagrantly violating the law that was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president himself. One of the things that makes me hopeful about the Sean Ryan—I mean, Sean, you know, you got to give a guy credit. You actually talked a lot about this. He just had a child protection person on his show. Like, he cares really, really deeply about this issue. And this is somebody who is—I mean, he's got millions of subscribers on YouTube. and in general, the way that you could assess this as part of an overall, let's call it vibe shift, if you will.

30:22If you take the totality of like Tim Dillon, Andrew Schultz, Joe Rogan, Sean Ryan, if we accept that all of those people were vital conduits for Donald Trump or Trump thought, Theo Vaughn, another one of them, to Trump permission structure in 2024, then we have to accept that their criticism is also a permission structure against Trump and the Republicans in 2026 and potentially in 2028. And that's why I actually think that this issue remains so important, not only because of the substance, which, again, we've covered since here from day one, but it matters because when it comes to a cover-up and the way that they act, let's say, as we just pointed out in the censorship block, that they immediately will come to the defense of some Florida State student who apparently got yelled at because he's wearing an IDF t-shirt.

31:14But then you see them dragging their feet for a month whenever it comes to Epstein. I mean, you should freak out about that. Like, you really should be upset about that. And then you see the way that they act for multiple other high-profile cases. By the way, if you're super right-wing, shouldn't you be upset about the way that the Charlie Kirk thing went down? It's nuts, right? The way that Kash Patel and the FBI botched that investigation from day one. You should be furious. I mean, even, oh my God, the shooter? Remember the Brown University thing? What a shit show. And they had no idea where the person was.

31:49He ended up killing himself in a storage locker. Yeah. All right? That's how it all eventually went down. By the way, still haven't heard much about that. We got the transcripts of his video, and apparently it's just because he was crazy. Maybe. I mean, I don't know. It seemed pretty weird to me. Going to assassinate the head of a nuclear science program. But yeah, so like every step, they're either incompetent and or acting as if there is something to cover up and they have nothing to say about it. And then the president, the DOJ and all of their behavior look at the way – I mean Trump literally flipped that guy off, the Ford worker.

32:20And then even inside the administration, they're furious with Pam Bondi for blaming her. and it is like kind of centrally her and cash's fault because from the day one they handed out all of that epstein files transparency they made it into a thing which makes their retrenchment and their cover-up like so much worse yeah completely that's why i think you know there's this whole theory on the right called no you're not uh this will not be unfamiliar to you yeah um you never criticize your own side yeah and i have always found first no enemies to the right is not Right. You know, anyone who's part of the revolution is part of the revolution.

32:57All right. So but in this case, it is so clear to me that people who criticize get more results because if it's something that you actually care about, look at Roe and Thomas Massey. They brute forced this bill, which the administration tried to kill through all of Congress and made Donald Trump sign the bill, which was to his own detriment. That was only made possible because, I mean, a small part, a show like ours, which is part of like this vast conduit which keeps the issue alive and to this day is forcing like continued transparency. if you want to have something be done the worst thing you can be is sycophantic which is why I think it's really good that somebody like Sean Ryan or any of these other people continue to speak up about the issue because something in the zeitgeist is genuinely the only way that this will ever like where we even remotely come to some sort of transparency even though I will still never believe you know most of what they put out and I don't really think that that's you know where it is I do hope though we can normalize this so when the Democrats if they eventually come into power actually just released the entire thing.

34:02And then, you know, perhaps we will get closure one day. Yeah. Put E4, just last piece up on the screen, to your point about sycopency. Right. So courageously, you had, you needed four Republicans to sign on to, you know, to get this discharge petition through to get this law passed. You had Thomas Massey, you had Marjorie Taylor Greene, you had Lauren Boebert, and you had Nancy Mace. And the White House aggressively went after Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert in particular. And which one of them was that they pulled into the situation? One of them just didn't answer the phone. Boebert, they like pulled into the situation where they could do the whole thing, like full pressure campaign.

34:41And to her credit, she did not cave. She signed onto it. And that is the reason why this law was ultimately passed. Well, now they are all just trying to, you know, move on. They don't want to talk about it anymore. Lauren Boebert in particular said, quote, I don't give a rip about Epstein. like there's so many other things we need to be working on. I've done what I had to do for Epstein. Talk to somebody else about that. It's no longer in my hands. So outside of Massey and then Marjorie Tillegreen is on a Congress now. So outside of Massey on the Republican side, they really are all just hoping this sort of goes away.

35:16Like they're probably hoping the administration wins in court that, you know, that the courts can't actually compel them to do anything and they just continue to sit on it. and there's no drip, drip, drip, drip, drip that they have to deal with. They're just hoping this all goes away at this point. And look, they could be right because, I mean, even we are subject to global affairs. This is our, what is it, E-block, right? Yeah. I mean, what do we have to lead with? Davos? Greenland? Yeah. Ice? I mean, look, I mean, it's not that you're falling for their game, but, like, we do have to quite literally order the news in terms of its relative importance.

35:53and you can't be on top of everything at all times. That's part of the tragedy of their strategy is it usually does work whenever they're in power. I do hope if the Democrats, let's say, take the House in the midterms that they just create a Benghazi level shit storm, which makes them, which constantly keeps it in the news, constantly forces reckoning or pressure on the administration because as they've already shown, they had to fold on this issue. I would say this is probably the biggest legislative loss that happened in Trump's entire presidency, even going back to 2016. Biggest political walkthrough.

36:25Which is shocking. Yeah, it's shocking that it actually was able to come to fruit and that they didn't Bruce force it and eventually veto. So that shows the crack that people can continue to work through. Yeah. Anyway, I think it's a positive development. We would be remiss if we didn't give our flowers here to Ben Affleck and to Matt Damon in their recent appearance on Joe Rogan, dropping several truth bombs, not just about AI, but also about our movie industry and the way it currently works. Here's Ben's rumination on AI. You could have taken it straight out of like a Bloomberg analysis. Let's take a listen.

36:59What I see is, for example, if you try to get ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something, it's really shitty. And it's shitty because by its nature, it goes to the mean, to the average. And it's not reliable. And it's, I mean, I just can't stand to see what it writes. Now, it's a useful tool if you're a writer and you're going, ah, what's the thing? I'm trying to set something up where somebody sends someone a letter, but it's delayed two days and gets and it can give you some examples of that. I actually don't think it's very likely that it can it's going to be able to write anything meaningful or in particular that it's going to be making movies like from whole cloth, like Tilly Norwood.

37:38Like that's bullshit. I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's not. I think it actually turns out the technology is not progressing in exactly the same way they sort of presented it. And really what it is is going to be a tool, just like sort of visual facts. And yeah, it needs to have language around it. You need to protect your name and likeness. You can do that. You can watermark it. Those laws already exist. You can't – I can't sell your fucking picture for money. I can't. You can sue me, period. It kind of feels to me like the thing we were talking about earlier where there's a lot more fear because we have the sense this existential dread.

38:09It's going to wipe everything out. Right. But that actually runs counter, in my view, to what history seems to show, which is, A, adoption is slow. It's incremental. I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies where they go, we're going to change everything. In two years, there's going to be no more work. Well, the reason they're saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the capex spend they're going to make on these data centers with the argument that like, oh, you know, as soon as we do the next model, it's going to scale up.

38:41It can be three times as good, except that actually ChatGPT5, about 25 % better than ChatGPT4 and costs about four times as much in the way of electricity and data. So those nice things, it's like plateauing. The early AI, the line went up very steeply. And it's now sort of leveling off. I think it's because, and yes, it'll get better, but it's going to be really expensive to get better. And a lot of people were like, fuck this. We want you at GBD4. Because it turned out like the vast majority of people who use AI are using it to like, as like companion bots to chat with at night. And so there's no work, there's no productivity, there's no value to it.

39:20Has he been watching Breaking Points? Like, this guy's so good. But the reason why I thought it was important was because there is quite a bit of concern still around AI and its creative endeavors in Hollywood. And there absolutely should be because of the potential. I mean, look at the new Avatar movie. Like, it's insane what people are able to create literally like out of nothing CGI technology and all of that, et cetera. But what I think he actually hit the nail on the head, though, is that while in the long run there remains quite a bit of danger, In the immediate term, many of these companies are lying.

39:53Much of their behavior indicates that there's nothing that great or new coming. ChatGPT putting in ads into the feed means we're kind of there for the interim period, and we just need to monetize the shit out of this to continue pumping all of these data centers. And actually the difference between, you know, ChatGPT 5 and 4.8 or whatever really only matters in like a few select cases. And though the data crunch is like immense, but at the consumer level, like he said, we're talking about companion bots and all this other parasocial weirdo stuff, which is causing all these social pathologies. So I actually think he just like really eloquently kind of put it together.

40:33I'm a little skeptical. No, I know. To be honest with you. Because here's why, is because of the economics of, yes, to run all the data centers is very expensive, but to be the studio that says, you know, give me a plot that hits X, Y, and Z points and there it is, is extremely cheap. Yeah, that's true. Extremely cheap. And so there's an assumption that they're going to care about quality that I just don't think is really true. I think when you have that level, there's going to be some large number of, you know, studios that push in the direction of we're just going to do quantity over quality.

41:09I mean, you already see this. YouTube is in some ways kind of like a good place to see the way that these things will take off. You already have these channels that will just put out like endless numbers of AI songs. I have for some of these. There we've got Janis Farifakis came on and talked about how there's all these channels that deep fake him and some of the videos genuinely hit, you know. And so if you're just able to easily churn out a ton of content that some of it's going to be so shitty, no one watches it. But some of it will be good enough that it does garner an audience. there are going to be a lot of people who go in that direction of like of just slop creation because the economics of it are everything.

41:54And they don't give a shit about like artistic creation. And, you know, and so the fact that it's low quality is right that it's low quality. There's no doubt about it. But and it's improving marginally. But I do think he's right, too, about the acceleration has slowed down in terms of the improvement curve. And it kind of is at a bit of a stasis right now, at least for the moment. But that to me doesn't rule out the possibility that it's going to come to dominate the sort of like creative space simply because of the way that the economics of it work. Yeah, maybe I've made the great mistake of thinking that people value anything of artistic high talent and that slop will always win, which is usually the case, I guess, right now in our current system.

42:34You're not wrong. And at the end of the day, one thing that I thought was really important and illuminating from what they said, because they made this whole case for why their new movie is on Netflix. But they eventually kind of gave the game away about the executives and how they talk. And I'd never heard words put to it, but I had watched the first episode of this new Stranger Things. Just, you know, whatever. It's something to do during Christmas. and I was like, this is the shittiest written show I have ever seen in my entire life where they would gather around the table and consistently reiterate the plot and like bang you over the face, which is the opposite of good writing.

43:10Good writing is when you're able to say all of these different, just to be like, you remember our brother, John? He died five years ago, right? You're just like, you need to try and engineer in a script to give that away without the character actually saying. The central tension that we're exploring here is his breakup with Jamie. Exactly correct. That is what all Netflix slop now currently sounds like. They revealed why that is because people are on their phones and you have to be banged over the head with the plot over and over again or you're going to lose track. Here's what they had to say.

43:41experience of watching at home i think you know you're watching in a room the lights are on other shit's going on the kids are running around the dogs are running around whatever it is you know what i mean it's just a very different level of attention that you're willing to or that you're able to give to it and that has a big effect and it also ends up having an effect or is starting to have an effect on how you make movies like for instance netflix um you know the standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you know, you usually have like three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, one in the third.

44:14And, you know, you kind of, they kind of ramp up in the big one with all the explosions and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That's your kind of finale. Um, and now they're, you know, they're like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get some, but you know, we want people to stay tuned in and can, and, you know, it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they're watching you know what i mean and so then it's gonna really start to infringe on creatively how we're telling the story but then look at our lessons it didn't do anything it didn't do any of that it's fucking great you know what i mean see that's why i was like i was like wow that is why netflix slop sounds the way that it does it's because it's purely regression to the mean as he just said with ai where anything even great concept shows.

45:04I don't think it's deniable. Stranger Things season one, that was a phenomenon. People really love that show. But what it ended up being, oh my God, it's horrific. And there are multiple of these over the years and they just keep pumping out multiple seasons of this absolute nonsense which just continues to get worse and worse and worse and worse. And I didn't realize how much of this second screen phenomenon is now being directly pressured into the very content which is now dominating. And so, I don't know, sometimes this may be a long-winded way of saying, like, I'm now afraid. Originally, I was generally supportive of Netflix buying Warner Brothers and HBO over Paramount Skydance, but now I'm like, wait, we don't want this nonsense to come to HBO either.

45:45Like, I'm currently watching the show Industry. I've never seen anything like it. Where it is now currently, only they could do that. Like, only they could do that. And it would never be able to exist in the sloppy-list world of where we are right now on Netflix. So maybe you're correct that the AI slop is ultimately just what's going to take over. These guys were very, like, they were very optimistic. And they were very, like, you know, they were talking about how, look, we've experienced these changes throughout history. And people every time are upset about what's lost. But ultimately, you know, it's more convenient for people to be at home on their, like, you know, watching them.

46:19You've usually got a big, nice flat screen TV. And it's a convenient experience. And they did talk about how you do lose something. That is a different experience. When you have the distractions contained in your house, whether it's your kids or your dog or your chores or whatever it is, that that is a different experience from being in the theater together. But they were sort of like ambivalent. They're like, that's fine. But, you know, I've kind of come to view things a little bit differently of that all of the people in the past who warned about like the radio is going to take away from family time or the TV is going to create this like homogenous culture.

46:56and we're going to be, you know, and the warnings they had about that and the way that it would turn you into a zombie, like, they weren't wrong. No, they were all correct. They were all correct. And they were correct about that there would be things that would be lost that come along with that technology. And the fact that we grew up with it and that was just the only world that we knew and we were fine with it doesn't mean that they were incorrect about the parts of life that would be pushed to the margins by the advent of that technology. Yeah, one of my friends just recommended this book to me.

47:24I think it's called, like, Tech Exit. I love this. She quit television. She's she she like deleted all social media, which, you know, that's like step one. Yeah. She quit TV, period. She does not watch television. She's a mom of two. And I was like, man, that's like I kind of want to I want to try it a little bit, you know, as somebody because exactly what you're talking about is, you know, the origin or started with the TV dinner in the 50s and the 60s, which took people away from the dinner table. And then what it became is now people will – they may even be sitting. How many times have you gone out to dinner and somebody across the table from me was like this on their phone, right?

48:02And so now we created the device, which is now here everywhere. And not to be like a crazy Luddite, especially if two people make their career on the internet. But it's one of those where in your own personal life, you're right in that you do have to ask and say that many of the most vicious critics, Like when we think back about the television and what people said about that, maybe in the late 80s and 90s, especially with cable TV, there was a real reckoning in the same way you are talking about AI. They're like, this is a disaster. It's actually going to destroy. At that time, people were watching seven hours of TV per day.

48:36Family unit, it'll make everybody dumber. I think they were probably right. It did kill critical thinking. If you want to look, really the most disastrous statistics around phones and AI is books. The amount of Americans now who read even one book a year is like a record all-time low. The bookstore industry is only prospering at the high end for people who make it like a social currency in value to read. And professors across the country are talking about how all people do is just chat GPT, summarize books and readings instead of actually engaging or reading with the text. I think it's a, I mean, obviously, not only in terms of making people dumber, but then you create a culture, just like you're talking about with TV and radio, where if your kids don't even see you reading, like my kid is now at this age where she wants to eat what I want to eat, which is a very powerful thing, because you're like, wow, mimicry is literally the way that these children develop and learn in the world.

49:29Well, if she would never see me, you know, I famously have only listened to audiobooks for 10 years. I started breaking out the real books again, because I'm like, she needs to see me read, because then she'll want to read. That's the only way to normalize that type of behavior. But you have to be very intentional about that. Because my eight-year-old, Ida, we were talking about reading and how much I enjoy it. And she's like, you never read. I was like, what are you talking about? Yes. But it's because she, yeah, she doesn't see me with the book. And even if I am reading a physical book, it's usually on like my phone.

49:56Right. And then, but mostly what I do is listen to audio books. Yeah, same. So, yeah, I had that realization recently of like, oh, like even though I am a reader and it is an important part of my life, she actually is not. She has no clue. witnessing that. But in any case, to go back to, I mean, we also have to acknowledge like even as obviously the drawbacks, blah, blah, blah. We also, we like having the thing, you know? I mean, obviously there are positive things about it too, which is why it is so widespread and why it has, you know, completely taken over the culture. But in any case, the two guys, very thoughtful, very interesting conversation that they had.

50:34Especially the first half, it was very good. Yeah. It was very good. I will listen to them talk anytime, any day. Also, Matt, Ben, if you're listening, man, we'd love to talk. We can talk all day. We don't even have to talk about new movies. We can only do old. That would be even better. All right. Thank you, everybody, for listening. We appreciate it. I know we went very long today, so the show is going to be late. It is what it is. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. And counter... No. Ryan and Emily will see you all tomorrow. There is no counterpoint. The show formerly known as counterpoint is what I like to call it.

51:00Ryan and Emily will see you all tomorrow.

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