Here today, this great morning. Im so excited to be here with my friends Mollie Hemingway and Andrew Klavan who i dont think needs an introduction. Two of the smartest writers, we have so many wonderful writers who were blessed with having among us during these two days, but on culture u2 are some of the best so thank you so much for being here. And one thing i found when im traveling is people get saying to me, and these are people who may or may not have voted for donald trump, depending on what state you live in, in some cases, but they keep, especially if im in the middle of the country or not on the coast, the northeast especially, people will say things like donald trump is president , and they dont say it again to just miss him or thing but is coming this place can be used to be the host ofrity apprentice, you know . And how es that happen and what does it mean . It auestion. Its not a dismissal. Its not a criticism. So how are you processing that when people expect you to have the answer to that question . How does it happen and what does it mean about us . Are the lessons to learn . Mollie . I do have this thing about once a day it hits me that donald trump is president and it feels like youre in the 1980s movie, where, that makes sense. But those are really good book life can be troy who is written for National Review called Something Like what jefferson read, i watched and obama tweeted. And it goes through a history of president in terms of what was instructing them. He looks at libraries at early president said and then the transition to television with a kind of informed how we viewed president and been the stage of social media that obama was very good at figuring out and using to his advantage. So i do think that the rise of celebrity has a lot to do with the donald trump being president , and i think about how jonathan, hes pretty sure oprah will be our next president. Shes very good at that celebrity stuff. And that there are things that are consuming about that. More than that i think that donald trump is a master of media in general, and he spent decades learning how to navigate hostile media envonment and using it to his advantage and figure out how to make a work for both the media and for him. And that happen at a time when i think a lot of people on the right that just frankly given up on this shot that they would get a fair break from the media. Answer these two things coincided at the right moment and i also think it has worked out to some extent at least to the benefit of both of those groups. I think the second of have a that will import because i think a lot of the things about donald trump that disturb we gentlefolk are actually his strengths. He has a keen sense of how information travels, its timing and now deflect the narrative. So you watch the media which petrol has been at this point, hes right, it has become an opposition party. And you watch the media buildup this narrative that hes a russian spy, the election was hacked. All these things that actually didnt happen. The election actually wasnt hacked and there is no evidence of this thing. He let it build up to a certain point and then he gave that press conference where he just slap of those people solely. A lot of my friends were going all, this is terrible, awful. And i thought i thought it was genius. The next morning the narrative was we are so hurt. Shes heard us before damaged. What did you do . I feel bad. I felt like that smart. When you look at what the media did to george w. Bush commented new look at how he has fought back against them, it may make us uncomfortable as people who speak more politely and you dont like the bullying and all the stuff, but it works. Its a treat and it is amazing to see. And talked to a lot of what we heard during the election. I wasnt surprised that he won. I thought it was a high possibility, in part because i was just listening to people when i was traveling and i would listen to the mexican cabdriver and, or the mexican waiter probably, everybody, muslims, everybody was telling me im voting for donald trump. And then i would say but youve heard what he said about x or y. But hes not a politician and s going to do Something Different and the politicians are not working and im fed up. You hearing that from everybody. It is sort of come he is following through on that much, on sort of giving it to the people that are the sources of frustration. A lot of times he says things and everybody jumps on him because he is unclear, vague and its like a blunderbuss just blowing up. But the people understand what you say. He talks like the people talk and i think thats a benefit. Our friends obviously we hear in the news all the time breitbart, but he was a man named andrew and use a friend to a lot of us. The history of National Review is that we used to have long instant message conversation with andrew and occasionally talk on the phone and long in person conversation every once in a while. Actually i remember one night instant messaging me because i i never have my phone ringer on, and so like he would submit text message and say pick up your phone. And then he says his son was just born, the youngest, he named after William F Buckley junior. So andrew always had a love for National Review. I bring him up because he wrote a piece about the crisis in the art and you quoted andrew as saying that people of money, every four years, at the last possible second i told you need to give millions of dollars because these poor counties in ohio are going to determine the entire election. I am saying, andrew would say why didnt we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in hollywood . Why didnt we invest in creating Television Shows . Why did we create institutions that went up from that which is good about america. His point being theres overwhelming narrative that the media and the culture create, and its hard to speak to that or have a different opinion than that. On the other hand, that all being true, mollie, youve written john stuart elected donald trump. Did it backfire at some point, all the leftwing sort of emphasis on hollywood to the extent thaople were rt of overwhelmeby i well, it is very interesting how weve had decades of people running roughshod through all of our institutions, the academy, all of our culture institutions and everyone is very surprised that we have donald trump as president and they were very concerned about how he doesnt speak clearly or speak truth or what not. And its funny, or its sad, to think about how their event all of these, just a decade to simply people on the left have really questioned the very notion of truth and reality and whatnot and everything is relative, and we are sort of reaping what we have sown through decades of letting our educational institutions kind of rot from the inside. And actually have i think a much more positive take on hollywood or visual arts in part because i think that they are intrinsically tied to telling stories that are true and beautiful, and that thats such a great buys to map and its such, it benefits everybody but it certainly has not, if theyre going to tell a good story has to be based in truth and has to tell something beautiful. We are also concerned it just doesnt do very well. But to the jon stewart point, yeah, i think when you look back, i dont remember when he got his start but it was during, when im getting so old that i just dont remember spirit ats the adam sandler fms . I mean they daily show and it really got going and everybody on the left, but also a pretty modern audience will he loved it and they thought it was great. He would do that sort of very snarky approach to the news and lots of sarcasm. And as you watched it used sort of my pickup that he wasnt actually being very fair to other people, that he was taking clips out of context or manipulating interviews to make it seem like people were idiots are whatnot. And at his best, at the daily shows best emily was a good engagement with contrary ideas. Some of the best interviews i remember were, like the one with cliff may when he talked about something to do with the war, which it was like a nice giveandtake. They had a really interesting discussion on torture that changed my mind on what those torture memos were. But then the other things like his interview with Jonah Goldberg reaches like ranted and raved and couldnt contain himself and in result was like this horribly edited thing that didnt even make any sense. Anyway, somehow this became the primary way people getting their news, this hostility, not getting a fair shake to other people. And other comics had just completely taken it and run with it to samantha bee is the best example of that. Theres a difference between her approach ande worst of jon stewart in terms of manipulating information and whatnot. And i think again a reaches ths breaking point where people just cant take it anymore and instead of engaging with ideas on the other side they are just like screw it, im out of here. I think in general there was this approach with so much of our media and cultural elite that was so antagonistic toward conservative viewpoints or even just like common sense viewpoints that people just stop listening. I think they are supposed to be funny. That is a big topic and something i find interesting and it speaks to truth and beauty being a strong aid for keeping culture from going off the deep end theres been a massive push to make abortion comedies or dramas that are funded in part by plan or had another pro abortion organizations and they always turn out like not just bad, b sometimes christian filmmakers do this preachy message and art suffers. Imagine that, but imagine advocating killing unborn children. You dont even have an underlying good message, so a lot of these things are literally written by pro abortion groups and it shows an comedy has to in order for comedy to work or good art to work it has to be more honest. Cant be so partisan or whatnot and so amy schumer is the one in particular that struggles with making abortion comedies funny, but in general its a difficult thing to pull off unless you are truly engage with the topic and it truly engaging with the topic its hard to keep your pro abortion message. I so agree with everything you are saying about the true and good and beautiful. Of these things tended to be good stories and like you you do it more now. I used to try to watch primetime tv and find the good and it would be amazing. You would have some of these shows that shonda ryan, i mean, she is on the board of planned parenthood, one was a drama about a Reproductive Health clinic. You get this amazing prolife message, probably by accident, but may be because of some wrer in the ro that no one knows is a plife conservative, which we know these people exist. I remember Andrew Breitbart being in hollywood and i have such a skewed view of los angeles because when i go out there i see the conservatives. When i i remember one of these gatherings very memorably remember one of my colleagues asking me, who is hercules because kevin a sorbo is a conservative and hes like courting from the corner and goes up to one of my colleagues, but you often look around and see these character actors and camera guys and script writers and everyone who is behind the scenes and there are so many conservatives and that will make a difference if you are just in a room trying to tell stories. Go for it, andrew. First of all i want to say its true that annoying celebrities can alienate people, but narrative changes consciousness over the course of decades and that we are suffering from a serious narrative deficits and to the point, youre absolutely right that all good stories tell Say Something true and beautiful and that is helpful for conservatives and not helpful to leftists worse of the reasons youre talking about. Good leftists artis have learned to get around that by changing the premises of the argument and making up facts so if you have that picture like avatar, one of the most successful anti war on terror films made, virtual propaganda they simp changed the native popation to innocence, the native population Science Fiction film if you havent seen that they have plans that light up at night. They have dragons that fly with the quality of choice with women and men. Those are all things native populations dont have. We have them because we have oil and with oil you have a light at night, you can fly it you have technology and gives women more choices, so if you change the premises can actually Say Something that feels true and beautiful in that the world of the movie that isnt, in fact appeared to the point of in mainstream hollywood, there is still a blacklist in the way it works is this, i mean, i have worked a lot in hollywood. You walk in and you are trying to sell a script and there are assumptions made in a room. Its a friendly conversation right, try to sell something and the odds are fantastically against you all the time. I walked in during the romney obama election, Fairly Famous director called me up about an old script i had written written, it had been optioned and fallen out of option numerous times. He asked me to come in and meet with him and i walked in and within two to three Meeting Minutes of the meeting he said to me republicans dont really care about mitt romney. They just want the and word out of the white house and he did not say and word, so thats put me in a posion of either sitting there and letting him assume that i am a person who thinks like that war politely as i did correct him and effectively ending any chance of a sale. That happens about 30 of the time. To tell one other quick story of a woman i know had a great tv idea called a famous show runner to pitch it and she said im on my way to a hillary fundraiser pitcher to me on the way over. Those kind of assumptions grade and atmospheric that makes it difficult for conservatives to operate. Its a difficult professor and. Ive lived in ours for 30 years and its a tough job and everything that lower short odds makes it that much harder. The good news is that hollywood is fracturing a bit. Mainstream hollywood is no more a solid force then Mainstream Media is a more. In that mainstream, which is still very powerful, there is a very powerful anti conservative bias. You make a point that i think is important. People dont watch movies like they used to and in talking about this panel two of us at least admitted we have not watch that many movies this year and i think we are probably representative of most actually going out to a Movie Theater and watch a movie. Movies themselves are a late stage of development for tv, whicis the new narrative art form is still doing quite well and there are other things that come out of hollywood that are more important. The thing that we lack is that we lack infrastructure that gives artists a safe place to speak. So, lena dunham made that show girls come if you went to new york when it was on people would say everyone is watching girls. Girls on a good night got 600,000 viewers, which on tv is statistically zero. Everyone that was watching live between 57th street and maybe 68th. [laughter] we dont have the same thing is true of john stewart, by the way. He had under 8 Million Viewers when he was on the cover of time, newsweek. They know how to do this stuff to make people seem more important than they are and to make people seem much less important, a show like bluebloods which has conservative values gets no press and that one about the minister with the seven children, cant remember what it was called, seventh heaven, no press and was one of the most popular show on tv for years, so there is this infrastructure that actually reverberates and makes everything you say louder than it is. Still, those shows are on the air and people are watching them and they have rocked long runs. There are people like Patricia Heaton that was able to get a prime time show after playing and people said that wasnt going to happen with crazy mel gibson, so are there exceptions . No. Its simply that we dont have the infrastructure to play them up. There was a movie by the Cohen Brothers last year hail caesar which was conservative pornography and i have no idea where those guys stand, but it was an amazing anticommunist statement, procapitalist statement, per jesus statement and the critics loved it. This picture logan, wolverine, the xmen, a wonderful movie i dont know what the guys politics are, but religiously its a beautiful movie. What we lack is the groups who say both two things, we lack the infrastructure to encourage and award reward conservative artists because artists work for love. Anyone who tells you hollywood is all about money has never worked in hollywood. Hollywood is not there is a lot of money. There is. Even if the movie bombs they make their money. Artists, not talking about producers on talk about the artists. They work to get girls, awards to get invited to parties and those things, so thats the kind of things we lack in the second thing is talking about rewriting the facts. Hollywood and hbo is chief among these has been rewriting history now 440 and 50 years so you have kids who think jfk was killed by a conservative cabal because theyve only seen the oliver stone and we never do that took all the great conservative films most of the great conservative films are either cartoons or cost him the drama say get the dark night chill edgy trilogy which was wonderful, toys story three, but we dont write history the way we see it zero. What out there do you see that encourages you . I mean, who is trying to do something right . Im very encouraged. We own the internet. We culturally we rock the internet, i mean, my pal michael mole wrote a book wrote a book , he made a book in his basement basically made a book called reasons to vote for democrats its blank. The book is blank. We put that sucker number one on amazon for over a week. This guy will make over hundred thousand dollars off a blank books. [laughter] [applause]. I mean, sounds like an expensive notebook. We are patrolling means on twitter. They are rare hilarious, theres are angry and nasty, our jokes are funny and its really a wonderful thing to behold and that is becoming becoming the major place where culture lives. That is a wonderful thing because can you measure that in the same way you measure blockbuster movies . You can in the stuff that goes viral little bit. I mean, its important because the other day a friend came over and brought a couple to my house that