In this episode, Mock and Daisy sit down with former music industry insider turned activist Robby Starbuck to unpack what they see as a cultural tipping point in America. From losing friends and jobs after endorsing Trump, to exposing DEI hypocrisy in major corporations you won’t believe, to making a documentary so powerful, Elon Musk retweeted it. They also dive into how COVID changed everything for Gen Z, why corporate America is terrified of bold conservative voices, and what it really means when they say, “We need to build our own media.” From teen focus groups to whistleblowers to Hollywood cancel culture, this episode hits every major front in the culture war.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of The Chicks on the Right Show.
We are very very excited to have someone with us
that probably a lot of folks in our audience are
already familiar with through social media. Robbie Starbuck is our guest,
and you may recognize his posts from going after lots
and lots of companies about their DEI programs and really
creating awareness and actual like online campaigns to get those
(00:23):
companies to stop the crazy DEI stuff that they've got
going on. But you may not know that Robbie used
to be a music video director. So we want to
find out how you started at point A and are
now basically at point Z.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, they're diametrically opposed sort of arenas, right.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It is interesting.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
They're both probably the most difficult arenas to you know,
sort of penetrate in different ways. And you know, on
the music side of things, essentially, if I go all
the way back as a kid, I was just in
love with music and in love with films, and so
I knew I wanted to, you know, do something in
that arena, and I figured, why don't I justfuse the
(01:05):
two together? Right, And so as a kid, I was
like sneaking into shows and filming artists and then showing
them what I filmed. And it was probably awful at first.
I was probably terrible because I'm completely self taught, right,
and you know, eventually it was good enough where one
of them was like, hey, we want to use this.
Can we give you a couple hundred bucks, you know,
(01:25):
or something like that. It was something ridiculous, and.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Like, okay, where was it.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh, I was in the area. I lived into Mecula, California.
That's where I mostly grew up, but like outside of
that area. I mean, like I would drive like hundreds
of miles sometimes, you know, at like fifteen sixteen years
old to go do this. So you know, I'd kind
of go anywhere and try to film artists that you know,
I felt like, okay, maybe people will want to see
(01:51):
what they're like live, right, And you got to remember,
this is early on where there's not a lot of
videos of artists online, you know, on the Internet.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
But like this is like nineties, is like two thousand,
When was.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
This the two thousands?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You know, this was early on early YouTube, you know,
things like that. So I was one of the early
people in the partner program at YouTube, okay, because we
had tons of music videos. So I actually did interesting
deals with labels. Like I think, in Hollywood, it's very
hard to break in if you're not you know, connected
to you know, the Hollywood elite, or you're not from
(02:25):
a wealthy family or something along those lines, right, right,
And for me, I was none of those things, and
so I had to have a differentiator. And for me,
it was that we were breaking the mold of how
this had always worked. When I came into the industry,
everything had kind of still been shot on film, and
it was very expensive to shoot a music video and
very expensive to shoot a commercial, really expensive shoot anything, right,
(02:46):
And they had sort of insulated their industry by having
things be so expensive because anybody who wasn't a part
of that world basically had a barrier to entry. They
couldn't get over right. My production company changed that because
we would go to these record labels and say, hey,
we can do these videos for one tenth of the
costs that you're paying for now, and a lot of
(03:07):
them would say, okay, we'll take the gamble on that, right,
because it's one tenth of the cost. We'll see what
he can do. And we were doing things digital and
barely anybody was. In fact, a video I did for
The Smashing Pumpkins I believe was the first music video
ever shot on the red camera, which, if you like,
kind of look at the history of cameras now the
red is used, you know, I'll kind of be industry
(03:29):
widen in many respects along with the Ari Alexa.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
So we were very very early.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
We had had that first one that we were able
to shoot with that and had worked with the company
to do that, and so we were breaking new ground
in terms of that and also how we.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Shot and marketed the videos.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I don't know any directors at the time who did
similar deals to what I was doing, where I was
going to artists and saying I will actually fund your video,
but I want the rights so that I can monetize
it on the internet. And so we owned the rights
to a lot of videos, and it was basically just
a marketing tool for the artist and they couldn't see
(04:07):
the future and the record labels couldn't see the future
in online monetization, but we did. I saw it as
a long term investment. So some of those videos go
on to have hundreds and hundreds of millions if not
billions of views on the Internet, and music videos monetized
quite well, right, So yeah, we were at like the
forefront of all that. And I built the company from
the ground up. I was the sole owner, never took
out a bank loan anything like that, so it was
(04:29):
like really like a bootstrap operation, and we ended up
with over a dozen directors across the world doing commercials,
music videos, documentaries, working with the major studios. And then
in twenty fifteen, you know, I was kind of on
my own journey too because my kids were getting older,
at least our oldest was, and I was starting to
(04:49):
see things through a new lens, and that was the
lens of like a dad whose daughter and her peers
are starting to engage with the world and culture. And
I had to like examine my own in packed right
on culture and I'm like, I'm really putting lipstick on
a pig, and I'm compromising my values on a daily basis.
And if I'm being really honest with myself, I can't
(05:10):
raise my kids to have integrity and live out their
values if I'm compromising mine every day. And so I've
got to be willing to take risks and trust God
and you know, do something different. And so around that
same time, obviously we have the primaries politically, and I
was always very conservative. My family's from Cuba, so I
shouldn't be a surprise. I'm like as anti communists as
(05:32):
they come. But I was always very deeply interested in it,
you know, because I understood how lucky I was to
be an American. And so during that election, I talked
to my wife, my wife from Texas, and I said,
I feel like I need to say something because I
also was sort of an anomaly in the sense that
I had built an online following already and that was
something not very many directors had done before. And so
(05:53):
I was like, I'm going to talk about you know,
this stuff. I feel like there's sort of different rules
for different folks, and if you're on the left, you're
allowed to talk about it, but if you're on our side,
you're supposed to shut up exactly, And I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Did you have a like a like a I mean,
were you out there talking on your channels or just
doing the produced videos like We're if you when you
made that decision to say something. Had people already been
familiar with you as a person, or just your work.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, so okay, both, you know, they'd been familiar with both,
so I had you know, you know, there's directors like
in the old school cinematic universe, like Tarantino who you know,
they have like a public persona like that was kind
of how things were with me online at that point.
And so it's different arena, but it's you know, sort
of similar thing where people know your name and kind
(06:41):
of what you're about and things like that. And so
I came out and not I endorsed Trump early on
in the Republican primary, which it wasn't enough. I came
out as a Republican like to come out and endorse Trump.
It was like a whole different.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Thing, right.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
My company at the time had to deal with one
of the largest movie studios, and I remember they called
me and they were like, you know, Robbie, it's not
too late to go back on this.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
You can go back on this.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Just say you didn't understand it, you didn't understand his
immigration policy, you know, so on and so forth. And
I said, well, that's going to be tough to do
because that was actually the selling point for me. You know,
the immigration policy was the selling point. Wow, you know,
and as a Latino is like I think, in their
eyes a special betrayal, right because like I'm not supposed
to hold these views, but they're not. They're not incredibly
(07:28):
intelligent about politics in Hollywood, so I don't think they
understood the nuance of like Cubans tend to be very
anti illegal immigration, you know, and they're sort of like different.
There's different groups, you know, subgroups within the Latino category,
and quite a lot of them actually think legal immigration
is a bad thing. But I said no, I said
I'm not going to do that, and I knew what
(07:50):
was coming. You know, before I came out in indoorstrump,
my wife and I had the conversation.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
We knew I was going to lose business. We knew
it was going to affect the company, and we were right.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
You know, Hollywood is in many respects forgiving to the
very worst things. Hollywood will forgive you if you sexually
abuse people, It will forgive you. If you are the
worst sort of narcissist and treat people terribly. Hollywood will
forgive you if you rape people. Even Hollywood will forgive
the worst behavior. But Hollywood will not forgive one thing,
(08:19):
and that's coming out and being conservative. It's coming out
and saying you know what, actually I oppose this left
wing ideology. I opposed this crazy Marxist, you know, belief
system you're trying to force onto America. That's the one
thing Hollywood won't forgive. And I knew that I was
okay with it, and so we had kind of trusted
God that, you know, we were going to go in
a different direction. And at the time, my wife and
(08:41):
I had had sort of wisely invested in everything, and
so we felt like it was a risk we should
take if we didn't, you know who was.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So was the backlash that you faced as bad as
you expected? Was it worse? Did you lose a lot
of followers in addition to business deals or like? Was
it a combination of everything.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I think I was pretty clear i'd going into coming
out politically. So the backlash wasn't worse than I expected.
It was kind of what I expected. In terms of audience,
you know, it was it was pretty mixed. You know,
I think a lot of people were sort of interested
in why if you think about it, around twenty fifteen,
like they were still building up the propaganda to make
people totally terrified in the normal population of this idea
(09:25):
of voting, you know, this way. So people were more
curious than anything else. There wasn't sort of the orange
man bad trumped arrangement syndrome yet, you know, so it
was more curiosity. Obviously, there were some people, mostly Hollywood
based people, very small group, who were angry at me
online and were like, you know, how could you This
is awful? And I got a lot of text messages
(09:46):
that were like, you know.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
What about friends and people within the company that knew you.
But then when you came out, You're like, Okay, I'm
gonna go ahead and I'm gonna endorse Trump. I'm going to
do this because we've experienced that. Yeah, just personally like that,
that's it's been tough. I just I'm just wondering, Like, personally,
that was experience that was very different.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So, like in terms of employees, it was a very
different response. And I never ideologically tested employees. I was
never like, you know, you all agree with me on politics,
you know, that was I was always hiring people like
are you the best for the job? Right, And so
obviously there was a range of political views. So I
(10:26):
had some employees come to me and be like, this
is awesome you're doing this. Had other employees that were like, hey,
I disagree with you, but I know you're a good person,
and I don't like what people are saying about you.
You know, it's it's definitely not you know, accurate, and
I've defended you and blah blah blah things along those lines.
So people who actually were like day to day basis
worked with me, they knew that, you know, even if
(10:47):
they disagreed with me, that my reasons were, you know,
not because I was like.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
A Nazi, right like, which is great.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
That was crazy and it was crazy to to sort
of frame in that direction. But then you had, you know,
sort of the Hollywood friendship matrix, right which is a
total force. And I always knew that I've never been
one of those people. Like to give you an idea,
this probably says quite a bit about me. Like even
even when I was nominated for awards at like the
(11:16):
m MVAS or the VMAs and things like that, I
never went not once. I never went to the award shows.
Even when I won awards at these award shows that
were like you know, televised award show, I never went ever.
And I just I knew I didn't fit there, and
I didn't go to the parties or any of that stuff.
Like I knew kind of through the grapevine that I
(11:37):
was not in alignment with their value set, and that
it was a place I was going to be deeply
spiritually uncomfortable and I would have to you know, it
would put me in weird positions, and I didn't want
to be in that position. Ye, And so you know,
now we're finding out just how sordid and terrible it is.
(12:00):
Like I mean, right, even at that point, I can
say when I was, you know, sort of early on
in my career, I never imagined it was as bad
as weird understanding it is. You know, today, I knew
it was gross, you know, I knew there was sort
of this gross quid pro quo that was going on.
But it's so much worse than I think anybody imagined.
And you know, in that respect, I feel blessed that
(12:25):
I feel like God protected me from a lot of
the worst things in that industry. But there's not real friendships, right,
That's the truth.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
There's not.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You're You're as valuable to somebody as the step you
are on the ladder. For them to get on and
get to the next place. So it's really about, like,
how can you help people right in it You're no
longer helpful to advancing people. You're sort of you're useless, right,
And I understood that from the very beginning of being
in that industry, and that's why I never invested a
(12:57):
ton into friendships, you know, in that direction. I invested
into you know, my family, my wife, my kids, because
that's the thing that lasts, that's the thing like, you know,
I always remind myself this, like when I die one day,
hopefully it's in a very long time, but you never know, right,
I know that the people who are going to be
there are my wife and kids. And outside of that,
(13:21):
you know, nothing is guaranteed, nothing's promised, And you know,
that's that's what matters to me, is those people that
are going to be there and making the world a
better place for them while I'm here.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
And that's what well, And.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You're obviously you're doing all the right things to be
loud and proud about your own beliefs and also to
make people aware of some of the crazy stuff that's
going on. Talk about the film that Elon Musk even retweeted,
and it has millions and millions of views. This The
War on Children? What inspired you to make it? And
(13:53):
tell people who haven't seen it a little bit of
the background.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Thanks. Yeah, it's been incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The War on Children now has crossed over sixty million views,
and we never imagined that when we were making it.
We didn't think it was going to be the most
watched documentary of like the last decade.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
But it just popped off.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
It went crazy after Elon you know, backed it and
put it out there online, and Donald Trump Junior supported it,
and a whole range of other people. I can't I
can't even go down the list. Just very thankful so
many people supported it. And you know, the fact that
it hits such a broad swath of people has really
built a beautiful legacy for the movie. And that's that
(14:33):
it has helped spur and encourage a lot of child
protection laws. So even here in Tennessee, it really helped
us with the death penalty for pedophiles. That was something
my wife and I made a big priority and lobbied
for relentlessly to make sure that we had the just
worst consequences possible for child rapists. And we were able
(14:54):
to get that done here in Tennessee, in in other
states where you know, lawmakers watched the movie and and
they talked with us, and they felt, you know, like
this was important. And then also getting rid of these horrific,
barbaric procedures that were being carried out on kids in
the name of transgenderism. The film has helped a lot
(15:15):
to open up people's eyes, you know. I think the
interesting thing about the movie is rand Paul's wife, Kelly,
She actually told me that the most wonderful thing about
the film is she knows so many people who just
don't believe that horrible things are really happening, or that
there's a coordinated, you know, element or effort out there
(15:35):
to derail the future of our children and to sexualize
them and screw them up mentally. And so being able
to share this movie with people has been able to
be an eye opener. Right, So, if they don't believe
that there's these horrific drag shows in front of kids,
they don't believe that kids are getting you know, surgical
procedures at thirteen years old in the name of transgenderism.
(15:57):
If they don't believe that schools are intentionally teaching them
Marxist concepts are intentionally sexualizing them. The movie opens their
eyes because we're using sources anybody can trust if they're
a Democrat, you know, independent, Republican, doesn't really matter anybody
across the board.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Like the media called.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Me a lot of different names, and they really went
after me over the movie. But one thing they couldn't
do was they couldn't say I was wrong. They had
a very difficult time with that because they tried relentlessly
to fact check and go through the film, and we
were able to back up everything with pure reviewed research,
with sources they trust.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
I mean, some of the you.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Know, evidence that we bring forward are people that you know,
really ideologically disagree with us, like people from Berkeley who
are professors there, and pure reviewed research that has been
in you know, sort of the most respected left wing publications.
And so they have a hard time, you know, trying
to sort of poke holes in the arguments we're making
(16:56):
because we're using their own sources.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And that was very intentional.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I didn't want to have only things that I trusted
and knew to be true. I wanted to really delve
into the whole swath of evidence out there and have
a movie that could be convincing for somebody who doesn't
already agree with me, and so we spent a lot
of time and effort on that. My favorite thing though
about the film was doing the teen focus groups, where
we got to sit down with teenagers and ask them
(17:21):
sort of their experience and what it's like growing up today,
what challenges they face. And I was really surprised by
that because we weren't sure it was something we were
going to include in the movie when we had the
idea to do these focus groups, because my first inclination
was teenagers are not going to tell us anything. They're
going to be very stonewall. They're going to be closed off.
It's going to be awkward and weird. They're not going
to want to talk with us about this stuff. And
(17:44):
they were so incredibly open. It was like the dam
had broken and it was just rushing water of emotion
everywhere of them sharing everything going on for kids their age,
and we learned a lot. You know, not just as
you know human beings concerned about this, but as parents,
you know about what these kids are dealing with. And
(18:04):
there's sort of a reflex I think from our generation
and the older generations to you know, sort of judge
this generation in a harsh way and say like, oh,
they're they're coddled, or you know, they you know, I
don't try as hard or whatever it might be. But
the truth is they have a very difficult set of
circumstances they're dealing with that are.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Very different from what we grew up with.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
You There's pressures and things that just we never had
to deal with as kids, and I'm not sure we're
entirely honest about that, So, you know, I think that's
a really great thing about the movie is that it
opens up people's eyes to all the challenges they do
face and things that we never had to think about
as kids.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
Yeah, and I agree with you. I think that they
do face a whole different set of challenges. And I
also think that the pendulum is swinging a little bit.
We see that at least I maybe it's just because
I want to believe that, because I do have I
have a thirty five year old, a thirty year old,
and a fifteen year old, so we run the gamut
in our family. But the fifteen year old, I look
at her generation and I think, I mean, I see
(19:07):
them as being more conservative. I see the pendulum less woke.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know, they're going to be extremely right wing.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Yeah, I do too, Robbie, I absolutely do.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
So when you talk about those kids being open and
talking about their you know, their issues in this generation,
I really do think they are rejecting all of the crazy,
woke crap that the previous generation. I don't even know
what that would be. Would that be millennial? I don't
even know. I can't keep track of all the generations,
but I but the yeah, because we're Gen xers, you know,
and so I just I feel like they are embracing America,
(19:40):
and they're embracing being proud of who they are as
Americans and knowing the difference between a boy and a girl,
and you know, those are the things that we understood
and it was just common sense. And I feel like
common sense is making a comeback and that you know,
all of that other stuff, the garbage is starting to
go away because they're tired of it too, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, the globalist left made a horrific miscalculation when it
came to COVID. Okay, because COVID changed the game. They
stuck a bunch of teenagers and middle schoolers in their
rooms with nothing but time to research, okay, yes, and
watch videos and start to think for themselves. And what happened,
they turned extraordinarily right wing. When you're given free access
(20:25):
to information, they shifted away from the left. And also
the other big mistake they made was making teachers so
incredibly woken crazy right, because what happens when you're a
teenage boy and you're put in a classroom with a
lady trying to control your words, control your every movement.
Natural Yeah, your natural biology is somehow toxic and destructive,
(20:46):
and exactly you should deny every part of it or
else your persona on grata.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It was a big mistake by.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The globalist left because these kids turned to the right
and they're going to stay there. And the truth is,
you had the young millennials were extremely far left because
they were on the front end of, you know, sort
of the shifting of institutions. And the media still was
controlled by entities that were able to sort of program
the masses for decades and decades, and they were the
(21:14):
very tail end of that operation. When COVID happened, the
media landscape shifted, and that was a part of this
big radical change we see everybody younger, you know, high
school and younger had this big shift. And I can
tell you this as a data I saw that shift
in a really interesting way because my oldest is sixteen.
When we lived in California, which was seven years ago,
(21:36):
we moved to Tennessee, and then when we first came
to Tennessee, I can tell you right now, all of
the kids in her peer group were either non political,
or if their families were conservative, they kept quiet, or
they were openly very to the left, and they were
indoctrinating sort of everybody with their viewpoints and bullying everybody
to be like you're going to be a part of
the climate club, or you're going to be this or
(21:57):
that or whatever, you know, like some crazy thing. And
the radical shift that has occurred is such that I
don't really know of the last time I heard somebody
their age in their peer group come out and defend
Democrat policies, priorities or candidates. I don't know that, but
I can tell you I've seen tons of them in
maga hats around town during this last election. I've seen
(22:20):
tons of them talk about politics. I've seen my kids'
friends follow me online, and I think that's something that's
weird to me.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm like, I've talked to my daughter about this. I'm like,
I feel a little weird about that. You know, that
you're getting so old that like your friends have accounts
and you guys are following me on the internet. Now
I feel like I need to watch what I say,
you know, I'm like, I need to be more careful
and do things and like the you know, PG version,
it's hard to get comfortable with the idea that like
your kids going to college soon, you know, like that's
(22:49):
that's just rat And.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
We're seeing it in culture too, like I mean, you're
seeing it like Late Night is affected by it, we're saying,
I mean, we're just the landscape I think is changing,
just all sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
That used to be. It used to be okay to
beat up on conservatives. It's not. It's not as okay anymore.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Which no, I'm okay with that, you know, because it's like,
you know, what diametric changed is what diametrically changed is
that back like ten years ago, if you were making
fun of George Bush, there was genuinely a lot to
make fun of, right, It really was like and I
still agreed with the party position then, but I didn't
(23:28):
agree with him. You know, I agreed with like the
you know, sort of general principles, but I disagreed with
him on policy when it came to the war and
things along those lines. That was sort of always an
objective person. There was stuff to make fun of there
that was just funny, right, Like we love the guy.
The way he talked was just kind of like, you know,
(23:48):
you were leaving it open to a lot of combination
extuy tgery isery, and so there was something there. Right now,
so much of our identity is wrapped up in just
common sense that when you go after it, you sound crazy,
and that's that's a good thing, you know. And I
think like it's incumbent on us to stay there in
(24:09):
that common sense, you know, sort of areas, because it's
going to make it very hard for the left to
beat us on any front because it's when you shift
out of that that you become sort of fear game, right,
And we have to be really honest about that, And
so most people want us to be in that common
sense zone. And I think that, you know, we have
(24:30):
to find ways to shift our priorities into being in
that zone and that makes us more able to achieve
what we want to achieve. Right, So, you know, it's
like my argument has always been, let's win every eighty
twenty issue, Like there should be no reason we don't,
because almost every eighty twenty issue is just pure common sense,
(24:51):
and for a long time, both sides of the political
aisle have just left them out there. And during this
last election, what we saw was President Trump grabbed those
eighty twenty e issues and he ran on them.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Yes, and that includes, you know, the DEI stuff that
you've been obviously really targeting companies that everyone is familiar
with and saying we know what you're doing and we're
exposing it to the world so that they can make
a judgment about whether or not what you're doing makes
any sense. And you've had a lot of success with
(25:22):
getting these companies to at least say, yes, we're revising
or we're getting rid of this DEI initiative.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Do you continue to do.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
That work, how do you choose your targets and what
kind of changes have you seen as a result of
that work.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, I mean it's been incredible what we've been able
to accomplish in the last year, and we've had a
little bit of a slowdown period over the last month
and a half because we're planning some things that will
be happening. Folks will be hearing about that I think
will be very exciting. We've still had some wins during
that time period and we're very happy with that. But
I think we'll sort of ramp up and have a
(26:00):
lot more companies to announce this summer. But yeah, essentially,
you know, I realized nobody was telling the truth about
what these companies were doing, and in many respects, a
lot of them were held hostage, you know, and so
they needed somebody to come in and say, hey, these
people are holding them hostage. We're going to take the
gun out of their hands, right, and we're going to
(26:20):
show people what's happening, and that by virtue of just
sort of exposing it, it's going to bring down a
lot of these, you know, sort of facades that have
been built up. So for the left, it was sort
of about exposing how they were paper tigers, right, because
you had these groups like the HRC or Al Sharpton,
and they had built themselves into these sort of mythological
(26:43):
creatures that should be feared by corporate America, right. And
what I did is I showed corporate America they're not
real that they really they don't have the power that
they pretend to have, but we do. And we had
to show them that we had to bear our teeth.
And so, you know, my first three companies were our
sort of proving ground. It was companies testing us to
(27:05):
see what are they actually capable of? And I say
they instead of me, because like, I'm not Al Sharpton,
this isn't about me. I'm not, you know, so narcissistic
and obsessed with myself that I believe companies are afraid
of me personally. They're afraid of what I represent. They're
afraid of me. I'm a megaphone for this big swath
of people, and I'm very blessed to be that megaphone.
(27:26):
And so, you know, we had to prove ourselves and
we did. I think that everybody you know who sort
of supported my campaigns, we made these companies terrified. We
showed the weight that we could carry. We showed the
financial you know, sort of hammer we had. And the
first company that we went up against, Tractor Supply, they
lost over three billion in market cap when we went
(27:47):
after them. John Deere lost over ten billion in market cap,
and then Harley Davidson is still suffering today even after
their CEOs out, because they fought us the longest, and
that was the case. People point to a lot of
different things that are like Walmart or this company or
that company is the reason company started to just kind
of like give you whatever you wanted.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
The truth is it's Harley Davidson.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Harley Davidson is the company that resulted in other companies
saying we will we will do what you want, you know.
And it's because they saw that if they fought me
and really went after me, that I was going to
be the most punishing and relentless I could possibly be,
and that that was going to do some very bad things.
In fact, Harley Davidson really recently had a board member
(28:32):
resign that is very rare for board members to do,
and in his resignation he wrote essentially that the way
the company mishandled the situation with me could mean the
end of the company in total, that they may just
not survive this because they so thoroughly decimated their reputation
with their core customer base, and they had gotten so
(28:55):
far out of line and didn't do what they should
have done early on with me. They're not sure there's
any coming back, and there's stock price.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, if you look at it, it still reflects that.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I mean, it was total decimation, and they got rid
of the CEO, you know, and really what's going to
decide if they live or die as a company is
going to be the direction the new CEO takes it in.
And we're going to be watching that very closely because
if they are not a reformer to get back to
sort of the core of what Harley Davidson is, then
(29:26):
I think we're going to have something to say about
it if they do go in the right direction and
they do reform back to sort of the culture that
Harley Davidson is supposed to be about, just sort of
an American icon, right. It's like celebration. It's not explicitly political,
you know. And that's the thing actually I think has
made our campaign very successful is I'm not telling companies
you need to adopt my politics. I'm saying stay out
(29:48):
of politics. There's no reason for you as a company
to have a position on transgenderism. It's ridiculous, you know,
there's no reason you guys should have a policy on abortion.
It's ridiculous. You're a company. Make your products, like I
don't care what it is. Like, you know, you could
be Gatorade or Pepsi or you know, Walmart, Like, I
don't care what you make, how you sell it, Like,
(30:11):
just make good products, provide great service. Celebrate America, you
know if you if you're using our money, you know,
like try to do good for our country.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
But stay out of politics.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Study the info, like did you have moles everywhere? Like
did people that worked on the inside volunteer the information
and you know, ask to work with you? How did
you do that?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I probably have more corporate sources than anybody in America
American history now.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, we have so many whistleblowers. It's absurd. Any company
you can pick out of a hat, we have a
source there. Any any major fortune five hundred company, you know,
if you pull them out of a hat, we have
a source at the company.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
And the brands that are the brands that are taking
some of the positions that they do are some of
the most surprising brands to do.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
So that's what's so bad.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Flaying to me you know, which is why I think
these campaigns are so effective, right, because these are the
companies that people are like a two.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Ay two John here and and tract Or supply are
you paying?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
So we plan this out, I think very effectively, which
was that we were going to start with companies, exposing
companies that have massively conservative consumer bases, prove our power there,
but also understand this is psychological. You know, this whole
Wokeness operation was psychological, and we need to do something
(31:33):
akin to that in reverse in terms of influencing the
direction our country goes. So what we needed to do
was build up the psychological understanding that we were the
incoming wave, the tidal wave that could not be stopped.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
But you had to build that up, right.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So you start with these companies that just can't deny
their consumer bases are on my side, right, But eventually
that wave gets so big it's a tsunami that sort
of engulfs everybody.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So the tipping point for that was Walmart. When I
got Walmart to back off everything, that was when corporate
America really kind of fell and they said, Okay, we
need to aggressively start to assess how we do things differently,
because if our biggest employer in the country has changed
(32:24):
and they're rejecting wokeness openly, we're in trouble, right. And
so that was when the social fabric sort of changed,
and you saw the psychology flip, and you saw frantic
board meetings for you know, companies to stop this before
they're the next company that's exposed. I mean, you got
to understand too. Companies spent New York Times admitted this.
(32:46):
They spent absurd, absurd sums of money to do opposition
research on me. They have what The New York Times
called a new cottage industry built around how you handle
Robbie Starbuck. There was a whole industry of advisors and
communications professionals getting hired for how you potentially deal with
me if I come after you.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
And what were they expecting to find?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well, I mean, I think it's one of them.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
What were they going to do?
Speaker 3 (33:13):
I really don't fault them for this.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
And because any competent corporate CEO, if they could spend
a little bit of money to try to get in
front of something and say, hey, this person actually committed
this crime and they haven't told anybody about it, I
get it. Like, I mean, it's it's fair game. You
put yourself in the public arena, people are going to
go and they're going to do oper research on you.
Totally fine with me. They wasted their money though, you
(33:37):
know exactly. Ceo come back to me, he says, you know,
I got it at this after we made a deal
with them, he goes, Robbie, I got to tell you
you totally wasted our money. You know, we we did
all this research on it, and at the end of it,
you know, the answer we got essentially is you were
one of the most boring people they had ever.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Come up for our They said, you don't leave your
house almost ever. You know, you you don't.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Only have hobbies, you know, you're just like you're with
your family or you're working, and that's basically it.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Like that's all you do.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
You don't drink, you don't do drugs like you know,
any of those things. And I'm like, yeah, well I'm
you know, I'm content with what I've got. You know,
I'm not searching for anything. I don't have some hole
in my heart I'm trying to fill. You know, I'm
a pretty happy person actually, So you know, I thought
that was funny, but it's you know, if you think
about it, you really can't blame them.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
I mean, you've got to.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Take a shot at it, right, You've got to try,
because if there was some horrible thing, you know, and
in my in my background, I mean, like you'd want
to use that as a company, right, you'd want to
go out there and be like, hey, this guy criticizing
us is actually you know whatever it is, right, Yeah,
So I don't I don't blame them for that. But
it's interesting the desperation that sort of increased after Walmart,
(34:49):
and I think in many respects that's that sort of
shifted the needle. And you got to keep in mind,
by the way this was happening, all of this, you know,
started well before the election. You know, we were to
build up this changing mindset before the election, very intentionally
because we wanted to make people feel safer as you
got closer to the election being open about your rejection
(35:10):
of wokeness, because if you go back a year before
the election, people were still very afraid to speak out
about these things, especially in the workplace. And I think
one of our greatest achievements through this campaign is the
fact that people are no longer afraid in their workplaces
in many cases to speak up and push back and say, hey, actually,
this could be a real liability for us, This could
(35:31):
be a real problem for the company, that this is
out there, that we're doing this. I think we should
probably be careful with this new Department of Justice, with
this new you know, like people are not afraid to
speak up about these things anymore, and that's huge.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I think I want to lead you to Elon's you know,
revival of Twitter. So funny because you know, you think
about how free people immediately felt when he bought it,
and people were like testing the waters right and like posting,
can we say gay and retarded now? And so they
were like doing it, and it's just been such this
amazing transformation. I think that did help people feel more
(36:06):
courageous about being loud and proud, just.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
Everything, just being being out of exactly just being themselves.
I mean, for years we would get emails of people saying,
I agree with what you guys say, but I can't
say it on my college campus, I can't say it
at work. I can't say I can't be conservative out
loud and proud. It's ridiculous. But now I feel like
more and more people can they can just be conservative
(36:31):
walking around, which is a really beautiful thing, right, And
it's largely in part to obviously the administration, but to
the work that you do too, So it's wonderful.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
It's a great thing.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I think, you know, there's a conversation like we're being
really honest. President Trump is his last term, and if
you look across the landscape, one of the really important
parts of his legacy is this activist base that sort
of has a major influence. It's in the grassroots right
that's going to outlive him, and it was largely predicated
(37:05):
on people boldly sort of standing up for him from
twenty sixteen on, or really twenty fifteen on. I think
that is going to be a huge part of his legacy,
is that the people who sort of came from that
in twenty fifteen will long term be real, you know,
sort of shifters and shapers of culture in this country.
(37:27):
And I think we're going to see I think we're
ascendant on the right, not just politically but culturally, and
I think we have an opportunity for total dominance. There's
a lot of little, you know, micro factors that have
to be considered in things that you have to be
good at and you can't sort of screw up your opportunity.
But let's just say we do ninety percent of things
(37:48):
right or eighty percent of things right. In these opportunity
pools we have right now, we could be culturally dominant
for a very long period.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And I love here.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
I love that too. Gosh, please let that. Yes, I have.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Everything's building up in that direction, right. So, like, look
at the media landscape right now. If you had told
me ten years ago, or told anybody ten years ago
that the right would become dominant in the media landscape,
people would say, I don't think so. I mean, the
left owns the media right, but we are, you know,
I mean for all the shit we give mainstream media,
the truth is, at this point we now have more
(38:23):
power than them in independent media. You know, if I
put up a video about a company, it gets more
views in CNN in primetime a week for a week.
You know, Like if you take CNN's ratings for a
week in primetime, combine it together, like one of my
videos on wokeness at a company will get more views
than that and.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
More social action too.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
The thing that's breaking down now is the structure of
you know, how those news agencies and things were compensated,
right because and you're seeing this with Stephen Colbert, right,
so the Emperor has no clothes.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
They lost forty million.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Dollars on the show because advertisers don't want to pay
when you don't have that many eyeballs, right, especially in
key demos. Well, then you've got this shifting landscape on
our side, which is that we have eyeballs. But the
advertisers were told for so long by these different agencies
like you can't give them money, you can't advertise with them,
you know. Now you're going to get into this new,
(39:15):
you know, sort of arena where they have to advertise
with independent media because that's where the eyeballs are.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
And the truth is we're just beating them, you know.
And so.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
That's really important for how you see the future culturally,
because if we were able to do it there, we
can certainly do it in Hollywood and music and other
places too. The thing that's important that we should take
from this is we didn't win that fight with the
media by trying to take control of their institutions.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
We built our own.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
And that's the thing we have to be very cognizant
of as we approach these other fights. We're not going
to win the fight with Hollywood by going and it
being a part of Hollywood. We're going to beat it
by making great things outside the system that people want
to do.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
That's such an incredible point.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, and so the barrier to entry you know too,
like if they don't want to, if they fight us
getting into the movie theaters and things like that, like
they did with the War on Children in Canada, we
were actually banned from movie theaters, you know, So if
they want to play that game, they're again kicking themselves
the same way they did when they tried to ban
(40:25):
people from TV shows and news programs because their voices
were too controversial or whatever.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Despite people having.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Putting the explicit lyrics label on a record album and
expecting a teenager not to want it more.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
You're going to find avenues to reach people like we
did with our movie. You know. Our numbers in Canada
were fantastic despite the ban on the movies at movie theaters,
because people wanted to see it and it made them
more interested. And why did they ban this movie? You
know what's so dangerous about it? And then people would
watch it, they'd be like, that's weird. This movie just
wanted to protect kids, Like it's it's literally just like,
(41:00):
let's take the issue of pedophiles or mental health that
are in the movie, right, we don't politicize it in
the movie. We're very, very neutrally talking about the issues
kids face when it comes to sexualization and mental health
and the fact that we have the most depressed generation
in human history. This is this is the most mentally
ill generation in human history. And I think again you
(41:21):
talk about why this shift occurred politically for this upcoming generation,
they experienced a lot of really difficult things during COVID,
and they've seen how their peer group has suffered. They've
seen the mental anguish in the group of people who
have adopted some of the wokeness you know, the most,
and so they understand the harms of it in very
interesting different ways than we ever will. And so, you know,
(41:45):
I think it's natural they're rejecting what caused that harm,
and so I think they will actually be more conservative
than any generation that we actually have seen in America.
I think they'll be the most conservative because if you
look at the male numbers what's happened historically when you
have you know, let's take this to all of human history,
(42:06):
what happens by the time people marry, When they marry
and have kids, females political views are the most movable
thing in human history. So if you're a liberal girl
in college right now, out of all humans, you are
the most likely to change your political view and conform
it to your husband's. That's all of human history. So
(42:27):
what really matters is looking at the male political belief
system in that age group right now, and when you
look at that, it is dominantly right wing, the most
right wing we have seen, right, So what's going to
happen when they reach that age where they get married
and have kids. You're going to see a massive number
of females realign their politics to the politics their husbands have,
(42:47):
and also changing priorities because suddenly, when you have kids,
you're concerned about safety, you're concerned about you know, all
these different things you weren't concerned about when you were
in college and you just wanted people to think you
were nice, Right, And there's a lot that goes with that, right, Like,
I almost don't even fault some of these young girls
who are in high school or college and they have,
you know, sort of more liberal views. They're just concerned
(43:09):
at that point about seeming nice, right, and they are
lacking a lot of real world sort of experience to
understand how niceness can get you killed, you know, and
that you know it can destroy your life, it can
destroy your child's life. You can't always be nice, you know.
I had this discussion actually yesterday about a legal immigration.
You've got all of these leaders out there in the
(43:31):
world pretending this is such a complicated problem. Maybe it's
the Latinos strong man in me, but it's not complicated. Okay,
you could put me in charge of any country on
the face of the earth, any country, I don't care
which one it is. I could solve a legal immigration
in a month. People might not like it, they might
think I'm mean, but I could solve it. I could
damn well solve it, and nobody would push nobody would
(43:53):
try again. Okay, it would not try, because it'd be
very clear in our country, we don't do this. We
don't accept this culture. Truly, we will never accept it,
and we will sort of have an iron fist when
it comes to this. Doesn't mean we hate people from
the outside. But you've got to have, you know, very
strong consequences and incentives for what you want out of
(44:14):
a society, and frankly, we haven't had that, you know,
in a very long time in America.
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Yeah, we're one of the few. Yeah, we're like, we're
you look around the world and other countries have it
and we don't.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Even in Trump's first term, we did not have it
because Trump was fighting a beast in DC.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
It was just like it was constantly just this game
of tug a war, and so you weren't able to
establish any sort of new cultural identity that said, actually
there's these new incentives, Actually there's this new way things
are going to be done.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Everything was a fight term two.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Staffing was done very differently, and the ability to sort
of gut a lot of parts of the federal bureaucracy.
It was different this time, right, And so so I
think a lot of people kind of knew what they
were doing in ways they didn't know during the first term.
And so you are starting to see that shift in
expectations and sort of you know, what incentives were putting
(45:12):
out there, and I think that, you know, my hope
is we get more aggressive in that respect, because I
think society is all about the incentives that you give
the populace. And for my entire life, the incentive structure
has been horrific. It has been terrible. It has led
us to, you know, more single mother homes than we've
(45:34):
ever had. It has led us to horrific crime numbers.
It's led us to fentanyl overdoses and numbers I don't
even want to talk about. I mean, it's like, this
is worse than the deaths we've experienced in world wars,
you know, and almost nobody talks about how this happened.
And it was just total weakness and cowardice from the
American politician.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It was like, we could have gone to war over
this a long time ago. And I mean I mean
go to war. I mean we could to send in
special forces to absolutely obliterate cartel bosses decades ago, decades ago,
when they were weaker, when they didn't have the ability
to train their people in the ways they do now,
where they didn't have the tools and lethal capacity they
do now, the ability to carry out horrific terror attacks
(46:16):
that they could do now. We could have done this,
We could have cut the head off of the snake
and not grown two new heads we didn't know. Pure
cowardice and weakness. And what has it bought us? A
bunch of dead Americans, you know. And you can go
down the line of all of these horrific things that happened,
and it all goes back to our political leaders not
having the courage, will or backbone to just do the
(46:38):
right things, do very simple things that reset the incentive structure.
And I think that's something we've got to prioritize. And
that's what we did with our campaign with the EI.
We changed the incentive structure and that was very important
to us and how we approached it, like, we've got
to change the incentives for companies. That's why the financial
reality of this is very important. It's almost never talked about,
but did you know this, With the exception of Harley Davidson,
(47:01):
every single company that we have announced their DEI changes
has had their stock go up, even when compared to
their competitors within their industry. So, wow, if you say
you know X company went up, We'll take you know
Walmart for instance, right, Okay, do you say they went up?
(47:24):
You need to know also how much did Amazon go
up during this same period, right, and so you've got
to look at apples and apples, And that's what we
do in our financial analysis of these companies. When we
look at the companies that we have made these announcements for,
they have gone up in stock to a degree much
higher than their competitors within their industry. And the only
(47:45):
exception is Harley Davidson, who fought us the longest. And
so what message does that send corporate America? The incentives
have changed.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Do you want to make money? You know, like that
be that's your goal, right.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
Should be, you'd think, right, your public.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Company, your responsibility is it's a fiduciary duty to the shareholder.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
That is your legal obligation.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Yeah, and so if you.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Want to make money, the incentives are different now. It's
not wokeness, not esg. It's actually a rejection of these things.
Publicly rejecting it will make you money.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
I mean, it's been so fun to watch all of
your work on that front. It's been absolutely amazing. I
love that you're going to keep it going in whatever
new format you were referring to earlier. Tell people how
they can find the film if they haven't seen it. Yet,
and also how to follow you and the work that
you do.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Thanks Yet.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
If you haven't seen The War on Children, go to
the War on Children dot Com. You can see the film.
There's a bunch of different ways. You go on Amazon
Prime to I think it's called Prime TV or something
like that. It's on there, you know, So if you're
one of those people watched on Prime you can you
can get it there, which, by the way, is an
interesting story in itself, because that is the changing fabric
of America. When the movie came out, it was banned
(48:59):
on Amazon. It was banned for a year from Amazon Prime.
And then after my corporate campaign, as we get probably
six months into it, we get a leaked message from
an Amazon representative telling us check Prime today. We check Prime,
Suddenly our movie is there. Suddenly our account is no
(49:21):
longer banned, you know, Suddenly we no longer were in
violation of their policies right in the world. That was
I think an effort on their end to be like, okay,
this is like a peace offering, right, And for me,
I see it as like Okay, culturally, we can tout
this win and show a part of the shifting culture
and the landscape of sort of like this is a
(49:43):
new world, right, So that's one place you could follow
me online at Robbie Starbuck on every platform, on all
of them, you know, most active on X because that's
always been my favorite platform, but we post everywhere, so
if you're a YouTube person or you know, rumble or whatever,
you can on any of those. We will be having
a regular show rolling out too, on top of all this,
(50:05):
so you can see the set here, you know there.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
There will be great, it will be right, and we'll.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Be kind of diving into a lot of these issues,
but also explaining a lot of the you know, sort
of political issues of the day and getting into an
explanation behind policy and you know why certain things don't work,
you know, So it's not going to be sort of
a typical show. Will be very issue oriented, so like
explaining WHYDI doesn't work? You know what is sort of
(50:32):
like the secret agenda behind it?
Speaker 3 (50:34):
What does it mean? Who's behind it? You know?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
How long has this been going on? It's sort of
like diving deeper on issues. So I folks you're interested
in that, you know, we'll be doing that soon.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
Good deal. Well, it's been to talk to you you
great to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, really really glad to have had the time and
and we'd love to have you back another time to
hear more about the latest companies that you're exposing, because.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
That's super fun to watch.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, we appreciate you being with us.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
Thank you.
Welcome to another episode of The Chicks on the Right Show.
We are very very excited to have someone with us
that probably a lot of folks in our audience are
already familiar with through social media. Robbie Starbuck is our guest,
and you may recognize his posts from going after lots
and lots of companies about their DEI programs and really
creating awareness and actual like online campaigns to get those
(00:23):
companies to stop the crazy DEI stuff that they've got
going on. But you may not know that Robbie used
to be a music video director. So we want to
find out how you started at point A and are
now basically at point Z.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, they're diametrically opposed sort of arenas, right.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It is interesting.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
They're both probably the most difficult arenas to you know,
sort of penetrate in different ways. And you know, on
the music side of things, essentially, if I go all
the way back as a kid, I was just in
love with music and in love with films, and so
I knew I wanted to, you know, do something in
that arena, and I figured, why don't I justfuse the
(01:05):
two together? Right, And so as a kid, I was
like sneaking into shows and filming artists and then showing
them what I filmed. And it was probably awful at first.
I was probably terrible because I'm completely self taught, right,
and you know, eventually it was good enough where one
of them was like, hey, we want to use this.
Can we give you a couple hundred bucks, you know,
(01:25):
or something like that. It was something ridiculous, and.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Like, okay, where was it.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh, I was in the area. I lived into Mecula, California.
That's where I mostly grew up, but like outside of
that area. I mean, like I would drive like hundreds
of miles sometimes, you know, at like fifteen sixteen years
old to go do this. So you know, I'd kind
of go anywhere and try to film artists that you know,
I felt like, okay, maybe people will want to see
(01:51):
what they're like live, right, And you got to remember,
this is early on where there's not a lot of
videos of artists online, you know, on the Internet.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
But like this is like nineties, is like two thousand,
When was.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
This the two thousands?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
You know, this was early on early YouTube, you know,
things like that. So I was one of the early
people in the partner program at YouTube, okay, because we
had tons of music videos. So I actually did interesting
deals with labels. Like I think, in Hollywood, it's very
hard to break in if you're not you know, connected
to you know, the Hollywood elite, or you're not from
(02:25):
a wealthy family or something along those lines, right, right,
And for me, I was none of those things, and
so I had to have a differentiator. And for me,
it was that we were breaking the mold of how
this had always worked. When I came into the industry,
everything had kind of still been shot on film, and
it was very expensive to shoot a music video and
very expensive to shoot a commercial, really expensive shoot anything, right,
(02:46):
And they had sort of insulated their industry by having
things be so expensive because anybody who wasn't a part
of that world basically had a barrier to entry. They
couldn't get over right. My production company changed that because
we would go to these record labels and say, hey,
we can do these videos for one tenth of the
costs that you're paying for now, and a lot of
(03:07):
them would say, okay, we'll take the gamble on that, right,
because it's one tenth of the cost. We'll see what
he can do. And we were doing things digital and
barely anybody was. In fact, a video I did for
The Smashing Pumpkins I believe was the first music video
ever shot on the red camera, which, if you like,
kind of look at the history of cameras now the
red is used, you know, I'll kind of be industry
(03:29):
widen in many respects along with the Ari Alexa.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
So we were very very early.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
We had had that first one that we were able
to shoot with that and had worked with the company
to do that, and so we were breaking new ground
in terms of that and also how we.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Shot and marketed the videos.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I don't know any directors at the time who did
similar deals to what I was doing, where I was
going to artists and saying I will actually fund your video,
but I want the rights so that I can monetize
it on the internet. And so we owned the rights
to a lot of videos, and it was basically just
a marketing tool for the artist and they couldn't see
(04:07):
the future and the record labels couldn't see the future
in online monetization, but we did. I saw it as
a long term investment. So some of those videos go
on to have hundreds and hundreds of millions if not
billions of views on the Internet, and music videos monetized
quite well, right, So yeah, we were at like the
forefront of all that. And I built the company from
the ground up. I was the sole owner, never took
out a bank loan anything like that, so it was
(04:29):
like really like a bootstrap operation, and we ended up
with over a dozen directors across the world doing commercials,
music videos, documentaries, working with the major studios. And then
in twenty fifteen, you know, I was kind of on
my own journey too because my kids were getting older,
at least our oldest was, and I was starting to
(04:49):
see things through a new lens, and that was the
lens of like a dad whose daughter and her peers
are starting to engage with the world and culture. And
I had to like examine my own in packed right
on culture and I'm like, I'm really putting lipstick on
a pig, and I'm compromising my values on a daily basis.
And if I'm being really honest with myself, I can't
(05:10):
raise my kids to have integrity and live out their
values if I'm compromising mine every day. And so I've
got to be willing to take risks and trust God
and you know, do something different. And so around that
same time, obviously we have the primaries politically, and I
was always very conservative. My family's from Cuba, so I
shouldn't be a surprise. I'm like as anti communists as
(05:32):
they come. But I was always very deeply interested in it,
you know, because I understood how lucky I was to
be an American. And so during that election, I talked
to my wife, my wife from Texas, and I said,
I feel like I need to say something because I
also was sort of an anomaly in the sense that
I had built an online following already and that was
something not very many directors had done before. And so
(05:53):
I was like, I'm going to talk about you know,
this stuff. I feel like there's sort of different rules
for different folks, and if you're on the left, you're
allowed to talk about it, but if you're on our side,
you're supposed to shut up exactly, And I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Did you have a like a like a I mean,
were you out there talking on your channels or just
doing the produced videos like We're if you when you
made that decision to say something. Had people already been
familiar with you as a person, or just your work.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, so okay, both, you know, they'd been familiar with both,
so I had you know, you know, there's directors like
in the old school cinematic universe, like Tarantino who you know,
they have like a public persona like that was kind
of how things were with me online at that point.
And so it's different arena, but it's you know, sort
of similar thing where people know your name and kind
(06:41):
of what you're about and things like that. And so
I came out and not I endorsed Trump early on
in the Republican primary, which it wasn't enough. I came
out as a Republican like to come out and endorse Trump.
It was like a whole different.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Thing, right.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
My company at the time had to deal with one
of the largest movie studios, and I remember they called
me and they were like, you know, Robbie, it's not
too late to go back on this.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
You can go back on this.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Just say you didn't understand it, you didn't understand his
immigration policy, you know, so on and so forth. And
I said, well, that's going to be tough to do
because that was actually the selling point for me. You know,
the immigration policy was the selling point. Wow, you know,
and as a Latino is like I think, in their
eyes a special betrayal, right because like I'm not supposed
to hold these views, but they're not. They're not incredibly
(07:28):
intelligent about politics in Hollywood, so I don't think they
understood the nuance of like Cubans tend to be very
anti illegal immigration, you know, and they're sort of like different.
There's different groups, you know, subgroups within the Latino category,
and quite a lot of them actually think legal immigration
is a bad thing. But I said no, I said
I'm not going to do that, and I knew what
(07:50):
was coming. You know, before I came out in indoorstrump,
my wife and I had the conversation.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
We knew I was going to lose business. We knew
it was going to affect the company, and we were right.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
You know, Hollywood is in many respects forgiving to the
very worst things. Hollywood will forgive you if you sexually
abuse people, It will forgive you. If you are the
worst sort of narcissist and treat people terribly. Hollywood will
forgive you if you rape people. Even Hollywood will forgive
the worst behavior. But Hollywood will not forgive one thing,
(08:19):
and that's coming out and being conservative. It's coming out
and saying you know what, actually I oppose this left
wing ideology. I opposed this crazy Marxist, you know, belief
system you're trying to force onto America. That's the one
thing Hollywood won't forgive. And I knew that I was
okay with it, and so we had kind of trusted
God that, you know, we were going to go in
a different direction. And at the time, my wife and
(08:41):
I had had sort of wisely invested in everything, and
so we felt like it was a risk we should
take if we didn't, you know who was.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So was the backlash that you faced as bad as
you expected? Was it worse? Did you lose a lot
of followers in addition to business deals or like? Was
it a combination of everything.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I think I was pretty clear i'd going into coming
out politically. So the backlash wasn't worse than I expected.
It was kind of what I expected. In terms of audience,
you know, it was it was pretty mixed. You know,
I think a lot of people were sort of interested
in why if you think about it, around twenty fifteen,
like they were still building up the propaganda to make
people totally terrified in the normal population of this idea
(09:25):
of voting, you know, this way. So people were more
curious than anything else. There wasn't sort of the orange
man bad trumped arrangement syndrome yet, you know, so it
was more curiosity. Obviously, there were some people, mostly Hollywood
based people, very small group, who were angry at me
online and were like, you know, how could you This
is awful? And I got a lot of text messages
(09:46):
that were like, you know.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
What about friends and people within the company that knew you.
But then when you came out, You're like, Okay, I'm
gonna go ahead and I'm gonna endorse Trump. I'm going to
do this because we've experienced that. Yeah, just personally like that,
that's it's been tough. I just I'm just wondering, Like, personally,
that was experience that was very different.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So, like in terms of employees, it was a very
different response. And I never ideologically tested employees. I was
never like, you know, you all agree with me on politics,
you know, that was I was always hiring people like
are you the best for the job? Right, And so
obviously there was a range of political views. So I
(10:26):
had some employees come to me and be like, this
is awesome you're doing this. Had other employees that were like, hey,
I disagree with you, but I know you're a good person,
and I don't like what people are saying about you.
You know, it's it's definitely not you know, accurate, and
I've defended you and blah blah blah things along those lines.
So people who actually were like day to day basis
worked with me, they knew that, you know, even if
(10:47):
they disagreed with me, that my reasons were, you know,
not because I was like.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
A Nazi, right like, which is great.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
That was crazy and it was crazy to to sort
of frame in that direction. But then you had, you know,
sort of the Hollywood friendship matrix, right which is a
total force. And I always knew that I've never been
one of those people. Like to give you an idea,
this probably says quite a bit about me. Like even
even when I was nominated for awards at like the
(11:16):
m MVAS or the VMAs and things like that, I
never went not once. I never went to the award shows.
Even when I won awards at these award shows that
were like you know, televised award show, I never went ever.
And I just I knew I didn't fit there, and
I didn't go to the parties or any of that stuff.
Like I knew kind of through the grapevine that I
(11:37):
was not in alignment with their value set, and that
it was a place I was going to be deeply
spiritually uncomfortable and I would have to you know, it
would put me in weird positions, and I didn't want
to be in that position. Ye, And so you know,
now we're finding out just how sordid and terrible it is.
(12:00):
Like I mean, right, even at that point, I can
say when I was, you know, sort of early on
in my career, I never imagined it was as bad
as weird understanding it is. You know, today, I knew
it was gross, you know, I knew there was sort
of this gross quid pro quo that was going on.
But it's so much worse than I think anybody imagined.
And you know, in that respect, I feel blessed that
(12:25):
I feel like God protected me from a lot of
the worst things in that industry. But there's not real friendships, right,
That's the truth.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
There's not.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
You're You're as valuable to somebody as the step you
are on the ladder. For them to get on and
get to the next place. So it's really about, like,
how can you help people right in it You're no
longer helpful to advancing people. You're sort of you're useless, right,
And I understood that from the very beginning of being
in that industry, and that's why I never invested a
(12:57):
ton into friendships, you know, in that direction. I invested
into you know, my family, my wife, my kids, because
that's the thing that lasts, that's the thing like, you know,
I always remind myself this, like when I die one day,
hopefully it's in a very long time, but you never know, right,
I know that the people who are going to be
there are my wife and kids. And outside of that,
(13:21):
you know, nothing is guaranteed, nothing's promised, And you know,
that's that's what matters to me, is those people that
are going to be there and making the world a
better place for them while I'm here.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
And that's what well, And.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You're obviously you're doing all the right things to be
loud and proud about your own beliefs and also to
make people aware of some of the crazy stuff that's
going on. Talk about the film that Elon Musk even retweeted,
and it has millions and millions of views. This The
War on Children? What inspired you to make it? And
(13:53):
tell people who haven't seen it a little bit of
the background.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Thanks. Yeah, it's been incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The War on Children now has crossed over sixty million views,
and we never imagined that when we were making it.
We didn't think it was going to be the most
watched documentary of like the last decade.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
But it just popped off.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
It went crazy after Elon you know, backed it and
put it out there online, and Donald Trump Junior supported it,
and a whole range of other people. I can't I
can't even go down the list. Just very thankful so
many people supported it. And you know, the fact that
it hits such a broad swath of people has really
built a beautiful legacy for the movie. And that's that
(14:33):
it has helped spur and encourage a lot of child
protection laws. So even here in Tennessee, it really helped
us with the death penalty for pedophiles. That was something
my wife and I made a big priority and lobbied
for relentlessly to make sure that we had the just
worst consequences possible for child rapists. And we were able
(14:54):
to get that done here in Tennessee, in in other
states where you know, lawmakers watched the movie and and
they talked with us, and they felt, you know, like
this was important. And then also getting rid of these horrific,
barbaric procedures that were being carried out on kids in
the name of transgenderism. The film has helped a lot
(15:15):
to open up people's eyes, you know. I think the
interesting thing about the movie is rand Paul's wife, Kelly,
She actually told me that the most wonderful thing about
the film is she knows so many people who just
don't believe that horrible things are really happening, or that
there's a coordinated, you know, element or effort out there
(15:35):
to derail the future of our children and to sexualize
them and screw them up mentally. And so being able
to share this movie with people has been able to
be an eye opener. Right, So, if they don't believe
that there's these horrific drag shows in front of kids,
they don't believe that kids are getting you know, surgical
procedures at thirteen years old in the name of transgenderism.
(15:57):
If they don't believe that schools are intentionally teaching them
Marxist concepts are intentionally sexualizing them. The movie opens their
eyes because we're using sources anybody can trust if they're
a Democrat, you know, independent, Republican, doesn't really matter anybody
across the board.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Like the media called.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Me a lot of different names, and they really went
after me over the movie. But one thing they couldn't
do was they couldn't say I was wrong. They had
a very difficult time with that because they tried relentlessly
to fact check and go through the film, and we
were able to back up everything with pure reviewed research,
with sources they trust.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
I mean, some of the you.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Know, evidence that we bring forward are people that you know,
really ideologically disagree with us, like people from Berkeley who
are professors there, and pure reviewed research that has been
in you know, sort of the most respected left wing publications.
And so they have a hard time, you know, trying
to sort of poke holes in the arguments we're making
(16:56):
because we're using their own sources.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And that was very intentional.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I didn't want to have only things that I trusted
and knew to be true. I wanted to really delve
into the whole swath of evidence out there and have
a movie that could be convincing for somebody who doesn't
already agree with me, and so we spent a lot
of time and effort on that. My favorite thing though
about the film was doing the teen focus groups, where
we got to sit down with teenagers and ask them
(17:21):
sort of their experience and what it's like growing up today,
what challenges they face. And I was really surprised by
that because we weren't sure it was something we were
going to include in the movie when we had the
idea to do these focus groups, because my first inclination
was teenagers are not going to tell us anything. They're
going to be very stonewall. They're going to be closed off.
It's going to be awkward and weird. They're not going
to want to talk with us about this stuff. And
(17:44):
they were so incredibly open. It was like the dam
had broken and it was just rushing water of emotion
everywhere of them sharing everything going on for kids their age,
and we learned a lot. You know, not just as
you know human beings concerned about this, but as parents,
you know about what these kids are dealing with. And
(18:04):
there's sort of a reflex I think from our generation
and the older generations to you know, sort of judge
this generation in a harsh way and say like, oh,
they're they're coddled, or you know, they you know, I
don't try as hard or whatever it might be. But
the truth is they have a very difficult set of
circumstances they're dealing with that are.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Very different from what we grew up with.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
You There's pressures and things that just we never had
to deal with as kids, and I'm not sure we're
entirely honest about that, So, you know, I think that's
a really great thing about the movie is that it
opens up people's eyes to all the challenges they do
face and things that we never had to think about
as kids.
Speaker 5 (18:45):
Yeah, and I agree with you. I think that they
do face a whole different set of challenges. And I
also think that the pendulum is swinging a little bit.
We see that at least I maybe it's just because
I want to believe that, because I do have I
have a thirty five year old, a thirty year old,
and a fifteen year old, so we run the gamut
in our family. But the fifteen year old, I look
at her generation and I think, I mean, I see
(19:07):
them as being more conservative. I see the pendulum less woke.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know, they're going to be extremely right wing.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Yeah, I do too, Robbie, I absolutely do.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
So when you talk about those kids being open and
talking about their you know, their issues in this generation,
I really do think they are rejecting all of the crazy,
woke crap that the previous generation. I don't even know
what that would be. Would that be millennial? I don't
even know. I can't keep track of all the generations,
but I but the yeah, because we're Gen xers, you know,
and so I just I feel like they are embracing America,
(19:40):
and they're embracing being proud of who they are as
Americans and knowing the difference between a boy and a girl,
and you know, those are the things that we understood
and it was just common sense. And I feel like
common sense is making a comeback and that you know,
all of that other stuff, the garbage is starting to
go away because they're tired of it too, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, the globalist left made a horrific miscalculation when it
came to COVID. Okay, because COVID changed the game. They
stuck a bunch of teenagers and middle schoolers in their
rooms with nothing but time to research, okay, yes, and
watch videos and start to think for themselves. And what happened,
they turned extraordinarily right wing. When you're given free access
(20:25):
to information, they shifted away from the left. And also
the other big mistake they made was making teachers so
incredibly woken crazy right, because what happens when you're a
teenage boy and you're put in a classroom with a
lady trying to control your words, control your every movement.
Natural Yeah, your natural biology is somehow toxic and destructive,
(20:46):
and exactly you should deny every part of it or
else your persona on grata.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It was a big mistake by.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The globalist left because these kids turned to the right
and they're going to stay there. And the truth is,
you had the young millennials were extremely far left because
they were on the front end of, you know, sort
of the shifting of institutions. And the media still was
controlled by entities that were able to sort of program
the masses for decades and decades, and they were the
(21:14):
very tail end of that operation. When COVID happened, the
media landscape shifted, and that was a part of this
big radical change we see everybody younger, you know, high
school and younger had this big shift. And I can
tell you this as a data I saw that shift
in a really interesting way because my oldest is sixteen.
When we lived in California, which was seven years ago,
(21:36):
we moved to Tennessee, and then when we first came
to Tennessee, I can tell you right now, all of
the kids in her peer group were either non political,
or if their families were conservative, they kept quiet, or
they were openly very to the left, and they were
indoctrinating sort of everybody with their viewpoints and bullying everybody
to be like you're going to be a part of
the climate club, or you're going to be this or
(21:57):
that or whatever, you know, like some crazy thing. And
the radical shift that has occurred is such that I
don't really know of the last time I heard somebody
their age in their peer group come out and defend
Democrat policies, priorities or candidates. I don't know that, but
I can tell you I've seen tons of them in
maga hats around town during this last election. I've seen
(22:20):
tons of them talk about politics. I've seen my kids'
friends follow me online, and I think that's something that's
weird to me.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm like, I've talked to my daughter about this. I'm like,
I feel a little weird about that. You know, that
you're getting so old that like your friends have accounts
and you guys are following me on the internet. Now
I feel like I need to watch what I say,
you know, I'm like, I need to be more careful
and do things and like the you know, PG version,
it's hard to get comfortable with the idea that like
your kids going to college soon, you know, like that's
(22:49):
that's just rat And.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
We're seeing it in culture too, like I mean, you're
seeing it like Late Night is affected by it, we're saying,
I mean, we're just the landscape I think is changing,
just all sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
That used to be. It used to be okay to
beat up on conservatives. It's not. It's not as okay anymore.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Which no, I'm okay with that, you know, because it's like,
you know, what diametric changed is what diametrically changed is
that back like ten years ago, if you were making
fun of George Bush, there was genuinely a lot to
make fun of, right, It really was like and I
still agreed with the party position then, but I didn't
(23:28):
agree with him. You know, I agreed with like the
you know, sort of general principles, but I disagreed with
him on policy when it came to the war and
things along those lines. That was sort of always an
objective person. There was stuff to make fun of there
that was just funny, right, Like we love the guy.
The way he talked was just kind of like, you know,
(23:48):
you were leaving it open to a lot of combination
extuy tgery isery, and so there was something there. Right now,
so much of our identity is wrapped up in just
common sense that when you go after it, you sound crazy,
and that's that's a good thing, you know. And I
think like it's incumbent on us to stay there in
(24:09):
that common sense, you know, sort of areas, because it's
going to make it very hard for the left to
beat us on any front because it's when you shift
out of that that you become sort of fear game, right,
And we have to be really honest about that, And
so most people want us to be in that common
sense zone. And I think that, you know, we have
(24:30):
to find ways to shift our priorities into being in
that zone and that makes us more able to achieve
what we want to achieve. Right, So, you know, it's
like my argument has always been, let's win every eighty
twenty issue, Like there should be no reason we don't,
because almost every eighty twenty issue is just pure common sense,
(24:51):
and for a long time, both sides of the political
aisle have just left them out there. And during this
last election, what we saw was President Trump grabbed those
eighty twenty e issues and he ran on them.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Yes, and that includes, you know, the DEI stuff that
you've been obviously really targeting companies that everyone is familiar
with and saying we know what you're doing and we're
exposing it to the world so that they can make
a judgment about whether or not what you're doing makes
any sense. And you've had a lot of success with
(25:22):
getting these companies to at least say, yes, we're revising
or we're getting rid of this DEI initiative.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Do you continue to do.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
That work, how do you choose your targets and what
kind of changes have you seen as a result of
that work.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, I mean it's been incredible what we've been able
to accomplish in the last year, and we've had a
little bit of a slowdown period over the last month
and a half because we're planning some things that will
be happening. Folks will be hearing about that I think
will be very exciting. We've still had some wins during
that time period and we're very happy with that. But
I think we'll sort of ramp up and have a
(26:00):
lot more companies to announce this summer. But yeah, essentially,
you know, I realized nobody was telling the truth about
what these companies were doing, and in many respects, a
lot of them were held hostage, you know, and so
they needed somebody to come in and say, hey, these
people are holding them hostage. We're going to take the
gun out of their hands, right, and we're going to
(26:20):
show people what's happening, and that by virtue of just
sort of exposing it, it's going to bring down a
lot of these, you know, sort of facades that have
been built up. So for the left, it was sort
of about exposing how they were paper tigers, right, because
you had these groups like the HRC or Al Sharpton,
and they had built themselves into these sort of mythological
(26:43):
creatures that should be feared by corporate America, right. And
what I did is I showed corporate America they're not
real that they really they don't have the power that
they pretend to have, but we do. And we had
to show them that we had to bear our teeth.
And so, you know, my first three companies were our
sort of proving ground. It was companies testing us to
(27:05):
see what are they actually capable of? And I say
they instead of me, because like, I'm not Al Sharpton,
this isn't about me. I'm not, you know, so narcissistic
and obsessed with myself that I believe companies are afraid
of me personally. They're afraid of what I represent. They're
afraid of me. I'm a megaphone for this big swath
of people, and I'm very blessed to be that megaphone.
(27:26):
And so, you know, we had to prove ourselves and
we did. I think that everybody you know who sort
of supported my campaigns, we made these companies terrified. We
showed the weight that we could carry. We showed the
financial you know, sort of hammer we had. And the
first company that we went up against, Tractor Supply, they
lost over three billion in market cap when we went
(27:47):
after them. John Deere lost over ten billion in market cap,
and then Harley Davidson is still suffering today even after
their CEOs out, because they fought us the longest, and
that was the case. People point to a lot of
different things that are like Walmart or this company or
that company is the reason company started to just kind
of like give you whatever you wanted.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
The truth is it's Harley Davidson.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Harley Davidson is the company that resulted in other companies
saying we will we will do what you want, you know.
And it's because they saw that if they fought me
and really went after me, that I was going to
be the most punishing and relentless I could possibly be,
and that that was going to do some very bad things.
In fact, Harley Davidson really recently had a board member
(28:32):
resign that is very rare for board members to do,
and in his resignation he wrote essentially that the way
the company mishandled the situation with me could mean the
end of the company in total, that they may just
not survive this because they so thoroughly decimated their reputation
with their core customer base, and they had gotten so
(28:55):
far out of line and didn't do what they should
have done early on with me. They're not sure there's
any coming back, and there's stock price.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, if you look at it, it still reflects that.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I mean, it was total decimation, and they got rid
of the CEO, you know, and really what's going to
decide if they live or die as a company is
going to be the direction the new CEO takes it in.
And we're going to be watching that very closely because
if they are not a reformer to get back to
sort of the core of what Harley Davidson is, then
(29:26):
I think we're going to have something to say about
it if they do go in the right direction and
they do reform back to sort of the culture that
Harley Davidson is supposed to be about, just sort of
an American icon, right. It's like celebration. It's not explicitly political,
you know. And that's the thing actually I think has
made our campaign very successful is I'm not telling companies
you need to adopt my politics. I'm saying stay out
(29:48):
of politics. There's no reason for you as a company
to have a position on transgenderism. It's ridiculous, you know,
there's no reason you guys should have a policy on abortion.
It's ridiculous. You're a company. Make your products, like I
don't care what it is. Like, you know, you could
be Gatorade or Pepsi or you know, Walmart, Like, I
don't care what you make, how you sell it, Like,
(30:11):
just make good products, provide great service. Celebrate America, you
know if you if you're using our money, you know,
like try to do good for our country.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
But stay out of politics.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Study the info, like did you have moles everywhere? Like
did people that worked on the inside volunteer the information
and you know, ask to work with you? How did
you do that?
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I probably have more corporate sources than anybody in America
American history now.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, we have so many whistleblowers. It's absurd. Any company
you can pick out of a hat, we have a
source there. Any any major fortune five hundred company, you know,
if you pull them out of a hat, we have
a source at the company.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
And the brands that are the brands that are taking
some of the positions that they do are some of
the most surprising brands to do.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
So that's what's so bad.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Flaying to me you know, which is why I think
these campaigns are so effective, right, because these are the
companies that people are like a two.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Ay two John here and and tract Or supply are
you paying?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
So we plan this out, I think very effectively, which
was that we were going to start with companies, exposing
companies that have massively conservative consumer bases, prove our power there,
but also understand this is psychological. You know, this whole
Wokeness operation was psychological, and we need to do something
(31:33):
akin to that in reverse in terms of influencing the
direction our country goes. So what we needed to do
was build up the psychological understanding that we were the
incoming wave, the tidal wave that could not be stopped.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
But you had to build that up, right.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So you start with these companies that just can't deny
their consumer bases are on my side, right, But eventually
that wave gets so big it's a tsunami that sort
of engulfs everybody.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
So the tipping point for that was Walmart. When I
got Walmart to back off everything, that was when corporate
America really kind of fell and they said, Okay, we
need to aggressively start to assess how we do things differently,
because if our biggest employer in the country has changed
(32:24):
and they're rejecting wokeness openly, we're in trouble, right. And
so that was when the social fabric sort of changed,
and you saw the psychology flip, and you saw frantic
board meetings for you know, companies to stop this before
they're the next company that's exposed. I mean, you got
to understand too. Companies spent New York Times admitted this.
(32:46):
They spent absurd, absurd sums of money to do opposition
research on me. They have what The New York Times
called a new cottage industry built around how you handle
Robbie Starbuck. There was a whole industry of advisors and
communications professionals getting hired for how you potentially deal with
me if I come after you.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
And what were they expecting to find?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well, I mean, I think it's one of them.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
What were they going to do?
Speaker 3 (33:13):
I really don't fault them for this.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
And because any competent corporate CEO, if they could spend
a little bit of money to try to get in
front of something and say, hey, this person actually committed
this crime and they haven't told anybody about it, I
get it. Like, I mean, it's it's fair game. You
put yourself in the public arena, people are going to
go and they're going to do oper research on you.
Totally fine with me. They wasted their money though, you
(33:37):
know exactly. Ceo come back to me, he says, you know,
I got it at this after we made a deal
with them, he goes, Robbie, I got to tell you
you totally wasted our money. You know, we we did
all this research on it, and at the end of it,
you know, the answer we got essentially is you were
one of the most boring people they had ever.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Come up for our They said, you don't leave your
house almost ever. You know, you you don't.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Only have hobbies, you know, you're just like you're with
your family or you're working, and that's basically it.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Like that's all you do.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
You don't drink, you don't do drugs like you know,
any of those things. And I'm like, yeah, well I'm
you know, I'm content with what I've got. You know,
I'm not searching for anything. I don't have some hole
in my heart I'm trying to fill. You know, I'm
a pretty happy person actually, So you know, I thought
that was funny, but it's you know, if you think
about it, you really can't blame them.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
I mean, you've got to.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Take a shot at it, right, You've got to try,
because if there was some horrible thing, you know, and
in my in my background, I mean, like you'd want
to use that as a company, right, you'd want to
go out there and be like, hey, this guy criticizing
us is actually you know whatever it is, right, Yeah,
So I don't I don't blame them for that. But
it's interesting the desperation that sort of increased after Walmart,
(34:49):
and I think in many respects that's that sort of
shifted the needle. And you got to keep in mind,
by the way this was happening, all of this, you know,
started well before the election. You know, we were to
build up this changing mindset before the election, very intentionally
because we wanted to make people feel safer as you
got closer to the election being open about your rejection
(35:10):
of wokeness, because if you go back a year before
the election, people were still very afraid to speak out
about these things, especially in the workplace. And I think
one of our greatest achievements through this campaign is the
fact that people are no longer afraid in their workplaces
in many cases to speak up and push back and say, hey, actually,
this could be a real liability for us, This could
(35:31):
be a real problem for the company, that this is
out there, that we're doing this. I think we should
probably be careful with this new Department of Justice, with
this new you know, like people are not afraid to
speak up about these things anymore, and that's huge.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I think I want to lead you to Elon's you know,
revival of Twitter. So funny because you know, you think
about how free people immediately felt when he bought it,
and people were like testing the waters right and like posting,
can we say gay and retarded now? And so they
were like doing it, and it's just been such this
amazing transformation. I think that did help people feel more
(36:06):
courageous about being loud and proud, just.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
Everything, just being being out of exactly just being themselves.
I mean, for years we would get emails of people saying,
I agree with what you guys say, but I can't
say it on my college campus, I can't say it
at work. I can't say I can't be conservative out
loud and proud. It's ridiculous. But now I feel like
more and more people can they can just be conservative
(36:31):
walking around, which is a really beautiful thing, right, And
it's largely in part to obviously the administration, but to
the work that you do too, So it's wonderful.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
It's a great thing.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I think, you know, there's a conversation like we're being
really honest. President Trump is his last term, and if
you look across the landscape, one of the really important
parts of his legacy is this activist base that sort
of has a major influence. It's in the grassroots right
that's going to outlive him, and it was largely predicated
(37:05):
on people boldly sort of standing up for him from
twenty sixteen on, or really twenty fifteen on. I think
that is going to be a huge part of his legacy,
is that the people who sort of came from that
in twenty fifteen will long term be real, you know,
sort of shifters and shapers of culture in this country.
(37:27):
And I think we're going to see I think we're
ascendant on the right, not just politically but culturally, and
I think we have an opportunity for total dominance. There's
a lot of little, you know, micro factors that have
to be considered in things that you have to be
good at and you can't sort of screw up your opportunity.
But let's just say we do ninety percent of things
(37:48):
right or eighty percent of things right. In these opportunity
pools we have right now, we could be culturally dominant
for a very long period.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And I love here.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
I love that too. Gosh, please let that. Yes, I have.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Everything's building up in that direction, right. So, like, look
at the media landscape right now. If you had told
me ten years ago, or told anybody ten years ago
that the right would become dominant in the media landscape,
people would say, I don't think so. I mean, the
left owns the media right, but we are, you know,
I mean for all the shit we give mainstream media,
the truth is, at this point we now have more
(38:23):
power than them in independent media. You know, if I
put up a video about a company, it gets more
views in CNN in primetime a week for a week.
You know, Like if you take CNN's ratings for a
week in primetime, combine it together, like one of my
videos on wokeness at a company will get more views
than that and.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
More social action too.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
The thing that's breaking down now is the structure of
you know, how those news agencies and things were compensated,
right because and you're seeing this with Stephen Colbert, right,
so the Emperor has no clothes.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
They lost forty million.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Dollars on the show because advertisers don't want to pay
when you don't have that many eyeballs, right, especially in
key demos. Well, then you've got this shifting landscape on
our side, which is that we have eyeballs. But the
advertisers were told for so long by these different agencies
like you can't give them money, you can't advertise with them,
you know. Now you're going to get into this new,
(39:15):
you know, sort of arena where they have to advertise
with independent media because that's where the eyeballs are.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
And the truth is we're just beating them, you know.
And so.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
That's really important for how you see the future culturally,
because if we were able to do it there, we
can certainly do it in Hollywood and music and other
places too. The thing that's important that we should take
from this is we didn't win that fight with the
media by trying to take control of their institutions.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
We built our own.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
And that's the thing we have to be very cognizant
of as we approach these other fights. We're not going
to win the fight with Hollywood by going and it
being a part of Hollywood. We're going to beat it
by making great things outside the system that people want
to do.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
That's such an incredible point.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, and so the barrier to entry you know too,
like if they don't want to, if they fight us
getting into the movie theaters and things like that, like
they did with the War on Children in Canada, we
were actually banned from movie theaters, you know, So if
they want to play that game, they're again kicking themselves
the same way they did when they tried to ban
(40:25):
people from TV shows and news programs because their voices
were too controversial or whatever.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Despite people having.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Putting the explicit lyrics label on a record album and
expecting a teenager not to want it more.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
You're going to find avenues to reach people like we
did with our movie. You know. Our numbers in Canada
were fantastic despite the ban on the movies at movie theaters,
because people wanted to see it and it made them
more interested. And why did they ban this movie? You
know what's so dangerous about it? And then people would
watch it, they'd be like, that's weird. This movie just
wanted to protect kids, Like it's it's literally just like,
(41:00):
let's take the issue of pedophiles or mental health that
are in the movie, right, we don't politicize it in
the movie. We're very, very neutrally talking about the issues
kids face when it comes to sexualization and mental health
and the fact that we have the most depressed generation
in human history. This is this is the most mentally
ill generation in human history. And I think again you
(41:21):
talk about why this shift occurred politically for this upcoming generation,
they experienced a lot of really difficult things during COVID,
and they've seen how their peer group has suffered. They've
seen the mental anguish in the group of people who
have adopted some of the wokeness you know, the most,
and so they understand the harms of it in very
interesting different ways than we ever will. And so, you know,
(41:45):
I think it's natural they're rejecting what caused that harm,
and so I think they will actually be more conservative
than any generation that we actually have seen in America.
I think they'll be the most conservative because if you
look at the male numbers what's happened historically when you
have you know, let's take this to all of human history,
(42:06):
what happens by the time people marry, When they marry
and have kids, females political views are the most movable
thing in human history. So if you're a liberal girl
in college right now, out of all humans, you are
the most likely to change your political view and conform
it to your husband's. That's all of human history. So
(42:27):
what really matters is looking at the male political belief
system in that age group right now, and when you
look at that, it is dominantly right wing, the most
right wing we have seen, right, So what's going to
happen when they reach that age where they get married
and have kids. You're going to see a massive number
of females realign their politics to the politics their husbands have,
(42:47):
and also changing priorities because suddenly, when you have kids,
you're concerned about safety, you're concerned about you know, all
these different things you weren't concerned about when you were
in college and you just wanted people to think you
were nice, Right, And there's a lot that goes with that, right, Like,
I almost don't even fault some of these young girls
who are in high school or college and they have,
you know, sort of more liberal views. They're just concerned
(43:09):
at that point about seeming nice, right, and they are
lacking a lot of real world sort of experience to
understand how niceness can get you killed, you know, and
that you know it can destroy your life, it can
destroy your child's life. You can't always be nice, you know.
I had this discussion actually yesterday about a legal immigration.
You've got all of these leaders out there in the
(43:31):
world pretending this is such a complicated problem. Maybe it's
the Latinos strong man in me, but it's not complicated. Okay,
you could put me in charge of any country on
the face of the earth, any country, I don't care
which one it is. I could solve a legal immigration
in a month. People might not like it, they might
think I'm mean, but I could solve it. I could
damn well solve it, and nobody would push nobody would
(43:53):
try again. Okay, it would not try, because it'd be
very clear in our country, we don't do this. We
don't accept this culture. Truly, we will never accept it,
and we will sort of have an iron fist when
it comes to this. Doesn't mean we hate people from
the outside. But you've got to have, you know, very
strong consequences and incentives for what you want out of
(44:14):
a society, and frankly, we haven't had that, you know,
in a very long time in America.
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Yeah, we're one of the few. Yeah, we're like, we're
you look around the world and other countries have it
and we don't.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Even in Trump's first term, we did not have it
because Trump was fighting a beast in DC.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
It was just like it was constantly just this game
of tug a war, and so you weren't able to
establish any sort of new cultural identity that said, actually
there's these new incentives, Actually there's this new way things
are going to be done.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Everything was a fight term two.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Staffing was done very differently, and the ability to sort
of gut a lot of parts of the federal bureaucracy.
It was different this time, right, And so so I
think a lot of people kind of knew what they
were doing in ways they didn't know during the first term.
And so you are starting to see that shift in
expectations and sort of you know, what incentives were putting
(45:12):
out there, and I think that, you know, my hope
is we get more aggressive in that respect, because I
think society is all about the incentives that you give
the populace. And for my entire life, the incentive structure
has been horrific. It has been terrible. It has led
us to, you know, more single mother homes than we've
(45:34):
ever had. It has led us to horrific crime numbers.
It's led us to fentanyl overdoses and numbers I don't
even want to talk about. I mean, it's like, this
is worse than the deaths we've experienced in world wars,
you know, and almost nobody talks about how this happened.
And it was just total weakness and cowardice from the
American politician.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It was like, we could have gone to war over
this a long time ago. And I mean I mean
go to war. I mean we could to send in
special forces to absolutely obliterate cartel bosses decades ago, decades ago,
when they were weaker, when they didn't have the ability
to train their people in the ways they do now,
where they didn't have the tools and lethal capacity they
do now, the ability to carry out horrific terror attacks
(46:16):
that they could do now. We could have done this,
We could have cut the head off of the snake
and not grown two new heads we didn't know. Pure
cowardice and weakness. And what has it bought us? A
bunch of dead Americans, you know. And you can go
down the line of all of these horrific things that happened,
and it all goes back to our political leaders not
having the courage, will or backbone to just do the
(46:38):
right things, do very simple things that reset the incentive structure.
And I think that's something we've got to prioritize. And
that's what we did with our campaign with the EI.
We changed the incentive structure and that was very important
to us and how we approached it, like, we've got
to change the incentives for companies. That's why the financial
reality of this is very important. It's almost never talked about,
but did you know this, With the exception of Harley Davidson,
(47:01):
every single company that we have announced their DEI changes
has had their stock go up, even when compared to
their competitors within their industry. So, wow, if you say
you know X company went up, We'll take you know
Walmart for instance, right, Okay, do you say they went up?
(47:24):
You need to know also how much did Amazon go
up during this same period, right, and so you've got
to look at apples and apples, And that's what we
do in our financial analysis of these companies. When we
look at the companies that we have made these announcements for,
they have gone up in stock to a degree much
higher than their competitors within their industry. And the only
(47:45):
exception is Harley Davidson, who fought us the longest. And
so what message does that send corporate America? The incentives
have changed.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Do you want to make money? You know, like that
be that's your goal, right.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
Should be, you'd think, right, your public.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Company, your responsibility is it's a fiduciary duty to the shareholder.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
That is your legal obligation.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
Yeah, and so if you.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Want to make money, the incentives are different now. It's
not wokeness, not esg. It's actually a rejection of these things.
Publicly rejecting it will make you money.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
I mean, it's been so fun to watch all of
your work on that front. It's been absolutely amazing. I
love that you're going to keep it going in whatever
new format you were referring to earlier. Tell people how
they can find the film if they haven't seen it. Yet,
and also how to follow you and the work that
you do.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Thanks Yet.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
If you haven't seen The War on Children, go to
the War on Children dot Com. You can see the film.
There's a bunch of different ways. You go on Amazon
Prime to I think it's called Prime TV or something
like that. It's on there, you know, So if you're
one of those people watched on Prime you can you
can get it there, which, by the way, is an
interesting story in itself, because that is the changing fabric
of America. When the movie came out, it was banned
(48:59):
on Amazon. It was banned for a year from Amazon Prime.
And then after my corporate campaign, as we get probably
six months into it, we get a leaked message from
an Amazon representative telling us check Prime today. We check Prime,
Suddenly our movie is there. Suddenly our account is no
(49:21):
longer banned, you know, Suddenly we no longer were in
violation of their policies right in the world. That was
I think an effort on their end to be like, okay,
this is like a peace offering, right, And for me,
I see it as like Okay, culturally, we can tout
this win and show a part of the shifting culture
and the landscape of sort of like this is a
(49:43):
new world, right, So that's one place you could follow
me online at Robbie Starbuck on every platform, on all
of them, you know, most active on X because that's
always been my favorite platform, but we post everywhere, so
if you're a YouTube person or you know, rumble or whatever,
you can on any of those. We will be having
a regular show rolling out too, on top of all this,
(50:05):
so you can see the set here, you know there.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
There will be great, it will be right, and we'll.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Be kind of diving into a lot of these issues,
but also explaining a lot of the you know, sort
of political issues of the day and getting into an
explanation behind policy and you know why certain things don't work,
you know, So it's not going to be sort of
a typical show. Will be very issue oriented, so like
explaining WHYDI doesn't work? You know what is sort of
(50:32):
like the secret agenda behind it?
Speaker 3 (50:34):
What does it mean? Who's behind it? You know?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
How long has this been going on? It's sort of
like diving deeper on issues. So I folks you're interested
in that, you know, we'll be doing that soon.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
Good deal. Well, it's been to talk to you you
great to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, really really glad to have had the time and
and we'd love to have you back another time to
hear more about the latest companies that you're exposing, because.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
That's super fun to watch.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, we appreciate you being with us.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.