September 18, 2025 • 46 mins
Join us for the return of the Darkest Hour Podcast as we recap one of the most horrendous weeks in recent memory. We love you Charlie.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi guys, welcome back to the Darkest Hour. This is
the first of these shows back with the Darkest Hour
podcast and it's been a while. It's been a long
time since we've done any of the Darkest Hour podcasts.
(00:23):
If you remember in the if you know your Josh
Denny podcasting lineage, going back to the early days, I
feel like this is really hot. I want to bring
this down a little bit. That looks better. You can
let me know in the comments if you can hear me. Okay,
(00:44):
I feel like the mic was way too hot in
the beginning, but that's good. So yeah, if you know
your Josh Denny podcasting legacy, and if Numero Uni, if
my Numero Uno fan is in the comments, you know
that I have had many podcasts. I had. The first
(01:05):
podcast that I did was called March of the Pigs
and that was actually the podcast that got me the
Food Network show. And that was back in twenty fourteen.
I think I started that twenty fifteen, So yeah, that
was that was sort of the thing that kicked off
(01:28):
my podcasting adventure. Of course, I did many years on
Patrick Melton's Nobody Likes Onions program, from like twenty ten
to twenty fourteen, and that was a fun time for
the years we did that show, and then The March
of the Pigs was my first solo thing, and then
we did several several several other did I did several
(01:50):
other podcasts. I had the Implications of Josh Denny. I
had the wake Up Call, which I did for locals
for a little while at the Jankam podcast, which was
sort of me and my sort of nihilistic everything is
shit Stan Marsh phase of broadcasting. And then I had
(02:16):
for a short while this was a podcast that I
had done during the pandemic, and this was more or
less an extension. It was intended to be an extension
of a live show that we did here in Los Angeles.
So I used to host a live show at the
Westside Comedy Theater in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, sixteen, seventeen eighteen.
At she was like, so it's like four years almost
(02:38):
five years we did that show, and we always wanted
to have a podcast extension of the show because the
show is sort of centered around you can make comedy
from anything, so it could be dark personal stories or
just if you have a really fucked up sense of humor.
It kind of works across the board, and we always
thought it would be cool to maybe do a green
room extension of that that type of thing. But for me,
(03:02):
the concept of the Darkest Hour comedy show and the
podcast was always sort of based off of one of
the things that I like about myself the most as
a person. And you know, I think for like I think,
for you to find purpose and happiness in life, you
have to have an understanding of like, this is who
I am as a person, this is what I like
about myself, this is something that I think is different
(03:26):
about me or unique about me. And then if you're
lucky enough, you can build some kind of career or
you know, have a fun hobby of podcasting or stand
up or you know, put it into some kind of
art or something creative. But for me, it's always been
like my curiosity about people and what they've been through
(03:46):
and what they've experienced and kind of what they've gone
through in their life that has shaped who they are,
and whether that be creatively or just as a person,
I don't know. That's always what's been the most interesting
to me about people. It's also why I love working
as a ride share driver. Over the years. For some
of you guys that know the history, I lost a
job when i was like thirty for the first time
(04:08):
I'd ever been fired from a place. I end up
suing that company and winning. But I started working as
an uber driver at the time just to sort of
make ends meet, and I've really fell in love with
it from the perspective of like being forced to meet
strangers you otherwise would never meet. And you know, in
the early days, people were very very talkative, Like back
in the day, they would be it was like a cab.
(04:30):
It would be taxi cab confessions. People would confide in
you their darkest secrets or I don't know about darkest secrets,
but you know, the people would like almost treat you
like a therapist. Sometimes they tell you about their day.
They'd maybe tell you about their life or their relationship,
different stuff that they had going on. This hair is
bothering me right here. So yeah, you really just got
(04:51):
to immerse yourself in people. And that's what I always
sort of loved about that work, and I feel like
it informed my work as a co I've had several
bits over the years that came directly from conversations with
strangers or even you know, things that I've overheard from strangers,
and and it's what's been cool about that is I've
always had that as a part time job to lean
(05:13):
on if work got thin or if times got tough
or whatever, except for the pandemic, when everything sort of
shut down, then it was like off the table. But
going back to the format of the show, I've always
really seen this show as like a vehicle for that curiosity.
So as we bring the show back and do it
more and more, I want this show to be about
(05:34):
exploring people and what they've what they've been through their stories,
not necessarily like celebrities or famous people or other comedians.
And you know, it's not necessarily the episodes might not
all be chuckle house where you know, you're you're always
trying to make fun of dark shit. But that's the intention,
(05:57):
right is to try to, you know, either be informed
by what people have experienced in their lives just to
understand them better, or to have some sort of point
of connection with a person, or maybe you know, maybe
something creative does come out of it. Maybe you come
up with a funny bit, or you come up with
an interesting idea, or you know, I was spending time
(06:19):
with a friend a couple months back who visited for
a weekend, and my time with her was like, gave
me a great idea for a movie, and so I've
been working on writing that for the last several weeks,
on and off, despite interruptions. So that's the that's kind
of the gist. That's the gist of what this show
is always meant to be, and with with a lot
(06:42):
of hope and care what it'll be going forward. And
there might be episodes like this one where you know,
something happens in the world, like we all know what
went down this week, and I decided to jump on
here and just share my thoughts with you guys about
you know, what I think or what I see and
and how I feel about it. So you know, if
(07:03):
you've been living under a rock or you're one of
these people who doesn't really pay attention to internet stuff.
Charlie Kirk, very famous right wing monster. I think you
could call him just absolute savage, absolute icon of conservative media.
(07:25):
Very young guy thirty one years old, was assassinated, shot
and killed, and I think at this point everybody's probably
seen the horrific video of it. Definitely not going to
show it on this show. I think I've seen and
if I'm speaking for everybody, I think I've seen it
more than I need to in my lifetime, more than
I care to. But I agree with Sam Hyde, I
(07:46):
think everybody has to see it. I think you have
to be faced with sort of the brutality of how
fragile life can be and how quickly it can end
or be taken away from you. So I think as
gruesome as it was to watch, I'm sort of grateful
that I had to see it because it just reminds
(08:06):
you how quickly life can be taken away from any
of us. And you know, that's that's a horrific crime
that took place, that took his life, but there are
also situations every day to try to maintain perspective that.
You know, people have random accidents every day that that
(08:28):
result in death or or major disfigurement or whatever, and
you know, there's there's just there, there is this sort
of reminder of like, dude, our life is just this
this thing that we sort of take for granted all
the time, and until you have some sort of near
death experience, whether it be an accident or you get sick,
(08:52):
you get cancer scare or whatever it's it's really hard
to understand the fragility or to experience that sense of
mortality and feel the frigid of what human life is
like until you go through something like that, or you
experience something like that. So pretty horrific thing. I've pretty
much spent the last two three days. I did jump
on a stream Wednesday night with my friend Robert Hurr,
(09:15):
who hosts a show called Washcast, and it sort of
felt appropriate because we spent election night together, myself and
Carls Patali and a bunch of other conservative people on
Washcast kind of going through election results, and we were
following a lot of Charlie Kirk and his team's coverage.
(09:36):
So when he asked me to be a part of
the sort of memorial show Wednesday night to talk about it,
I was like, sure, absolutely, And you know, there were
moments of that where it quickly devolved into people's takes
and everything else, and you know, ultimately I think everybody
was really sad. And I've spent the last three days
since then just talking with friends of mine in the space.
(10:00):
A lot of you guys, most people that follow me
on social media know me one of a couple ways.
So you either know me as a comedian because you
know me from other podcasters that you follow their comics,
So like you either know me through the world of
Gavin mcinness and Anthony Kumia and some of the work
I've done with those guys touring on our different stand
(10:20):
up tours that I've put together for us over the years.
There are a lot of people who know me through
some conservative Twitter spaces. I do a lot of hangouts
with Pirate Radio on Thursdays, and when I was up
in the mornings early enough, I would do some stuff
with fuck why can't I remember the name of their show,
(10:43):
that's gonna bother me, but early Morning, very early morning
X space that I used to jump on all the time,
and obviously I haven't been on in a while because
I can't even remember the fucking name of it, but
very welcoming group of conservative people, and obviously I do
a lot of stuff on there with my buddy Brandon Strock,
the founder of walk Away, and he's also been nice
(11:05):
enough to include me in a lot of his political events.
We did walk a con last year, we did his roast.
I was supposed to be at the Los Angeles event
this year, but was very, very sick from our show
about a week before. And so I say all that
to say that a lot of my since twenty eighteen,
when I sort of got thrust into the political sphere
(11:30):
with some comments I made on Twitter, I started making
a lot of friends in the conservative media space, and
I never, you know, politically, I never really thought of
myself as much of a conservative, and still to this day,
I have points of view that are not conservative at all,
Like I'm a yes, I'm very pro life, and if
(11:51):
you follow the older version of the Darkest Hour, you
actually can go back and listen to the episode where
I sort of made that realization with Adamy Enzer on
the podcast and sort of came around to that way
of thinking. But I was always sort of like a
left leaning libertarian in my mind, where you know, I'm
pro universal healthcare, you know, pro streamlining entitlements into something
(12:17):
like UBI instead of having welfare and child you know,
support and all these different things where I feel like
there's probably tons of stealing that happens. So I never
thought of myself as a conservative guy. And in twenty eighteen,
when I was like canceled. Everyone loves that word for
basically saying something as simple as racism towards white people
(12:39):
is still racism and we should treat it the same way,
which I felt was kind of a common sense take.
The fucking world lost its goddamn mind and freaked out
over that and then tried to tie every racial joke
or whatever I've ever made in my career to that statement.
I started making friends with people in conservative media. That's
when I became friends with Gavin mcinness, when I became
friends with Anthony Cumia, and I started meeting a bunch
(13:02):
of other people in the conservative space and a lot
of the other young people that were around my age
at the time. Keep in mind, at that moment, I
was only thirty five, not even thirty five. Yet I
was thirty four, and a lot of the young people
in that space that I had met were young people
who worked for a small company at the time or
a smaller group at the time called Turning Point and
(13:23):
worked for a guy named Charlie Kirk. And so naturally,
as I started getting more familiar with the space, I
started to follow Charlie and Candace Owens and became a
very big Candace Fan early on, and really loved what
they stood for and loved the people that they that
they've fostered and brought along. And a lot of those
people now have gone on to be stars in their
(13:46):
own right, like people like Isabelle Brown, who now works
at The Daily Wire, has her own show over there,
has written books, has done a lot of amazing things.
Started as like TPUSA interns and chapter people, and and
a lot of the guys that I still know to
this day, either if they work for Turning Point currently
(14:06):
guys and girls, or they started there in some capacity,
So Turning Point for most conservative people was a part
of their start. For me, it was really just a
part of my exposure to this side of modern media.
And I always saw Charlie as like a you know,
just like your classic American sort of church boy, like
(14:30):
like really clean cut, really polished, very nice, maybe a
little too nice, you know. I think I think I
always thought of Charlie as somebody that if I had
gotten to meet him, uh and was myself, he would
potentially maybe be a little like, well, that's a little crass,
you know, maybe a little a little too clean for
(14:50):
guys like us. Unfortunately, that never got to happen. I
never got to test that or find that out. But
but always a good guy. You know. I always looked
at him and I was like, okay as a and
I was not back into religion when I started watching Charlie,
so I feel a little slighted in the sense that
I didn't have the appreciation for his faith and his
(15:14):
commitment to Christianity early on in watching him that I
do now and would now after kind of getting back
into religion myself. I always saw him as a like
sort of the best of us, in the sense of,
you know, this is probably the guy we all should
aspire to be if we're being our best selves. You know,
(15:36):
clean cut, hard working family men, dedicated to a cause
and a purpose and a mission of building something greater
than ourselves. I think when you think about aspiration, like
what is the goal for any sort of conservative space person,
they would tell you the goal is to become a
Charlie Kirk and any of these friends of mine that
(15:57):
have you know, organizations or non pro or anything like
that in the conservative space. I mean, the model that
they would always speak to is like, you know, if
only we could get to turning point numbers, or if
only we could be as effective and reach as many
people as Charlie does, then we would really be doing something.
So always sort of a beacon of aspiration for people
(16:19):
on that side of the space, and for me, getting
involved in that world was never like premeditated. It was
something that I sort of like got pushed into with
the circumstances around what happened to me in twenty eighteen,
and I just really tried to lean into it and
be involved as much as people asked me to be
and participate as much as I was invited to, and
(16:42):
as that happened, I've been lucky enough to be involved
with some of these things, like I said, mostly with
walk Away Organization and a few other small ones here
and there, but have always been really grateful to be
invited along to participate with that. So, like I said,
I've spent the last few days just sort of talking
(17:05):
through this with a bunch of friends and people that
are in this space, and other performers and other public speakers,
and we've sort of all been left with this feeling
of I wonder why this one stings so much, or
why this one hurts so much? And I think Dave Smith.
I won't replicate what he said. I think if you're
a follower of Dave Smith, I'm a big fan of Dave's.
(17:26):
He really hit the nail on the head about what
it is we talk about these parasocial relationships all the
time that you have with people you watch as podcasters
or broadcasters or streamers or whatever. And you know, he
sort of put a really really good point on it
(17:47):
about saying, like, you really do get to know these people.
You really get to know who people are because they're
if they're good at it, or if they're coming by
it honestly, then they're they're really sharing a big part
of themselves as they do these shows and streams, and
so you do get to know these people, and even
if you don't know them on a personal level, you
do get to know them maybe closer than I mean,
(18:08):
you may end up spending more time with them listening
to them than you do even some of your closest friends.
For me, it's a little bit different. And as I've
talked with some of my friends, you know, and to
give you guys a little bit of perspective on this
kind of thing, it's a I think it's a little
bit different if you do anything in the public eye
at any capacity, like if you're a performer of any kind,
(18:31):
or a public speaker or even a politician. This is
something I and I tweeted about this, and Dana lash
the former head of the NRA, was nice enough to
share it, and a few other gap I think Seb
Gorka shared it. But I said, you know, everyone that's
sort of on this side of conservative media or alternative
media and any capacity, right small or big or whatever.
(18:53):
I think we've all had this sort of looming in
the back of our heads that this could and probably
would happen to one of us one day, you know.
And I you know, not to not to go through
a forced ranking of who we would put at the
top of the list, but certainly if you're a Nick
Fuentes or an Alex Jones or even my buddy Gavin
(19:14):
Gavin McGinness, Milo Yanopolis, like any of these people and Coulter,
any of these people who have been, you know, really
vocal figures at the top of the pyramid. At one
point they've either had their lives threatened verbally or written
in a written form, whether it be male or email
(19:36):
or messaging or even face to face. I mean, you know,
the infamous one that I can recall Gavin McGuinness in
New York in twenty eighteen when the Proud Boys were
sort of sneak attacked by Antifa, jumped by Antifa and
had to sort of fight for their lives and defend themselves,
and and then remembering how warped that gout in the
media that these guys did, this brutal group of white
(19:59):
supremacist was in an altercation in New York, as if
these guys are going around looking for antifas to beat
up and seeing just how the media perverts these sort
of stories. But regardless, if you've if you're in that
space at all, you know, you've at some point you've
had the thought of, you know, could could something happen
(20:23):
to me because of what I'm saying or what I'm
speaking about? You know? And and certainly people can be
critical and go, hey man, you're small, nobody gives a
fuck about you. And I'm sure that's a sentiment out
there that people can have. But I can tell you that,
you know, I was. I was in a twelve year
(20:43):
relationship up until November of last year. And the reason
I mentioned the span of time is that when we met,
I was not in the public eye at all. You know,
we met in twenty eleven, started hanging out and became friends.
We started dating in twenty twelve, and I at that
(21:04):
time I had released a couple of CDs as a comic,
I had a few YouTube clips out there. I had
never had any sort of public exposure whatsoever. So our
life was very different when we met. Then it became
over time, and in twenty eighteen, when the after I'd
gotten a TV show and had some success and people
(21:25):
started to know who I was a little bit on
the Food Network. When the cancelation thing happened in twenty eighteen,
was really the first time I had ever gotten a
large degree of online hate and death threats and violence
and things like that. And so what I shared on
X was like a there's something unique about people who
(21:48):
have had to have real scary conversations with their partner,
their wife or their husband or their significant other about
the danger of being a public person in any way,
and also how that affects them, because I don't think
people realize, but like maybe they do, but in today's society,
like it doesn't stop at the public figure. They go
(22:08):
after your family, they go after your friends, they'll go
after your job if you have one, you know. And
so there were some very very hard times in my
relationship at that time, and we were about six years
into the twelve where that became very real, where the
dangers that I was putting myself in were also possible
(22:32):
dangers for my partner and the person that I was
living with and you know, was the most prominent person
in my life. That's a real scary proposition. It's also
something that if I'm looking back on, you know, I
would say, was it the end of the real? No?
But it was the start. I think that that stress.
(22:53):
I think that, if I'm being honest like that, the
pressure of that was the start of the end of
the relationship ship and definitely put a lot of I guess,
undue pressure, unexpected pressure, and undo pressure on it. And
on my side, you know, I for many years after that,
(23:13):
I carried a tremendous amount of guilt about putting somebody
in that position who didn't ask for it, you know,
And it wasn't something I had set out to do,
but it was also not something I considered it, you know,
I was I didn't intend to become hated by a
ton of people on the internet. But I also didn't
really act as if I gave a shit if that
(23:35):
happened either. So it's one of those things of like
you can set out, you know, you can still be reckless,
not setting out to do something on purpose, but still
be responsible or have to be responsible for the collateral
damage that it may cause. It's like a manslaughter thing.
You know, you didn't intend to kill somebody, but somebody
did die, so you have to you still own that too.
(23:57):
And it sort of felt like that in some ways,
and and you know, I by feeling and also I'll
say that guilt was also manipulated and exploited throughout the
rest of our relationship together, and so it was sort
of the It was a big It was a big
It was definitely a cancer that I think in the
(24:18):
beginning thought this is probably something we can get over
with time. But it was always there and it was
always a problem. And so I say that to say
that when you're a public figure in any way and
people hate you, and I think that's the case for
anybody who's a public figure in any capacity, even if
you think you're saying all the right things, or you're
(24:39):
the nicest guy in the world, and this is this
is you know, obvious in the case of Charlie, like
we look at this and we go, my god, I
would never expect the person that would be targeted would
be Charlie Kirk. He's the nicest, he's the best of us,
he's the sweetest, he's the most reasonable, he's the most polite.
And so you sort of left with this feeling of, man,
(25:00):
if somebody could hate that guy enough to kill him,
you know, we're all fucked, We're all doomed. And so
I think that is a lot of that was a
lot of the feeling of of what happened on Wednesday
and why it was very tough for a lot of
my friends who put themselves in the public eye, even
(25:22):
the smallest ways or the biggest ways. They have a
couple of friends who will go on Fox like once
a week locally and and share their opinions about things,
and you don't ever think that like what you have
to say, or what you think or what your opinions are,
there is enough to, you know, have somebody want to
visit violence on you. And I think that also lends
(25:44):
credibility to some of the things that have bothered people
about the way this has been reacted to in the media,
you know, right, And I'm guilty of this as well.
You know, I think we've been lied to by mainstream
media and to the point and buy our own government
enough to where it's hard to believe anything they tell us. So,
(26:05):
you know, when the Trans, when the Trans shit came
out about the bullet casings or whatever on Wednesday, my
immediate thought was like, well, this is a government agency.
This is the CIA or Massade or somebody, And I
wanted to talk about that a little bit because everybody's
I saw Louis Gomez said this, and a lot of
people have been like, what the fuck with the conspiracy theories?
(26:26):
Even Dave when he and Carroll was like, this is
the Jews, and I'm not the Jews guy by any
stretch of the imagination. I get exhausted with that shit.
It's exhausting. It's as exhausting to me as it is
listening to black people talk about how white people prevent
them from having the life they want. You know, It's like,
there's not a Jewish guy standing in my doorway preventing
me from going to work today and making more money,
or working harder at my career as a comedian, or
(26:48):
any of those things. Like it's the only person in
my way is me, And that's true for ninety nine
percent of people. The biggest obstacle you face every day
in having the life you want is yourself. But I
can kind of send a little bit of a testament
or make a little bit of an inroad in trying
to explain I think why our brain goes there. I think,
(27:13):
you know, at least for me, this desire, this hope
that it's something some grand conspiracy, something greater than just
a lone gunman or a lonely mad kid, is based
in hope. You know. I think we look at these
things and we go man, I Charlie was such a
big character and such a force that there has to
(27:35):
be some elaborate plan to take someone down that's that great,
that's that powerful, that's that impressive. That and dare I
say that Christ like in his in the way he
treats people and the way he carries himself and the
way he lives. You know, it would have to be
something monumental to take down someone that's that good. And
(27:56):
I think we look for that because of the scary
reality of what if it is just one mad kid
that just doesn't like you for whatever reason. Because I
think it's very easy for all of us to go, well,
if it is the CIA or it is Masad, like,
I'm not even on their radar, so I don't have
(28:16):
to worry about that at all. But if it's one
mad kid who's been radicalized by whatever he consumes or
his friends or internet chet groups or whatever it is,
whatever are the influences that push him in that direction.
Sometimes people are radicalized by their own lonesome You know,
(28:39):
I can tell you in the twelve months or not
that long ten months or whatever, that I've been alone
again now, like you think some fucked up shit. When
you're home alone by yourself and there's nobody to check
you or check in on you, you can have some
really dark, insane thoughts at times, and if you don't
have Fortunately for me, I have good friends and comedians
(28:59):
where I can put that dark energy and we can
laugh about it and make jokes about it, and it
doesn't become what's something I fester on or think about
or motive for action. That I would later go out
into the world and take. So I think what's what
causes us to push forward into the realm of conspiracy
(29:21):
is this hope that something, this evil has to be
bigger than us and it couldn't touch me because I'm
not Charlie, I'm not turning point. I've never done anything
that significant in my life or that important or that meaningful,
So this I would never be at risk. The other
thing we're all at risk of. Anybody who has ever
(29:44):
had any kind of audience is at risk for a
percentage of that audience hating them enough and maybe hating
him enough to kill them. And so then you're sort
of faced with a question that I think everyone has
to ask themselves when you are thinking about this is
a few things. Number One, have I ever said anything
(30:05):
that I don't stand behind or believe? And the answer
for me is no, I've never said anything that I regret.
I've never said anything that I don't believe that I
don't mean. And obviously I would put comedy a little
bit to the side of that, because obviously sometimes there's
some exaggeration in there for comedic effect, or you're putting
a little extra English on the ball to h to
(30:28):
really drive it home, or to make it funny or entertaining.
So there's obviously got to be some grace given with
with that anything creative. You know, I certainly don't think
the guy who wrote American History X like thinks all
that shit. And if you know him, you've seen him.
He's he's complete opposite, total peace love, sort of anti
(30:50):
Vietnam hippie of a guy, Tony. I think his name
is Tony something I could be wrong about that. I
have to look it up. But you have to ask
yourself that have I ever said anything I don't believe?
Have I ever endorsed something I don't really believe or
believe in. Have I ever thrown my weight behind something,
whether it be maybe like a if you do products
(31:12):
or endorsements or whatever ads? You know? Have I ever
promoted something that I don't believe in, or an ideology
I don't believe in? You know, those are the things
you have to question. And then a question that you
have to ask yourself is is do I care about
the thing that I do in public enough to maybe
(31:32):
die for it? And I know that sounds a little extreme.
I don't think it sounds extreme after what happened this week,
I think it's a real question that everyone is asking,
you know. I think musicians are asking themselves this. I
think performers are asking themselves this. And this is no
different than when nine to eleven happened and we felt
(31:55):
that other kind of terrorism of you know, am I
going to let the fear of what could happen to
me overtake what I want to do with my life?
And in my case, you know, the question would be like,
do I care about comedy and any of the other
creative things that I do enough that I would be
willing to get injured or die over it? For me,
(32:17):
the answer is yes. I can't think of anything else
that I would do with my life that wouldn't mean
anywhere near as much or that I would enjoy as much.
And that's one of the only things that gives me
comfort about Charlie Kirk being the person that this happened
to is I think if you asked him, in his faith,
in his conviction and his commitment and belief in God,
(32:41):
would he give his life as he did for this mission?
I think he would have said yes. I think he
would have said yes without hesitation and it's horrible that
it had to come to that for him and his
(33:02):
family and those adorable kids. But if you are religious
in any way as as I have become, then you
have to put your faith in your higher power and
(33:23):
trust that your purpose ah is to serve in whatever
capacity you're called to. And and I think he believed
that as well, probably better and strongly than I do.
And I think he would have answered the call willingly
(33:45):
and did so. It's uh, yeah, it's it's it's a
somber thing to think about because a man lost his life,
a good man, and you know, a wife lost her husband,
and two very young children lost their father. And I
(34:10):
don't think there's ever a situation, at least from my
point of view, that I would ever cheer for that
or root for that, even of my worst enemy. You know,
you know the people that I despise, that I don't like,
and you guys can probably figure them out who they are.
It's not a secret. But I would not ever sit
(34:34):
in joy or positivity about something like this happening to
even my worst enemy. You know. It's a and again
it's because of the collateral damage, you know, it's their
families that's the people that love them and depend on
them and I And there's also you also have to
(34:56):
have a little bit like a little bit of a
degree of humility and understand that like most people aren't
what you're getting on from people through a screen is
not all of them. And I guess the curious part
in in me is a person has faith that there
(35:17):
is better in people than maybe what I see in
them or what they show me or what they show
the world. And I think that's a big thing that
keeps me going as a person, is that I have
faith that there's good in people that we don't always
get to see or that maybe they don't always show.
(35:37):
Because I think if you lose that hope, then what
are you living for? You know, I've always said, like
the death of the West, Like if if the West falls,
what will be written on the headstone is a lack
of curiosity. And it's this place we've gotten to in
(35:59):
society where we just think we know exactly who somebody
is at all times. We go, oh, I've seen that
guy's content or I've seen people talk about that guy,
and I know exactly who he is and what he
stands for, and I can make a judgment on his
character because I think I've seen enough, and we saw
today with like fucking Stephen King, like read somebody else's tweet.
(36:21):
It was like Charlie Kirk called for stoning Gaze, and
then people were very quick to point out like never
said that, he never did that, and this is you know,
absolutely defamatory and fucking garbage and probably the kind of
rhetoric that riled up the guy who killed this person.
And of course now you know Stephen King is doing
a Mia kulpa and he's done a million apologies on
(36:43):
Twitter and he's probably just trying not to get sued
at this point. But if you lose that curate, that
genuine curiosity about who people are, you are limiting what
this life can be for you. And listen, I'm not
saying this as a guy who does this. Well, like
(37:04):
I am a flawed man, and I like as much
as I'm telling you this, I have to tell myself
this all the time, is that maybe there's more to
this person than what you see. And I really trust
in my gut and I really think I'm a good
judge of character, but you have to sort of be
cautious at times not to discount possibility, right, And so
(37:27):
when I say that what will be on the headstone
if the West ever falls will be a lack of curiosity.
It will be because this assumption that we can immediately
know who someone is based off of a little bit
of information is what drives us to extremism. You know,
you here are somebody's opinion about one thing, and then
you put them in a box. You go, well, this
person is woke. This person is a liberal, this person
(37:48):
is a leftist, this person is all right, this person
is an extremist. They hate women, they hate gays, they
hate black people. Listen, I've heard people say this shit
about me all the time. They'll hear my opinion about
being pro life, and they'll go, this man's a misogynist
and he hates women, and he hates black people, and
he hates gay people. Even though I most of the
(38:10):
time work with one of the biggest gay conservatives in
the movement, nobody's interested in that nuance or that subtlety,
or that the difference in people because it's it takes effort.
It takes effort to find out who somebody actually is,
who they really are, and what they really stand for.
(38:32):
And people are lazy, and it's just easier to put
people in a box than it is to really understand them.
And I'm just here to tell you that anytime I've
done that, i've been I know that I've like limited
how much of life I get to experience. And you
are too. If you're one of these people that sees
a couple of notes, it's like, think of it this way.
(38:54):
It's like somebody who listens to thirty seconds of a
song and decides, I think this artist sucks and I
don't have to hear anything else that they have to make.
And it's so limiting, right, because if you think about
some of the greatest artists we've known over time, they
don't always nail it the first time out of the gate.
And sometimes they nail it the first time out of
the gate and they never get back to it, and
(39:16):
nothing they ever do is as good as that or whatever.
But maybe it's different, or maybe it tells you something
about else about who they are as a person. And
so you know, imagine if you had only listened to
like the first thirty seconds of a Beatles record and said,
I don't ever have to I don't ever have to
hear anymore. I know that the Beatles suck, I hate them,
(39:38):
and then you don't ever experience any of the rest
of it for the rest of your life. And so
it's just really limiting. It's a really limiting way to
see people. And it's actually where a lot of the
division lives and comes from, where people just sort of
(40:00):
they see a little bit, they see a few seconds
of somebody's life or a snapshot or a video clip,
or they see a clip of somebody else covering that person,
and they go, I know who this guy is. I
don't need to know anything else and I and I
fucking hate this person or I love this person. I mean,
it's it's kind of insane to live that way. So
(40:25):
that's really the only message I have, you know, coming
out of this is if if you take anything away
from this week, it is two things. Try to understand
that your time here is limited and really think about
how you spend it and who you spend it with.
And the second thing is is make sure you give
(40:46):
yourself enough grace and the people around you enough grace
to really show you who they are before you make
life altering decisions based on a little bit of information.
You know, it's and and to try to have empathy
for the kid in this situation. His life is over
because he thought he saw enough of Charlie Kirk to
(41:07):
end his life and basically give up any fucking future
This kid would have had doing anything because he had
so much hate for this person, which was probably based
on a little bit of information and not the full
picture of who Charlie Kirk was as a person. So
(41:27):
that is that, you know, I appreciate you guys tuning
into this. I haven't been looking at comments because I've
been trying to maintain my train of thought. If there's anything,
you're good, I'll throw it up. Let's see, here's a question. Oh,
(41:48):
this is a good one. Do you ever think you'll
do live events again, considering the possible danger to your life?
I think I addressed that. First of all. I know
you're being facetious that nobody cares, and it's like, yeah,
the people all the time, like, we don't care enough
to want to kill you. We just love watching you
eat shit all day. Okay, Yeah, I've never this has
always been a fear or possibility, and it's never prevented
(42:09):
us from doing it. So when I say us, I
mean me and the people that I travel with and
tour with. But I don't speak for them, and so
we will see. But from my perspective, I'm not changing anything.
I'm not doing anything different. Let's see clips. I know
Josh originally is an eater. I saw this one earlier. Yeah,
(42:30):
great comment, five stars. That is how most people know
me is a big old, fat piece of shit. Let's see. Uh.
Somebody said, not sure if I ever heard Charlie Josh
mentioned Charlie's name ever before. Yeah, listen, listen, man. A
lot of the people that are in that sort of
(42:50):
center right part of what we do, I've been very
critical of them, and you know, I'll be the first
to admit that I one of the things I didn't
like about people like Charlie, and I'll throw Ben Shapiro
in there, and even Tucker Carlson while he was on
Fox up until he covered our story, but even then
didn't cover Gavin's involvement in it, so that felt pussy.
(43:13):
I've always had an issue with the center right or
mainstream right, because I feel like they don't involve people
like more so Gavin and Anthony or even Fuentes into
the conversation because they love to be able to stand
to their left. So you know, they they pretend that
we are the extreme right, and so they love to
(43:35):
stand to the left of us and go, well, we're
not over there with the Milo Unopolises and the Nick Fuentes,
is in the Gavin mcinnesss and me only by association
with those people. So I've always been critical of that.
But if that's even more so the reason why I
look at somebody like Charlie and go, why on earth
would he be the guy that would that would absolutely
(43:58):
bear the wrath of somebody's hatred to this degree. So yeah,
let's see, let's see where is spit where it's carl Yeah,
we're gonna get in, We're gonna talk about that. We're
gonna we're gonna segue right into the big Uglies here
in a minute. You're gonna watch biggest problem. Yes, definitely
(44:21):
gonna watch biggest problem. Veto has been on quite a tear. Yeah,
we'll probably talk about Vito at the Big Uglies here
in a little bit. Let's see. Yeah, that's about it.
Abbi shap Mike, I said, Abbi Shapiro know I can
get behind her. I don't even know if she's real.
I see these things about Abbi Shapiro and she's supposed
(44:44):
to have big tins or something that always looks like
AI to me, is that even a real Is that
even really his sister? Is that a real person? I
don't know. I've always felt like that's like not even
a real thing. So pretty, but but yes, so Darkest Hour.
(45:04):
This is something I'm gonna try to put out once
a week. There is a Patreon, there are links. I'll
have them in the bio, on my ex and on
some of these other social media pages, and we'll get
moving on new episodes of this. But these are gonna
be you know, I think a little bit more sort
of like real conversations and you know, hopefully sort of
(45:25):
rewarding conversations with people. So you know, I'd love to
have people come on and talk about tragedy that they've
turned into comedy and all that type of stuff. And
I hope it's interesting for you guys, but you know,
for me, it's more it's interesting for me, So I'm
gonna keep doing it, and I'm I'm it's kind of
a It wasn't planned to bring this back this week
(45:47):
in what might be the darkest hour in America in
a long, long time. But here we are, and in
a weird way, it felt like, well, I guess this
is the time to bring it back. So thank you
guys for tuning in and checking the show out and
stick around. We'll be right back with a new episode
of The Big Uglies.
Hi guys, welcome back to the Darkest Hour. This is
the first of these shows back with the Darkest Hour
podcast and it's been a while. It's been a long
time since we've done any of the Darkest Hour podcasts.
(00:23):
If you remember in the if you know your Josh
Denny podcasting lineage, going back to the early days, I
feel like this is really hot. I want to bring
this down a little bit. That looks better. You can
let me know in the comments if you can hear me. Okay,
(00:44):
I feel like the mic was way too hot in
the beginning, but that's good. So yeah, if you know
your Josh Denny podcasting legacy, and if Numero Uni, if
my Numero Uno fan is in the comments, you know
that I have had many podcasts. I had. The first
(01:05):
podcast that I did was called March of the Pigs
and that was actually the podcast that got me the
Food Network show. And that was back in twenty fourteen.
I think I started that twenty fifteen, So yeah, that
was that was sort of the thing that kicked off
(01:28):
my podcasting adventure. Of course, I did many years on
Patrick Melton's Nobody Likes Onions program, from like twenty ten
to twenty fourteen, and that was a fun time for
the years we did that show, and then The March
of the Pigs was my first solo thing, and then
we did several several several other did I did several
(01:50):
other podcasts. I had the Implications of Josh Denny. I
had the wake Up Call, which I did for locals
for a little while at the Jankam podcast, which was
sort of me and my sort of nihilistic everything is
shit Stan Marsh phase of broadcasting. And then I had
(02:16):
for a short while this was a podcast that I
had done during the pandemic, and this was more or
less an extension. It was intended to be an extension
of a live show that we did here in Los Angeles.
So I used to host a live show at the
Westside Comedy Theater in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, sixteen, seventeen eighteen.
At she was like, so it's like four years almost
(02:38):
five years we did that show, and we always wanted
to have a podcast extension of the show because the
show is sort of centered around you can make comedy
from anything, so it could be dark personal stories or
just if you have a really fucked up sense of humor.
It kind of works across the board, and we always
thought it would be cool to maybe do a green
room extension of that that type of thing. But for me,
(03:02):
the concept of the Darkest Hour comedy show and the
podcast was always sort of based off of one of
the things that I like about myself the most as
a person. And you know, I think for like I think,
for you to find purpose and happiness in life, you
have to have an understanding of like, this is who
I am as a person, this is what I like
about myself, this is something that I think is different
(03:26):
about me or unique about me. And then if you're
lucky enough, you can build some kind of career or
you know, have a fun hobby of podcasting or stand
up or you know, put it into some kind of
art or something creative. But for me, it's always been
like my curiosity about people and what they've been through
(03:46):
and what they've experienced and kind of what they've gone
through in their life that has shaped who they are,
and whether that be creatively or just as a person,
I don't know. That's always what's been the most interesting
to me about people. It's also why I love working
as a ride share driver. Over the years. For some
of you guys that know the history, I lost a
job when i was like thirty for the first time
(04:08):
I'd ever been fired from a place. I end up
suing that company and winning. But I started working as
an uber driver at the time just to sort of
make ends meet, and I've really fell in love with
it from the perspective of like being forced to meet
strangers you otherwise would never meet. And you know, in
the early days, people were very very talkative, Like back
in the day, they would be it was like a cab.
(04:30):
It would be taxi cab confessions. People would confide in
you their darkest secrets or I don't know about darkest secrets,
but you know, the people would like almost treat you
like a therapist. Sometimes they tell you about their day.
They'd maybe tell you about their life or their relationship,
different stuff that they had going on. This hair is
bothering me right here. So yeah, you really just got
(04:51):
to immerse yourself in people. And that's what I always
sort of loved about that work, and I feel like
it informed my work as a co I've had several
bits over the years that came directly from conversations with
strangers or even you know, things that I've overheard from strangers,
and and it's what's been cool about that is I've
always had that as a part time job to lean
(05:13):
on if work got thin or if times got tough
or whatever, except for the pandemic, when everything sort of
shut down, then it was like off the table. But
going back to the format of the show, I've always
really seen this show as like a vehicle for that curiosity.
So as we bring the show back and do it
more and more, I want this show to be about
(05:34):
exploring people and what they've what they've been through their stories,
not necessarily like celebrities or famous people or other comedians.
And you know, it's not necessarily the episodes might not
all be chuckle house where you know, you're you're always
trying to make fun of dark shit. But that's the intention,
(05:57):
right is to try to, you know, either be informed
by what people have experienced in their lives just to
understand them better, or to have some sort of point
of connection with a person, or maybe you know, maybe
something creative does come out of it. Maybe you come
up with a funny bit, or you come up with
an interesting idea, or you know, I was spending time
(06:19):
with a friend a couple months back who visited for
a weekend, and my time with her was like, gave
me a great idea for a movie, and so I've
been working on writing that for the last several weeks,
on and off, despite interruptions. So that's the that's kind
of the gist. That's the gist of what this show
is always meant to be, and with with a lot
(06:42):
of hope and care what it'll be going forward. And
there might be episodes like this one where you know,
something happens in the world, like we all know what
went down this week, and I decided to jump on
here and just share my thoughts with you guys about
you know, what I think or what I see and
and how I feel about it. So you know, if
(07:03):
you've been living under a rock or you're one of
these people who doesn't really pay attention to internet stuff.
Charlie Kirk, very famous right wing monster. I think you
could call him just absolute savage, absolute icon of conservative media.
(07:25):
Very young guy thirty one years old, was assassinated, shot
and killed, and I think at this point everybody's probably
seen the horrific video of it. Definitely not going to
show it on this show. I think I've seen and
if I'm speaking for everybody, I think I've seen it
more than I need to in my lifetime, more than
I care to. But I agree with Sam Hyde, I
(07:46):
think everybody has to see it. I think you have
to be faced with sort of the brutality of how
fragile life can be and how quickly it can end
or be taken away from you. So I think as
gruesome as it was to watch, I'm sort of grateful
that I had to see it because it just reminds
(08:06):
you how quickly life can be taken away from any
of us. And you know, that's that's a horrific crime
that took place, that took his life, but there are
also situations every day to try to maintain perspective that.
You know, people have random accidents every day that that
(08:28):
result in death or or major disfigurement or whatever, and
you know, there's there's just there, there is this sort
of reminder of like, dude, our life is just this
this thing that we sort of take for granted all
the time, and until you have some sort of near
death experience, whether it be an accident or you get sick,
(08:52):
you get cancer scare or whatever it's it's really hard
to understand the fragility or to experience that sense of
mortality and feel the frigid of what human life is
like until you go through something like that, or you
experience something like that. So pretty horrific thing. I've pretty
much spent the last two three days. I did jump
on a stream Wednesday night with my friend Robert Hurr,
(09:15):
who hosts a show called Washcast, and it sort of
felt appropriate because we spent election night together, myself and
Carls Patali and a bunch of other conservative people on
Washcast kind of going through election results, and we were
following a lot of Charlie Kirk and his team's coverage.
(09:36):
So when he asked me to be a part of
the sort of memorial show Wednesday night to talk about it,
I was like, sure, absolutely, And you know, there were
moments of that where it quickly devolved into people's takes
and everything else, and you know, ultimately I think everybody
was really sad. And I've spent the last three days
since then just talking with friends of mine in the space.
(10:00):
A lot of you guys, most people that follow me
on social media know me one of a couple ways.
So you either know me as a comedian because you
know me from other podcasters that you follow their comics,
So like you either know me through the world of
Gavin mcinness and Anthony Kumia and some of the work
I've done with those guys touring on our different stand
(10:20):
up tours that I've put together for us over the years.
There are a lot of people who know me through
some conservative Twitter spaces. I do a lot of hangouts
with Pirate Radio on Thursdays, and when I was up
in the mornings early enough, I would do some stuff
with fuck why can't I remember the name of their show,
(10:43):
that's gonna bother me, but early Morning, very early morning
X space that I used to jump on all the time,
and obviously I haven't been on in a while because
I can't even remember the fucking name of it, but
very welcoming group of conservative people, and obviously I do
a lot of stuff on there with my buddy Brandon Strock,
the founder of walk Away, and he's also been nice
(11:05):
enough to include me in a lot of his political events.
We did walk a con last year, we did his roast.
I was supposed to be at the Los Angeles event
this year, but was very, very sick from our show
about a week before. And so I say all that
to say that a lot of my since twenty eighteen,
when I sort of got thrust into the political sphere
(11:30):
with some comments I made on Twitter, I started making
a lot of friends in the conservative media space, and
I never, you know, politically, I never really thought of
myself as much of a conservative, and still to this day,
I have points of view that are not conservative at all,
Like I'm a yes, I'm very pro life, and if
(11:51):
you follow the older version of the Darkest Hour, you
actually can go back and listen to the episode where
I sort of made that realization with Adamy Enzer on
the podcast and sort of came around to that way
of thinking. But I was always sort of like a
left leaning libertarian in my mind, where you know, I'm
pro universal healthcare, you know, pro streamlining entitlements into something
(12:17):
like UBI instead of having welfare and child you know,
support and all these different things where I feel like
there's probably tons of stealing that happens. So I never
thought of myself as a conservative guy. And in twenty eighteen,
when I was like canceled. Everyone loves that word for
basically saying something as simple as racism towards white people
(12:39):
is still racism and we should treat it the same way,
which I felt was kind of a common sense take.
The fucking world lost its goddamn mind and freaked out
over that and then tried to tie every racial joke
or whatever I've ever made in my career to that statement.
I started making friends with people in conservative media. That's
when I became friends with Gavin mcinness, when I became
friends with Anthony Cumia, and I started meeting a bunch
(13:02):
of other people in the conservative space and a lot
of the other young people that were around my age
at the time. Keep in mind, at that moment, I
was only thirty five, not even thirty five. Yet I
was thirty four, and a lot of the young people
in that space that I had met were young people
who worked for a small company at the time or
a smaller group at the time called Turning Point and
(13:23):
worked for a guy named Charlie Kirk. And so naturally,
as I started getting more familiar with the space, I
started to follow Charlie and Candace Owens and became a
very big Candace Fan early on, and really loved what
they stood for and loved the people that they that
they've fostered and brought along. And a lot of those
people now have gone on to be stars in their
(13:46):
own right, like people like Isabelle Brown, who now works
at The Daily Wire, has her own show over there,
has written books, has done a lot of amazing things.
Started as like TPUSA interns and chapter people, and and
a lot of the guys that I still know to
this day, either if they work for Turning Point currently
(14:06):
guys and girls, or they started there in some capacity,
So Turning Point for most conservative people was a part
of their start. For me, it was really just a
part of my exposure to this side of modern media.
And I always saw Charlie as like a you know,
just like your classic American sort of church boy, like
(14:30):
like really clean cut, really polished, very nice, maybe a
little too nice, you know. I think I think I
always thought of Charlie as somebody that if I had
gotten to meet him, uh and was myself, he would
potentially maybe be a little like, well, that's a little crass,
you know, maybe a little a little too clean for
(14:50):
guys like us. Unfortunately, that never got to happen. I
never got to test that or find that out. But
but always a good guy. You know. I always looked
at him and I was like, okay as a and
I was not back into religion when I started watching Charlie,
so I feel a little slighted in the sense that
I didn't have the appreciation for his faith and his
(15:14):
commitment to Christianity early on in watching him that I
do now and would now after kind of getting back
into religion myself. I always saw him as a like
sort of the best of us, in the sense of,
you know, this is probably the guy we all should
aspire to be if we're being our best selves. You know,
(15:36):
clean cut, hard working family men, dedicated to a cause
and a purpose and a mission of building something greater
than ourselves. I think when you think about aspiration, like
what is the goal for any sort of conservative space person,
they would tell you the goal is to become a
Charlie Kirk and any of these friends of mine that
(15:57):
have you know, organizations or non pro or anything like
that in the conservative space. I mean, the model that
they would always speak to is like, you know, if
only we could get to turning point numbers, or if
only we could be as effective and reach as many
people as Charlie does, then we would really be doing something.
So always sort of a beacon of aspiration for people
(16:19):
on that side of the space, and for me, getting
involved in that world was never like premeditated. It was
something that I sort of like got pushed into with
the circumstances around what happened to me in twenty eighteen,
and I just really tried to lean into it and
be involved as much as people asked me to be
and participate as much as I was invited to, and
(16:42):
as that happened, I've been lucky enough to be involved
with some of these things, like I said, mostly with
walk Away Organization and a few other small ones here
and there, but have always been really grateful to be
invited along to participate with that. So, like I said,
I've spent the last few days just sort of talking
(17:05):
through this with a bunch of friends and people that
are in this space, and other performers and other public speakers,
and we've sort of all been left with this feeling
of I wonder why this one stings so much, or
why this one hurts so much? And I think Dave Smith.
I won't replicate what he said. I think if you're
a follower of Dave Smith, I'm a big fan of Dave's.
(17:26):
He really hit the nail on the head about what
it is we talk about these parasocial relationships all the
time that you have with people you watch as podcasters
or broadcasters or streamers or whatever. And you know, he
sort of put a really really good point on it
(17:47):
about saying, like, you really do get to know these people.
You really get to know who people are because they're
if they're good at it, or if they're coming by
it honestly, then they're they're really sharing a big part
of themselves as they do these shows and streams, and
so you do get to know these people, and even
if you don't know them on a personal level, you
do get to know them maybe closer than I mean,
(18:08):
you may end up spending more time with them listening
to them than you do even some of your closest friends.
For me, it's a little bit different. And as I've
talked with some of my friends, you know, and to
give you guys a little bit of perspective on this
kind of thing, it's a I think it's a little
bit different if you do anything in the public eye
at any capacity, like if you're a performer of any kind,
(18:31):
or a public speaker or even a politician. This is
something I and I tweeted about this, and Dana lash
the former head of the NRA, was nice enough to
share it, and a few other gap I think Seb
Gorka shared it. But I said, you know, everyone that's
sort of on this side of conservative media or alternative
media and any capacity, right small or big or whatever.
(18:53):
I think we've all had this sort of looming in
the back of our heads that this could and probably
would happen to one of us one day, you know.
And I you know, not to not to go through
a forced ranking of who we would put at the
top of the list, but certainly if you're a Nick
Fuentes or an Alex Jones or even my buddy Gavin
(19:14):
Gavin McGinness, Milo Yanopolis, like any of these people and Coulter,
any of these people who have been, you know, really
vocal figures at the top of the pyramid. At one
point they've either had their lives threatened verbally or written
in a written form, whether it be male or email
(19:36):
or messaging or even face to face. I mean, you know,
the infamous one that I can recall Gavin McGuinness in
New York in twenty eighteen when the Proud Boys were
sort of sneak attacked by Antifa, jumped by Antifa and
had to sort of fight for their lives and defend themselves,
and and then remembering how warped that gout in the
media that these guys did, this brutal group of white
(19:59):
supremacist was in an altercation in New York, as if
these guys are going around looking for antifas to beat
up and seeing just how the media perverts these sort
of stories. But regardless, if you've if you're in that
space at all, you know, you've at some point you've
had the thought of, you know, could could something happen
(20:23):
to me because of what I'm saying or what I'm
speaking about? You know? And and certainly people can be
critical and go, hey man, you're small, nobody gives a
fuck about you. And I'm sure that's a sentiment out
there that people can have. But I can tell you that,
you know, I was. I was in a twelve year
(20:43):
relationship up until November of last year. And the reason
I mentioned the span of time is that when we met,
I was not in the public eye at all. You know,
we met in twenty eleven, started hanging out and became friends.
We started dating in twenty twelve, and I at that
(21:04):
time I had released a couple of CDs as a comic,
I had a few YouTube clips out there. I had
never had any sort of public exposure whatsoever. So our
life was very different when we met. Then it became
over time, and in twenty eighteen, when the after I'd
gotten a TV show and had some success and people
(21:25):
started to know who I was a little bit on
the Food Network. When the cancelation thing happened in twenty eighteen,
was really the first time I had ever gotten a
large degree of online hate and death threats and violence
and things like that. And so what I shared on
X was like a there's something unique about people who
(21:48):
have had to have real scary conversations with their partner,
their wife or their husband or their significant other about
the danger of being a public person in any way,
and also how that affects them, because I don't think
people realize, but like maybe they do, but in today's society,
like it doesn't stop at the public figure. They go
(22:08):
after your family, they go after your friends, they'll go
after your job if you have one, you know. And
so there were some very very hard times in my
relationship at that time, and we were about six years
into the twelve where that became very real, where the
dangers that I was putting myself in were also possible
(22:32):
dangers for my partner and the person that I was
living with and you know, was the most prominent person
in my life. That's a real scary proposition. It's also
something that if I'm looking back on, you know, I
would say, was it the end of the real? No?
But it was the start. I think that that stress.
(22:53):
I think that, if I'm being honest like that, the
pressure of that was the start of the end of
the relationship ship and definitely put a lot of I guess,
undue pressure, unexpected pressure, and undo pressure on it. And
on my side, you know, I for many years after that,
(23:13):
I carried a tremendous amount of guilt about putting somebody
in that position who didn't ask for it, you know,
And it wasn't something I had set out to do,
but it was also not something I considered it, you know,
I was I didn't intend to become hated by a
ton of people on the internet. But I also didn't
really act as if I gave a shit if that
(23:35):
happened either. So it's one of those things of like
you can set out, you know, you can still be reckless,
not setting out to do something on purpose, but still
be responsible or have to be responsible for the collateral
damage that it may cause. It's like a manslaughter thing.
You know, you didn't intend to kill somebody, but somebody
did die, so you have to you still own that too.
(23:57):
And it sort of felt like that in some ways,
and and you know, I by feeling and also I'll
say that guilt was also manipulated and exploited throughout the
rest of our relationship together, and so it was sort
of the It was a big It was a big
It was definitely a cancer that I think in the
(24:18):
beginning thought this is probably something we can get over
with time. But it was always there and it was
always a problem. And so I say that to say
that when you're a public figure in any way and
people hate you, and I think that's the case for
anybody who's a public figure in any capacity, even if
you think you're saying all the right things, or you're
(24:39):
the nicest guy in the world, and this is this
is you know, obvious in the case of Charlie, like
we look at this and we go, my god, I
would never expect the person that would be targeted would
be Charlie Kirk. He's the nicest, he's the best of us,
he's the sweetest, he's the most reasonable, he's the most polite.
And so you sort of left with this feeling of, man,
(25:00):
if somebody could hate that guy enough to kill him,
you know, we're all fucked, We're all doomed. And so
I think that is a lot of that was a
lot of the feeling of of what happened on Wednesday
and why it was very tough for a lot of
my friends who put themselves in the public eye, even
(25:22):
the smallest ways or the biggest ways. They have a
couple of friends who will go on Fox like once
a week locally and and share their opinions about things,
and you don't ever think that like what you have
to say, or what you think or what your opinions are,
there is enough to, you know, have somebody want to
visit violence on you. And I think that also lends
(25:44):
credibility to some of the things that have bothered people
about the way this has been reacted to in the media,
you know, right, And I'm guilty of this as well.
You know, I think we've been lied to by mainstream
media and to the point and buy our own government
enough to where it's hard to believe anything they tell us. So,
(26:05):
you know, when the Trans, when the Trans shit came
out about the bullet casings or whatever on Wednesday, my
immediate thought was like, well, this is a government agency.
This is the CIA or Massade or somebody, And I
wanted to talk about that a little bit because everybody's
I saw Louis Gomez said this, and a lot of
people have been like, what the fuck with the conspiracy theories?
(26:26):
Even Dave when he and Carroll was like, this is
the Jews, and I'm not the Jews guy by any
stretch of the imagination. I get exhausted with that shit.
It's exhausting. It's as exhausting to me as it is
listening to black people talk about how white people prevent
them from having the life they want. You know, It's like,
there's not a Jewish guy standing in my doorway preventing
me from going to work today and making more money,
or working harder at my career as a comedian, or
(26:48):
any of those things. Like it's the only person in
my way is me, And that's true for ninety nine
percent of people. The biggest obstacle you face every day
in having the life you want is yourself. But I
can kind of send a little bit of a testament
or make a little bit of an inroad in trying
to explain I think why our brain goes there. I think,
(27:13):
you know, at least for me, this desire, this hope
that it's something some grand conspiracy, something greater than just
a lone gunman or a lonely mad kid, is based
in hope. You know. I think we look at these
things and we go man, I Charlie was such a
big character and such a force that there has to
(27:35):
be some elaborate plan to take someone down that's that great,
that's that powerful, that's that impressive. That and dare I
say that Christ like in his in the way he
treats people and the way he carries himself and the
way he lives. You know, it would have to be
something monumental to take down someone that's that good. And
(27:56):
I think we look for that because of the scary
reality of what if it is just one mad kid
that just doesn't like you for whatever reason. Because I
think it's very easy for all of us to go, well,
if it is the CIA or it is Masad, like,
I'm not even on their radar, so I don't have
(28:16):
to worry about that at all. But if it's one
mad kid who's been radicalized by whatever he consumes or
his friends or internet chet groups or whatever it is,
whatever are the influences that push him in that direction.
Sometimes people are radicalized by their own lonesome You know,
(28:39):
I can tell you in the twelve months or not
that long ten months or whatever, that I've been alone
again now, like you think some fucked up shit. When
you're home alone by yourself and there's nobody to check
you or check in on you, you can have some
really dark, insane thoughts at times, and if you don't
have Fortunately for me, I have good friends and comedians
(28:59):
where I can put that dark energy and we can
laugh about it and make jokes about it, and it
doesn't become what's something I fester on or think about
or motive for action. That I would later go out
into the world and take. So I think what's what
causes us to push forward into the realm of conspiracy
(29:21):
is this hope that something, this evil has to be
bigger than us and it couldn't touch me because I'm
not Charlie, I'm not turning point. I've never done anything
that significant in my life or that important or that meaningful,
So this I would never be at risk. The other
thing we're all at risk of. Anybody who has ever
(29:44):
had any kind of audience is at risk for a
percentage of that audience hating them enough and maybe hating
him enough to kill them. And so then you're sort
of faced with a question that I think everyone has
to ask themselves when you are thinking about this is
a few things. Number One, have I ever said anything
(30:05):
that I don't stand behind or believe? And the answer
for me is no, I've never said anything that I regret.
I've never said anything that I don't believe that I
don't mean. And obviously I would put comedy a little
bit to the side of that, because obviously sometimes there's
some exaggeration in there for comedic effect, or you're putting
a little extra English on the ball to h to
(30:28):
really drive it home, or to make it funny or entertaining.
So there's obviously got to be some grace given with
with that anything creative. You know, I certainly don't think
the guy who wrote American History X like thinks all
that shit. And if you know him, you've seen him.
He's he's complete opposite, total peace love, sort of anti
(30:50):
Vietnam hippie of a guy, Tony. I think his name
is Tony something I could be wrong about that. I
have to look it up. But you have to ask
yourself that have I ever said anything I don't believe?
Have I ever endorsed something I don't really believe or
believe in. Have I ever thrown my weight behind something,
whether it be maybe like a if you do products
(31:12):
or endorsements or whatever ads? You know? Have I ever
promoted something that I don't believe in, or an ideology
I don't believe in? You know, those are the things
you have to question. And then a question that you
have to ask yourself is is do I care about
the thing that I do in public enough to maybe
(31:32):
die for it? And I know that sounds a little extreme.
I don't think it sounds extreme after what happened this week,
I think it's a real question that everyone is asking,
you know. I think musicians are asking themselves this. I
think performers are asking themselves this. And this is no
different than when nine to eleven happened and we felt
(31:55):
that other kind of terrorism of you know, am I
going to let the fear of what could happen to
me overtake what I want to do with my life?
And in my case, you know, the question would be like,
do I care about comedy and any of the other
creative things that I do enough that I would be
willing to get injured or die over it? For me,
(32:17):
the answer is yes. I can't think of anything else
that I would do with my life that wouldn't mean
anywhere near as much or that I would enjoy as much.
And that's one of the only things that gives me
comfort about Charlie Kirk being the person that this happened
to is I think if you asked him, in his faith,
in his conviction and his commitment and belief in God,
(32:41):
would he give his life as he did for this mission?
I think he would have said yes. I think he
would have said yes without hesitation and it's horrible that
it had to come to that for him and his
(33:02):
family and those adorable kids. But if you are religious
in any way as as I have become, then you
have to put your faith in your higher power and
(33:23):
trust that your purpose ah is to serve in whatever
capacity you're called to. And and I think he believed
that as well, probably better and strongly than I do.
And I think he would have answered the call willingly
(33:45):
and did so. It's uh, yeah, it's it's it's a
somber thing to think about because a man lost his life,
a good man, and you know, a wife lost her husband,
and two very young children lost their father. And I
(34:10):
don't think there's ever a situation, at least from my
point of view, that I would ever cheer for that
or root for that, even of my worst enemy. You know,
you know the people that I despise, that I don't like,
and you guys can probably figure them out who they are.
It's not a secret. But I would not ever sit
(34:34):
in joy or positivity about something like this happening to
even my worst enemy. You know. It's a and again
it's because of the collateral damage, you know, it's their
families that's the people that love them and depend on
them and I And there's also you also have to
(34:56):
have a little bit like a little bit of a
degree of humility and understand that like most people aren't
what you're getting on from people through a screen is
not all of them. And I guess the curious part
in in me is a person has faith that there
(35:17):
is better in people than maybe what I see in
them or what they show me or what they show
the world. And I think that's a big thing that
keeps me going as a person, is that I have
faith that there's good in people that we don't always
get to see or that maybe they don't always show.
(35:37):
Because I think if you lose that hope, then what
are you living for? You know, I've always said, like
the death of the West, Like if if the West falls,
what will be written on the headstone is a lack
of curiosity. And it's this place we've gotten to in
(35:59):
society where we just think we know exactly who somebody
is at all times. We go, oh, I've seen that
guy's content or I've seen people talk about that guy,
and I know exactly who he is and what he
stands for, and I can make a judgment on his
character because I think I've seen enough, and we saw
today with like fucking Stephen King, like read somebody else's tweet.
(36:21):
It was like Charlie Kirk called for stoning Gaze, and
then people were very quick to point out like never
said that, he never did that, and this is you know,
absolutely defamatory and fucking garbage and probably the kind of
rhetoric that riled up the guy who killed this person.
And of course now you know Stephen King is doing
a Mia kulpa and he's done a million apologies on
(36:43):
Twitter and he's probably just trying not to get sued
at this point. But if you lose that curate, that
genuine curiosity about who people are, you are limiting what
this life can be for you. And listen, I'm not
saying this as a guy who does this. Well, like
(37:04):
I am a flawed man, and I like as much
as I'm telling you this, I have to tell myself
this all the time, is that maybe there's more to
this person than what you see. And I really trust
in my gut and I really think I'm a good
judge of character, but you have to sort of be
cautious at times not to discount possibility, right, And so
(37:27):
when I say that what will be on the headstone
if the West ever falls will be a lack of curiosity.
It will be because this assumption that we can immediately
know who someone is based off of a little bit
of information is what drives us to extremism. You know,
you here are somebody's opinion about one thing, and then
you put them in a box. You go, well, this
person is woke. This person is a liberal, this person
(37:48):
is a leftist, this person is all right, this person
is an extremist. They hate women, they hate gays, they
hate black people. Listen, I've heard people say this shit
about me all the time. They'll hear my opinion about
being pro life, and they'll go, this man's a misogynist
and he hates women, and he hates black people, and
he hates gay people. Even though I most of the
(38:10):
time work with one of the biggest gay conservatives in
the movement, nobody's interested in that nuance or that subtlety,
or that the difference in people because it's it takes effort.
It takes effort to find out who somebody actually is,
who they really are, and what they really stand for.
(38:32):
And people are lazy, and it's just easier to put
people in a box than it is to really understand them.
And I'm just here to tell you that anytime I've
done that, i've been I know that I've like limited
how much of life I get to experience. And you
are too. If you're one of these people that sees
a couple of notes, it's like, think of it this way.
(38:54):
It's like somebody who listens to thirty seconds of a
song and decides, I think this artist sucks and I
don't have to hear anything else that they have to make.
And it's so limiting, right, because if you think about
some of the greatest artists we've known over time, they
don't always nail it the first time out of the gate.
And sometimes they nail it the first time out of
the gate and they never get back to it, and
(39:16):
nothing they ever do is as good as that or whatever.
But maybe it's different, or maybe it tells you something
about else about who they are as a person. And
so you know, imagine if you had only listened to
like the first thirty seconds of a Beatles record and said,
I don't ever have to I don't ever have to
hear anymore. I know that the Beatles suck, I hate them,
(39:38):
and then you don't ever experience any of the rest
of it for the rest of your life. And so
it's just really limiting. It's a really limiting way to
see people. And it's actually where a lot of the
division lives and comes from, where people just sort of
(40:00):
they see a little bit, they see a few seconds
of somebody's life or a snapshot or a video clip,
or they see a clip of somebody else covering that person,
and they go, I know who this guy is. I
don't need to know anything else and I and I
fucking hate this person or I love this person. I mean,
it's it's kind of insane to live that way. So
(40:25):
that's really the only message I have, you know, coming
out of this is if if you take anything away
from this week, it is two things. Try to understand
that your time here is limited and really think about
how you spend it and who you spend it with.
And the second thing is is make sure you give
(40:46):
yourself enough grace and the people around you enough grace
to really show you who they are before you make
life altering decisions based on a little bit of information.
You know, it's and and to try to have empathy
for the kid in this situation. His life is over
because he thought he saw enough of Charlie Kirk to
(41:07):
end his life and basically give up any fucking future
This kid would have had doing anything because he had
so much hate for this person, which was probably based
on a little bit of information and not the full
picture of who Charlie Kirk was as a person. So
(41:27):
that is that, you know, I appreciate you guys tuning
into this. I haven't been looking at comments because I've
been trying to maintain my train of thought. If there's anything,
you're good, I'll throw it up. Let's see, here's a question. Oh,
(41:48):
this is a good one. Do you ever think you'll
do live events again, considering the possible danger to your life?
I think I addressed that. First of all. I know
you're being facetious that nobody cares, and it's like, yeah,
the people all the time, like, we don't care enough
to want to kill you. We just love watching you
eat shit all day. Okay, Yeah, I've never this has
always been a fear or possibility, and it's never prevented
(42:09):
us from doing it. So when I say us, I
mean me and the people that I travel with and
tour with. But I don't speak for them, and so
we will see. But from my perspective, I'm not changing anything.
I'm not doing anything different. Let's see clips. I know
Josh originally is an eater. I saw this one earlier. Yeah,
(42:30):
great comment, five stars. That is how most people know
me is a big old, fat piece of shit. Let's see. Uh.
Somebody said, not sure if I ever heard Charlie Josh
mentioned Charlie's name ever before. Yeah, listen, listen, man. A
lot of the people that are in that sort of
(42:50):
center right part of what we do, I've been very
critical of them, and you know, I'll be the first
to admit that I one of the things I didn't
like about people like Charlie, and I'll throw Ben Shapiro
in there, and even Tucker Carlson while he was on
Fox up until he covered our story, but even then
didn't cover Gavin's involvement in it, so that felt pussy.
(43:13):
I've always had an issue with the center right or
mainstream right, because I feel like they don't involve people
like more so Gavin and Anthony or even Fuentes into
the conversation because they love to be able to stand
to their left. So you know, they they pretend that
we are the extreme right, and so they love to
(43:35):
stand to the left of us and go, well, we're
not over there with the Milo Unopolises and the Nick Fuentes,
is in the Gavin mcinnesss and me only by association
with those people. So I've always been critical of that.
But if that's even more so the reason why I
look at somebody like Charlie and go, why on earth
would he be the guy that would that would absolutely
(43:58):
bear the wrath of somebody's hatred to this degree. So yeah,
let's see, let's see where is spit where it's carl Yeah,
we're gonna get in, We're gonna talk about that. We're
gonna we're gonna segue right into the big Uglies here
in a minute. You're gonna watch biggest problem. Yes, definitely
(44:21):
gonna watch biggest problem. Veto has been on quite a tear. Yeah,
we'll probably talk about Vito at the Big Uglies here
in a little bit. Let's see. Yeah, that's about it.
Abbi shap Mike, I said, Abbi Shapiro know I can
get behind her. I don't even know if she's real.
I see these things about Abbi Shapiro and she's supposed
(44:44):
to have big tins or something that always looks like
AI to me, is that even a real Is that
even really his sister? Is that a real person? I
don't know. I've always felt like that's like not even
a real thing. So pretty, but but yes, so Darkest Hour.
(45:04):
This is something I'm gonna try to put out once
a week. There is a Patreon, there are links. I'll
have them in the bio, on my ex and on
some of these other social media pages, and we'll get
moving on new episodes of this. But these are gonna
be you know, I think a little bit more sort
of like real conversations and you know, hopefully sort of
(45:25):
rewarding conversations with people. So you know, I'd love to
have people come on and talk about tragedy that they've
turned into comedy and all that type of stuff. And
I hope it's interesting for you guys, but you know,
for me, it's more it's interesting for me, So I'm
gonna keep doing it, and I'm I'm it's kind of
a It wasn't planned to bring this back this week
(45:47):
in what might be the darkest hour in America in
a long, long time. But here we are, and in
a weird way, it felt like, well, I guess this
is the time to bring it back. So thank you
guys for tuning in and checking the show out and
stick around. We'll be right back with a new episode
of The Big Uglies.
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