Kevin

I've made it clear from the beginning that I believe a term in prison is appropriate in this case. It seems to me this is this man's third felony conviction. For that fact alone, he ought to go to prison.

He was just a tenant at my mom's house here, and he worked for my mom at Schlotzky's restaurant.

Very much so, because I know his books were all there and he always seemed to be studying very diligently.

The college is only an hour and a half away. That's not that far.

I'll do anything that you guys want me to do.

They said, you failed this polygraph test and we know that you killed her.

They turned from, we're your friend, we're trying to find out who did this, to we know you did it.

Were you scared? Yeah. I was really scared.

She was his partner forever. I knew I was going to marry her. There wasn't a question about it to me. How'd you know? I don't know. I didn't see it any other way.

At that point, no.

We went over to Noah's apartment at around 6.15. She hadn't answered my phone all day. My mom was with me. We drove there together. We pulled up to the apartment. We saw that her car was out front and her lights were on. Came around the side of the apartment to the back door. I just grabbed the door, tried to pull it open as hard as I could, and then we went inside.

At that point, I did not know about it.

At first I was scared and nervous because it's the police and they have a lot of power. They have the power to put someone in jail for the rest of their life if they want to. Well, that is kind of where this was heading.

At that point, Yeah, it did. And then I thought, no, I didn't do this. They're not going to put me in jail for something that I didn't do.

No. Again, I was still under the impression that I had nothing to hide. Why do I need a lawyer?

And I just started yelling Kevin's name, and I yelled for him to come out. I said, you can get up and leave. You don't, you know, just come on out of there.

I was as loud as I could be. And I said, I don't understand what's going on. All he's tried to do is help. That's all we've done is try to help.

What was it like for you to go to the funeral under those conditions? I put it out of my head. And I said, I don't care what these people think.

Nothing at that point mattered to me. Why? Because I was hollow inside. All I could think about were the times that she and I spent together and that I'd never get to spend another time with her like that ever again.

Really? Oh yeah.

At that moment, I felt more alone than I'd ever had in my entire life. This was a staged crime scene. I was straddling her body, trying to find some way to save her life. At one point, I even tried to give her mouth to mouth.

People were telling me, they're saying the boyfriend did it. That's what was going around.

The boyfriend did it.

In fact, yes.

I remember my dad called me and he said, I wish I had some good news, but I don't. And I could tell he was pretty upset. And he said, they want you at the police station at 10. I said, okay.

That's when it really hit me that I could possibly go to jail. There were no guarantees that I had my life. My life would be in the hands of 12 people.

If I shut the lights out and tried to lay in bed, the thoughts would haunt me.

Now, he waited for the jury's verdict. I had a lot of dreams, and it was like Nona was right there next to me. And then I'd wake up, and there would be nobody there.

How are you feeling?

When they go into deliberation, anything can happen. And there are no guarantees.

The bailiff came out and said we got a verdict. What did that feel like? Well, my heart started beating very, very fast. The judge asked the foreman if they had reached a verdict, and she said yes. And they handed a slip of paper across, and then he read it.

Not guilty.

Not guilty. It felt like 10,000 pounds had been lifted off my shoulders.

I mean, it was a horrible thing that happened in a horrible situation. But at that point, I was just happy that I was a free man. and that people would stop saying the things about me that they'd said, and people would stop judging my family and me. Is Kevin innocent or is he not guilty, if you know what I mean?

It's very hurtful. It is very frustrating.

I made a promise to Kevin when he was in jail and sitting at the cemetery. with my hand on Nona's gravestone. I have promised both of those kids that I would keep looking and searching until we found the person who did this.

Hopefully it will eliminate all doubt that I was the person that did this, and we can bring the person to justice. that did do it. And just last month.

It has been two and a half years of hell.

Our goal is to know the truth. And I felt very strongly that this young woman deserved that from the people who loved her.

I think that a lot of people's minds have been changed since the arrest. And if there is a conviction, then I think I wouldn't have to change anybody else's mind.

If I didn't say her looks, I would probably be lying. Because that's a big part of it, you know, when you're young. And her personality, too.

It did help her self-esteem a lot. How could you tell? Just the way she acted. And, I mean, when people would tell her, you know, that she was beautiful, it would just make her happy.

She and Kevin were very good for each other.

He gave her confidence and supported and cheered her on in her struggles.

She just told me one night over the phone. She was upset and I said, why? And then there was a pause and she said, because my dad sexually abused me when I was six.

I didn't like the fact that I had to be away from her. You stayed in touch pretty, text message? Yeah, we talked on the phone every day. I really look forward to going back home on the weekends.

It was just concern as to why she hadn't called me back.

He said, Mom, I can't go to this party and wonder if she's okay.

That's when Kevin and his mother raced to Nona's apartment. My level of concern had raised significantly.

We turned and pulled in and parked there. He just hopped out.

It was rather dim inside, but all I was focusing on was getting the door open. So when did you first see her? Ryan touched me on the arm and he was just looking straight forward and he said, dude, there she is. Then Kevin forced open the sliding glass door. I ran inside and I turned her over.

And Kevin was on the floor next to her, hovering over her. My eyes just kind of scanned down her body. And her socks were on her feet. But otherwise, she was naked.

I wouldn't let myself think that she was dead.

It never really hit me that my girlfriend was a beauty queen. She was just Nona to me.

I felt around kind of on the back of her head and her hair was matted. It was a little sticky, I guess. There was still some wet blood on the carpet. I was straddling her body at the waist and I was touching her face. and talking to her and just trying to get some sort of response from her.

We dated throughout our senior year of high school and our freshman year of college. And then I moved to Fayetteville, and we continued to see each other on the weekends.

When Nona and Kevin were together, I always just saw him as a different person, just a little bit kinder and sweeter and gentle because that's the way he always was with her.

Okay, you wrote the times? Yeah, please.

What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Fitness with Kevin. I'm Kevin. It still doesn't feel real. You know, like, it still doesn't feel real.

US Marshals are leading a nationwide manhunt this morning for the man charged in the murder of a Yale grad student. You give me a real sense of the pressure.

I was dreaming that Kevin would have a few beautiful children after getting married. This beautiful and joyful dream is destroyed. I am left alone by myself. I will never see Kevin smile again.

Why were the women so crucial? It shows what he's capable of. He'd done it almost exactly the same in the past. It's his modus operandi. It's strong proof.

He wore a bandana 24 hours a day. He had bandanas in his bedroom. He had bandanas in his truck. The bandana in Lori's mouth was the one I believe he was wearing that day.

She identified him perfectly. She even identified his shirt he was wearing.

Lori was in the box that day, and he was taking her to dump her in the canal, where she was later found.

You always put the best for the last.

Thank God.

Because bad things happen to good people.

I think it was probably close to here.

And I kept walking and realized that's a person and figured I needed to go get some help.

And we got up to her, and it was a young lady that was laying on the ground, and she was still alive. She was unconscious, but there was a big pool of blood around her head.

Her arms were twisted in a way that I never thought the human body could twist. Do you remember her face? I just remember the blood.

Yeah, I knew it was tragic. I knew it was a very serious injury.

Today's stories include a new trailer for The Last of Us Season 2. Horizon Zero Dawn's TV show is now going to be a movie. And Helldivers 2 is going to be a movie. We'll have all this and more because this is Kind of Funny Games Daily. What's up, and welcome back to Kinda Funny Games Daily for Tuesday, January 7th, 2025. Of course, I'm your host, Tim Geddes.

Because there's the big thing that happens at the beginning of the game, and then there is kind of the reset point, and everything's kind of told out of sequence, and I feel like there's a potential that this doesn't do that. That this is a bit more... sequential with flashbacks.

Caitlin Dever, though.

Lies in the vibes. Like, seeing these actors as Ellie and Abby, I'm like, yeah, I want to see the scenes from the game with them. Like, that's going to be brutal as hell.

I mean, yeah, because I feel like, you know, the first... What sound does a zebra and barbed wire make, Greg? The changes from the game to the show, like the spores, right? That's a big thing. So I feel like they're going to need to...

figure out how to adapt some of the core scenes into the deal with that, whether it's, um, uh, her and Dina having their moment or, um, later in the game with, I forget the character's name, but, uh, the one that.

Is it Mel?

No, no, no, no, no, no. The, the one where she like chases her down when she like really kills her or whatever.

Where she realizes you're the one, whatever, like they'll come up with a way or they just reintroduce spores, right? Like for, because, um, Seattle was the,

starting point right of it all of the the whole thing i don't remember that as part of the cannon the whole deal that's why the rat king was there i thought that they were all just piled in there so long and close together they grew into each other again i don't remember that well i'm pretty sure that was it in fact there was some word they used for it but you call i mean ground zero right epicenter i was ground zero just for seattle okay okay well

Murder-suicide? Yeah. Holy shit. Okay, Kev, yeah, let's look through this real quick.

That's what you gotta do.

Yeah, the sound effect. Great use of that.

Yeah.

Well, I think he might even be a big part of season two, right? Like, I'm sorry, a bigger part than he was in the game.

Well, I mean, the game he was so underutilized. It's going to be cool having him. The last dance.

What the fuck is happening in our world?

Alright, that's cool. Team Hacker says the Nora scene is like way after the big scene, so it's weird. Yeah, I'm so fascinated with how they're going to play this all out. And it's a shorter season too, if I remember correctly.

What's up, Kev? Lead pipe. There we go.

Should have played the game, Kev. CJ splits on Super Chats in and saying the lead character from The Last of Us will kill the lead from Intergalactic. Nora is the lead from Intergalactic. Oh, yeah, you're right. She also is one of the main characters in The Chilling Tales of Sabrina, which Gia's been watching. And I saw her. I'm like, hey, she's in the new Naughty Dog game.

DJ Kendo, Super Chat, saying, are you more excited for Pedro Pascal to return as Joel or to see him as Reed Richards in Fantastic Four First Steps? I mean, I'm going Fantastic Four. I'm so hyped on that movie. My other thing, too, is I wonder how much Joel we're getting in this, which is, I mean, just like for players of the game, kind of wild, you know? 100%, yeah.

But, yeah, it's... Do you all think it's episode one?

We have seven episodes.

Calvin Perez says, I think the penultimate episode or final ep of this season is a fully Abby flashback ep. It pulls the rug out just before you get the next season and sets the viewer on the path to compassion.

There'll be many thing pieces.

Yeah. April, baby. Let's go. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Greg. Story number two. Horizon Zero Dawn film has been confirmed.

Ring the bells. Sony has announced a new movie adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn. The collaboration between PlayStation Studios and Columbia Pictures was announced during Sony's CES 2025 press conference. Columbia Pictures produced the successful 2022 Uncharted movie.

Speaking on stage at CES, the head of PlayStation Productions said that Columbia Pictures and PlayStation Productions are at the early stages of developing a film adaptation of the award-winning Horizon Zero Dawn. Just imagine, Aloy's beloved origin story set in a vibrant far-future world filled with the giant machines brought to you for the first time on the big screen.

This makes a lot more sense than a TV show.

I think it'll work obviously you can't adapt every single story beat but I think that you can montage a couple things and get through where you need to get for the main beats like Horizon does have such an interesting world and it's so visually pretty and cool and like I mean call it whatever you want there's nothing fucking cooler than robot dinosaurs 1000% and a main character whose main weapon is bow and arrows like in like techie bow and arrows they can switch out with different elements and like she's basically I mean in a movie she can be basically Hawkeye

right like but way like yeah i think that there's uh there's a lot a lot that can hit there so yeah this i think is good news overall um for because i was pretty worried about the the tv show for horizon uh whereas like last of us on hbo with the cast that it has with the creators behind it and all that i'm like all right cool i have full faith in this horizon on amazon it was like i don't know things started falling was it netflix either way started falling apart yeah i think

God of War was Amazon. So we'll see when that gets turned into a movie. I think it will.

Yeah. Because that makes so much sense as well. God of War as a movie like trilogy.

Just be good. Be good. Speaking of being good. I've been good. I've been so, so good. I've also been good. So if you want to support both of us, good, good boys, you can get the Kind of Funny membership on YouTube, Patreon, Spotify, or yeah, don't worry about Greg, or Apple Podcasts, and you get the show ad-free. But for everyone else, here's a word from our sponsors.

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash kindoffunny today. That's rocketmoney.com slash kindoffunny. rocketmoney.com slash kindoffunny. And we're back. We're back. Got a couple super chats here. Samsonel just says, for the two good boys and two good boys only. Oh, thank you.

I hate that shit. Like I hate that auto battle is a thing. Either do or don't. You know what I mean? I feel you. If you're going to let me auto battle against a computer to get these stupid ass fucking cards and make it this like tedious, just let the auto battle just like let me know the results. Dude, honestly.

Oh, my God, everybody. Jay Miranda says, who's your fan casting for Kratos?

Michael Cera.

Story number three.

No, I mean, I love that you're just in the WWE world.

Yeah, I mean, well, because it makes sense because they're larger than life in Kratos' eyes. No, I mean, I feel like. Or Christopher Judge. That's my problem. Christopher Judge, the voice is just so, like, that's what I want from Kratos, period. So it's like, yeah, just give it to him. Yeah. Fair enough. Also, he's dope as hell. Story number three, Sony announces Helldivers 2 film in production.

This comes from Wesley Ian Poole at IGN. Sony smash hit PlayStation Studios video game Helldivers 2 is being adapted into a film. The Helldivers 2 movie is a collaboration between Sony Productions and Sony Pictures. No other details were offered.

Speaking on stage at CES, the head of PlayStation Productions said, looking ahead as to what might come next, I'm excited to announce we're working with Sony Pictures on developing a film adaptation of our amazingly popular PlayStation game, Helldivers 2.

And I think they're going to do it well. And what's just wild about this is it was a year ago that this game came out. Yep. And wowed the world. Not even. And here we are getting a movie announced and it's like an exciting thing. I feel like they're going to pull this off. It does remind me though. Well, let's get the story number. Do you have anything more to say about this?

Well, I have two things.

Yeah, fast forward. Fast forward. Like, give me something. That's a really good point. What are we gaining here? You know? That's a really good point. Give me the option to slow it down and see what they're doing, I guess. Because the sucky thing is I can't even turn my screen off. I know.

Dude, that is... I'm going to call Gary Whitta. I'm going to call him now. And I just want to see what he... What do you have to say? Let's do it. I don't want to put pressure on him anyway because, you know, work stuff gets in the way. Also, Demon Hacker in the chat was saying, like, why is Tim acting like there wasn't a Helldivers 1? Y'all acted like there wasn't a Helldivers 1.

Sure. I'm calling him now.

Gary Witta, you're live on Kind of Funny Games Daily. How are you?

I love Gary so much.

Hey, Gary, you're live on Kind of Funny Games Daily. How are you? I'm good. What's going on? I don't know if you saw the news, but Sony has announced a Helldivers 2 movie is in production. I did see that, yes. What are your thoughts on this? I'm not really in a position to talk about it. Love that. I love that. Love to hear that. I appreciate that.

Me and Bless, we're rooting for you in any way possible. I wanted to see your thoughts on it as an idea, but hey, you know what? Say no more, fam.

Bye. No, what?

Oh, wait. I'll call him back, Kevin. I'll call him back.

I'm calling him back.

Sorry. Kevin wants to know if you want to get Wongs for lunch. I can't today. I have a dental appointment. Okay.

Bye, Gary. What a nice man. I fucking love him. If this happens, can you imagine?

I hope he gets it. Oh, man. I hope this all works out. Story number four. Ghost of Tsushima anime coming exclusively to Crunchyroll in 2027. This one, again, comes from Wesley and Pool at IGN. A Ghost of Tsushima anime is in the works and set to launch exclusively on the Sony-owned Crunchyroll in 2027. We've been talking a lot about this with all of the... I forget the name of it. Kuro...

Kuriyama?

Katakawa, thank you very much. How, you know, there's this big, like, anime push of, like, who's gonna own all of the anime, and Sony's really making some moves here. But anyway, they own Crunchyroll. The new series, the first anime adaptation of a PlayStation Studios game, is not only based generally on Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima, but specifically...

Blessings fan favorite, Legends co-op multiplayer portion. It's produced in collaboration with Aniplex, the studio behind the likes of Demon Slayer, Komitsu no Yaba, Solo Leveling, and Sword Art Online. And it's directed by Takanobu Mizuno with Jen Urobuchi, Nitro Plus, on story composition and animation by Kamikaze Duga.

Sony Music will serve as the strategic music and soundtrack partner for the series. The Ghost of Tsushima anime will offer fans an exciting new way to experience the game in an anime style that will be bold and groundbreaking, said the president of Crunchyroll. Bless. You love Legends.

My biggest problem with the game is how long some of this stuff takes and like how many promo cards they put out that are like behind this thing of just luck of, Hey, you got to do this dumb computer battle 50 freaking times, hopefully getting the card. And every day you can only do five of the battles. And it's just like, it's so tedious.

Yeah, it seems like they have the right tone, the right team. So I feel like they could pull this off. I feel like so far they've been doing a pretty good job of putting these things out. One of the things I wanted to bring up that I don't remember if we actually talked about post-Game Awards, but I'm shocked that we didn't get a Twisted Metal Season 2 announcement at Game Awards.

That was one of my lock predictions. And I remember I had the whole...

conspiracy theory board trying to link back to anthony backy's instagram uh but yeah so i i wonder when that's going to come but that did very well for them so i'm if that could do well i feel like this with this team like they can cook they can get something going here ghost of yotei is this year yeah obviously you've only have we've only had one trailer so we don't know much about it i have to assume that ghost of tsushima legends probably wouldn't launch with yotei or ghost of yotei legends whatever they call it but

Totally. The chat's asking about Twisted Metal 2 and Anthony Mackie. He announced that Season 2 was happening at the last Game Awards, but we're at the time now where the show's done. Production is done, so we're just waiting for the release date. I expected we were going to get either a clip with the release date or something like that.

And once I miss one of them or two of them, I'm like, well, I'm never going to have the full collection. So it means less to me, but yeah. I gotta catch them all, Wes.

season two is done yeah oh i didn't know that i mean i went through it all on the predictions episode but don't worry about it you know what i mean but no i imagine that show was coming very very very soon so um it's just interesting we don't know yet um story number five call of duty's massive development budgets revealed it costs 700 million dollars for black ops cold war this comes from steven totillo at game file

The budgets for big video games are among the most closely guarded secrets in the gaming industry. So it's surprising that late last month, an Activision executive spelled out the development costs for three of the games in the company's best-selling Call of Duty franchise.

In a court filing reviewed by GameFile that has not been previously reported, Patrick Kelly, Activision's current head of creative on the Call of Duty franchise, said that three Call of Duty games released between 2015 and 2020 cost between $450 and $700 million to make.

The disclosed totals are the highest development cost ever reported by a major video game company and top just about any that have ever leaked or been estimated by analysts. By comparison, a poorly redacted court filing in 2023 from Sony pegged the development cost of the company's marquee 2020 game Last of Us 2 at around $220 million. That number was considered huge when it leaked.

Here are the Call of Duty development costs from Kelly's filing, which GameFile has reviewed. Black Ops 3 from 2015. Treyarch developed the game over three years with a creative team of hundreds of people and invested over $450 million in development costs over the game's life cycle. Kelly also discloses it sold 43 million copies. Modern Warfare 2019.

Infinity Ward developed the game over several years and has spent over $640 million in development costs throughout the game's life cycle. 41 million copies sold. Black Ops Cold War 2020. Treyarch and Raven Software took years to create the game with a team of hundreds of creatives. They ultimately spent over $700 million in development costs over the game's life cycle. 30 million copies sold.

That is not good. The above breakdown is based on a declaration from Kelly filed to a court in California on December 23rd. It's part of Activision's response to a lawsuit filed against the company last May regarding the 2022 school shooting at Rob Elementary in Texas.

The suit, which filed in May 2024, partially blames the massacre on Meta's Instagram and Activision's Call of Duty, saying the company's platforms and content influenced a teenager to commit the mass shooting that killed 19 students and two adults. The three games for which Kelly cites budgets are among those that the survivors say the school shooter avidly played.

Kelly's declaration addresses some details of the lawsuit, but isn't explicitly a response. It functions as an explanation of what Call of Duty is and how it operates so that Activision's lawyers can reference it. Last May, Activision expressed sympathy for the survivors, but denied any connection between gaming and gun violence.

Game File will have more on the state of that lawsuit in an upcoming article. Kelly's budget figures for Call of Duty are extraordinary, but they should be considered with some perspective and some caveats, given how numbers like this tend to make it into the public view.

It does not include marketing costs.

god damn then that then i'm just utterly like i've that fucking blows me away if that's the case then yeah and i mean you know we gotta take it into the modern time so what's that mean for uh call of duty modern warfare 4 that just came out is that the one that just came out modern warfare 4 no i don't know wait what was the black ops six yes i was like i don't think that's close

Yeah, but Kev's asking what's up with this. What are they getting from us here?

I just remember the logo just being, something was weird about it and it was the six thing. It was no games ever had six in the title. But I just remember back when they had the four and it was like the four lines instead of the IV. It's like what the fuck are we doing here? So yeah, in my head about stupid decisions. But thinking about what would that game have cost?

I mean, a lot of money, right? Because I mean, you got to imagine somewhere between conservatively 400 and 700 million dollars. And then now there's the game pass of it all. So you're not even necessarily getting all the sales. Have we gotten sales yet on Call of Duty? Oh, I don't know. I don't. We should look into this. I want to know because like that's we need to know.

Because, yeah, that number is, I mean, well, it's wild because... See, that was Black Ops 4.

But, like, yeah, 41 million sold versus 30 million sold, like... Yikes. I mean... It's crazy. Again, yesterday we were talking a lot about Grand Theft Auto and the $3 billion that it's potentially going to make in a year. I saw someone in the chat, and I don't know if this is confirmed, but Grand Theft Auto 5 saying that it cost $150 million to make. Grand Theft Auto 5?

Different time, whatever, but obviously, is it that different of a time? With 2015, two years after GTA 5 came out, Black Ops 3 cost $450 million? Yeah. Three times as much as Grand Theft Auto V?

Corey Cudney says he just reread the article. It doesn't actually say anything about whether or not it includes marketing.

I'm joined today by Blessing Adeoye Jr.

Yeah.

I mean, whatever, either way, even if there is like some, I don't know if it'd be artificial, but like if there's any way you can rationalize putting this number in a legal document like this, it's like there's some reality to it. Yeah. That's crazy.

Video game. Story number six. Black PlayStation Portal, DualSense Edge, and Pulse accessories are announced. Hell yeah. This comes from Tom Ivan at VGC. Sony's announced a new Midnight Black line. Launching next month, it includes the Portal, DualSense Edge, Pulse Elite, Wireless Headphones, and Pulse Explorer. Wireless earbuds.

It'll be released on February 20th, 2025, with pre-orders starting January 16th at 10 a.m. Eastern. What's this do for you? work of art. I mean, like, I have my look, so, like, I feel like they personally nailed it for me with just the white and black normal DualSense, but I'm so happy this exists, because it looks very nice.

But Kevin, isn't that just everything we love? Like you, it's great, except when it doesn't work. Google Home, it's great, except when it doesn't work.

When it works. When it works.

It's infuriating. Infuriating blast that the portal can't just have Bluetooth. It's crazy.

It should be both options. Give me both fucking options. You heathens. I love the black though, but it's so sexy. Oh my God. It's sexy. The dual sense, normal midnight black that I think Greg has on his desk. I look at all this. I'm like, damn, that thing is nice. And now offering an edge. I feel like that's just perfect.

Like this is how I like, I like a Sony that is willing to just like put out these collections and just be like, Hey, we know you want it in all the accessories. And I continue to think it's an important thing to bring up. The Portal being focused on this much. Yeah. They are releasing it in a new colorway.

That shows this thing is selling, not just in white, not just in PlayStation 40th Anniversary Edition, 30th Anniversary Edition, 30th Anniversary Edition. But also, here's black. That's good news for the success of the Portal.

Yeah, man. Everything should look like a PlayStation 2. New Virtua Fighter project. It's a pre-development concept video. You see this shit, Bless?

Yes. This comes from Sal Romano at Gamatsu. Publisher Sega and developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have released a 35-second pre-development concept video of its new Virtua Fighter project announced at Game Awards 2024. The video is noted as in-engine footage created before development began and not actual gameplay. actual gameplay and characters may differ from what's shown.

And by that, I mean, yeah, of course.

Look at how fluid the animations are of this fight.

How you doing, Bless?

Uh, we news for you from IGN. Sony has revealed its movie adaptation of beloved PlayStation horror game until dawn will feature a new story and cast of characters separate from the original games. I feel like that's probably the right move.

New story.

I wonder if it's going to be like in the universe of, or if it's just going to be, Hey, here's just like a separate alternate take. And so it can take parts of the story and like, or like vibes of it.

I feel like that's probably the best move.

It was a four-star Charizard, though.

That has to happen. New Game Pass games for January have been announced on Game Pass Standard. You get Lightyear Frontier, My Time at Sandrock, Robin Hood, Sherwood Builders and Rolling Hills. Listen. Those are four sets of words. You're not looking forward to Game of the Year, Robin Hood, Sherwood Builders? Surely you're going to say My Time at Sandrock.

Cool. For Game Pass Ultimate, you get UFC 5 and Diablo on PC on January 14th. From Eurogamer, Suicide Squad killed the Justice League developer Rocksteady, has quietly suffered another round of layoffs, this time just before the end of 2024. Hate to see it.

From Bloomberg via Noble, we got former Annapurna Interactive staff who resigned last year are taking over Private Division's portfolio, including Tales of the Shire, the upcoming Game Freak Game, Project Bloom, and Kerbal Space Program series. From Eurogamer via Noble, Citizen Sleeper creator Damian Martin has said that Citizen Sleeper 2 will be the last game in the series.

He'll be focusing on a Citizen Sleeper tabletop game after Citizen Sleeper 2's launch later this month. And then from NVIDIA, we'll talk more about this tomorrow on the Gamescast. I'm very excited. Gamers will soon be able to play titles from their Steam library at GeForce RTX quality with the launch of a native GeForce Now app on the Steam Deck. Bless. Yeah. We're talking 4K60 HDR with RTX.

That's it.

They spoke English back then, right? Oh, my God, everybody. Let's look at some super chats. CJ Splits on says, Tim, when do you think Resident Evil 9 will be revealed this year?

That's a great question. That's only seven generations. I don't know. I think it'll be during a state of play or a PlayStation showcase of some sort, whether it's a showcase or a state of play. That's where I think Resident Evil 9 will be revealed.

game news that you need to know about live on youtube twitch and podcast services around the globe if you love we do support us with the kind of funny membership on patreon youtube and now spotify and apple podcast to get all of our shows ad free watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show another reminder for you we're now video on spotify even for non-paid users so if you are a spotify user

Garrett says, Tim, love the new look. Looking forward to any NASCAR races or future Joe Rogan episodes. Glad to see everyone doing well after the weekend. Much love to see. Much love to everyone at Kind of Funny. God, it's hard to read right now. Honestly, Bless, I just laughed so hard at that that I looked up and I looked into the light. Now I have that staring into the sun thing.

I wouldn't have known either. I wouldn't have known, dude.

Yeah.

I don't like that at all. We got... A brown spot says day one of asking for creatures commandos in review. The DCU has started. Why won't Tim respect it? I'm going to be completely honest with you. And this happened on content to some extent. I wanted to do that. And Greg said, no. So I was like, are you sure? He's like, no, no, no. It starts with Superman.

I know it starts with this, but it starts with Superman. I'm like, okay. And so I made a bunch of plans that did not include it. Hmm. And now we have a full fucking calendar because somebody's like, oh, we got to do Alien in review, which I think starts next week and I'm very excited about. But anyway, I just want to let you know, this isn't on me. This isn't on me.

The estimated birth of Christ?

You asked me what planet Gamora was sacrificed on, and I got you.

Let's see. We got... Street Shadow says Sony's going all in on Horizon because it sells really well. Back in April 2023, it had sold near $25 million, and Forbidden West sold $8 million. Oh, yeah. Dude. Huge. Huge selling thing. And also, yeah, there's just so much there. Like, the LEGO sets... Like, they made LEGO sets out of this, and it sells.

Like, it's not the highest selling thing ever, but it's like they've got something with Horizon.

You can watch the shows, which is really, really cool because you get to see this whole studio. You get to see the gym. You get to see the smoke machines when they go off. It's a great time. You get to see the B-roll. That's probably the most important part. But great stuff all around. And that beautiful face. Look at that. Look at it. There you go. All of that together.

So that's very exciting here. Uh, new Mateo says the good rule of thumb for the real cost of the games. You take the development costs and double it for marketing. So 7 million would be 1.5 billion. Um, that danger debt danger. Daddy D says missed most of the 12 hours stream due to work. Just want to say congrats on 10 years and love you all. You genuinely make my days better. Here's to 10 more.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Uh, prof plays game says, who the fuck is J Cole?

Just look for J. Cole. And honestly, just listen. Yeah, just listen. Just listen, man.

ChocolateFox9 says, first off, congrats on 10 years. Glad y'all are back. Y'all are a huge part of my drives to and from work, plus my gaming grind. So thank you for the daily games, Cass, and all you do. Thank you for listening to us. We really, really appreciate it. I'm loving all the love over the last couple days. How nice has it been, right?

Such a nice swell. I was talking to Gia last night, and she's like, how are you doing? I'm like, dude, I'm on cloud fucking nine. Things are just good right now. I love that. Aaron Lime says reactions to Chris Dring doing a Q&A on install base and saying Game Pass cuts in the game sales by about 80% on average. Very interested to look into that because I am not surprised.

And these are numbers that we should know. Yeah. I want to look into that. Holy shit. Here we go. This isn't a super chat, but I have to ask. Okay. Because I don't fucking know. Hella drove says someone asked blessing what am and PM stands for.

Morning. I don't know. I don't know. Nobody fucking knows. Kevin, you don't know that.

We're so fucked, man. Not because we don't know this shit, but because people were stupid when they came up with it.

Look at the gym and the wall and the face.

The Call of Duder says Black Ops Cold War was developed during COVID and had a studio shakeup. It was initially being developed by Sledgehammer, but they got booted off of it and Treyarch had to come in and help Raven play it into development. That stuff could have inflated the budget a bit.

Yeah. and then Kabob says on Tsushima Legends blessings correct except for it being told years later you can find the storyteller throughout the single player game Iki Island also has a side quest you complete by having Jin hear the end of the storyteller's tale i.e.

Hold on. We got a couple more Super Jets I want to get to real quick. Luke Aggie says, Bless, you're talking about the Mongolian Empire in the 1200s. I have a one-to-one experience that proves you can charm someone by telling them all about the Mongolian Empire midterm you just aced.

I wish they would just integrate my Pokemon Go experience into my map experience. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yep. Nvidia GeForce. And then DJ Kento writes in and saying, speaking of AI podcast, did anyone at Kind of Funny listen to their Spotify wrapped AI podcast? That was terrifying. The pauses, the breaths, ums and ahs to pause. Terrifyingly real. I didn't.

But was it us?

Yeah, that's what they're saying. It's like for the podcast rap.

That's weird.

I wasn't listening. Everybody, that's been kind of funny games daily. Thanks for hanging out with us. We're about to do an amazing games cast with Roger predicting things and us judging him. It's going to be so much fun. That's why I feel history, Kevin. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.

I don't know that we will.

Do no harm.

We're not far from an AI just being able to sit here. I'll be talking to them. I wouldn't know the difference. You would not know the difference.

Very scary. We're cool. Kind of cool in some ways. More scary. More scary. We're an 11-person business all about live talk shows. Today, after Games Daily, you'll get Gamescast, which is going to be a very fun one, everybody.

This is an episode that has evolved a little bit, but what it is now, and you'll have to watch it to see the shenanigans that ensue, Roger Pokorny has predicted one prediction for every month of 2025, and he's going to let us know what they are, and we are going to judge him.

Every month. He's the one.

He's been talking to John Google. He's been talking to John Google. Yeah, so he has a bunch of video game predictions for every month of 2025. We are going to judge him and decide whether we think that he is on or off. The stream after that will be an exclusive. Freedom Wars Remastered. Greg and Mike jumping back into the war.

You can check that out exclusively here on twitch.tv slash kindoffunnygames and youtube.com slash kindoffunnygames. If you're a Kind of Funny member, you can get today's Greg Way about if game sponsorships are leading to layoffs. And then thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by Rocket Money, but we'll tell you about that later.

We have eight stories today.

We're starting with a big one. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, the next couple days, CES is happening. But last night, Sony had one of their presentations. They talked about a whole bunch of shit that we're going to get to in today's show. We're also going to do a Gamescast episode tomorrow talking about a bunch of gaming stuff going down at CES. And that's going to be me and Andy.

Going to be a good time. But Sony yesterday showed the first trailer. Or the first substantial trailer.

I guess so. Yeah. I believe so. You know what? We've seen quite a bit, actually. Yeah. It wasn't a full-ass trailer, but we got like a 30-second... I think technically they called it a teaser. Okay, okay. Well, are they calling this a trailer? Yes. Okay, here we... No, they're not. Well, I guess, yeah, it's just called Last of Us Season 2. It's just a thing. Well, whatever.

I'm calling it a trailer. There's footage of Last of Us 2. We have not seen this. We waited to watch with you. It's a minute and eight seconds. So, okay. Okay. I'll call it a teaser. We'll call it a teaser trailer. Well, let's get teased.

Greg Miller's coming in.

You want to react with this, Greg? Yes, he does. Yes, he does. What mic does he have?

There's a grogginess that I'm feeling that I haven't had for the last couple... I've been good. I've been fresh. I feel like I... Because I've been working on my big editing project for the wedding, that means that there's been many nights over the last week and a half that I've been staying up. That and also all the kind of funny day stuff. I was up until like 3, 4 a.m. most nights.

I'm very teased. Now, we're about to get a, hopefully, potential, fingers crossed, banger couple months. March, Daredevil Born Again. April and or season two. And then this as well. That's crazy.

There's that. That's two years. It's always weird watching this. Obviously, this is going to be great. But like this type of teaser trailer is one of my least favorite words. Here's just a bunch of stuff.

Yeah. So I feel like here's what we're going to do here. Kev, before you even bring that up, is there do you have the spoilers, bro?

image that we can use uh you want it on this screen right yes all right give me one second let me look for it see if we have it so we'll talk about this non-spoiler for a little bit and then we'll get into spoilers because i feel like this is very difficult to talk it's difficult to talk about this game without i mean i even know last two spoilers this whole thing i was gonna go you know yeah there's somebody here who's just watching for the first time exactly i love last of us season two they put out that's great they come like oh my god that short guy in the middle so funny

We're going spoilers here, everybody. Yes, let's go spoilers now. Do you guys have anything to say spoiler free?

Oh, my God. Okay, we're going into spoilers here, everybody.

It's going to be a good time. Can't wait. Yeah.

And then I would wake up later than I've been waking up. Because yeah, these days I'm waking up 6.30, 7, something like that. But I was waking up like... If I could, 10.30, fuck it. I'm getting out of bed, baby. I'm going to lay in that thing as long as I can.

I mean, I imagine that that's a flashback to...

I like that a lot. So what's really cool to me about this is, like Bless was saying, you can look at it and you can really pinpoint all the different scenes. She's about to fight her dead dad. I loved Last of Us 1, the show, and I know some people a little bit more. It was exactly the same.

I thought they did a great job with it. I thought it was absolutely fucking phenomenal. But what I'm excited about is Last of Us 2. I'm a lot less familiar with it. I played it through it once. Whereas Last of Us 1, I feel like we've played through multiple times. Then we saw the show. I feel like the whole story and the bits and even a lot with the Seraphites and stuff, I'm a little hazier on.

So I'm excited to kind of be reminded and see what changes they make. But looking at this teaser, very much a teaser, it does immediately, especially with where they start here, make me think, What is this season going to be? Because we know that they're going to break down into break the game into multiple seasons here.

And I wonder with the whole points and crux of the game being that turning point of the reveal of, hey, this person you've been going after the entire time. that we should actually have some empathy for her and give her her perspective.

I feel like that doesn't necessarily work in TV show form, especially for general audiences that are watching this on HBO for when you're not going to be able to just continue it right away, like having that season break that I imagine at best is next year, but I think that that is incredibly lofty. Like, I wonder... I wonder what sequence they're going to tell the story in.

$80?

I'm so sorry.

There we go.

Bye.

Paris' entire fantasy critic we're talking about right now.

Oh, you're saying in America.

No, babe.

Yeah, exactly.

This is why Greg Miller should be here. Dr. Freeze. Er sieht aus wie ein Doktor!

Something tells me that Kevin's pressing a button right now and it's not turning off the music.

Oh, there we go. That feels good.

I thought it was a Y.

That's sexy erotius.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

I was like, okay, well, now I got to say something.

Greg, if you let me take that box home, I'll fit it with lights, some weight so it doesn't flip over like that. Maybe a smoke thing. Kevin, you got my permission. Oh, great.

There's so many buttons, guys.

It is nice TV.

Yeah.

Like, I don't think this is just a... They definitely added rocks, too, in the left side.

Yeah.

You could.

Throw a banana in there.

That's your thing.

I was going to ask, are you writing off as much as you can with game-related stuff for the Twitch thing? No. If you have any PlayStation subscription. Because I usually get stuff through here. Yeah, no, I know. But if you bought a new computer, write that shit off.

It is a breakfast burrito. Hash browns, egg, sausage.

Happy Donuts.

They do a lot. They got a big old menu.

Unless you have like Bless does the Twitch streaming, which is like a side business thing.

sure sure sure sure but i think i even i was even talking when i was then maybe but i don't make enough money like i don't make enough money to be writing stuff off off of the twitch streaming thing is the thing right like your business could be losing money and that might be like and that's the thing i'm saying no but i'm saying if it's losing money you can write off a lot of stuff oh i see but i'm not buying that's the thing is i'm not there's not really anything i buy a gym membership you know and then write it off be like it's got to stay fit for the for the twitch streams

It was a crazy-ass Games Daily the other day. Why are you guys so out of focus? I don't understand.

He's looking through cloudy blood.

Five items on the Roper Report! A baker's dozen! Yay! Kevin, why sad, Kev? Kevin, why sad?

No, I'm not done yet. No, I just thought, too much excitement, you know, I gotta bring it down. How much of the burrito have you eaten? Like 90% of it.

Do you think we get to fly a spaceship at any point?

Do we dogfight?

Wait, that'd be really good. Just talk to me about that beforehand. I can have that set up. Four screens.

Four people playing at the same time.

It's great.

He just doesn't feel pain. His body deteriorates as it goes.

Oh, God, it's bad. It's bad, Greg. But don't worry, it'll get better eventually. Just let's wait four years from now.

Ned was so good, too, every time he was on.

I have absolutely no memory of this.

Do you have any answers?

Yeah, we might be busy.

Where you can build everything, you know?

Brick by brick, Tim. Brick by brick, Tim.

Tell him.

Yeah, but I was just saying it in a fun way.

Tai Chi.

He did. He went and bought one afterwards.

It was only because I was so aggressive the entire time. Sure, I can imagine. Tim, it was such a douchey move. Such a douchey move.

In fact, I thought about throwing my shoe at him multiple times. And if there weren't company policies against violence.

By God, I would have hit him with the shoe.

You've got to know when to pull up.

Oh, my God. There were a couple of moments. We've got two badges. We're working on a third. Everyone's like, oh, three's scary. So we're scared.

I mean, I think we're ready. The thing is, we just got a machoke? Machop. Machop. We got a machop, and we're grinding him a little bit.

But I think we're going to get here. I think we got there. I think we're getting there.

Did anyone watch the movie Heretic?

Was it good? I...

It's on Amazon or something now.

No, I mean, I am too, but now it's exciting that it's free.

You all got Nintendo up there. Fucking Moosa. We're all part of the problem. We're all part of the problem here. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. No. Let's fucking go. Kevin, is this real? Let's fucking go. Oh, my God, it's real. It's real. Y'all are hilarious up there. Oh, man. Literally, it's the logo.

When did he start putting the banana guy on the wall? I love this. That's good. That's really good.

It's so wet. It's so wet. I spit water everywhere.

$600?

What do you want me to say? That ain't Mario. Also, I just spent 30 minutes bitching about how I think this is stupid and Nintendo shouldn't do it.

Yeah.

What if Mario's the final boss of this game?

God dang, dude.

What's up with you right now?

Yeah.

Why did we change? We pressed the wrong button. Because you said red light. Oh. That would be fun. This guy.

100%.

Oh, shit.

Yep.

Would it be like that Pear app that they always... I was going to say Social Club. Click Clack is kind of good.

He takes a step, I take a step. What about when he's on a motorcycle?

Well, you get shark cards or whatever it is.

What the fuck?

Roger, if I order a stopwatch, will you maintain it? Sure. Every time he's walking? No, you're not going to. I can tell. Yeah.

My other question, which I'd like an answer for, I know you didn't answer, is when, like, if he gets a motorcycle... What are you doing? We'll still walk. No, no, we'll still walk. Okay.

Mike, I think 10 hours or 22 hours. 10 or 20. That's a wide margin. It is. But if he makes it past 10, he's making it to 22. I like that.

We're going to plug this thing. Sorry, man. Another question for Roger is do you have any of the lubricant that you're supposed to use? Whoa.

Bring it, because there's a chance it's going to dry out completely. That's a great call. Because it's not made to go that long, right? That's a great call. At the very least, you can lube it up and keep it going. What are we talking about here? What are we talking about?

But we can also ask him for his lube just in case, too.

Hi, Jason. Hi, Jason.

Hey.

Ring the bells. Yes, baby.

You and me, bro.

Greg, we did sit with him and tell him we would like him to be your replacement. If I'm being totally honest with you.

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Seriously, uploading photos via the app is so easy and such a nice way to share Ben's childhood with my parents, even though we're in San Francisco and they're in Chicago. Untertitelung des ZDF für funk, 2017

Oh, there's a circle in there. You get a globe. I don't know, the eyes ain't as good as they used to be. You get the jumbo steelbook display case, the great circle globe with hidden storage, the all-maker relic replica with the digital game code on it. A new adventure journal, I call that.

Oh, es war kein größeres Steelbook, es war ein dickes Steelbook.

Okay, hier geht's.

Wie kannst du das machen? Hier ist dieses Ding. Ich weiß nicht, was das ist. Hier ist dieses Stück Braille.

Es öffnet sich! Das Glöckchen öffnet sich!

Es öffnet sich. Es hat eine Hinge.

Es ist ein Unboxing von Greg Miller.

Es ist das Flugzeug, also kannst du es so machen wie in dem Ding.

Wie weiß ich, wie ich es auflatschen kann?

It says, for your next adventure. For Marion. Just blank pages.

Sometimes they would do that thing where they branded all Indiana Jones. I'm glad it's there. I'm keeping that.

Okay.

Du weißt, für den Rekord, alle, Entschuldigung. Ja, es sagt, erstens, öffne deinen Globen. Ja, es sagte nicht, rippe es apart.

Step number two to access the globe's hidden storage, attach the plane magnet to the correct point of interest and trigger the opening mechanism. Well, what can I say, everybody? I've watched a million Indiana Jones, I've played the Uncharted thing, and I'm just like, why wouldn't you just tear the shit open? And that's what I did. Nice try. Great circle. You couldn't stop Greg Miller.

Now we got an Audrey, too. Hello, Seymour. I love that.

Well, that's not right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

100%.

That doesn't work from this angle.

Thank you.

No, the turtles are using guns.

So, I purposely delayed it just half a second because I think it's funny to be off. Didn't expect it to not be working.

Andy, do you want to go grab one of the wireless mics?

Is the theater good or not, Nick?

Literally anyone else. We were here. I was here. You could have asked me. I would have been like, no, it's a shit theater. It's small.

I yelled it does.

Well, I had to yell because I was on the other side of the room. If I talked. I hate you so much. What?

As a punishment, does she also have to power the vacuum? As in like, there's a hose that she's like...

The coffee she has to put her hand and press it down.

I'm a little embarrassed with myself. Kevin, what do you got? I mean, you guys, you didn't think that they had, like, it was a bunny because they're moved. You know, they run around a lot. So I think it was, like, one of those things where it's a track inside, and they move, and that powers them up. Fair enough. That's what I always assume.

You know what I mean? But Greg, that's why I was saying you make her the vacuum. It's not going to be a strong vacuum, but she's going to suffer. You know what I mean? The coffee maker, she has to press down on the hot water.

Yeah, with the hot water.

That's the point. I'm not trying to punish. Why are you going to have to?

If you make it too comfortable, they're never going to leave.

Just so you know, when that does happen, it's never good for me, Tim. I gotta run over there, unplug it, and it just keeps going and going.

What's the name of this trailer that I'm looking for?

I think he's just waiting for you to pause.

We call that a teaser for the content. Go watch the stream yesterday. That's not what we said. No one said that. Let's all remember, bless poops naked. That's true.

I shouldn't?

You've been like, why is he so drunk? That's probably how you would met him.

I mean, what do you want to treat yourself? He said when he's coming home sometimes. He starts taking his clothes off. Yeah, like up the stairs.

Boo!

And he's got a Band-Aid travel kit.

That's the end of the story.

No, I didn't need it. He did that to me too. And I was like, am I bleeding? He said no. And I'm like, what the hell am I going to do with a band-aid?

You see that? Yeah, shout-out to this.

Oh, we have that same table.

I think it was about 90 minutes that he waited.

Yeah, and I met him halfway through.

What?

But, like, LCD screens, when you puncture them, they bleed, right? Like, they, like... No, no, but, like, I'm serious. Like, the liquid part of LCD, liquid crystal display, bleeds. There's no bleed in this. I think we're being bamboozled. You think they're faking it? I think someone... Someone wants attention. I think someone hates that particular store. It has a film.

All right, well, that's good enough then.

Well, yeah, but it's his Switch at that point, right? He didn't break the store's Switch.

Yeah, but to get banned from a Nintendo store? Come on, man. Come on. It's not like we arrested him.

I mean, I just think it's a little absurd for him to get banned. He spent money on the thing. He can do whatever he wants. He can break it and try to eat it.

Get out. Why are you touching me?

Tim, Chad's on my side. You've lost this one again. First Fran, now me. Greg's getting you too.

I am just going to say, in San Francisco, many of us have seen people just pooing on the street. And, like, there's a good chance that some random person will poo in front of the Nintendo store. Should they get banned? Should they get banned?

I've seen it twice. And it's shocking. Tim, it changes you. It takes something that you didn't know you needed. And innocence. And I hated it.

You promised not to bring this up.

What did Kevin do? I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. I'll just say it. I'll just say it. I'll just say there was a man aggressively peeing by a 7-Eleven close to my house.

I'm aware. I'm aware. But, like, I'm this deep already. You know what I mean? I love that Kevin cutting me off there made it sound like there's some story.

Well, first of all, we have a good friend who takes shit in bushes. What? Aggressively. You know what I mean? Why do you keep attaching the word aggressively? What does that mean in this context? I mean, just imagine Greg Miller taking a shit in a bush. You're telling me that's not aggressive? You know what? I can see that. He's definitely crying, right? I can see that.

But bless. We were driving towards this person. They are in their car. Well, no, no. Their door is open. They are facing the cars that are driving towards them. And he's just aggressively peeing forward into the light.

It was a shocking stream.

Like, it was a lot, guys. Like, you could tell... Quarter inch thick stream. Oh. Jesus Christ.

I'm just saying that's impressive to see from a car as you're driving 25, 35 miles an hour, and you can just tell the force that's coming at you.

We got to...

i begged him not to bring this story up i said don't mention it don't mention it you changed some freaking details you're the one that told the exact story i can't i what am i gonna do i gotta be honest you know what i mean this is gonna get like 25k views at least you know what i mean i love it this is what we do this is what we do what did i just say uh let's read some super chats before we get to uh story the stories and the ads and stuff uh

I didn't say that they couldn't ban him. I just said they shouldn't. That's absurd. He broke it outside.

You know what I mean? I'm sorry.

Grub, I didn't have all the information. I just went off what Tim told me. I got it.

The mascot wasn't there, right?

Goldbrock, that's your first warning. You get two.

With a microphone? No, thank you. Oh, but it is Tim's birthday, so we can count it as his birthday party.

Wait, what is it transferring over?

I think that something you're not thinking about is the X-Real factor. Imagine you're playing your Switch in your AR glasses and you're having a great time. But now it's time to stop playing video games. And now you're going to switch over to Netflix. Do you want to unplug your X-Reel glasses? Or do you want to just keep watching Netflix where you're comfortable in your bed, your massage chair?

But we won't let them bully us. You know what I mean?

Nintendo's not... Am I?

Remember that being, like, I think... Yeah, they might have, because they had the, like, you plug in your cable box, right? Yeah. And then, Tim, wire it to my face with my X-Real glasses.

Yeah. You guys are better at looking at rates. Are the windmills at the bottom all moving at the same rate?

Yes.

Damn. But then how will we do our own research?

Real pickle on this one, huh?

Are you talking about with brine or without brine?

Is there fluid in the bag?

Okay. Because there's one they sell at 7-Eleven nearby that has no fluid. It freaks me out.

Greg! Wait, Tim, were you there when I opened my present? Maybe in Texas.

We had one here for like a year.

Wait, but, like, these are flavored. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of cool. Yeah, no, that's pretty much giving 7-Eleven right there. Andy! And then, Tim, the 7-Eleven, the dry brine one, it's only one of them. They still have the one in fluid, the brine one. Oh, okay.

Yeah, I was about to cut it off for a little while.

I'm telling you, 7-Eleven. They got them at 7-Eleven. Let's go. Me, you, you get a pickle, I get a hot dog.

They're over by the egg sandwiches that nobody eats.

I'm so excited. I want a hot dog so bad. He won't go to that 7-Eleven, by the way. Oh, you're right. I'm not even going to ask.

Normal, we answer.

It could also be that I'm logged in on X and not Blue Sky, but it's just because my X is auto-login and my Blue Sky isn't. I don't use social media anymore. Too much work.

Let's do it. Damn, to be able to get it the next day in the morning, that's cool.

Damn.

He's giving out ass whoopings. He got you, bro.

That's crazy.

But also don't try, like, go and pick it up. You know? Like, it's really cool that Walmart did this, but this is not the norm.

Equally right. We weren't actually wrong. I hate this. Don't let him wrong his rights. No. Guys, now I'm equally wrong.

You're not wearing it, though, right? Like it's injected into your skin. I think I've heard where it's embedded into your skin.

No, that's not ordering. Ordering is when you get your phone.

So you get your phone, you order it, and then it gets delivered to you.

You can't order something in real time? And, like, if you walk up to the, like, you order a sandwich. You know what I mean? You walk up to the sandwich vendor and you say, senor sandwich vendor, I would like steak. I'm not saying that. You just got a G to sandwich? You know we say sandwich that way. You've heard it my whole life.

And, Tim, to clarify, in Spanish, the word sandwich is sanguche. Gotcha. So it gets transmogged to English, you know? Yeah. Where it kind of looks like a Spanish word. Okay, you can use transmog that way. Because it kind of looks like. I can't say I ordered. Because it kind of looks. But bless. It looks like a Spanish word in my head.

Sandwiches and torta? That's nonsense. That's nonsense. Torta means cake. Torta means cake. I understand that people from Mexico have this weird thing where they're like, oh, it's a sandwich. No, it's a cake.

Because I add the G, so it looks like a Spanish word.

This one's me. Wasn't it strike three yesterday? Or two days ago?

Interesting.

Why don't you just plug in the HDMI to Type-C in the back of the Switch?

I want to be mobile.

What?

Do it, dude.

Andy, before you go too deep into what you're saying, I want to just for a moment bring up the 13-month calendar again because I think this is my opportunity. God, it's such a low-res image.

I don't know why it's so low-res.

When I clicked, how nice that looks.

It was great audio content. I had no idea you could do that. You could right-click it?

Really?

Whatever. It doesn't seem like it. You want one more month, Andy. We can do it if we just commit to the 13 month. It would still be the same amount of days, so we would be in the 13 month.

So this is New Wave Toys. And they've sent me a bunch of them. And they're really cool. Oh, those are little tiny baby ones. Yeah, these are 1-6 scale. But they're awesome. Like, the quality is so... They're beautiful devices. Anyways, I just wanted to show them off. Because they're so cool and great.

But it would feel better.

Did he get a discounted price?

Oh, this wasn't like he was just like, I went to Costco and I bought a bottle.

I mean, he's making some solid points.

The movie's disappointing.

Yeah, you know what I mean? In what way? Story?

Guys, the gears are grinding, all right? You know, it's weird to not work for two and a half months and then come back.

I said, no, wait. Because I went early. It was seven. And I looked and I was like, no. Because usually I start the countdown. I start five when it actually says six. You know what I mean? Five. As I was saying five, it was seven. And I was like, oh, it's too early.

And by the time I had corrected, we were at five.

And we played the gorilla.

Wait, really?

I think it's optional to do it, you know?

Wasn't this year's like... Holy shit! Jesus Christ. Wasn't this year's like six weeks?

Mike, are we golfing? I thought you booked it already. What are you afraid of?

Get over here, Mike.

What was the big thing that he did in Fortnite?

Can you show me what the emote looks like?

Can we get a what? I said, should we get a talking stick?

I miss him. Me too. I miss him a lot. I'm sorry. We didn't mean it.

God, that was such an awful story. You've got to go back. That was such an awful story. I don't know if it's been clipped out, but Tim, it was just a terrible story.

Cool Greg has a connection to the Earth right now.

He also looks wildly concerned. You good?

You felt a lot there?

Fuck, that's scary.

No, no, we're fine.

But I mean, those first, like, 50 feet next to the beach, probably not great.

100%.

But it's not. Go to that.

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. These things are insane. You think something that hangs on the wall is going to be cheap?

Suction power, Andy.

What did it do?

Hmm.

It got cancelled.

Good. It's just me and Barrett do things differently. Like I have a button where everything's automatic and he's got a button where it just plays the intro and I hit his button instead of my button.

It means arch in Spanish.

Andy, do you get their shape?

Can you send it to me?

Oh, that's what you... Sorry.

No, you want lucid dreams.

Can you hear me now?

The button is just not working.

Thank you to our- Can I just say really quick, that was the mean blessing has ever- He was in a character that I- Yeah, I like it.

1000%.

Yeah.

100%.

Gary, can you move your mic over?

Yeah, a little bit to your right. Further. A little further. Like there? A little further.

Yeah.

Oh, because I'm doing this. Look at that.

Look at that.

Are you trying to kill us? Why are you doing this every week? Why are you doing this to us? Why are you looking at me? I assume it was you. You should not assume that.

This was Kevin? Kevin, are you trying to kill us? I don't do it every week.

But then if you do it every two weeks and then Andy does it every two weeks and we're giving it every week.

03.04.25.

Cool.

He's like,

Bigger than.

Five seconds. I'm going to be honest. We can't.

I mean, I can leave it on. It's just... No, it's fine. It's fine.

It's cool.

Okay.

Christ.

Okay. Well, I'm glad you like it. I'm glad you're having fun with it.

No way. They published Deathspank?

It should be on the graphic, too.

Because it's an adjective that's described. But people read it, they know. You know what I mean?

100%.

Mm-hmm.

Roger shit. Fuck.

2025.

It said soccer and puzzles.

Do you think there'll be a subscription service?

Yeah, exactly.

I know. That's what they do up there. That's their word. That's their word. That's their word. But like if I say I'm a bad guy to him. Yeah, we can't take that. That's theirs. There's so many.

Wait, did you actually ask him to do it?

After yesterday, he asked you like a million times to do it. Yeah, but I was busy. He said no.

Man.

So I can play soccer. That was the darkest I've ever seen. Plus, I'm like, well, he doesn't know how to say no.

Yeah.

100%.

Yeah, but he doesn't respond to text. So you're going to have to ask him in person. Oh, I'm going to ask him in person.

I'm trying to figure it out. I don't hear it in my headphones. Let me go to the other room and like, cause it could be the, is it YouTube or is it Twitch? Chad, let me know. Are you on YouTube and the issue with the mic? Mike is fine. Says Twitch. So maybe it's YouTube.

Why?

No.

No, he's making that up.

That's super cool.

Five stories today.

I actually think it was like just the morning before that.

I don't know. But like, I was really happy. And then I discovered blueprints.

Wait, wait, wait. Where's the link? Because it's not on assets. On the top of the page.

You're going to bring me into a meeting room and be like, hey, look, I know this is a fun place, but people are all talking about how much you're playing. You know what I mean?

I don't know. My first solo run felt pretty good.

Sorry, yeah. Yeah, I didn't hear you.

God, I remember I was like, hey, so have you seen any good cases for your portal? And you're like, what the fuck would you need to take it outside for?

100%.

Okay.

Tim, it was a really lit demo, actually. I encouraged you to check it out. One big battle sequence going from the front lines all the way through storming to the gates and then taking on Lu Bu. Pooh. I didn't know Lubu had it like that, but now I'm aware of it. I downloaded it. It just was taking too long to download to actually play, but I got it downloaded, so maybe this weekend.

Tim, it's really fun because, like, you know me, I'm an old school, like, PS2 target demo Dynasty Warriors kid, and to see what they've done over the years, how big the battlefields are, how many people are on it, and then the kind of mix of combat. They're adding a little more souls-like parrying into this. There's a lot of combat going on, tagging in other people, doing their crazy moves.

I had this lady with a hula hoop with a bunch of blades on the hula hoops. It was sick. Hell yeah, everybody.

Oh, yeah.

We don't have to shut TikTok down. It just has to change ownership to abide by American laws as deemed by the order of Congress.

This company is living in a dreamland thinking the Supreme Court of the United States is going to uphold spyware against its American people. Ain't going to happen. And then you've got this timing situation.

Yeah, I experienced firsthand why they chose to move the ceremony indoors. It was absolutely frigid. I am still thawing out. I met folks from around the country, and world for that matter, who had come to D.C. to celebrate, and they certainly got their chance.

The entire city felt like a giant Trump party, and because the ceremony was not on the National Mall, impromptu viewing parties formed all across the city all day long. When Trump gave his inaugural address after taking the oath of office, he struck an optimistic but defiant tone, saying the golden age of America was about to begin.

Along with presenting that extremely optimistic view of the country's future under his administration, Trump also did not shy away from a key theme of his campaign, widespread government corruption. He vowed to immediately begin taking action to rip it out root and stem.

And we should note that Trump supporters say the timing of that declaration could not be more appropriate, as the now former president, Joe Biden, issued a series of extremely controversial preemptive pardons in his literal final hour in office. Those included open-ended pardons for five members of his immediate family.

Also among those pardons before any charges have been brought were Dr. Anthony Fauci, former U.S. Army General Mark Milley, and members of the J6 committee, including Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. There was a lot of blowback over those, but even more so over Biden's decision to pardon his own brother James and his wife, his sister Valerie and her husband, and his brother Francis.

This all comes, of course, amid a number of allegations against the Bidens for corruption, as well as fears on the left that Trump will pursue charges.

Right. A lot of anticipation about how he would handle the January 6 pardons. And Trump did not disappoint his base in his first moves on this. He announced to the crowd at the Capital One Arena that he was about to sign some of his initial pardons of what he called the J6 hostages and teased a lot more to come.

As we reported, the Biden administration slapped over 1,400 people with charges and convicted more than 900. Trump has so far already signed pardons for all but a handful. He's commuted those final sentences and will do, quote, further research on them. So we'll be tracking how he handles those cases going forward. Right. And one final note before we go.

Another memorable moment from the day came during the swearing in when the music in the venue malfunctioned right as Carrie Underwood was supposed to sing America the Beautiful. After a long, awkward moment of confusion, Underwood stepped up with a beautiful acapella rendition and the crowd joined in.

Quite the partnership on display there. Kevin, thanks for reporting. Absolutely.

The one which is profoundly the case and has been for the last two generations is a proper understanding of freedom. From the understanding of freedom that most Americans understood at our founding, they would say that freedom is the right to do what we ought. which confers a moral obligation to community, a moral obligation to other.

In other words, not to be overly academic in this explanation, what it leads to is a civil society that is healthy, a civil society that has institutions like schools and professional associations, eventually media, obviously, all of which mitigate the differences that Americans have.

What has happened, however, over the last two generations is a redefinition of freedom, which is unhealthy, which is the freedom to do whatever the heck we want. eliminating that and coming to refocus on freedom as what we ought to do gets us to aspire to something greater as Americans. And for some Americans who may not be overtly religious, that's simply the American dream, which is excellent.

But for others of us who are explicitly religious and acknowledge and respect the religious pluralism in our country, it really does create a healthier country because ultimately what you're doing is minimizing the role of government, particularly in government doing things that we as individuals, as families, as communities should be doing instead.

with a zealous, ironclad commitment to religious liberty as exemplified in the law. And let's just be really blunt here. The ideology that has run roughshod over religious liberty is the radical left. We don't have an example in modern American history of those of us on the political right attacking the religious liberty of anyone.

In fact, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been just as zealous in protecting that of non-Christians as they are of Christians. So I have 100% confidence that that will continue to be the case for those of us who are politically conservative.

But the second thing is, and in a lot of ways, it is the very thing that allows our lawmakers, our policymakers to keep this focus on religious liberty, that if we focus on living out whatever our religious tenets are, and not just in our individual lives, but very importantly, in our communities, that might be mass attendance for serious Catholics, it may be church attendance for people of other faith, that ultimately what's going to happen is that even people who don't go to church,

who would say, you know, I'm not explicitly religious benefit because the institutions in society allow us to air these differences. And ultimately, the pluralism that has been present in the United States since our founding will reflourish. And it's going to be something that benefits everyone in society and really helps to sustain freedoms and rights across the board.

That's right, and there's an irony there, right? At the very least, a strong correlation between two things. One, the attack on religious liberty, which, for example, we saw under the Biden and Obama administrations, and the decline in religiosity of Americans, broadly defined. So in other words, to the very heart of your point,

If we either, because we are religious people, revitalize the practice of our beliefs, or if we're not religious, at least acknowledge that according to religious liberty and the pluralism of the country, that is the right of other Americans to do as they see fit. That actually is going to prevent the overreach of government in abrogating those religious liberty freedoms.

Both in my career as a public policy leader and also as an American history professor, I've never encountered a more egregious misunderstanding about any important part of the United States than the separation of church and state.

In fact, the whole reason for that, the long jurisprudence on this until the 20th century, the long custom, was that separation of church and state meant that you kept the state out of running the church's business.

And what's happened, as we have seen the political ascendance of the radical left, which, of course, aims at undermining religious institutions, is the complete 180 degree turn toward a misunderstanding in which we're saying there can't be any religion even expressed publicly. We're not even talking about in laws or in policymaking.

But I, as the president of Heritage, according to this misthinking, shouldn't even talk about religion publicly. in public.

That's the logical consequence of this terrible misunderstanding, and so to your question, I think ultimately what's happening because of the presence of still strong religious institutions and religious leaders of all backgrounds, Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and others, is a revitalization of this.

In other words, it's getting back to a proper understanding that if you don't have healthy religion in this country, government, And politics will become your religion. And we've lived through, over the last generation, the bad fruit that that reaps.

Yeah, the bad news, and it is bad news, but thankfully now good news story. The bad news is that under the Biden administration, the FACE Act was used to run roughshod over the right of pro-lifers to just be present peacefully at a safe distance outside abortion clinics. We're not talking about a protest.

We're talking about, for example, my friend Mark Houck of Pennsylvania standing outside peacefully in an abortion clinic, not obstructing the people wanting to go in. I mean, that was their legal right we made. disagree with, but that's their legal right, certainly, to go in and out. And the local law enforcement and then the FBI using the FACE Act to arrest Mark.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And ultimately, for someone not familiar with that story, the short version of the story is that all the charges were dropped. I mean, this was just totally baseless. It is one of the most egregious examples of the Biden Department of Justice clearly identifying pro-lifers using the FACE Act.

Our legal experts at Heritage, including Roger Severino, who's the expert on the FACE Act, said there's, in modern history, never been a greater violation of religious freedom there.

But the good news is not just because Donald Trump is president of the United States and is not using the FACE Act for those purposes, but more importantly, Americans have the ideology of common sense that whatever you think about abortion, you shouldn't be using that particular piece of legislation for that purpose. There is a right to free speech, including outside abortion clinics.

There's a zero percent chance that will happen because of two things. Number one, the political right in modern American history has never had that as a goal. We simply want to have a level playing field, which simply means we honor our religious liberty laws and jurisprudence. But the second reason is With Donald Trump as president, J.D.

Vance as vice president, these are men who might happen to know personally who have no interest in that. And so the chatter from the radical left and some of their associated media outlets that that's what the objective is, is not 50% wrong. It's not 20% wrong. It is 100% wrong. There's literally a 0% chance that will happen.

Well, in two ways. There are many, but two primary ways. The first is to use the bully pulpit of the presidency for that matter of being a congressional leader. So for Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, who of course are also great men, to talk about the plight of Christians in particular in the Middle East. We have seen over the last generation that

the near elimination of Christians in most Middle Eastern countries. In fact, as I point out in a recent op-ed, the only country where we've seen an increase in the Christian population is in Israel. And there's a reason for that, because the Israeli government protects religious liberty.

But so that bully pulpit, just identifying this, speaking to the American people and allies around the world about this, actually for Christians on the ground, some of whom I'm in touch with directly, is a real benefit.

Well, 100%. We wouldn't have the United States without Christianity, which is not to say that we ought to be dismissive toward the wonderful and unique religious pluralism we have in the United States, to put a fine point on that. Obviously, people of other faiths, particularly those who are Jewish, were also vital to the American founding and they're vital to the United States today.

But the second thing is we have to make sure that the different parts of the administration, an apparatus like USAID, which thankfully is dying a well-deserved death, that through the State Department that we're actually supporting religious liberty, not a particular faith, I want to be clear.

but religious liberty, the natural right of any individual to practice their religion in any government or any nation. And we haven't been doing that. In fact, we've been doing the opposite under USAID, using billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money to actively undermine the plight of Christians in those countries. Thankfully, that's come to an end.

Africa is the real hope there, not just socially and culturally, which of course are far upstream of politics. There's a real revitalization and expansion of Christian communities throughout Africa. There are exceptions like Nigeria.

But the second thing is, and we know this in heritage because of all the meetings we have with ambassadors and heads of state, there's a real growth in Africa or move toward a Western understanding of protecting religious liberty. And so what I see in Africa is, And the convergence of those two trends is something that probably will expand beyond their continent.

I mean, the best case scenario here would be that European leaders, most of whom are actually hostile to their Christian foundations, might be reminded by African friends of what their cultural inheritance is. I'm actually really optimistic about this, especially with all the great work that the Trump administration is doing.

Two things. One is a friend among older generations, particularly baby boomers away from Roman Catholicism, And then secondly, to underscore the point you make, overwhelming trend among a little bit of my generation, Generation X, but especially millennials and younger generations toward not just Roman Catholic churches, but those diocese and Catholic parishes that have

broad sense of this term, conservative liturgy. I'm not talking about conservative politics. I'm talking about traditional liturgy. We see this anecdotally as a family in the Diocese of Arlington and the daily masses I attended in Washington, D.C., but the macro-level trends in studies done by various institutions are also very clear.

I want to say that even for someone who is not Roman Catholic, this ought to be seen as being a real sign Because ultimately, what younger Americans are saying, whether they're entering the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church, the Protestant Church, maybe returning to their family tradition of Judaism, is they're looking for belonging. They're looking for meaning.

And for us at Heritage, as a non-sectarian institution, of course, which also honors the religious practices of all of our friends and colleagues, this is really hopeful for the future of America, because it's going to make the federal government a lot less important.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

But the worldview that created the ideology, the philosophy, which undergirded the founding of the United States was explicitly Christian. And I think revitalizing that in the 21st century is essential as we revitalize most of the institutions in the United States.

America wants our land, our resources, our water. our country. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us.

During President Trump's first term, he sat down with the Pope at the Vatican in 2017. Trump responded to the Pope's death early Monday, saying, May God bless him and all who loved him.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell of the Apostolic Chamber announced the Pope's death early Monday, stating that at 7.35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.

Stating that his entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his church, the Cardinal praised Francis as a man who taught us to live the values of the gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially in favor of the poorest and most marginalized. Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected in March 2013 after Pope Benedict XVI resigned.

He was the first Latin American pope, and his papacy often adopted progressive tones but also upheld the church's conservative doctrines on abortion, gay marriage, and gender ideology. Despite his criticisms of the Trump administration for its immigration policy, one of the last people the Pope met was Vice President J.D. Vance, who visited him the day before his passing on Easter.

Right now, 130 countries have responded and we're negotiating with them. The small business owner has experienced over the last few weeks the start of a process that's settling down really quite quickly.

This is a landmark victory for the rule of law. And this is what we've been arguing on behalf of President Trump from day one. These are enemies of our state, of our country, and they should be deported. And what the judge ruled was going forward, From this day forward, all those planes that are gone are there. Those people are staying. So there are a lot of reasons why Americans are safer.

From this point forward, the hearing will be held. It's a habeas hearing in the court of confinement, which means in Texas. So it will be a much faster hearing. And these people will be deported.

The death toll and property damage continues to rise in Los Angeles as wildfires rage on nearly a week after they started.

How contained are the fires now and why do some fear they may get worse in the coming days?

The Biden administration on Friday shielded hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation just days before President Biden will leave office.

And as the Supreme Court considers the issue of so-called gender-affirming care, a new documentary from TPUSA and The Daily Wire exposes its harsh reality.

Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter, Megan Basham. So Megan, we've seen a rapid sea change when it comes to public opinion about transgenderism, particularly as it relates to children. Only a couple of years ago, it was an expanding field within the medical establishment. But since then, 25 states have moved to outlaw these practices and we're actually well behind Europe in that regard.

Several countries, including the UK most recently, have banned the use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria. Why is the sentiment shifting now?

Now, 20 years ago, there was virtually no parents transitioning their kids. How did this happen so fast, and what was driving it?

Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

If there are little hiccups here or there because of decisions that activist judges make, then it shouldn't concern you at all. And it's certainly not going to affect the negotiations.

We also discovered through the coroner's office that the individual had sustained a gunshot wound to the head prior to the detonation of the vehicle. One of the handguns was found at his feet inside of the vehicle.

Obviously, in how we're trying to identify him, and I'm feeling comfortable to give you this information, there's a tremendous amount of substantial evidence to include he rented the Toro vehicle.

The FBI is a rotten institution, thankfully, with many great men and women in rank and file roles. But for too long, the FBI has been too independent of any real overview by either the president or the attorney general or Congress, which would be appropriate. Congress has largely just abdicated its responsibility to do so.

We believe at Heritage that the best way to reform the FBI is to go into the legal code that created it, select all, delete, and start from scratch. We believe there's, to be clear, a very proper role for a federal bureau of investigation. We think that in its current constitution and structure, it is so unreformable that that would be the best way to actually fix it.

Because of politics, it's most likely that reform will have to come from a very vigorous director, but also real vigor from the president and from the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate. They've got to play ball when it comes to reforming that agency. It's rotten. It is used to persecute Americans.

There are probably people in our respective organizations, The Daily Wire and Heritage. I happen to know factually that's the case, at least for some of us at Heritage. The FBI was on the brink of persecuting. They've done so with the former president. I wouldn't like that at all if it were someone on the political left. This is something that ought to transcend politics.

And it's very important to sum up here as the president prosecutes this political case against the FBI, that as much as he could make it personal that he explained as he did during the campaign, the reform is about the ordinary American and making sure the FBI works for us rather than against us.

I hope to see a real discipline about what the policy priorities are. Obviously, those don't have to run in such a linear fashion, but to some extent, being excellent in communication about what those priorities are and why is the first step. The second step, I would argue, at Heritage is to completely close the border.

And I think President Trump, keep in mind his first appointment was a border czar, our Heritage fellow, Tom Homan, who taught me several years ago as we started working together on border security, is that it isn't just about closing the border, but about interior enforcement.

And that's where Americans in the interior of the country, obviously a majority of Americans, believe that their interests have been forgotten on that issue.

Not only is it important to do that for its inherent purposes, it's also important to do that to prove to the American people that Trump meant it, that he's going to spend political capital to do so, including deportations of millions of people. And then that gives you the political will to move on to point two.

And I think point two is largely going to be focused on the economy, ranging from very important deregulatory efforts to policies of the Treasury Secretary to re-upping the Trump tax cuts. All of those are very important in step two, and Americans will feel the benefits of that relatively early. And then, as I speculate, John, The third step is sort of up in the air.

Bottom line is the top lesson Democrats should be talking about right now is that when you govern like radical leftists and attempt to run to the center very late in the campaign, that does not work. Sometimes it works for Democrats to govern on the radical left, but they, over many, a long period of months, will move to the center and it works.

There are a lot of possibilities, but I think I would recommend, as a friend to the president and vice president-elect, that they pick some example of the reform that they will be doing throughout the government. Maybe it comes from the work at government efficiency that Elon and Vivek will be doing. Maybe they decide they're going to focus on the Department of Education.

And my point is spend a lot of time, a disproportionate amount of media time, explaining to the American people what this is about. Why they're doing it, how they're going about it, that they're treating federal employees well as they're doing so, sort of the human level that Americans pay attention to, which is good, and then go do it.

And I actually think that that gives them an expanded popular will to move on to step four, whatever that may be. The pressures in D.C. will be such that they're going to try to push all of those together so that only one of those things can happen.

It's really important that the president and his team, who thus far just look terrific to us at Heritage, be very disciplined in how they go about that and when.

In this case, their record prevented that from happening. And the more the vice president tried to present herself as someone in the center, there were two problems that she had. Number one, enough of the American people realized that was a lie.

And number two, it actually underscored this persistent concern that they had about her and have about a lot of politicians, especially on the left, which is that they're inauthentic. And so they try to run an inauthentic campaign against whatever you think about Donald Trump, the most authentic man in politics. Right.

And so the lesson that they should be drawing, Democrats should be drawing is either run as radical leftists and convince the American people that they are with you, which they are not.

or which is what I would recommend they do, be a center left party, be less ridiculous about abortion, be less ridiculous about the power of the state in our lives, be less ridiculous about basically your whole program. But I'm just telling you now, at least spending the daytime many days in Washington, D.C., those aren't the conversations they're having.

And they've actually pushed out very thoughtful folks like Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut. I think I disagree with Senator Murphy on everything, but he had this very thoughtful analysis on X several days ago. And those conversations just are not happening. It's bad for the Democrats, but good for those of us who believe that this commences a generation-long era of conservative policy reform.

I will describe it two ways, and I will, in the second way, acknowledge your point about principles, maybe even versus pragmatism. But the first, and I think arguably more important way, is that the Republican Party is once again a working class, multi-ethnic coalition. And of course, it includes middle class and high net worth people, too.

But the reason I say once again is not even to harken back to Reagan or sometime 100 years ago, but to its very roots. You know that I'm a historian and the very roots of the Republican Party, particularly when Abraham Lincoln ran in 1860, certainly had something to do in that election with anti-slavery.

But even more important than that in that election was the sense that the Republican Party stood for the American worker. what Abraham Lincoln termed free labor ideology. It was his way of saying sort of working class, blue collar, middle class, and so on. And that's the most important thing that the Republican Party has become. But it's also important to acknowledge that there is a tension.

between principles, which we, by definition, don't have the power to change, at least in a social sense, but in a political sense, Trump and his campaign put an emphasis on pragmatism, that we're going to water down, they are going to water down, the party's position on abortion. They have stopped fighting on marriage.

And there are questions about what Trump will do as president regarding using the federal government and the administrative state for certain aims that may in fact be very good, but those are going to, this is going to be sort of a tense conversation with other conservatives who are very Trump aligned. I'm not saying that all of that is bad. I'm just saying that there's a tension there.

And I think one of the goals that we have, certainly at Heritage and I think across the movement, is to reconcile those, not just for politics.

That's almost the least of my concerns, although it's a concern, but more importantly for the long run to make sure that the Republican Party, as it has been my entire lifetime, best represents the principles that Americans believe are upstream of those political considerations.