A Hollywood Producer’s Fight for Conservative Values & Corporate Culture Shifts w/Robby Starbuck :: Ep 21 TTIAST Podcast
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We want you to take on the music business now. It's on my list, actually. So...

A little bit about how... I can't wait. A little bit. Segment two on my list. We want to be behind you like as your little warriors. As an entourage. Little minions. I could use an entourage. That could be cool. Could we do like matching uniforms or something? Absolutely. Like Bukali down in El Salvador. He's got those cards behind him. Can we please do that? That just sounds like fun. Our kids are yes sir, no ma'am. And in California, that's weird. Your kids do that in California and people are like... That's

That's a cult. Exactly. No, literally, I think people immediately assume it's a cult and they're homeschooled. The worst thing we ever did was say we're a silent majority and then brag about it, which I will never understand.

Because essentially that's what we did become. We became the silent majority. And by virtue of that, this very loud, obnoxious group of people convinced corporate America that they were the people that they needed to answer to. The Try That In A Small Town podcast begins now. All right, guys, we have got a true troublemaker on the show tonight. He's a rock star in my book.

I have studied this guy, and he is like a hero to me, because I know him inside and out, and I don't even really know him until tonight. I met him for the first time, and we are so proud to have a guy on here from California decide to make the move out to Tennessee, and he loves it here, and I think he's a homeboy now, and we're going to learn a lot about this guy tonight. Y'all make welcome to the show, Robbie Starbuck. Yeah, man.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. That was a good intro. Did you like that? I might need you to go on the road with me. We'll drop the California part though. I think I just lost my gift. I think you took Kurt's joke. California's got a lot of red in it. You know what though? That is the misconception about California. People hear California, they think Hollywood. I was raised in an area with farms and that type of lifestyle. It's a very conservative area.

It's not LA, you know, but that's the perception somebody gets. If you say, oh, they moved here from California, they think automatically like, oh, they, they must be bringing their, you know, crap with them. And it's just the opposite. I think most people who are moving here from those places are doing it because they have the right value set and they're going, I cannot in good conscience be a part of this anymore. I mean, there's definitely a few of those people who are coming here for the wrong reasons. They're like,

They don't understand their voting pattern is exactly what caused California to self-destruct. But the vast majority are eagle-eyed, too, about what's happening. And they're those ones that are turning into really effective activists and going, hey-

We saw this happen in public schools before in California, and it led to this. You guys need to nip it in the bud. And so there is a little bit of that too where I've seen some of the most effective activists are people who have come here from places that were utterly destroyed by left-wing policy. Ooh, we're starting out strong. I love it. It's very similar. I'm similar in a different coast, but I'm from New York.

but I'm from the Adirondack mountains and way upstate. Yeah. I was going to say you're too nice. Yeah. People always say, Oh, you're from New York. I said, yeah, but New York city is just, it's barely connected to the state. The state is very, I mean, it's farmland, it's mountains, very similar in that way. Like people think automatically New York city. Yeah. You know, which is really its own thing. It is totally its own thing. There's nowhere else I've been in New York. That's anything similar to New York city. It's its own thing. And it's very, you know, I went home over the fourth and it's,

very conservative people just trying very low income people trying to just pay their bills and you know it was pretty like California was devastated by COVID and small business shut down and everything so people felt that and

So, yeah, very similar in that way, though. People think automatically, you know, oh, New York City or, oh, L.A., if you're from, you know. And not that they're very effective, but New York is the reason that we have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives because people didn't expect Republicans to do well in New York, and they did very, very well. I mean, Lee Zeldin ran that governor race very close, a lot tighter than anybody thought, and he carried those members who ended up winning their House races, he carried them over the line.

So, you know, we could thank them for that. I just wish the House majority would do something with the majority. Yeah. You love Tennessee. You love living here. Oh, it's the best decision that we have ever made aside from getting married and having kids. So, yeah, backtrack a little for us. You were in California. You were a producer, right? Yeah, producer, director, yep. Maybe we should backtrack to there. Give us a little insight to what that's like.

Well, I think you guys could probably relate to this on some level. It was a little different because I was in the belly of the beast. I wasn't able to do my job from a place like this where I was directing people like Natalie Portman and Megadeth, Smashing Pumpkins, Snoop Dogg, Jamie Foxx, all those types of people. And in that side of the industry, it is very difficult to be open and honest about your politics unless you are super far left. And so to my shame, honestly...

I was very young when I broke into the business, much younger than people usually are. And so I came from, you know, my mom came to this country with nothing. And so to me, making it at a young age and kind of being able to have like a really solid resume and make decent money, my initial thing as a young dad is I'm like, well, I just have to keep my mouth shut and make money for my kids, provide for my kids, give them better life than I had, right? That was like sort of the operating mindset. But in the back of my head, there was always sort of the...

The fighter Robbie that's like, you're being a coward and constantly challenging me. You're being a coward. And then I happen to be married to one of the feistiest women. And then she was reinforcing what my head was saying. And she's like, you just need to speak up. You want to.

You need to. And then there was also in the back of my head, my basically father figure in my life was my great grandfather. And he had such a massive impact on me because I've never known a man to love his wife more. And that's, I try to be as good of a husband as he was to his wife every day. Like if I can get there 80% of the way, I'll feel like I did a great job.

But he had always warned me, you know, if you see these signs that the country is sort of sliding into the same traps that Cuba fell into, you have a duty to stand up at whatever cost it is. He's like, I don't care if it's money. I don't care if it's your life. You stand up for your family because you're

Cubans were able to go to America because America existed. There's nowhere for your kids to go to. There's nowhere for you to run to. If it happens in America, you're done. That's it. Freedom ceases to exist. You know, what our founders designed ceases to exist. And so as we got into 2015, I cruelly,

I could really tell that the signs were there, that we were entering uncharted territory in our country where if we didn't have massive disruption, we were going to be quickly facing down the barrel of the gun of communism. And so I said, I'm going to do just about the dumbest thing you can do in this business, and I'm going to endorse Trump in the primary. And at the time, I already had a decent following from people who liked watching my work and stuff like that. I was sort of

An anomaly in that early part of the internet breakout thing where you could have a personality tied to a creative art form where you weren't an actor and you weren't a musician. So I had sort of this little cult following. And so I just was open and honest about it. And I went on Fox as well and endorsed Trump. And the next day I get phone calls. And one of them I'll never forget. It was from somebody at Paramount.

And we had a deal with Paramount at the time, and they said, you know, it's not too late for you to go back. You could just say that you didn't understand his policies on immigration. And I literally, my response came out of my mouth, not from me. It had to have been God spoke for me. I swear to you, because I don't know what compelled me to say it to this person, because we're talking about probably the contract that made my company the most money.

And I immediately responded, his immigration policy is the selling point for me now. And that was it. And I was like, but you've got to understand, like, I'm Latino, so they can't pull the you're racist thing. And.

and they said, well, they absolutely can. And so this person was actually, they were friendly. They were like trying to sort of forewarn me like this is what's going to happen. And it was, it was absolutely what I thought would happen. It was a massive loss in business. I'd say in that first year we lost probably 80% of our business and it was entirely over, entirely over politics. That is, that is, we talk about this a lot where in no way, shape or form is that American. It's un-American in every way. To, um,

cost somebody some livelihood because they have a different political view. And I still can't believe we talk about it. It just sounds crazy. It doesn't feel like America. That's why. Yeah, it's not.

Wow. But I will say, you know, I knew at the time the important part of doing it was that if somebody didn't do it, and I wasn't the only one. There were others who did it. Like, Scott Baio and I were friends at the time. He came out and did that. Our daughters went to school together and stuff. And we both, we knew what time it was, you know. And he lost a lot, too. And...

We knew, though, that setting that sort of path would make it easier for people in the future. And now you're seeing people in at least cross parallels of the entertainment industry be able to thrive while being honest about their politics on the right. And, you know, in a perfect world, I wish like you could separate entertainment from politics. But the truth is they've always been intrinsically intertwined. They've always met each other. And they're they're one. There's like a symbiotic relationship between the two.

And so it's only the right that has been fooled into the idea of being proud of being a silent majority. And I think that's probably one of the dumbest things that's happened to us. Amen.

it's not going to lead anywhere because they're just a small contingent of crazy people. Well, the crazy people run stuff now. That's a nice way of putting it. But essentially, those people who were gluing themselves to a Starbucks counter were more willing, which by the way, I think about this all the time. I'm not joking. On a weekly basis, they're like, oh, men think about Rome. And we do, that's true. But once a week, I think about this video I saw this one time. It was probably like six years ago. And it was this guy inside of a Starbucks. He glued his hand

to the counter because he was upset they didn't carry the type of milk he wanted. And he was a left-wing activist. And I remember thinking, like, this dude is nuts. But my second thought was...

What do people on our side care enough about that they would do something that crazy? That they would commit themselves and be like, I don't care how foolish I look. I don't care how it's going to physically hurt me. I'm going to commit to this. And there's a certain party that almost has to admire the commitment. We need to be committed in some way. I mean, we shouldn't glue ourselves to a counter and look like a crazy person. But we could take some commitment from this. And that was sort of what I challenged myself is like,

double your efforts, be as committed as possible to creating a better country for your kids, you know, and it's not going to be easy. There's challenges to it, you know, but it's, it's important. I mean, I don't think there is anything more important than

If we're being real. Yeah. 100%. I've been guilty of being silent the majority of my life, really, until we started this podcast after the... Until we wrote that song. Try that in small town. You're welcome, Kalo. And it did just seem like just a great platform because...

Because the other side is always, they're always saying something. Always. We're just trying to be nice and quiet and make everybody like us and we're not going to upset anything. But you do realize in the more even researching you and getting ready for this podcast, you're inspiring to me and to us to kind of like,

Yeah, we're doing the right thing. Oh, you guys are totally doing the right thing. We can say something, and you can make a difference, like you are in a major way. And I realized in researching you that you may be a little smarter than we are. It's possible. That's a very...

That's usually the case with our guests. That's not a surprise to him right now. But I realize that we had a lot in common because a lot of people hate you too. Yeah, no, that's true. When you Google, when you do the death Google, it's, oh, it's bad. Yeah. It's bad, but it's awesome.

It really is. I will say we have a lot of death threats right now. People are really upset over us eliminating all of this crazy woke stuff in workplaces. But I will say this.

By people are really mad, I mean literally like 3% of the stuff we get. They're just really loud. 97% of the emails, messages, and stuff in voicemails, which please people stop getting my phone number and calling me because that's been probably one of the more irritating things this week because I've just had to turn my phone off because I've been doxxed a couple times.

But most people are actually calling. They put my phone number online. But most people are actually calling and being like, thank you. I'd like to tell you this. And I'm like, okay, well, there's a designated email for that. Email the email, and then we'll get back to you. Because I can't even do this work if you're calling the number the whole time. But the left is crazy. I mean, the stuff we've gotten has been...

absolutely grotesque, you know, including them, including my kids. And that's something that like, we can't even conceive of. We can't conceive of on our side, you know, because we would never do that. I would, I would never, I don't care what your politics are. I don't care what you've done to me.

kids are innocent. You don't involve kids in stuff like this. But you kind of recognize what time it is and what we're really facing when you realize that for them, there was no second thought put into that to naming the kids. That's because on that far left, they don't like kids. They don't. That's just the truth. When you're that far left, I've seen it. The

kids are not very high on their list well it's the there's a baked in narcissism that's why because there's this whole idea that you know your life's value is based off of how good you feel and that's not that's not true value that's not true wealth in life is like oh how good can you make yourself feel if it was everybody should just sit down do heroin until they die right um

But your life would be meaningless effectively. Like, yes, you would have had some feel-goods had you been just strapped up on drugs your whole life. You'd have no experiences, nothing meaningful to be able to leave on this earth. And I'm of the opinion that there has been a concerted effort by a certain group of elites...

to essentially undermine the family and everything that challenges their power structure. And the nuclear family is a big part of that. So the more you can discourage people from pursuing that, the better. And so in their eyes, because if you look at sort of what they're selling to young people today, it's that you don't need to have kids right away. You just need to like be able to have this life where you're able to just do things you want to do. And that's true freedom. Kids are just going to shackle you. They're going to do all these terrible things. And

You guys are all dads, right? I think we can all agree. Literally best moment of my life, my kids being born. I'm not a crier. I'm not an emotional person. Every single one of my kids, I cried when they were born, like a baby. And the best moments of my life that I could, if I was like, okay,

this is it, God, and there's going to be a two-minute reel of all the best memories I have played before I die. Not one of them is going to be as selfish like, oh, I got to go on a trip to Bali by myself or with a girlfriend. It's going to be every moment of me and my wife and my kids together where we made memories. It's the best feeling, the best things, and yes, being a parent's not always easy, but I really do think that it's so valuable and such...

a part of the wealth we build as men and for women too. But as men, it's like we are different men and women. At the end of our life, that's our legacy.

And they want to strip that from men. And they want to strip masculinity too. They'd like us all to be the same. And functionally, even if you just go from a godly sense or even a science sense, I mean, it's just patently ridiculous. We're not the same. We have very different experiences and we have very different feelings about what we value and what we want out of life. And that's true even with the partners we choose in life, whoever we marry.

we're still very different from them. We can have similar interests and things like that, but the things we value, the things that are really going to matter on our deathbed, they're still different from women. Some things cross over, but they want to strip those things that really matter from us. And I think that that's an important thing for us as men and as dads to step up and sort of undo a lot of the BS that's out there. Because think about the amount of propaganda there is to young people today telling them that being a parent is so hard. Right.

And you'll just see all of these videos, Trent, of moms being like, I wish I had more time for this or that or the other thing. And dads, the same thing where they're like, it's so hard being a dad. And they talk down about their experience about having kids. How many dads have you seen like push...

promoting the idea of family and being like, this was the best moment of my life. This is the best thing that's happened to me. We need to kind of counter the stuff that's out there that's leading young people to believe that they should sort of abandon the idea of having a family. Yeah, that's really well said. Yeah. You know, they say, yeah, at the end of your life, you never hear anybody say,

God, I wish I'd spent less time with my kids. Yeah, never. If you interview any nurse that works hospice, the ones who ask about that, about regrets, they say they wish they had spent more time with family. They wish they hadn't worked so much at home.

at their job that they hated, you know, and they wish they had followed their dreams. They wish they had stood for something. They wish all of these things that are within our control to do, you know, we can do these things. It's within our grasp. It's all about the choices we make. And honestly, you know, I say that from a standpoint of like, like I said, there was a certain period of my life in Hollywood where I was cowardly and, and that's how I see myself now. But I,

I also understand because of that experience that it's not easy to get your mind out of that mindset.

You really do have to just take the leap and trust God and go for it because it's not always going to be easy. But the fulfilling and really memorable things in life are not. They're not easy. But they get you somewhere that is, you know, a summit that you'll never forget. You know, it's kind of like the mindset of those people who climb Everest. You know, some people don't understand it. Yeah.

it's about the journey for those people more than it is the mountaintop. The mountaintop's great, but it's a mindset. And I think we need to adopt that same mindset in everything we do, that we've got to just take the risks. We've only got one shot at this. Let's do it right. Yeah, you're right. It is hard. Sorry to interrupt, Caleb. That's okay. It is hard, like you said, challenging to take a stand. And I think we're seeing more of it in our business where I think you can see it turning a little bit where...

people are less afraid maybe slowly but surely but you know it's it's inspiring meeting people like you that that do that because it's it's not easy for everyone that to not you know to just we want you to take on the music business now it's on that list actually so a

A little bit about how... I can't wait. A little bit. Segment two on my list. We want to be behind you like as your little warriors. As an entourage. Little minions. I could use an entourage. That could be cool. Could we do like matching uniforms or something? Absolutely. Like Bukele down in El Salvador. He's got those guards behind him. Can we please do that? That just sounds like fun. It does. And it...

What guns does he give them? It's a, I don't know, but he's got like these little, I'm trying to remember what it was. They look cool. And I can't remember what guns he gave them, but we'll give you guys cool matching guns. We'll wear the loves Jesus in America too. Yes. That's we'll do that as the uniforms. But no, I think that the concept, you know, with these companies kind of where I've, I've operated with this is actually from the premise that the, the worst thing we ever did was say we're a silent majority and, and then brag about it, which I will never understand. Um,

Because essentially that's what we did become. We became the silent majority. And by virtue of that, this very loud, obnoxious group of people convinced corporate America that they were the people that they needed to answer to. And there was nobody filling the vacuum to say, oh, no, actually, they're a very small group of people. We're over here. We're a lot bigger group of people. And we will make your life hell if you go that route.

So that just didn't exist. And so after George Floyd, everything accelerated. I mean, that was the acceleration point. The match was lit. And the silence from the silent majority got even more silent because now you're put in the awkward position of if you say anything, you're a Nazi. I mean, like you're not just a racist. You're a racist. You're a Nazi. You're transphobic somehow, which I don't know how that connects to George Floyd, but somehow you're all of those things. Okay. Okay.

And so there was just a culture of everybody's going to shut up, let these people do whatever they want with these policies. And at corporations, CEOs that were not true believers at all, they were just kind of like, okay, I don't want to be called racist. They let this stuff happen. And I will say that about corporate America. The true believers among the CEO and executive class is few and far between. They do exist. Like the CEO of Harley-Davidson, he was a true believer.

But that is the rarity. The vast majority of them just went along for the ride because they didn't want to be called names. And so the thing that happened that I think a lot of people don't understand is

is that we had a couple things converge at once. That moment happened, right, where everything starts to accelerate. But what also happened right before that, colleges got especially radical, okay? So a couple years before that, by virtue of Trump being elected in 2016, the colleges essentially became the training center for the color revolution, right?

And so you've got all these new color revolutionaries leaving college. These kids are going out there, and they're not trained in whatever their job is. They're trained activists, and their job is to spread this poison into wherever they go. So they're sort of like, think of them as the initial infection point. And so they're going to infect these companies. And so they spread out all over the country doing this at different corporations.

And so by the time you reach George Floyd, these people are already embedded into the system. What departments are they most prevalent in? HR, PR, okay? Those two places where they're the heavyweights. Those two places have disproportionate power within every corporation in the country. Because number one, people are scared of the DEI people and the HR people. And then the PR department, well, they manage your public sort of face.

And so if you're an executive and both of those teams come to you and they say, we need to do this or we're going to get crushed. We have to do this crazy program. We have to sponsor a pride parade that has drag queens for kids. You know, like the CEO doesn't know any better. He's sitting there going like, OK, I'm going to have a riot and a mutiny on my hands if I don't do this. And they're like, my hands are tied because there's nobody who's standing up and saying, no, actually, you're going to you're going to get really hurt as a business for this if you go this this route.

And so if we want to dial it back, my sort of approach was that you've got to start with the companies you know you can change. And that's the ones that depend on conservative consumers walking through the doors. And so we started there because what happened back after George Floyd was a massive Overton window shift of what was acceptable. Now to shift it back, we've got to start on the right, move to the middle, then go to the left.

And so that's kind of what we've begun. It's why if you look at the companies we've done so far, it's Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Jack Daniels, and now Lowe's yesterday. So we're seven for five, which is a good batting average. Because we actually only had five targets, but we turned two others just by accident. And so if you look at those, they're all companies that they depend on the conservative consumer. But we are going to...

veer into a territory where we start to fight for what I call the jump ball companies. They're 50-50s, but they've never had a sizable right-wing push against them to just act normal. And that's the other reason this has been successful, is because we're not asking them to adopt my politics. We're not saying, hey, you have to mirror what I believe in. It's quite the opposite. It's saying that would be inappropriate too. We just want work to be work again, make it neutral.

Stop with the political social issues at work. Nobody wants to shove down their throat and it doesn't help your company. It's dividing people and get rid of all the identity politics. Stop separating people by color or what type of sex they like to have. You know, I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but when I first got into the workforce...

If you had talked about what kind of sex you like to have, it was sexual harassment, you were going to get fired. Now they have clubs for it at work. That's weird to me. I don't care if you're gay or you're straight. I think that's weird. You probably shouldn't talk about what kind of sex you like at work. It's kind of bizarre. I'm not even sure how that plays out where you're like,

You go over to the desk in HR and you're like, hey, Donna, we're going to have a little meetup later about, you know, if you want to come, we're going to do it after lunch. I'm not even sure how that plays out in the first place, but I do know that it seems weird. And if you think about like your kids going into the workforce, you want your kids to be in a position where, you know, with John Deere, they had this thing called the Ally Pledge. Okay. So they had this LGBTQ. I don't want to hear it, man. Yeah.

So they go around with this ally pledge. And essentially, have any of you guys watched Seinfeld? Oh, yeah. You know the episode with Kramer and the ribbon? Yes. Oh, yeah. Was it a ribbon? The age walk? Yeah. It was a ribbon, right? Yeah. I don't want to wear the ribbon. Age walk. It's a great episode. Imagine you work at John Deere, okay? And you're a Christian and you just, you feel like signing this would violate your faith in some way.

How do you get away with that without being demonized, losing a promotion, losing your next bonus, whatever it is, when you know that DEI is the sole performance metric for behavior at your workplace? How do you not sign it? And then they make it public, by the way. So your other employees can see if you signed it or didn't sign it. Oh, geez. So it's essentially like that ribbon thing where they're like, if you don't sign it, you have to wear the ribbon. Yeah.

You have to wear the ribbon or you're a Nazi. Again, like everything goes back to you're a Nazi if you don't agree with me. And the funniest thing as I've been doing this, going through these woke companies and changing their policies, I've gotten a few, you know, people, they push back and they go, you're a fascist. And I'm like, you know what seems kind of fascist to me is-

Trying to force your politics down everybody's throat against their will that seems sort of fascist to me I'm just saying let's leave people alone at work. You said you said it But you like people just want work to be work. That's it Get it back to neutral and I had a good friend of mine I told me you were coming on and where I'm from Harley Davidson is a way of life. Yeah, like I

If you don't have one, that's on you. And he goes, tell them, thank you for saving Harley Davidson. Because really, it was happening. People were, that is their base. And they're pushing them out. They get buried in Harley gear. They have dedicated their lives to that brand. Yeah.

That's part of what made me so upset with Harley and why I went is I probably went harder on Harley than I did any of the other companies. There's a lot of companies where I held certain things back because my operating premise is you are going to have a few who return to their bad habits and we want to have things to be able to bring in if such things should occur. With

With Harley, though, I was like, the CEO is a true believer. He is exactly the problem. He's the type of person that is destroying not just our country. He's a German guy. Yeah, he's a German, which I don't even understand how that happens in an American company. I was going to ask you. Maybe you know how that happens. But you know what is strange? I will say this. A mainstream media reporter reached out to me and said, hey, do you guys ever find anything on the bio of him? I said, no. And they said, it's very strange. We have the best department at figuring out sort of where somebody came from.

we can't find anything about where he was born, who his parents are, any of that stuff. In Germany, it's a little, it's a little sus. Yeah. It's a little sus. If you look at Harley Davidson and just look at it, that is America. That Harley Davidson sign, that is what that is to a lot of people. It's like Coca-Cola. It's like Harley Davidson. It's embedded, you know,

And when I think of American companies, that's what I think of. So seeing that fall away was like tragic. And so thank you. Like, you know, the DEI warrior. We still have to get rid of the CEO. I will say that. I mean, that's the one thing. I think the customers are going to make that happen. I could actually explain a little bit behind that. So what I've been told by sources in the company is that the CEO was not in favor of the statement that went out. Again, he's a true believer.

Um, I actually operated that whole thing from the vantage point of thinking they were not going to roll over because of the CEO, but that they were going to damage their brand and that they were going to be forced by the board eventually to fire the CEO and change at that point. I was very happy the board did the sensible thing and changed the policies on their own, but I'm just thinking about the social science of this. So like,

If you put yourself in his shoes, this is a guy who's dedicated his life to this. He was already incredibly wealthy before he became CEO of Harley.

like filthy rich. And so he doesn't need the job. He was there to try to force an ideology, which is very clear from the videos where he calls himself the Taliban of sustainability, which I don't know why he thought that would go over well in America when the Taliban killed a ton of Americans. So disconnected from the base of what Harley is, which- Or just America in general. How does that happen though? Like to your question, how does a guy like that who-

has no idea, become the CEO of

Harley Davidson. I think you figure out the answer to that one. I mean, look at the board. The board is filled with people like there's a guy who he's the president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He doesn't look like he's ridden a motorcycle a day in his life. So why is he on the board? But I think you can kind of put two and two together why they're there to force an ideology, right? So if you think about the social science of this, they're changing all these policies. He's massively embarrassed by this whole thing that has occurred.

His baby over the past few years was to change this company and turn it electric. He had a plan to turn the entire company electric by 2030, which is just like ludicrous. Oh, wow. Scooters for everybody. The sound is everything. We can recreate the sound. And it's like, okay, their plan, I bet you anything, was to play like an audio of what it used to sound like.

And then have it be electric. I bet you anything that's what they were going to try to do. But that was the plan was by 2030, go fully electric. And so now his hopes have been dashed, right? So if you think about the social science of this, what circles does he run in? Well, if you looked at any of the videos I posted of him where he's getting an award at like a Rockefeller thing, I mean, he's palling around with all of the furthest left elites that you can think of.

Among those circles, it's not going to be very popular what's going on at Harley now that there's been a very public about face. So he's going to get a lot of questions about that. And I think he's going to get sick of that really fast. And

Is he really going to want to take a backseat at a company that he knows he can't do this anymore with? Because we have sources within the whole thing. And the dealers, the dealers are in absolute mutiny over this. They hate what he's done. The dealers were pissed at him before I ever said a word over a bunch of financial stuff. Because there's a whole other end of this that, like, if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say...

Looking at the behavior of the company in recent years, I would say it looks like a company that doesn't want dealers. It would look like a company to me that wants to eventually go fully selling the vehicles on their website. They want to sell the motorcycles from there and deliver them out. Yeah.

Similar to Tesla, where they would have maybe a couple power centers in different places where people could go pick up their bikes, things like that. Tesla's grown now, but back in the day, that's kind of how they did it. You go to this one central hub and you pick up your car. That's what Tesla did. You'd pick up a motorcycle in this case. That's what they look like to me on paper. A lot of their decisions make sense if you look at it thinking that that was their eventual goal.

They've never stated that, but that's what it looked like to me is a company kind of setting themselves up to do that because they were doing this thing where they were requiring dealerships to upgrade. And in some cases, we're talking about like four or five, six million dollar upgrades to perfectly fine dealerships that those dealerships could not afford. So what happens when they can't afford it? Well, they shut because they couldn't do the required build out of all the upgrades.

That makes sense from the conspiracy theorist vantage point that I had. But, you know, that's if I was a conspiracy theorist. You got us looking at all the companies that we might be affiliated with or that we do business with or we have insurance with or whatever, whatever the case may be. And I'm looking and I'm studying. It's like, where can somebody go to find, you know, companies that DEI infected? Yeah. Yeah.

So there's a couple things to say on this. There is somewhere for people to go, Public Square. So if you go to Public Square, there's a bunch of options there. You can look up whatever it is you want. Like I know they've got a great diaper company, Every Life Diapers. So all the major diaper companies are super woke now. They're like – I mean we're talking – there's diaper companies. Diapers for grown men. I got to write that down. Everybody keep your diapers on. I got a six-month-old baby. I'm very triggered. I'm very triggered.

I wouldn't honestly even be surprised by that. But no, you're talking about diaper companies who support abortion. You know, like...

That makes sense. The math doesn't matter for me on that one. But EveryLife, you know, this is a diaper company that they've got the right value set and everything, and you know where they stand on the issues. They donate a ton of, you know, baby stuff for underprivileged kids and to moms who are struggling and maybe have thought about having an abortion, but being able to have somebody there with resources kind of giving them another option, you know, where they're open to having the baby. So we just...

We ordered every life diapers. You know, that's, I want to support something that is within our value set. However, I will say this is going to be very important going forward because we're going to take some pretty big swings coming up here.

There's one thing that we've been planning for a while now that is going to be a David versus Goliath fight. I think it's going to be all over the news. We have a very good strategy for it. What happens at the end of it, I can't tell you. But I do know it's going to be a big swing at changing corporate America. And people need to know for this, if they're following what we're doing...

I don't need you guys to be purists. Everybody has a life where there's so much stuff going on, you can't possibly take the time to research every single company. Some people have that time, but few people do. And so until we have enough change...

I think people need to just take a look at this from a point where we say, how can we make change happen? And for us, that might be going, hey, there's an industry with five companies. All five of them are woke. So how do you approach that? You focus on one of them. You change one industry.

And you go shop at the other four woke stores during that time period, but you make their business so difficult for them because nobody's showing up in the doors. You expose them every day for months on end if it takes that, and you change them. You get real change in there. And then suddenly what has happened? Everybody can leave the other four stores and go back to the one option they have now. You reward them doing the right thing. Now the other four go, oh, crap.

Our growth numbers are all wrong. Now our sales are down. What are we going to do? Then you put pressure on those four. Once you put pressure on those four, some of them will buckle too. Some of them will stay because some of them are going to say, you know what? We're resigned to being the left-wing business. The smart ones are going to say, we're not going to pick a side. We're done. We're done with all this. It's done nothing but cause us headaches and problems. But

To change these things, we can't demand purity. I think that's the thing that actually makes boycotts fail is when people are too judgmental about it. And they're like, well, where are you going? Well, you have an iPhone. They're woke. And it's like, you could play those semantics all day long, but it doesn't do any good for anybody. The reality is, if we want to change things, it's going to be one by one. And so we have to look at this like a battlefield. And if it was a battlefield, you've got to have a plan. And the plan should be that. I don't care where people shop.

It's just that when we pick a company out collectively as a group, we need to all focus our energy on that one place and make it very difficult for them to do business without changing their policies.

And then I think in the long run, you look out two, three years from now, you're suddenly going to look around and go, oh, the weird companies are the ones who haven't changed their policies. They're the weird ones now. And so you've changed the social psychology effectively of corporate America at that point where companies don't want to touch the stuff with a 10-foot pole. Yeah, and what was so cool is like in reading about this stuff is now that you have a reach and companies know that you're going to expose them.

And just really single-handedly you sending that email to Lowe's and getting them to proactively change their policies before you even had to do a show about it. Yeah, that's the latest one. Which is amazing. It was – I thought – I'll be honest. It even surprised me. Yeah.

But that's the misconception I've corrected a little bit in the media. It's not just me. They're not afraid of me. I mean, yes, I'm tall and good-looking. Yes, of course. There's all these great qualities that I'm sure they're afraid of, but...

What they're really afraid of is that we have mobilized people. So like when we pick a company from beginning to end, they're getting hundreds, if not thousands of phone calls and emails every single day for two, three, we can go for as long as they want. That's the thing is like they've given up. We haven't given up in any of these cases. Like we still had material to keep going. Um,

And so for them, they've got to kind of decide how long do we want to live with that and do we want to lose that brand loyalty from customers? Because the longer it goes on, the more people are exposed to it. If you look at the analytics from the...

We'll say Lowe's decision, right? So yesterday, Lowe's going backwards on DEI probably reached somewhere in the range of like 30 million people between TV, my social media, and the papers. You add maybe another 15 million this morning. So we'll say 45 million. In the case of, let's say, John Deere, John Deere did this long, really stupid thing

I don't have any nice words about how they handled it because it was not smart. Same with Harley Davidson. In both of their cases, them prolonging it

It allowed essentially hundreds of millions of people across the planet to become aware of the insane policies that they had, which tore away brand loyalty and hurts them way more in the long run. And we don't want to do that. Like, we want to just fix companies. Lowe's did the smart thing. Like, I'll give their executives credit. That was the smartest thing they could have done. Same with Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels?

They saw that I looked at their executive pages on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, yeah, which is brilliant. Can we be your bossy? We can be your bossy. What is the average length of time that it seems like? What's the average length of time that some of these companies do maybe change their policy? And is there a baseline of what you're looking for? Yes, the baseline should be tractor supply. Okay. Okay.

Tractor Supply, they made the best decision out of any of these companies. The only way it could have been better, and I forgive them on the amount of time it took them, because they were the first one. So they kind of had to learn. They had to be the example, unfortunately. So they had to bear the brunt of what that would actually look like in their stores. But Tractor Supply's turnaround was the most decisive, full, couldn't have been more. We're eliminating absolutely everything. We're done. And we get it.

We missed the mark. We're so out of alignment with our customers. We did not realize that. We are going to correct it. We're going to get back on track. So I'll give them a lot of credit because they're a company where I would have no qualms going and shopping in tractor supply because I have sources within every one of these companies. And I hear back on a regular basis how things are going. Tractor supply employees have told me nothing but amazing things. They're like, literally, after that statement came out, we came into the office and

and a bunch of this stuff that used to be in the office that was like woke materials, it was gone. Like somebody had come in during that time between the statement and the next day they went to work, and all that stuff was gone. And so it was like a full reversal. I think that should be the model for companies, but they should do it sooner. In terms of average time length, you know, it's gotten shorter with each one. So we went from like,

three and a half weeks to three weeks to two and a half weeks to then seeing that I looked at their LinkedIn page, getting an email from me, you know, that type of thing. So it's getting short. There will be some that are long though. You know, it's all about the mindset of the executives. You know, some are going to sort of think like we can, we can outsmart this whole thing and, and we're just going to, we're just going to hold course. It's going to blow over that, that,

And like our whole thing is designed against the PR strategy of this is going to blow over. It's not going to work. The other thing that won't work for them is the attack. That's the other thing they would typically like to use in a situation like this is let's just try to smear this person. It's not going to work on somebody like me because I'm not emotional. Like, I don't care. You can call me whatever you want. Like, cool. I'm not even going to pay attention to it. You know, and people who follow me are just going to make fun of you. How long before we go off your target?

You know, they're a jump ball company. That's how I see them. They're a 50-50 where they depend on Democrats, they depend on Republicans. And so as a jump ball company, they're super woke. So I don't mean in terms of policy, they're crazy woke, they're insane. So as we veer out of the right-wing companies, they'll be on the list. But there's these companies that still, they heavily rely on conservative consumers and it's much more powerful going to those 50-50 companies when you've turned 25, right, of the biggest, you know, like,

the other thing to look at is market cap of the companies we're moving. So we're proving models as we go along here, right? So like,

in Tractor Supply's case, they're a $50 billion market cap. In John Deere's situation, they're 105, some change, billion dollar market cap. And we dropped their market cap by $12 billion during that time period where we were going after them. I don't want to be on that list. Exactly, right? And then, you know, Harley actually has a surprisingly low market cap. I want to say it's somewhere around like

eight or nine billion, which is still a lot of money, but comparatively to what we think of in our heads, you would think they're a massive company, right? But they're really not as giant as people perceive them to be. And then in the case of Jack Daniels, it's well over 100, but then in Lowe's, it's almost $200 billion in market cap. So we're trying to increase the size of the companies as we go along because we're testing new things with each one to prepare for the big swing that we're going to take.

I'm dying to know what the big swing is. Because you've got to take down the giants. If you take down a giant, there's this whole cascade effect of like you cause an earthquake and there's going to be tsunamis and you're going to take out unintended targets. Yeah, you can just tell us. I mean, it's just us. It's just you guys. So that's the other thing too is like,

Doing this whole thing, we've become very protective of each one of these things because we also realize there are a few pitfalls. And number one for us, our number one value set essentially is always think ethics first. Because

If we ever do tell anybody outside of our circle and somebody front runs and they trade against that company or something like that, it doesn't matter that we didn't know or not. It just, it makes the whole thing look like this was a grift to make money. And so nobody is allowed that works for me to trade on the stocks that we do stories about at all.

at all, period. If you own the stock before we do the story, I want you to divest from it, put it in a blind trade, whatever the hell you have to do, but I don't want you to have it because it's, I don't think that it's an ethical thing to do as we go about this stuff. Oh, it's not waste. Actually, it's intimidating. And so, that, that,

That sort of thing down the line as you go through this, how we operate, how we vet the materials, like we don't have a mulligan to one time get it wrong and put out false information. If we do, then it discredits everything else we do. And so the mainstream media is allowed to lie all the time.

I was waiting for a reason to do that. But they lie all the time and get away with it. If we just screw up once and a source comes to us, they take the time and trouble to fake a document or something like that, and we put it out there. It discredits everything we do, and it'll be the only thing that media talks about when they talk about everything we do. That, oh, they're trying to attack companies with lies.

So on and so forth. So we have to extensively vet every single thing that comes in. I don't think people realize the amount of work because they just see the videos that I put out. Right. But like the amount of work that goes into making those is actually insane. Like it's, it's, it's pretty ludicrous. Like,

Down to with certain things like you get photos given to you. We've gone as far as having to send people out to verify all of that stuff that the person isn't like I'm talking go cross state lines, go to that state, meet with the person, verify their employment, verify the photos are legit, all that stuff because AI exists. Right. So like we're trying to be very careful that number one, we're not attacking companies unfairly.

The other thing, too, is we have to be very aware that there's a lot of corporate hijinks out there, that enemies of other companies are going to try to essentially get the other company to be put in the barrel next, right? And do so unethically. So we have to be eagle-eyed for that, too. And then the other thing, it's my personal irritation, is I've had a number of executives come forward and ask me to do their company.

because they're too cowardly to make the changes themselves. Oh, wow. They want an excuse to be able to make it. And at least up to now, I still don't know what to do with these companies because there's a part of me that wants to do it because you get to change the policies, right? But then there's this other part of me that does not want to reward cowardice. And I think that it's especially unethical that like they would even do that. You know what I mean? I just...

If you know what's wrong, do the right thing. That's kind of where I've operated from. And that's kind of what I've told them each time. It's like, look, I have companies I have to go after that they don't have a CEO that understands this is wrong. They don't have an executive that understands this is wrong. We have to spend our time on them. You need to just do the right thing. Like, don't put your company or your brand through that. Just do the right thing. And, you know, so that's one I'm still a little lost on, you know, because it's...

it blows my mind they would even do that, you know? Well, after our break, we want to ask you if any company has come to you and offered you a certain amount of money not to talk about their company. That'd be kind of an interesting question, I think. But we're loving our time with Robbie Starbuck and hope you guys are, know you are. And we're going to take just a quick break for our sponsors. Be right back with you with Try That in a Small Town podcast. ♪

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Hey, welcome back to the Try That in a Small Town podcast. We're here with Robbie Starbuck. And the last thing we had mentioned before the break is some of the companies that Robbie's exposed or sent an email and maybe, you know, going to say you may be exposed.

that some companies have come and asked them, hey, to write about their company for recognition and advertisement and stuff like that. And so we got to thinking of, are there companies that come to you and offer you anything, money, stock, whatever, to say, hey, please don't write about us? I think if they did, they have definitely not studied the social psychology of the way that I operate because...

they could offer me any amount of money. They could offer me literally a billion dollars of stock. And there would be a really funny response with some sort of meme attached to it. And then they would have it exposed for doing so. So I think it would only embarrass them to try that. You know, there's certain people can be bought and then there's other people that are willing to go down swinging. You know, I'm definitely in the latter group where it's like,

I already took the risk once of, you know, not knowing what our future was going to look like, you know, where it was like, okay, I'm going to burn down my business and we just got to trust God and we're going to make it work, you know? And once you've done that, you know,

you're not worried about doing it again. So it's like, you know, whatever risk we have to take to bring back sanity, take it like no questions asked. And our kids to their credit, they're the same way. Like they've had to deal with weird stuff, you know, their, their whole experience the past few years. I mean, um, I,

I've only gotten more vocal as each year went on. And, you know, they've kind of dealt with a lot of this stuff in different social settings and everything. And they understand it. And they're kind of the same way of like, we're a family. Whatever we got to do, we got to do. You know, we're making a difference. We just got to do it and deal with... You deal with the bad and you get a lot of good too, you know? And the good is overwhelming. So you just...

do the right thing. The right thing will come back and reward you. Well, in hearing that, I think it's a good time to circle back a little and help people connect the dots. So you were in Hollywood. You had just pronounced your love for Trump. Yeah.

And you were like, okay, maybe it's time that I don't, you know, I don't feel like I fit in here. And maybe, so that was your move. Well, we already didn't fit in. Like I was the type. So like when, when I was nominated for awards, like at like the big video award shows and stuff like that, I didn't go not once. It didn't matter if it was a VMA and MMVA, none of that. Even when I won, I did not show up to accept awards.

Um, I had no desire to be in that group of people. I always saw it as like, I mean, you guys have been to some of these things. I've, I had been to some and it's what turned me off of ever going to them. Um,

it just felt like there were a lot more serious things going on in the world that we could all be dedicating our times to. You know what I mean? Like, I would rather be with my family for all being real. Like a lot of these things, they feel very fake and plastic. And like, it just wasn't my thing. You know, I would rather be home and understand why certain artists have to do it because like, it's their job. So they're going to work for me. I didn't have to do it. I was still going to get my job directing the video or producing video. So it's like, you can mail me the award, you know? Um,

but I was always uncomfortable with the sort of social environment that there was, you know, cause especially if you're in Nashville, it's a little different, you know, you're in the country music industry. There are still a lot of sane people in the country industry. Um, in that side, I mean, it's like secret clubs. If you're conservative, you know, like there were literally secret clubs and it's like, everyone's sworn to secrecy, you know? Um,

And even among those groups, when Trump came into that race in 2015, the largest, most prominent secret group of Republicans in Hollywood disbanded over disagreements about Trump because there were a bunch of people who liked Ted Cruz, some who liked Marco Rubio, so on and so forth.

But for those certain people in those groups, Trump was a bridge too far. And they were essentially like, they were willing to flip the table and be like, we've got to separate. And so they branched out, separated into different groups.

And we're talking like some A-list actors, directors, stuff like that, but it is a very secretive deal. So it should never operate like that. It sounds like you're talking about something out of a movie, right? Because it just seems unreal that in America, somebody has to operate like that, especially somebody who makes millions and millions and millions of dollars, right? Like how could you allow yourself to be put in that position? And what's so especially weird about it

to me, looking back on it, is that there is the largest underserved audience of any industry in entertainment. Conservative families in America make up this massive group of people with a lot of disposable income, and they have precisely, what, maybe three different well-funded groups that are trying to make somewhat watchable entertainment for them?

The left has thousands. They have thousands of TV channels and endless stream movies. It's illogical. It makes no sense. Like, I still, for the life of me, cannot understand why somebody is not invested in an explicitly conservative movie studio that spends real money, goes and poaches those actors because...

Within the group, I know the actors that would go in a heartbeat if you were able to match their movie deal. And you said, we'll match dollar for dollar, come to this studio. They would go in a heartbeat. It's all about money for them. Their whole excuse in their head is, I need to provide for my kids. And I know what that's like because I was allowing that to control my behavior for a long time.

And as a byproduct of that, you start to accept things you would never accept otherwise. So even jobs that came through our company, there's certain jobs that came through where if I look back now, I'm like, I can't believe we were a part of that. Because now I'm able to see, looking backwards, the negative effect every piece of entertainment that even somewhat touches these...

you know, sort of fringe things, the negative effect it can have on the next generation. And I think, you know, somebody explained this really well to me, Brett Craig, in our documentary, The War on Children. He said, I don't know if this even made the movie, but in our interview, we were talking about

essentially what is going on at these ad agencies. Because ad agencies, anybody who's been around and paying attention realizes that all of the advertising today is so wildly inappropriate compared to the stuff that was on TV when we were kids. And he said, it's very simple. Everybody wants to overcomplicate it. The people at the ad agencies don't have kids. They're all childless cat ladies who their child is their politics. That's their child. Right.

And so the way you and I love our kids, that's how they love their politics. And so they will inject it into everything. Everything you're willing to do for your kids, you would die for your kids. They will do for their politics. And so there's a lot of truth to that. And that goes beyond the ad agencies. That goes to the movie industry too. When you go into the sort of decision maker realm, a lot of them don't have kids. Right.

Yeah.

And so I have always thought it's really strange that that has not happened yet because there's this massive audience waiting to be tapped in and somebody just has to create. If you create it, build it, they will come, you know, and I'm too busy destroying these companies to be able to be the one who has to do it. So somebody's got to, you know, come to the table and do it. Well, and it's cool that you're a point in your career that God has blessed you in a way that you can be strong and bold. You're not going to be bought and you can do things that you believe in. I mean, it was years ago and I might've had

I don't know, two or three hits at the time. And I was working with a buddy of mine, Bill Howard, and he's an evangelist. And I was just learning so much about the Bible and Jesus and everything and understanding the Bible for the first time. And I was so excited. And I told him one day, I said, man, I think I kind of want to do what you do, you know, and maybe not do this anymore. And he's like, oh, bro, don't do that. And I said, why not? And he said, because you won't have a platform anymore.

So I need you. I need you to write hits, more hits, so we can get more people because they'll come because you're writers and we're all buddies and we're hanging out. And then, hey, let's talk about Jesus while we're here. So now you have such a platform because a lot of people, like you were talking about, to the point of, I mean, it'd be very tempting. Somebody give you a...

big bunch of money and you're at a different place in your life or somebody's at a different place in your life and be like, okay, that'd be tough to turn down. But thankfully you're not doing that. So I've identified what wealth will mean to me. And I think everybody should do that. Like have a very clear understanding of what wealth means to you. For me, I can pin it all down to one moment when I die.

When I die, I want my kids to be able to, I want to know that they're thinking in their heads. My dad always loved me. He always did everything he could for me. He fought to make the world a better place for me. He always had integrity and was never a hypocrite. And if they're able to say all those things, and that I love their mom all the time, like a little more every single day, if they can say all those things when I die, I will be the richest man that has ever lived on this earth. Like that's what'll make me happy.

be supremely joyful and be able to leave here just feeling like I did my job, you know? Tell me you need to write that down. That's something I think, you know,

There's a lot of stuff we have to do that's hard. It's not easy to admit the stuff you screw up on in life. And that was a tough one for me, especially with God, because I was raised Catholic. And I would say, in a sense, I was over-churched. I'd alter boy and went to church multiple times a week in some cases. I went all the time. And in some ways, I just...

I went through a period where I rebelled against it, where I felt like it was just too much. And I saw a lot of hypocrisy. And I said to myself, if this place that is supposed to be, you know, that the home of God is filled with this hypocrisy, you know, how can I trust anything else? Right. And so I went through that period of time and, you know, I always, I always believed in God though. Like I knew God was real, but,

But there was definitely a distance, you know, and the more distance you put between yourself and God, I think the less sure you're going to become and the more you're going to disconnect from the magic of God's creation. And there was definitely a big turning point for it. There were a couple turning points for me. I mean, it came in sort of waves because my courage had to grow commiserate with my faith. And it was like every time I got more courage, I also got more faith.

So when our daughter, our oldest, was born, that was one big moment for me because I stopped thinking about God and the rules and everything that had sort of been crafted in my mind about what it all meant by going to Catholic church. And just kind of seeing some of the stuff I saw on it.

And this isn't a knock on the Catholic church at all, by the way. It was that personal experience I had there, just feeling like there was a lot of, a lot of hypocrisy. I was able to peel back and, and, and boil everything down to something much simpler. Seeing the beauty of God's creation, the impossibility of that moment of my beautiful daughter being born. Everything that happened was impossible. Like I started to think about it, every single thing that had to go right for that moment to exist in time was

Just from a mathematical standpoint, if somebody doesn't believe in God yet, like do the math on every single thing that had to go right for that moment to occur. You know, the magic of everything humans have been able to create. If you just look around at any given city, I mean, even look at a place like this, you know, where we live in Williamson County. Look at the growth that has happened, what humans have created. There's something about that that is unnatural. It's beyond anything that we can explain, right?

And if you think about it from a mathematical standpoint, you start to think about all the variables involved to make all of this happen. It's beyond impossible. We're not talking about a one in a billion lottery. We're talking about impossible, impossible. And so if the impossible is possible, the only answer is God, you know? And so at that point, you have to start asking yourself some tough questions. If you don't have a relationship with God, if you are ignoring God, if you do have that distance, right?

And you have to start realizing what parts of your life you're putting lipstick on a pig, trying to convince yourself that something that you're negotiating on ethically is okay. Because a lot of that has to do with your distance from God. And so, you know, for me, those waves, that was one of the first ones, was her birth. But then as time went on, there was also the personal growth trajectory. And I have to give my wife Landon a ton of credit because she has always been sort of a...

And this is maybe something I wish that I was this at that point, but I have to say she was, she was my faith rock. You know, I think that men should strive to be that in their family. But at that point in time, I needed somebody, I needed to see somebody do it right, you know, and she was doing it right. And I saw her persistence in faith and I saw the way it moved her and I saw the way it changed her.

And seeing the person that I admired the most dedicate themselves to that and just throw themselves into it and have faith and take the leap, it made me want to. It made me want to have that trust for God. It made me want to rethink some of the things that I'd convinced myself when I was younger. When I was younger, I had a lot of the practical questions as a teenager like, why would God allow a kid to get cancer and die?

And that was one of the things that pulled me away and said, why are you going to allow your life to be controlled by arbitrary rules that you can't even say for sure came from this person when they're allowing kids to die of cancer?

That was a very logically minded question I asked myself, and it's one a lot of young people ask themselves. And the truth is, it took life experience to be able to realize God doesn't make or let those things happen. The reality is he made us with free will, because do any of us want to be robots that are just controlled wind-up monkeys that he winds up and lets go?

Because the truth is, the reason a lot of people are getting cancer and dying or have some horrific disease that is really painful and they pass from that, there's a lot of environmental stuff that we're responsible for. Human beings made choices. You know, we talk about it in the war on children, the poisons in our food, in pharmaceuticals. Kids are the most over-medicated they've ever been. It's not even close. The amount of pharmaceuticals we pump kids with is insane. And then we act surprised that they're the sickest generation. Right?

We shouldn't be surprised. So like we have to take accountability and it's, if I'm going to ask my kids to take accountability in their life, well then I better damn sure stop blaming God for everything bad that happens because I've got to take responsibility for my part in whatever bad thing happens. And I've also got to be able to be clear-eyed enough to have place the blame in the right place. You know, if something happens and it's, you know, environmentally associated, you know,

that caused people to get sick. Like, you know that Aaron Brockovich movie where the water gave, like, you could easily be in the mindset of blaming God for that or you could blame the people responsible who poisoned the water. Right.

And the truth is God wants nothing but good things for us. And I didn't understand that as a young man, but I understood it. And God had the grace to give me great things, to give me the best wife I could ever have, to give me a beautiful, perfect child that didn't have any of those issues, didn't have any of those problems. He had the grace to give me that. And it sort of knocked me on the head and be like, you better damn well realize it now. You've been given a gift, but I want good things for all of you.

But he's also not our puppet master. And, you know, as time went on, I had to have the courage of my faith, of my convictions and make hard decisions and turn down jobs that, you know, I felt like were out of alignment with values and things like that. And eventually just disconnect altogether because I realized that

Again, like I was trying to put lipstick on a pig. I was trying to make things marginally better. You don't fix things on the margins. You fix them by really aggressively going after real change. And so then, you know, again, I trusted my wife. She's from Texas. She always hated California. And every year it was like, are we ready to move yet? And it was always, it was always just about work because both of us wanted to raise our kids in the South.

especially because she's from the South and that's where our values are, it's where our demeanor is, how we raise our kids. Our kids are yes, sir, no, ma'am. And in California, that's weird. Your kids do that in California and people are like... It's a cult. Exactly. No, literally, I think people immediately assume it's a cult and they're homeschooled. That's the immediate thought. It's like, well, actually, we just taught our kids to be polite and respect people enough. I'm like...

Set some expectations there. But no, you're absolutely right. That's got to be what goes through so many of their heads. Like it's a cult. They must be a part of some weird stuff, you know? And it's like- They got a bunker somewhere. Exactly. And like, meanwhile, they believe in giving kids sex changes and they think they're totally normal, you know? But you teach your kid yes or no, ma'am. And like, you're a psychopath. Or you hold the door open for- I had this happen to me once in Calabasas, California, where I held the door open for somebody and the lady yelled at me for that.

Oh, wow. She was mad at me for holding the door open. I could have done that myself. She was offended. I don't need a man to hold the door for me. And my mind was blown by it. But again, a good lesson to like, you know, you can't punish a group because of the bad actions of one. I recognize this was one crazy woman. But the vast majority of women like to have the door open for them just as much as we like opening the door, you know? And so...

We can't let these crazy people control our society. You know, you can't let that lady turn our society into one where men are afraid to open the door. I hate that. When I hear that stuff where it's like, well, we're afraid to open the door now. We're afraid to ask a girl on a date. Who's controlling these guys? What is happening? What is happening? Yeah.

Like you weren't designed to be this. I think honestly, it's a combination of the food and the drugs that these people are getting because they're being emasculated at every turn, especially young men. Like we need to inspire these boys to be a man, open the door, you know, go out there and try to get what you want in life.

I think real women, the people that are, you know, the women that are worth marrying, they're going to appreciate you being the one to ask them out on a date. They're going to appreciate you being straightforward. They don't want somebody to like, you know, be shaking as they try to figure out if they're able to work up the, you know, like we've got to train up our boys and encourage them to not be scared into becoming something they're not by virtue of the direction these things

fairly evil people are trying to veer society. You know, I'd say, honestly, they're extremely evil. I see this whole thing, not even as a war of Democrat versus Republican, right versus left. This is a war of good and evil. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely believe that too. And you mentioned the movie, The War on Children. When did you start thinking about this? When was it an idea? When did the idea become reality? Yeah.

Powerful stuff. You guys are going to start to realize that I'm actually not the smart one here. My wife is. We can all say that. It's becoming more apparent as the interview goes on. It's like at the beginning of it, you guys are like, oh, he's great. By the end, you guys are going to be like, oh, well, he just copies his wife. Can we have her come on after this? Why don't you use a songwriter? Yeah.

So she, you know, she'd been telling me for a long time, like, you need to do this. Like, this is in your skill set. Who else is going to do it as well as we could? Like, you need to do this. Use the talent that God gave you for good, you know, and make it something that you're really proud of. And show people what's happening. Because one of the biggest problems is, you know, I was talking to Rand Paul's wife, Kelly Paul. She's a wonderful, brilliant lady. And they wrote a book together, The Case Against Socialism.

And I was talking to Kelly and she told me, she's like, you wouldn't believe the number of my friends. I tell them some of the stuff you post about and they don't believe it's real. Like if I tell them that there's a drag show where they expose their genitals to kids, they're like, that's not believable. That didn't happen. And then you tell them, maybe you get them to believe one, you know, so you get one of them to believe that.

But then you tell them that they're doing sex change surgeries on kids. I don't believe that. Nobody's doing a double mastectomy to a child. That's not happening. That's not happening to a 13, 14-year-old kid. That's nuts. And so they don't believe it, right? You have to see it to believe it. You have to hear the victims. You have to see the damage in real time. And you have to have all the dots connected for you. And people like that,

That has been the biggest impact center of the film. We're at well over 50 million views now. We're getting close to 60. And the amount of people that it has reached who are just non-political or don't agree with my politics, like they're not explicitly conservatives. They're just parents existing and seeing the problems. It's massive. And it's why it's the most meaningful project I've done to me. More meaningful than the DEI stuff or anything else. As a professional project, that was the most...

and important thing, maybe will be for my life, honestly, because I think that it's something that also is a time capsule, is a warning to people. You know, if we do get this ship right, the things that people have to prevent again in the future, but it connects all those dots and finally in one place, if you have a friend who goes, I just can't believe this stuff is happening, like you sound crazy. We,

We were very meticulous how we put it together to ensure that we were able to earn the trust of those people by watching the film. That's why we use peer-reviewed research. You know, when we talk about, say, atrazine, you know, for those who aren't familiar, atrazine is a chemical. It's in a lot of water. It's in basically all tap water. It's on almost every vegetable at the store, every fruit at the store. Kids consume it on a day-over-day basis in amounts that are...

Honestly, very worrying to me. And so we went and we talked to Tyrone Hayes at Berkeley. Berkeley is obviously not a school that is aligned with my political philosophies, right? But he did a really, really, really great study. He introduced atrazine in the water with frogs.

And the results of it was just shocking. The frogs started to turn gay, the vast majority of them. Some of them even started to produce eggs. Male frogs started to change their reproductive system and produce eggs. Okay? Our kids are consuming atrazine.

There's no studies being done on the effects of it. So I'm not going to make the leap of saying our boys are going to start producing eggs, but if it's doing that to frogs, and then we have studied it in adult males, and we've seen in adult males, the one way it's been studied is effect on sperm count. So they studied just that. They didn't look at anything else. They didn't look at hormone levels or anything else that could be disrupting. But when they looked at just sperm,

The male sperm count just took a nosedive once you introduce atrazine. So, you know, you have to sit there and wonder, number one, why is nobody studying this? Like, you know, we have all this funding from the U.S. government for the most ludicrous things you can imagine. I mean, we have literally spent over a million dollars giving a monkey cocaine to just see what would happen. Yeah.

I'm not, that sounds ludicrous, but it's actually a real thing. They really did that, which like, I get why it sounded fun to them, but it's, it's a million dollars of taxpayer dollars. Okay. Like, I think we could all imagine a monkey on cocaine is going to be kind of crazy. I think I saw that movie. There's like some kind of movie. The monkey loves it. I think it was King Kong, right? So,

But we're not funding that to see what's happening to our kids. That's one of the reasons I like that RFK is backing Trump now because I think RFK is somebody who will – if Trump just unleashes him on these issues that have to do with kids, that's where he shuns. I don't agree with RFK's politics in a lot of other areas, but when it comes to kids, I've been a longtime supporter of what he's done with the Children's Health Freedom Network and all that stuff.

because there's so many issues that are unstudied about the health of our kids. There was a reason why our kids today are sicker than ever. And in a time where we have sanitation, we've got access to all this amazing technology. There's no excuse for it. There's no excuse for it.

And a lot of it comes down to the government bending to the will of big corporations, not caring enough to try to fix the problem and essentially just ignoring it. And so the movie, I think, connected a lot of dots for people about everything from food, pharmaceuticals, mental health, social media. That was a big one. Social media is a hard one for parents today, you know, because your instinct is you want to make your kids happy, you know, and you see all their friends have it.

And so you're like, you just want to give it to them. You know? I mean, it presses on you. There's a lot of social pressure to just do it. And I'm not going to pretend it's an easy thing. It's probably one of the harder things to do. But like...

I do think that when you look at the reality, like you listen to the kids in our documentary who are teenagers and they just tell you the truth about what social media has done to them, that should scare the crap out of parents. You know, the social media company should watch it because here's the other thing people don't, people, social media companies don't want to admit, but like a Facebook, the executives there, they don't give their kids social media. They don't give their kids phones. They understand what's happening. And that is a fact. They have admitted it. They've admitted some of them in court documents. Yeah.

You know, so you see these people, they understand the effect this is having on the brains of kids. If social media didn't exist, I wouldn't be on it. It's a great tool for, you know, what we do.

But, you know, as far as my kids go, I want them, they get to be kids once. I want them to be kids. Like, go outside, have fun, explore, play with your friends, you know, dream up something. My son is, he's very entrepreneurial. For him, it's starting businesses. And when I say businesses, I mean, he literally, he accepts Apple Pay. Yeah.

He has a full bore like website. He's got a contact thing where it emails him. Like, I mean, he's like, he's got it all on lock. The kid is actually like a professional. Okay. I want them to explore real interests. There's going to be so much time in life to be on social media. And the truth is, is like, you know, what, what net benefit are they getting from it?

How's it benefiting their brains? And I tried to get there. I really did. I tried to get there and try to find something positive, some excuse to be able to give in. And when I really thought about it, there really wasn't one.

The whole thing, parents have to be aware and armed with knowledge. So I know my wife, her nonprofit, Freedom Forever, it's freedomforever.us. They have a free manual for parents, all the ways you can kind of protect your kid. And that's something I would tell any parent who's like, I don't know where to start. Read the manual.

because one of the jokes you made while we were making the movie is they don't give you a manual as a parent and we were like well we'll give it our best shot here's some stuff you can do preach it we went to church today I love it I recommend all our listeners check out The War on Children because it is eye opening yeah 100% this is going to be one of those episodes that I think

Even I'll watch three times to try to digest everything Robbie's saying. I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. It's been such a pleasure, right? We are so thankful for you spending your time enlightening us, enlightening our viewers. We're very thankful for you.

Thank you. My wife's thankful for you guys. She's just happy whenever she can find somebody to listen to my monologues. She's like, finally a break for me. Robbie got a vocal cord workout. She's happy. I appreciate you guys too. And I want to commend you guys for, for standing up for something, for doing what you're doing, because it's exactly what we need to do as men. Like we we've got to stand up and we can't be afraid, you know? Um, and the more we do it,

the more you know the next generation after us goes okay that guy Robbie Starbuck is a stud I mean he can go on and on and on oh yeah but in a good way very inspiring what he's doing taking on these companies I think it's I think it's very important it's very interesting I enjoy watching his videos he's

you post and you learn a lot that you don't hear about, you know, which is very interesting. Yeah. You respect the mission. You respect what he is, uh, you know, what he wants to get done, the way he lives his life. All of that was super, super inspiring. Oh, every word out of his mouth. I'm just, I'm almost locked in on everything he had to say. Yeah. And, and the movie is a war on children, right? Is that the movie? Yeah. It was kind of interesting because today I was looking up some stuff and, uh,

And Rolling Stone did not give him a great review of that. And it reminded me, I thought, let me go back and see what Rolling Stone said about Jason Aldean. I don't think they liked our song much either. And so I looked back and it said, chart shocker, Jason Aldean turned small town fear mongering into the number one song in the nation.

I thought, ah, Rolling Stone. You can suck it. I thought they also voted our song like 10 worst of the year. They did. I didn't see the number one. I think it was number one worst. Yeah, but it's pretty funny. I thought, okay, we got something in common with him because Rolling Stone doesn't like him either. Robbie, once you start looking into him, like I know we all did,

Like Elon Musk follows Robbie Starbuck, Trump Jr., Dr. Drew. I mean, he's got a huge following and a huge footprint out there. It's, man, it's impressive what he's doing. It is. And I can't say it enough. Like with the companies he's taking on, it's like it's –

People just want to go to work and come home. They don't want to go have to have all this stuff shoved down their throat. They just want to pay their bills, live a life, go to work, come home, raise their kids. And it's awesome what he's doing. I think that's an incredible mission he's on. Yeah. Great night. Great night. Make sure to follow along, subscribe, share, rate the show, and check out our merch at trythatinasmalltown.com.