We were the fastest growing show in conservative media, but we were also one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube at the time, which is just crazy. You hit a million subscribers within like four and a half months. Just crazy.
What was the inspiration getting into child acting? My brother died when I was five years old. Nothing else fueled my spirit the way that being on stage did and the way that performing did.
I love storytelling. I love being on stage. Conservatives, I think, don't do a great job on art and on creativity.
I think that we look down on a lot of art, but it is something that we do. such a powerful medium for healing and especially for young people for expressing themselves. COVID, you know, made us rusty. We have this entire generation that was raised in that world, that was raised in the digital world, is now leaving apps and has no idea what to do.
Add in Me Too and add in this divide between men and women where there's such hatred for men. I have so much sympathy for them. And then how do we solve this?
Yeah, I think... Brett Cooper, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much.
I'm happy to be here. I'm so excited to have you on. Okay.
So there's a lot to talk about. You are the host of the comment section. Yes.
Which has taken YouTube by storm over the last few years. It's crazy how big it's grown. Yeah.
It's pretty big. Congratulations. Thank you.
I know so many people who are huge fans of yours. And I'm so grateful that your voice is out there because having a beautiful young woman speaking from conservative values into politics and culture, it's so essential and needed because everybody is. I think wandering around, we're wondering what is up, what is down, and people are very confused today.
Yeah. So keep it up. You're doing an amazing job.
Thank you. I appreciate it. How did you get started with YouTube?
What was the inspiration? The inspiration... was my work that I was already doing on social media.
So I was never a YouTube kid, which I think surprises a lot of people because I'm, you know, obviously very ingrained in the platform now. That's where the majority of my audience is. I live on YouTube these days, but was never a YouTube kid, was never an internet kid, really. I was an actor for 10 years in Los Angeles prior to starting all of this. So I was definitely in media, which I think is where...
you know, my speaking skills, communication skills, my interest in storytelling and connecting with an audience comes from. But was doing that. And then during COVID, I was a student at UCLA, started being a little more forthright about my values and being more intentional about sharing them.
Obviously, with BLM and COVID, it was, you know, kind of a make or break point. Like I felt like I was called to and needed to. Lost a lot of my friends.
I basically lost the entire UCLA community that I had built. with the, you know, acting community that I had also built over literally 10 years of living in Los Angeles. For what? For sharing more conservative values.
Can you share what that looked like? Because I went to UCLA too and I'm, and I was like rage, you know, a raging pro-lifer there, but what did that look like for you to become outspoken on conservative values and then get blowback? That's the thing. It was like, not like I was hosting protests or I was not even involved in, you know, YAF or TPUSA.
Um, it's so funny. I actually got an email, which I need to respond to guys, um, from the UCLA chapter. And they're like, we found one of your emails from like 2020 when you were still a student here and nobody ever responded.
But anyway, it was so funny. Um, but I was not politically engaged at school. It was literally as simple as having a conversation with my group of best friends that I had met through Greek life. Cause I was in a sorority and saying that I was not going to vote.
for Biden. And we weren't even in the general election. We were in the primaries at this point, and they were debating Bernie Sanders versus Biden.
And we had one friend that was like, I think, you know, Bernie's a little too much for me. Her father was a, you know, was a Leo. Just a little bit too much Bernie. And she was like, oh, I don't know. And that started a whole kerfuffle in our friend group.
And I was like, oh, my gosh, if this is causing drama just that she's not voting for Bernie and that she's voting for this, like, establishment Dem, what are they going to think when I say I'm not voting for either of them? And so I kind of dipped my toe in when they all, like, looked at me and I was a deer in headlights. And it was like the entire thing just broke apart. And.
I mean, at that point, they became so, we were still friends, which is the weird part. Like, I was going to live with these people in my senior year. And we were still friends.
We still engaged with one another. We were, you know, this is during COVID. We were on Zoom calls, like every night with each other, like debriefing class and, you know, playing all the, you know, online games we were playing during COVID. But it became so passive aggressive and angry to the point that there were texts sent in our group chat of saying, like, just saw a Trump supporter driving around. I told my dad that he should hit him and he would have like no regrets.
Did you affirmatively say you were supporting Trump? Okay. And these were your sorority sisters? Yeah.
And my male best friends. This is a challenge with a sorority. I dipped my toe in a sorority. I did it for like four months when I was at UCLA. What sorority were you in?
It was 80 Pi. Okay. I was Kappa Delta. Okay. But I left because I deactivated because I realized I love the concept of like a sisterhood altogether, but I realized so quickly that this is a sisterhood only in certain terms.
Yes. And otherwise, it's so hard. Otherwise, there's no substance to the friendship. It really is we agree like a contract.
We agree to be friends if we and it's an unspoken contract if we follow these certain rules. politically socially. I deactivated for the same reason.
Yeah. So that was at like January of 2020 and that was my junior year. So then going into my senior year, already I was thinking, why am I going to pay my dues to be in an online sorority for my senior year?
This is just ridiculous. But I got an email from our house mom that lived in the sorority and she was talking about the election. And encouraging everyone to register to vote, which is great. And everybody should register to vote.
You should register to vote because it's an important election. But she started off the email that way and then went into a whole dissertation on women's rights and how she was so civically engaged when she was our age and we needed to vote correctly. Meaning abortion. Yes.
That's the only reason. Women's rights is always synonymous with abortion. Exactly.
Which is nonsense, of course, but that's what they do. And so that was an email that was sent. And I had already kind of reached my breaking point because of my experience with my friends and my, you know, sisters. And my big was one of the ones that really like led the charge of this vitriol.
And, you know, during BLM, there was this whole like breakdown in our entire, you know, Greek life group chat and our group memes that we use. And they were going back and forth about, you know, what statement should Kappa Delta put out about George Floyd and BLM. I'm like, we're a chapter at UCLA.
Nobody cares. Nobody cares at all. But this is actually a story I've never shared before.
East LA sororities, as you know, are very in the public. We're not like in an enclosed campus or anything like that. Meaning you're in Westwood off of campus. Yes, yes. So you can walk up to a sorority house and you might think that they're just some like LA mansion, but it's where all these girls are living.
And so we had been having problems with random crazed homeless men coming up and breaking into sorority homes. And at one point there was a guy who had gone up to, you know. Kappa, I believe, and then made his way down but was like going to all of the houses. People have been taking photos of him. And a sweet girl in my sorority who literally meant no harm whatsoever sent a picture of a man.
And the man in question who had been terrorizing all these homes was a black man. So she sent a picture of a black man on campus wearing a hoodie that was very similar and said, and she said, I think that this is the guy. I'm going to send this to campus PD.
The entire sorority. blew up at her. And it was an entire attack on this one young woman because she racially profiled.
Even though she had seen him before. Yes. Yes. Vandalizing.
Yes. And it ended up not being the guy, but it looked incredibly similar. And they were just attacking her right and left saying, how dare you?
You need to understand your biases. They called an entire meeting about her to literally berate her for sending this picture. And it's like, why wouldn't she? She saw a man that looks exactly like this guy wearing a very similar hoodie who also you know, looked homeless, did not look well.
And this is our safety. This man is coming in and breaking into the homes that we live in. And it was just insanity. So we had already gone through that. And then this letter was sent by our house mom.
And I was just like, I'm out. I can't do it. Well, you're almost graduating at that point, right?
Yeah, exactly. So there's no way. And again, it was like COVID and I didn't want to do like Zoom Cap Delta meetings.
So how did you become conservative? Where did you find your principles? What created your foundations?
It was my family. My mother is incredibly, incredibly principled, incredibly values-driven, I would say. That's kind of how I was raised.
We didn't talk about like hard current events or politics around the dinner table, but we talked about ideas, talked about values and principles. Personal responsibility was probably the most significant thing that drove our family. Freedom, independence, and personal responsibility.
She was incredibly encouraging of debating ideas we would come home and I would talk about. you know, the things that I saw on the news or that my friends were sharing experiences that my friends were going through as teenagers, especially in LA and in Hollywood that were pretty perverse and, um, very mature and not a healthy way. And I was, you know, really trying to understand that and break it down.
And so we had, you know, I think that was a real significant turning point for me was being a teenager and realizing that most people did not live by the values that I was, you know, raised in and raised by. Well, you were in LA for a lot of this and you're a child actor. So you're, you're already.
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So go download it right now or visit firebreakerseries.com. That's firebreakerseries.com. What was the inspiration getting into child acting? I love storytelling. I love being on stage.
So I was a, going back much further, my brother died when I was five years old. And I was a really, really shy kid. And that just turned me even more inward. My family just kind of combusted after that. And we never really, still to this day, we haven't really repaired that family unit after his death.
And I would literally go and hide in the kitchen cupboards. and just like shut myself in, did not want to speak to people, was not interested in being involved in the chaos. My parents'marriage at that point was basically done and falling apart.
It already was, but that just kind of was the final straw. My brothers were not doing well, and I was very alienated. They both kind of like left, went off to college.
So I was just alone in this chaos. And my mom was desperate to find some kind of creative medium for me to work through these feelings and have some kind of outlet. And the high school that my brothers had attended And we still had a lot of friends that were there even after they had graduated.
And they said, you know, we're doing a production of The Wiz and we want a bunch of little siblings to be the munchkins on stage. And I was like, absolutely not. I do not want to do this. My mom's friends were saying this would be really good for Brett. Like just, you know, introduce her to some friends, you know, get her on stage.
Maybe she can because I had always like done ballet and danced. And so I said, no, I'm not doing that. I do not want to do that. And then something clicked in my mind. And I was like, okay, maybe like why not?
literally hiding in a cupboard like we moved from like three different houses and I was always just hiding myself and I don't know what changed but I'm so glad that I you know told my mom okay I'll go be a munchkin um how long would you hide in the cupboard for gosh like 15 to 30 minutes I mean it was just remember what you were thinking about when you were in the cupboard just like silence and peace basically yeah escape and so I think that was my way of coping like we lived in this tiny house in Chattanooga Tennessee down in the um down in the closer to the downtown area. And it was like the cupboard that I had all of my little like baby kitchen tools and that kind of stuff, you know, make-believe kitchen play and would go in there. And then we moved to this house on Signal Mountain in Chattanooga. And there was a super long, it was like a really, really long ranch style house. We had this really long dining room that had built-in cabinets and I would go and I would sit in there.
And so, yeah, I was literally, I remember having this conversation with my mom as I was like peeking out of the cupboard, like, okay, I guess I'll go do this show. But it was, it was like something just woke up inside of me. And I think it was because I got, it was a healthier kind of escape because I was able to pretend to be somebody else and live somebody else's experiences. And the community was incredible as a young person.
And it was like, when I went on stage, I was just like a different person and just lit up. So I just wanted to do as much of that as possible. So the theater department at this high school continued to do that where they would bring in, you know, younger siblings and kids to play little parts in their role in their shows.
So I would do that. And then I started doing community theater and it just kept snowballing to where I was like, I want to do more and more and more. And I was homeschooled. So I had the time and the flexibility to do that.
So I was dancing. I was doing singing lessons. You know, I would beg my mom to, you know, drive me to Atlanta to do this like repertory theater.
They're in, they're doing Annie. I really want to do Annie. Um, and then I wrote when it got professional was when I did my first paid job was doing opera at the Atlanta symphony and opera was in Labo M. I was like eight.
And then I wrote a letter to a manager in New York City because I had seen that he managed a lot of the young women who were in, you know, Mary Poppins and in the new Annie. And at the time, Billy Elliot was huge on Broadway. So he represented a lot of these young actors.
And so I wrote him a letter and I drew a picture of myself on Broadway, literally at like 10 years old. And I said, I want to do this. And I flew up there.
I auditioned for him. So he wrote back. He did.
He did. He wrote back. He's like, I love this girl's art here.
Yeah, exactly. This is like the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. It was a huge piece of art.
It was like a drawing. Oh, yes. Was it a painting or a drawing? It was like a multimedia art. Like I had like curtains on it and it was a whole thing.
And he represented me for, gosh, like 12 years, I think, until I stopped acting during COVID. And he had that over his desk the entire time because he was like, nobody did anything like that. But. Basically, I was very precocious. I think the question that a lot of people ask is, you know, did your mom push you into this?
Why would your mom put you into, you know, child acting? She was very apprehensive, did not want me to do it. But nothing else fueled my spirit the way that being on stage did and the way that performing did. And she always said, my brother who passed away is David. And she always said, you know, if David had wanted to do something and I knew that I only had 17 years with him, would I have?
would I have taken him to Atlanta? Would I have taken him to New York to do this? How old was he when he passed away?
17. Yeah, he had a heart attack. And so that's the reason why we did all of this. And I think it was kind of an escape for her as well, because it was healing to be able to do that with a child. My parents'marriage was already kind of falling apart, and so it kind of gave them distance in a way because we were traveling and I would go back and see my dad and then, you know, go back out on the road. How did it help you deal with the death of your brother to do acting?
Because I got to work through the emotions that I was too scared to and not equipped enough to deal with in my own personal life through a safe environment. It was like I could go on stage. and play a different 12-year-old girl who's going through things. And I was in a safe environment to express those emotions that I didn't feel safe enough to express at home.
And that's why I think that, you know, conservatives, I think that we don't do a great job on art and on creativity. I think that we look down on a lot of art. But it is such a powerful medium for healing and for, especially for young people, for expressing themselves.
That's why make-believe is so important for young people. And your imaginations is so important. So I got to do that on literally like a very large scale of big stage. And so I think, you know, the same way that imagination and play is so important for young people like that at a very high level was what it was for me. What was your favorite role to play?
And wow, it's a terribly hard question. One of. One of.
Yeah. Um, I loved playing. Trailer Parker in the remake of Heathers that I did with Paramount.
That was one of the last big things that I did before I stopped acting. That was in 2018, 2019, I think. And that show really radicalized me and red pilled me in a way about Hollywood that nothing else had before, because we were slated to come out right before the, or right after the Parkland shooting happened.
And if you know Heathers, it's a very dark movie and the show was very, very dark. guns in schools. It was flipping a lot of things in woke culture on its head to basically prove that comedy should be politically incorrect. The entire premise was that the, and I'll talk about the role in a minute, but the three Heathers in the original movie are these skinny white girls.
They are the clique. They flipped it on their head, on its head for this television remake, and they made the three Heathers be a larger body positive girl, a black woman, and a non-binary person. And they were the mean people.
They were the ones that were like ruling the roost of high school. So this was like so ahead of its time in, you know, 2017, 2018. Did you get involved with the show because you already had conservative leanings or how did you end up matching up with them? It was by fate, really.
I would just like, it was just another project that I was auditioning for. And ironically, my role of Trailer Parker, she was originally called Martha Dump Truck in the original movie. And so she was a fat girl who got hit by a school bus in the original movie.
But because... being fat is now something that's glorified. They made one of the Heathers fat.
And instead, they made me the poor religious pro-life girl. So ironically, I was playing this pro-life girl. And that was, you know, my character is the one who get ridiculed throughout the entire show, is made fun of because she's religious.
I saw the clip of you in that film. You were absolutely adorable. You were like in a stadium and I think you're being berated by someone.
I was like, she's so cute right now. It's so sad. And it's so sad.
And so it was a very fun role to play. That was almost like probably prepared you for your time at UCLA. It did.
It literally did. And so that was an amazing project. I love the people that I worked with. I think that it was really important for that cultural moment. And it's really disappointing that Paramount was not brave enough to actually put it out because they ended up butchering the entire show.
And they cut out basically everything that was offensive. They cut an entire episode. And then they just kind of pushed. I think it was 2018 or 2019. Over Halloween, they did like, oh, it's a spooky, politically incorrect show. And then just put it away.
You can pirate the entire thing if you want to watch it, which ironically, the creator often talks about. He's like, if you want to see my show that is not butchered, you can pirate it. So I loved it for that reason because it really woke me up and it empowered me in a lot of ways.
And it's the thing that kind of pushed me out of acting because number one, I realized how cowardly they are and how. afraid they are to put out good art that actually would make people think, that would actually make people question their biases and their premises. Work that is actually funny. They were so scared to put it out there. And I also hated just on a personal level the fact that I had no control over my career because I had, you know, been in the show and all of our agents and managers had basically said like, this is your star.
They call it like a star vehicle. Like this is your like breakout role. We had all been on hold. There was already a season two plan that we were already booked for and contracted for. And all of it just went away because these people were so afraid and cowardly.
And I just thought I cannot live my life at the whim of people who do not have my best interest at heart, who I also seriously disagree with and not having any control over when a project comes out, who sees my work, when I'm going to be making money. So that was a big... push away from me that pushed me more into production so while I was at UCLA I was like okay I'm not gonna act anymore I'm gonna go be a producer or director I saw that the you know the politics in the book this is still there and you know that had ruined that side of the industry as well so I kind of just you know wiped my hands of it in 2021 and had to figure out something else to do so I know you sent a video into Daily Wire yes tell us about that video and what was the what was the impetus behind that and did you ever think when you were sending that initial video to Daily Wire when they did their own casting call that you would be where you are now? I had no idea. So I, it was a really weird period in my life where I felt the most unlike myself because I had, you know, I had been acting for 10 years and it was everything I knew my entire childhood.
My identity was wrapped up in it. So at the time I decided to go to law school because I was an English major and what do English majors do? You take the LSAT and you go to law school.
So I get count, make the major. Exactly. Exactly.
And so I was slayed. I was going to do a JD MBA program at Boise, or no, Idaho University, University of Idaho. I can't speak. And I withdrew the first day of my orientation, and I just thought, I can't do this. This is not what I'm meant to be doing.
I'm not meant to be an attorney. I wanted to go and do two-way law, and I felt really called to get civically engaged. And I talked to a couple constitutional lawyers who said, this is not what you should be doing. Your talents are better used elsewhere. So I felt really, really lost.
And I was doing videos for PragerU. I was working as a copywriter for the fundraising department of YAL. So I was using my English major.
And I was writing and doing videos for Foundation for Economic Education. So I was in this social media space. And a couple of my videos had made their way to Daily Wire.
And so they slid into my DMs, literally, and said, would you be interested in, you know, sending in an audition and meeting with us? I thought that they were looking at, like, thousands and thousands of girls. They weren't.
It was a very small group and by the time we got to where I was actually sending in a video, it was really only me. But I almost didn't send it. I almost did not even do the audition. They wanted me to send in a long-form reaction video. They said, we know you can do these 30-second TikTok videos and Instagram shorts, but we want to see you do a long-form reaction and commentary on this Logan Paul video.
And they didn't give me any instructions, but it was like, react to some of these pop culture things. And basically what I did in that video was I related these big pop culture moments that they had sent me to react to back to the culture war, back to politics, which I'm not sure if that's what they were expecting, but that's just what I felt like made sense. I'm like, this is actually a great opportunity to be able to connect what my generation is seeing and, you know, to try to extract some meaning there because nothing that we watch is subliminal, like, or nothing that we watch is innocent.
There's always a subliminal message that we are receiving through every piece of content. through every celebrity comment that we engage with. And so being able to extract that and share that with people, I thought was super important. So I thought, okay, this is how I will angle it and approach it.
And ironically, I had had a little like baby pilot that I had put together that I had like shopped around at other like conservative organizations, basically, where I wanted to do a show like that, where I wanted to do a reaction show with the fast edits, reading comments. And for legal reasons, Daily Wire could not accept it. They were like, we can't accept a pitch.
but you can just tell us about it. So they actually never saw that episode, but it basically, that's what comment section is. And they had had a very similar idea.
And so it really felt just meant to be in very harmonious because I sent in my little audition, I met with them and we were just riffing on what we saw the show being and where the actual need was for young people. And it was very cool because the entire team that developed my show with me, they're all Gen Z, they're all my age. Some of them aren't at the company anymore, but I think the oldest was 24. And so this show was created by young people. It was created for my generation. Obviously, people of all age watch it, but it was specifically, you know, filling a niche that we all had felt, you know, didn't exist for us growing up, you know, not as teenagers, not in college, not now as young adults.
There was not this type of content that was internet focused, that was, you know, young and fast and digestible for young people. And so we created that together. But yeah, I almost did not send in. the audition because I thought, you know, there's no chance. Like they're looking at thousands of people.
I'm not worthy of this. I'm not good enough. And my mom called me over to her house. We were living in Boise at the time, literally yelled in my face is I don't know what you've become. And she said, this is like the most cowardly thing to do to not even try.
And she, yeah. What a mom. Yeah. And she said, you know, you've been so beaten down by Hollywood because you feel like you don't have a place there anymore.
And you've decided that you're walking away from it. So you've lacked, you know, you don't have that. foundation and you don't have that as your identity anymore. You just dropped out of law school. I was working as a waitress to actually make my money because being a copywriter doesn't pay very well, obviously.
She said, you literally have nothing to lose. You are being so cowardly. Just be bold and send it in.
I don't care if you don't accept the job. I don't care if you don't want to move to Nashville. I don't care if you just want to stay in Boise and help me work on my farm and live in your little house and marry a nice Idaho man.
But you can't live with the regret of not even trying. And then so she turned me around, pushed me out, sent me back to my house to film the audition. And then, yeah, the rest is history. So I'm incredibly grateful to her because I definitely, I was in a funk. And I think I needed to be uncomfortable and scared, which I do always try to tell, you know, people who watch my videos that it's good to challenge yourself.
It's good to feel scared in a healthy way. It's good to take risks, you know, when you feel like there's a time to, you know, speak out about your values, to take some big leap, you know. it's usually worth trying to do it. And look at the power of a mom or someone cheering for you.
I saw your potential when you didn't see it in that moment. Cause you were just beat down, like you said. Yep.
And how incredible that, that impact that had. Yeah. So when you started the comment section, I remember watching it start and I remember being excited that Daily Wire was getting into this and seeing you, I was like, this is, she's perfect.
This is going to be amazing. And then I was even, I mean, you're highly, highly talented. I was amazed how quickly it grew.
It was crazy. Tell us about that, the early days of comment section. I had no, again, because I wasn't an internet.
It was a phenomenon. Yes. Yeah. We were not, we were the fastest growing show in conservative media, but we were also one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube at the time, which is just crazy. You hit a million subscribers within a few months.
Like four and a half months. Yeah. Insane.
Just crazy. And I think that goes to show how needed this was. Like people were just starving. Like I was starving.
Again, like. When I have young women come up to me and they say, we watch the show, we love what you do, it is the most meaningful and impactful thing for me because obviously I created the show for a lot of different people, but I see myself in them because I didn't have this. I didn't have somebody who I could turn on and use as an escape and to offer clarity in a very chaotic, upside down world.
And so to know that that's making an impact specifically for women, I'm like, I was you and I did not have this. So I'm so, you know. grateful for that. And so I think it's, you know, it's really meaningful to know that, you know, me and my team, you know, our experiences of needing this kind of content was universal.
And so I think that's why it, you know, picked up really, really quickly. And we've just been on a roll ever since. I think we're almost at 4.5 million subscribers now, and it just keeps growing.
Amazing. Yeah. How do you, how do you pick your topics?
You're, you're, you're filming twice a day, putting out content multiple times a day. It's a lot of content. It is. It's a lot of different topics.
How do you and I think part of the power is your commentary and knowing what to speak to. Yes. How do you choose what you discuss?
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Start your subscription. And after three months, you can donate a full month's supply of diapers to a mom and a baby in need. So I kind of have a couple different parameters. It's not really a science per se. I just kind of have gotten into a good rhythm where I know what will work and what I can extract meaning from.
But it literally comes from me actually being engaged in social media, which is a double-edged sword because I'd love to live my life off of social media. But I think the effectiveness... of the show and of what I talk about comes from the fact that I'm actually engaged with what the rest of my generation is engaged with. Like I don't want to shy away from TikTok and social media and pop culture, which I think a lot of people on the right, you know, shun celebrity and say, for good reason, obviously, and kind of look down on that.
Again, sort of how they, you know, will look down on art. But I think it's incredibly important to be in it and be engaged and meet people where they are and they are online. My entire... higher generation is online.
Even if they are not super active on social media, our entire lives are digital. We started dating in a digital world. Our school is all online now.
Where we apply for jobs, where we work is all online. You have to meet them there. So I literally find my topics on TikTok, on...
Twitter, on Instagram. Sometimes there will be an event that is viral that I talk about, and that's a very easy pick. That's probably the easiest day.
It's where I'm like, oh, everybody's talking about this. There's lots of comments. But my personal favorite type of topic and type of video is where I'm able to piece together the patterns of a trend.
So I have like a, my Slack is for like, you know, business Slack, what you use, you know, what companies use. I have one that I just send myself and it is the most chaotic thing you will ever see. But throughout the week, just throughout life, even like while I've been here this weekend with you guys, I send myself videos and stories and tweets if they stand out to me.
And it's like, I keep seeing a similar sentiment on a lot of different platforms. I'm just going to track it. Yeah. And I will continue to collect those and be able to kind of piece together, okay, this is what young women are thinking right now. Okay, this is what a lot of young men.
are doing online, or a lot of people are doing this trend. What does this actually mean on a deeper level? Can I connect this to something that is political, that is something that, you know, psychologists are talking about?
Has Jordan done some lecture on this that I can bring in? Again, the goal is to empower people with information so that when they are consuming content, when they're consuming social media, it's not blind. Because I think that is where you lose power with yourself.
I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but if you're just scrolling mindlessly. If you're just numb to everything, that is when these gross, you know, terrible, subliminal messages get to you because you don't actually, you're not thinking critically about what you're consuming. So I want to give you the tools to think about what is this trend, this stupid trend on TikTok actually mean? What is this saying about gender roles? What is this saying about marriage?
You know, one that I want to do this week that we're kind of tracking right now is this increasing trend of women. talking poorly about their husbands online and doing trends at their expense and not like, oh, funny, funny, I pranked my husband, but painting him in a bad light for clicks, for views, because it has become trendy to not even like your husband. So pulling all of those videos and breaking them down, you know, what does that say about marriage today and this growing divide between men and women?
So that's my personal favorite because I think that Number one, it's exciting to me because I'm just, you know, as a consumer, as a young woman, I'm consuming this content and I'm seeing the patterns. And so being able to piece that together for people and say, like, here, here's here's some meaning. Here's, you know, let's break through the chaos a little bit.
So that's my personal favorite. But often it's literally just spending hours scrolling and being engaged. There's all this research coming out how Gen Z men, at least by I think it's four to six percentage points, which is significant over.
millions of people. We're talking about a lot of people are moving conservative or attending church more. They're polling more conservatively. Their church attendance is up. And then the women, it's either down or at least not, it's lagging behind the men.
Did you know that American women are the most, young American women in my age group are the most liberal group in history, which is crazy. That is crazy. Yeah.
Anyway, so they are for sure moving. So what is your take on why that is? And then I want to hear too what you think, how we can solve it.
I mean, that's part of the project of even the show is like, how do we help solve this problem? Because women, I feel like we're not, there's not content created to help us, not just politically, but it's more relationally. It's how we see ourselves, how we see children. There's this huge war between us and children, women and children. Obviously how we see men, the war between women and men.
How do we, I mean, how do we get there? That's a huge topic. I mean, I know you have a take on it. How do we get there?
And then how do we solve? this. Yeah. You know, abortion is probably the crux of what really drove this wedge.
And actually, my husband and I were talking about this last night in light of your gala and everything that we were talking about with friends who were there. But, you know, in this election specifically, we're talking a lot about the economy and immigration, foreign affairs, and those are all, you know, very real issues and they're very tangible for a lot of people. And so I think that that is what people are really leaning into and that's what they're voting on, which is important and that's good. But. Abortion, it's not just about, you know, the murdering of a life.
Like, the values that have allowed that to be so prevalent, I think, are also the values that have caused this wedge between men and women. Because it is feminism. It is the, you know, I am not just equal to men, but I also want to be better than men.
And I deserve more because I'm a woman and because I have been oppressed. I deserve exceptions. I deserve to live above the law because I am a woman.
It's incredibly selfish. I think that a lot of modern women are incredibly narcissistic. are incredibly selfish, which is so hard to say as a woman, and it breaks my heart to say that, but that is what I experience on a daily basis.
That's what I see. Men hate that. Most men these days hate feminism, and young men are also exhausted. I actually tweeted this.
a couple of weeks ago and I got so much flack for it. But I tweeted a text that my husband sent me and he said, you know, I get called a white supremacist, a racist, a bigot, a far right extremist. And all I want to do is just work out, see my wife, have dinner with my wife, do my job and win in fantasy football this week. That's like, I'm just a normal guy.
That's all I'm trying to do. And just by existing. Who's calling him that, by the way?
Just, it's like the people online. Meaning the stereotype of him. Yes, it's the, yeah.
It's not him individually. But it's like, if you're a guy who is a traditional man, then you're a bad guy. Yeah, a straight, cis, white man. And, you know, you see women marching through the street. Well, look what happened to Harrison Bucker.
Exactly. And I think there's good and healthy debate between how he worded some things. Yes. Because, yeah, of course, you know, he's not there to give the perfect speech about what it means to be a young person. He's sharing from his own heart, his own experience.
And that's what he did. And he said, that's what I'm doing, by the way. I can't speak to everybody.
And he wasn't allowed to do that for a lot of people. It's like, how dare you have this more traditional setup and your poor wife. And I think his wife is very happy with their marriage by all accounts. And he's sharing on a stage about how much he honors her, which is a beautiful thing. But I think that was missed because he was fitting the stereotype that unfortunately a lot of people see as just a horrible person to be, which is that man who's married, the breadwinner.
doing the more traditional role. Very traditional, yes. And so I think that, you know, my husband says that when young men experience that, it's not attacks directly against them, which granted many of them have been, you know, have faced those attacks, whether it be on social media or in real life on college campuses, because that happens a lot. But it's watching figures like Harrison Butker.
It's watching, you know, going on social media and seeing women march through the streets in, you know, the pink pussy hats with signs saying, you know, eradicate men. Like, no wonder. moving towards the right. It is a rejection of everything that you are pushing. They're exhausted by these women saying that you are worthless, that they are toxic, that every fiber of their being is hurting the world, basically.
Or that they can't win. It's like, how dare you not open the door for me? You're so rude.
Or how dare you not make special accommodations for me because I am a woman. And by the way, women should have special accommodations because we... Do something that men don't do or they're different.
We can have children. And that's a very important societal role that only women should have and have. Yes.
But then on the one hand, it's like, how dare you not accommodate me? And on the other hand, women are mad for the accommodation. Like, why are you treating me any different?
Yes. Why are you opening the door? Why are you paying for the dinner?
And so that man is thinking, what do I do? I can't please anybody. I can't please. You're unpleasable.
Yes. In this moment. So I think it's a big rejection. And I think that that has caused a wedge. And, you know.
Again, the same things that dictate women believing that abortion is permissible and empowering are the same things that I think have driven men away. It's those same values. It's the same premises of I am, again, above the law. I am better than you. I deserve more than you.
I deserve to have my way regardless of who it hurts. Have you found an effective line of communication to help women like that, to help them see? Because I know you said they're selfish, they're narcissistic. And yeah, but I think there's just, they're confused.
There's a ton of woundedness. And if you're taught your whole life that you are a victim and that you need special treatment, but the special treatments you're taught aren't actually the right ones. And it's all, there's so much confusion, right?
How does someone help that group of women? How do we, how do we help them? I think the most, the most effective thing that I have found, especially on the abortion issue is number one, talking about the lies that women are fed about it being. healthy about it being a good thing.
So I think the work that you do, I mean, your work was transformative in me becoming pro-life because I was not always pro-life, but I had never actually seen what an abortion was. And I think for women who are so emotionally driven, watching that take place and hearing that was heartbreaking. I was like, I cannot believe that I ever thought that this was okay. And I never believed that it was morally okay. It was kind of like, I would never do that, but it's not my place to tell a woman what to do.
I was just, you know, very libertarian in that sense. And then I actually watched. one of your videos and listened and just, it was so, it was such an emotional reaction of, oh, I know, you know, I think it was very maternal if I could never do that and nobody should be able to do that.
And so I think that also with the health ramifications of abortions, both mentally and physically for women that we just do not talk about. And it's basically like, here, this is this amazing, empowering thing. And if you die from this, if you have lasting regret and mental illness from this, if you have raging anxiety for decades. over this. We don't care.
You know, your story is not important. Or you're a gaslit. The problem wasn't the abortion.
It's always something else. It's what the Republicans are doing. Well, the problem is the Republicans.
There you go. Yeah, exactly. Or the problem is the people shaming you.
Yes. This is where it gets really deceptive because women are told if you feel abortion regret, that's because there's stigma. We have to de-stigmatize it. So we need to say abortion's great.
Have as many as you want. Like that is the only logical conclusion. of legalized abortion being totally okay is it has to have zero.
sadness, zero shame attached to it, but you can't unroot the fact that this is a human life. That is the reality. That's the fact. And so somewhere there's going to be an emotional baggage.
There's going to be emotional baggage from that one way or another. And we're told you're not allowed to have emotional baggage. And so that is the constant confusion of, I think, the post-abortive woman today is she doesn't know where to place the pain.
Yeah. And it's a wonderful way to say it. And it's just heartbreaking the fact that most of these women are hung out to dry after the fact. So I think...
sharing those stories and sharing the emotional side of it has been very effective. As I know that you have seen with your audience and the people whose minds you've changed, just like mine. And the other thing for women in more of a broader sense is showing out the inconsistencies in their rage, the inconsistencies in what they've been taught to believe, where it's like, yes, you've been told that you're a victim for your entire life, yet simultaneously you've been told that you're a princess.
You can't have it both ways. And you're a warrior. Like you are the Marvel character. Yes, exactly. You are everything but nothing.
We don't need the men anymore. You are the hero. Exactly. And you're also the victim.
Yeah. And so I think pointing that out, and that's easier said than done. And it's really a daily journey that I, you know, want to, you know, do on Common Section with the stories that I tell. But pointing that out, I think is really important.
And then also going back to personal responsibility and really hammering in that it's like you genuinely believe that you are above the law. in so many ways, that you are above, you know, cultural norms. And so again, pointing out the inconsistencies. We were just talking before the show here about the Call Her Daddy podcast, and Kamala Harris was just on it this past week.
So we're kind of dating the episode right now, but we're filming in early October. And they were talking back and forth, girl talk, you know, Kamala Harris, of course, is the most raging pro-abort of any candidate in my lifetime. And there was this, you know, undertone that...
She was the victim. Women are the victims because they can't have abortions and everything else. But you made a really interesting comment about it when we were talking.
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Download Hallow today and deepen your prayer walk with God. Yes. So the thing that has gone the most viral from that entire episode, we'll see where it goes after the fact, but just 24 hours after the episode has aired, the most viral clip is Alex Cooper saying, is there a law in the US government that gives you as president control over a man's body?
And it's this like whole bombshell clip and has millions and millions of views now, which is so ridiculous because number one, every law. impacts our bodily autonomy. I can't go up on the street and punch somebody.
I can't murder somebody. I can't drive drunk. I can't ingest drugs on the street in most states. That all impacts our bodily autonomy.
That impacts men and women similarly. Also, the draft is the most significant one for men. And people often say, well, it's not the same. It's not the same.
It is. And it's so different because, and this is something that I posted last night, you know, My husband, who is eligible for the draft, he has no control over what the president is doing. He has no control over what wars we get involved in. He has no control over whether his number gets picked. He has no control over whether he gets to sign up.
He has to. But women, 99% of the time, ignoring that 1% that is rape and incest, 99% of the time, you have willingly and knowingly engaged in an act that could create a child. That is, that did not like accidentally happen to you.
So that is not an attack. I mean, that is not the same. You cannot compare it. And to say, you know, to throw away the draft and say, oh, that doesn't impact men. Yes, it does.
And they have no control. Women, you have control over the situation. You keep your legs closed.
Or you only have sex when you, you know, would be comfortable having a child with this man. It is so, so simple. And so, again, pointing out those inconsistencies in the hypocrisy, I think when you reach women in that way, a lot of them are smarter than I think we think. And I think that they've just been, you know, pushed into this ideology because it's, you know, it feels good. It feels good to, you know, be a feminist and, you know, feel victimized and oppressed.
And that gets you brownie points in this society. Oppression is, you know. financially and emotionally bountiful in this society but pointing out how wild and inconsistent that is I think it's so important but the the draft comparison it just especially now being newly married and being you know worried about world wars and our you know you know foreign affairs it's like I had like never think about that before so yeah well it's crazy because you can have there are criminal penalties against a man who induces abortion Yes. Meaning not the abortionist. If they're paid to do it by the woman, it's totally legal.
But if you're Scott Peterson and you murder your wife and she's pregnant with your child and you're also murdering your child, then you can get double the double homicide charges and you can go to jail or you can get the, even potentially the death penalty for killing your unborn baby. And it, but if you're the mom and you kill the unborn baby, it's no longer a baby. It's no longer, it's empowerment. And so again, that double standard that you're speaking to.
between the treatment of men and women in our culture, which drives the gender wedge more. The gender division that we're seeing because there's double different treatment. And what's so ironic about all of it, Brett, is that there should be different treatment in society at least.
I mean, laws, I think should be largely speaking, gender neutral in how we treat the sexes, but there are different roles that men and women play. You recently got married. Yes. Congratulations.
How's marriage treating you? It's amazing. I say this every time, but it's the best thing I've ever done, we've ever done. It's incredible.
All the lies that women are told about you're settling down, you're being controlled, this won't give you fulfillment. I mean, every day, that's rejected in my life. One thing you talk about on your show sometimes is dating.
Yes. And we were talking before about your comment section and how it's helped people find love. Share about that. And I do want to ask you about healing that part of the country because I do think people are just starving for relationship and they're struggling to find it.
Yes. So I was telling Lila this before the podcast, but I have literally had people meet, get into relationships and get married from my comment section, which is just the craziest thing. And I'm so grateful. And that means so much. I've been invited to the weddings.
I've been sent the invitations, which is so cool. I've been asked to be a bridesmaid, which I would love to do at some point. You know, the most frequent question that I get is, how do I meet somebody?
And it comes from both men and women. It's, how do I meet them? Where do I meet them? And I realized by, you know, going through those comments and talking with people and doing, you know, Q&As, and we'll often do like, ask Brett for advice, and we'll talk about this.
I realized, and then I thought about my own experiences, Gen Z doesn't know how to date because we, our entire lives are online. My first any experience of being asked out and flirting with. a guy in high school, getting into my first little like baby relationship situation ship when I was like 16 years old, it was all done online.
It was through text, Instagram, Snapchat. And then when I went to college and I joined my sorority, it was like, how have you never been on Tinder? I'm like, I'm 17 years old. Like I haven't, like obviously I haven't been on Tinder, but everybody else was. And so then you make dating apps.
My first and only real like long-term boyfriend that I had before meeting Alex, I met on Hinge. And That is a totally different world. But now, you know, over the last few years, young people especially are getting, you know, more and more unhappy with dating apps.
The algorithms are set up against you. The apps, just because they're a business, their goal is to keep you on the apps. Like Hinge's slogan, I think, is the dating app that's designed to be deleted. It's not.
They literally, they'll like hide the, you know, the attractive users behind their paywall. Which is, and they've, you know, admitted to that, that you can kind of like see through the, they give like, you'll be swiping and it's like, you can unlock this with one rose. And it's like a really attractive person, but you have to pay to get it.
And Tinder has, you know, these exclusive, you know, things that's like $500 that you can pay for in order to maybe meet somebody. So it's all, it's gamified as well because you just swipe and you swipe and you swipe. And men and women are on dating apps. In different levels, there's significantly more men than there are women. Men and women swipe differently on apps.
There is very little success, especially now. So we have this entire generation that was raised in that world, that was raised in the digital world, is now leaving apps and has no idea what to do. Like genuinely does not know how to flirt, does not know how to approach women.
And especially for men, you know, I have so much sympathy for them because number one, I mean, just asking a girl out and approaching is so terrifying. Just regardless. of the cultural, you know, tone, regardless of me too, like it was already very scary. And then add in me too, and add in this divide between men and women where there's such hatred towards each other. Obviously it's just going to be even worse.
So literally do not even know how to, you know, approach it. So what I've been talking about, I can tell your viewers is that I think that the healthiest way to go about it is literally to create patterns and habits and like activities that you are doing on a weekly basis because it is so much easier to approach somebody. It's so much easier to get comfortable engaging with the opposite sex and maybe dipping your toe into flirting if it is a comfortable environment for you. So like whether you're joining a run club and you go like every week and you're running with people, which Chris Williamson always says that run clubs are basically the new dating apps. Like it's basically just a dating event or pickleball or you join like a pottery class that you go to every single week or you go to, you find a really great Bible study and you're going every single week with the same group of people.
You get comfortable in that environment with that same group. And if there's somebody there that maybe you're interested in, you can start those conversations in a comfortable, like the stakes are so low because you're going to see them next week. So you don't have to go, okay, I have to get everything set up.
I need to go ask her out. And if it doesn't go well, she's going to, you know, cancel me online and I'm going to be arrested. Like it's just the stakes are lower and you can actually get comfortable engaging with, you know, people of the opposite sex.
Um, and so that's sort of been what I've. you know, been suggesting. In a perfect world, I would love to be like hosting dating events and actually getting people, you know, real life. But I have so much, you know, sympathy for them.
And I'm so grateful that I, you know, that I met Alex. Dating app? No, actually we met at work, which is crazy, which I always said I would never do. I was like, I'm never, he also said it. It was like a whole thing that I was like, I can't do this, whatever.
But, you know, Daily Wire kind of did the easy part for me because. Great. Thank you, Daily Wire for that one.
Yeah, exactly. Because I knew that where our values were aligned. Um, and it was so, you know, simple and he literally walked in and like, I looked at him and I was like, that's it. Like, wow. That's what I'd never spoken with him before.
How did he ask you out? In the parking lot. And he literally just said, I love to take you for dinner.
Was he allowed to do that? I don't know. He's like, he wasn't my boss. So no, yeah, he wasn't.
Um, but no, and it was, it was very traditional and normal and, you know, not over text. Um, the other thing that I will tell women, um and this is like apparently the sign that I gave Alex that it was like okay to ask me out was that you know women you don't have to ask out I mean you don't have to make a first big move but you do have to show that you're interested and like I hear from women and they're like how do I get a guy to ask me out it's like maybe smile like make eye contact in the eyes yes like show that you were interested and apparently like we were standing outside and it was cold I didn't have a sweater we were standing out by my car and I was like shivering but I made no motion to like move I did not want to leave the conversation he was like you kept continuing the conversation, even though you were freezing cold and shivering. And he was like, and I knew that you actually wanted to be there and that you were interested.
And he was like, that was the sign that you gave me. So just like your body language. And I think women are so closed off that you do have to also take that first step.
It's a dance, which again, I don't think Gen Z has been taught how to do. Um, we had, we had Alessandra Conti and then Rachel can do a couple of different girls in the last few months on about dating and echoing a lot of what you're saying. And they're saying, let it be a little uncomfortable.
Like you got to lean into it, almost like physically lean into it, you know, or make the eye contact longer than you would feel naturally comfortable. Cause we're all also so shy. I think we're so shy and awkward. COVID made us awkward. I mean, it even made me awkward.
I remember after I got back into like doing social things with my husband again and like with other people, I was like, wait a minute, we're doing social things again after two years of like hunkering down. And we still did some social things during COVID, but there was a lot more. activity happening. And I think we've just gotten rusty.
And if you, if you didn't even have that because you just had COVID, that was your like youth, like part of your youth. And then you have the phone, you have digital life. It is so hard to interact.
One of the things that they said, I thought was really good too, was it's not just like find someone you find attractive and then go flirt with them. It's like, be open with people generally. Like have that, like when you're walking around public, make eye contact. When you're talking to a clerk, like Like ask, have the small talk, have small talk with them.
Again, because it's habits. It's literally just learning how to engage and be open to it and knowing social cues. I think that COVID, you know, made us rusty. But again, just with my generation of being so online, we are not good with social cues.
And so I think that is, you know, what makes women a bit like testy about things. Like, is this guy being creepy or is he just interested? Like we genuinely, like guys don't know, women don't know. And I often say like for women, if a man is, you know, asking you out and leaning in, that's not really creepy.
But to men, like I've been followed around Home Depot when I was single. I'm like, I mean, can I have your Snapchat? Can I have your Snapchat?
And I've said no twice. I'm like, that is creepy. And it's like, so we do need to know like what is appropriate, but it goes for both men and women.
And so, yeah, it's. practice. It's getting comfortable. It's being just open in general, which I think will be so important for people.
But it breaks, I have so much sympathy for my generation because it's so, I feel like I, you know, won the lottery and feel so undeserving of it because I know how hard it is for so many people my age. All right. Last topic that we have to touch on is faith, because that's another part of the statistical analysis that's coming out is that the men are going more to church and the women are not. I know it's connected back to everything else we're talking about.
Yes. way women see themselves, they see the world, because the way women also see themselves in the world is a bit of a secret to how they see God. All of this is connected.
What are you seeing out there and how do you personally approach God? It's been a journey for me as of late. I was raised Episcopalian and then kind of went in and out of my faith. Being a child actor in Los Angeles is like the most ungodly thing possible. And so that was not...
part of my teen years. That was not, interestingly, it really wasn't part of my come to conservatism. It was not really faith-driven at all. It's something that's kind of come later, which a lot of people have felt very weird about.
They're like, that doesn't make sense. But it was simply just because of common sense that I realized later on, like, oh no, this is something that I need in my life. So it's been a ever-going journey of trying to figure out, you know, where Alex and I are going to land because we were raised in, you know, different denominations. We, you know, last year started going through RCIA actually.
So we're trying to figure out, you know, where our home is going to be. But for a minute, I think you made a really excellent point. We're not interested in being submissive.
And even as a young woman who did lean more right and was more conservative, I resented that word and thought, I just don't identify with that until I met Alex and I met a man that was worth submitting to. And then I felt like I could actually. relax with and breathe easy and say, oh, okay, I can follow this man and I know that he will lead me. And I think that that is indicative of how a lot of women view God and view the church. Again, I'm going to dictate everything.
It's going to be by my values and my morals and you have to bend to me, which is how a lot of them view relationships as well. And so that's never going to be compatible with a traditional view of faith. And so I think that's why a lot of women are walking away from the church. And so I'm so glad that... men are leading the charge in getting back in, but now it's kind of like, oh gosh, now the women, we need to bring them all back.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that it's just another arm of this same divide, which is, I think, pretty devastating for the soul of our country. But men making their way back, I think, is really positive.
Are you still in RCIA or where are you guys at with that? RCIA is tough a lot of the time. It's hard.
Depending who's teaching it, it can make a big difference to who's in it. We started it. last year and then I left to go film in Hungary for about five months.
And so that kind of broke our pattern and our progression through it. And then we got married early this year. And so we felt a lot of pressure to finish it and get confirmed before we got married so we could get married in the Catholic church.
And that didn't really feel right either because we were going through it and there were questions that we had and we didn't feel like our understanding was deep enough. So we kind of just took a step back and said, okay, we're just going to get married and then we're going to work on this. together.
So I think that it's a conversation that we're having more and more, you know, literally just in the past few weeks of, is this something that we want to pick up? Did we, you know, feel like we had a home there? And so, yeah, it's all active, but it was put on pause at the beginning of this year. Do you have a good priest that you guys talk to?
Yes. Okay. Yeah.
That's good. Yeah. For me, that was everything. Cause I was actually very spoiled to not have to do RCIA. I mean, not to like hate on RCIA, cause there's probably like religious educators listening and they're like, what are you doing to my RCIA?
But he basically is like, what questions do you have? Because I had already done a lot of research and study on my own. It's like, what questions do you have? And then walk through each of them. Because it's important to like lay it, like have peace, obviously, about all of this and make sure you're going in with eyes wide open about what it is.
And I think that's what we didn't have because it felt fast and rushed and disjointed. And I was like doing it over Zoom from Hungary. And I was like, oh, this isn't right. That's hard. But yeah.
Yeah. Well, I'm very excited for you guys. I know there's a lot to continue to explore, I'm sure, in your marriage and with your faith, but you're doing a phenomenal job, Brett. Thank you. What's next for you?
Oh, gosh. You know, we're going to continue the show. I want to keep growing it and reaching young people. I think that this is such a crucial time, not just because of the election, but I think that the election is, you know, a symptom of maybe, I don't know if symptom is the right word, but it is indicative of really big changes that are happening in this country.
It feels like a really significant turning point. So that's all my focus is there and just trying to give young people the resources and the empowerment that they need. And that's where I'm going to keep going. Keep it up.
You're awesome. Thanks, Brett. Yes.
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