[Music] this episode is sponsored by viewers like you and since YouTube is probably going to D monetize this curiosity stream it's a streaming service for documentaries so perfect for you guys more on that at the end of the episode hey safer here I came to the film vice expecting it to be bad perhaps that means that I was simply happy it wasn't as bad as I had expected but it remains the worst film of 2018 thus far some folks are fine with anything being said in the service of going after Dick Cheney but I am certainly not that vindictive of him or anyone lies are lies no matter who you're telling it about but much like my death of Stalin review if I'm busting myths about someone generally thought of as a bad guy which by the way is a dumb way of viewing history well I'm going to be labeled as defending the man the funny thing is this movie could have easily avoided these problems if it wasn't so vindictive to begin with but I can understand how difficult it is to talk about Cheney's vice presidency [Music] Dick Cheney has a lot of myths surrounding him many of which you guys probably believed he was certainly what we might call the most powerful vice-president in US history but he's often portrayed as though Cheney was the power behind George Bush secretly manipulating everything behind the scenes Matt is not what he was it's easier to think of him like a chief bureaucrat in the Bush administration so let's get something straight about his time as VP most of the myths surrounding Dick Cheney has to do with the lead up to the Iraq war he was not the sole reason for pushing the u.s. in terror Iraq it feels convenient to blame one dude but the fact is that while he is responsible for elevating several pieces of intelligence that drove public opinion simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends against our allies and against us there were public doubts about that stuff at the time to the point that the UN refused to create a coalition to fight in Iraq this was all in front of us at the time perfectly public yet that whole thing gets forgotten over the vitriol but we've got to realize about all the claims and rumors that were going through the public at the time is Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein in fact used them on his own people and Iran and though Iraq was supposed to have disarmed after the Persian Gulf War they had dodged several official investigations Proactive in cooperating with inspectors and if there is that the sources for WMDs still existing was dubious at best but that was enough for most people including Cheney we weren't deceived by Cheney into a fraudulent war Congress voted on it and they were still amped up on vengeance for what al Qaeda had done only one year prior some most voted yes hate fueled that vote it changed well change the way I look to the world WMDs was the excuse what cannot be understated with Cheney's role in all of this was torture he staffed the White House in a way that he could easily worm into the decision-making process he read the briefing packets before Bush he was bcc'd on all emails and his staff could be called upon to push Bush's staff into certain decisions were they all controlling heck no but the torture memos have Cheney's prints all over them and he has defended them on numerous occasions he had a way of reaching down to the appropriate level just to get his way and he was good at it the Darth Vader metaphor that people use for him is pretty accurate because that leaves the Emperor in control so Cheney is not without blame for these things but Bush was ultimately in charge and no one escaped without becoming complicit for instance when NSA surveillance was up for renewal in 2004 the upper echelon of the Department of Justice threatened to resign including James Comey and Robert Mueller but when Bush back down on a minor part of the terrorist surveillance program they stopped threatening to resign since you know terrorism is bad and whatnot considering it was an election year then resigning would have been politically devastating and they acquiesced and signed off on merely reduced surveillance you see each episode was fueled by hatred left over by 9/11 longer we refused to see that the longer we continue to fight unnecessary Wars and obstruct our own freedoms Chaney was merely a cog in the machine a massive one who was happy to be a cog but a cog nonetheless life's calling he would be a dedicated and humble servant to power as with someone as divisive as Cheney you know there is plenty of material out there for instance the Cheney's themselves have written several books on his time in the White House his daughter's wife and himself have all told their side of the story many have tried to glean motive from Lynne Cheney's fictional novels as well then of course there are the investigative journalists who have written about Cheney most of which were written while Cheney was still vice president the most famous of those is angler which was Cheney's secret service name based on his love of angle fishing I figured that that book would be the basis for the film and I was correct the filmmakers aren't willing to say so because why would anyone want to reveal their sources especially when you have a clear basis that you are simultaneously denying it's really easy to tell when the movie directly quotes from the book it's safe to assume that at least one person wonders why in the midst of the most fateful day in American history was Dick Cheney talking to his lawyer what's sad is if they read the book why did they get so much wrong furthermore the book was written in 2008 and so much has been declassified since then yet the movie has the gall to say this yeah well if you tried your [ __ ] best you'd have figured out how many mistakes you made the fact checkers have been all over this one just look at what slate said the directors own grasp of Washington politics is thin and his understanding of power and how it works Hughes to what VI Lenin denounced as infantile leftism yep that's slate complaining about leftism a more even-handed sources politifact who went ham with primary sources and tore this movie a new one even history vs. Hollywood ends his review with it's likely that many on the Left will embrace it while most on the right will dismiss it fiction is much easier to believe when it fits your own narrative this is certainly true of Hollywood who nominated vice for a bunch of awards this is the very same Hollywood that has refused to nominate a number of biopics in recent years over far less fiction Mena's found in Vice heck the same documentarian who made conspiracy theorists lie uploaded a documentary length video on how this film shows a decade of conspiracism that this film perpetuates unfortunately the movie panders to a select audience with a collection of cliches and half-truths at best which is well worth checking out by the way so by this point it should be obvious that this movie is sadly off-base it comes from the same director who did the Big Short which is supposedly fantastic it's been praised for its ability to explain complex economic issues and vice has some strengths in that regard there's actually an interesting mix of accuracy and inaccuracy here some of the accuracy even comes at the cost of the demonization of Dick Cheney like it shows him being a drunkard flunking out of Yale and having to learn a hard lesson when his wife threatens to leave him that was very true and it shows Cheney becoming a better man as a result it also shows how much the Cheney's supported Mary when she came out of the closet later on when Liz runs for Congress dick and Lynn support her decision to campaign against gay marriage which Mary saw as a betrayal fact checkers have complained about this but it is portrayed plausibly and shows the way the Cheney's had to split the difference between their conservatism and support of Mary though let me point out Mary herself is quite conservative too just not on the subject of gay marriage finally there are a few times they can see the ability to explain complex problems shining through like how Cheney weasels his staff into the Bush administration it also accurately shows how the estate tax was rebranded as the death tax and how the torture memos came to be justified by Cheney that's really well handled but unfortunately that can be misleading there are so many issues here then it's time for a lightning round it starts simply enough and then jumps between crazy and just plain weird [Music] you have authorization to shoot down any aircraft deemed a threat so there is a lot of debate over whether Bush actually gave the okay for the shoot down order the 911 Commission couldn't verify the call times but both Cheney and Bush say it happened if Cheney did it of his own volition then that would be a crime so the movie is apt to draw doubt on it but also uses it to say this he saw an opportunity less than five minutes in and you're already demonizing him you can't draw doubt and then just blatantly say that crap that's no longer doubt but conspiracy theorizing minor issue but Cheney was an alignment he worked on the ground also the way they depict this accident baked him into town put five dollars in his pocket and find another man for tomorrow it's just an odd exaggeration for no apparent reason I couldn't verify any such thing happening but given the later falsehoods I'm guessing this is also false forgot that Roger knows TV but he doesn't know politics pretending that Roger Ailes wasn't a political operative in the 1960s and 70s is some pretty blatant ignorance like there was a book complaining about Ailes ability to manipulate the public framing him as a key component of the Southern Strategy which was released only a year afterward Nixon did assed Ailes from his administration but it was more from interpersonal problems than lacking political acumen this reinforces a later plot point that makes absolutely no sense where they basically blame Cheney getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine on the rise of Fox News its repeal would lead to the rise opinion knew two things incorrect about that Cheney wasn't whip yet so he wasn't responsible for this at all hey thank you for getting the house not to override the President's veto with a Fairness Doctrine not a problem and to the Fairness Doctrine couldn't affect the rise of Fox News because Fox is a cable channel and therefore not subject to the Fairness Doctrine like how do you now know this movie what design suspend what do we believe we believe oh come on Jimmy had well-documented conservative leanings in the 1960s when he had spoken against New Deal ISM as early as his time at Yale so this makes no sense and it fails to grasp Cheney's entire career [Music] okay here the movie is implying Lin's father killed her mother and screw you movie screw you that's the kind of [ __ ] I find unforgivable no one thought this and the movie makers are getting this from an offhanded remark in one of Lin's books that McKay the director is grossly misinterpreting why would you even include this it doesn't help the plot and once you know the truth of the matter which is no one suspects Lin's father of killing her mother where the hell are you pulling this from movie that's pretty disgusting so that's supposed to be a young Antonin Scalia and what he's talking about is the first of many mentions of a theory this film completely gets wrong are you familiar with the theory of the unitary executive it is an interpretation that few like myself happen to believe in article 2 of the Constitution that vests the president with absolute executive authority and I mean absolute but also this simply doesn't understand Scalia he's always been an originalist so the idea that he would interpret the original intent of the Constitution's article 2 like this is preposterous just know when did not take over dicks campaign like this but this is an acceptable inaccuracy plus you got to love the way they introduced Cheney's heart attacks they've money families like the cokes and the Coors rolled right into Washington DC and started writing fat checks to fund right-wing think tanks this is a misconception worth an entire episode on its own but after having taken an entire graduate level class on the rise of neoliberalism no historian I have read would be willing to blame that rise on the Koch brothers or any particular people seriously this is yet again basically conspiracism perhaps they were trying to simplify a complex issue that historians are currently trying to figure out but blaming it on the Koch brothers is beyond stupid I'm beginning to question all the good reporting about the big short because this is some seriously inept analysis for a movie that quotes the Constitution constantly it sure doesn't seem to understand that document neither branch as oversight at the VP articles of impeachment can be made against the vice-president just as the president the movie talks about the Ford administration but seems to refuse to accept that Spiro Agnew existed even though the movie is trying to use the angler metaphor if we were to come to a different understanding this is basically opposed to what the book was trying to say this is that typical Cheney being the power behind the throne caricature but as we've already found out that's not a good depiction so clearly the movie didn't bother to read its source material very well it shows Halliburton paying Cheney his exit package after the election his filings are public and it was paid sometime between June and October elections are in November so this is impossible Antonin Scalia remember him and the Supreme Court stopped the state of Florida from completing their recount Scalia didn't decide the election Bush v Gore was decided per curiam which by definition has no primary judge I see what you're trying movie but only idiots will fall for that [Music] here we go with iraqi oil and Halliburton [ __ ] including a map of iraq's oil fields with all of the oil companies that would be interested in acquiring them if somehow they were ever to become available then they'd have this scene later like cheney got what he wanted or something we have concerns over Halliburton KBR s billing practices as you know that no bid contracts they received were quite sizable and now well we're not concerned are we not at all the paperwork they're showing is the real deal but the narrator is incorrect those weren't u.s. suitors listed in fact you can clearly see that those were foreign companies Halliburton is not one of them since it's an american company this is a popular one with iraq oil conspiracy theorists but the fact is we can't really connect to anything sure there's doubt but that's it to go from doubt to conspiracy is conspiracy theory plus this whole thing makes it seem like cheney wanted to invade iraq before 9/11 which is verifiably false he opposed violent regime change in the 1990s when even Bill Clinton was calling for it and he remained steadfast on that as vice president until 9/11 this is the kind of Hollywood falsehood that causes more warfare Iraq has all the good targets Iraq has nothing to do with this time Richard you don't know that I the 9/11 Commission report makes it quite clear that the Iraq connection was tenuous at best and everyone knew that which is kind of hilarious because the movie later portrays that aspect correctly here they make it seem like Cheney could literally wave a hand to make Bush follow his opinion yet another failure to comprehend the book the movie is based upon yet again the movie fails to explain the unitary executive theory we have the fact that under the unitary executive theory if the president does anything it must be legal like you could have just gone to Wikipedia movie their first sentence is a better explanation than the entire film which of course means you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want so wow they want a country is cleaner simpler that would certainly help us legally looks like it's time to take a rag Wow no just simply No [Music] now the movie is just saying the CIA was fabricating sources make sure you work in the phrase we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud that focus trip to the roof more unnecessary conspiracism you know this whole thing has been Declassified right movie we have the sources that were supposedly fabricated you can go and find them yourself they're on the CIA's website they weren't fabricating them they were trumping him up to be more than what they were that's the point we allowed fear-mongering to drum us into a war this isn't some sort of conspiracy it's literally just the fear of the American people and neither will Israel Israel's one of the closest allies they said an invasion of Iraq would destabilize the region sorry Israel actually campaigned for that this is publicly documented for Thucydides sake movie you had one job and with these scenes the movie is trying to say that Isis is cheney's fault no one who studies them would be so stupid as to peddle this conspiracy theory but the movie sure is I think this is as bad as when Trump was trying to say that Obama was the creator of Isis or something like this is that level of stupid I'm done I'm just done with this [ __ ] I think 20 is more than enough to illustrate how bad this movie is despite the obligatory praise of accuracy this movie is pure fakery I don't know what is worse trying to play off the fear that created the Iraq war but instead of alleviating it only bolstering it trying to blame all our problems on one person or just the constant conspiracism this is the kind of myth making that only creates more violence in the future yeah it's fun to blame the big bad genie but myth only allows the same mistakes to be made again this movie is ultimately complicit in the very violence it's supposedly abhors so instead of focusing on the vice-presidency how about when presidents have been in crisis curiosity stream has a perfect series for you on that very subject the world breaks everyone and afterward some are strong at the broken places Ernest Hemingway a farewell to arms before they led America through national crises presidents Abraham Lincoln Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson were all transformed by personal trauma if you click the link below in the description or in the pinned comment you'll get a 30 day free trial granting unlimited access to their huge library of documentaries there's a lot of stuff here history content is of course fairly prevalent but they've got plenty on other subjects too they have curated lists on various subjects so you'll have to search to see more it's all there just follow the link in the description and thanks to curiosity stream for sponsoring this episode [Music] you [Music]