Good morning. U.S. conservative media company the Daily Wire now has its first box-office hit – more on that below, along with the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and Pierre Poilievre’s refusal to get security clearance. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Four more Liberal cabinet ministers won’t seek re-election, sources say, and a shuffle is expected within weeks
- Three tobacco companies are set to pay $32.5-billion in a landmark Canadian legal settlement
- Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding is wanted by the FBI for his alleged involvement in a drug cartel and homicides
Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy
U.S. Politics
Inside the right’s media machine
At the Daily Wire’s headquarters in Nashville, the media company keeps security tight – unmarked entrance, gun-holstered guard – and its right-wing cred abundantly clear. Washroom doors are splashed with either “He/Him” or “She/Her” pronouns. Water bottles are filled with “liberal tears.” Inside the warren of studios, someone could be recording a podcast (representative title: “The DNC Begins: Free Abortions and Vasectomies, Plus Hamas!”). They might be firing up a post for the website, where yesterday, a headline announced “Kamala’s Pathetic Plan to Bribe Black Voters With Reparations And Marijuana.”
There’s a huge appetite for this kind of red-state red meat. Between its news site, podcast network, streaming service, social media and YouTube channels, the Daily Wire reaches more than 220 million people a month. Now, as The Globe’s film editor, Barry Hertz, writes in his new story, the Daily Wire is coming for the multiplex. Its first theatrical release, a Borat-style mockumentary called Am I Racist?, follows commentator Matt Walsh as he infiltrates and skewers the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion industry. This requires his best woke disguise: skinny jeans and a man bun.
Last month, Am I Racist? delivered the highest opening weekend for a political documentary since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 two decades ago. The movie has pulled in more than US$12-million in North America, including $500,000 in Canada. Emboldened by those numbers, the Daily Wire is considering an action franchise and, inevitably, an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. “Art shapes culture,” Walsh wrote in a recent Facebook post, “and if we’re not creating our own, we’re not really fighting a culture war.”
From click bait to cinema
Right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro and producer Jeremy Boreing launched the Daily Wire nearly a decade ago as an outlet for conservative click bait. But their foray into filmmaking only began in 2020, after Disney added warnings for racist stereotypes to some of their movies. Boreing told Hertz he objected to the implication that “if you watched Peter Pan you would come away as a genocidal anti-native white supremacist.”
Matt Walsh in Am I Racist? and also in a man bun.Supplied
The Daily Wire recognized that successful Hollywood counterprogramming demanded the involvement of an actual Hollywood insider. So Shapiro and Boreing tapped veteran producer Dallas Sonnier, whose low-budget, ultramacho action fare mixed name recognition (Kurt Russell, Mel Gibson) with the tea-kettle whistle of reactionary politics. In short order, Sonnier brought several films to the Daily Wire’s streaming service, including the survival thriller Shut In, the survival thriller Run Hide Fight, and Terror on the Prairie, which is a survival thriller set in frontier times. As it turns out, these films aren’t halfway bad.
“There’s clearly a level of craftsmanship that speaks to the involvement of real-deal Hollywood veterans,” Hertz told me. He added that in most of the evangelical-forward films out there, including the anti-abortion drama Unplanned, the proselytizing takes precedence over the filmmaking; Sonnier’s productions flip that around. And put this on a movie poster: “I’ve seen plenty worse big-budget Hollywood stuff than Run Hide Fight,” Hertz said. “I’d much rather watch that, in fact, than recent action dreck like the new Crow or the latest Expendables.”
Culture war or cash grab
But what about the Daily Wire’s DEI.-lancing mockumentary, Am I Racist? Matt Walsh is trying hard to summon his inner Sacha Baron Cohen, though that mostly involves handing out whips so white people can self-flagellate and getting White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo to cough up $30 in reparations to a Black producer. (Walsh believes reparations are a massive grift; he’s the one who wrote that Kamala Harris post.) Of course there are opportunists in the DEI industry. In his culture-war salvo, Walsh doesn’t seem to have much more to say. “There’s a bitter aftertaste to the whole thing that doesn’t work,” Hertz told me. “I certainly didn’t learn anything from it, let alone walk away enlightened or entertained.”
Still, Am I Racist?’s box-office haul proves there are plenty of stick-it-to-the-Libs moviegoers willing to shell out for it, and Hertz suspects that this – not the culture-war stuff, not the need for filmmaking credibility, not the safe space for Trump voters to enjoy popcorn thrills – is the whole point of the Daily Wire project. “They saw a hole in the market and think that they can fill it, then expand it,” he said. “They have no illusions they’re going to topple Disney or Netflix, but they sure would like to be a viable and profitable alternative.”
MIDDLE EAST
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is killed in Gaza
Yahya Sinwar in Gaza City last year.MOHAMMED ABED/Getty Images
In a surprise encounter yesterday, Israeli troops killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, which left nearly 1,200 people dead and saw some 250 others taken hostage. Those attacks set in motion an Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed more than 42,000 people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and driven nearly two million from their homes, according to the UN. Sinwar refused until the end to release Hamas’s remaining hostages – believed to number around 100, though as many as half are feared to be dead. Read more from The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon on Sinwar’s life and death here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called on Pierre Poilievre to get the top-level security clearance needed to view classified documents on foreign interference. The Conservative leader says doing so would muzzle his ability to criticize the government.
Abroad: Two-and-a-half weeks out from election day, The Globe’s U.S. correspondent Adrian Morrow speaks with Trump voters in Reading, Penn., to find out why – despite everything – this race is so close.
Across the border: In the epilogue to his year-long Undercurrents project, The Globe’s Doug Saunders profiles a Venezuelan migrant family for whom the U.S. election is yet another crossroads in their perilous journey.
Good call: You can now find Inuktut on Google Translate, making it the first Inuit, Métis or First Nations language spoken in Canada to be added to the service.
Great call: After racking up $145,000 on an art trip to northern Italy, four Ontario Catholic school board trustees now say they’ll pay back the expenses.