The wait is over.
The season premiere of Sparks begins right now.
Tonight is the night.
Tonight, it's the season premiere of Sparks.
The long awaited season premiere of Sparks.
Schools and workplaces are letting everyone out early.
Tonight to honor the premiere,
The White House will be lit up
Monster Energy drink green.
Look at this on StubHub.
Tickets to be in the audience are selling for $5 million.
To keep the tailgating under control,
President Biden has called up the National Guard, initiating a response
simply known as: “Omega Protocol.”
New York City has opened its overflow triage hospital in Central
Park for viewers suffering laughter related injuries.
Wall street concern about a selloff of all
non- Sparks stocks has closed the markets for tomorrow.
A designated survivor has been chosen for the Sparks premiere.
Kate Plus eight Jon Gosselin.
North Korea will halt all missile tests during Sparks out of respect
for what Kim Jong un is calling the real gun show.
A lot of rumors being thrown around on what to expect in the season premiere,
but the leading contender among those rumors is Austin Sparks
will wear a blue wig.
This is no surprise.
The top baby name of 2023: Sparks.
Number two: Little Sparksy.
We are working to confirm that Austin Sparks is simultaneously
dating Bella Hadid, Ana de Armas, and Tilda Swinton.
Remember, there's only one Sparks airing on Comedy Central.
Anyone who says otherwise is trying to scam you.
I, for one, cannot wait.
God bless Austin Sparks.
Tonight on Sparks,
SeaWorld Jail,
Five Timers Club Member, Bonnie Davis.
Concussion protocol dodger, Blake Holliday.
Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and me.
I'm Ed Hall.
And now here's the host of the highest rated show in history.
Thrice crypto crash survivor Austin Sparks.
Thank you.
Stop, Stop. Seriously, stop.
We got a show to do.
I love you, too.
All right.
It's your boy, Austin Sparks.
But who am I really?
I'll tell you in tonight's monologue.
First of all, I'm a straight white man.
And in today's America, that's a crime.
Have I been thrown in prison?
Of course not.
I'm a straight white man.
But every morning, I feel like a prisoner.
Not to unforgiving masculine norms forced upon me from birth,
but to wokeness. Politically,
I'm an independent.
I believe in live and let live. You do you.
Full stop. Unless it means men wearing a dress.
You can't just do whatever you want.
I'm a truth teller.
I say what I mean, no pulling punches.
And if you're offended,
I was just joking. I didn't mean it that way.
You need to lighten up.
I used to be a liberal. Yeah, it's true.
I was fired from a liberal cable news program because I was too real for them.
And I didn't realize my Zoom camera was on during a meeting.
Coincidentally, at the exact moment my cancellation rendered me unemployable.
And my agent mentions conservative comedy is highly lucrative.
I had a political awakening.
The woke mob is out of control. and that's the model that.
And that's the monologue.
Speaking of woke mob, pour one out for my brother
in boat shoes, Tucker Carlson, who is out at Fox News.
Rupert Murdoch apparently is all for free speech
unless you commit the thought crime of costing him $1 billion.
One man leading the campaign against corporations
promoting woke ideology is wealthy business executive
and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
According to a national poll of Republican primary voters,
he is now polling fifth ahead of strong Republican candidates and Mike Pence.
Vivek also puts the “lit” in literary because he's a dang New York Times best
selling author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's
Social Justice Scam” and “Capitalist Punishment”:
How Wall Street is Using Your Money to Create a country you didn't vote for.”
Make some noise for Vivek, who joins us now.
What's up, Vivek?
How you doing Austin?
How are you? I'm doing so good, man.
Let's jump into this. Vivek, You were booked on Tucker's
show the night Fox News announced his departure.
Bro, give me the deets on how Tucker pimp walked out of there
flipping the double bird one for each Murdoch son.
So to tell you the truth,
I wasn't in the room and couldn't tell you what happened.
What I will tell you is I've gone on Tucker's show for a couple of years now.
I've actually gotten to know him.
I have found him to be
one of the most thoughtful voices, not just in the conservative movement,
but really in the movement of this open discussion about American politics.
And so that's what I think we need more of in our politics, in our discourse,
is where people who on principle will say that, you know what?
Even if you disagree with me, I believe in your right to say it.
I'll applaud my friend for that. Good defense of Tucker.
And hella smart of you to put yourself out on a limb
like that before all the facts come out?
I have with you, Vivek, and you know, the left claims to care
about sustainability, then celebrates the firing of the number one
recycler of World War II era anti-Semitic dog whistles.
This Tucker departure is bad.
We can't be switching generals to slate in a sperm wars.
Sperm 11 Never forget.
Now Wokeness is destroying
something far more important than the fabric of American society.
Our money.
Luckily, Vivek, you are leading a crusade against environmental, social
and governance, investing or ESG investing, and even co-founded
STRIVE, an Anti-woke asset management and advisory firm.
And you're crushing it.
Convincing Indiana's $42.4 billion state pension fund to contract with STRIVE.
Quote, the contract obtained by the Capital Chronicle is capped
at $150,000, with conservative Republican presidential candidate Ramaswamy
set to earn $4,000 per hour for ad hoc work. Ca-ching!
But one state ain't enough.
You're pitching
strive to all the states on the back end of the literacy bell curve.
Emails obtained by watchdog group documented and provided to us
show STRIVE approached at least ten states in the last year.
Now, Vivek, how do you clap back at the haters
who claim there's a conflict of interest between your anti-woke political crusade
and your highly lucrative anti-woke asset management business?
Well, I actually stepped aside from STRIVE and my other businesses
to run for US president, but at the time I founded STRIVE, you know what
I was taking on?
I was taking on incumbents like BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street.
Those three institutions alone manage over $20 trillion of money.
Yes, including that of state pension funds across this country.
They have captured the system.
And when you have large incumbents in a near oligopoly, an ESG oligopoly, yes.
That captures the system. You're right.
It is hard for a new incumbent to break in,
especially when you're coming in with a different message.
Yet you stepped back.
But according to the nerds at the SEC,
you still own a majority stake in strive between 50 and 75%.
Do you want to send a heartfelt message
to your employees back at the office making Anti-woke investments
while you're out here on your completely unrelated anti-woke presidential campaign?
Well, I've actually never used the word anti-woke.
I am pro excellence.
I think that's one of the things we miss in this country is that we like to put
labels on things as opposed to asking what it is we actually stand for.
I stand on my presidential campaign for actual values
the individual family, God, the nation.
That's actually what I talk about.
But I know a lot of left wing media likes to apply labels.
Anti-woke I don't call myself that.
I call myself pro excellence and pro-American.
Got it.
We'll get the word.
Woke off the cover of your book right away.
Moving on.
You say that corporations
have a fiduciary duty to focus on profits over woke priorities.
Now, Indiana's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal and Management Analysis,
which I assume is run by Lena Dunham, determined that your approach could result
in reduced aggregated investment returns by $6.7 billion over the next ten years.
So, Vivek, explain why investment funds need to stop being woke
and start fulfilling their fiduciary duty to make less money.
Well, just look at the actual facts.
Last year, ESG funds dramatically underperformed the market
and they even more dramatically underperformed
the very sectors that they shunned, like oil, gas and coal.
Hey, hang on a second.
It is not fair to say strive would lose India at $6.7 billion.
I mean, STRIVE is going to siphon off a good chunk of that before it disappears.
Awesome.
Now, Vivek, let's talk about companies putting wokeness ahead of profits.
Now, specific companies like Disney, Nike, Hershey's, Starbucks, Apple.
I don't like to talk about how much money I have, but I got a lot of money, bro.
So be real.
Should I think twice before investing in these companies?
Look, I think you should make a decision based on how well-managed
the company is and whether it has a product or service
that actually makes people live a better life.
That's the best way the companies create value.
Some companies have to serve their customer bases, but part of
what's going on is companies like Apple and Chevron and Home Depot,
they've been forced to adopt racial equity audits
and they've been forced to adopt emissions caps
that those companies didn't initially want to adopt until they were forced
to by the likes of BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard.
So I had to write a book exposing capitalist punishment.
But I'll tell you, this is a complicated issue.
It's designed to do through the back door.
What government couldn't get done through the front door.
That's a farce. And I believe in exposing
all farces, all hypocrisy, all hypocrisy for what it is.
That's what this game is about. It's hypocrisy.
Yes, we need to expose hypocrisy.
Like how your companies strive asset management according to their SEC
filing, invest in all those woke companies you just railed against.
Is there any way
you can talk some sense into the bleeding heart SJW majority owner?
Well, here's actually the interesting fact.
Index funds means Americans get to invest in the market more broadly.
But the little secret is
you actually get a vote and a voice that goes along with that.
So my purpose in founding Strive was to exercise that vote and voice
differently, telling companies something really simple.
Knock it off with the politics and focus on your products and services
for profit without apologizing for it.
And for those people who, with their own money want to tell companies
to, yes, focus on environmental or social agendas.
You're right. It's a free country.
You should absolutely be free to do that.
But what I object to is a lot of people, without knowing it,
have their money directed via 401K accounts or pension fund accounts
to fund managers that tell those companies to adopt social agenda's
without actually knowing it.
My dude is grinding, specifically,
he's grinding away hardworking Indiana residents ability to retire.
Let them freaks
eat cat food.