Elizabeth Pipko, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee (RNC), joins Russell Brand to discuss the need to vote for Donald Trump in order to prevent further social decay in America. She also discusses her family's immigration journey, and why she believes that Donald Trump is a better choice than Hillary Clinton for the 2020 Republican primary than any other presidential candidate in the history of presidential politics. Russell Brand is a comedian, actor, writer, and podcaster. He is the host of the podcast Stay Free With Russell Brand, and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and NPR. He is also the author of Finding My Place: How I Made My Parents' American Dream Come True, a memoir about growing up in a family of immigrants in America, and a memoir of his own about his own experience growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how he navigated the post-9/11 anxieties that came with growing up with the post 9/11 trauma and the loss of his parents. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to know what it's like to be a political spokesperson for a major political party in a country where there's no such thing as a black politician. a party with a black presidential candidate . in the midst of a time when black people are treated as second-class citizens, and the only black person allowed to vote in presidential primary debates, but not even remotely represented in the debates. in any meaningful way. It's a brilliant, smart, funny, and hilarious, and it's a must listen to this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand. Stay Free, Stay Free! and RUMBLE! Thank you for listening, Russell Brand! - Thank you so much for your support, and stay free, you'll love it. -Amy Poehler, too, Amy Poehler and her book, Thank You For This, Too Much? - and Thank You, My Dear Lord, I'll See the Future, by Puff and Jai Courtney by Pizzi, and I'm Too Effing Good At This, by Emily, Too Good, and She's Not Sorry, I'm So Sorry, Too Bad, by Billie O'Brien, and so Much So Good at This, too Good At That, by Rachel Holliday, and So, So, You Can't Have It All?
00:52:50.000Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:52:53.000The first 15 minutes we will be streaming broadly across the world, but after that we will be exclusively in that sweet home of freedom that we call Rumble, where we can speak freely.
00:53:03.000And we're going to want to speak freely today because we're talking to Elizabeth Pipko, spokesperson for the RNC, with an extraordinary take on Donald Trump and the necessity to vote for Donald Trump to prevent Apocalypse, further social decay in HP.
00:53:22.000And I suppose it's interesting to have an insight from someone who's worked on Trump campaigns for a number of years and to hear what it's like to support Donald Trump publicly in a space where such a thing can be regarded as an anathema or even as, I don't know, some kind of some sort of social disease.
00:53:46.000She wrote a book called Finding My Place, Making My Parents' American Dream Come True.
00:53:50.000But what you get from talking to Elizabeth and listening to her, in your case, is the sense that Donald Trump can't be everything his detractors claim he is and still have this incredibly potent appeal among a wide base of people, an increasingly wide base of people.
00:54:06.000I think you're going to Enjoy this conversation.
00:54:09.000If you're not on Awake and Wonder yet, but come one now, then you can join us live for conversations like this one, as well as getting the opportunity to meditate every week and join us for book clubs.
00:54:17.000I'm going to begin the conversation now.
00:54:18.000As I say, it'll only be available for about 10 minutes or so on YouTube.
00:54:31.000Whilst you have an extraordinarily varied past and resume, you're here in your capacity as RNC spokesperson.
00:54:42.000Can you tell me, firstly, how you've arrived in this position?
00:54:46.000And also what is the capacity and function of a spokesperson and what duties that comes with, what obligations and what potential pitfalls?
00:54:54.000Because I'm guessing that you're here to advocate for the Republican Party and the Republican Party movement, but perhaps even more specifically for their presumed presidential candidate, Donald Trump.
00:55:46.000His story is really sad, actually, but also very inspiring based on the fact that one generation later, I'm here with you and I represent one of two major political parties in this country.
00:55:57.000And all that outweighs any of the horrible stuff that comes with it.
00:56:00.000Yeah it's pretty astonishing and I suppose it's one of the things that people that are not from the United States still glory in is their capacity for people to build incredible lives here.
00:56:12.000Now we're having this conversation of course In the week where Joe Biden has announced that he himself will be emulating a border policy that when comparable executive orders were made by Trump in office, he was much derided and attacked.
00:56:31.000As a first-generation immigrant yourself, how do you feel about the subject of immigration?
00:56:36.000How do you feel about the level of attack levelled at Trump in particular in 2018, in particular when he used comparable procedures to prevent immigration, initially just from Muslim countries specifically, but then additionally deployed that order?
00:56:54.000And what does it say about the current state of the Biden administration when they simultaneously plagiarise from Donald Trump while criminalising him?
00:57:17.000Everyone knows where Donald Trump stands and yet they painted him in a negative light, not just to disparage him, but all of his supporters as well, which was I think one of the first times in American history that's happened.
00:57:27.000It's always been brutal in politics when it came to the actual candidates, but I want to say it was the first time, definitely in my lifetime, but I've heard from others as well, the first time that a person's actual supporters were called racists for supporting him in what I think were some very normal border policies.
00:58:10.000So are countless Republicans and countless Democrats.
00:58:13.000The problem is the lies and hypocrisy of the fact that Joe Biden He's pulling out any kind of border policy because the election is five months away and he knows that polling is a top issue for people.
00:58:22.000It's the economy and it's immigration.
00:58:25.000The problem is not the policy itself, which we can debate for years.
00:58:28.000And if he is blatantly copying Donald Trump, but the policy works, then good for him.
00:58:32.000We can actually debate the policy because he's not actually copying him.
00:58:35.000He's just pretending to copy him and claiming to be putting a stop to illegal immigration, but he's actually legalizing it and making a pathway for a lot of people.
00:58:44.000At the same time, he's framing it differently, making sure people think that the issue at the border is being taken care of because we have an election in five months.
00:58:52.000Clearly trying to jail Donald Trump might not work and he needs to win this thing.
00:58:56.000What do you think about the aspect of the policy that is obviously anti-asylum seekers or illegals or migrants or whatever term that you might deploy.
00:59:09.000Do you feel that as a first generation, former Soviet Union, Russian is your heritage and background, am I right in thinking?
00:59:19.000Do you feel that there is any hypocrisy there or do you think that there is a distinction, I'm assuming, between legal immigration and having controlled and secure borders?
00:59:29.000Yeah, no, there's obviously a huge distinction.
00:59:32.000For me, personally, I understand the argument.
00:59:34.000The argument that people out there need help, people that have to come here because they're fleeing their countries, I completely understand that.
00:59:41.000I also understand the argument that Americans have to come first.
00:59:43.000So the obvious answer is a legal pathway, legal immigration.
00:59:52.000We just marked the anniversary of my grandfather's passing.
00:59:55.000My dad said goodbye to his grandfather, his father, my grandfather, when he left Estonia at the time, but former Soviet Union, thinking he'd never see him again.
01:00:04.000He sat with tears in his eyes telling me about the last time he saw his father standing behind a fence armed by, you know, guards while my dad boarded the last train out of the Soviet Union.
01:00:33.000He built a life for himself and it's hard for me to know my own family's struggle and then to know that a lot of people want to skip that line.
01:00:39.000Skip the line of many like my parents who did it.
01:00:42.000the right way and try to fight for them at the same time as fighting those that have been in line for I don't even know how many years.
01:00:49.000No one is saying that we don't understand where people are coming from by wanting to welcome people in and give them some kind of asylum from the horrors that they're running away from.
01:00:57.000We're all also a country ourselves and we have to look out for Americans first.
01:01:01.000Secondly, those that want to be Americans and want to do it the right way.
01:01:04.000One of the questions that has arisen in my own analysis of the subject of immigration has been whether I, excuse me, whether I trust the integrity of the argument that it is compassion that undergirds the position of those that are laissez-faire on the subject of border security and border control.
01:01:28.000That's always the argument that is offered.
01:01:30.000That we owe a debt of gratitude, not of gratitude, of duty and of kindness and compassion and I've always been very sympathetic to that argument and it sounds like you are also, that there is a kind of shared human duty for us to take care of one another, particularly I suppose when we come from, speaking for myself, a country that has a colonial and imperial past, that's wreaked havoc Across the world through plunder and acquisition that perhaps there is a duty of contrition and restitution that is born.
01:02:02.000We talk a lot on our show about how potentially if you believe in secure borders, and plainly people do, plainly that's what people want, Plainly that's why Biden is emulating that policy.
01:02:16.000Then perhaps an accompaniment to that would be a curtailing of the kind of corporatism and globalism and geopolitical misadventure and exacerbation of war and profiting from war that appears to be kind of prevalent and central to the Democrat Party's purview elsewhere.
01:02:33.000Do you see that Having secure borders and protecting a nation, as well as of course acting upon the view and mandate of the electorate, which is what democracy is supposed to bloody mean anyway, do you see that it's helpful to regard that as an accompaniment to non-interventionism more broadly?
01:02:56.000Yeah, I mean, you started off by saying that you maybe don't believe the argument people make.
01:03:02.000I don't believe that they're compassionate.
01:03:03.000It's a good point because I think people don't separate those at the top and those everyday Americans that actually believe in certain policies or think that they should believe in certain policies.
01:03:11.000I have met everyday Americans and I believe them when they say this is what I think is the right thing to do.
01:03:16.000I don't believe that those at the top think it's the right thing to do because of the goodness of their heart.
01:03:20.000I think they know that they can sell that, specifically to young people, to college students, to so many that buy what they're selling.
01:03:26.000Unfortunately, I think that they have the same heart as those at the top.
01:03:30.000They know they can profit off of this, profit off of war, like you said, and who don't do anything, I think, honestly, for the right reasons.
01:03:36.000I think the border is just the beginning of that, but the destruction of everything we know To be our fundamental values, just the country that we had is a country of, I mean, a country with borders, a country that protects its citizens.
01:03:48.000And we've seemed to kind of throw all of that away because people knew that they could convince others in the country to believe that for some reason that was the right thing to do.
01:03:56.000If the motivations aren't what they claim, do you ever wonder what the motivation might be?
01:04:00.000Do you think it's like an annihilation of the American way of life?
01:04:06.000If it isn't compassion and kindness and the human duty as it's claimed... It is 100% annihilation of every single thing that we know and love about this country.
01:04:14.000And by we, I mean people actually like my parents and people who are still around the world dreaming of being in a place like America because For them and their country, up until maybe this Trump trial, they don't see a comparison.
01:04:28.000And there are too many people in the world that want to take that down.
01:04:31.000And unfortunately, a lot of those people are in this very country because they know that there's money there and there's power there.
01:04:35.000And that means a lot more to them than what America means to all of us.
01:04:40.000You said a minute ago that you've, since publicly supporting Trump and Republicanism, faced a lot of attacks.
01:04:50.000I guess because you've worked as an author and you work in media, you've It sounds like you came pretty close to being an Olympic athlete at some point.
01:05:02.000It felt like, generally speaking, these areas of American cultural life are assumed to be the domain of liberalism.
01:05:12.000And so was there a point where you felt like, oh I don't feel like I'm in alignment with him views, I want to start speaking out about it.
01:05:21.000Were you always inclined towards republicanism and you know even, I guess you're 28 years old, so like pre the advent of Trump and the MAGA movement, What was it that you were into then?
01:05:35.000The Tea Party, Republicanism more generally?
01:05:41.000Was there a moment of transition or is this something they've always been in alignment with?
01:05:44.000It's a good question because there was a very long period of time that I didn't care about politics at all.
01:05:49.000But as a little girl, I was weirdly obsessed.
01:05:51.000I ran for every political, you could say, position we had in our school.
01:05:55.000Like, I was secretary of the school in fourth grade and vice president in seventh grade.
01:05:59.000I think my first trip to Washington, D.C., I stood with my mom outside the White House for like seven hours just waiting to meet anyone that worked in there.
01:06:06.000I think later on, I realized I wasn't really obsessed with politics.
01:06:11.000For me, and I say it a lot, but I almost don't say it enough, my parents' story is basically all I know.
01:06:17.000Every single part of my life, everything I do, everything I try to succeed in, everything I suffer from, everything that gives me anxiety or sadness or hope or joy, comes from their story and their sacrifice.
01:06:27.000And people, honestly, they think that I maybe oversell it, but that's truly what it is.
01:06:54.000I'm a very well-known artist, actually.
01:06:55.000So he was working up until he got Alzheimer's when he was older, but he worked through, you know, 80, 85 years old.
01:07:00.000But whenever he had a free moment, I sat on his lap and he told me what it was like to be in Russia and he told me what I had here in America.
01:07:10.000So for him, it was about knowing that he escaped so that his granddaughter one day would be allowed to be openly, proudly, publicly Jewish.
01:07:19.000Obviously his children were not allowed.
01:07:20.000It's something that he dreamed of back in the Soviet Union.
01:07:23.000Everything I know comes from their struggle.
01:07:26.000So for me, it was never about speaking out because I'm Republican.
01:07:31.000I never even associated with the term.
01:07:32.000It was just, I'm a proud American and I want the best for this country.
01:07:36.000You asked me just now, if I think that people that have certain policy views are doing it because they believe that's best or because they want to destroy America.
01:07:43.000And I fear that there are people in my own country that want to destroy America and I stand against them.
01:07:49.000That's all that we can give you on YouTube.
01:07:57.000I care less about the parties and more about the country.
01:07:59.000And right now I think the Republican Party and Donald Trump, our candidate, is the most patriotic candidate we could ask for right now and the one that wants the best for us.
01:08:08.000So for me, it was never, hey, I like politics.
01:09:30.000I have pictures of me as like a 10, 11 year old little girl figure skating and it says Trump behind me like on the wall and that's all I knew.
01:09:39.000He likes to put his name on stuff, yes.
01:09:40.000And I knew who he was because of that.
01:09:42.000I think I had seen him at one event at the rink.
01:09:45.000It was like a figure skating competition for little kids and he showed up but that was all I knew.
01:09:49.000My brother watched I think every video that existed on this man and said Donald Trump's going to be the next president of the United States.
01:09:54.000I think Gabe was 15 or 16 at the time, and I said, you are out of your mind, but let me look into it.
01:10:03.000I thought the most amazing part of everything to do with Donald Trump at that time was that the world was laughing, right?
01:10:09.000So just like I laughed when Gabe said he's going to be president, the world laughed every single day when Donald Trump said, I'm going to be president.
01:10:26.000I thought the one thing I need is to learn something from this man who gets up every single morning, knows that the whole world, including many people that were his friends, are laughing at him.
01:10:35.000And he's saying, I'm going to be president of the United States.
01:10:38.000So I went to volunteer with my brother.
01:10:57.000Um, but I have never done anything like that and I just wanted to... I always like to do the most that I can and I thought, I don't want to volunteer, I want to be on this campaign.
01:11:06.000So I wrote a letter to the data director of the campaign saying, this is what's wrong with the volunteer operation.
01:11:11.000I found an intern to bring it up to the offices.
01:11:14.000A lot was wrong with it, let me tell you, but I fixed it.
01:11:16.000So I asked this intern to bring it up to the office.
01:11:20.000The data director called me, I think, 48 hours later, offered me a job, and I said, you can't take me without my brother because he actually loves Donald Trump even more than I do.
01:11:28.000God, you're a right hustler, you, aren't you?
01:11:30.000First of all, yeah, Weaseled your way in through the intern.
01:11:35.000Then when you're given the good grace of a job offer, you're like, Gabe's coming.
01:11:39.000I said, trust me, you're not going to win without my little brother.
01:11:43.000Gabe now, he's in charge of data, is that right?
01:11:45.000Yeah, so he did data analytics back then too.
01:11:48.000And at the beginning, Trump was polling at 2%?
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01:12:40.000It may be the acquisition of a crazy pet that's profligate and having too many kittens.
01:12:44.000That would mean it's necessarily a cat.
01:12:46.000Or it could be a reckless and ridiculous tattoo.
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01:14:52.000We have more like state-specific ones.
01:14:54.000So, I mean, it depends, but, you know, we're calling into usually swing states, but it's about getting people out to vote when we're close to election day.
01:15:00.000And then also just asking people who they're voting for, getting that data and sending it back to the campaign.
01:15:42.000There's one woman, I won't say her last name, but her name's Eileen.
01:15:45.000She, I think, was a nurse who changed her shift to work nights so she could volunteer all day.
01:15:51.000I think she made the most phone calls of anyone in the country.
01:15:54.000I mean, there were people driving in seven hours just to be in Trump Tower to make these calls.
01:15:59.000The amount of purple hearts and awards and letters and things that people sent in.
01:16:03.000There were days that were really, really hard in there, obviously, political campaign.
01:16:06.000I would just go to this back office we had where we kept all the gifts and letters people sent in to us and sit on the floor reading them.
01:16:12.000The amount of people that had some kind of faith restored because of this man, the things that they sent him, the things they said to him.
01:16:18.000I had never seen that kind of stuff in my life, and I think the volunteers were a good amount of the reason that I believed that he was going to win when no one else did.
01:16:26.000While all this was happening, and Donald Trump's being continually vilified in the media and condemned, and let's face it, some public blunders were made, in particular the leaked audio of what we would all have to say was a rather inappropriate remark.
01:16:41.000How are you reconciling that with your sense that this is a person that is heroic?
01:16:48.000Because, you know, like I recognize people say dumb stuff.
01:16:50.000I've said a bunch of dumb stuff in my own life.
01:16:52.000How were you dealing with the public perception of Donald Trump, this hugely vilified man, condemned as like, you know, people saying literally this is worse than Hitler?
01:17:02.000Or at least on part of it, I don't know if anyone's said it worse.
01:17:05.000How are you, how are you, as someone who's very proud of your heritage... I've actually heard them say it worse than Hitler.
01:17:15.000How are you reconciling that with the experience you're having, with the various people who seem of good faith, and your own experiences of that movement?
01:17:22.000I think the answers are the volunteers.
01:18:01.000When I say people sent in I mean, it was truly purple hearts, gold stars, like people's military awards.
01:18:07.000They sent in notes for him to sign, notes just for him to know how much they supported him.
01:18:12.000People, I also ran, there was like a few phone lines I had to set up so volunteers could send in like their, you know, questions or concerns or things because we were trying to deal with the amount of volunteers we had and that we were very short-staffed compared to a real presidential campaign or Hillary Clinton's, for example.
01:18:25.000So I was getting all these voicemails and the amount of love people had for this man, that's why I kept going.
01:18:30.000And my job was very easy compared to most.
01:18:31.000People at the top worked much harder, but even for me it was very stressful.
01:18:34.000But I got to interact with some of the most incredible, down-to-earth, just middle America, incredible human beings that want the best for this nation.
01:18:42.000Nothing more, just the best for America and thought Donald Trump was it.
01:18:46.000Do you think that there is a legitimacy to the support that he has galvanised?
01:18:50.000Because again, many of the detractors of Donald Trump, and let's face it, even though there's a sense now that many of them are centralised in, for example, urban areas, or the professional media class, say, or professional class, or people within particular states or cities, there's still a sense, I think Elizabeth, That people say that whilst Trump has harnessed the power of the people that you've described, the people that make any nation great, not just your country, but mine too, people that work in civil and civic professions, people that are willing to sacrifice for their nation, whether that's through military service or through working in areas like health, what people, the detractors of Donald Trump say, is that he doesn't genuinely represent those interests, that he's a misanthrope and a
01:19:37.000misogynist and you know we all know the things that Trump is condemned for.
01:19:41.000How do you, do you not think there's some legitimacy to that charge or that claim rather
01:21:02.000I just started telling the story because it just happened, but I think it was 10 days ago or so, my mom, who's the biggest animal lover in the world, found a Facebook post about some dog that was going to be put down.
01:21:13.000And my mom was like, I can't stand for this, obviously.
01:21:15.000And she called everyone she knew to get this dog in Texas out of the shelter.
01:21:18.000She was paying the shelter money to not put this dog down.
01:21:21.000And she, you know, last minute she was like, I don't have anyone.
01:21:23.000I have to fly to Texas and save the dog myself.
01:21:26.000So I texted Laura Trump, his daughter-in-law, the co-chair of the RNC now, who I work with regularly, who is known for, you know, her love of animals.
01:21:38.000That was the same day that we at the RNC, by the way, got a disgusting package of blood sent to us.
01:21:44.000When I texted her, it was maybe 20 minutes before a huge box hit that she was doing, and I just said, hey, help me save this dog.
01:21:49.000That's the Trump family that I know, and I understand people see something else because that's the way he's portrayed in the media, so I almost don't judge those that think of him a certain way.
01:21:58.000I judge those that portray him that way, knowing it's not the truth.
01:22:33.000He just doesn't, and his family doesn't, and there's a reason people around the country see what they see.
01:22:38.000I understand this weird elitism thinking that you know better than everyone in America because you have this degree or that degree or you're on television, but if millions of Americans see something in him, instead of demonizing them, why not take it upon yourself to try to see what they see?
01:22:51.000If you care at all about this country, maybe just do that for five minutes.
01:22:57.000I find that very surprising myself, Elizabeth.
01:23:00.000The constant condemnation and criticism of people to support Trump and no attempt at all to address the issues that are creating, generating and increasing this support.
01:23:11.000And as a person who's faced some pretty serious condemnatory language and attacks myself, I'm aware how powerfully a media machine can generate hysteria and hatred when it decides to do that.
01:23:25.000The common trope around Trump, and this election in particular, is that it was irresponsible to vote for Trump, that you have to vote for Joe Biden.
01:23:34.000We saw Robert De Niro on the courtroom steps removing his mask, even though it seemed to me that he's relatively safe COVID-wise.
01:23:43.000At any moment saying that you know that we're in real peril, real peril from Trump and what's slowly dawning on me as a former member of the Hollywood establishment is that actually a greater threat to democracy Are these authoritarian, centralising, controlling, censoring, surveilling, warmongering politicians that masquerade under the auspices of compassion while condemning 50% of the population as racists and maniacs, even though Trump's support appears to be on the rise?
01:24:19.000Since being in this country, I'm sensing a different temperature.
01:24:22.000I'm sensing that if someone is clearly that much of a threat to the establishment, this is a person that we have to look at Very, very seriously.
01:24:30.000Even people that would never have dreamed of voting Trump before.
01:24:34.000We have to recognise that we are at a critical moment.
01:24:36.000Not just because of what's happening nationally in this great nation of yours, but because of the threat of escalation of war.
01:24:43.000In particular, the ongoing and potentially seriously irresponsible support of a war between Ukraine and Russia, where diplomacy is surely the solution.
01:24:53.000Where America might be deployed in order to bring about peace, rather than escalate war.
01:24:59.000I don't know if you remember, he was doing a CNN town hall, and she was asked about the Russia-Ukraine war.
01:25:06.000And she asked, who do you support in the war?
01:25:08.000And he said, I want everyone to stop dying.
01:25:12.000That's where we've gotten to as a society, where you have to pick a team, apparently, instead of saying, I want people to stop dying, which should have been America's answer from the start in every single war.
01:25:24.000That's not what we see right now in Gaza.
01:25:25.000That's not what we see in Russia, Ukraine.
01:25:44.000But they're also laughing at his supporters, many of which, like my parents, come from countries where they see this happening regularly and who are not able now To distinguish between the legal system here and the legal system where they came from.
01:25:55.000And those people are being laughed at.
01:25:57.000Instead of being transparent and saying, we hear your concerns, but this is why we did this, they're laughing at people here as if they're crazy Trump supporters, when in reality that's not the case.
01:26:06.000I think you mentioned just now, people are coming over to the Trump side, especially after this case, by the way.
01:26:11.000We looked at the numbers when it comes to donations that came in.
01:26:14.000We raised over 30 million in six hours after the verdict, over 50 million in 24 hours.
01:26:27.000People's eyes are open, not because they love Donald Trump, like a lot of people do, but because they're seeing a system that they once ran away from, and they're seeing it happen here, and they're seeing a government that doesn't want to answer their concerns about the system.
01:26:51.000They're saying you're crazy for thinking anything is weaponized, you're crazy for thinking anyone is against Donald Trump, and you suck for supporting him too.
01:26:57.000And that is the opposite of what we should be doing in this country.
01:27:01.000To see the judiciary, which has to be as best as possible, an objective institution used to adjudicate fairly in complex legal matters, metastasized into a weapon as it is being That's happening increasingly, not just across your country, but elsewhere, that people are using the institutions of democracy to control, curtail and shut down their opponents.
01:27:26.000And that's something that we always understood as a hallmark of tyranny.
01:27:29.000Once there is no such thing as justice, we're in trouble.
01:27:33.000In fact, I've been saying for a while, Elizabeth, I don't know what you feel about this, mate, When we look at like the writing of George Orwell and his vision of a dystopia which is sort of brutal and I guess Stalinist in its aesthetic, the boot stamping on a human face forever.
01:27:50.000When we look at Kafka, Franz Kafka, the Czech writer's depiction of bureaucratic dystopias where you don't know what you've done wrong and what's happening to you and where the evidence has come from.
01:28:01.000When you look at the writing of Aldous Huxley and his depiction of a dystopia as a place where you might be happy to be because of the soma and that you're free to vote for anybody as long as it's Joe Biden, I feel that what technocracy, tyranny and technological dictatorship has become is a kind of new feudalism that we can learn a lot about from looking at the literature of Orwell, Huxley, Kafka and that this is a far greater threat than the kind of idea that we're being sold, that Trump is a kind of revival of the charismatic and military and militaristic dictators of the last century.
01:28:40.000As the brilliant American commentator and writer Martin Goury, a former CIA analyst, continually points out, you don't have fascist dictatorships led by men in their 70s that don't have control over a militia.
01:28:57.000The hysteria, around Donald Trump it seems to me is the only weapon left in a corrupt and broken system that is more in danger and in fact has already become more dictatorial than the thing that they're telling us we have to fear.
01:29:14.000I had to use his book as an example the other day when I was trying to explain to people why it is that so many like my own parents are concerned about what's going on.
01:29:22.000I don't know if you remember In Animal Farm.
01:29:35.000The last maybe three sentences of the book when the pigs are in a room with the humans that formerly were in control and the other animals are looking in, right?
01:29:53.000The people that took power are unable to let it go, and we've become almost indistinguishable from the very countries that we criticize ourselves every single day.
01:30:02.000When Joe Biden stands up and criticizes Russia, criticizes all these countries, as he should, by the way, he's not realizing that when Americans now look at his own legal system, we've become the exact same thing.
01:30:12.000Our legal system is indistinguishable, if you're looking at what happened to Donald Trump just now, from so many countries that Americans fled from.
01:30:26.000And people here have very valid concerns.
01:30:28.000How often is a president, five months from an election, a former president, possibly future president, leading in all polls, by the way, is, you know, threatened with jail time?
01:30:36.000Where does that happen except in these fascist countries that everyone fled from to come here?
01:30:41.000And then, like I said, when Americans are asking why this is happening and if this is okay and if this is correct, they're demonized left and right.
01:30:47.000This doesn't happen in the United States of America.
01:31:09.000This incredible ability that he has for coming up with catchphrases, condemnatory nicknames, and kind of memeable linguistics is one of these inherent skills he has that his detractors are unable to nullify.
01:31:28.000Rumble is a committed free speech platform.
01:31:31.000Rumble, first of all, couldn't operate out of France because they refused to take down Russia Today's content, believing, in my view correctly, that people should be able to decide for themselves whether or not something's a bit of propaganda.
01:31:43.000I look at a bit of Russian propaganda and, you know, I'm not saying I'm beyond being duped, of course not, I've been fooled a thousand times, but I'd like to decide for myself whether or not this is a piece of Russian propaganda or a piece of American propaganda, English or French propaganda.
01:31:56.000Not only, though, are Rumble not able to operate out of France, they can't operate out of Brazil, can't operate out of Russia.
01:32:01.000Now, the media that's continually condemned Rumble for being a sort of a Russian psy-op, when Russia kick Rumble out of their territory, the legacy media don't report on that.
01:32:13.000They don't say, oh, well, there's something must be going on because Rumble aren't able to operate out of Russia anymore.
01:32:17.000And yet YouTube are, as Chris Pavlovsky, our CEO here at Rumble, pointed out.
01:32:22.000What are YouTube facilitating in Russia that Rumble wouldn't, that means that they can still operate out of there?
01:32:29.000This shows us, I suppose, that free speech is very, very important.
01:32:32.000And people have recognized the significance of free speech.
01:32:35.000We can't make this content without our partners and sponsors.
01:33:48.000And this is while you have an administration that's emulating his policies, plagiarising from Donald Trump while simultaneously criminalising him through the weaponisation of the legal system.
01:33:58.000In a straight choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, if you care about democracy if you care about freedom.
01:34:03.000I don't know how you can do anything other than vote for Donald Trump for precisely the reasons that they claim that you can't vote for Donald Trump.
01:34:10.000They act as if a vote for Donald Trump is almost like you're directly voting for Armageddon.
01:34:15.000Like you see hysterical performances outside of courtrooms, endless MSNBC bombast But I'm starting to think that, no, a greater threat to democracy is this kind of technological feudalism that tells you that it cares about you and it's protecting vulnerable people, all the while increasing censorship, increasing the funding of wars, increasing the division between ordinary Americans.
01:34:40.000I think that the Armageddon that everyone's warning everyone of actually started when Joe Biden took office.
01:34:46.000What we're seeing in this country and around the world, World War III, I mean, people talk about this every single day because of what's happening in Ukraine, because of what's happening in Gaza.
01:34:56.000Look at all the issues Americans are facing.
01:34:58.000This all started when Joe Biden took office.
01:35:00.000The disjunct between reality and the discourse is what frightens me most of all.
01:35:05.000The idea of this kind of Kafkaesque, Huxleyesque, Orwellian nightmare continuing all the while while they're telling you that they're helping you, it's a far greater threat than their constant portrayal of Trump as a mad strongman figure, a kind of 21st century reiteration of the despotism of the last century.
01:35:24.000For me, what we are facing now is a bigger threat than that.
01:35:28.000It's almost like when Joe Biden, I think last week or two weeks ago, said when he came into office, we had a 9% inflation rate.
01:35:36.000But people believe that they will believe whatever he says, whatever the mainstream media tells them, and not do the research for themselves.
01:35:41.000They truly believe the American people will listen to their portrayal of Donald Trump instead of remembering what life was like when he was in the White House.
01:35:50.000I think it's going to come back to bite them in the butts on November 5th, 2024.
01:35:54.000Yeah, I think I'd be frightened if there was a further four years of Joe Biden.
01:35:58.000I mean, this with all due respect doesn't look like a person who's potentially going to endure for that long.
01:36:04.000I think the trajectory of the country economically, militarily, And in terms of stuff that I care about, like free speech and censorship and the criminalization of free speech and the free exchange of ideas, frightens me, Elizabeth.
01:36:16.000And I never thought that I'd be a person that would say that if you care about democracy, if you care about America, if you care about world peace, you will be safer in the hands of Donald Trump than in the trembling and tremulous fist of Joe Biden.
01:36:32.000In one way, one of the ways that his rise, other than you and your brother, was extraordinary and astonishing to most people, is that if you look only at legacy media, there's no way this guy's going to win.
01:36:53.000Not only was I proven wrong in that regard, I was proven wrong in terms of what represents a real threat to democracy.
01:37:01.000Is it a figure like Donald Trump or is it an administration that currently supports limitless war, that currently funds limitless war, that currently surveils and censors and uses the media as a propagandist amplifier rather than an independent adjudicator?
01:37:17.000And is not beyond using any institution, as you have rather well articulated, including the judiciary, to attack its opponent, as well as the fact that it's condemned entire populations.
01:37:28.000Free speech is massive and is significant.
01:37:31.000The movement around organisations and platforms like Rumble, I think, is an evolution of what Trump was able to achieve on X, then Twitter.
01:37:39.000He was able to bypass these corrupt institutions and reach a base.
01:37:43.000And the gatekeepers were unable To mediate and control the rise in popularity.
01:37:51.000Do you see the increase in censorship as well as the ongoing crushing and attacks that people that have dissenting views, whether that's a dissenting view like you hold, because it is dissenting to be a young person in the area of entertainment that's Republican and an advocate for Donald Trump.
01:38:10.000And also I have experienced extraordinary attacks also.
01:38:14.000Do you see that part of the attack on free speech is the desire to establish control over any means that could be used to confront and potentially override the establishment power that is clearly starting to disintegrate?
01:38:37.000Watch the Washington Post headline always, democracy dies in darkness.
01:38:40.000It's weird all the people that are screaming that are allowing it to die because they want everything to be dark all the time.
01:38:45.000There's no transparency left and those that ask for it are demonized.
01:38:48.000And that happens in everything, whether you're asking about a war, when you're asking about election, you're asking about anything, you were demonized because you're not allowed to ask questions anymore.
01:39:05.000So even though they couldn't censor him, they censored all of his supporters.
01:39:08.000They censored those that supported him, even in small ways here and there with certain things that he said that weren't, you know, crazy MAGA base members.
01:39:25.000If they want to shut any one of us down, they can do that.
01:39:28.000And I think people are only starting to see now how serious that is because of what happened to him in this trial.
01:39:32.000It's easy to say, well, this person said what they said.
01:39:34.000They shouldn't be allowed on Twitter anymore and think that you're in the right because what they said was wrong or mean or racist or anything else.
01:40:04.000Who's going to believe me about what Hitler said?
01:40:05.000Who's going to believe me about what people around the world or on college campuses here now are saying and thinking if we're not allowing it to be out there?
01:40:12.000You have to put everything out there so people can decide for themselves what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong.
01:40:18.000Otherwise, no one's going to know what's out there, what's okay to say, and we're going to have one administration deciding that this is okay and that's not.
01:40:24.000The next one, whoever it's going to be, is going to fight back and do their own thing And America becomes a ping-pong game between people that like certain things and those that don't like it, and Americans being toyed with every single time.
01:40:35.000Because no one is allowed free speech anymore, or free thought, which is even more important.
01:40:38.000Free speech is easy to get confused with because of hate speech.
01:40:52.000Freedom of thought was shut down after the 2016 election.
01:40:55.000I think you're right that free speech has no value at all unless it's the free speech of people you disagree with and even of sometimes, you know, there are already laws about speech that's inciting hatred and violence and those are very, very sensible and necessary regulatory measures.
01:41:14.000But without free speech, many other values start to fall away because you can't, where do we achieve consensus?
01:41:21.000Where do we find the areas that we can agree amidst the many areas where as human beings we are necessarily and inevitably going to disagree?
01:41:46.000aspects of nature that appear to be evident to many, many people and have
01:41:50.000historically never been queried or inquired about. There's a sort of a bad
01:41:54.000faith project being undertaken to prevent people forming alliances that
01:41:59.000might otherwise not be possible but are absolutely necessary if we're to change
01:42:03.000the world. And one of the things I think is interesting because I'm English so
01:42:06.000I'm not so ensnared within the particularities of the American
01:42:10.000political landscape but obviously it's understood and often commented on the
01:42:14.000the ascent of Donald Trump coincided with the Brexit movement in our country
01:42:19.000and both of these political events, epochal in their own ways, are
01:42:24.000are indicators of I feel something that is significant and that you have alluded to several times that there is a kind of misanthropic disdain for ordinary people in our kind of democracies.
01:42:37.000The basket of deplorables remark being one of the great indicators that the establishment regards some people as being beyond the ability to participate in electoral democracy, that they just want them condemned, silenced, shut down, and they'll call them racist, they'll call them homophobe, they'll use whatever smears are necessary to prevent voices that are about bringing together popular movements so that representative democracy can flourish, so that people can control their own lives as sovereign, can control their own communities, can control their own states based on the electoral principles that this country was built upon, and any sensible country
01:43:14.000What do you think about that kind of contempt that is visible in political discourse?
01:43:19.000And do you feel that Donald Trump is a person that is capable of bypassing that contempt?
01:43:26.000Because certainly he plays rhetorical games when it comes to his opponents that I think flirt with, shall we say, contempt.
01:43:34.000And there's no question that the people that hate and attack Donald Trump use contempt for him and everybody.
01:43:39.000But what do you think about the other direction?
01:43:41.000It's weird because I have to sit here and tell you that a billionaire from New York City understands and appreciates the common man more than others do, but that is actually the case.
01:43:51.000Anyone I know that spends five minutes with Donald Trump tells you that it looked like he actually cared about what they were saying.
01:43:57.000I've never seen him in a room with anyone, not say hello to them, not ask them for their opinion.
01:44:02.000He's very big on asking people their opinion.
01:44:04.000He was very good at connecting with people.
01:44:06.000Since 2016 everyone always laughed at everything he said either because they called him racist or everything else or because they just thought it was silly not realizing that for some reason that was going to propel him further in the polls.
01:44:15.000He's very good at understanding what the American people are thinking and whether you like him or don't like him I think many people agree with that.
01:44:21.000For someone that was never in politics, he's very good at politics.
01:44:26.000He almost tells them what they want and then they realize in the moment that he's right.
01:44:30.000He's very good at connecting with the common man.
01:44:32.000I think it's because he actually talks to people.
01:44:34.000I've never seen him walk by a janitor without asking him how his day was.
01:44:37.000So for me, I think people in power Like you said, the disdain is probably the best word, but it's almost as if they think that those people don't exist.
01:44:45.000I remember my dad coming back right before Brexit, and he was telling me that all his friends told him it was never going to happen and laughed, much like they did in 2016.
01:44:53.000And he said every taxi driver told him how they were voting.
01:44:56.000And he came home and he said, I know what's going to win.
01:45:16.000They just harness the power that they have, take more and more from people, demonize people at the same time, and try to divide us further because they know the more divided the people are, the more powerful the government is.
01:45:26.000That's the only way for them to win is for people to hate each other.
01:45:29.000I have no problem being friends with Republicans and Democrats and liberals and everything else in between.
01:45:40.000And for some reason, for Americans to tell me, people that were raised here to tell me that I'm a bad person for how I'm voting so they can't be in my life, that baffles me.
01:45:48.000It doesn't make any sense to me, especially everything my family escaped from, to get to vote and be publicly proud of their vote.
01:45:56.000But then you watch it and you realize this has been ingrained in so many people because they want us divided.
01:46:01.000The best way to have power in any society is to divide the people.
01:46:05.000There are more people than there are powerful people at the top.
01:46:08.000But if they're all divided, then the powerful people can continue to win.
01:46:10.000Continue to take from us, continue to divide, continue to get away with the policies that you were mentioning.
01:46:14.000Funding wars, murdering people left and right in wars that we don't have to answer for because the people are too distracted hating their neighbor instead of asking why people are dying in Russia and Ukraine.
01:46:23.000And we continue to send money and to fund that very war and fund those deaths without any kind of solution or explanation.
01:46:29.000And then we have to hate those who disagree with our policy towards Ukraine instead of asking them why they feel a certain way and trying to stop what's going on over there.
01:47:12.000And they know that the victories that happen Let's say even overseas, with the victories that happen that our government celebrates, the American people don't celebrate.
01:47:19.000Because we've been separated from everyone that's having any kind of decision-making power.
01:47:24.000At the same time, they've also separated us from our family and our friends and everyone that we're supposed to be next to, regardless of how they voted in the 2016 election.
01:47:34.000No one wants to know anymore who says what they want to know how you voted in 2016 and how you're going to vote now.
01:47:39.000And that's what this administration has been very successful at doing is demonizing every single person in this country, especially, of course, Trump supporters, because that's how they win.
01:47:48.000Yeah, you're talking about like quite essential human values that I suppose usually derived, Elizabeth, from a spiritual perspective of respect, compassion, willingness to listen and open-mindedness.
01:48:05.000I think these are really, really important values and actually transcend what we have
01:48:10.000to accept is a temporal debate that on some level we are operating in eternity.
01:48:17.000You know, this is an important moment in America because 2024 is coming up and we're in it,
01:49:09.000And my prayer is that whatever happens in this election, the kind of values that you've articulated incredibly well and communicated brilliantly, come to the forefront of politics.
01:49:20.000And that people, even and especially people that dislike Donald Trump, are willing to say, well, you know, I want people to stop dying.
01:49:29.000ain't a dumb thing to say and the significant support of a massive part of America is something
01:49:34.000that should be taken seriously and open heartedly and open-mindedly not just condemned because
01:50:22.000And I think that the only way to confront that is through a kind of a return to and adherence to the sort of values you were mentioning there.
01:50:31.000I agree, it's... I was talking to my dad actually before I took the RNC job.
01:51:38.000It's not fun for us because now I have to argue with my neighbor and explain to them that I don't support this man who wants to tear down the institutions that we have here.
01:52:08.000I don't think I definitely haven't seen it.
01:52:10.000in anything but success for this country and unity for the country because I mean he was a staple in this country for how many years in New York City especially like he knows what it means when Americans are together he always says he was there on 9-11 he remembers the days after that he knows what it means and I'm sure in some way it hurts his heart to see the things that you and I are talking about now it is horrible what's happened and all he wants people to be unified again to stop hating each other for how they happened to vote in one election or two or three.
01:52:36.000And I think the problem is that not enough people realize that what is said in the media just isn't true.
01:52:40.000It's said to rile people up in one way or the other.
01:52:47.000It's so easy to get riled up, to hear what is being shouted at us constantly and to get angry.
01:52:52.000But in reality, it's better to look at what the candidate says himself.
01:52:55.000And I assure you, Donald Trump has said and will continue saying it.
01:52:58.000He just wants success for this country and us to be unified again.
01:53:01.000And it's, I know it's easy to listen to MSNBC and CNN and believe something else because we've been wired to believe them now for so long, but that's not what he wants.
01:53:08.000And that's not what the majority of his supporters wants, not what his staff wants, not what anyone wants.
01:53:23.000I've become Christian recently and I really would like to publicly declare a prayer for peace, for peace in all of the regions of the world, for all of the disputes that are costing people their lives right now.
01:54:14.000I met him like, it must have been, I think it must be 2009 because I hosted the VMAs that year and it was the year when Kanye came on stage when Taylor Swift was, do you remember that?
01:55:05.000But like, you know, like, at that point, actually, he wasn't running for office or anything.
01:55:09.000So it wasn't like a politically charged thing at that point.
01:55:11.000Donald Trump hadn't been vilified then in the way that he had been.
01:55:14.000I was pretty rude about him, actually, because I was doing stand up comedy and I made some jokes, pretty cheap jokes, you know.
01:55:19.000And then I wrote him a letter of apology.
01:55:22.000I had to write a letter of apology to him and the filmmaker, Oliver Stone, because Oliver Stone was using Trump's buildings to film Wall Street 2, I think, something like that.
01:55:29.000So it was a really weird day for me to have to write a letter of apology to Donald Trump, a letter of apology to Oliver Stone.
01:55:35.000And I'll tell you, man, it's like, what an extraordinary time.
01:55:39.000Since then, Donald Trump has become this sort of like both beacon and wrecking ball in American institutional and cultural life, depending, of course, on the inflection.
01:55:49.000And it's extraordinary now to sort of hear a perspective from someone with your very
01:55:54.000particular past and your very particular affinities and affiliations speak so passionately but
01:56:02.000also plainly and simply about why you believe in Donald Trump.
01:56:07.000You've really given me a lot to think about and you've been as a spokesperson for the,
01:56:12.000you know, would you say spokesperson for the MAGA movement or a public?
01:56:33.000It's been a brilliant opportunity to listen to you and spend time with you.
01:56:37.000And I really wish you all the best because the principles that you're conveying are transcendent of the temporary machinations and fluctuations of politics.
01:56:54.000Let me know if it's changed your perspective at all, or if you're pretty dyed in the wool and know the direction that your vote's heading already.
01:57:02.000And please join us next week for another extraordinary week of conversations live from Rumble.
01:57:09.000Russell in residence at Rumble continues for another week.
01:57:12.000We've got some fantastic guests, some amazing conversations, potentially even The most significant conversation of all.
01:57:19.000Remember, subscribe to our channel, give us a like, and become an Awake and Wonder if it's something that suits you.
01:57:25.000See you again next week, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.