This week on Stay Free With Russell Brand, we look at hypocrisy in the Democratic Party, including the White House Correspondents Dinner and Joe Biden quoting Thomas Jefferson. Plus, we learn more about Robert F. Kennedy and why the mainstream media are trying to paint him as an anti-vaccine crusading "vaxxer." And we have a special guest on the show, Ryan Grim, who tells us why he thinks Joe Biden should have the right to call himself a journalist. Stay Free with Russell Brand is out now, wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! You re an awakening wonder. You re wonderful, you're awakening. You're awakening! You're wonderful. You are wonderful. Thank you for awakening. - Russell Brand Stay Free, Stay Free. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. We do not own the rights to any music used in this episode. All credit goes to original artists, except that which is credited to their respective labels and other creators. This episode was produced and edited by Twisterium Records, LLC. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review and/or a review on iTunes, and we'll be looking out for the next episode of Stay Free in the next week's episode. Thank you! We are working on a new song, "Sputum" by The Good Mythical, we're working on it! - it's out now! -- we're looking forward to hearing from you, too! -- Thank you so much! -- we love you! -- The Good Morning America. -- Good Morning, Good Morning! -- -- -- Thank You! -- We'll be back next week! -- And we'll see you soon! -- Good Luck! -- Love Ya'll! -- Matt & Good Luck, Matt, Matt & Jack, Matt Goodnight, -- Matt Goodell -- Cheers, Matt and Jack Good Morning... -- Jack, Amy Goodell, Cheers! -- Sarah Good Luck? -- Sarah, Sarah Goodell & Joe Biden, Sarah Good Morning -- - Matt Goodness, Matt Gooding, Thank You, Joe Biden - Jack, Sarah Badal... Jack,
00:00:32.000We're going to look at some hypocrisy, in particular the hypocrisy of the Democrat Party when it comes to claims around rigged elections.
00:00:40.000If you're watching this on YouTube now, by the way...
00:00:43.000After about 10-15 minutes, we will disappear into the annals, I said annals, of Rumble, where we can speak more freely.
00:00:50.000We're not there to discuss conspiracy theories, well, a little bit, and we're certainly not there to do anything other than bring people together and to speak freely against the establishment.
00:00:59.000We've got such an exciting week this week.
00:01:00.000We're going to be learning more about Robert F. Kennedy and why the mainstream media en masse are attacking him as an anti-vaxxer.
00:01:09.000We've got a great guest on, Ryan Grim.
00:01:11.000He's going to be telling us about Well, we're going to be talking a little bit about the White House Correspondents Dinner, which Ryan Grimm, who has the nerve to call himself a journalist, was chucked out of last year for brawling.
00:01:23.000And I think one man said the back of his hand was scratched.
00:01:26.000Another fellow said he received, and this is a direct quote, a Chinese burn.
00:01:30.000And I'm not even sure that you can say that anymore.
00:01:32.000It's probably not the sort of thing that people should say.
00:01:36.000We're going to start though by looking at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
00:01:39.000Why I like the White House Correspondents Dinner is because it's a living embodiment of the corruption and collusion that exists between the state and the mainstream media.
00:01:51.000Joe Biden, your president, had the out-and-out nerve to quote Jefferson and Jefferson's views on the media.
00:02:51.000On a serious note, Jill, Kamala, Doug and I and members of our administration are here to send a message to the country and quite frankly to the world.
00:03:04.000I'm not pausing, I'm just showing you that this don't work no more.
00:03:08.000The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society, not the enemy.
00:03:16.000Thomas Jefferson wrote Of course they're cheering that, because they are the press.
00:03:23.000You know, they've just had like four years of Trump saying, you know, fake news, fake news.
00:03:30.000I put it to you, whether you're watching this on YouTube or Rumble, where we'll do the whole show unexpurgated, that this is a sort of an onanistic circle jerk, a media masturbatory circle of self-congratulation, where everyone is drenched, not in news, but in...
00:04:23.000US corporations cashing in on... But don't worry about the free press that's holding power to account to complete Jefferson's quote before dear old Doddery Joe does.
00:04:37.000Thomas Jefferson wrote, we're left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government.
00:04:46.000I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.
00:04:50.000Right, so he's saying that a free media is more important than the government.
00:04:56.000But how many do you think that we have a free media?
00:04:59.000Right now there are stories that we can't discuss on YouTube which is a media platform that's regulated in a variety of ways.
00:05:06.000When we come off we're going to be talking about an Epstein story that's going to, I'm not going to use my usual metaphor like knock your knickers down because it doesn't seem appropriate with regard to that particular story, but we're going to be talking about Epstein's calendar.
00:05:17.000And it's not a calendar where Epstein's posing like February's a fireman with a kitten.
00:05:22.000March, he's got a little apron on and he's whipping up a cake with a bit of batter up his face.
00:06:04.000The way he got those boys to come together as a band, he took them to the top of most, the top of the pops, as they used to say amongst themselves in happier times.
00:06:12.000So listen to this bit as well, back to Joe Biden's White House circle.
00:07:58.000Do you know what the White House dinner, the point of the White House dinner is?
00:08:02.000Well, it's about freedom of speech, essentially.
00:08:04.000It's about the relationship with government and the press, or so-called freedom of speech.
00:08:08.000But on whose terms is this freedom of speech, Russ?
00:08:10.000Because if that freedom of speech was the type to which Jefferson was referring, Assange That's what he's referring to.
00:08:18.000He's talking about the type of journalists that want to challenge power, not the type of journalists that essentially promulgate and propagate the messages of the state, who themselves, in my view, are just the managerial class of a globalist corporate cartel.
00:09:31.000And might I even venture, little old us, Trying our best to keep you informed about stories that we believe matter, like the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, whom, indeed, if you notice, the two emergent smears of our time are your right wing, or your fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa right wing,
00:09:55.000Two terms that have almost had to be created to smear people.
00:09:59.000Now, RFK, because he is running for the leadership of the Democrat Party, or the presidential candidacy for the Democrat Party, I don't think they can use far-right without making the whole Democrat Party sound bad, can they?
00:10:49.000What the hell is drawing all these important men?
00:10:52.000Taiwan now has real-time intelligence sharing links with Five Eyes.
00:10:57.000So that means Five Eyes, which are the anglophonic countries and their various secret service agencies that I believe were part of the exposures of Snowden, actually.
00:11:07.000We learned about the extent of like... Because America ain't meant to spy on Americans.
00:11:12.000Britain ain't meant to spy on British.
00:11:14.000Australia ain't meant to spy on Australians.
00:11:55.000So obviously all the things we've spoken about loads of times, but when they're talking about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, we've had the Twitterphile revelations recently.
00:12:39.000They've actually gotten to the point where they're getting on Gareth's nerves.
00:12:42.000And that's something that I don't like to hear.
00:12:44.000This is what I did get on my nerves, actually.
00:12:47.000So in the coverage of the Correspondents' Dinner, no mainstream production made any mention of Assange or the contradiction between Biden's declaration fidelity to the First Amendment and the continued drive of his administration to extradite and jail Assange.
00:13:03.000That's what the collusion, I suppose, is about.
00:13:11.000A kind of consensus to double down and reiterate the framing.
00:13:21.000We don't talk about how the mainstream media, in particular TV networks, They generate the majority of their revenue by bundling together your data and selling it to other companies even more than porn sites do.
00:13:38.000So, in a way, it's a bit like the WEF.
00:13:41.000How the WEF operates is by PRing for globalist interests and making sure that the agenda stays within an acceptable framework that will never challenge the interests of the powerful.
00:13:54.000We've got to do something about the environment, but we're never going to meaningfully change what powerful organisations do.
00:13:59.000We've got to do something about pandemics, but we're never going to say, for example, start exercising all the time or eat healthy.
00:14:06.000That's not the kind of thing that's going to be on the agenda.
00:14:08.000The White House press correspondence dinner is essentially a coming together, as many circular, onanistic ceremonies are, Yeah, thank you.
00:14:21.000To establish what's discussed and what's not discussed and actually that recent story about Biden's cheat notes shows that, shows that they are given the, they discuss the questions in advance.
00:14:32.000You know, at least Donald Trump wouldn't go to it because there's bad blood between him and the media.
00:14:36.000Would you not prefer a degree of animosity between the state and those that are supposed to hold them to account?
00:14:43.000Particularly when you know, you know for a fact, whoever you are and whatever you believe in politically, that prior That means it's just rhetoric.
00:15:15.000The outbreak of new organisations such as Rumble, I have to say, and even YouTube at its best, with organisations like Breaking Point and Jimmy Dore, and obviously the kind of stuff that Joe Rogan talks about, and even organisations that are left of centre, like, what are we like?
00:15:29.000We like Redacted, and even people that don't like me, like, what's that one called?
00:15:37.000They're all out there being independent voices.
00:15:40.000But what I would say is, if you find yourself parroting the views of the establishment, that's a problem.
00:15:45.000They seem to think it's a greater problem if you find yourself attacking the establishment alongside people that they define as right-wing.
00:15:53.000But I don't think that's as big of a problem.
00:15:58.000You know, you can see that Tucker Carlson does have concerns about demographics, and me, that's not what I'm about.
00:16:03.000I'm about, like, that ordinary people from all cultures, all backgrounds, all identities should find new alliances and ways of loving one another in order that we may confront establishment power.
00:16:14.000Allow people to express themselves freely, whether that's traditionally or progressively.
00:16:18.000These are just simple terms that I use to try to avoid getting mired in this stuff.
00:16:22.000What I don't think we should be doing is finding ourselves on the same side as the Defence Department and the Pentagon and massive corporations.
00:16:29.000If you're doing their dirty work for them, you ain't on the right side.
00:18:32.000Tom Jones lookalike named Ian Stott, he's been sending me, he writes a lot of quite radical literature about revolution and global conspiracies and religion and it's a bit of an unusual combination of things to do, like to write books about anti-establishmentism and appear as Tom Jones at my mum's birthday.
00:18:53.000We've all got to have a day job, haven't we?
00:18:55.000You've got to do what you've got to do to survive.
00:21:19.000Register the hypocrisy as it came out of his lips.
00:21:24.000And I doubt many people in that room even did.
00:21:27.000That's how far apart they are from the rest of the public on this question.
00:21:32.000Ryan, your analysis chimes with ours in that what they do at events like that is they reiterate what the status quo is.
00:21:41.000They reiterate what the framing for debate is.
00:21:45.000That when the press that are supposed to hold power to account enter into a consensus that Julian Assange don't even register in your mind when talking about the criminalisation of journalists, that this is precisely the problem we have.
00:21:57.000The zeitgeist is being determined by banalised institutions that are not interested in democracy, that are not interested in transparency, that are not interested in free speech.
00:22:11.000No wonder you got your gander up and started kicking people on the tip of the dick.
00:22:15.000What sort of journalists get invited to White House Correspondents Dinner and why?
00:22:19.000Who gets invited, who don't get invited, Ryan?
00:22:22.000I mean, so DC is, you know, probably more than most cities in the United States, very status obsessed because it's all about power and politics.
00:22:30.000And so, you know, getting invited to it is a status symbol.
00:22:34.000But then on top of that, you needed to then have the best celebrity.
00:22:37.000This started around kind of the Obama years.
00:22:40.000That whichever news organization could get Scarlett Johansson or whatever, like to be at their table, then they would be one-upping the other ones, and then they would also invite their ad sales folks, and also then invite their big clients, like Dove Soap would be there, or like the guy from GM, or the guy from Cadillac would be there.
00:23:02.000And so you've got these news organizations that are attracting celebrities with Yeah, it feels like that.
00:23:09.000It feels saccharine and theatrical and appalling and ridiculous.
00:23:12.000And I feel like it cannot go on for much longer.
00:23:15.000And it's just a gigantic kind of money-making operation.
00:23:18.000Yeah, it feels like that. It feels saccharine and theatrical and appalling and ridiculous.
00:23:28.000And I feel like it cannot go on for much longer.
00:23:32.000What do you think about the candidacy of RFK and the early search there?
00:23:37.000We're going to have him on our show, Ryan.
00:23:53.000Ryan, perhaps you'll join us for a little bit of that game where we're going to look at old news and we'll marvel at the way that the news media has altered.
00:24:01.000Click the red button, you can join us.
00:24:02.000Remember, I do a festival every year from July the 14th to July the 17th, Community.
00:24:06.000There's a link in the chat for that as well.
00:24:08.000People like Vandana Shiva, Wim Hof, Satish Kumar will come, plus Cali Means, who talked about all that food corruption stuff.
00:24:16.000Tomorrow we've got Max Blumenthal on the show.
00:24:18.000What are we going to be talking to Max about?
00:24:19.000There's a really sort of relevant new story that Max was being incredibly vocal about.
00:24:58.000We're discussing the obvious and evident corruption and collaboration and even conspiracy perhaps that exists between the establishment and the press, but a bit of gossip.
00:25:09.000Is it true, Ryan, that you saw Don Lemon at a party over the course of the week?
00:25:16.000If so, did you kick him on the tip of the dick or was there too many barriers?
00:25:21.000I was nowhere near him, but I did look over and say, that is Don Levin.
00:25:27.000And the people around, everybody around me was kind of shocked because they didn't expect that he would kind of show his face in Washington or kind of in public after getting fired.
00:25:37.000But this was thrown, this was a party that was kind of thrown by his talent agency, UTA.
00:25:43.000And so maybe it was in his contract that he had to come and he didn't have a choice.
00:26:03.000His chest was pumped, puffed out and I see Tucker Carlson on a golf buggy the day after and it seems like as these mainstream media heads topple, they are not losing their dignity nor their gravitas.
00:26:15.000What do you think can be drawn from their deposition of these figures?
00:26:21.000Or capitation, I don't know what the right word is.
00:26:28.000And also, mate, what do you think about the sudden rise of RFK even without any mainstream media support and with this sort of coordinated onslaught for anti-vaccination stuff?
00:26:42.000Yeah, there's a huge opening for somebody to challenge Biden and actually beat him, is I think what this shows.
00:26:51.000can get all the way because of the nature of the kind of Democratic primary electorate, and also the media that he'll be up against.
00:26:58.000If you think back to 2016 and 2020, you know, Bernie Sanders very nearly beat Hillary Clinton and very nearly beat Biden in 2020, but was up against a Deeply hostile media, the entire time, as well as a an electorate, a significant portion of which is hostile to right the kind of MSNBC viewing electorate a good 80% of them just don't like somebody like a Bernie Sanders.
00:27:25.000And they also have a lot more trust in media than Republican voters do, and I think that's the big difference.
00:27:32.000I think that's why the right was able to take over the Republican Party, but the left has not been able to take over the Democratic Party, is that Democratic voters trust their media institutions.
00:27:41.000If the Washington Post, New York Times, and MSNBC are telling them something, a majority of Democratic voters Believe that.
00:27:50.000If they hear it on NPR, they believe that it's accurate and it's true.
00:27:54.000And those media institutions were deeply hostile to Sanders in 2020, and I think they'll be way, way more hostile to RFK Jr.
00:28:05.000Their approach is going to be to mock and belittle and ignore, but if it gets to a place where he can't be ignored anymore, when they turn their guns on him, Because it'll be very difficult to overcome that kind of trust in media institutions that so many kind of center-left Democratic voters still have.
00:29:07.000I mean, who were we talking to the other day?
00:29:08.000Saga from, you know, from your lot, like about how, like there's a, like there are so, there are about five, ten off the top of your head policies that 90% of Americans from a broad base would be in favor of, for example, around pharmaceutical, capping pharmaceutical prices meaningfully, you know, drug prices meaningfully.
00:29:27.000Well, no one even, sorry to jump in, no one even ever mentions in his history of being an environmental lawyer.
00:29:32.000I mean, that's the main thing about him.
00:29:36.000Because that's such a buzzword for the Democrat Party, like climate change and the environment.
00:29:42.000And he's won significant cases, hasn't he, RFK, against corporations that exploit the environment.
00:29:49.000I prefer to call him crazy than mention his work with environmental law.
00:29:55.000There's massive cases that you're talking about.
00:29:57.000Is that an indication of a complete lack of principles, Ryan?
00:29:59.000How are they going to countenance that when those kind of things, you know, with new independent media, those kind of stories can be told now?
00:30:08.000It depends on whether or not the independent media can penetrate the Democratic electorate enough because the two parties, that is the thing that is opening up possibilities that didn't exist before.
00:30:19.000But the two-party system over the years has been so effective at controlling the narrative because what it does is it includes people in each party that kind of agree with each other and they split along kind of either cultural or narrow distinctions.
00:30:38.000If you are somebody who, say, wanted a working-class party in, say, the late 19th century, you had half the politicians who were supportive of you in the Democratic Party, you had half over in the Republican Party, which perfectly makes it so there's also then, therefore, nobody that you can vote for.
00:30:58.000So, we're going to have to figure out how people who agree across the political spectrum are going to be able to find a mechanism to get their policies into Washington, get somebody represented that actually agrees with them, because you wind up in this partisan fight where you'll have people who might love everything about RFK Jr., but they're like, well, I'm not a Democrat, I'm not voting in the Democratic primary.
00:31:25.000You might have people who like a lot of the things they hear from some Republican candidates, but don't want to support them, and then you wind up with nobody.
00:31:34.000We've got Jack29er in our chat so you guys can see it in the chat if you want to.
00:31:38.000We don't even need to put it on screen because I guess you guys were all watching this on Locals.
00:31:41.000He pointed out that in 2004, George W. Bush spent $62 million campaigning against Kerry.
00:31:52.000There was an increase that the next election cycle or like the next yeah the next one Barack Obama versus McCain 69 million versus 59 million once again the person that spent the most money won Obama spent more than Romney in the next election at this time for a total of 126 million according to these figures Trump spent less than Clinton but it was still a total of 128 million spent on campaigning and And in the last cycle, $155 million was spent.
00:32:20.000Biden spending $81 million to Trump's $74 million.
00:32:26.000I feel that even the same thing is evident in sport, that expenditure represents and demonstrates success.
00:32:32.000But with something as significant and as important as politics, which is in danger of becoming as reductive and tribalized as sport, that there needs to be controls and caps on this type of expenditure.
00:32:44.000When you say about a new, emergent, potentially independent political force that's able to instantiate policies that are representative of a broad working class base, surely the priority above all else would be to revise, reform and radically alter the way that both political or all political parties are funded, end of donations.
00:33:05.000End lobbying and end this practice of people in Congress and the Senate owning stocks and shares in the companies they regulate.
00:33:11.000If we can start to even popularize these ideas do you think there's a possibility of a movement coalescing around it Ryan or do you just think it's too out there?
00:33:21.000No, I think that's where you'd have to start.
00:33:23.000Also, the numbers that you mentioned there didn't include super PACs, which started to come in to being after the 2011 Citizens United decision.
00:33:31.000And so even though you might look at that and say, well, the Clinton and Trump or the Biden and Trump elections only spent, say, two or three times as much as back in the 2000 or 2004 election, if you include outside spending from mostly corporate or billionaire class donors, Then you're getting into the billion-dollar range.
00:33:53.000Biden is likely to spend a billion dollars, which I can't do the math, but that's what, 20 times more than Democrats were spending in 2004 in just a short amount of time.
00:34:09.000A five-piece McNuggets is basically the same as the price it was 20 years ago, but a 20-fold increase in what people are spending in politics Yes, it's going to be used in all sorts of ways to tamp down the type of frustration you're talking about.
00:34:26.000Some type of independent public matching funds for candidates so that they don't have to rely on wealthy donors and corporations is the only thing that gives you a shot.
00:34:38.000Gareth, what was that stat you got there?
00:34:40.000It was like federal and state spending 2022 elections set to top 16.7 billion.
00:34:45.000Yeah, so as Ryan says, we're moving well into the billions for elections now.
00:34:49.000Think of the weapons we could send to Ukraine with that money, 70% of which wouldn't even reach the Ukrainians, but 50% of that money would end up with the MIC, while people in the military could still be dirt poor.
00:35:02.000It's actually the same thing, because most of the money that we're sending to Ukraine doesn't actually leave the Washington area, and most of the money spent in politics doesn't leave the Washington area either, so it's kind of a wash.
00:37:11.000This is our new item in our new entertainment-oriented show where we still attack the establishment, but this time with a smile on our face.
00:44:06.000Well, thank you very much for joining us.
00:44:08.000Tomorrow on Rumble, we'll be talking to Max Blumenthal, founder and editor of the Grey Zone, and join us on Rumble tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.