Stephen Crowder joins us live at Rumble HQ to discuss why he joined the company and why he thinks it's a good place to start a conversation about religion, politics, and the world at large. We also talk about how Rumble came to be and how it became a safe haven for people who want to talk about anything and everything. And we talk about why we think Russell Brand should have been on the show, and why the idea of free speech is a good thing. And, as always, thank you for tuning into SPOTIFY, and stay tuned for a new episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand Live on Tuesday nights at 8 PM ET on Comedy Central. Stay Free, Russell Brand! Subscribe to Stay Free with Russell Brand: on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, and Stitcher or wherever else you re listening to your favorite podchats. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a five star rating and review! We appreciate the support! Thank you so much for all the love, support, and support, stay free, and spread the word to your friends about this podcast! Stay Free! Timestamps: 5 stars is much appreciated and much appreciated! . 5 stars will get you an ad-free version of the podcast next week. 6 stars is a discount code! 7 stars means you re getting a better chance to win a chance to be featured on the next episode! 8 stars is also getting a shoutout! 9 days of the show. 9 stars is better than the next week! 10 stars gets a discount on the new episode. 11 days of a chance at a new ad-only version of my new ad 12 days of my ad 13 days of free 10 days of promo code and I ll be giving it out in the ad is a free promo code, so you get a discount, and I m not getting a discount promo code? 15 days of $89 a week, and they get it all day, they get all that deal, I ll get that deal. 13 months of the whole deal starts next week, so I ll win a discount deal, so they get a deal on my ad discount, they ll get it. 14 days of VIP promo code: $89 16 days of promotion starts Monday, I m giving it all.
00:11:17.000Stephen Crowder is joining us on Rumble now.
00:11:19.000You just had a scoop and threw it away.
00:11:22.000Like my dad, he'll do that with like punchlines.
00:11:23.000He's, I don't know if you have someone like this in your family, who rather than just sitting on it, he just will say something, he'll toss them like, Dad, that's the meanest, funniest thing I've ever heard.
00:11:34.000We've got 45 minutes right now to discuss the reasons that you've joined Rumble.
00:11:39.000In particular, for you and I, there's obvious areas where we wouldn't agree explicitly, overtly, but what we both agree with is our right to have public conversations about our beliefs, both political and spiritual, and perhaps through dialogue and conversation, reach areas of common ground and certainly to conduct these conversations in a spirit of mutual respect.
00:12:01.000Most people have known that you've been in a period of transition because it's been a big online story in itself. It's been a saga, Stephen. So will you just talk
00:12:10.000us through how you come to be on Rumble right now and why in particular you're joining Rumble?
00:12:14.000Well I take exception with period of transition because we know how they're going to take
00:12:17.000that. So I'm still me. But I do understand. No, I will say this. We've been in this period
00:12:23.000of transition actually and there have been some issues that we can discuss that we can't
00:12:26.000discuss contractually but a lot of suitors who came forward and Rumble was really just
00:12:33.000They understand the idea of free speech.
00:12:34.000Now, I've heard people complain, say, oh, Rumble's too right-wing.
00:12:36.000I go, hold on a second, you think Russell Brand is right-wing?
00:12:38.000Now, of course, if you allow all free speech, you're naturally going to have the people who've been ostracized, the people who've been censored, migrate there first.
00:12:46.000Hopefully, long-term, Rumble will be, you know, an alternative to a place like YouTube where people can actually speak freely.
00:12:51.000But, you know, we've been working with Rumble for a long time as sort of a mirror channel to YouTube.
00:12:57.000Because we were the reason for, you know, the new borderline content guidelines on YouTube.
00:13:53.000It's in the single digits as far as browse and search.
00:13:56.000And we never wanted to lose touch with everybody.
00:13:57.000We had Mug Club, and Mug Club is where people, you know, can sign up, and it's the premium service where you get a wonderful girthy hand-etched mug, but you also get additional content where we take chats.
00:14:07.000And that's what we're launching March 20th.
00:14:11.000It's $89.99 a year, so it's $10 less, and we actually, Gerald is here, we can announce that we've signed a new talent as well as doing a Friday show.
00:14:19.000We're going to be producing some stand-up specials.
00:14:21.000Brian Callum, Gerald will be doing a theology show with Brian Callum, questions about the Bible.
00:14:26.000Mr. Guns and Gear, and we're talking about two other comedians and hosts, will probably be there by March 20th.
00:14:32.000So you can go and sign up now at loudearthcracker.com slash Mug Club.
00:14:35.000We're not funded by a foreign caliphate, and unlike PBS who says viewers like you, and it's actually taxpayer dollars, we're funded by mug holders.
00:14:51.000Sometimes it's an easy sort of sell to say, hey, fight with us and we'll go and take it to Big Tech and then they're there at the cocktail parties.
00:14:57.000The new CEO of YouTube, you know him, Mohan?
00:15:06.000He was one of the guys who was involved with us having to remove like 50 videos off of our channel after the Vox Apocalypse that weren't in violation.
00:15:13.000It was just, you know, if you took these down, we might be able to allow your channel to stay.
00:15:18.000So when we heard that Susan Wojcicki was stepping down, I thought, great, and then I heard it was that guy, and I said, shit!
00:15:32.000So it's exactly what we used to do, which is four days a week, you know, at 10 a.m.
00:15:35.000Eastern, you get an hour, right, if you're on YouTube or if you're on Rumble, free.
00:15:39.000And then we always do, and we've been doing this for a long time, if you're a member of Mug Club, an additional hour of content every day for people who subscribe.
00:15:45.000And by the way, if you're just watching the free show, there is no free show if you don't join Mug Club, because we don't really do a bunch of live reads and sponsors, and we don't have any monetization from YouTube.
00:15:53.000So we're doing that, we're also adding a Friday show, and then adding other talent and creators, which was kind of a big undertaking.
00:16:00.000You know, as someone who just focuses on the creative, I don't want to run a business.
00:16:04.000But there really isn't much of an alternative, and Rumble has... We're betting on ourselves, that's the thing.
00:16:09.000Rumble allows us to bet on ourselves, while also kind of helping hedge that bet, because they do have our backs, which is the first time we've been in a position like that.
00:16:17.000I know a lot of you guys signed up for Mug Club before we left.
00:16:20.000You know, we were formally at The Blaze and we had no real way to reach you.
00:16:25.000Rumble has decided to pick up the tab and will be offering you, if you're on Mug Club Forever, the email list, a few months free to try and make up for what you guys lost.
00:16:32.000So they were willing to do that and foot that bill, which is really stand up for them to do.
00:16:36.000So people that are already on your mailing list, they're going to get the first couple of months of content?
00:16:42.000Because some of them sign, and you know, contracts end, and you're going, oh, people are signing up, but I can't tell them the contract's ending, and they sign up, let's say, in October, and they don't get the full year.
00:16:50.000We don't have any way to reach you, so we're giving you an extra, you know, three months free, $10 off and twice the content.
00:16:56.000That's as good as we can do right now, right?
00:17:00.000So I'm assuming that you were deliberating over where to take your content because it's been a story in itself since your circumstances changed.
00:17:52.000Cool, so is that something that you genuinely encourage and welcome and think that Rumble will deliver?
00:17:57.000Well, you know what, here's what I would ask you this, and I already know the answer so forgive me, but has Rumble ever come to you and tried to tell you what you have to do with your content?
00:18:38.000So, no, you're quite right that, you know, they're absolutely on the subject of free speech.
00:18:42.000It's a conversation that's been vibrant in this space because of Elon Musk and the Twitter files and the sort of transition that's taken place with his stewardship of the platform Twitter.
00:18:52.000And you think that Rumble is going to be at the vanguard of this?
00:18:55.000Well, they never, to go back to that, they've never asked us to shift our content ever.
00:18:59.000Even before we had a business relationship as we do now, where basically we're
00:19:02.000just airing our stuff on Rumble for free.
00:19:04.000And when I would get really excited is when YouTube, you know, we'd see, let's say,
00:19:07.000a hundred something thousand live viewers on YouTube. And then we would say, oh, okay,
00:19:11.000now it's down to 80, but we have 20 on Rumble. Now it's down to, and at one point it went down
00:19:15.000to 40 on YouTube and over 50 on Rumble where it tipped.
00:19:17.000Keep in mind, I've been on YouTube since 2006, but doing political content since 2009, and there
00:19:25.000Now, of course, it doesn't have the user base that YouTube does now.
00:19:28.000But the beauty with Rumble is they've never come in and tried to dictate content, and they've never said, you have to do 50 live reads, you have to do the show this way, you have to soften your edges.
00:19:38.000They're on board with what it is that people like you do, people like I, and we do very different things, but they want it to be a home for all of those voices.
00:19:44.000And look, as far as, will it be as big as YouTube?
00:19:48.000I don't know, but here's the thing, as long as you can speak truth, let the cards fall where they may.
00:19:53.000I saw a recent episode of yours where you were talking about The vaccine.
00:19:57.000And I know now we're multi-streaming to YouTube, so I'll be careful, but you're saying, can I talk about this or we have to wait until we're only on Rumble, right?
00:20:02.000Things that are now confirmed, by the way, from the CDC, things that are now confirmed by the NIH, we were suspended because Gerald on YouTube used a CDC resource Talking about flu deaths versus, which you can do now, but back then they said, well, it didn't violate our policies, but it's that people might not take COVID as seriously if you say that children are more likely to die from the flu.
00:20:23.000Now, if we're following a science, this is the issue, right?
00:20:25.000I understand working within systems to change the system.
00:20:29.000In other words, it's a YouTube sandbox, you play in it.
00:20:31.000Not when you reach the point where you're precluded from speaking the truth.
00:20:34.000In other words, who are you reaching if it's not the truth?
00:20:36.000And Rumble is willing to gamble and let the cards fall where they may and allowing the truth to stand on its own.
00:20:40.000And you're going to have right-wing people, more conservative people, migrate there first because they've sort of been exiled from big tech platforms.
00:20:47.000My God, it's nice to see some people actually try.
00:20:49.000When they say they're fighting big tech, they're fighting big tech, and I've been running up against that, you know, for years.
00:20:55.000It is a pride-swallowing siege that I'll never fully tell you about.
00:20:58.000I think it's very kind of you to reward Gerald with his own theology program after he's put your channel in jeopardy with these outrageous, Never saw it coming.
00:21:09.000If you were to tell me that he was the one who was gonna, he would be the reason we had two strikes, I wouldn't believe you.
00:21:14.000I would have thought something that I did for Cultural Appropriation Month, maybe Carrie Lake as a guest.
00:21:18.000Him, quoting the CDC, I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
00:21:21.000He shook me down afterwards, became CEO.
00:21:24.000So you have created a pretty powerful community there with your Mug Club.
00:21:29.000And some of the shows of yours that I've thought have really given me pause for thought, even though as we've already mentioned and will be clear to anybody that's familiar with our work, there are points of Disagreement, but as the cultural landscape continues to shift, as censorship continues to, broadly speaking, become exacerbated, it's clear that new forms of alliance and conviviality are going to be necessary.
00:21:52.000And I feel like the areas where we agree is generally personal, autonomy, the ability to run your own community.
00:21:59.000obviously and evidently we should make clear on this platform the right to speak freely
00:22:25.000But what I say is, well, when you silence people, for example, if we can't speak out against children transitioning, wherever someone lines up children on puberty blockers, and so we do jokes about that.
00:22:34.000You know, one of the episodes we got suspended was there was a sexual assault that took place in a prison, an all-female prison.
00:22:40.000And it was a formerly male, I would argue currently male prisoner who did the assaulting.
00:22:45.000So we did a sketch where Alex Jones visited this woman as the angel Gabriel.
00:22:51.000And he said, you know, you shall, she said, I'll be, I'll have a son.
00:23:02.000And that was a joke, dressed up as an angel.
00:23:04.000They suspended us for that, even though it was a true case, right?
00:23:07.000But what happens is I don't see that as punching down, I see that as punching at the powers that be.
00:23:10.000There are certain topics, third rails, that you can't discuss.
00:23:13.000I don't see it as punching down if you talk about the European Union, you talk about the atrocities that they've committed against their own people, when we're dealing with COVID, right?
00:23:20.000The violations of human rights in my homeland of Canada.
00:23:24.000That is something that I think, not I think, I know.
00:23:27.000When we do these shows, At live shows, and I'll do stand-up, and we'll have these big theaters.
00:24:47.000People don't see what's going on here.
00:24:48.000There's this whole buzzing and activity.
00:24:50.000Behind the cameras, Rumble staff and our personal teams and handlers are watching right now to ensure that the content that is brought to you is 100% accurate and that the questions and lines of inquiries are sanctified not by some tech techno overlord but by people that are ensuring that you
00:25:07.000get to see the show behind the show so that you get authentic content.
00:25:58.000And yeah, it's a horrible feeling, but I think people need to take into consideration that young Americans who are, let's say, in an Ivy League school or people who are in the entertainment industry and lean right, they're about as othered as you can get.
00:26:09.000I mean, you know from some of the backlash that you've seen in very reasonable positions, I'm sure you've had some conversations that are uncomfortable.
00:26:15.000I just had those, you know, when I was 13 because I didn't know how to keep my mouth shut.
00:26:20.000I suppose that where my focus is, Stephen, tends to be on the movements of power and finance and how the neoliberal establishment has been co-opted by the same financial interests that 30 or 40 years ago would have been presumed to be affiliated with the conventional right.
00:26:41.000I'm talking about Wall Street, military-industrial complex, big pharma.
00:26:45.000Over the period of the pandemic it became sort of plain to me that what we were being offered was a lens to how power was operating and the fact that there was no meaningful opposition from anywhere other than spaces that are typically now labeled as the alternative right.
00:27:06.000This is where we saw sort of criticisms emerging, even where people were willing to have the
00:28:12.000I'm not the party of big business or small business.
00:28:13.000We all need to be, as Americans, the party of good business.
00:28:17.000When you remove government from the equation, picking winners and losers, when they're picking winners in banks, when they're picking winners in auto manufacturing, picking winners in insurance companies, picking winners in universities, airlines, you lose.
00:28:28.000These are industries that are the most heavily regulated in the country, and now big tech, right?
00:28:48.000What kind of interest are you getting on your CD?
00:28:50.000These are all the most regulated industries that exist.
00:28:53.000And they're the ones that people hate the most and they think the solution is more regulation.
00:28:57.000If the media hadn't done the tarring and feathering and labeled all conservatives and the Tea Partiers, who are largely good people, the people who probably not only support me now but probably by and large tune into your show, good hard-working American people, if they hadn't been labeled racist and they could effectively do that back then because there wasn't really the alternative podcast sphere or alternative media, you would have had a much Much stronger coalition of them and the Occupy Wall Street people.
00:29:22.000The problem is the endgame, because the Occupy Wall Street people, a lot of them wanted to nationalize the banks.
00:29:26.000And of course, that's where I get off the train.
00:29:28.000But they both had a problem with bailouts.
00:29:30.000And so it's never been a right wing position to bail out big banks.
00:29:51.000I feel like that what we can agree upon is that centralized establishment politics is ultimately going to move to the tune and rhythm of secondary interests that remain unimpeded by administrative fluctuation.
00:30:04.000That sort of like seems pretty clear at this point.
00:30:07.000And another thing where I think we broadly agree is I don't like the tone of condescension that exists in many media spaces when addressing American people or British people or any people.
00:30:19.000The assumption that it's an authoritative relationship that takes place between the state or media spaces and the recipients.
00:30:25.000I enjoy a sense of conviviality and inclusion.
00:30:29.000I enjoy the idea And the acceptance of the principle that we're allowed to create our own communities, that the price for allowing people to have a traditional set of principles is allowing elsewhere people to have a progressive set of principles.
00:30:45.000I don't think that these need to be... No, no, these are the conversations I've been having all day long and I'm finding that people are broadly speaking sympathetic to those ideas and increasingly, Stephen, I'm beginning to think that the conflict is being exacerbated precisely to prevent A sense of alliance forming between people that, aside from a few cultural and value-oriented ideas, have the same interest in bringing down centralized establishment authority in numerous spheres.
00:31:13.000Big tech, government, media spaces, finance, globalism, and the transcendence of non-elected authorities like WF, WHO, etc, etc.
00:31:56.000This is a guy who screwed up All of it, by the way.
00:31:59.000No one despised Fauci more than those in the gay community back in the 80s with the AIDS epidemic, because he just wasn't being honest about it.
00:32:33.000This is the biggest sort of murder that I really think has taken place sort of in the right-wing sphere because of how many subscribers we have on Mug Club.
00:32:40.000But the reason for that is because these people wanted a show to be truly independent and not beholden not only to YouTube advertising, But they didn't want to have five, six, seven live reads in a show.
00:32:49.000I mean, you know, how many, how many trimmers and bed sheets do you need, right?
00:32:52.000They wanted to be able to watch a show that they felt was for them, by them.
00:32:55.000If you're using them simultaneously, you need a lot of bed sheets.
00:32:59.000If you're trimming, like, all of your bodily stubble, there's going to be a lot of detritus on the sheets.
00:33:04.000And I think you're going to just have to change all those nightly.
00:33:09.000But, you know, it's like now we've sort of gone that way where media, if you go online now, it's become... Okay, back in the... You did a radio show, right?
00:33:15.000I don't know what it is necessarily in the UK, but you did it for years.
00:33:18.000I don't know... Is it the equivalent to the FCC?
00:33:22.000So there's, in a sense, no equivalent because it's sort of like they're the largest sort of reach radio stations and there are no ad reads, but that's the...
00:33:29.000But as far as, not ad reads, but as far as what you can and can't say on radio.
00:33:33.000There's a good deal of restriction, certainly by the time I finish with the media.
00:34:11.000What happens is YouTube says, well, you won't be able to make a living, and more importantly, no one will be able to find your videos unless you are advertiser-friendly.
00:34:18.000And it's far more strict because it's not just naughty words.
00:34:59.000But what about the elected officials out there?
00:35:01.000What about a lot of these companies who have billionaire investors?
00:35:05.000Why aren't they doing anything about that?
00:35:07.000Why did it take me, who started with a blue bed sheet and a mug club, and doing some sketches out there where I have to take these bullets and people... You're gonna take some too, I'm warning you.
00:35:15.000You're gonna get a lot of those, unfortunately.
00:35:17.000You're gonna be butting up against Big Tech, this new Mohan, whatever the hell his name is.
00:35:20.000You don't see anyone else going out there fighting for you.
00:36:06.000Not only that, here's what excites me about Rumble.
00:36:08.000You know, Rumble told France, the government, to basically go fornicate themselves with a wire brush when they said you have to take this content down.
00:36:13.000Rumble, yeah, people would be concerned they're a publicly traded company.
00:36:16.000Here's the thing, Rumble is only as valuable their protection of free speech. In other words, if Rumble
00:36:23.000does not continue to adhere to the principles of protecting free speech, why
00:36:27.000would anyone go to Rumble? So it's this self-protection mechanism where the
00:36:31.000company is only valuable if they actually do what they say they're going to
00:36:34.000do. And that's something that's exciting to me because it doesn't allow
00:36:39.000Listening to you now, Stephen, it sounds sometimes like you're as disillusioned with what might be regarded as systemic, centralist, right-wing politics as perhaps some are with neoliberal establishment, referred to as left-wing politics.
00:36:55.000Well, more so the business of conservatism, right?
00:36:58.000Like, again, like I said, everything that I've pitched, everything that we do was pitched to the powers that be, and they said, no, no, we want to change it.
00:37:04.000And so I stepped out and did something that I believed in, and I didn't know if there were enough people like me out there.
00:37:08.000There's probably a portion, there's probably some of that with you, and I know that you're not, you're not right-wing, but stepping out where your views have evolved a little bit, or for example, you're talking with people from Different political persuasions.
00:37:19.000Where you're going, okay, this isn't necessarily something I've done a whole lot, and I'm hoping that people go along with me.
00:37:23.000There's always a step out in faith if you're doing something new.
00:37:27.000And I was told that it would never work.
00:37:32.000To find out that there are hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to invest in our program, which is silly to a large degree, to fight for them.
00:37:40.000And to have seen the powers that be say, that'll never work.
00:37:48.000I've had to deal with this for a very- and then on the flip side, right, in the entertainment industry, gosh, I was getting banned from most colleges in Montreal.
00:37:55.000I mean, we've been sued by the Bob Ross Estate, ABC Disney, Viacom, NBC Universal, uh, who else?
00:38:03.000The Burrowing Owls Society, yeah, because people started kicking them when we were just doing a gag.
00:38:17.000Tell us, mate, a little bit about your trajectory as a stand-up comedian and former Fox contributor to the place that you find yourself in now.
00:38:29.000How you see the division between yourself as an entertainer and a voice in the political space?
00:38:45.000So I did the voice of, he's an aardvark, he has a pet dog and his best friend's a bunny, and I did the voice of the brain, another friend, the black bear.
00:38:53.000A lot of drugs involved in the creation of this program.
00:38:56.000And so I started doing that when I was 12 years old.
00:38:59.000I had done some extra work before that and I was acting.
00:39:00.000I was often tutored on set as an actor.
00:39:03.000And I actually got to see every single major comedian.
00:39:05.000My mom was the wardrobe stylist for the gals at the Just for Laughs.
00:39:09.000So I would get to see, like in one night, I'd get to see Damon, Bill Burr, I remember Dane Cook when I saw him there when I was really young, I remember seeing Jeff Dunham, then seeing Jerry Seinfeld, seeing, I remember the British Invasion, Noel Fielding, Danny Boy, Reister, all in one night.
00:39:22.000And I remember I always wanted to do stand-up.
00:39:25.000I was primarily an actor at this point, but I remember the joke that made me want to do stand-up.
00:39:29.000And I've talked about it on air when Norm Macdonald died.
00:39:32.000And you did his show, so I'll forever be seething with low-grade jealousy for you.
00:40:31.000And then was just on the road for a long time and was an early adopter of YouTube and started doing political videos.
00:40:39.0002008, 2009, Andrew Breitbart came and he liked some of it.
00:40:42.000I called him up when I heard him on the Dennis Miller Show and he posted a video, a set of mine from the improv and then said, hey, people liked it.
00:41:36.000Or once someone says you can't do it, I felt the need to do it.
00:41:40.000And back then, YouTube was the Wild West.
00:41:41.000I don't know if you remember back then YouTube like most viewed, most commented, most... It was actually the most viewed and most commented.
00:41:48.000It wasn't someone in the back office saying, yeah, let me put this in someone's feed.
00:41:51.000And so early on generated a lot of views and people would comment because they would be arguing but having discussions.
00:41:58.000And then here we are. At a certain point we realized, you know, we saw the writing on the wall
00:42:02.000and created Mug Club in 2016 and it just exploded more than we realized. And I'm eternally grateful.
00:42:10.000I'm so grateful to owe you than owing a non-profit, than owing some politician, than owing an oil baron.
00:42:19.000I owe the audience who pays for the show because that is what keeps the lights on.
00:42:22.000That's what keeps 25 plus employees gainfully employed and pays for their insurance and pays for us to go on location and do Change My Minds.
00:42:30.000All of it is funded by, I used to think PBS was funded by viewers like us, but it's not, right?
00:42:36.000We are really funded by people who paid to watch at a time where no one was paying for
00:42:40.000anything on the internet outside of hardcore depraved pornography.
00:42:42.000Yes, I was doing my best to contribute.
00:42:45.000What about the comedic culture of the show?
00:42:52.000The inclusion, the unwise it seems in retrospect, inclusion of Gerald and his tendency to strikes.
00:42:59.000How did you come up with that kind of thing?
00:43:01.000And were you just using sort of the visual grammar of late night and the sort of gang show sort of mentality of like stern and stuff like that?
00:43:10.000So when people would say, uh, how would you describe it?
00:43:16.000Um, so like late, late show, uh, early on before he kind of went to CBS and, you know, I don't want to say started kind of towing the company line, but he changed.
00:43:24.000Early Letterman, my dad used to film it for me when I was a kid.
00:43:37.000I remember one thing that had me laughing as a kid, I talked about this yesterday, was he was doing a segment on Native American reservations.
00:43:42.000And it was this guy who we later found out was kind of a charlatan, you know, who would just show up whenever there was a camera.
00:43:47.000He said, you know, we need back our land and the white man or whatever, talking about how the white man had abused him.
00:44:03.000And he was kind of going through this like, hey, you're going out there and making these claims, but really this was a guy who didn't live on a Native American reservation.
00:44:10.000You know, you see these hucksters everywhere.
00:44:12.000But as a kid, I would watch it and I would stay up for John Stossel's Give Me a Break, because rather than being just a consumer reporter, he started reporting on the corruption of government.
00:44:20.000And if you read his biography, It's fascinating.
00:44:22.000He became persona non grata there at ABC.
00:44:26.000So the influence would have been Letterman, probably Early Otts, Stern, and John Stossel.
00:44:31.000And when we started doing the show, you know, it was at night.
00:44:34.000It was really the only sort of late night show that leaned right.
00:44:38.000Then when Mug Club quarantine happened during the pandemic, everyone else kind of started Quitting or broadcasting from home and we said look I know and this is one that was just starting right people had no idea what's gonna happen There was a two-week lockdown.
00:44:50.000We said instead of instead of pulling back.
00:44:52.000We're gonna do two a days And so then we did the late-night show and we did something called Good Morning Mug Club But what we realized is not only were more people tuning in in the morning But more people were watching the late-night show in the morning a lot of people don't know this people consume late-night television the next day now And I'm actually not really a late night guy.
00:45:09.000Like, I get up early because I would have to.
00:45:11.000It was like, gun in my mouth, have to write, you know, 20 jokes every single show, all of these references, 4.30 in the morning.
00:45:17.000I said, well, if we can take this live in the morning and kind of hybridize it, that's kind of what you see now.
00:45:21.000It was a late night show with more traditional monologue, sketches, Photoshop jokes, characters, and then kind of a more laid back feel of a podcast.
00:45:29.000We kind of merged those together and that's kind of the amalgamate that people see today.
00:45:34.000When you do these live shows, that sense of community, that's enjoyable.
00:45:38.000Because one of the things I think about, I suppose, when discussing the media space that we're both in now, which I suppose is alternative media and establishment media, using the analysis of Martin Goury, a former CIA, not operative, a data analyst.
00:45:55.000He says in his book, The Revolt of the Public, that the terms left and right are becoming almost defunct.
00:46:00.000What you have now is centralised authority and peripheral figures.
00:46:04.000He says that centralized authority can come from either side of the aisle and the peripheral figures are often in some cases nullified by the lack of an alternative ideology.
00:46:18.000I found him like a pretty interesting figure to listen to and his diagnosis around like the terms of left and right and how they're in a sense becoming Less and less relevant.
00:46:29.000Particularly as I have more conversations like this with people where there are areas of evident disagreement, but also a general good faith sense that what we're talking about, we believe in.
00:46:40.000And when we disagree, it's a genuine disagreement, but there's an acceptance that we're both entitled to have the opinions that we have.
00:46:48.000There's actually an example with you that I ran into this.
00:46:51.000This is back, I was, and I don't say this at all for it to be a sore spot, but you made a joke at some MTV awards about George Bush, and there were a bunch of people in the right-wing sphere who were upset.
00:47:00.000You said something about, like, the joke I think was, you know, you let that retarded cowboy habit go or someone for four years let Obama be president.
00:47:07.000You said in England he wouldn't even be trusted with a pair of scissors.
00:49:03.000From the perspective of a comedian, I guess we require targets.
00:49:07.000And I, by the way, don't accept the sort of the who gets to determine the punching down stuff.
00:49:12.000What I feel like is, with me, generally speaking, and you have to make mistakes as a comedian, how do you know where the line is unless you cross it?
00:49:22.000Broadly speaking, where I'm coming from, though, is a sense that I believe that I'm optimistic about human beings.
00:49:29.000That part of my determination to not yield to centralised authority, be it corporate or state, is a sense that people will be alright.
00:49:40.000People will find ways of organizing for their personal and mutual benefit.
00:49:45.000For me, that requires a certain openness.
00:49:49.000Is there anything in what you say that you disagree with?
00:49:52.000We've hit the fundamental disagreement, but it's not what you think it is.
00:49:54.000I believe that human beings are inherently sinful.
00:49:57.000Um, you know, I have twins they're 17 months and uh, I probably shouldn't say this because people think i'm a horrible dad But I don't know that i've ever laughed harder than this.
00:50:05.000So one's a boy one's a girl and uh, what happened is He she was stealing his pacifier, right?
00:50:11.000She would steal his pacifier all the time And so then he went back up to up to her about 14 months and he took her pacifier out of her mouth as revenge And she started crying and she looked at us and so then my son Went like this to put the pacifier back in her mouth, so she opened it, and he backhanded her.
00:50:30.000And I just said, like, that is the most vindictive—I mean, he kept his pin pan strong, and of course we had to punish him and say, you can't do that.
00:50:36.000No, you know, it's really hard to punish kids because they're so dumb, they don't understand anything.
00:50:40.000But I realize human beings are—as Christians, we believe human beings are inherently sinful, and that's the reason that Kind of you said you believe that we'll be okay.
00:50:48.000I believe that if you centralize power to any individuals, right, you give that up, human beings are sinful.
00:50:55.000And I don't think there's anything more corrosive to the human soul than success and power, except for unearned success and unearned power.
00:51:03.000And so when I believe that human beings are inherently sinful, and as a Christian, I believe we can all be redeemed through Christ, right?
00:51:07.000Otherwise, there would be no reason for him.
00:51:10.000I believe that you want to mitigate that centralized power, right?
00:51:14.000The role of the government, I've always said this, this is the Canadian in me, is like a hockey referee.
00:51:18.000And it's very different from other sports. I don't know how much you follow hockey,
00:51:21.000but hockey for the longest time was the only sport where they'll let two guys fight, you know.
00:51:30.000It's actually a form of self-governance, right?
00:51:32.000When you're doing it in baseball, everyone jumps up on the pitcher's mound and they start slap fighting each other.
00:51:37.000In hockey, what happens is you have these guys on the bench, at least you used to, they've changed the sport quite a bit, and they're known as enforcers.
00:51:42.000And these guys only sit on the bench to make sure that you don't cheap shot their player.
00:51:45.000So this guy doesn't score a goal all season, but if you cheap shot, let's say, Paul Correa or Steve Izerman, you're going to have a Stu Grimson, you're going to have a Bob Probert come out, and all he's going to do is drop the gloves and beat your ass, and the ref lets it go.
00:51:55.000The ref lets it go because of a system of self-accountability.
00:51:58.000Now here's the thing, a hockey referee, unlike in other sports, he keeps the pace of the game.
00:52:02.000meaning the rules, right, that affect everybody, make sure that people are playing by the rules,
00:52:06.000and make sure that no one is hurt, make sure the players are safe, meaning protect us from inside
00:52:10.000and outside threats, be that domestically or, of course, we need some kind of a national defense,
00:52:15.000because we do live on a globe with other countries, some of whom want to cause us harm.
00:52:18.000In hockey, unless there's a direct penalty that involves the puck in play, or someone's being
00:52:25.000hurt, he keeps his whistle in his pocket, including when two guys fight.
00:52:28.000You let them fight it out over here if it's mutually agreed upon combat.
00:53:05.000Every single late night host, every single one and all their correspondents, All endorsed Hillary Clinton?
00:53:12.000How is that happenstance at a certain point?
00:53:14.000How is there no organic fracturing of different points of view?
00:53:17.000It's by design in the entertainment industry.
00:53:19.000And you say the same, you go, wait, hold on a second.
00:53:23.00099% of political donations from Google, from YouTube, from Alphabet, from Facebook went to Democrats, went to leftists.
00:53:29.000And by the way, by and large, with big banks and big insurance companies as well, you go, How is there just no natural, organic divergence in points of view?
00:53:40.000And so I don't want a design that centralizes power to people who can just give in to their own sinful desires of the flesh, whether it be more money or, you know, Harvey Weinstein jerking off into a ficus plant.
00:53:51.000I feel that those examples of the allocation of resources, I'm not talking about the plant there, I'm talking about the... It's a fake plant, so it's hardly a resource.
00:53:58.000You can't actually nourish a fake plant.
00:54:04.000That regardless of where those resources end up, ultimately the kind of systems that will be delivered will not empower or meaningfully improve the lives of ordinary Americans and the lack of diversity among the opinions of those Late night talk show host does show where the tendency to the ordinary centralist politics is sort of flowing and that's where that particular bias is heading in.
00:54:30.000With your point there, mate, about sin, I was thinking like outside of the, if only we had a theologian on.
00:54:36.000Outside of the scriptural rhetoric, if you were to look at that from a biological perspective, I suppose it would mean that our appetites and primal drives will ultimately be geared towards survival and procreation, and those drives unchecked without a system of ethics, morality, and I suppose a tribal identity, kind of a mutual support, compassion, love, kindness.
00:55:02.000will lead to a kind of what could be described as sin or selfishness or missing the mark or
00:55:07.000however you want to regard and describe sin. I suppose what I feel is another area where we agree
00:55:14.000is I don't like the idea of grant in that authority either to a government official
00:55:22.000or to the sort of more inert motivations of corporate momentum, the kind of lack of choice
00:55:30.000that comes when you have monopolies or...
00:55:33.000And that's the thing too, I think that's been sort of misconstrued, is conservatives are not for crony capitalism or corporatism.
00:55:41.000And that's also a big reason that I've gone with Rumble, you know, people know if they followed.
00:55:45.000I have problems with the way that a lot of people on the right run businesses and people say, well, you know what, this is the way of doing things.
00:55:50.000And it's one thing to say, hey, there are multiple ways of doing things.
00:55:52.000With Mug Club and bringing on new talent, and some of whom I'm really excited about,
00:55:56.000we can't officially announce all of them, but by March 20th you'll see who they are,
00:55:59.000is I don't want to tell them how to do their show.
00:56:02.000I don't want, and I certainly don't want to keep their subscribers.
00:56:04.000Anyone who signs up with Mug Club, who will also, you know, be going through Rumble, if
00:56:09.000they leave, they take their subscribers with them.
00:56:11.000Why would you want to keep someone who doesn't want to be there?
00:56:13.000The problem is when you have other people in this space, just like you have in the left space, that's really kind of the entertainment media industrial complex, but in the right wing sphere saying there's only one way.
00:56:23.000I'm saying there are many different ways.
00:56:25.000I'm saying you can let your freak flag fly.
00:56:27.000You can have conversations like you have on spirituality and do transcendental meditation, which by the way, I was never able to do because I got one on Spotify.
00:56:34.000And she was telling me to picture myself at the bottom of a staircase, but my staircase banister didn't work.
00:56:38.000It was, like, wobbly, so that's all I could picture.
00:56:41.000But you can do that, and then we can do a show where we do Cultural Appropriation Month, or, you know, God, do you have any idea how hard it is to make Schindler's List funny in a parody?
00:56:48.000But, my God, we give it the college try.
00:56:50.000And then if you want to do talking points, and you want to do five live reads, or 20, or you want to hit sort of more Republican talk—that's fine.
00:57:15.000And I know you were just on Tucker Carlson's show, and I've only spent a very small amount of time, but I have nothing but good things to say about him.
00:57:47.000So all of those people are out there, and they're tuning into Breaking Bad, or they feel like they have to go against their principles and subscribe to Disney+, even though they're supporting an agenda that they don't want to be on board with.
00:57:57.000And those people, not even a fourth of them, are tuning into the largest conservative network?
00:58:06.000Maybe some of those people, like what Tucker Carlson has to say, that show is not their flavor.
00:58:11.000The problem is when you have a movement that says everyone has to be the same in cookie cutter.
00:58:15.000And that's what, look, here's the truth.
00:58:17.000If it worked, people wouldn't be so excited about you.
00:58:21.000People are excited about you because you're someone who has made a cultural impact, right?
00:58:24.000You've been in the entertainment industry, so you have street cred, and you have more influence than people who came up hitting the right wing talking points because there's a pretty low ceiling.
00:58:32.000And this is why you'll see people on the right clamor for celebrities, right?
00:58:36.000Because they don't have a whole lot of them.
00:58:38.000Like, you know, they have like G. Gordon Liddy or like you're on like, you know, Fox News,
00:58:58.000Also, I would disagree that this is for like a kind of a personal epiphany, that anti-establishmentism
00:59:02.000is something that's very much inborn in me just because of the circumstances of my background,
00:59:07.000the fact that I'm a recovering addict, I'm a comedian, I believe in free speech.
00:59:13.000And when I was like making jokes about George Bush, like he was the president now.
00:59:18.000Now that was in an MTV space and by your analysis, and it's not an analysis I would dispute, that's broadly speaking a democratic liberal space.
00:59:27.000But at that point for me, that was the joke to make.
00:59:32.000I feel that what people want now, Stephen, this is my guess, I'm not from your country, I'm not from this country, excuse me.
00:59:40.000What I believe people want is the opportunity for open dialogue, not to be spoken down to, not to be judged and condemned, and to look at new ways of organising their lives with dignity, and to recognise that we can't cut ourselves off from one another because there are some areas where we disagree with each other.
01:00:00.000That doesn't seem to me like a sensible way forward, as power is coalescing Quite significantly around some very, very deep, potent interests.
01:00:11.000If there aren't new forms of alliance, and certainly if there aren't new kinds of conversation, it's very difficult to imagine how we can move forward together.
01:00:18.000So I feel like the principles of democracy, and open-heartedness, and open-mindedness, and broadly speaking, good faith conversations with people.
01:00:25.000There are areas where we disagree, but I believe that you love your children, I believe that you're a man of principle, that you care about what you're saying, that you're on your journey.
01:00:35.000I don't think that I know enough about the world to foreclose on your right to say stuff.
01:00:40.000What I'm saying is you wouldn't be able to be you if, for example, you were coming up in more so the right-wing echo chamber, which is something I fight against a lot.
01:00:57.000What would happen is you would have been morphed into something that you weren't in order to fit the mold that conservatism ink that Big Con says you have to be.
01:01:07.000But here's the thing, you would be of no value.
01:01:29.000It can't happen unless you have some people at the top who are willing to back them up and let their freak flag fly and say, hey, you know what?
01:01:33.000You be you and your audience will find you.
01:01:59.000People don't have to jump around, use apps that didn't quite work.
01:02:03.000But that's the issue, is the mold that you see on the right that I have a problem with.
01:02:07.000And it does stem largely from corporatism.
01:02:09.000It does stem largely from people at the top telling you what you want, rather than coming from the bottom up.
01:02:14.000And those people are the people who go to the shows, those are the people who join Mug Club, and those are the people who are excited about Rumble.
01:02:20.000Those are the people who are excited about alternatives.
01:02:22.000How long have people been clamoring for some kind of an alternative?
01:03:06.000Really excited, because every single conversation that we had, With Rumble was how to make it better for the user how to make it better for the viewer and that for me is true north is Not how do I better serve the sponsor though?
01:03:19.000You need to do that Well, not how do I better serve the overlords not how do I make sure that I play ball with big tech is okay?
01:03:27.000Got millions of people who tune in every day hundreds of thousands who are willing to part with their hard-earned dollar and How do I best serve them?
01:03:35.000And that's not how most media companies operate, and it is how we operate, and Rumble's willing to back us up.
01:04:15.000I wish you every success with this endeavour.
01:04:17.000I'm glad to hear you're so enthusiastic and see you looking so well.
01:04:21.000Thanks all of you for watching the show and I'm sure you'll be joining Stephen for his show and continuing to join us on Stay Free and obviously we're going to have opportunities to continue this conversation, maybe get into the DL, maybe turn up on a campus.
01:04:33.000Maybe get you in a sketch or a parody if you... Change each other's minds!