Stay Free - Russel Brand - Stay Free Meets Mug Club: Russell sits down with Steven Crowder

00:00:00.000 you you

00:10:47.000 hello and welcome to stay free with russell brand live at rumbles headquarters for a very special announcement.

00:11:04.000 As you by now know that Steven Crowder is joining us on Rumble.

00:11:09.000 Steven, welcome.

00:11:10.000 I don't think they knew by now.

00:11:10.000 Thank you.

00:11:11.000 I think they know just now.

00:11:13.000 That was the announcement.

00:11:14.000 That was the announcement.

00:11:14.000 Yeah.

00:11:15.000 I'd like to announce something very special.

00:11:15.000 That was the announcement.

00:11:17.000 Stephen Crowder is joining us on Rumble now.

00:11:19.000 You just had a scoop and threw it away.

00:11:22.000 Like my dad, he'll do that with like punchlines.

00:11:23.000 He'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.

00:11:30.000 He's like, no, who cares.

00:11:30.000 It's nice to dispose of those things.

00:11:32.000 You don't want to fate it too much.

00:11:32.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:34.000 We've got 45 minutes right now to discuss the reasons that you've joined Rumble.

00:11:39.000 In 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.

00:12:01.000 Most 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

00:12:10.000 us through how you come to be on Rumble right now and why in particular you're joining Rumble?

00:12:14.000 Well I take exception with period of transition because we know how they're going to take

00:12:17.000 that. So I'm still me. But I do understand. No, I will say this. We've been in this period

00:12:23.000 of transition actually and there have been some issues that we can discuss that we can't

00:12:26.000 discuss contractually but a lot of suitors who came forward and Rumble was really just

00:12:30.000 the only place that gets it.

00:12:33.000 They understand the idea of free speech.

00:12:34.000 Now, I've heard people complain, say, oh, Rumble's too right-wing.

00:12:36.000 I go, hold on a second, you think Russell Brand is right-wing?

00:12:38.000 Now, 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.

00:12:46.000 Hopefully, long-term, Rumble will be, you know, an alternative to a place like YouTube where people can actually speak freely.

00:12:51.000 But, you know, we've been working with Rumble for a long time as sort of a mirror channel to YouTube.

00:12:57.000 Because we were the reason for, you know, the new borderline content guidelines on YouTube.

00:13:00.000 Sorry about that.

00:13:01.000 They called it the Crowder Rule, where they said, well, you didn't violate community guidelines.

00:13:05.000 And so you're not advertiser friendly anyways.

00:13:07.000 I was like, well, just demonetize us.

00:13:08.000 They said, well, we need to hit you with some strikes. 0.80

00:13:10.000 So now we'll create borderline content guidelines.

00:13:12.000 And that's this sort of cabal of people who create these new rules that you can't know.

00:13:16.000 There's no transparency.

00:13:17.000 You don't know who sets them and you don't know how to not violate them.

00:13:20.000 So Rumble became a safety at that point as they were kind of coming up.

00:13:24.000 And we just always told people, look, if you don't see us on YouTube, go to Rumble.

00:13:29.000 I mean, one thing people Don't necessarily know, like you can't find us in browse or in search on YouTube.

00:13:34.000 So if you type in Stephen Crowder and the name, the title of the episode, you'll get something from PBS from nine years ago.

00:13:39.000 Something about the burrowing owl or some shit.

00:13:42.000 So we knew that we had to start building an alternative platform for ourselves.

00:13:47.000 And more importantly is every single view that we get on YouTube is from people bookmarking and checking every day.

00:13:52.000 That's where the traffic comes from.

00:13:52.000 Wow.

00:13:53.000 It's in the single digits as far as browse and search.

00:13:56.000 And we never wanted to lose touch with everybody.

00:13:57.000 We 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.

00:14:07.000 And that's what we're launching March 20th.

00:14:08.000 I guess I should say this.

00:14:09.000 I'm not the best salesman.

00:14:10.000 March 20th, Mug Club comes back.

00:14:11.000 It'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.

00:14:19.000 We're going to be producing some stand-up specials.

00:14:21.000 Brian Callum, Gerald will be doing a theology show with Brian Callum, questions about the Bible.

00:14:26.000 Mr. Guns and Gear, and we're talking about two other comedians and hosts, will probably be there by March 20th.

00:14:32.000 So you can go and sign up now at loudearthcracker.com slash Mug Club.

00:14:35.000 We'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. 0.50

00:14:43.000 That's all it is.

00:14:44.000 And in sitting down, look, Rumble, when they say they're fighting big tech, you know this, they actually are.

00:14:49.000 Not everyone's doing that, right?

00:14:51.000 Sometimes 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.

00:14:57.000 The new CEO of YouTube, you know him, Mohan?

00:15:00.000 I've not had the pleasure.

00:15:02.000 He's awful. 0.99

00:15:03.000 He's the worst. 1.00

00:15:04.000 He's the pits. 1.00

00:15:05.000 He's just unacceptable.

00:15:06.000 He 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.

00:15:13.000 It was just, you know, if you took these down, we might be able to allow your channel to stay. 0.99

00:15:18.000 So when we heard that Susan Wojcicki was stepping down, I thought, great, and then I heard it was that guy, and I said, shit! 0.99

00:15:25.000 Here we are. 0.94

00:15:26.000 So from March the 20th, what are you going to be doing on Rumble, mate?

00:15:30.000 Is it like five days a week?

00:15:32.000 So it's exactly what we used to do, which is four days a week, you know, at 10 a.m.

00:15:35.000 Eastern, you get an hour, right, if you're on YouTube or if you're on Rumble, free.

00:15:39.000 And 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.

00:15:45.000 And 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.

00:15:53.000 So 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.

00:16:00.000 You know, as someone who just focuses on the creative, I don't want to run a business.

00:16:04.000 But there really isn't much of an alternative, and Rumble has... We're betting on ourselves, that's the thing.

00:16:09.000 Rumble 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.

00:16:16.000 Oh, and one thing I should say, too.

00:16:17.000 I know a lot of you guys signed up for Mug Club before we left.

00:16:20.000 You know, we were formally at The Blaze and we had no real way to reach you.

00:16:25.000 Rumble 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.

00:16:32.000 So they were willing to do that and foot that bill, which is really stand up for them to do.

00:16:36.000 So people that are already on your mailing list, they're going to get the first couple of months of content?

00:16:40.000 Yeah, I think three.

00:16:41.000 Three extra free months.

00:16:42.000 Because 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.

00:16:50.000 We 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.

00:16:56.000 That's as good as we can do right now, right?

00:16:58.000 Who am I, Houdini?

00:17:00.000 So 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.

00:17:11.000 Right.

00:17:12.000 What do you think is unique about Rumble?

00:17:15.000 Why do you think it is unique?

00:17:18.000 in this space and why do you think it's important that it becomes a platform that houses numerous

00:17:25.000 voices? One of the things I admire about you is your willingness to openly debate people

00:17:30.000 who explicitly and overtly disagree with you. Is that something that you genuinely...

00:17:34.000 Thank you.

00:17:35.000 Yeah, I think it's really impressive. Do you think that...

00:17:38.000 do you hope that Rumble will genuinely become a place where there are diverse opposing

00:17:43.000 voices?

00:17:43.000 Is part of your, I heard you describe yourself as a traditional conservative.

00:17:49.000 Basic bitch, pumpkin spice conservative, yeah. 1.00

00:17:52.000 Cool, so is that something that you genuinely encourage and welcome and think that Rumble will deliver? 0.92

00:17:57.000 Well, 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?

00:18:05.000 Wait a minute, let me scan.

00:18:07.000 These guys have been pretty terrific to old Russ.

00:18:09.000 Here I am, essentially an immigrant, over here, and I've been welcomed with open arms.

00:18:15.000 They've shown me around.

00:18:16.000 If I have any complaint about Rumble, it's when they name rooms after some of their content creators.

00:18:20.000 Have you seen the room they've named after me?

00:18:22.000 It's basically a toilet in there would be an improvement.

00:18:26.000 Other than that, it's been a fantastic place.

00:18:28.000 I'll post a photograph later of the Russell Brand suite if it had a mop in there.

00:18:32.000 That can't be an accident.

00:18:33.000 You're too big of a name for that to just slip through the cracks.

00:18:36.000 It's a deliberate insult.

00:18:38.000 So, no, you're quite right that, you know, they're absolutely on the subject of free speech.

00:18:42.000 It'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.

00:18:52.000 And you think that Rumble is going to be at the vanguard of this?

00:18:55.000 Well, they never, to go back to that, they've never asked us to shift our content ever.

00:18:59.000 Even before we had a business relationship as we do now, where basically we're

00:19:02.000 just airing our stuff on Rumble for free.

00:19:04.000 And when I would get really excited is when YouTube, you know, we'd see, let's say,

00:19:07.000 a hundred something thousand live viewers on YouTube. And then we would say, oh, okay,

00:19:11.000 now it's down to 80, but we have 20 on Rumble. Now it's down to, and at one point it went down

00:19:15.000 to 40 on YouTube and over 50 on Rumble where it tipped.

00:19:17.000 Keep in mind, I've been on YouTube since 2006, but doing political content since 2009, and there

00:19:23.000 really was no viable alternative.

00:19:25.000 Now, of course, it doesn't have the user base that YouTube does now.

00:19:28.000 But 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.

00:19:35.000 They understand what it is that I do.

00:19:38.000 They'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.

00:19:44.000 And look, as far as, will it be as big as YouTube?

00:19:48.000 I don't know, but here's the thing, as long as you can speak truth, let the cards fall where they may.

00:19:52.000 Like, here's the issue with YouTube.

00:19:53.000 I saw a recent episode of yours where you were talking about The vaccine.

00:19:57.000 And 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?

00:20:02.000 Things 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.

00:20:23.000 Now, if we're following a science, this is the issue, right?

00:20:25.000 I understand working within systems to change the system.

00:20:28.000 I get that.

00:20:29.000 In other words, it's a YouTube sandbox, you play in it.

00:20:31.000 Not when you reach the point where you're precluded from speaking the truth.

00:20:34.000 In other words, who are you reaching if it's not the truth?

00:20:36.000 And Rumble is willing to gamble and let the cards fall where they may and allowing the truth to stand on its own.

00:20:40.000 And 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.

00:20:47.000 My God, it's nice to see some people actually try.

00:20:49.000 When they say they're fighting big tech, they're fighting big tech, and I've been running up against that, you know, for years.

00:20:55.000 It is a pride-swallowing siege that I'll never fully tell you about. 1.00

00:20:58.000 I 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.

00:21:09.000 If 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.

00:21:14.000 I would have thought something that I did for Cultural Appropriation Month, maybe Carrie Lake as a guest. 1.00

00:21:18.000 Him, quoting the CDC, I think he knew exactly what he was doing.

00:21:21.000 He shook me down afterwards, became CEO.

00:21:24.000 So you have created a pretty powerful community there with your Mug Club.

00:21:28.000 Yeah.

00:21:29.000 And 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.

00:21:52.000 And I feel like the areas where we agree is generally personal, autonomy, the ability to run your own community.

00:21:59.000 obviously and evidently we should make clear on this platform the right to speak freely

00:22:04.000 and disagree.

00:22:05.000 One of the things I've always enjoyed is the sense of community that you bring to Mug Club

00:22:11.000 and do you feel like even in some of your targets comedically that there's a sort of

00:22:15.000 a sense of warmth and engagement?

00:22:19.000 How much anger do you feel there is in the stuff you do?

00:22:22.000 If you were to hear the left they would say that we're bullies because they'd say you

00:22:24.000 should only punch up.

00:22:25.000 But 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.

00:22:34.000 You know, one of the episodes we got suspended was there was a sexual assault that took place in a prison, an all-female prison. 1.00

00:22:40.000 And it was a formerly male, I would argue currently male prisoner who did the assaulting.

00:22:45.000 So we did a sketch where Alex Jones visited this woman as the angel Gabriel.

00:22:51.000 And he said, you know, you shall, she said, I'll be, I'll have a son.

00:22:56.000 We were suspended.

00:22:56.000 What was, I don't remember what it was.

00:22:57.000 And he said, no, your cellmate's going to rape you. 1.00

00:23:01.000 Repeatedly. 0.99

00:23:02.000 And that was a joke, dressed up as an angel.

00:23:04.000 They suspended us for that, even though it was a true case, right? 0.99

00:23:07.000 But what happens is I don't see that as punching down, I see that as punching at the powers that be.

00:23:10.000 There are certain topics, third rails, that you can't discuss.

00:23:13.000 I 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? 0.80

00:23:20.000 The violations of human rights in my homeland of Canada.

00:23:24.000 That is something that I think, not I think, I know.

00:23:27.000 When we do these shows, At live shows, and I'll do stand-up, and we'll have these big theaters.

00:23:31.000 People show up with their mug.

00:23:33.000 And they say, you know what?

00:23:34.000 I felt like there was nothing out there for me.

00:23:36.000 I was at Fox News for four and a half years.

00:23:39.000 And loved a lot of people there.

00:23:41.000 But it just clearly wasn't a fit where they'd be like, hey, could you soften your edges?

00:23:44.000 Hey, could you put on a jacket and tie?

00:23:45.000 Hey, could you maybe change the way you frame this?

00:23:47.000 And I remember pitching changed my mind.

00:23:49.000 Pitching it as a book and pitching it as a segment.

00:23:51.000 And they said, that'll never work.

00:23:53.000 On cable news, we want you to do it short.

00:23:55.000 We want you to be in a quadrant view so it looks more international.

00:23:57.000 I said, well, I think it would work.

00:23:58.000 I said, conservators don't really like comedy like that.

00:24:00.000 I was influenced by Letterman and by Stossel and said, I actually saw you perform at the

00:24:03.000 Just for Laughs when I was just a little boy.

00:24:05.000 I was a seat filler.

00:24:06.000 I got to do it every summer.

00:24:07.000 I said, that doesn't really work at this point in time.

00:24:09.000 I said, Change My Mind as a book wouldn't work.

00:24:10.000 I said, we want to sell kind of doomsday books like the Obama Apocalypse books.

00:24:14.000 I said, well, I don't know.

00:24:15.000 These are things that I want.

00:24:16.000 So I had to step out in faith and create it.

00:24:18.000 And we talked about this actually yesterday with Patrick Bet-David.

00:24:21.000 People say that it's more niche.

00:24:23.000 Like, there are a lot of comedians who do shows online.

00:24:27.000 We do a comedy—it is a comedy show, first and foremost.

00:24:29.000 The show is designed to be a comedy show, but we have to be right.

00:24:32.000 We have to provide all of our references.

00:24:34.000 And that's something that I think also really builds community, is people say, hey, I see you talk about it.

00:24:38.000 And then you have a bibliography every single show with 40, 50 links.

00:24:41.000 We make them all publicly available so you can learn as much as... What's your guy Gareth doing?

00:24:45.000 What's he doing?

00:24:46.000 He's off to no good.

00:24:47.000 People don't see what's going on here.

00:24:48.000 There's this whole buzzing and activity.

00:24:50.000 Behind 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

00:25:07.000 get to see the show behind the show so that you get authentic content.

00:25:11.000 I'm sure that this is a matter of...

00:25:12.000 I'm not comfortable being around a Gareth without an obscenely large codpiece.

00:25:15.000 Well, you are...

00:25:17.000 I can assure you, you're perfectly safe.

00:25:19.000 Assuming that there is some sort of technical challenge.

00:25:22.000 So we do have... Are we good?

00:25:25.000 Do you have streams going?

00:25:26.000 Did the stream stop or something?

00:25:28.000 No?

00:25:28.000 Are we good?

00:25:29.000 I never know.

00:25:29.000 All right.

00:25:30.000 You never know.

00:25:30.000 This happens.

00:25:31.000 Gerald's like, and we're banned.

00:25:31.000 Gerald knows all the time.

00:25:33.000 You're like, ah, crap. 0.99

00:25:34.000 And then it's usually you. 1.00

00:25:34.000 What did I say? 1.00

00:25:36.000 Um, but, uh, we get people who show up to shows, they'll bring their mug.

00:25:39.000 And they'll say, well, you know, I don't really tune into Fox News.

00:25:41.000 I don't really listen to AM radio.

00:25:42.000 You know, our average viewer is a 30-year-old male or a 28-year-old.

00:25:45.000 We have a huge portion of female viewers. 1.00

00:25:48.000 And really, it's more so conservatives on the East and West Coast as opposed to Middle America who often feel like they don't have a home.

00:25:54.000 And I think often people talk about, you know, being othered.

00:25:54.000 They're misfits.

00:25:58.000 And 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. 0.88

00:26:09.000 I 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.

00:26:15.000 I just had those, you know, when I was 13 because I didn't know how to keep my mouth shut.

00:26:20.000 I 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.

00:26:41.000 I'm talking about Wall Street, military-industrial complex, big pharma.

00:26:45.000 Over 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.

00:27:06.000 This is where we saw sort of criticisms emerging, even where people were willing to have the

00:27:13.000 conversation.

00:27:14.000 So...

00:27:15.000 You know what, I would say one thing.

00:27:16.000 This is where there was a real missed opportunity at one point in time.

00:27:18.000 I would disagree somewhat with just the presupposition that people on the right, for example, you'd

00:27:24.000 mention like banks.

00:27:25.000 I don't know if you remember, but the Tea Party, when it came about, everyone was accusing

00:27:28.000 them of being racist.

00:27:29.000 Rick Santelli's rant was against the bailouts.

00:27:32.000 It was the right-wing who said, we shouldn't be bailing out big banks.

00:27:34.000 You know, the West Indian Trading Company, I believe, was like a fifth of population Earth, right, at one point.

00:27:39.000 No company is too big to fail.

00:27:41.000 So the right-wing view, the conservative view, has always been no bailouts for anybody.

00:27:46.000 But then Occupy Wall Street came out, and they had the same problems.

00:27:49.000 But they believe that the Tea Party folks were racist, because that's how the media labeled them.

00:27:52.000 But both of them were against bailing out big banks.

00:27:55.000 And by the way, you see this identity politics on the right.

00:27:57.000 Have you ever heard that song?

00:27:58.000 It's like, well, they're living it up on Wall Street.

00:27:59.000 They're shutting Detroit down.

00:28:01.000 That's just identity politics for some guy with a truck.

00:28:03.000 They should shut Wall Street down and shut Detroit down. 0.98

00:28:06.000 You don't deserve a bailout if you're, you know, Goldman Sachs, any more than you create a shitty car that nobody wants to buy. 0.99

00:28:11.000 I don't care. 0.92

00:28:12.000 I'm not the party of big business or small business.

00:28:13.000 We all need to be, as Americans, the party of good business.

00:28:17.000 When 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.

00:28:28.000 These are industries that are the most heavily regulated in the country, and now big tech, right?

00:28:32.000 Big tech.

00:28:33.000 It's really a tripopoly.

00:28:34.000 Three companies that largely run it.

00:28:36.000 You guys satisfied with the customer service at airlines?

00:28:39.000 You think American cars have been better lately?

00:28:41.000 You try and get a car with a chip set on the lot?

00:28:43.000 How about insurance companies?

00:28:44.000 Did Obamacare work out?

00:28:45.000 How about banks?

00:28:46.000 Are they being honest by you?

00:28:48.000 What kind of interest are you getting on your CD?

00:28:50.000 These are all the most regulated industries that exist.

00:28:53.000 And they're the ones that people hate the most and they think the solution is more regulation.

00:28:57.000 If 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.

00:29:22.000 The problem is the endgame, because the Occupy Wall Street people, a lot of them wanted to nationalize the banks.

00:29:26.000 And of course, that's where I get off the train.

00:29:28.000 But they both had a problem with bailouts.

00:29:30.000 And so it's never been a right wing position to bail out big banks.

00:29:33.000 Yes.

00:29:34.000 And of course, famously, this bailout took place under a neoliberal establishment administration.

00:29:42.000 And that's notable, evident and obvious.

00:29:47.000 Both Bush and Obama.

00:29:48.000 They were very similar in a lot of ways.

00:29:50.000 They weren't all that different.

00:29:51.000 I 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.

00:30:04.000 That sort of like seems pretty clear at this point.

00:30:07.000 And 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.

00:30:19.000 The assumption that it's an authoritative relationship that takes place between the state or media spaces and the recipients.

00:30:25.000 I enjoy a sense of conviviality and inclusion.

00:30:29.000 I 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.

00:30:45.000 I 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.

00:31:13.000 Big tech, government, media spaces, finance, globalism, and the transcendence of non-elected authorities like WF, WHO, etc, etc.

00:31:22.000 Or Fauci.

00:31:23.000 That is the highest paid unelected position in this country, at least while he was there.

00:31:28.000 And this is a guy who said you could get AIDS from a cereal box.

00:31:31.000 People don't realize that.

00:31:32.000 People, if you go back and read up on... I've had some pretty dodgy free gifts.

00:31:34.000 Well, yeah, I know.

00:31:35.000 Especially... Some of those dinosaurs are a bit sharp.

00:31:38.000 Yeah.

00:31:39.000 But... We have no idea what Toucan Sam was up to, but we can guess. 0.97

00:31:42.000 No, Fauci actually was in Russia.

00:31:44.000 He was in bathhouses.

00:31:44.000 I say Russian bathhouses, but probably that too.

00:31:46.000 He was in bathhouses and he said that AIDS could be communicable through droplets.

00:31:50.000 And he said that so if a child could be in a house with a dad or a mom who has AIDS, he could get AIDS.

00:31:55.000 He wrote this in a published paper. 0.95

00:31:56.000 This is a guy who screwed up All of it, by the way. 0.88

00:31:59.000 No 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. 0.89

00:32:06.000 I think big tech is the big one.

00:32:06.000 But I agree.

00:32:08.000 And that's the big concern that I had, you know, on this hiatus.

00:32:10.000 Some of it was contractually necessary, but Rumble is the one place that understands that.

00:32:16.000 And the big thing I have, if you want to be with big tech, that's fine.

00:32:19.000 If you don't have a problem, that's fine.

00:32:21.000 My issue is Don't claim that you're fighting big tech and then do their bidding.

00:32:24.000 And there are a lot of people who do that on the right as well because they still want to make sure that they're in their good graces.

00:32:29.000 Look, I'm not looking to get banned from YouTube.

00:32:30.000 And that's a big thing.

00:32:31.000 Mug Club has grown.

00:32:33.000 This 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.

00:32:40.000 But 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.

00:32:49.000 I mean, you know, how many, how many trimmers and bed sheets do you need, right?

00:32:52.000 They wanted to be able to watch a show that they felt was for them, by them.

00:32:55.000 If you're using them simultaneously, you need a lot of bed sheets.

00:32:59.000 If you're trimming, like, all of your bodily stubble, there's going to be a lot of detritus on the sheets.

00:33:04.000 And I think you're going to just have to change all those nightly.

00:33:04.000 Yeah.

00:33:06.000 No, I don't envy that housekeeper. 0.93

00:33:07.000 Yeah, get them out of there.

00:33:09.000 But, 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?

00:33:15.000 I don't know what it is necessarily in the UK, but you did it for years.

00:33:18.000 I don't know... Is it the equivalent to the FCC?

00:33:20.000 Actually, it wasn't commercial.

00:33:21.000 It was like BBC.

00:33:22.000 So 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...

00:33:29.000 But as far as, not ad reads, but as far as what you can and can't say on radio.

00:33:33.000 There's a good deal of restriction, certainly by the time I finish with the media.

00:33:35.000 Yes, I can imagine.

00:33:36.000 A lot of contention.

00:33:37.000 That we share in common.

00:33:38.000 But here at least, like when I was on radio, right, you had the FCC. 0.99

00:33:41.000 And they would say, you can't say, for example, you can say, I think that Harry Reid is a dick. 1.00

00:33:48.000 You can't say, hey, Harry Reid has a small dick, right? 1.00

00:33:50.000 That was what they said. 1.00

00:33:51.000 They said, you can say, ah, crap. 1.00

00:33:53.000 You can't say, I took a crap. 0.99

00:33:54.000 These rules that were silly, but it was kind of a game of cat and mouse here with the FCC. 0.99

00:33:57.000 Nothing scatological or the bodily, uh, you know, if we're talking about anatomy, but people kind of understood the rules.

00:34:03.000 And so that's where you have the Howard Sterns and sort of the birth of the shock jock.

00:34:03.000 Okay.

00:34:06.000 The issue now is you're not being censored by the FCC.

00:34:09.000 Everyone is the FCC.

00:34:11.000 What 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.

00:34:18.000 And it's far more strict because it's not just naughty words.

00:34:21.000 It's topics you can't cover.

00:34:23.000 And so people are self-censoring.

00:34:24.000 Go and listen to most of the podcasts out there right now.

00:34:27.000 It is far more PG, vanilla, Disney-friendly than what you would hear on basic AM radio.

00:34:32.000 And there's no FCC.

00:34:33.000 And people didn't even see it coming.

00:34:35.000 That's because they set the policies in the playground.

00:34:37.000 And by the way, this is the issue with big tech that I think we can agree with.

00:34:40.000 It really is like this tech oligarchy, right?

00:34:43.000 They're benefiting from Section 230 where they don't have the liability, right?

00:34:46.000 They're basically benefiting as being a public utility, but they are a platform if they're censoring content.

00:34:51.000 So they want to have it both ways.

00:34:53.000 And God, no one on the right is going in and really doing anything to fight that.

00:34:56.000 Think about it.

00:34:57.000 You'd think you are.

00:34:58.000 We talk about it.

00:34:58.000 I am.

00:34:59.000 But what about the elected officials out there?

00:35:01.000 What about a lot of these companies who have billionaire investors?

00:35:05.000 Why aren't they doing anything about that?

00:35:07.000 Why 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.

00:35:15.000 You're gonna get a lot of those, unfortunately.

00:35:17.000 You're gonna be butting up against Big Tech, this new Mohan, whatever the hell his name is.

00:35:20.000 You don't see anyone else going out there fighting for you.

00:35:22.000 This is where you and I agree.

00:35:24.000 I sit there.

00:35:24.000 I have traveled this country, right?

00:35:26.000 When I do a show, it could be anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people.

00:35:29.000 I'm really grateful now that we can do this and not have to be beholden to clubs.

00:35:32.000 I've never met one fan of Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell.

00:35:37.000 Not one.

00:35:38.000 But these people are always elected?

00:35:40.000 Where's the fan club?

00:35:41.000 I talk with these people.

00:35:41.000 Right?

00:35:42.000 I know who they like.

00:35:43.000 I know what they want.

00:35:44.000 I know the kind of content they want.

00:35:46.000 When they vote with their dollar, when you look at the consumer behavior, it's very clear.

00:35:49.000 Not one.

00:35:50.000 No one says, gee, you know what, I really like what that Paul Ryan's up to.

00:35:54.000 But they always get the spots?

00:35:55.000 That's where the right gets it wrong.

00:35:56.000 It is a lot of exchanging.

00:35:59.000 It's a lot of handshakes, and you know what you always owe in this industry, and the right or on the left, and Rumble doesn't.

00:36:04.000 They're in a really good position.

00:36:06.000 Not only that, here's what excites me about Rumble.

00:36:08.000 You 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.

00:36:13.000 Rumble, yeah, people would be concerned they're a publicly traded company.

00:36:16.000 Here's the thing, Rumble is only as valuable their protection of free speech. In other words, if Rumble

00:36:23.000 does not continue to adhere to the principles of protecting free speech, why

00:36:27.000 would anyone go to Rumble? So it's this self-protection mechanism where the

00:36:31.000 company is only valuable if they actually do what they say they're going to

00:36:34.000 do. And that's something that's exciting to me because it doesn't allow

00:36:37.000 for doublespeak.

00:36:38.000 Yeah, that's a good observation.

00:36:39.000 Listening 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.

00:36:54.000 Is that Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:36:55.000 Well, more so the business of conservatism, right?

00:36:58.000 Like, 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.

00:37:04.000 And 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.

00:37:08.000 There'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.

00:37:19.000 Where 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.

00:37:23.000 There's always a step out in faith if you're doing something new.

00:37:27.000 And I was told that it would never work.

00:37:28.000 So that is disenchanting.

00:37:30.000 And then to find out that it does.

00:37:32.000 To 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.

00:37:40.000 And to have seen the powers that be say, that'll never work.

00:37:42.000 That'll never work.

00:37:43.000 Because Frank Luntz with his toupee and terrible sneakers ran a focus group? 0.99

00:37:47.000 You're shitting me. 0.78

00:37:48.000 I'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. 0.98

00:37:55.000 I mean, we've been sued by the Bob Ross Estate, ABC Disney, Viacom, NBC Universal, uh, who else?

00:38:03.000 The Burrowing Owls Society, yeah, because people started kicking them when we were just doing a gag.

00:38:08.000 It's a flightless bird.

00:38:09.000 I mean, for crying out loud, I think you're no longer a bird.

00:38:10.000 You're extinct.

00:38:12.000 This has happened- I have to pay millions for a lawyer on retainer.

00:38:15.000 I'm going, no one else.

00:38:17.000 Tell 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.

00:38:29.000 How you see the division between yourself as an entertainer and a voice in the political space?

00:38:34.000 Is it an ideologue?

00:38:35.000 Tell me a little bit how you situate yourself.

00:38:37.000 So how I started actually was voice work.

00:38:39.000 There was this kid's show, Arthur.

00:38:42.000 Arthur the Aardvark on PBS.

00:38:43.000 Yeah, I know that show. 0.99

00:38:44.000 Yeah.

00:38:45.000 So 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.

00:38:53.000 A lot of drugs involved in the creation of this program.

00:38:56.000 And so I started doing that when I was 12 years old.

00:38:59.000 I had done some extra work before that and I was acting.

00:39:00.000 I was often tutored on set as an actor.

00:39:03.000 And I actually got to see every single major comedian.

00:39:05.000 My mom was the wardrobe stylist for the gals at the Just for Laughs. 0.98

00:39:09.000 So 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.

00:39:22.000 And I remember I always wanted to do stand-up.

00:39:25.000 I was primarily an actor at this point, but I remember the joke that made me want to do stand-up.

00:39:29.000 And I've talked about it on air when Norm Macdonald died.

00:39:32.000 And you did his show, so I'll forever be seething with low-grade jealousy for you.

00:39:36.000 It's like an irritability.

00:39:39.000 He was our white whale.

00:39:39.000 He was supposed to be on the show, and we didn't know that he was sick at the time.

00:39:42.000 And, you know, he's my favorite comedian ever.

00:39:44.000 But he went up, and he did a joke at the Just for Laughs gala.

00:39:48.000 And everyone's going up there, set up punchline, right?

00:39:49.000 Because you have five minutes.

00:39:50.000 you gotta keep it tight. I remember him going up and he said, you know, there's this guy

00:39:54.000 who he killed his whole family there, you know, in this news story. He chopped them

00:39:58.000 up and he put them in a duffel bag because the devil told him to. I said, what if the

00:40:05.000 devil took off his mask and said, hey, it's me, Bob. I got my family here in a duffel

00:40:10.000 bag.

00:40:11.000 That's one for you, Bob.

00:40:12.000 That's one for you.

00:40:13.000 And as a kid, I was crying, laughing, saying, what is this?

00:40:15.000 It's not a setup punchline.

00:40:17.000 What is?

00:40:17.000 And anything I could consume from Norm Macdonald.

00:40:20.000 So then in my mid-teens, started doing stand-up, and that took me full circle to some pilots with that MTV money, as we know.

00:40:28.000 Did some pilots there, which were, of course, ill-fated.

00:40:30.000 Couldn't keep my mouth shut.

00:40:31.000 And then was just on the road for a long time and was an early adopter of YouTube and started doing political videos.

00:40:39.000 2008, 2009, Andrew Breitbart came and he liked some of it.

00:40:42.000 I 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.

00:40:49.000 Could you start writing for us?

00:40:50.000 Could you start contributing?

00:40:51.000 And then that took me to this other company, PJTV, in 2010, Fox News.

00:40:56.000 And I was always working alongside other people, and they always knew exactly what it was that the average American wanted.

00:41:03.000 They thought I was like Lindsey Graham, right?

00:41:04.000 And then at a certain point, I said, you know what?

00:41:06.000 I don't think you know, because I spend time with these people.

00:41:08.000 I think I have a pretty good idea.

00:41:10.000 So all I had ever done was acting in stand-up and always got in trouble.

00:41:15.000 I didn't even know I was a conservative.

00:41:17.000 I didn't know I was conservative when I was 16, 17, certainly 18 when I did the Just for Laughs.

00:41:21.000 I had no idea until they pulled me back and go, you know, you really can't tell that joke about, like, Muhammad.

00:41:25.000 I was like, but I just told one about Jesus Christ and that was pretty, you know, tasteless.

00:41:29.000 Like, yeah, but you can do that, but you can't do this joke, so we're not going to allow you to get on stage if you do it.

00:41:34.000 And I just was mad.

00:41:35.000 I was a contrarian.

00:41:36.000 Or once someone says you can't do it, I felt the need to do it.

00:41:40.000 And back then, YouTube was the Wild West.

00:41:41.000 I don't know if you remember back then YouTube like most viewed, most commented, most... It was actually the most viewed and most commented.

00:41:48.000 It wasn't someone in the back office saying, yeah, let me put this in someone's feed.

00:41:51.000 And so early on generated a lot of views and people would comment because they would be arguing but having discussions.

00:41:58.000 And then here we are. At a certain point we realized, you know, we saw the writing on the wall

00:42:02.000 and created Mug Club in 2016 and it just exploded more than we realized. And I'm eternally grateful.

00:42:10.000 I'm so grateful to owe you than owing a non-profit, than owing some politician, than owing an oil baron.

00:42:18.000 I do owe someone.

00:42:19.000 I owe the audience who pays for the show because that is what keeps the lights on.

00:42:22.000 That'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.

00:42:30.000 All of it is funded by, I used to think PBS was funded by viewers like us, but it's not, right?

00:42:34.000 It's a shakedown from the government.

00:42:36.000 We are really funded by people who paid to watch at a time where no one was paying for

00:42:40.000 anything on the internet outside of hardcore depraved pornography.

00:42:42.000 Yes, I was doing my best to contribute.

00:42:45.000 What about the comedic culture of the show?

00:42:52.000 The inclusion, the unwise it seems in retrospect, inclusion of Gerald and his tendency to strikes.

00:42:59.000 How did you come up with that kind of thing?

00:43:01.000 And 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?

00:43:10.000 So when people would say, uh, how would you describe it?

00:43:12.000 I would say early Letterman.

00:43:13.000 And again, he was just, you know, contrarian.

00:43:14.000 He just had a problem with authority.

00:43:16.000 Um, 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.

00:43:24.000 Early Letterman, my dad used to film it for me when I was a kid.

00:43:26.000 So I'd watch that.

00:43:27.000 And then John Stossel used to come on after TGIF on Fridays, uh, here in the States.

00:43:31.000 It would be like Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

00:43:33.000 And he did this segment, Give Me a Break.

00:43:35.000 And I loved it.

00:43:36.000 He would sit there.

00:43:37.000 I 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.

00:43:42.000 And 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.

00:43:47.000 He said, you know, we need back our land and the white man or whatever, talking about how the white man had abused him.

00:43:52.000 That may or may not be true.

00:43:53.000 But John Stossel looked at him and said, yeah, but you're wearing jeans.

00:43:59.000 Well, that's because a white man forces me to live this way.

00:44:01.000 But you're driving a Tacoma!

00:44:03.000 And 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.

00:44:10.000 You know, you see these hucksters everywhere.

00:44:12.000 But 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.

00:44:20.000 And if you read his biography, It's fascinating.

00:44:22.000 He became persona non grata there at ABC.

00:44:24.000 They would ignore him in the halls.

00:44:26.000 So the influence would have been Letterman, probably Early Otts, Stern, and John Stossel.

00:44:31.000 And when we started doing the show, you know, it was at night.

00:44:34.000 It was really the only sort of late night show that leaned right.

00:44:38.000 Then 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.

00:44:50.000 We said instead of instead of pulling back.

00:44:52.000 We'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.

00:45:09.000 Like, I get up early because I would have to.

00:45:11.000 It 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.

00:45:17.000 I said, well, if we can take this live in the morning and kind of hybridize it, that's kind of what you see now.

00:45:21.000 It 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.

00:45:29.000 We kind of merged those together and that's kind of the amalgamate that people see today.

00:45:32.000 So it was just, just an accident.

00:45:34.000 When you do these live shows, that sense of community, that's enjoyable.

00:45:38.000 Because 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.

00:45:55.000 He says in his book, The Revolt of the Public, that the terms left and right are becoming almost defunct.

00:46:00.000 What you have now is centralised authority and peripheral figures.

00:46:04.000 He 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.

00:46:17.000 Yeah.

00:46:18.000 I 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.

00:46:27.000 Pretty interesting.

00:46:29.000 Particularly 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.

00:46:40.000 And 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.

00:46:48.000 There's actually an example with you that I ran into this.

00:46:51.000 This 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.

00:47:00.000 You 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. 0.99

00:47:07.000 You said in England he wouldn't even be trusted with a pair of scissors. 0.51

00:47:09.000 That's right.

00:47:10.000 And you know what?

00:47:11.000 I was asked on these shows, like, well, don't you think it's disrespectful?

00:47:14.000 I said, I thought it was funny.

00:47:16.000 So I thought it was funny.

00:47:17.000 Now, I added, I had the addendum, I said, now look, I do think being in clubs is sort

00:47:20.000 of a comedic witch hunt, like making fun of George W. Bush is obviously safe territory,

00:47:24.000 he's at MTV.

00:47:25.000 I said, but the joke is funny.

00:47:26.000 I said, and I remember saying this to a host, and I won't name him because it was a local

00:47:30.000 host and I still like the guy, but I said, do we want to be the left?

00:47:32.000 Do we want to be offended by this?

00:47:33.000 That is an app, I said, what, what, because you use the word retarded, which now I know

00:47:36.000 we're not allowed to say because look, George Bush doesn't come across as particularly eloquent.

00:47:40.000 It was a funny joke that he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors.

00:47:43.000 That's a funny gag.

00:47:44.000 You're not going to get me to say this guy shouldn't have said that.

00:47:47.000 And faint outrage.

00:47:48.000 I don't care.

00:47:49.000 I thought it was funny enough.

00:47:50.000 That was my first brush with the phenomena of the death threat.

00:47:55.000 They came thick and they came fast.

00:47:57.000 And what I would say, where for me the line has been pretty consistent, is anti-authoritarianism, anti-establishment.

00:48:04.000 However that authoritarianism is undergirded, if it's a kind of we're doing this for your own good or we know best, I can't take it.

00:48:11.000 I can't take authoritarianism.

00:48:14.000 I believe in our right to make our own mistakes and to forge our own path and our ongoing right to disagree with one another.

00:48:21.000 Yeah.

00:48:21.000 And it was a funny joke.

00:48:22.000 Thanks very much, I appreciate it.

00:48:23.000 One day I did all of that Jonas Brothers stuff, I think I got more death threats for saying

00:48:27.000 that the Jonas Brothers should wear their virginity rings on an appendage in their anatomy.

00:48:32.000 I'm still thinking we're on YouTube, so can you see me self-censoring right now?

00:48:37.000 We're coming off of YouTube, that's what it says! 0.99

00:48:37.000 Oh, who gives a rat's ass? 0.99

00:48:39.000 What, are you going to let the Jonas Brothers fans throw their purses at you? 1.00

00:48:41.000 Who cares?

00:48:42.000 You can handle it.

00:48:42.000 You're a purple belt.

00:48:43.000 Right, I can probably find some way through framing to get those... Grab them by the sideburns, drag them to the ground, you're good.

00:48:49.000 That was an easy way to dispose of that potential threat.

00:48:53.000 What I feel, Stephen, what about spiritually?

00:48:57.000 I understand, are you a Christian, mate?

00:48:59.000 Yeah.

00:49:03.000 From the perspective of a comedian, I guess we require targets.

00:49:07.000 And I, by the way, don't accept the sort of the who gets to determine the punching down stuff.

00:49:12.000 What 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?

00:49:22.000 Broadly speaking, where I'm coming from, though, is a sense that I believe that I'm optimistic about human beings.

00:49:29.000 That part of my determination to not yield to centralised authority, be it corporate or state, is a sense that people will be alright.

00:49:38.000 We will look after one another.

00:49:40.000 People will find ways of organizing for their personal and mutual benefit.

00:49:45.000 For me, that requires a certain openness.

00:49:49.000 Is there anything in what you say that you disagree with?

00:49:52.000 We've hit the fundamental disagreement, but it's not what you think it is.

00:49:54.000 I believe that human beings are inherently sinful.

00:49:57.000 Um, 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.

00:50:05.000 So one's a boy one's a girl and uh, what happened is He she was stealing his pacifier, right?

00:50:11.000 She 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.

00:50:30.000 And 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. 0.99

00:50:36.000 No, you know, it's really hard to punish kids because they're so dumb, they don't understand anything. 0.95

00:50:40.000 But 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. 0.98

00:50:48.000 I believe that if you centralize power to any individuals, right, you give that up, human beings are sinful.

00:50:55.000 And I don't think there's anything more corrosive to the human soul than success and power, except for unearned success and unearned power.

00:51:03.000 And so when I believe that human beings are inherently sinful, and as a Christian, I believe we can all be redeemed through Christ, right?

00:51:07.000 Otherwise, there would be no reason for him.

00:51:10.000 I believe that you want to mitigate that centralized power, right?

00:51:14.000 The role of the government, I've always said this, this is the Canadian in me, is like a hockey referee.

00:51:18.000 And it's very different from other sports. I don't know how much you follow hockey,

00:51:21.000 but hockey for the longest time was the only sport where they'll let two guys fight, you know.

00:51:24.000 It's part of the rules.

00:51:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:26.000 That's the bit that people don't follow hockey like.

00:51:29.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:51:30.000 It's actually a form of self-governance, right?

00:51:32.000 When you're doing it in baseball, everyone jumps up on the pitcher's mound and they start slap fighting each other.

00:51:37.000 In 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.

00:51:42.000 And these guys only sit on the bench to make sure that you don't cheap shot their player. 0.98

00:51:45.000 So 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. 0.81

00:51:55.000 The ref lets it go because of a system of self-accountability.

00:51:58.000 Now here's the thing, a hockey referee, unlike in other sports, he keeps the pace of the game.

00:52:02.000 meaning the rules, right, that affect everybody, make sure that people are playing by the rules,

00:52:06.000 and make sure that no one is hurt, make sure the players are safe, meaning protect us from inside

00:52:10.000 and outside threats, be that domestically or, of course, we need some kind of a national defense,

00:52:15.000 because we do live on a globe with other countries, some of whom want to cause us harm.

00:52:18.000 In hockey, unless there's a direct penalty that involves the puck in play, or someone's being

00:52:25.000 hurt, he keeps his whistle in his pocket, including when two guys fight.

00:52:28.000 You let them fight it out over here if it's mutually agreed upon combat.

00:52:31.000 That's the role of the government.

00:52:33.000 That's what I want to see the government do.

00:52:34.000 I think human beings are inherently sinful if left to their own devices, which is why I don't want them to centralize that power.

00:52:40.000 And by the way, it's why I don't want to see it on the right-wing media sphere either, right?

00:52:43.000 You don't want two companies.

00:52:44.000 Same thing with big tech.

00:52:45.000 You don't want three people controlling 95% of the information.

00:52:49.000 That's the problem, right?

00:52:49.000 We're talking about big tech.

00:52:50.000 How does this happen?

00:52:51.000 Talk about like a late night thing.

00:52:53.000 I remember sitting there and at one point in time it was, gosh, I'm trying to remember.

00:52:56.000 You had Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, and I'm going through this list.

00:52:59.000 You had Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, okay, all of them.

00:53:02.000 Larry Wilmore was on at that point.

00:53:03.000 And I said, hold on a second.

00:53:05.000 Every single late night host, every single one and all their correspondents, All endorsed Hillary Clinton?

00:53:12.000 How is that happenstance at a certain point?

00:53:14.000 How is there no organic fracturing of different points of view?

00:53:17.000 It's by design in the entertainment industry.

00:53:19.000 And you say the same, you go, wait, hold on a second.

00:53:23.000 99% of political donations from Google, from YouTube, from Alphabet, from Facebook went to Democrats, went to leftists.

00:53:29.000 And 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?

00:53:38.000 And then you realize it's by design. 0.84

00:53:40.000 And 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.

00:53:51.000 I 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.

00:53:58.000 You can't actually nourish a fake plant.

00:54:01.000 It's a principle.

00:54:04.000 That 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.

00:54:30.000 With your point there, mate, about sin, I was thinking like outside of the, if only we had a theologian on.

00:54:36.000 Outside 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.

00:55:02.000 will lead to a kind of what could be described as sin or selfishness or missing the mark or

00:55:07.000 however you want to regard and describe sin. I suppose what I feel is another area where we agree

00:55:14.000 is I don't like the idea of grant in that authority either to a government official

00:55:22.000 or to the sort of more inert motivations of corporate momentum, the kind of lack of choice

00:55:30.000 that comes when you have monopolies or...

00:55:33.000 And that's the thing too, I think that's been sort of misconstrued, is conservatives are not for crony capitalism or corporatism.

00:55:41.000 And that's also a big reason that I've gone with Rumble, you know, people know if they followed.

00:55:45.000 I 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.

00:55:50.000 And it's one thing to say, hey, there are multiple ways of doing things.

00:55:52.000 With Mug Club and bringing on new talent, and some of whom I'm really excited about,

00:55:56.000 we can't officially announce all of them, but by March 20th you'll see who they are,

00:55:59.000 is I don't want to tell them how to do their show.

00:56:02.000 I don't want, and I certainly don't want to keep their subscribers.

00:56:04.000 Anyone who signs up with Mug Club, who will also, you know, be going through Rumble, if

00:56:09.000 they leave, they take their subscribers with them.

00:56:11.000 Why would you want to keep someone who doesn't want to be there?

00:56:13.000 The 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.

00:56:23.000 I'm saying there are many different ways.

00:56:25.000 I'm saying you can let your freak flag fly.

00:56:27.000 You 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.

00:56:34.000 And she was telling me to picture myself at the bottom of a staircase, but my staircase banister didn't work.

00:56:38.000 It was, like, wobbly, so that's all I could picture.

00:56:40.000 It didn't work for me.

00:56:41.000 But 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?

00:56:48.000 But, my God, we give it the college try.

00:56:50.000 And 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.

00:56:57.000 All of that is welcome.

00:56:58.000 In a war for information, to use that sort of Allegorically.

00:57:01.000 You need all different kinds of people and different kinds of skill sets.

00:57:04.000 The problem is, you do have people in positions of power who say, no, no, there's one way to do it.

00:57:09.000 There's one way to do it.

00:57:10.000 And I don't think that what we do is niche.

00:57:11.000 That's the thing.

00:57:12.000 Like, people talk about Fox News.

00:57:15.000 And 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.

00:57:21.000 Okay.

00:57:21.000 But here's the thing.

00:57:22.000 People say, man, it's the number one show out there in the conservative sphere.

00:57:25.000 It's two point something million, maybe three point something million on a really good night.

00:57:29.000 Media and viewership is in the seventies, right?

00:57:31.000 Okay.

00:57:31.000 Breaking bad.

00:57:33.000 The season finale had about 12 or 14 million people who tuned in.

00:57:37.000 Here's the thing.

00:57:37.000 They ran some focus groups and I don't know if I could even still find this.

00:57:40.000 It was a huge majority.

00:57:42.000 I want to say 80%.

00:57:43.000 Let's say it was 60%.

00:57:45.000 We're registered Republicans.

00:57:47.000 So 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.

00:57:57.000 And those people, not even a fourth of them, are tuning into the largest conservative network?

00:58:02.000 How badly have we failed them?

00:58:05.000 And you know what?

00:58:06.000 Maybe some of those people, like what Tucker Carlson has to say, that show is not their flavor.

00:58:11.000 The problem is when you have a movement that says everyone has to be the same in cookie cutter.

00:58:15.000 And that's what, look, here's the truth.

00:58:17.000 If it worked, people wouldn't be so excited about you.

00:58:21.000 People are excited about you because you're someone who has made a cultural impact, right?

00:58:24.000 You'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.

00:58:32.000 And this is why you'll see people on the right clamor for celebrities, right?

00:58:36.000 Because they don't have a whole lot of them.

00:58:38.000 Like, you know, they have like G. Gordon Liddy or like you're on like, you know, Fox News,

00:58:42.000 like I'm Bill Devane, whatever it is.

00:58:43.000 If you were to be selling self-lubricating pocket catheters, they wouldn't be able to

00:58:46.000 keep them in stock.

00:58:47.000 So people are excited because they realize there's a cultural influence from someone

00:58:50.000 like you, who even though you don't agree on everything, your eyes have been open to

00:58:53.000 some issues they've been espousing for a long time, which tells me they don't believe it's

00:58:57.000 the only way.

00:58:58.000 Also, I would disagree that this is for like a kind of a personal epiphany, that anti-establishmentism

00:59:02.000 is something that's very much inborn in me just because of the circumstances of my background,

00:59:07.000 the fact that I'm a recovering addict, I'm a comedian, I believe in free speech.

00:59:13.000 And when I was like making jokes about George Bush, like he was the president now.

00:59:18.000 Now 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.

00:59:27.000 But at that point for me, that was the joke to make.

00:59:32.000 I 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.

00:59:40.000 What 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.

01:00:00.000 That doesn't seem to me like a sensible way forward, as power is coalescing Quite significantly around some very, very deep, potent interests.

01:00:11.000 If 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.

01:00:18.000 So I feel like the principles of democracy, and open-heartedness, and open-mindedness, and broadly speaking, good faith conversations with people.

01:00:25.000 There 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.

01:00:35.000 I don't think that I know enough about the world to foreclose on your right to say stuff.

01:00:40.000 What 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.

01:00:49.000 People would say, hey, you know what?

01:00:51.000 Let's say you were conservative in a parallel universe, is what I'm saying.

01:00:53.000 Like me, 13, getting on stage at 16, 17 years old.

01:00:56.000 People say, you can't say that.

01:00:57.000 What 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.

01:01:07.000 But here's the thing, you would be of no value.

01:01:10.000 You'd be another talking head.

01:01:11.000 The reason that people are so excited about you just saying, hey, people should be able to speak freely, right?

01:01:15.000 Just that.

01:01:16.000 Is music to the ears of conservatives.

01:01:18.000 Why?

01:01:18.000 Because it's someone different who doesn't fit the mold.

01:01:20.000 But that mold is by design.

01:01:21.000 What I'm saying is my goal is to build a bench.

01:01:24.000 My goal is to have another Steven Crowder, another Latter Earth Crowder. 1.00

01:01:28.000 It can't happen.

01:01:29.000 It 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?

01:01:33.000 You be you and your audience will find you.

01:01:35.000 The left is very good at that.

01:01:38.000 Jordan Peterson talks about this because they're often more open minded and less sort of conscientious are the terms that he would use.

01:01:44.000 Well, Rumble allows for that.

01:01:46.000 And that's what we're doing.

01:01:47.000 And one thing, too, that's also really convenient with Mug Club being on Rumble is people don't have to go to three different places.

01:01:51.000 You either watch on YouTube or you watch it on Rumble, and then you just keep watching on Rumble.

01:01:54.000 You don't have to go anywhere else, and you'll be watching the paid portion of the show.

01:01:58.000 So that's a lot more convenient.

01:01:59.000 People don't have to jump around, use apps that didn't quite work.

01:02:03.000 But that's the issue, is the mold that you see on the right that I have a problem with.

01:02:07.000 And it does stem largely from corporatism.

01:02:09.000 It does stem largely from people at the top telling you what you want, rather than coming from the bottom up.

01:02:14.000 And 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.

01:02:20.000 Those are the people who are excited about alternatives.

01:02:22.000 How long have people been clamoring for some kind of an alternative?

01:02:26.000 And maybe it will be!

01:02:27.000 Maybe it won't.

01:02:28.000 You know, the capital that YouTube has is their user base, is their eyeballs and their ears.

01:02:32.000 But that only remains if people think that YouTube is what they came to see.

01:02:36.000 It used to be content generators, right, who were adding the value to YouTube.

01:02:40.000 Now they want to be CNN Lite.

01:02:42.000 Now they want to favor the big channels.

01:02:44.000 And it's not the reason that people went to YouTube.

01:02:47.000 So they're making some mistakes.

01:02:48.000 And I think places like Rumble are picking it up, and they're not forcing me any more than they're forcing you to fit into a box.

01:02:54.000 They're just saying, hey, here's a playground, and let us have your back, and at least be a wind to your sails.

01:03:01.000 This is the first time that I've signed a contract, I will say this.

01:03:04.000 I'm really excited.

01:03:06.000 Really 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?

01:03:19.000 You 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?

01:03:27.000 Got 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?

01:03:35.000 And that's not how most media companies operate, and it is how we operate, and Rumble's willing to back us up.

01:03:41.000 I can't say how excited I am.

01:03:43.000 Chris is cute as a button, too.

01:03:44.000 Yeah, isn't he cute?

01:03:45.000 He really is.

01:03:46.000 I think we can certainly agree on that point as well, that Chris Pavlovsky, the CEO of Rumble, is as cute as a button.

01:03:52.000 Stephen, thank you so much for this conversation.

01:03:55.000 I've really enjoyed talking with you.

01:03:56.000 If I had access to amphetamines now, I'd carry on for a little longer, but I've got a... You've had a long day right there.

01:04:02.000 It's been intense, man.

01:04:03.000 Across the state, you flew in.

01:04:04.000 Yeah, isn't it just, people don't realise sometimes, it must be nice to just talk for a living. 0.99

01:04:08.000 It's like, oh, if you only knew how much crap goes on behind the scenes that sucks. 0.96

01:04:12.000 Stuff that we're dragging out of ourselves. 0.98

01:04:14.000 Stephen, thank you mate.

01:04:15.000 I wish you every success with this endeavour.

01:04:17.000 I'm glad to hear you're so enthusiastic and see you looking so well.

01:04:21.000 Thanks 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.

01:04:33.000 Maybe get you in a sketch or a parody if you... Change each other's minds! 0.80

01:04:36.000 We can try that.

01:04:37.000 I don't think you'll be changing my mind but I'll be willing to.

01:04:40.000 Challenge people.

01:04:41.000 Can we get you in a sketch?

01:04:43.000 Can I get you to commit to be in a sketch?

01:04:45.000 I didn't realize you love contracts.

01:04:48.000 This guy lives for contracts. 1.00

01:04:49.000 No, no, I'll do it for shits and giggles. 0.99

01:04:52.000 Let's do a live change of mind. 0.99

01:04:54.000 We'll do it for lupus.

01:04:55.000 We'll do it for charity.

01:04:55.000 I don't know why you don't care about people with lupus.

01:04:57.000 I care about people.

01:04:58.000 I care about all conceivable conditions.

01:05:00.000 That's what makes me a damn decent... What about moderate to severe plexoriasis?

01:05:04.000 All of it. 0.90

01:05:05.000 All of it.

01:05:05.000 And owls.

01:05:06.000 I would never No.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - March 07, 2023

Stay Free Meets Mug Club: Russell sits down with Steven Crowder

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript