Russell Brand is joined by comedian Vivek Ramaswamy to discuss a range of topics, including the latest in the Trump administration, Alex Jones, the 2020 Democratic primary, and much, much more! Stay tuned for the full episode next Monday, when Russell will be joined by his good friend, comedian, writer, podcaster, actor, and all-around great guy, Amy Poehler. Stay free, friends! - Russell Brand. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The opinions expressed here are our own, not those of our companies, and do not necessarily reflect those of any other companies or organizations. We do not own the rights to any music used in this podcast. If you like what you hear here, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and we'll read out your comments on the next episode of Stay Free, wherever you get your favourite streaming platform. Thank you so much for listening, stay free, and spread the word to your friends and family about this podcast! Love ya! xoxo, Timestamps: 3:00 - Stay free! 4:30 - The future is here! 5:15 - What's the future? 6:00 7:40 - Who's going to go to Mars? 8:20 - Is it possible? 9:00s? 10:30s 11:00 | What's next? 12: Is it a good idea? 15:00 Is there a better country? 16: Should we be a paedophile? 17:30 | 16:00 / 17: Is there any such thing? 18:00 + 17:00 // 19:00? 21:40 22:00/16? 19:30 23:00+ +16:40 +17:30? 25:00 & 16:20? 27:30 + 16:10? 26:00 ? 27, is it a double standard? 29: Is the problem? 35:00 Or 15: Is he a paedophilia? 30:00?? 32:00?! 33:30+ 36:30 Is he going to be sent to prison for calling someone a pedophophile in prison? 31:00
00:02:39.000If you're watching us anywhere than Rumble, our home where we can speak freely, where we can pet our dogs, where we can even insure our dogs.
00:02:47.000Where we can drink our glorious coffee, where we can have fun together, making fun of the powerful.
00:02:54.000If you're watching it on YouTube, for example, you're going to have to click the link in the description to join us for our conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:06:09.000Maybe she was trying to illustrate what misinformation means, posted Elon Musk in our country, Nigel Farage, Former leader of reform, engineer many would say of Brexit, former guest of the show, says that it's more likely that you'll go to prison for calling someone a paedophile than being a paedophile.
00:06:34.000I think in response to a very high profile case here in this country where a BBC newscaster was found to have Pretty appalling imagery on his phone pertaining to subjects that I don't even want to name out loud.
00:06:48.000Let's have a look at Farage making the claim.
00:06:51.000It does seem rather odd that you can go to prison for calling someone a paedophile online but not for being one.
00:07:00.000And that sort of double standard is how it looks to most people.
00:07:04.000And I think one of the problems that we've got Mohammed is whether it's policing the way different groups are policed in different ways,
00:07:12.000whether it's the judicial system, I think there is a strong view
00:07:19.000You know, two-tier Keir, people start to talk about.
00:07:22.000Two-tier Keir is catching on, globalist leader, Keir Starmer, current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
00:07:30.000Donald Trump is actually, it seems, approaching, acknowledging that there was some problems
00:07:40.000with Operation Warp Speed and the MRNA program.
00:07:44.000You hear Donald Trump say about beautiful vaccines, beautiful vaccines, so fast!
00:07:49.000But now, Trump, it appears, could be about to admit That there was a problem with the vaccine program and maybe even the vaccines themselves.
00:08:09.000Let us know in the comments and the chat what you think about some of Vivek's revelations when it comes to big tech and censorship and consider becoming an awakened wonder.
00:08:18.000Join us for some fantastic additional content.
00:08:20.000For example, Russell Brand's stand-up breakdown where I scrutinize, analyze and have fun reflecting on stand-up comedy greats.
00:08:30.000We also do Bible studies and meditations and answer your questions directly.
00:08:34.000Let's have a look now at Donald Trump Coming close to admitting, and I know a lot of you would like this, that there was something wrong with that medication.
00:08:45.000On COVID, you frequently say at your rallies and so on that you don't feel like you get enough credit on COVID.
00:08:51.000But by nearly every assessment, the CDC failed miserably at job one.
00:08:57.000And yes, the COVID vaccines were developed in record time.
00:08:59.000But as we now know, they don't prevent infection, illness or transmission.
00:09:03.000And they have very potentially serious side effects.
00:09:07.000Do you think that maybe they were approved too fast?
00:09:09.000And in hindsight, based on what we know now, what would you have done differently?
00:09:13.000Well, I think they're doing studies on the vaccines and we're going to find out and it'll come out one way or the other.
00:09:20.000But I really had a mandate to get vaccines done and I got them done very quickly in record time.
00:09:36.000Because it did become such a hotly politicized issue, which is odd, really, because that oughtn't be the approach to A medical solution to a problem that did not prevent transmission or ultimately, it appears, hospitalisation and increasingly, it seems, may have contributed to excess deaths.
00:09:57.000That's something that's just conjecture, obviously, at this point.
00:10:00.000But certainly, the Yellow Card and VARS events do not look favourable and it's been subsequently established that there are causal links to myocarditis and pericarditis that were potentially known about long before it was published, as well as The impact on menstruating and in the potentially pregnant women.
00:10:18.000It seems that we are living in a time of great transition when it comes to that subject and in a way I see that as sort of a further evidence of Trump's kind of good faith that he was just trying his hardest to get those mRNA products out there.
00:10:34.000Again, let me know in the comments if you agree with this.
00:10:35.000The Bobby Kennedy inclusion means, doesn't it, that there's going to have to be a reckoning in the event that Trump forms a government in November.
00:10:46.000I have a friend of mine who said to me, why don't you talk about the vaccine, what you did with the vaccine?
00:10:52.000He's a democrat, but I'm sure he voted for me.
00:10:55.000He said, what you did was the most incredible thing that any president has ever done.
00:11:00.000You've saved hundreds of millions of lives all over the world.
00:12:01.000Interesting unraveling of a continually captivating story.
00:12:07.000If we reach the point where Trump says, That was a mistake or it was badly handled or if it's empirically proven, further proven, that there was a net negative impact as a result of those medications and Trump's in government.
00:12:21.000I wonder if we will see the reckoning that many people have been praying for when it comes to some of the administrative bodies.
00:12:27.000And administrators as well as billionaire plutocrats that are able to exert incredible influence even from non-governmental positions, from philanthropic positions they call them, across the world.
00:12:40.000Why don't you let me know what you think in the comments and chat.
00:12:41.000If you're watching this anywhere other than on Rumble, our home, or if you're not on Awake and Wonder yet, If you're not an Awaken 1DN, there's so many reasons to become one, then you're going to have to click the link in the description and join us over on Rumble now for our conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:13:09.000I was enthralled to hear his perspective on censorship, The cutting down of bureaucracy and the new alliances that are suggested and I believe now for the first time culturally possible when you have figures like Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy, Bobby Kennedy and Donald Trump all aligned or at least in alliance.
00:13:30.000How can you claim that the bureaucratic centralists who clearly are in the hot and control of globalism, corporatism and institutional powers that don't care about ordinary Americans are anything other A detrimental outcome when it comes to November.
00:13:59.000You must be at some point accepting that you may take on the mantle of soothsayer as well as disruptor with some of your predictions, notably that Biden would drop out of You've been kind of perspicacious, but I suppose you'll say that's just because you were looking at evidence and circumstances rather than trusting intuition.
00:14:24.000On that basis, I wonder how you see the rest of this campaign going, with one side relying on celebrity endorsements, the other side relying on assassination attempts.
00:14:34.000What can we look forward to in the next 50-60 days?
00:14:38.000I think the next 50-60 days could get strange, but I think it's going to be a barometer of the following, Russell.
00:14:46.000And I'm just, again, following historical facts and evidence, and combine that with a little bit of trained intuition, okay?
00:14:53.000I think that the more that you see Donald Trump surge in the polls, the more likely there are going to be very unusual and strange things that happen and continue to happen.
00:15:05.000If that doesn't happen, then I think you won't see as strange of things happen.
00:15:08.000So I think it's a direct function of what the polling looks like between now and the election.
00:15:15.000I say this because the evidence supports it.
00:15:17.000When Donald Trump has surged in the polls, strange things have happened, up to and including the swapping out of his main opponent for this race for the presidency of the United States of America.
00:15:28.000And other unprecedented things, I mean, of a kind, Russell, that we haven't seen in a generation in this country.
00:15:34.000One of the things that's most alarming about the assassination attempts, just as a citizen, was watching this.
00:15:41.000Is the fact that it has become almost normalized in the way that this has been covered.
00:15:46.000And I think that's the saddest part about this.
00:15:49.000Just over two months ago was an assassination attempt.
00:15:52.000As recently as several weeks ago, it was not even talked about really anymore.
00:15:56.000And then there was the second assassination attempt, and as a matter of days later, it's not really discussed anymore.
00:16:01.000When these should be exceptional, appalling, rare historical events that'll be in the history books for kids a century from now, and yet forget about a century from now, even days from then, it's almost as though it's forgotten, as though it's not in social media cycle anymore.
00:16:18.000And I think that type of normalization, that type of anesthetization of our response and instincts, I think bodes poorly where it means that we'll take something even more strange or odd or bizarre in order to actually cause people to halt and say, what the hell is actually going on in this country?
00:16:40.000And so anyway, that's a deeper psychological malaise in the country that I worry deeply about.
00:16:45.000But nonetheless, you asked about my prognostications and, you know, I think I think it's gonna be a tight election.
00:16:54.000At this point in my mind, it's going to stay tight through the end.
00:16:56.000But if for whatever reason, it looks like, you know, Trump is ascendant clearly and on his way to victory.
00:17:04.000I just think that the last year and a half has taught us from prosecutions to civil service, civil cases, to attempts to remove him from a ballot without even going through the judicial system, to swapping out his candidacy of those opponent.
00:17:20.000All the way to even tragic or near tragic events in the last several months.
00:17:25.000I think we have to brace ourselves for what has been already a really unusual election cycle and could become even more unusual as we head to the election.
00:17:35.000I've just noticed a tendency with our own content that I imagine is close to universal.
00:17:43.000What I suspect is happening is that legacy media will report on an assassination attempt or an event that could be favourable to the Trump campaign that might engender or inspire sympathy, interest, be a kind of tacit endorsement of anti-establishment credentials.
00:18:01.000The legacy media will report on it, whether that's the BBC in my country, or MSNBC, or CNN in yours, in a particular way.
00:18:08.000Like the BBC report began with, Donald Trump is safe and well after an assassination, after a failed assassination.
00:18:16.000I was like, oh my god, that's so extraordinary!
00:18:17.000Then, the other component, and this is very recent, is that online spaces, notably Google, are For sure, de-amplifying universally independent media content that's covering your party's campaign.
00:18:34.000What that will do, of course, initially, is it will mean that the messaging that's somewhat favourable, or at least sympathetic, to the new alliance that's coalescing around you, Trump, Tulsi, Bobby Kennedy, it means fewer people will see, obviously, but secondarily, Independent media content creators are dependent on the revenue.
00:18:58.000So they will select against making this content, ultimately.
00:19:02.000When we used to make content on Trump events, we would see spikes, particularly if there was an event.
00:19:11.000So people will start to make different types of content.
00:19:13.000It's a cynical little world out there.
00:19:15.000So that, I see, is a real strangle and choke on this type of content.
00:19:20.000And I think, Russell, that last point you made, it's actually a really interesting observation.
00:19:24.000It is a profound point, because I think we worry very much, rightly, about the way human beings at these tech companies are training their AI and their algorithms.
00:19:35.000But the last step that you just identified is actually the most devious of all.
00:19:39.000It's the way the AI and the algorithms are actually training the human beings.
00:19:43.000So the ultimate AI in this is the incentive structure you create for, as you said, independent journalism, content creators, whose revenue models depend on what is or is not amplified or monetized.
00:19:54.000So in some ways, it's the human beings at the tech companies that have trained the algorithms.
00:20:00.000We can't make this content without the support of our partners and sponsors.
00:21:20.000One of the things the tech companies learn, let me just walk through the cascade here.
00:21:24.000In the last several years, they've learned that actually outright censoring, outright banning, outright locking accounts isn't a good thing for them to do.
00:21:32.000Not just because it's morally wrong or because it's anti-American or runs against their stated principles of supporting a free internet.
00:21:39.000But pragmatically, it's a bad idea for them because it creates a level of public ire, potential headlines that later follow, And so they've realized the way to carry out censorship is not through bans, not through terminating accounts.
00:21:53.000That was the sloppy way they used to do it way back in the stone ages of 2020.
00:21:57.000The way they do it now is almost exclusively through amplification or suppression of the desired forms of content being amplified, whereas the undesired forms are de-amplified, if not outright censored.
00:22:09.000It is a form of censorship, but this allows them to call it something other than censorship.
00:22:13.000Now, then the next step in the cascade is, okay, if they've done it that way, is it human beings doing this?
00:22:18.000The answer to that question is no, because again, they're too smart for that.
00:22:21.000Human beings doing it as individuals, that was again back in the Flintstone age of the 2020s.
00:22:26.000In the postmodern age of 2024, the way they do it is, no, no, it's just the algorithms that do it.
00:22:31.000Well, how are those algorithms trained?
00:22:33.000They're trained by the biases set into motion.
00:22:35.000It's like if the creator launched the Big Bang, we can talk about the existence of God and what the Big Bang has to do with that later.
00:22:44.000But the analogy here is the creator of those algorithms is actually just a human being that's set into motion, but then watches it do whatever it does for the public to believe is independently.
00:22:54.000Now that AI has been permanently trained by those biases, what's the final way to close that loop?
00:23:01.000The entire incentive structure, and capitalism is a form of AI, you could think about it in that context at least.
00:23:06.000They use the combination of that AI and capitalism, human incentives for people who make money through creating content and distributing it independently, to train them on what types of content they are or aren't aren't supposed to create, not by censoring them anymore, but by training them using the financial incentives of amplification, or or shadow banning and throttling as a backdoor mechanism for now that having solved the problem.
00:23:30.000So then fast forward four years from now, You don't even need the technology companies to intervene because the system has already been trained on what types of incentives are rewarded for creating what kind of content and what kind of content or information isn't rewarded.
00:23:42.000And that's exactly what they're playing for.
00:23:43.000So I thought that was a really astute observation, but I just wanted to take a minute to really break it down because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
00:23:50.000Part of the reason I still do things like write books.
00:23:53.000I mean, the reason I wrote this most recent book, I actually talk about some of these very themes of the more covert threats to free speech that are less overt, but in some ways, they're more dangerous.
00:24:05.000And, you know, in the latest book, I think that was a focus area of mine, because I think this is a hot theme right now, affecting and impacting even potentially the result of this upcoming election.
00:24:16.000And the more alert we are to it, the less likely it is to actually have its intended effect.
00:24:21.000I noted that some of the cultural governmental departments and groups that manage AI that were involved in the stories and maneuvering subsequent to the attacks I received personally in September last year were meeting with the Biden and Kamala campaign In your country, recently, it's precisely the manipulation and management of online content, deamplification, forms of shadow banning, populating comments with bots, ensuring that certain stories aren't proliferated, that these organizations engage in.
00:24:57.000Creating stories that legitimize smears and legitimize censorship seems to be part of the overall playbook, and it's one that's being used I would say profligately during the Covid period, various individuals, Bhattacharya, Pierre, Corey, Robert Malone, anyone, McCulloch, anyone that was outspoken, most notably and famously Joe Rogan.
00:25:22.000But what we're seeing now is its use in electoral cycles.
00:25:28.000And what I suppose the end point of it becomes, Vivek, is ontological.
00:25:34.000It seems like if 10 years ago and it's almost difficult to imagine the alternate universe in the incessant blizzard of data that we all live in.
00:25:42.000If like figures as distinct as you, Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump, Bobby Kennedy were all part of a One political party?
00:25:53.000You would have to regard that as anti-establishment.
00:25:56.000In your case I'm referring to your anti-bureaucratic stance.
00:26:00.000I loved it how on Jordan Peterson you described how you would strip government departments once in office and that was an area of expertise and experience that you'd be able to deploy.
00:26:09.000Then you think of the experience of environmentalism and medical malpractice that Bobby Kennedy brings, Tulsi Gabbard's military experience.
00:26:18.000I'm still astonished by say intellectual liberals who some of whom I stay in touch with and I still read their content really to understand what the purview is, are able to say like I saw recently a celebrity endorsement of Kamala Harris saying that if you believe in democracy you have to vote for Kamala Harris because and Tim Walz because of the terrible project 2025.
00:26:41.000The management like The management of the information sphere is becoming extraordinarily adept and other than outliers like our platform Rumble and Elon Musk's ex, there's a complete management of information that means that something that would, I would say, at the beginning of this campaign, even though you're
00:27:02.000You know from a capitalist and entrepreneurial and somewhat libertarian, you tell me what you are, perspective it seems like anti-establishment and Bobby Kennedy in the way that I've described is anti-establishment, I would have thought it very unlikely that you guys would be campaigning together.
00:27:17.000So in a sense doesn't that show that there's an emergent anti-establishment consensus and how can the sort of liberal centrist globalists You know, it's interesting.
00:27:28.000I'm enjoying this conversation, Russell, because your insights are spot on here.
00:27:31.000the page and we've got to fight against this establishment.
00:27:34.000I don't understand how they can manage it. You know, it's interesting. There's a funny
00:27:38.000dynamic. I'm enjoying this conversation, Russell, because your insights are spot on
00:27:43.000here. The only thing I would say is, I don't think you're ever going to see a political party
00:27:47.000represent that because the nature of being anti-establishment or the nature of having an independent
00:27:52.000streak is remaining independent, And so, you know, here are things that are true about the likes of some of the people you mentioned from Tulsi, Bobby, myself.
00:28:00.000We don't agree with 100% of what each other think.
00:28:02.000We don't agree with 100% of what Donald Trump thinks, and we're not afraid to say it.
00:28:05.000But actually what we are against is the rise of this managerial class and this machine that in some ways is managing not just the government, unelected bureaucrats managing the government, they're managing every sphere of our lives, right?
00:28:17.000From corporate America to our universities to nonprofits.
00:28:21.000It's the bureaucratic class, the committee class, the managerial class that effectively is protecting its own continued existence at the expense of the institution they're supposed to safeguard.
00:28:32.000And in the government, that's the case of representative democracy.
00:28:35.000So part of the imbalance here, and what we have going against us, if you will, in an anti-establishment current, is that just by our very nature, we're not wired to form a political party with structure around that current, because create a new establishment, and that would create a new layer of bureaucracy and a managerial class.
00:28:54.000And that's, in some sense, what we find antipathic.
00:28:57.000But it's also I think what makes this movement in this moment that much more powerful because I think people across the country and even people who you'd call former liberal intellectuals, some of them at least I think even the others, I hope there's an awakening still yet ahead.
00:29:13.000You've seen movement where I think people agree in this country that I may not want the policy that some congressman votes for, but I'd still want it to be the people we elect to run the government, for God's sake, to be the ones who actually run the government and make the decisions, rather than somebody who I could never fire at the ballot box.
00:29:30.000That's just what it means to live in a constitutional republic.
00:29:33.000It's what it means to live in a representative democracy.
00:29:36.000I may not agree with a heinous opinion that's expressed on Rumble, or on Facebook, or on X, or on TikTok, But I still believe in the right of the person there to express it, because if I don't, that means that tomorrow it's going to be my opinion that's suppressed when the same shoe fits the other foot.
00:29:55.000So I think those principles, what we're seeing, what you call anti-establishment, and I think it's a fine word, but There can be different kinds of establishments at different times.
00:30:05.000I call maybe more of a principles-based rather than a politics or partisan-based, first principles-based movement to say just what are the basic rules of the road, right?
00:30:13.000We might need to drive different cars on that road.
00:30:15.000You know, every one of the individuals you mentioned, from Bobby to Tulsi to Donald Trump, we'll spar and disagree, I'll spar and disagree with them on a wide range of topics.
00:30:23.000Those are like different cars you might ride on the road, okay?
00:30:27.000But we're not talking about which car you're designing on the road.
00:30:29.000Right now we're in a moment we're talking about the basic rules of the road itself.
00:30:33.000And we are deeply aligned on those basic rules of the road.
00:30:56.000We're against the assault on religion.
00:30:58.000Stand for the free exercise of religion.
00:31:00.000And I think that that's one of those moments.
00:31:02.000That's part of why I say it's more of a 1776 moment right now.
00:31:07.000I know you come from the other side of the pond, so with all due respect, you know, in a very American-centric sense, a 1776 moment in our own country where this isn't about, you know, bickering over the tax rate being 1% higher or 1% lower.
00:31:21.000And, you know, we may have our disagreements between the parties on that.
00:31:26.000It's about the basic rules of the road.
00:31:28.000And as Orwell once said, the best way to actually control a society is to first control its language.
00:31:35.000That's what you see from the other side, where they've owned the message of protecting our democracy.
00:31:40.000We think about what's a threat to democracy?
00:31:42.000A threat to democracy is telling your political opponents they can't speak.
00:31:45.000A threat to democracy is saying that the people who run the government aren't actually the ones who we elect to run the government, aren't the ones who run the government.
00:31:52.000There's no doubt in anybody's mind that Joe Biden is not, in any sense, running as the President of the United States today.
00:31:57.000He's not functioning as the President of the United States today.
00:31:59.000Nobody in America believes that he is, and yet we hold out this artifice that he's actually the U.S.
00:32:04.000So those, I think, represent real threats to democracy, not the histrionics that we hear Part of the problem is, you know, we as human beings, we always do.
00:32:15.000We fall for narratives that are sold to us.
00:32:18.000But there's also a part of us that hungers to rebel against those narratives.
00:32:22.000And so this anti-establishment current that you're describing, our duty, our job right now is to awaken the side of each of us.
00:32:29.000That wants to reject what we're force fed rather than just swallowing it.
00:32:33.000And every human being, every one of us has both impulses in us.
00:32:37.000The question of the leaders of this new movement is how are we going to awaken the rebellious instincts at a moment where the future of our country depends on it?
00:32:45.000And that's what I'm trying to do my best on in the next few weeks and months left.
00:32:50.000To your point on Orwellianism and the capture of language, I was speaking with Michael Schellenberger yesterday and he said that one of the ways I think it was X was being condemned with regard to possibly the election or possibly COVID.
00:33:08.000X was being condemned for its aggressive neutrality.
00:33:14.000That would not even work linguistically.
00:33:17.000Just a little while ago, the world is changing fast.
00:33:20.000Two current stories that give us an indication that institutional power is maneuvering In ways that perhaps have a history but certainly seem to be somewhat modern phenomena, to me at least, is the whistleblowers over ABC claiming that Kamala was given the questions in advance and that that debate was to some significant degree stage managed.
00:33:48.000And if you add to that the endorsement of a couple of hundred former Bush staffers and the So welcome embrace of the Cheney family endorsements by Kamala.
00:33:58.000Do you see that, you know, for me that shows you that there are sort of ulterior currents that are moving beyond the livery of what was once assumed to be bipartisan American politics, i.e.
00:34:11.000if the Cheneys, who were once the antipathy of Democrat Party politics when they were being condemned for the, what should be illegal, Gulf War, And now the endorsement is now welcomed.
00:34:25.000And if the debates can be so incredibly well managed, is that an indicator of where real power is, Vivek?
00:34:34.000Can we start to detect The outline, at least, of the sort of real body politic that is being preserved and respected and how its power is visible in the movements of famous families, in the way that debates are conducted in apparently neutral circumstances, in addition to what we've talked about already, the Orwellian capture of language evident in a phrase like aggressive neutrality, a kind of neutrality that didn't seem to be present in those debates, for example.
00:35:02.000Yeah, so look, I think that again, you're hitting on one of the core political realignments underway here in the country.
00:35:09.000You talk about where the power center is and what's going on.
00:35:11.000Let me talk about the political realignment aspect of this and then we'll come back to the media part in a bit.
00:35:16.000And the political part of this, the Cheney family, both Dick and Liz Cheney hitting for Kamala Harris, is actually an embodiment of the same type of defecting Democrats who are going for Donald Trump.
00:35:28.000Back in the 2000s, when Dick Cheney was enemy number one of the Democratic Party, The kinds of issues they wanted to argue about were substantive issues ranging from what should abortion policy be to, at that point, a GOP that wanted to engage in foreign interventionism, which by the way, I opposed at the time as well.
00:35:47.000I was in college, but the Iraq war, we want to go fight foreign wars.
00:35:50.000We, you know, have strong pro-cultural federal policies that we would implement here.
00:35:56.000I think there was a strong cultural divide on those kinds of issues.
00:36:21.000Right now, Donald Trump, I mean, the Republican Party today has no opposition to gay marriage.
00:36:26.000It is opposed to a federal ban on abortion.
00:36:29.000It does believe it should be a state's right to choose a pro-life view, but no federal ban on abortion, no federal or state constraints on gay marriage.
00:36:36.000And so it's precisely when supposedly the evil views of the Republican Party no longer are the actual part of the policy platform of the
00:36:44.000Republican Party, that they've now resorted to other histrionics, where the
00:36:48.000political field has now realigned itself.
00:36:49.000What they now want is actually the people who just want government to retain control, period.
00:36:55.000The Dick Cheneys of the world, but also the Kamala Harris and the Joe Bidens of the world said, OK, we might disagree on some of those other cultural questions, but we do agree that people can't be permitted to speak or express their opinions.
00:37:05.000We do agree that the government needs to be able to surveil everyday citizens to make sure that they're not expressing those opinions and causing wreaking havoc or danger.
00:37:12.000We do believe in the importance of the United States meddling and interfering in random countries affairs, even when they don't advance the interest of the United States, as long as it actually enhances the power structure of the people who are doing the meddling.
00:37:24.000That actually is a deep alignment between the Kamala Harris, Joe Biden wing of the Democratic Party and the Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney wing of the Republican Party.
00:37:33.000So that's an alliance that actually runs deeper than what was their former antipathy on issues relating to gay marriage abortion.
00:37:40.000Meanwhile, you got Donald Trump leading a Republican Party right now that has opposition to a federal ban on abortion.
00:37:47.000The Republican Party does not favor, under Donald Trump, a ban on abortion, a federal ban on abortion.
00:37:52.000That was also my position during the presidential campaign, by the way.
00:37:55.000And you also have a party that's completely open to same-sex marriage, to really the kinds of freedoms that many libertarians would at least appreciate.
00:38:03.000Yet what we are committed to is actually a view that says we can express our opinions freely, that we don't want that surveillance state, and we don't want the United States creating or aiding and abetting foreign conflicts that don't advance American interests.
00:38:17.000That's a deep realignment that's going on.
00:38:19.000And so in some sense, I got pushback after the debate.
00:38:22.000I was in the spin room and I was pointing to all the Democrats defecting from the Democrat Party, coming over to Trump.
00:38:27.000They said, but the same thing's happening the other direction.
00:38:28.000Do you see Republicans defecting to go for Kamala Harris?
00:38:32.000That almost proves the point about the deeper realignment that's going on in the country.
00:38:36.000And I think we'll look back 10 or 20 or 30 years from now as this is a significant, significant catalyst in American history and the history of American politics for the kind of principles-based realignment that we haven't seen in a long time.
00:38:52.000When you say about, you list the various authoritarian aspects of the current Democratic Party and the new tectonically shifting alignments that appear to be taking place, I'm minded of an idea that was recently described to me of how social democracies more easily move towards totalitarianism Then the ideologically explicit forms of centralized control of the last century, Soviet Communism, National Socialism, Fascism, that social democracy in its increasing regulatory capacity is moving towards a totalitarianism that's unprecedented simply because no
00:39:38.000Well, I suppose communism had goals towards global control, so did National Socialism, but it was not likely to be implemented without sort of extreme military endeavor.
00:39:49.000Now, there's an ideological capture that you see taking place in sort of bizarre outlier events, like whether it's the Olympic opening ceremony or more observable economic phenomena like agricultural control and attempt to centralize land ownership and food production.
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00:41:29.000I wonder, Vivek, How your opponents will be able to continue to say that Project 2025 and the idea that there is some kind of a handmaid's tale style Christian patriarchy or mass authoritarianism leading to mass deportation
00:41:55.000Control over women's reproductive rights, winding back the clock.
00:42:00.000When it seems now, to me, sort of evident, just because of legislation, because of public rhetoric, because of the increasing of surveillance, that the greater threat is this bureaucratic technological feudalism, rather than militaristic, patriarchal, old school, strongman, 2025 stuff.
00:42:19.000I wonder how these arguments are going to be rebutted, and I wonder what your position is on something like 2025, and if you can give us some insight on why social democracy tends towards totalitarianism.
00:42:34.000Yeah, look, I think that, well, there's a deep philosophical reason, I think, why social democracy tends to lead to totalitarianism.
00:42:41.000But let me say a word about even just the, you talk about Project 2025, let's talk about Project 2050, which is effectively what the Great Reset, on a global scale, is really all about.
00:42:52.000And you want to know one of the vectors that they're using to achieve that, not as some theoretical policy construct, it's constraining people today, is the climate change agenda.
00:43:01.000This is, A third rail you're not supposed to touch.
00:43:04.000I actually, in the book, the book's coming out, the book that's out this week, this is a core topic that I hit, Russell, because this is a third rail where if you veer even from factual terrain to miss some sort of fact here or there, you're done.
00:43:20.000So in the chapter in the book that I actually put the most factual layers of confirmation, reconfirmation, had people steel man it, red team it from every side, was this chapter.
00:43:33.000Because this is really the vehicle that they're using to create a global governance structure of totalitarianism, not even limited to the United States of America.
00:43:42.000Limiting the way that we live our lives, flogging ourselves for the modern way of life and the success of the West, while completely failing To apply those same shackles or standards to places like China.
00:43:54.000This is the vision of the Great Reset.
00:43:55.000You don't have to call it Project 2025 or Project 2050.
00:43:57.000They call it Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum vision is to call it the Great Reset.
00:44:03.000The dissolving of barriers between the public sector and the private sector to accomplish what neither could on its own.
00:44:10.000The dissolving of boundaries between nations to combat shared global challenges that either nation could not combat on its own.
00:44:17.000You saw a bit of this in the rise of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that really just laid the groundwork.
00:44:24.000They lost the excuse once the virus had mostly dissipated and they tried to cling on to it for as long as they could.
00:44:31.000But it really laid the groundwork for now doing that at a larger and more lasting scale.
00:44:35.000Well, one of the answers is that people have an inherent nature in us, all of us do, to at times behave like sheep, right?
00:44:40.000In some sense, we want to bend the knee to something.
00:44:42.000up out of the lull that they lull you into? Why does social democracy lead to totalitarianism?
00:44:47.000Well, one of the answers that people have an inherent nature in us, all of us do,
00:44:51.000to at times behave like sheep, right? In some sense, we want to bend the knee to something.
00:44:55.000It's part of human nature. But there's also a rebellious side of us that doesn't. But I think
00:45:00.000the reason that they're able to do it is they lull you into submission by appealing to the part of
00:45:04.000your human nature that wants to bend the knee, especially at a time when you don't believe in
00:45:08.000God or where you've seen the recession of faith, which I do think is a deeper undercurrent in all
00:45:13.000When you stop believing in true God, you start believing in false gods instead.
00:45:18.000That also greases the wheels, and it's times in loss of faith and the recession of religion that you do see that trend from social democracy to totalitarianism accelerate.
00:45:27.000Also, a theme that's deep and central to the book that I wrote.
00:45:32.000The first two chapters are about the revival of faith and the rise of the climate religion.
00:45:36.000These two things are deeply, inextricably intertwined for how we're able to create this new type of global technocracy.
00:45:42.000But anyway, the reality of how we combat it, I think, is twofold as well.
00:45:47.000One is you've got to see it for what it is, use the tools of representative democracy to fight and push back.
00:45:52.000That's what I think this election's about.
00:45:53.000You've got to fight based on the facts through free speech and open debate.
00:45:57.000We're not playing on an even playing field, which means we have to hold ourselves to an even higher standard in those arguments about climate change policy or otherwise.
00:46:04.000It's one of the things I've tried to do in the book.
00:46:07.000But I also think there's a deeper, deeper cultural fix we need, which is the revival of true belief and conviction in things that are bigger than ourselves.
00:46:18.000The revival of faith and patriotism and belief in your nation without apologizing for it.
00:46:24.000And the family as a grounding institution of your own identity.
00:46:28.000Those I think will actually have greater power to awaken the side of us that gives us the self-confidence to stand back.
00:46:35.000But when we lose our identity grounded in our family, when we lose our sense of faith or belief in a higher power, when we lose our sense of conviction in our nation and allegiance to our nation, then we no longer have the individual fortitude to be able to push back against the otherwise inevitable march to this type of soft tyranny.
00:46:55.000And I do think that that's a part of the solution that sometimes we skip over, we forget, we remember what we're fighting against, but we often forget what we're fighting for.
00:47:06.000And I do think that we as human beings require that grounding forms of all identity that even in our anti-establishment movement, even the modern conservative movement in America, it's important that we not forget those deeper grounding institutions and values of individual family, nation, and God that give us the possibility of having the fortitude of actually standing up against the otherwise inevitable march of the global Great Reset, the march to domestic totalitarianism in the United States.
00:47:35.000And I think that's an important part of the equation that we sometimes risk skipping over.
00:47:40.000It can't be a coincidence that there is this sense of ongoing bewilderment, whether it's the inundation of continual information, mocking and extraordinary ceremonies, the continual attempt to nominate all of us, primarily as consumers, above all else, the individual, in an extraordinary way, there are some odd contradictions here, but to make the individual a kind of personal Deity, that myself and my identity is the apex, what I want, what I feel, you know, that is by definition limiting your tribal, familial, national, religious identity, preventing you from attaining a sort of a sense of transcendence, a sense of purpose derived from anything other than this is what I want, this is what I consume, this is who I have sex with, that should be the summit of how we regard ourselves.
00:48:32.000Listening to Vivek, though, what seems interesting is that the pathway to this kind of globalism that requires to achieve its ultimate goals, a kind of nihilism, that people don't believe in family or nation or individual or respect or God or these kind of values, it seems that the pathway, the tracks at least, may have been laying By economic and corporate requirement in in the attempt to create integrated free global free markets a type of a kind of infrastructure has been wrought and brought about meaning that people can
00:49:08.000Trade and they can mine in this country and transport commodity here that it's just normalized that food is shipped around everywhere to have the availability of food.
00:49:16.000And now what seems to be happening is having, having been created to facilitate the economic elites that are no longer as powerful as they once were because of the way that our economies have changed, the way that our culture has changed because of the advance of technology for but one thing.
00:49:31.000It seems that an ideology is being lacquered on top of this.
00:49:35.000Do you see that part of what has led us here has been the right to consume?
00:51:20.000It was a failure of underlying virtue that was just amplified by, you know, and even exposed by capitalism.
00:51:27.000So it's not the system that I blame so much as the loss of that upstream virtue in the first place.
00:51:31.000How do we close that gap between what we want and what we need?
00:51:34.000It's grounding ourselves in the true things that come from outside of the world of capitalism or commerce and come from the revival of True faith, understanding our relationship, reconciling man's existence with his creator or supreme being.
00:51:47.000That's a difficult thing for one to reconcile.
00:51:50.000That is the ultimate pinnacle of the human experience in being able to do so, right?
00:51:55.000And that's the call of every major world religion in its own different way, attempting to answer that question.
00:52:03.000Every one of us is brought into this world by two parents, mother and father.
00:52:07.000You know, you could say what you will.
00:52:08.000The nuclear family, I do believe, is still the greatest form of governance we have known to mankind.
00:52:13.000The decimation of the importance of that institution, I think, erodes that sense of identity that grounds us.
00:52:19.000Same thing with respect to the erosion of hard work or pride in what I create in the world.
00:52:24.000The erosion of national identity, that I'm not a citizen of this nation that I was once proud of, but I'm a nebulous citizen vaguely fighting climate change somewhere.
00:52:32.000We're like blind bats lost in a cave, right?
00:52:35.000We're blind in some sense of moral sense of the word.
00:52:38.000We send out these signals through echolocation or sonar that bounce off a wall and it comes back and tells us, this is where I am.
00:53:29.000I think that we require preconditions of virtue to actually flourish.
00:53:33.000But let's do the hard work of reviving those virtues, reviving those grounding institutions and beliefs that are precedent conditions for capitalism.
00:53:43.000But then we don't need to complain about the fact that, okay, some guy has more green pieces of paper than the others.
00:53:48.000It wasn't an important part of our grounding identity in the first place, and we wouldn't have been so susceptible to allow our base human instincts to respond to that in the way that we do if we were sufficiently well grounded and based in our own principles in the first place.
00:54:03.000So, a little bit abstract and philosophical there.
00:54:05.000A lot of that I hope it comes through in this book I've written, Russell, as I missed during the presidential campaign.
00:54:13.000You're going 24-7, and I did it on steroids in some way.
00:54:19.000Too much, actually, in terms of just going to the mat.
00:54:21.000Nine states in seven days, leading up to the debate, non-stop.
00:54:25.000One of the things I probably should have done more of was just build in time to step back and just reflect and think.
00:54:32.000One of the ways I do that is through writing.
00:54:34.000I didn't do a lot of writing during the campaign because you're running in a million different directions.
00:54:38.000So after I left the campaign in January, that was one of the first things I did is took out my notebook and just started writing.
00:54:50.000But I'm going to put this on paper, at least for myself.
00:54:53.000And then, you know, eventually that I said, Okay, we might as well put some of this out and it got a little bit more structured form.
00:54:58.000And that was, that was the genesis of this book.
00:55:01.000But for me, it was certainly a clarifying year to have that distance from the campaign to be able to relocate some of the why that you sometimes you're in the when you're in the horse race of a partisan political race.
00:55:16.000If you write with anything like the insight with which you communicate, and if you're half as articulate, it will be a fantastic book indeed.
00:55:23.000Truths, the Future of America First, Vivek Ramaswamy's book is out now.
00:55:29.000There's a link in the description and maybe we can get a few of them Vivek to give away on the basis of some competition.
00:55:35.000It's certainly a book I'll be interested to read.
00:55:38.000On the point of the campaign, I remember seeing you at different junctures, very near the beginning, full of ebullience and enthusiasm.
00:55:46.000Oh, you never looked anything less than, I'm not saying you were diminished, but I remember seeing you one day in a flight jacket, and I feel like there was a lot of Nikki Haley stuff going on, and I felt like, wow, this looks like a real odyssey that you've gone on, you know, like the stuff you've said about CIA, media.
00:56:50.000You're willing to, you know, you got to be willing to at least reflect on the experience and think about how you're going to improve and have an impact.
00:56:58.000And whatever I do next, it's going to be guided by the same Spirit that led me to the start of the campaign, which is that I'm grateful to this country.
00:58:45.000Our new The Oracle series, our first ever group interviews designed to bring the greatest and most authoritative voices in particular subjects together for the very first time.
00:58:58.000What we've experienced is a globally deployed psychological bioterrorism playbook.
00:59:08.000And then I started to see just global propaganda directed at essentially distorting, dismissing and suppressing the evidence of efficacy and I saw it as a crime.
00:59:20.000And at that point, I knew that this was not just a coincidence.
00:59:26.000There were too many black swans over too short a period.
00:59:30.000I've never heard anything like this story in my life.
00:59:34.000They seem to get the human psyche so well when it comes to brainwashing us and propagandizing us to the direction that they want us to go in, that you would think that they would know that pulling all of these various tactics would actually just push support towards Trump, not away from him.
00:59:48.000Ryan Ruth, some of his posts even show that he appeared to have been working with, in his own words, the U.S.
00:59:55.000He's doing effectively military intelligence, human trafficking of terrorists, It's in this context that I think Ruth was kind of radicalized.
01:00:04.000He decided that while he wanted to assassinate Putin, the easier thing would be to assassinate Donald Trump.