Vivek Ramaswamy is a Republican presidential candidate and outsider who could become increasingly significant as the travails of Donald Trump increase. In this episode, we talk about how he s coping with the current political climate, and why he thinks he s the best choice to replace Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. We also talk about Dave Chappelle and his role as a free speech advocate in shifting times, and how he would handle the current situation in the Middle East and Palestine. And of course, we re talking about free speech, as always. If you re an awakened wonder, press the red button! You can join interviews live, wherever you get your meditations, to join the conversation. You re not going to want to miss this one. Stay tuned for more interviews and meditations in the coming days, and stay tuned for the next episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand. Stay woke! Stay free, woke, and keep dreaming! - Russell Brand Thank you for joining me for this special show, you re a woke, woke wonder. - - Thank you, awakening wonder! - . Thanks, Russell Brand, for joining us for this show, and for being a woke wonder, and thank you for being awake! . . . and for listening to this show and for sharing it with the world, and we hope you re awake, and that you re ready for the future, and ready for it! and ready to talk about it! - RUMBLEYaay! ~ - R.A. - R, R.V. - -RV, RVY, RJ, R VY, and R Vayner, RVP, R-A, and VVY - and R-VY - R-R, RY, R-YVY. , R-S, R, V-U, and S-E-A-R-S-R -R-P-A - R? -VYAN, VYAN VYA, R -A, VE, R? - VYN, RK, VH, VJ, V - V-E, A-N-V-AJ, S-U-S., R-M, VV-E? , V-N, AY, P-A?
00:02:17.000Thank you for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand for an extremely special show.
00:02:22.000Today we have an extended interview with Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican presidential candidate and outsider, who could become increasingly significant as the travails of Trump increase.
00:02:36.000If Donald Trump is taken out by the state, where does that leave Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:02:42.000Does that mean he's next in line to be taken out as an outsider?
00:02:45.000Or does that mean that he will elevate to candidacy?
00:02:49.000Let me know what you think in the chat right now.
00:02:52.000In this first part of the conversation, we're going to be talking about Dave Chappelle and Dave Chappelle's role as a free speech advocate in shifting times.
00:03:00.000We talk about Israel-Palestine and how you handle that as the President of the United States.
00:03:05.000Of course we talk about free speech as always.
00:03:09.000Now, this interview was pre-recorded and you can join us live when we make that kind of content.
00:03:15.000If you are an awakened wonder, press the red button.
00:03:20.000We're planning a movement so that we can form new communities as the apocalypse apparently unfolds before our very eyes.
00:03:27.000How does independent media become independent politics?
00:03:31.000You tell me, because without you, we are nothing.
00:03:34.000Thank you for elevating your consciousness above the level of fear.
00:03:37.000Thank you for being willing to open up the belly of the beast, chop the head of the serpent and move forward in a glorious new movement together.
00:03:46.000We are going to have to change politics pretty radically if we're going to change the world and perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy is part of the solution.
00:03:53.000Let me know what you think in the chat now.
00:03:56.000Of course, the first 15 minutes will be available on YouTube, but after that, we'll be flying on wings of freedom to Free Speech's sweet home, Rumble.
00:04:11.000Vivek, this cannot be an easy time to have off-the-cuff, spontaneous conversations about politics, when the world's best comedians, like Dave Chappelle, find themselves unable to appease an audience with regard to a subject that you've spoken very boldly and bravely on, the escalating crisis in the Middle East, and it's almost its unique position now.
00:04:37.000as part of a cluster of wars that you might call a kind of omni-war, an emergent global war.
00:04:43.000And I wonder if you can comment on that, and I wonder if you can let me know really what you feel,
00:04:50.000Vivek, about the entry into an already fractured, sensorial and conflagratory cultural space,
00:05:00.000the mother of all controversial issues, an issue where it seems that it's not enough to say,
00:05:06.000well, we just want violence to end, we want war to end, where people on across the spectrum on
00:05:14.000Outspoken advocacy and condemnation of their opponents.
00:05:18.000How are you coping with that as you make such great progress in your own campaign to be the Republican nominee?
00:05:27.000Well, Russell, I think it's become increasingly clear that I am a lone voice in the Republican Party standing out against World War III and against war more broadly.
00:05:39.000So I know you're on the other side of the pond, but as you know, I'm running for U.S.
00:05:42.000President, so I'm looking at this from a U.S.
00:05:44.000perspective, and I don't think we should apologize for that.
00:06:17.000Biden has called for a $106 billion foreign aid package.
00:06:21.000The majority of that is still directed at Ukraine.
00:06:25.000$61 billion on top of the billions and hundreds of billions we've spent escalating that war in a way that I don't think advances anybody's interests except for a select few who stand to benefit from this conflict.
00:06:37.000And I think that itself is a disaster that is Already, and I'm going to get to the Middle East and the Israel point in a second, but the context is really important here, Russell, is already against the backdrop of major conflict brewing by way of proxies between the U.S.
00:06:50.000and Russia, between the West and Russia.
00:06:53.000We're driving Russia further into China's hands with the Russia-China alliance.
00:06:57.000We have a no-win war that, if you look back now, it's been confirmed in recent days, Ukraine could have Agreed to terms of peace they were willing to a long time ago, except for the US and also your guy, Boris Johnson, goading them further into war.
00:07:15.000And then this general logic that just because Putin is bad, that means Ukraine is good.
00:07:20.000That's a false premise for continuing this war.
00:07:23.000I mean, this is a country in Ukraine that has banned 11 opposition parties, that has outright consolidated all media into one state media arm.
00:07:33.000Yes, there are familiar feelings that that happens in the West more broadly, but that's happening here in Ukraine.
00:07:38.000You have a country that has effectively threatened not to hold its elections but for U.S.
00:07:45.000And by the way, occupied regions of the Donbas, like Luhansk and Donetsk, that are Russian-speaking, many of which don't view themselves even as really part of Ukraine, have not been represented in the Ukrainian parliament.
00:07:57.000Against this backdrop, we're escalating our way into major conflict between nuclear powers and driving Russia further into China's arms.
00:09:40.000After Hamas 1.0, you're probably slated for Hamas 2.0.
00:09:44.000And then this rolls out the red carpet, of course, for then China to be the ultimate winner of this and go after Taiwan while the U.S.
00:09:50.000is mired in conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East, some of which have actually driven our already adversaries further into China's hands.
00:10:00.000And I don't think that that's an exaggeration, so I know that took a little while for me to explain because I think these things have to be looked at in the context of one another for the risk of major conflict, dare I call it World War III.
00:10:13.000President, I have clear pads, a clear vision of how to keep us out of World War III.
00:10:18.000And yet the shocking part is I am the only person in the Republican Party offering a clear stance on opposing World War III, a clear stance against this $106 billion aid package that Biden has proposed for wars that I think are not on track to advance American interests.
00:10:36.000And it's precisely in times like these, I mean, you brought up, what does this have to do with the Jon Stewart piece?
00:10:41.000Well, it's during times of crisis that we need free speech and open debate the most.
00:10:46.000You know, it's easy and fashionable now to go back and say, oh, the Iraq war was bad and Afghanistan was bad.
00:10:58.000They hope you weren't listening to them 20 years ago.
00:11:01.000Well, the harder part is, remember why we got into those wars.
00:11:04.000They said after 9-11, shut up, sit down, do as you're told, follow the plan.
00:11:09.000Well, it's moments like these that effectively you're being asked to do the same thing as an American or otherwise.
00:11:16.000And that's the real danger of how we got into those wars.
00:11:19.000So easy to sit in an armchair and say, oh, we shouldn't have been in Iraq.
00:11:22.000Yeah, I said it at the time, and I say it today, too.
00:11:24.000The harder part is standing up with conviction when everybody else surrounding you is saying, skip the debate and march straight into that war again.
00:11:34.000To the contrary, I'm looking to lead this country in a manner that actually speaks with a spine, in a manner that other Republicans seem, frankly, too afraid of their own shadow to be able to do.
00:11:44.000Yes, Vivek, I think that's important and it is extraordinary how people are willing to mobilise condemnation of, if not entirely latent, conflicts due to the ongoing consequences of many of those actions, in particular across that region.
00:12:01.000Certainly willing to speak out with a kind of advocacy and confidence that was As you point out, absent at the time.
00:12:08.000One aspect or a few aspects of your answer I'd love to follow up on.
00:12:11.000You're quite right, it was Boris Johnson of the UK that interrupted the potential peace deal between Zelensky and Putin at a time when a different pathway was clearly open.
00:12:23.000Another thing I want to touch upon is the bundling together, financially but perhaps even ideologically, these conflicts.
00:12:29.000When you start to create aid packages of a hundred billion dollars, as you point out, the majority of which goes to Ukraine, a small amount goes to the conflict in the Middle East, some even preparatory aid for Taiwan.
00:12:40.000You start to create I think a mental image that these wars are somehow conflated with one another, instead of discrete, distinct conflicts, each of which has to be understood in its own unique context.
00:12:53.000And at some point, I would have to agree with you.
00:12:55.000I mean, and how can this be a controversial thing to say?
00:12:58.000A pathway towards peace has to be considered, particularly for you as a potential US president.
00:13:06.000And just to let you know that 50% of our audience, at very least, ...are in the United States of America, that's generally speaking where people consume our content.
00:13:16.000What I'd also like to comment on is the way that you mapped out that trajectory, how the escalation of a Middle Eastern conflict in particular, even without taking a side ideologically, all of us have a responsibility to look at, hold on a minute, and then Hezbollah, hang on a minute, and now US, now Iran, whoa, where are we going with this?
00:13:36.000It seems that we are heading towards World War.
00:13:38.000It seems that if you're able to make that analysis, perhaps people that are heavily advocating for further expenditure and more aggression for this conflict and others have also got an idea that that's a potential outcome.
00:13:52.000Is it conceivable, Vivek, that they know that this can lead to at least an escalating conflict, because there's no doubt that that will happen, but potentially even something that is global, and that they can accommodate that vision and maybe even want it?
00:14:08.000Or do you think they just haven't thought it through?
00:14:10.000Well, it depends on who you're talking about.
00:14:14.000Different people fall into different parts of that category.
00:14:16.000And I'm sitting in a room here in Iowa in the middle of the campaign trail.
00:14:19.000I can just make sure you can hear me well, right Russell?
00:14:42.000It's a bipartisan establishment in the US, in both the majority of the electeds in the Republican and the Democrat party that are marching us towards this war.
00:14:52.000These parties that otherwise disagree on everything, you know, they'll bash heads or pretend to bash heads.
00:14:58.000On everything here at home, on some domestic cultural war and, you know, every Republican likes to be more outraged than the next about men swimming in women's swimming competitions, which I'm against too, but it's a pissing contest to show outrage.
00:15:10.000But when it comes to the stuff that matters on foreign policy, they pretend like they're on the other, they pretend like they're opposed to the other side.
00:15:18.000Mitch McConnell called these conflicts interconnected.
00:15:23.000So, I want to say something about a path to world war, Russell, is the way you describe these conflicts may actually affect the way the conflicts themselves work.
00:15:33.000I mean, that's the relationship between diplomacy and war.
00:15:37.000And so, seeing these conflicts inherently as having to be funded together or not, I think actually escalates the risk of correlation in how we potentially, God forbid, end up in World War III.
00:15:53.000Now, your question is, are there vested interests or is this just stupidity?
00:15:58.000Some people absolutely have their head in the sand.
00:16:01.000It's amazing that even many of the politicians that will criticize me for lack of foreign policy experience I don't think they could tell you which provinces in eastern Ukraine are even occupied.
00:16:10.000I don't think they could tell you what happened in 2014 that led us to the history of now.
00:16:15.000They're just puppets, listless vessels, to borrow a term of Ron DeSantis, you know, in terms of reciting the slogans of their super-packed puppet masters.
00:16:25.000They don't even know what they're saying for some of them.
00:16:27.000For others of them, they absolutely are not dumb people, but they stand to benefit from it.
00:16:33.000The Pentagon's budget this year, that's the, you know, here in the U.S., for those of you who don't know the Pentagon, that's the military branch of, the military of, the umbrella for all of the military branches and organizations where the decisions are made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the people who run the military.
00:16:48.000The Defense Department, the Pentagon's budget, half of it, 50% of it, it's like an $850 billion budget, is going to defense contractors this year.
00:16:57.000I don't want to go off on this side tangent too far, but it's worth just understanding the context.
00:17:03.000Back in 1993 in the United States, under President Bill Clinton, so now there's a Democrat, the Defense Secretary convened a meeting of all of the defense contractors.
00:17:14.000Back then it was like 50 some odd defense contractors.
00:17:17.000And the government Well, I mean, this sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theory.
00:17:20.000It's just plain old mundane reality coordinated for these defense contractors to start merging with one another.
00:18:15.000You look at the other candidates in the Republican presidential field.
00:18:18.000I mean, one of my competitors in this race is a woman by the name of Nikki Haley.
00:18:22.000She is somebody who, after her short stint at the UN, which she uses to brandish as her foreign policy experience, her real foreign policy experience came when her family afterwards exploits those UN connections and government connections and otherwise to start, you guessed it, a military contracting business.
00:18:41.000You guessed it, to join the board of Boeing, which she did special favors for back when she was a governor of South Carolina.
00:18:48.000So my litmus test is if you are making money off your time of government connections, and worst category of all, making money off of war or the path to war, you are disqualified From being the commander-in-chief, and yet we live in a world right now where the establishment, from the media, to both political parties, to the super PAC puppet masters, label that foreign policy experience, and then push us further in that direction into war.
00:19:13.000These are the mistakes that took us into places like Iraq.
00:19:16.000We're making those same mistakes all over again.
00:19:20.000So, are there cynical forces at work, people who stand to make money off of this?
00:19:25.000And are they exploiting others in their own party to then say some of whom are too uneducated or undereducated on these issues to then come along and compliantly follow the plan?
00:19:51.000I'm going to show up and I think we're going to win this thing.
00:19:53.000But just to give you a sense for what type of allergic reaction.
00:19:56.000At first they said, oh yeah, young guy, a little bit different.
00:19:59.000It's a cute little addition to the race and we can brandish that as a, you know, a nice little trinket for the Republican Party.
00:20:05.000But now it turns out, I've been to the race, here I am.
00:20:08.000They're doing everything in their power to shut me up.
00:20:10.000I mean, you turn on mainstream media on a given day, you see the treatment that I'm able to get right now for my contrarian foreign policy views here to keep us in peace rather than in war.
00:20:21.000That's a cardinal sin right now, and you can see the establishment in both parties coming for me.
00:20:26.000Super PACs, those are the cancer on American politics, the farce where they say there's limits on how much you can contribute to a campaign.
00:20:34.000There are no limits on how much the multi-billionaire class, frankly, that donates to both parties, is donating in this particular case to Republican potential candidates, propping them up.
00:20:44.000There's closed-door summits where they're deciding which candidate they're going to put up against Trump.
00:20:49.000I'm not invited to those, but the Ron DeSantis' and Nikki Haley's of the world are sparring and begging these people licking their boots for money.
00:21:21.000It's still like 30 seconds left before we go off.
00:21:23.000Just for me, not for any other candidate.
00:21:24.000And I mentioned some of these foreign policy views in that speech.
00:21:27.000The music starts playing, like it's literally, they've got like blaring outgoing music, like I was supposed to walk out.
00:21:34.000I just stayed on stage for the full song.
00:21:36.000It was very, it was, it was, uh, enjoyably awkward, but you know, I, I wait till that finish and then I'm going to finish my speech and make sure people hear what I have to say.
00:21:45.000But this is not going according to the plan of the establishment.
00:21:48.000If a guy is defecting from the Republican party right now in the United States, Their goal is to suffocate this.
00:21:55.000They don't want debate on the merits, because we win on the debate on the merits.
00:21:59.000What should we be spending our money on?
00:22:14.000But in the meantime, avoid catastrophic World War III, which is otherwise what we're barreling forward into.
00:22:21.000And that's a foreign policy agenda that apparently the Republican Party, the Democrat Party alike, don't want an insurgent Canada to actually state in public.
00:22:31.000And I think that's the first step to keeping us out of wars that don't advance our interest is actually embracing more speech, not less speech, more free speech and open debate.
00:22:40.000And it's when they tell you to shut up that you have to actually Grow the spine to actually be more vocal than ever.
00:22:47.000That's our best chance to keeping our way out of this major conflict.
00:22:49.000I can see why there would be an appetite to censor you with music or with not including you in super PAC conventions because you are an innovative and discursive Thinker and, in my reckoning, precisely what's required within a Republican party that elsewise risks being captured by the same kind of militarist interests that have conventionally held sway, as you've explained beautifully, Vivek, over both parties.
00:23:18.000When it comes to the historic conflict between Israel and Palestine now, of course I have sympathies to all the parties directly involved and suffering as a result of that horrific war.
00:23:32.000There's no question that throughout the history of that region, or at least certainly the relatively modern history, That United Kingdom interests, corporate interests, US interests have made conflicts in that region a lot worse precisely because of the military-industrial complex relationships and the ability that energy companies and the military-industrial complex have had to assert and exert influence over American and, you know, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, UK foreign policy.
00:24:04.000What's striking at this time and perhaps the way that you say super PACs are set up and elections are sewn up and favoured political candidates are shut out or people that are willing to speak out against the establishment speak out against censorship speak out against wars that have not been Correctly contemplated our shutdown is perhaps because of the size and scale of the influence of this awful monopoly that you just described that collapsed from 50 organizations to just five.
00:24:35.000And you're right, the relationships of potential opponents with military industrial complex companies should mean that they forego inclusion in any race for office of the nature that you are currently pursuing.
00:24:48.000What I feel Vivek very strongly is that they're potentially now the
00:24:54.000centrist political class, the kind of neocon candidates that
00:25:00.000are visible on both sides of the aisle, as opposed to the more
00:25:05.000radical, sometimes demagogic, innovative, charismatic figures
00:25:12.000that are emerging that previously, presumably would have been in the independent space, and in the case of RFK
00:25:17.000are perhaps the only chance that US politics and therefore global politics have of pursuing a trajectory that seems to,
00:25:25.000by my reckoning, include the potential of world war as a
00:25:30.000favourable outcome, as it's the kind of crisis that would permit
00:25:34.000the type of controls many believe we saw piloted during the pandemic era.
00:25:39.000It facilitates censorship, it facilitates lockdown, it facilitates the closing down of dissent.
00:25:46.000Do you feel that if we have an election between party stooge candidates, Biden and whoever you would nominate as a stooge within your own party, that the advance towards war is inevitable because we'll be denied the possibility for proper conversations?
00:26:05.000Is America, and indeed the world's only hope, to start considering Outsider candidates that are willing to speak out against their parties and to speak out against the kind of narratives that at the moment, it seems astonishing to me, aren't being questioned.
00:26:20.000The possibility of alliance between China and Russia, terrifying.
00:26:23.000The possibility of limitless escalation in the Middle East, terrifying.
00:26:28.000The fact that we're bundling together funding without thinking about it, not to mention the fact that the military-industrial complex And America, as essentially their agent, sells arms to 57% of the autocracies in the world.
00:26:41.000And even, it's potentially true, I'm sure you're aware of the CIA whistleblower that said maybe even Hamas's weapons were American made, in office What would you do to match the invective of your campaigning to ensure that the military-industrial complex doesn't have that role in the world, given the importance of it and the power of the MIC in American political life?
00:27:04.000It could be argued, many would argue, they're more powerful than either the Democrat Party or the Republican Party.
00:27:11.000Are you willing to oppose that and prevent arms being sent to autocratic nations and to stand up against those kind of organizations and their current Influence.
00:27:21.000Now if you're watching this anywhere other than Rumble, Vivek Ramaswamy is about to comment on the, what he calls, this is his phrase and I don't know if it's a fair phrase to use, let me know if you agree, what he calls the Biden family and their criminal enterprises.
00:27:37.000If you want to hear Vivek Ramaswamy talk about that and how it relates to the current Ukraine-Russia conflict, click the link in the description and join us there.
00:27:47.000I mean, so you hit on a really important point, actually, which is the way in which we're often funding both sides of these conflicts, and somebody else is making money off it.
00:27:56.000It reminds me of Times Square, New York.
00:27:58.000There was this guy that was selling, the guy who was selling an Israel flag and a Palestine flag to whoever wanted to buy it.
00:28:04.000It's interesting that that guy in Times Square was making money from selling the flags.
00:28:08.000People are buying from both sides of him.
00:28:10.000But it's not that different than the military-industrial complex.
00:28:13.000Even if you think about a conflict that nobody else, for whatever reason, seems to have any other interest in.
00:28:17.000It's interesting how the good versus evil shows up in Russia versus Ukraine, but not in a different part of the Russian periphery in what's going on in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
00:28:27.000military involvement there at all, but it is interesting how nobody talks about how 120,000 Christians are being displaced in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Armenians live, back to Armenia as Azerbaijan's literally just rolled in and invaded.
00:28:41.000But part of the uncomfortable fact is that the U.S.
00:28:44.000has made for special exemptions that has sold and transferred arms, people making money off it, U.S.
00:28:54.000It's pervasive, this problem that you described.
00:28:56.000And I know it's self-serving for a guy like me to say, no, this is why it takes an outsider, insurgent, anti-establishment candidate to win.
00:29:24.000This may be more immutable than some principles of physics, okay?
00:29:27.000We went from Newtonian physics to, you know, an Einsteinian view to, you know, let's say a post-Einsteinian view today, string theory, so even those things change.
00:30:05.000And so, one of the ways I'm able to do this, even getting shut out by the establishment media and otherwise now, it's one thing if I'm anti-woke and against the cult of racialism and transgenderism and even against some of the climate statements.
00:30:19.000Okay, well that started to cross into really third rail territory.
00:30:22.000But now, opposing these wars, that was the ultimate trigger that shuts me out of the mainstream.
00:30:28.000So I'm spending time reaching people in roomfuls of 50, 60 people, 100, 200 people at a time in places like Iowa, where I've been in the last few days.
00:30:36.000And my bet is that there's still some last vestige of the system where we, the people, can actually decide who governs, rather than having it decided in the back of palace halls, which is how it was done in Old World England.
00:30:49.000But it's a myth to say that somehow that's not how it's done in modern America.
00:30:52.000That's mostly how it's done in modern America, but there are slivers where we can exploit the crack.
00:30:57.000And what I see is ordinary people across this country, they do not want to go to war.
00:32:32.000Israel as a nation absolutely has the right to defend itself.
00:32:35.000But I'm asking a different question which is the one that they're actually even more keen to suppress within the Republican Party.
00:32:42.000Who says that This ground invasion is even going to be a good idea for Israel on its terms of national self-defense.
00:32:50.000Who said this is somehow ordained to succeed?
00:32:52.000I think there are a lot of reasons to say it would not succeed, and that even if it does succeed nominally, what comes after Hamas?
00:33:02.000That should not be beyond the pale to ask that question.
00:33:05.000Should not be beyond the pale to ask how the heck did that security breach?
00:33:09.000How the heck did that intelligence failure happen in the first place as well?
00:33:14.000Those should be basic questions that are addressed now to say the money saved on a ground invasion, might that be better spent securing Israel's own border?
00:33:22.000Just as we in the United States should be asking that question.
00:33:25.000I went to the southern border of the U.S.
00:33:27.000just a week and a week and a half ago.
00:33:28.000I went to the northern border two weeks ago.
00:33:32.000If that can happen in Israel, that can happen here in the United States.
00:33:35.000And yet the irony is the same establishment that has led us into foreign wars from Iraq to Afghanistan to otherwise, has done nothing to protect this homeland.
00:33:45.000You know, this woman by the name of Nikki Haley, she's actually calling for the Department of Defense in the U.S.
00:34:16.000This is somebody who's saying the Department of Defense, which has badly failed to defend the American homeland, which is as vulnerable as it's ever been, is calling for, she's saying the quiet part out loud, make it a Department of Offense.
00:34:29.000And by the way, this is the person who, after her short stint at the UN, started Her family certainly did.
00:35:00.000That's a slogan from Mortal Kombat, in case people forgot that's a video game, finishing as though that's a model for American foreign policy.
00:35:08.000They hide behind the smokescreen of saying they might mean Hamas without a clear strategy of what comes after Hamas, but actually it's not what they mean.
00:35:49.000Hundreds of billions of dollars to the very country that, huh, figure this one out, made a multi-million dollar bribe to the son of the president who had no business on Burisma's board.
00:36:01.000I mean, this guy's barely qualified to do an ordinary job in this country, let alone to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company where he has no expertise, paid five million dollars.
00:36:11.000Is it an accident that when that same president or former vice president, now president, is
00:36:17.000sending hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxpayer money to that same country?
00:36:33.000That's not good for the United States of America.
00:36:35.000And believe me, a lot of people in the establishment media, in the Super PAC class, in the donor
00:36:40.000class, I can't tell you the number of potential backers I've lost over just saying the things
00:36:44.000I just told you there in that last 60 seconds.
00:36:47.000But again, I'm not going to be somebody's circus monkey.
00:36:50.000On a personal level, I would rather lose the election than to win by playing some careful political snakes and ladders.
00:36:55.000But for the country, it's bad that the system works that way because otherwise we're going to have somebody who's going to march us back into World War III, and I don't want to see that happen.
00:37:03.000When you describe how immersed and institutionally corrupt both the Republican Party and Democratic Party are in terms of the kind of familial ties, their willingness to do the bidding of the military-industrial complex, and When you observe that in all likelihood the ability of the
00:37:27.000military-industrial complex to dictate foreign policy, even though it's harmful to
00:37:32.000American interests and potentially even the interests of their declared partners, that there's
00:37:37.000potentially an exploitative agenda that is both curiously familial in the case of Hunter Biden's
00:37:43.000opportunities with Burisma and potentially global when you think of BlackRock's post-Ukraine
00:37:48.000war in the event that there is a post-Ukraine war, opportunities in rebuilding that nation
00:37:54.000as a kind of digital pilot scheme for a surveillance state, certainly one of the stories we've
00:37:59.000seen mooted, does it make you feel that these interests are so entrenched that you
00:38:06.000would have to enter the White House with a mandate to, for example, ban politicians in either
00:38:14.000the Republican and Democrat party from owning stocks and shares in companies that they
00:38:19.000Certainly if they sit on special committees, you know, the kind of Nancy Pelosi type ability to be ahead of the market, that would have to be curtailed.
00:38:28.000And perhaps even more terrifyingly, I mean, for me, you talk about super PACs and stuff, but almost that, once in office, what do you do about donations?
00:38:40.000What do you do to prevent the United States operating as a kind of agent for the weapons industry when it comes to arms sales around the world?
00:38:49.000Biden's famous lie about making Saudi Arabia a pariah before making their military capacity a little higher.
00:38:55.000With deals that went beyond any of the deals that Trump did, which were condemned by the Democrats while Trump was in office.
00:39:03.000These kind of policies, Vivek, are obviously much more incendiary than the rhetoric that you're currently using.
00:39:14.000So are you willing to Commit to policies like that, and indeed have you already.
00:39:19.000And also, since you've been doing this, what has it done to you?
00:39:23.000Since you've been running and having these conversations, what has it done to you spiritually?
00:39:27.000What has it done to your feelings as a man?
00:39:31.000You must have encountered things that are kind of damaging to encounter.
00:39:35.000I'm not suggesting that you've been damaged by them.
00:39:37.000I can see you're a very robust and strong person.
00:39:39.000But what has it done to your kind of spirit to see, you know, even small things like they fade the music up to larger things like you're not invited to participate in that type of funding?
00:39:51.000You know, that type of thing is almost... I almost laugh at that because that's exactly the system coming at me.
00:39:58.000But the stuff that deals less with me, Russell, but an observation of now having the curtain lifted and seeing how the game actually works, that part has left me...
00:40:12.000We're going to see this race through, and so you're catching me probably halfway through this thing, right?
00:40:18.000But it has left me cynical and jaded in a way that's not natural for me.
00:40:24.000I'm a naturally optimistic person, and in my heart of heart, I still am optimistic for the future of this country.
00:40:31.000But it doesn't leave you with the same optimistic Bullions, okay, that I began this campaign with.
00:40:42.000And I think we're going to finish there.
00:40:43.000We're going to get to that destination.
00:40:45.000But I think having seen the game played the way that it is, having understood the expectations of how you're supposed to treat the Super PAC puppet masters versus ordinary voters, just as a matter of the system, I'm not playing the game that way.
00:41:02.000My heart says we have a very good path to do it, but irrespective of me knowing that this is how the game works and kind of having seen it firsthand, it is discouraging.
00:41:18.000I mean, it makes a guy like me impulses, you know, that you have to sort of think about, okay, a guy like me has lived the full American dream, right?
00:42:35.000But money is the mother's milk of politics.
00:42:37.000And if you've been given and blessed with the resources to be able to see this through, That if you don't do this now, I don't think we're going to have a country left.
00:42:44.000And in some ways that cynicism comes back with a vengeance to come back and give me my redoubled sense of purpose to see this through.
00:42:51.000So on a personal level, that's kind of where you're catching me.
00:42:54.000A little unstructured reflection, at least on that.
00:42:57.000And you know, I think it's something that will catch me three months from now and I'll let you know how I feel about it.
00:43:03.000As it relates to policies that I'm committing to, yeah, I think that this isn't that complicated, right?
00:43:08.000So, I don't think members of Congress or regulators or people who work in the federal bureaucracy should be able to trade personally individual stocks.
00:43:19.000It should be all left to a blind trust.
00:43:21.000They shouldn't know what they own or what they're trading at a given time.
00:43:26.000It can come out with retrospect later.
00:43:28.000That's the way that this should be done.
00:43:31.000Now, I say this as somebody who began my career in the investment world.
00:43:36.000I'm going to just state something obvious.
00:43:38.000These congressmen and these bureaucrats, they would be better off financially if they weren't trading their own stocks, unless it was based on corrupt intentions, in which case they're going to do better.
00:43:49.000That's the only way these people, these clowns, are going to do better than professional investors in a competitive market.
00:43:55.000These are mostly clowns that would ordinarily, if they're behaving honestly, they would do better to leave their money invested In a blind trust by somebody who's not picking individual stocks or picking individual stocks without their knowledge.
00:44:07.000That would be the financially sensible decision.
00:44:10.000Unless they were actually doing it and using their special access to information to be able to enrich themselves, which is exactly what's happening.
00:44:20.000For 10 years, at least, if you've been part of that government.
00:44:23.000If you have been part of a bureaucracy or a regulator that has regulated an industry, you should not be able to serve on boards in that industry for at least 10.
00:44:32.000Fine, let's at least make it five years after leaving office.
00:44:35.000I think it's pathetic that you have a former head of the FDA immediately going and plopping on the board of Pfizer.
00:44:41.000You see the same thing with the defense industrial complex.
00:44:44.000You have a person like Nikki Haley, made special favors for Boeing in South Carolina while she was the governor of South Carolina.
00:44:52.000After her time in government, she's now sitting, until this race, sitting on the board of Boeing.
00:44:57.000In her particular case, for another company, collecting stock options while she is literally running for president.
00:45:03.000As far as I know, that's unprecedented in U.S.
00:45:22.000If you're going to spend money on a campaign as an entity, or if you're going to run ads for a specific candidate, which is what a campaign does, then you're just bound by the same rules that the campaigns are.
00:45:35.000Now, in the U.S., I'm a free speech absolutist.
00:45:37.000I believe in free expression to the fullest.
00:45:41.000but free expression means there's already rules that for certain other entities other than super PACs there are limitations to say you can't give to a candidate but you can advocate for whatever cause you want and you could put as much money into an entity that advocates for a specific cause a policy or a cultural vision there should be no restrictions on that but if you're advocating for a candidate And now the super PACs are literally running.
00:46:04.000I mean, if you take a guy like Ron DeSantis, his entire campaign is literally being run down to operations to people who are knocking on doors or handing out leaflets or putting stuff in mail or advertising on television.
00:47:15.000In a sense, in a smaller, less relevant, but comparable way, you see the same even in the entertainment industry.
00:47:23.000The kind of products and commodities and individuals that succeed are the ones that are supportive of The ideology of the time, even if that's a tacit ideology like materialism or progress or atheism or corporatism or consumerism.
00:47:42.000I'm not even talking about like the hot button topics that define our time and that have become so divisive.
00:47:49.000It's almost like the cultural machinery, the political machinery, are in alignment to sort of self-sustain, which I suppose
00:47:57.000perhaps is a system's primary goal, is to prevent itself from being destroyed, particularly
00:48:03.000from within. It seems though that we are at a tipping point that began, observably at
00:48:09.000least, it seems in our country with the Brexit movement, across Europe with anti-EU
00:48:15.000parties that were opposed to measures taken after the 2008 financial crash.
00:48:21.000Trump evidently in your country and then that has progressed I think into figures like yourself and Bobby Kennedy.
00:48:30.000Do you feel like what that tells us perhaps?
00:48:35.000Is that the institutions themselves, even though when I talk to people that I respect and like, like Marianne Williamson, she would say, no, I have to do what I can for the Democrat Party within the Democrat Party.
00:48:45.000Do you think that given the tide of corruption, the deep institutionalism, But really what is required is that, you know, let me ask you a host of things.
00:48:59.000You know, Bobby Kennedy's gone from trying to oppose Biden within the Democrats to running as an independent.
00:49:06.000And several times you and I have both over this conversation, Vivek, observed That is a kind of neocon-centrist alliance that always comes together on matters of war, even if they're willing to have highly invective spats when it comes to cultural issues.
00:49:24.000When it comes to the major matters, they fall in line.
00:49:27.000Do you think that even the apparent distinctions between Republican and Democrat are as not as radical as the distinction between anti-institutional thinkers from both parties and therefore is there an emerging sense that it's the machine itself that needs to be challenged which can only really happen from outside of it as it amounts to a kind of, well as you've said before and I agree with this, a revolutionary uprising?
00:49:56.000Yeah, so look, I think the real divide in this country, it's interesting you used the word culturally incendiary, invective.
00:50:05.000The real cynical side of me, Russell, the more I'm seeing about this, is thinking that all of it is in part just a production and a smokescreen to create the artifice of real disagreement or division That sidesteps the real third rail that they care to protect, which is the pro-war agenda from a foreign policy perspective.
00:50:30.000Call it liberal hegemony, call it neoconservatism.
00:50:33.000Two different ways of describing the same worldview.
00:50:37.000And I think that's a big part of what's going on in moments like this one.
00:50:40.000So, I think the real divide in the country, in the U.S.
00:50:44.000today, it's not between black and white, as the media would at times have you believe.
00:50:48.000It is not even between Republican and Democrat, not really.
00:50:53.000It is between, in one version of this certainly, the managerial class.
00:51:02.000It is sort of the swamp that exists within government.
00:51:05.000It's a horizontal class of people, the same people who become the undersecretary of God knows what in some deputy position of the bureaucracy of the federal government, who then become an associate dean of God knows what at a university, an ambassador to some second tier country abroad that then becomes the professional person who sits sits on a corporate board of directors, the Lockheed
00:51:27.000directors or the Raytheon directors on a given day. It's a horizontal class. It's the same
00:51:32.000class of people that are crushing the will of everyday citizens by wielding control over the
00:51:39.000institutions that they were supposed to safeguard, but are actually exploiting to
00:51:44.000horizontally permeate institutions and advance their own ends.
00:51:47.000That's what you might call the Great Reset on one side.
00:51:51.000It is the dissolution of barriers between the public sector and the private sector.
00:51:56.000The dissolution of the barriers between nations, actually.
00:51:58.000This is a trans-partisan, but transnational phenomenon as well.
00:52:02.000The dissolution of boundaries, and we can talk about this in a little more philosophical, between the online world and the offline world.
00:52:09.000That's what the metaverse is all about.
00:52:11.000But it's the dissolution of boundaries between different spheres of our lives.
00:52:14.000Let's stick to dissolution of boundaries between nations.
00:52:16.000Dissolution of boundaries between public and private sector.
00:52:19.000The dissolution of boundaries between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
00:52:21.000That is what the Great Reset is really all about.
00:52:24.000And then on the other side of this, you have what I call the Great Uprising, right?
00:52:30.000I think that it's a transnational movement.
00:52:35.000That's the position I'm running for as President of the United States, who believe in the value of the nation, that I am a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen fighting climate change vaguely somewhere.
00:52:45.000No, I'm a citizen of this nation, the United States of America.
00:52:49.000It is an uprising that says hell no to the dissolution of boundaries between the public sector and private sector to create a modern form of fascism, a hybrid of corporate and state power.
00:52:58.000It's what the military-industrial complex is all about, but it's really what big tech, big government is all about.
00:53:03.000It's not big tech censorship, it is government tech censorship that does the bidding for that same force.
00:53:08.000No, it says hell no to that vision that we, the people, decide who governs, how we settle our differences through free speech and open debate in the public square, not in the back of palace halls, not in Old World England, not in the back of a SuperPAC, not in the back of BlackRock's corner office on the Park Avenue of Manhattan today, not in the back of three-letter government agency buildings in Washington, D.C.
00:56:10.000There was something in the water back then.
00:56:12.000I am optimistic that we live in a moment where we can revive the ideals of that American Revolution.
00:56:20.000I favor doing it through peace, through activation of the energy of citizens that say hell no to that great reset in the peaceful version of a great uprising that does it through our electoral system and restores the integrity of our constitutional republic.
00:56:37.000But if it doesn't happen that way, you know, I think That's the way I want to see it happen.
00:56:44.000I think that that's the moment we live in and that's what I'm looking to lead through a peaceful version of a great uprising that restores the integrity of our constitutional republic.
00:56:55.000Vivek, when a figure like Jefferson enters into mythology, we do have a tendency to forget that they were real men.
00:57:04.000Real people that had a real vision that they were willing to sacrifice for in order to bring about.
00:57:12.000And it seems to me that part of the pervasive culture of our time is, except for matters that relate very directly to individualism and your ability to passively consume or passively protest without sacrifice, there's a kind of sense that the world is finished.
00:57:29.000The famous edict that history is over.
00:57:33.000And a kind of worldwide sense now that we're in a world where most terrain has been captured, most peaks have been scaled, many depths have been explored, that the world is over, that we've reached full saturation, that our role and our final apparition As consumers has been reached.
00:57:54.000When we've spoken before, I've noticed in your rhetoric a kind of appetite to reawaken and revivify the principles of the founding fathers.
00:58:05.000That kind of boldness, a willingness to embark on a brave adventure, an acknowledgement that that's going to be fraught with danger.
00:58:13.000And when I listen to certain, in particular, independent news commentators talking about
00:58:18.000the scale of corruption that we experienced during the pandemic, when even in our conversation
00:58:24.000today, the scope and potential for disaster that the march towards World War Three plainly
00:58:30.000includes that what's required is a kind of, firstly, a revolution in consciousness when
00:58:37.000it comes to us all as individuals, a willingness to look at our own lives and what motivates
00:58:42.000us and where do we see ourselves in five, ten years, both personally and on a global
00:58:48.000Obviously, I've had experiences lately working independent media where I see that the consequence and price of dissent, that dissenting voices will face serious opposition and sometimes that can be quite malign.
00:59:05.000It's hard without evoking the connotations of violence, which I noticed that you carefully stepped around, to awaken in people that this is a plain need.
00:59:15.000This time we live in plainly has the kind of need for revolution The time that you alluded to and the people that you alluded to saw and were willing to carry out.
00:59:26.000I suppose, though, that what we have to accept is those revolutions, whilst it was obviously a different time with different institutions and different challenges and different technology and ability to communicate, obviously revolution as part of its nature means an Overthrow of many institutions.
00:59:41.000And when, you know, many of the things we've touched on, a military-industrial complex that's willing to risk the lives of the people of the world, the safety of the people of the world, Big Pharma, which I know you have connections to, but when we spoke previously you, you know, you said that you're an outlier and a radical in that world rather than a sort of a compliant member of a corrupt system.
00:59:58.000You know, when you have Big Pharma that benefits from health crises, a military-industrial complex that benefits from military crises or wars, when you have energy companies that benefit from energy crises, it's plain that something rather radical is what's required.
01:00:14.000When was the last time anything like that happened in your country?
01:00:19.000Is it possible that these institutions with a compliant and amplifying legacy media will provide a voice to a man like you who's willing to put these ideas in front of people?
01:00:31.000And indeed, if you pursue these ideas to their natural conclusion, you're going to come up against interests that go beyond financial and go into some areas of deep state power that are pretty frightening to contemplate.
01:00:43.000And I'm sure you've come into contact with some of the information I'm referring to there.
01:00:48.000How far are you willing to go when it comes to revolutionary politics?
01:00:54.000So, you know, I want to also just say, I think that there's something to, just for people to know about my own background.
01:01:07.000This political world, or even the world of political revolution, that's not where I grew up, right?
01:01:13.000I came to my views because of my experiences.
01:01:17.000And one of the things I would say is, You know, people will say, some of the things you say, do they sound conspiratorial?
01:01:23.000Actually, I'm very different than even visionary conspiracy theorists.
01:01:27.000What I'm describing is not conspiracy theory.
01:01:31.000It is mundane conspiracy reality, right?
01:01:34.000The real conspiracy theories are just the reality is hiding in plain sight.
01:01:38.000And so, I think pragmatically, Russell, to win this, I think it is going to take, I know this sounds self-serving to say, weirdly self-serving, and I don't mean it that way.
01:01:49.000I think it takes somebody like me, who understands the other side of how this game is played, understands the mundane realities of actually the merger between state and corporate power and the corruption that that creates on both sides, to be able to really be precise in how we level that system.
01:02:09.000So here's what I'm willing to do, right?
01:02:10.000I think that I'm in this, I'm all in this for the phase of this.
01:02:15.000And I hope that this is the only phase that's ever required to do this.
01:02:20.000Peacefully, through the electoral process, get in there, have enough of a mandate to shut down, and I do think that yes, this is the revolutionary aspect of what I will bring to the table as U.S.
01:02:32.000President, to shut down the government bureaucracies from the FBI, to the IRS, to the ATF, to the CDC, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to the U.S.
01:02:41.000Department of Education, government agencies that should not exist.
01:02:45.000I've offered, these aren't slogans to me, In speeches I've given in Washington D.C.
01:02:49.000and elsewhere, laid out unprecedented detailed plans for exactly how we will do this.
01:02:54.000Phasing out the FBI, 35,000 employees, 20,000 will be fired, 15,000 will be reassigned.
01:03:17.000So that's the kind of battle I'm looking to go into is win this electoral battle, take battle against the deep state as the person who actually leads the executive branch of the government.
01:03:27.000I know that if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, That means they don't work for you, and I will exercise my power to gut that bureaucracy.
01:03:36.00075% headcount reduction by the end of my first term.
01:03:44.000I understand the backstop of how we win.
01:03:46.000That's what I'm signing up to lead, okay?
01:03:49.000I am worried that if we don't seize this window to do it, I don't think we're working with a lot of time here, where either on one hand what we're going to have is a hegemonic combination of a corporate industrial complex, a modern version of the corporate state power, what we would call the Mussolini definition of fascism that governs, or something more that will be required to prevent that from happening.
01:04:14.000And we're not... I'm an optimist, as you said, Russell.
01:04:18.000I'm here to make sure we don't get there.
01:04:20.000I've said this actually time and time again.
01:04:23.000You tell people they cannot speak, that is when they scream.
01:04:28.000If you tell people they cannot scream, that is when they tear things down.
01:04:33.000And if pervasive government-private coordinated censorship suppression of the exercise of voice continues, I do worry that January 6th in this country will be a preview of 2021, will be a friendly parlay compared to what's to come.
01:04:46.000But I am here to make sure we don't get there.
01:04:49.000And so I'm all in for leading this now.
01:06:40.000But if we get this right, yes, I'm confident that we will look at ourselves and this will go down as a phase in history where we were going through some deranged adolescence, but we found our way to revive who we really are.
01:06:53.000I think that opportunity exists and I'm keen to make sure we capture it, but I don't think we're working with a lot of time, Russell, because I think the other path leads to some places where I don't want to see this country go.
01:07:03.000Yeah, I agree with you and I thank you for elevating the calibre of the conversation with your personal integrity and your passion and vision Vivek.
01:07:15.000Thank you for joining us in the stream of freedom that is Stay Free.
01:07:19.000We're going to show you the rest of this conversation tomorrow in addition to talking about Jon Stewart's Apple cancellation.
01:07:26.000Does this mean that the system is closing down?
01:07:30.000That the pathway that you have to walk is becoming Ever narrower.
01:07:35.000Tomorrow we'll be talking about Trump's guilty plea, or the guilty plea of Trump's lawyers more specifically, and myocarditis, the Wuhan lab leak theory, and the necessity for radicalism in politics.
01:07:48.000Click the red button to join our locals community where you will get to see these conversations live on the occasions where we pre-record them, like our fantastic conversation with Jordan Peterson next week.
01:08:01.000We also talk explicitly and exclusively about how we're going to change the world together, create communities outside of the beast, the The serpent energy has to be abated.
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01:08:30.000Next week, The revolution will grow a little stronger.
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01:08:39.000Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, although it is also Vivek Ramaswamy talking, but for more of the different, because it's different stuff that he's saying.