In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, Russell Brand sits down with Benny Johnson at the Republican National Convention to talk about faith and politics, and what it's like to be from a Christian conservative background in the modern era of the modern Republican Party, and how it affects his views on the current state of the country and the current political landscape. Stay Free with Russell Brand is out now on all of the social medias, if you search for it, you'll find us. If you don't already know who Benny Johnson is, you won't want to miss this episode, which is a must-listen if you're a fan of Russell's work. Stay free with Russell, stay free with me, and remember to like, subscribe and subscribe to Stay Free! This episode was produced and edited by Russell Brand. It was edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and produced by Ben Koppel. Our theme music was made by Micah Vellian and our ad music was written and performed by Mark Phillips. Additional music was produced by Matthew Boll. Our editor was Matthew Boll and our editor was Patrick Muldowney. We mixed this episode with music written by James Wardlawrence and Matthew Wardlawley. Additional production by Matthew Wardell, and additional mixing and mastering by Patrick McKirdy. We were edited by Ben Kaufmann and Matthew Boll, and our mixing was done by Daniel Blumberg. It was mixed by Ben Bongino, Matthew Ward, and Bobby Lord. Music was mixed and produced and mixed by Matthew Shaw Shaw, and Matthew Condon, and Rachel Ward, with additional mastering and mastering and editing, and mastering, and Ian McKirden, and extra mixing, and a little additional editing by Ben Bergman, and editing by Matthew Cawthorpe, and Patrick Downey, and music engineering, and Alex Blum, and Jack Williams, and Robert Lord, and the addition of extra mixing and editing and mastering at the National Post's excellent sound design, and an additional editing and mixing at the Electric Light District in London, and Ayn Rand, and his New York City, and London s London, London s own mastering and sound design and distribution services, and distribution, and also a very good sound design. , and our thanks to the help from the excellent Rachel Ward. All rights reserved, and thanks to our good friend Jonathan Ruzicka, and Dan Boswell, for his excellent sound engineer, and James Rumi.
00:00:30.000As you can see, I'm at the RNC, and one of my many highlights of this extraordinary carnival have been my conversations with other content creators, and among them, Benny Johnson, with his radiant face, has been perhaps the favourite one.
00:00:45.000This is a brilliant conversation, talking about faith and politics, and what it's like to be someone who's from a full-on Republican background and how he feels about this iteration and expression of the Republican movement, as well as obviously recent events around Donald Trump.
00:01:40.000Like, sort of... I don't want to use any words that are condemnatory, but he's got a lot of power in him, hasn't he, Dan Bongino?
00:01:46.000Secondly, you get the sense that Dan Bongino can murder you whenever he wants to.
00:01:50.000Like, it's a matter of choice for Dan Bongino.
00:01:52.000And thirdly, his stream gets, like, so many views, so I'm all the time sort of thinking that I feel like I'm sort of rattling a tin cup, like, while he's, like, running a proper business, you know?
00:03:03.000He's been on the show, he's a fantastic person, and I love him very much.
00:03:06.000Now, this is one of the challenges I have, mate.
00:03:09.000Like, you know, I'm at the Republican National Convention.
00:03:11.000I'm not a person that's particularly associated with conservatism or republicanism.
00:03:15.000I detest the neoliberal establishment.
00:03:18.000Like, years ago, I'd have been talking about the Gulf War, I'd have been talking about Bush-Cheney, Wolfowitz, all that kind of stuff, all that corruption that was deep entrenched within the Republican Party system.
00:03:27.000Here we are now, though, at the Republican National Convention, and I see that you are wearing that image.
00:03:36.000This would be an album that I would have purchased when I was 18.
00:03:41.000And banged it really hard in my car to make my parents angry.
00:03:44.000Have you always been a Republican and have you never considered, have you, like, because for me Republicanism was always affiliated with conservatism, authoritarianism, control.
00:03:53.000So, and I wonder if you have had that perspective, what your perspective is on it and whether and how you think the ascent of Trump has altered the Republican movement and what are the positives and negatives of that?
00:04:06.000Yeah, the positives is that it's now officially a nationalist and populist party that puts America first, that does not want forever wars.
00:04:13.000In fact, the Republican Party of today would be exactly what you would have cheered for two decades ago.
00:04:20.000Bush Cheney, in fact, Liz Cheney, is a Democrat now.
00:05:27.000I think everyone won when Donald Trump stepped into North Korea, invited by the leader that we're technically at war with, and he claps him on the back and they hug his bros on the DMZ.
00:06:14.000And if you stop wars, And if you begin to restrain power and say, America first, let's spend our treasure here in America instead of spoiling our treasure in some desert somewhere.
00:06:33.000And also the emergence of this sort of BRIC financial alliance would further perhaps expedite the de-dollarization of the globe and prohibit, limit and diminish American power, meaning that the military power that America wields will soon be its only really facility for power.
00:06:55.000Do you think that's why the Forever Wars is?
00:06:56.000And also I wanted to ask you, this is a bit more of a basic question, how come the Democrat Party, if as you say they're the party of warmongering and death, have PR'd themselves into, we exist primarily to help the vulnerable?
00:07:06.000That's how they're pitching it, isn't it?
00:07:39.000There's also multiple wars going on in Africa right now.
00:07:42.000And we don't tend to care as much about those.
00:07:44.000But nonetheless, he hasn't brought peace, he's brought war.
00:07:46.000And I guess if you look at the actual moral value of a leader, ask yourself that question, especially if you call yourself a Christian.
00:07:55.000Are you bringing peace, or are you bringing war?
00:07:57.000Are you bringing death and suffering upon innocent children, or are you bringing war?
00:08:02.000One of the biggest problems that liberals have is they love their Lord and Savior, Barack Obama, yet Barack Obama famously drone-struck an American citizen, a young teenager named Anwar al-Awlaki, without a trial and killed that poor American teenager in Yemen.
00:08:54.000I watched this PBS Documentary on Obama prior to Obama.
00:09:00.000I think it's probably he might have been a senator like it was like I guess it's 20 years old It's like there's this guy Barack Obama, and it's all sort of like and what's really interesting about the Documentary is that you see in this story, which is not the kind of polished propaganda that we are accustomed to in 2024 a kind of a person that is indeed a Filled with hope and potential, a person with an extraordinarily unique background.
00:09:24.000And while watching it, certainly when you watch it, like you sort of see like Michelle Obama, ambitious Chicago lawyer, you sort of think that there's so much that's positive about this young couple.
00:09:34.000Do you think that there's something that happens to people, and I was just talking to Marjorie Taylor Greene about this, who I think is just a delight, I've got to tell you.
00:09:57.000Anyway, do you think that something happens to people?
00:09:59.000Do you think that, in the same way as I could say within Hollywood, the raw material is people with talent or abilities or aspects of their nature that could become commodities.
00:10:10.000You perhaps are beautiful or you're funny or you're clever.
00:10:12.000Do you think politics, people like Barack Obama might come in that are actually rather lovely, idealistic, great orators and communicators, they get sucked into this system and intoxicated not only with power but some sort of system of corruption that sort of in a sense, I don't know, taints, metastasizes the sort of commodity or quality of genuine people with ideals into something a little more repugnant.
00:10:35.000Yeah, so I call it the ghost in the machine paradox.
00:10:38.000So the ghost in the machine is the creature that actually runs the machine and it tries as hard as it can to be invisible.
00:10:47.000But the ghost in our machine as the American public is the permanent entrenched parasitic class inside of Washington DC that remains there forever and is not Able to be put into check by you, or me, or any voter, or any person that may want to donate to a cause.
00:11:14.000They are the barnacles on the bottom of the ship.
00:11:16.000Or have you ever seen a Nature Channel show with those majestic, beautiful, large fish and there's always these suckers on the bottom of them?
00:11:22.000There's always these parasite fish on the bottom that remain attached to the Big beautiful whale or shark that is through the ocean that's our political class and they suck and they drain and they destroy and when someone like Barack Obama and it's you know it's really interesting because you know there's so many people that could be enraptured by Barack Obama's initial rhetoric who can't here's this beautiful United States of America and he said in Colorado with all those
00:11:54.000He said, there's no red America, there's no blue America, there's just the United States of America.
00:11:57.000And even someone like me, who was forced to choke down John McCain in that election, based on the fact that I was the college Republican, Chair of my state.
00:12:35.000But then the difference between that and President Trump, who also has some very wonderful rhetoric about the nature and fabric of this nation, is that Trump follows through on that.
00:12:45.000and immediately was metastasized by the parasite class, and those sucker fish The fish in the inside of your tank with the big mouths that suck on the tank.
00:12:56.000Every time you bring them out you got a bit mad.
00:13:39.000Because there's one industry, and that is forever war, and the printing press that creates the forever war.
00:13:45.000And Barack Obama was utterly encaptured by those people and their psychological warfare, and as soon as he was losing in 2012, they told him, You know what, that whole, like, red state, blue state, like, bullshit you were talking about?
00:13:59.000It's better to just say there's white America and there's black America, and Trayvon Martin would have been my son, and the only way you're gonna win is actually to start pitting these people against each other.
00:14:10.000And instead of running on unifying the nation, you're going to run on tearing the nation apart.
00:14:14.000And right now, we are living in the afterbirth of Barack Obama making that decision, which was centrally organized by the establishment powers in D.C., to tear our nation apart.
00:14:56.000Obviously, like many people, I was disillusioned with Barack Obama because of the 2008 quantitative easing gear when he backed financial industry instead of ordinary American people.
00:15:06.000And that, of course, had ramifications the whole way around the globe.
00:15:09.000But given that you're a lifelong Republican, and I'm asking you this in like a legitimate way, you understand that about me?
00:15:17.000If you're like a lifelong Republican, what do you think about all that Iraq war and the very, like, when it was pretty plain that the Republicans were in the business of war, how do you calibrate that with your partisanship and your self-courage?
00:15:39.000The neocon policy is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Republican Party, and through an exorcism, a literal exorcism, we have killed it.
00:15:48.000In fact, this convention is where neoconism has died, has gone to die.
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00:16:41.000And wouldn't we all benefit from that?
00:17:32.000Yes, and in fact, the man who's been chosen to be the vice president Is a man who saw the terrorist attacks on September 11th, signed up for the Marines, went to fight in that sandbox.
00:17:49.000Because, as you've probably found yourself perhaps in the UK as well, which is a nation with many veterans, the people who hate war the most are the ones who see it up close.
00:18:02.000If there's some purge and transformation taking place, because as you have described, there are various movements that are secondary, ulterior, and you've used the phrase phantom to describe the bureaucratic class that remain in power regardless of any party change.
00:18:17.000It seems that what you're describing are movements, ulterior movements, that pass through parties and capture them for a while, and the neocon movement was one such.
00:18:26.000But I have felt at this Republican National Convention, as well as the kind of almost celebratory, resurrectionist euphoria, Around Trump, which is understandable given recent events.
00:18:42.000It still, for me, has the shellac that I sense around most political movements and institutions.
00:18:49.000This reverence and near-worship of power.
00:18:52.000You know that these people are in ascendancy, this individual is in decline.
00:18:57.000That power is hardly a novel observation to remark upon the corrupting quality of power.
00:19:05.000Do you feel that this is a Republican Party movement that can deliver on any Christian's priority beyond personal salvation in a relationship with our Lord and Saviour?
00:19:16.000Serve the poor, love the poor, protect the vulnerable.
00:19:19.000The very rhetoric, in fact, which you would say the Democrat Party masks its warmongering.
00:19:50.000But then let's pivot also to what real power is.
00:19:52.000And I hate to paraphrase Schindler's List of all things, but there's a line in there where it's like, you know, the Nazis about to shoot someone.
00:20:00.000And Uh, he's advised that real power is actually not taking the shot.
00:20:43.000And so you have to ask, he says, the promise of this nation is to let people live their lives freely and go about the peaceful freedom of living a good Christian life.
00:21:48.000I know that is certainly the brand of this show.
00:21:52.000And the best thing that you could do as a Republican party is to go back to those roots, where it's like, no, actually, we're going to decentralize power.
00:21:59.000The most wonderful and Christian thing we can do is to destroy or to eradicate that ghost in the machine and to rid ourselves of these shackles.
00:22:07.000And Christ does not want us to live as slaves.
00:22:08.000He wants us to live as frees, the greatest liberator.
00:22:12.000And that's why people are calling People say what they say about Abraham Lincoln and why people are calling Donald Trump and modern-day labor and Abraham Lincoln because we want no more shackles.
00:22:21.000You think that the condemnation and attacks on Donald Trump are entirely insubstantiated, entirely malevolent, entirely baseless and the characterization him as a kind of vulgar and let's face it in the circles in which he is loathed.
00:22:38.000They regard him as a Luciferian and dark figure.
00:22:45.000Everybody wishes the shooter had done its job.
00:22:47.000Yeah, so I've obviously seen and heard some of that kind of commentary.
00:22:54.000What I wonder is, is where you believe those ideals...
00:22:58.000The Christian ideals that you just described, where the potential for them to play out in bureaucracies or systems of government is a real one, Benim, and where you think that secularism is correct.
00:23:14.000Because my fear is that the emergence of the authoritarianism that's based on compassion
00:23:19.000is ultimately undergirded by a kind of godlessness that's not entirely nihilistic, but is entirely rationalistic.
00:23:26.000It has placed man at the apex of creation.
00:23:29.000It has placed humankind at the human mind, at the human purview, which can be voided of all ideals derived from the sublime,
00:23:38.000affording the potential for new agenda to emerge.
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00:26:35.000Because I've said a lot of inappropriate things in the past.
00:26:37.000Usually I've been trying to be funny, I guess, and many times I've missed the mark.
00:26:41.000Let's have a look at some of the things that have been said in recent days and let's work out together what it means about the legacy media's ongoing position on this matter.
00:26:51.000He has said many, many times, after having been questioned many times about this, that he's not stepping down and he's going to be the nominee.
00:26:57.000So, at some point, Democrats have to decide that they want to try to win this election and turn their fire on Donald Trump.
00:27:04.000I think there is... I shouldn't have said turn their fire.
00:27:10.000They need to turn their focus on Donald Trump.
00:27:14.000It's amazing, because I think we've all made Freudian slips, haven't we?
00:27:18.000Sometimes you say something because you think you shouldn't.
00:27:20.000It's the equivalent of coughing in church or something.
00:27:23.000But even the other CNN anchor is like, I don't think we can do this anymore, can we?
00:27:28.000I can't just casually compare him to Hitler and sort of subtly and insidiously suggest that it would be okay if he was killed because he's so demonic.
00:27:36.000That's one of the things that I found really fascinating and I think it may have been Vivek Ramaswamy actually who said it in the show.
00:27:41.000Yeah, you should watch that interview.
00:27:41.000It's really good, the one that we had.
00:27:45.000Donald Trump is indeed Hitler and evil incarnate.
00:27:48.000Then, actually, it's probably OK, isn't it, to shoot him?
00:27:52.000I mean, we've all had that conversation about, would you kill young Hitler?
00:27:57.000Personally, I'd say no, because he was quite cute when he was young, actually.
00:27:59.000If you see him, it'd be very difficult to explain to his mum what you were doing.
00:28:02.000Also, look, honestly, you'll thank me for this.
00:28:08.000But now, this is a new environment and we're seeing the permutations and we're seeing the kind of conflict and despair, I'm talking in legacy media quarters, that this event has caused.
00:28:22.000If you believe that Trump is a demon, an antichrist figure, then you can say whatever is necessary to prevent his ascent.
00:28:28.000But once you can no longer say that, because that's the kind of incendiary language that leads to violence, then what have you got left?
00:28:34.000And that's all they've had for so long.
00:28:36.000They weren't ever able to say, look, We really care about ordinary Americans and these are the policies.
00:28:41.000These are the way we're going to stand up to big corporations.
00:28:43.000These are the way that we're going to end wars.
00:28:45.000These are the way we're going to represent the interests of ordinary Americans against, God, heaven forbid, the state and bureaucracy, but also corporate and globalist interests.
00:28:53.000Because that's over, that's off the table, we don't represent, they don't represent ordinary Americans anymore.
00:28:58.000All they have left is hysterically banging the drum of, he's worse, he's terrible.
00:29:05.000That's been evident to me from the 2016 time.
00:29:07.000That's part of my personal abandonment of that Hollywood liberal elite class, is because, hold on, what are you offering?
00:29:15.000What exactly is it that you're selling?
00:29:17.000But, of course, people will continue to make jibes and remarks, and actually, in a free speech nation, in a free speech world, you've got to allow it, haven't you?
00:29:47.000So as you can see, Tenacious D cancelled their tour as a result of that, understandably, because of the backlash.
00:29:52.000But I was very interested that Tim Pool said this about it, that if we actually believe in free speech, if someone apologizes for saying something insensitive, they should be forgiven.
00:30:02.000And I actually, I agree with that point.
00:30:05.000But we do have to recognize that it hasn't just been offhand glib remarks.
00:30:10.000It's been a sort of an ongoing And of course no one can know for certain how that has contributed to these conditions or what was going on in the mind of that extraordinary young man who doesn't have a phone or a social media input.
00:30:21.000I mean there's so many questions beyond what his motives were, other than it's pretty obvious if someone shoots someone that their motive is to kill them.
00:30:29.000Although I don't know why they would want to, there's so much to discuss.
00:30:32.000But this compilation of people within media saying that Donald Trump is like Hitler, Donald Trump is a fascist, is so sort of Immersive and ongoing.
00:30:42.000It's like, you know, why did we ban tobacco advertising?
00:30:45.000Well, because if you keep sort of making smoking seem good and sexy and cool, people smoke and it kills them.
00:30:50.000Right, so people do respond to media messaging then.
00:30:52.000How do you imagine people would respond to this media messaging?
00:30:56.000Of course it's Trump is a Nazi time again.
00:31:32.000We just need to say for the record that the term vermin ...was really effectively used by Adolf Hitler... ...echoed dictators like Hitler... ...with language evoking authoritarian figures like Adolf Hitler... ...Adolf Hitler... ...Donald Trump parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler... ...talk about the brilliance of Hitler's generals... ...correct... ...General Kelly, yes...
00:31:54.000One of the things that I've been continually reflecting on here at an obviously partisan event, what could be more partisan than the convention of one of the parties, is is there a possibility for unity now?
00:32:06.000Is Donald Trump the type of leader that will enter into government in good faith?
00:32:13.000Or will we see more conflict, more conflagration, more doubt?
00:32:20.000I pray that this might be a seismic moment.
00:32:23.000I certainly haven't changed my opinion on whether or not this kind of government will actually meaningfully change the lives of many people because there are too many deep state institutions, too many globalist interests, and these are the things I'm discussing at the RNC.
00:32:36.000Certainly though, one thing that will change is the hysterical rhetoric.
00:32:39.000Although, actually, not all of that has changed, has it?
00:32:42.000What lessons do we need, Lord, in order for us to be saved?
00:32:57.000Given that there's sort of like one of the crucial tenet of a crucial tenet of Christianity is that there is only one
00:33:03.000Lord and Savior and it's certainly not any of us as individuals.
00:33:06.000What it seems that in the kind of euphoria surrounding a recent events there is an attempt to kind of allow that
00:33:13.000divine light to fully anoint Donald Trump.
00:33:17.000Do you consider there to be any risks in that?
00:33:19.000Because he has already been president for four years, and I really appreciate your point that he did not start any wars.
00:33:24.000I think that's a really valuable and incredible point.
00:33:27.000But from the outside, it was not a seismic and a pocal shift in American governance.
00:33:32.000You know, in one minute it's Obama, then it's Biden, then... It seems like the institutions themselves, as you said, because of the barnacles and those sucker fish that you hate, Benny.
00:34:33.000I've already been cancelled a million times, so it's, you know, bring it on.
00:34:36.000If I'm going to put in a litmus test to people who are wishing to serve and lead this nation, which has been designed as a nation fit for moral people and moral people only, I would say, are you God or is God God?
00:34:52.000If I were to ask a single question of every politician in the country...
00:35:00.000Are you in charge or is God in charge?
00:35:02.000I think that would be the most, I think that's the best, I think that's the most important question anyone can ever ask.
00:35:07.000And the answer to that question, I think, shockingly and horrifyingly for many people, if they were answering honestly, if they had the truth serum pumped into their veins, they'd say, no, I think I'm God because they behave like that.
00:35:16.000They behave, Joe Biden behaves with a reckless abandon as though there will, as though everything he believes in his faith is not true.
00:35:24.000You know, he just said that Jesus won't be returning.
00:35:43.000Which is a strange thing to say, right?
00:35:44.000If you actually believed Christianity.
00:35:47.000But you also see, and here's the final answer to your question, is there is an absolute danger in seeing in the messianic iconography of putting Trump on like, well, this is just a thug life.
00:36:12.000There's a problem, and when you want to see what's really close to my heart, if you want to see what's actually close to my heart, would be right here.
00:37:03.000Nebuchadnezzar was forced to live like an animal?
00:37:06.000Nebuchadnezzar was forced to go out into the fields and eat and shit like an animal and eat grass because God was displeased with him.
00:37:14.000And so God humbles and brings leaders low and so... Does Nebuchadnezzar learn his lesson from that?
00:37:20.000He gets brought back as the king, so we'll see, right?
00:37:22.000So the prophets, and you described this on my program the other day, you said there was a prophet that said that Donald Trump will go through a redemption and a baptism after getting his ear blown off.
00:37:44.000As a simple Christian, you just have to sit back and go, well, prophets exist, and God's calling exists on people, and perhaps this is God's calling.
00:38:35.000I was raised in a Christian tradition, but I fell completely away from the faith and lived a pretty embarrassing and humiliating hedonistic lifestyle.
00:38:45.000What made me a Christian was my children.
00:38:47.000I watched the veil of heaven pull back, and an angel was delivered into my arms from Christ himself, and I held my firstborn child in my hands, and tears ran down my face.
00:39:40.000And once you hold an angel in your arms, delivered to you by the Almighty, you are profoundly changed forever as a man, and you understand God's relationship with you.
00:39:51.000And I understand how helpless I am, and how Purposeless my life would be, and how dead I would actually be without God, without that presence.
00:40:03.000And fatherhood is God showing you a small token of what His relationship is with you, as the almighty and all-powerful, and how we are like children to Him, and that's why we're called God's children.
00:40:17.000Pretty beautiful the way you talk about Eloise.
00:40:50.000Yeah, I had the same moment with my, you know, I remember the, obviously, remember the birth of my little Mabel, uh, going through that same thing, and all of the subsequent births in their own way, a kind of rendering of miracle in nature, the miraculous and the natural.
00:41:05.000And I wonder what those boundaries are between the natural and the supernatural and I wonder how difficult it is with man in our hubris to not acknowledge that in God all things are possible and the degree of magnificence and glory that we experience there Might yet be felt in myriad unknown ways that we foreclose, that we foreclose our minds against miracles, this sort of abundant, endless, molecular requiem unfolding about us endlessly, even now.
00:41:34.000We've, in a sense, closed down the beauty and the glory.
00:42:06.000Maybe forever you'll be able to feel it.
00:42:08.000Yeah, because I remember the things, the catharsis like leading up to it as well, like the sort of excitement.
00:42:14.000I can remember the moment that my wife done a pee test and that she was pregnant.
00:42:18.000I remember the moment I was out running in a field where I live in rural Britain and Like, you know, someone driving out, Laura's going into labour!
00:42:26.000And, like, us driving, I wanted to have the baby at home, but that's not a choice that I was... Laura wanted to have it at this maternity thing, maternity unit.
00:42:35.000So we went, like, for women, like, midwife-led.
00:42:37.000It was amazing, and, like, the baby sort of retracted, and all of the... And I noticed how I was confronted with narcissism, individualism, egotism, sort of in this little journey up to it.
00:42:46.000And then the sort of extra Extraordinary transformation.
00:42:51.000The kind of language, the euphoria, the astonishment.
00:43:02.000Nothing could be... Every single person, one way or another, via this miracle.
00:43:06.000So staggering and astonishing and each subsequent occasion I mean I've told you when I was on your show mate about my my little boy that was sort of kind of different because we had to they had to be medical conditions and stuff and we weren't sure what was gonna happen and I wanted to protect him so much I went to protect him in the moment because we didn't know that he might be born unconscious he might be born dead he might immediately require you know all of that stuff Oh man, yeah, it's good.
00:43:32.000And thinking about it now, I suppose these transitions, firstly coming out, you know, you talked to yourself about a little bit of hedonism, coming away from drugs and alcohol, moving into family and fatherhood, then moving into a life with Christ.
00:43:45.000These are significant and transformative events, aren't they?
00:43:50.000But ultimately, I suppose as you retrace it, you sense the golden threads of his presence in each of these moments of transition and transformation.
00:44:01.000Do you think when you look back, mate, like, oh yeah, there he was, there he was, as someone who's temporarily turned from Christ into what sounds like a pretty appalling life of hedonism in support of John McCain?
00:44:28.000Yeah, okay, so Russell, it's, you know, the reason why those moments are so profound is because God reserves very few things just unto himself, and life and death are those things.
00:44:47.000And that's why I believe that Those moments are so profound because you experience life.
00:45:16.000Because there is no other explanation for the creation of life.
00:45:20.000And then I hold that child in my arm and I think about what type of evil must exist to order that child off to go to some pointless war and go die in some sandbox somewhere so that somebody's Raytheon portfolio can go up a point, right?
00:45:40.000And if you want to look at, like, where my actual transition goes from being able to stand on your show and look straight down the barrel of the camera and say, I disavow George W. Bush, and I disavow neoconservatism, and I disavow, and I'm glad that no one with the last name Cheney will ever be allowed in another Republican convention in my lifetime.
00:47:20.000We'll be back next week on Monday for my conversation with Candice Owens, which also is pretty astonishing and staggering and covers a wide variety of subjects that I can't even believe it.
00:47:31.000I still don't believe the things that woman is willing to talk about publicly.