Stay Free - Russel Brand - TRUMP 2024 | Can Anyone Challenge TRUMP’S UNSTOPPABLE Influence - Stay Free #177

00:00:00.000 BIRDS CHIRPING YOGA MUSIC 0.96

00:00:25.000 mann resonabe I'm a black man and I could never be a better man. 0.88

00:00:32.000 Brought to you by Pfizer.

00:00:34.000 I'm gonna roll with you, so I'm looking forward to seeing you.

00:00:38.000 Looking forward to seeing you.

00:00:40.000 In this video, we're going.

00:00:42.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:53.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!

00:00:55.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:00:57.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, we're only gonna be here for the first 15 minutes.

00:01:01.000 If you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button at the bottom of your screen and join us on Locals, because we are talking about Trump, the berserker, the pedagogue, or is he the new bringer of light and messiah that many of you claim?

00:01:15.000 In a world of political turbulence and mainstream media bias, we're gonna bring you, and I'm I'm excited to tell you this.

00:01:21.000 This is an uncensored special, at least on Rumble it will be uncensored, on the presidential candidates who are taking on the hysteria surrounding one man and the impact he continues to have on American politics.

00:01:32.000 Yes, it's Donald J. Trump.

00:01:36.000 I did everything right and they indicted me.

00:01:39.000 And coming up later, our friend Ron DeSantis.

00:01:43.000 What you've seen is a collusion between big government and big business.

00:01:47.000 I mean, if you think about it, a free society has to have debates over important issues.

00:01:52.000 We'll be hearing from Dr. Cornel West on his challenge to the White House.

00:01:56.000 Big money and big military have become what the monarchs and oligarchs were many hundreds of years ago.

00:02:03.000 They have power that's unaccountable, unanswerable, and irresponsible.

00:02:09.000 Plus, the man I'm in a pull-up challenge with, RFK Jr.

00:02:12.000 They're protecting the interests of the elites.

00:02:16.000 Everything they do is about raising money for the next election.

00:02:20.000 Turn to me any whisper to me, they consider you a traitor to their class.

00:02:28.000 I think Trump is about to become physically visible.

00:02:30.000 There he is!

00:02:32.000 It's arraignment day!

00:02:34.000 Yeah!

00:02:37.000 Let's get a-raining! 0.99

00:02:37.000 Yes! 0.99

00:02:39.000 I'm gonna make it a-rain!

00:02:40.000 Yeah!

00:02:41.000 So, Trump is being arrested on federal charges.

00:02:44.000 37 federal charges.

00:02:46.000 Both Kid Rocks, to be believed.

00:02:48.000 They're not that bad.

00:02:49.000 It's been showing, like, I think it's worse that there are that many documents that have been censored.

00:02:54.000 Do you think you can handle the truth?

00:02:55.000 Let me know in the comments in the chat.

00:02:57.000 Why are they, why have they got these clandestine documents?

00:02:59.000 I can handle it.

00:03:00.000 Just tell me everything.

00:03:02.000 Julian Assange, he's in Belmarsh prison now for telling us information that we should have known in the first place.

00:03:08.000 Edward Snowden, he's holed up in Russia right now for giving us information that we should have had access to in the first place.

00:03:14.000 They're both being prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

00:03:17.000 And now Donald Trump, is he being prosecuted under the Espionage Act?

00:03:20.000 That means them spies, baby!

00:03:22.000 Let's have a look at the mainstream media's reporting on this story.

00:03:26.000 The classified records strewn throughout Mar-a-Lago, in a public ballroom, a bathroom, and strewn.

00:03:31.000 Are they strewn?

00:03:32.000 They are strewn, actually.

00:03:33.000 Look at that one, it's spilling out.

00:03:34.000 That's the definition of strewn.

00:03:35.000 I reckon that's the one that he showed Kid Rock.

00:03:37.000 Like, look, Kid Rock.

00:03:38.000 Oh, man!

00:03:40.000 That's allegedly by the way.

00:03:42.000 Well let's say what it actually says.

00:03:43.000 Trump reportedly showed a classified map related to a military operation to someone who did not possess security clearance.

00:03:49.000 In a 2022 interview with Tucker on Fox, Kid Rock claimed the former president asked his advice and showed him what he believed to be secret information during a visit to the White House in 2017.

00:04:00.000 Did he have Kid Rock at the White House?

00:04:01.000 I mean even that's a bit mad. 1.00

00:04:03.000 Looking at maps and sh- looking at maps and shit, and I'm like, am I supposed to be in on this shit, Roxas? 0.99

00:04:08.000 Let's have a look at that. 1.00

00:04:09.000 You know, we're looking at maps and s***. 0.86

00:04:11.000 I'm like, you know, I'm like, am I supposed to be like in on s***? 0.84

00:04:17.000 You didn't think you'd have a hand in it?

00:04:18.000 What do you think we should do about North Korea?

00:04:20.000 I'm like, what?

00:04:22.000 I don't think I'm qualified to answer this.

00:04:25.000 That's amazing.

00:04:26.000 It's like Chappelle's fantastic bit of stand up about jar rule.

00:04:29.000 Let's have a look at how the mainstream are covering arraignment day.

00:04:33.000 We've already seen those strewn documents.

00:04:35.000 What else is going on?

00:04:36.000 Tossed on a storage room floor are among the nation's most closely held secrets.

00:04:41.000 Of the 31 charges for the willful retention of national defence information, 21 involve top secret documents.

00:04:48.000 Do you see how the mainstream media confines us to particular topics?

00:04:51.000 Everywhere, and if you notice this, we'll be talking about how outrageous and egregious it is that Trump's in

00:04:57.000 possession of these documents.

00:04:59.000 On some platforms, you'll see people saying, well, Joe Biden, he's just as bad.

00:05:02.000 1,800 boxes of documents from when he's a senator.

00:05:05.000 And then people say, yeah, but he was in Loudoun when he's a senator.

00:05:07.000 But then people say, he had 20, and they were in his garage.

00:05:10.000 And did you see what Trump said?

00:05:12.000 That my documents were kept in beautiful conditions.

00:05:15.000 Biden, he had them on the floor of his garage.

00:05:16.000 They could get damp.

00:05:17.000 He was talking about the literal conditions of them.

00:05:20.000 But the real problem is this.

00:05:21.000 Why have you nominated a patriarch elite class that allowed access to information that you're not?

00:05:28.000 Now I'm not suggesting that all of us on an individual basis want to be immersed in the bureaucracy of government.

00:05:34.000 But the category of classified should be abolished except in matters where it's strictly necessary.

00:05:41.000 Bolton told CBS News special handling suggests a special access program which can be so secret the government doesn't acknowledge its existence.

00:05:50.000 It's so secret you won't even know.

00:05:52.000 Does it exist?

00:05:53.000 I won't acknowledge it. 0.98

00:05:55.000 That's ridiculous. 0.80

00:05:56.000 Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio said there was no evidence the intelligence was compromised. 0.90

00:06:02.000 There's no allegation that he sold it to a foreign power or that it was trafficked.

00:06:06.000 You consider Kid Rock to be a threat.

00:06:10.000 Kid Rock is mounting on our borders.

00:06:13.000 Kid Rock has got battleships in American waters.

00:06:16.000 Kid Rock is floating a weather balloon high in the sky.

00:06:19.000 Kid Rock and Donald Trump are frankly not the problem.

00:06:22.000 The problem is deep systemic abuse that we're living under.

00:06:26.000 But a 2019 incident suggests Mar-a-Lago has been a target. 0.98

00:06:27.000 out of this damn matrix unless we're willing to overcome cultural conflict and unite against 0.99

00:06:31.000 establishment elites. 0.99

00:06:32.000 But a 2019 incident suggests Mar-a-Lago has been a target.

00:06:37.000 This Chinese businesswoman was convicted of trespassing, lying to federal investigators 0.96

00:06:42.000 and deported.

00:06:44.000 That Chinese businesswoman, what's she been doing, snooping around Mar-a-Lago? 1.00

00:06:47.000 Mar-a-Lago, yeah.

00:06:48.000 Around those strewn documents.

00:06:50.000 Like, she's been checking out the documents.

00:06:52.000 There's one strewn there, there's one strewn there.

00:06:54.000 Checking them out.

00:06:55.000 I just need to visit the bathroom. 0.99

00:06:57.000 Don't nut that bathroom. 1.00

00:06:59.000 Kid Rock's in there, having the time of his life.

00:07:01.000 Give me some advice.

00:07:02.000 Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy claims Trump's records were more secure than Biden's found in a garage.

00:07:09.000 Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that opens up all the time?

00:07:13.000 A bathroom door locks.

00:07:14.000 Yeah, that's a good argument.

00:07:15.000 The thing is, with a bathroom door, you just lock it.

00:07:17.000 You've got to be inside there, though.

00:07:18.000 That's true.

00:07:19.000 You can only lock it if you're in there with the documents. 0.84

00:07:21.000 Having to tie it off, maybe wiping your bum on one. 0.91

00:07:24.000 Not with our... That's disrespectful. 0.58

00:07:24.000 That's not right. 0.58

00:07:26.000 ...sacred documents.

00:07:27.000 Let's see what they're talking about on the mainstream media right now.

00:07:30.000 We're going to stand by for one minute.

00:07:32.000 Our special report is starting now.

00:07:34.000 Oh.

00:07:35.000 Okay.

00:07:35.000 All right!

00:07:36.000 This is their report and our report.

00:07:38.000 Special.

00:07:38.000 This is an NBC News special report.

00:07:42.000 Here's Lester Holt.

00:07:44.000 Good day, we're coming to you live from outside the federal courthouse in Miami where former President Trump...

00:07:52.000 At the end of this broadcast, my forehead will be another four inches long.

00:07:57.000 We'll be arriving shortly to surrender to federal authorities and be arraigned on 37 counts.

00:08:03.000 Mr. Trump departed his Miami-area golf course just a moment ago, a trip that should take about 20 minutes.

00:08:10.000 But Trump took 25.

00:08:12.000 He stopped to do some corruption, and he had to drive over some strewn boxes of secrets, some of which he was showing to Kid Rock.

00:08:19.000 When he enters the courthouse behind me, his arraignment will push America's legal and political systems into uncharted territory.

00:08:27.000 Never before has a former president been arraigned on federal charges, and never before has the leading candidate for one party's presidential nomination faced so much legal jeopardy.

00:08:38.000 This will be the second time in just over two months.

00:08:42.000 It's pornography.

00:08:44.000 It's ratings chasing.

00:08:45.000 They're amplifying it.

00:08:46.000 They're fetishizing it.

00:08:47.000 They're gilding and oiling the news.

00:08:50.000 This is not reportage.

00:08:51.000 It's not even analysis.

00:08:53.000 It's bombast.

00:08:54.000 It might as well be BT, PT, Barnum.

00:08:57.000 I think Trump is about to become physically visible.

00:09:00.000 There he is!

00:09:01.000 Quick, turn up the volume.

00:09:02.000 Is he going to do something?

00:09:04.000 ...interpretations.

00:09:05.000 For some people, they're seeing a persecuted hero going to stand up to the system that's trying to crush their movement.

00:09:12.000 And this is live images of this motorcade looking for Elvis, right?

00:09:15.000 And then for others of us, you know, this is a dangerous scofflaw who stole a bunch of federal documents that anybody else stole and they'd be under the jail by now.

00:09:24.000 And so, that's the division.

00:09:25.000 You can literally be looking at one...

00:09:27.000 I don't know, man.

00:09:28.000 I don't trust that analysis.

00:09:29.000 I don't think any of us think that if someone else stole it, they'd be in jail by now.

00:09:33.000 We know that Biden's got classified documents, some of which were taken during his time as Senator, some of which, 20 of them, were taken during another period.

00:09:40.000 There's seemingly, according to Matt Taibbi and Shelley Berger, a credible allegation that he took a $5 million bribe while VP, and that information was repressed by the FBI.

00:09:51.000 So there is no centralised moral authority.

00:09:53.000 Look at that amazing image there.

00:09:54.000 Right now, the stopping traffic.

00:09:56.000 We're so used to the visual grammar of this post-OJ.

00:10:00.000 Even this news reporting is criminalizing Trump.

00:10:04.000 I've, as you know, got no dog in the fire.

00:10:06.000 I know a lot of you like Trump, and for me, I think radical systemic change is required.

00:10:10.000 But this news reporting is partisan, and it is ultimately designed to limit your political options.

00:10:17.000 What they want is for you to operate within a narrow bandwidth where you don't really have Any options at all.

00:10:23.000 You have no one in the political sphere that's genuinely interested in representing the views of ordinary American people.

00:10:33.000 Trump versus DeSantis, the ongoing preliminary battle has reached propagandist levels.

00:10:40.000 The mainstream media, of course, enjoying this.

00:10:42.000 CNN and sort of, I suppose, the liberal half of the neoliberal corrupt establishment media are enjoying this super PAC spat.

00:10:51.000 First up, whose video are we going to see first?

00:10:54.000 I think it starts with Ron DeSantis' on Trump.

00:10:58.000 All right, let's see what Ron DeSantis is saying about Trump.

00:11:00.000 First of all, let's have a look.

00:11:03.000 It is April 2023.

00:11:05.000 Yes, April 2023, but an early... Excited about the date.

00:11:08.000 That's just the date.

00:11:09.000 What are we worried about that for?

00:11:10.000 Yep, that's right.

00:11:11.000 We know the date.

00:11:12.000 You can trust us on CNN.

00:11:13.000 I think his point is that these are coming early when the election is next year, but it is just a man reiterating the date.

00:11:18.000 And also, like, this is the thing.

00:11:20.000 With all of their bombast and banal pageantry, they're in no position to criticise the propaganda of anyone else. 0.94

00:11:28.000 Look at that, by the way, his name, John King, came thrusting onto the screen, an unwanted graphic, priapic erection, forced in from the side of the frame.

00:11:38.000 If his point is they're doing this too early, just make a decision to not show it then. 0.89

00:11:42.000 You're doing the thing.

00:11:43.000 You're reporting on them doing it too early.

00:11:45.000 Yeah, you're getting involved.

00:11:46.000 You love it.

00:11:47.000 it and wait till it gets to the three finger yogurts.

00:11:49.000 A proxy war is underway between the top two Republican 2024 contenders.

00:11:53.000 A super PAC aligned with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a new TV ad

00:11:57.000 suggests Donald Trump has lost his way.

00:11:59.000 Trump's stealing pages from the Biden Pelosi playbook.

00:12:05.000 Repeating lies about social security.

00:12:07.000 Trump should fight Democrats, not lie about Governor DeSantis.

00:12:10.000 What happened to Donald Trump?

00:12:12.000 I like that shot of Donald Trump looking sort of a bit destitute, wandering home from a nightclub with his bowtie undone.

00:12:19.000 That was good.

00:12:20.000 Let's see though, I think Trump's super PAC propaganda, not necessarily affiliated with the Trump campaign, which is a super PAC thing, is better.

00:12:28.000 Because what they've gone for Is a garish, galling, gory, and awful image involving pudding.

00:12:37.000 Also, like they're picking up on a weird detail about Ron DeSantis.

00:12:41.000 I didn't know that Ron DeSantis ate puddings with his fingers.

00:12:46.000 But that's...

00:12:46.000 You know, like, have you ever been to India?

00:12:48.000 In India, people eat, like, surprising meals with their fingers, and I presume that's common across that region of the world.

00:12:55.000 Like, I was in India, and people ate, like, rice and curry with their fingers, and you just have to go, well, why not?

00:13:00.000 Maybe it's more weird to hold a little spoon or a fork.

00:13:02.000 What are we afraid of, man?

00:13:03.000 I still think even in India, they wouldn't do a chocolate mousse.

00:13:06.000 They might, mate.

00:13:07.000 They might get their fingers right in there.

00:13:08.000 If you are watching this live from India now, eating a puddin', Or if you're on DeSantis and you're watching this in Florida, with a great scoop of pud right there, cradled there in the nook of your third knuckle. 0.93

00:13:29.000 Suck that down, delicious, like Mother Nature surely intended when she granted us these crazy little hand wands, and let's know what's going on.

00:13:38.000 Now, that ad from a pro-DeSantis pack is responding to scathing ads from a pro-Trump group, including this, yes, stomach-churning dig at the Florida governor after a report that he ate pudding with his fingers. 0.98

00:13:52.000 Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong.

00:13:56.000 ...is that De Santis has got a table and chair, and all that's on it is that pudding.

00:14:00.000 Just for a pudding.

00:14:01.000 That's his pudding table.

00:14:03.000 I'm going to the pudding table now, Mark.

00:14:05.000 There's nothing else there.

00:14:06.000 It's not like a TV or a phone or any distractions, just a man and his pudding.

00:14:10.000 And also, it's a non-branded sort of look.

00:14:13.000 I don't feel like that's a good quality pudding.

00:14:15.000 You get lots of those for maybe a dollar.

00:14:18.000 You get, in Walmart, I reckon you get 20 of them puddings for a very reasonable price.

00:14:23.000 And if you're fingering your way through them at a rate of knots, that's what you want.

00:14:28.000 When you're sat alone at your good, like, little jack-corner, sticking-your-fingers table, that's what you want. 1.00

00:14:35.000 Get another one in.

00:14:36.000 Like he holds up his muddy little digits.

00:14:40.000 And we're not just talking about pudding.

00:14:42.000 Yeah, we have a conveyor belt operated by an Oompa Loompa like on a bicycle. Just bring another pudding

00:14:48.000 He's like a self-fulfilling wonka. He's a one-man wonka. He's running his own chocolate factory. He's eating his own

00:14:54.000 product Hmm, that's the way to run a state if you ask me and we're 0.96

00:14:58.000 not just talking about pudding The Santas has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements

00:15:06.000 Making the connection between the senior entitlements and that chocolate smeared. Let's face it. That's an erotic

00:15:12.000 image. Yeah Yeah, it is.

00:15:14.000 Well, I guess it's both, isn't it?

00:15:16.000 What do you mean both? 0.97

00:15:18.000 Disgusting and erotic. 0.98

00:15:19.000 Right, I see. 0.82

00:15:20.000 I mean, the erotic need not necessarily evoke a passionate or even erotic response in the recipient because the world of sexuality is a complex and wonderful smorgasbord.

00:15:35.000 Smorgasbord, perhaps.

00:15:38.000 A wonderful menagerie.

00:15:40.000 A menagerie of potential things.

00:15:42.000 And also, it's sexualising DeSantis' pudding eating. 0.80

00:15:47.000 Maybe it's just efficient.

00:15:49.000 Yeah.

00:15:49.000 He did it on a private jet, apparently.

00:15:52.000 I don't know if that makes a difference.

00:15:54.000 It was 2019, Ron DeSantis is in a private jet, flying around, and the story came out that he ate a pudding with his fingers.

00:16:00.000 Maybe there weren't spoons on the jet.

00:16:01.000 Could have been a one-off, couldn't it?

00:16:03.000 I actually, myself, have probably... I'd call it stooped so low as to eat a pudding with Digit.

00:16:09.000 But that's... it's not through choice.

00:16:11.000 I don't like getting off on it.

00:16:12.000 I'd look around for some sort of spoon or device.

00:16:16.000 If there isn't one, what are you gonna do?

00:16:18.000 Make one?

00:16:19.000 No.

00:16:19.000 Or use what I call God's sweet spoons.

00:16:22.000 God's spoonsies. 0.99

00:16:24.000 Nature's forks, these guys are.

00:16:30.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:16:31.000 Thanks for supporting and endorsing Rumble, which of course has its home in the state that you are the governor of.

00:16:38.000 Ron, when I was in Florida recently, I was struck by the amount of pride that Floridians have in their state.

00:16:46.000 You appear to be universally endorsed by the population of Florida.

00:16:51.000 I did stand up comedy there.

00:16:53.000 A lot of my stand up was talking about measures taken in the pandemic where I live in the UK and the broad and I would say spookily ubiquitous response to the pandemic in most places in the world, except one might contest in Florida.

00:17:11.000 I'm sure that the sense of state pride that Floridians have is a source of great joy to you.

00:17:16.000 I wonder how you came to the position of confidence in taking a stance that was antithetical to the stance taken elsewhere in America.

00:17:28.000 Well, I'm glad you noticed that.

00:17:29.000 I was born and raised in Florida, and while I've always loved the state, we didn't have the same type of pride growing up that, say, people in Texas have about Texas.

00:17:39.000 And yet, in the last few years, particularly since I've been governor, we've developed that pride, and I think a lot of it's rooted in the fact that we told people like Fauci to take a hike during COVID.

00:17:51.000 We were going to do it our way.

00:17:53.000 We were going to be the free state of Florida.

00:17:54.000 And obviously that meant people had a right to work, right to operate businesses.

00:17:58.000 Kids needed to be in school.

00:18:00.000 We fought back against mandates, both in terms of not letting local governments impose mask mandates, not letting government or business impose COVID vaccine mandates.

00:18:11.000 So in every step of the way, we were really leading.

00:18:14.000 And how did I come to it?

00:18:15.000 I mean, part of it was I just looked at the data that was coming in.

00:18:20.000 The whole premise of lockdown, both in the UK and in the United States, was in the idea that COVID would cause massive amounts of hospitalizations and we wouldn't even have any more hospital beds left over for normal patients.

00:18:33.000 We all got those models, all governors, all heads of state, and I'm looking at this in like March and April, And none of it was accurate.

00:18:42.000 All the predictions were bogus.

00:18:44.000 And so I said, listen, this is something that we're going to have to live with.

00:18:47.000 Sweden is living with it, and they're doing much better than most of these other countries in Europe.

00:18:53.000 Let's have people make their own decisions rather than forcing Fauci-ism on our state.

00:19:00.000 And I think that the goal of Fauci Was to have rolling lockdowns.

00:19:06.000 So you'd lock down, then COVID would go down, then you could maybe open back up.

00:19:11.000 But when the next wave started, you would have to lock down again.

00:19:14.000 And I think they would have wanted to repeat that over and over again.

00:19:17.000 Had Florida not stood in the way, I think they would have gotten away with it.

00:19:21.000 But what happened was, we said we're standing for freedom.

00:19:24.000 We remember we had a COVID wave summer of 2020.

00:19:27.000 Everyone was telling me, you've got to lock down Florida.

00:19:29.000 Fauci was saying it, the White House, the press, the left, all these people.

00:19:34.000 And I said, no.

00:19:35.000 I said, I'm going to stand.

00:19:36.000 A lot of people said, your political career is over.

00:19:38.000 And you know, at the end of the day, so be it, right?

00:19:41.000 A leader's got to do what he thinks is right.

00:19:43.000 You got to stand up for your folks, protect their jobs instead of worrying about your own political hide.

00:19:48.000 And so that's what we did.

00:19:49.000 It made the state better, and that did.

00:19:52.000 But I do think it had an impact around the country, because anytime the lockdowners wanted to do more restrictions, people could just point to Florida and say, well, wait a minute.

00:20:01.000 Florida's not doing this.

00:20:02.000 Why don't we have to do it?

00:20:03.000 So we were glad to be able to take that stand.

00:20:06.000 But here's the thing.

00:20:07.000 You still have people today, Fauci and the like, They think that what they did was right.

00:20:14.000 They think that these lockdowns worked.

00:20:16.000 And so my fear is, if this happens in the future, a lot of these people are going to want to do the same thing again.

00:20:22.000 So one of the things I pledged as president, and I think I'm the only one running on the Republican side who will be willing to do this, we're going to bring a reckoning to this health bureaucracy and this medical swamp.

00:20:33.000 Because these agencies like CDC, NIH, FDA, they failed the American people.

00:20:38.000 They become corrupted.

00:20:39.000 And they did a lot of damage with these unscientific anti-freedom policies.

00:20:44.000 Well, that's pretty heartening to hear.

00:20:46.000 In retrospect, your stance increasingly seems to have been the correct one.

00:20:52.000 And that's interesting and exciting, in fact, to hear you talk about a reckoning.

00:20:58.000 One thing that is evident from the position that you took as governor of Florida, the decentralization and the ability that you had to take that position, which must have felt like a huge risk given that it was in opposition to the proposed mandate in elsewhere, the sacking of key workers in New York City, the advocacy for shaming by CNN of people that were hesitant or reluctant to pursue certain medical propositions. It's a risk that

00:21:28.000 has doubtlessly paid off, but also it helps us to identify the importance of

00:21:35.000 decentralization. With this in mind, how do you feel that you would preside over the

00:21:41.000 United States of America if you fundamentally believe in the rights of

00:21:46.000 individual states to establish their own laws and govern in their own way?

00:21:51.000 Well, there is way too much authority in Washington, D.C.

00:21:55.000 and in the federal government right now.

00:21:57.000 And a lot of that is, I'd say, illegitimate authority that has been accumulated over many, many decades.

00:22:05.000 Some of that is because Congress has been neglectful, presidents have been neglectful.

00:22:09.000 But you have a massive bureaucratic administrative state that exist almost outside of typical elections.

00:22:17.000 They exert power over the populace regardless of the outcome elections.

00:22:21.000 None of these people are elected and they purport to tell us what kind of energy we can use, what kind of car we can drive, even whether potentially you're allowed to have a gas stove.

00:22:32.000 You know, in Florida, we made gas stoves tax-free because we believe that you should have the ability to do all that.

00:22:38.000 So, part of the project, I think, is to take power out of Washington and send it back to the states, the localities, and individuals.

00:22:48.000 That means we need a radical reduction of the federal bureaucracy.

00:22:51.000 We're going to tell our cabinet secretaries that they have to reduce the number of employees that they have inside D.C.

00:23:00.000 by 50 percent.

00:23:01.000 And that's going to probably be the biggest reduction in power in Washington In modern American history, but we cannot go down the road of letting more and more power consolidate in Washington, D.C.

00:23:14.000 Part of the reason is the founders never wanted to have consolidated power like that because they understood that's a threat to freedom.

00:23:20.000 You also have another problem that the ruling class in D.C., they get almost every major issue wrong.

00:23:28.000 And so these are the last people you would want to surrender judgment and freedom to.

00:23:33.000 They're going to lead us down the road to ruin.

00:23:36.000 So we've got a lot of work to do, but at the end of the day, part of the reason we've been successful in Florida is we fought back against the federal government.

00:23:43.000 For example, When the federal government tried to impose the COVID-19 vax mandates on the economy, you had one through the main economy, which we fought back and won.

00:23:54.000 Then they did one on the medical personnel, nurses, who a lot of these nurses had had COVID.

00:23:59.000 They didn't want to take the vax.

00:24:00.000 And so we called a special session of the legislature.

00:24:03.000 We said, you don't have to do it in Florida.

00:24:06.000 Federal government said, well, we're telling you, you have to.

00:24:08.000 And we said, go pound sand.

00:24:10.000 We're not going to cooperate.

00:24:11.000 So the federal government fined us $2 million.

00:24:14.000 But you know what?

00:24:15.000 We saved the jobs of tens of thousands of people throughout our state.

00:24:19.000 And so there's a lot you can do when you just stand up to these people to do what's right.

00:24:24.000 But there's no question that there's too much power in Washington, D.C.

00:24:28.000 Presumably this process of devolving power and breaking down centralized bureaucratic

00:24:35.000 power in Washington, if undertaken in good faith, would mean in states like California

00:24:42.000 and New York State you would get different cultural and ideological inflections, certainly

00:24:48.000 from based on a current reading from the type of cultural values that are espoused and somewhat

00:24:56.000 represented and in fact embodied by you, Ron.

00:25:00.000 And I wonder, if this process is undertaken in good faith, how will that affect the culture

00:25:06.000 war, an issue that you've been most outspoken on, if you genuinely are devolving power in

00:25:13.000 the manner that you have described?

00:25:15.000 That's the first part of my question that I may offer you, because presumably California

00:25:19.000 would have a whole different set of values, different policies on green issues, for example,

00:25:26.000 different policies on homelessness, and many of the topics loosely corralled under, let's

00:25:32.000 say, wokeness and the anti-woke discourse that's been dominating political and culture

00:25:36.000 more broadly for a while.

00:25:39.000 The second part of my question is, are you willing to approach and rebut

00:25:43.000 but centralized power in its corporate and private form in the same way that you would confront it in the state

00:25:51.000 form.

00:25:51.000 I'm talking, of course, of giant monopolies and duopolies in the areas of big tech and even energy and media.

00:25:58.000 Because, of course, one of the arguments that is advanced that is for pro-state power is that it gives us the ability

00:26:05.000 to confront corporate power, even if that isn't happening anywhere in American politics at the moment.

00:26:10.000 Well, no, I mean, I think it's a great, great issue, but I actually think it's just the opposite.

00:26:15.000 I think what you've seen is a collusion between big government and big business.

00:26:19.000 I mean, just take big tech.

00:26:21.000 A lot of the things that were being censored during COVID, for example, that wasn't just being done because Mark Zuckerberg thought that he wanted it censored.

00:26:29.000 No, he was working with people like Fauci.

00:26:32.000 They were working with people inside of government to censor dissent on lockdowns, on mask mandates, on school closures, on vax mandates.

00:26:40.000 All these things that, I mean, if you think about it, a free society has to have debates over important issues.

00:26:47.000 What more important issue have we had in the last decade or two Then whether society should be locked down?

00:26:54.000 I mean, are you kidding me?

00:26:56.000 And they didn't want to have that debate.

00:26:58.000 So I actually think that, yes, obviously when there's less power in Washington, individual states, they have certain powers to make different decisions.

00:27:06.000 But I do think if we break up the relationship between big government and some of these big monopolies,

00:27:12.000 particularly in the tech sphere, I think that's actually gonna have universal benefit

00:27:18.000 throughout the country, because there's gonna be more ability to speak freely.

00:27:22.000 You're not gonna have Uncle Sam with its thumb on the scale.

00:27:25.000 And let's just be clear about this.

00:27:27.000 The federal government could not censor you and say you can't say something about, say, lockdowns.

00:27:33.000 That would violate the First Amendment.

00:27:34.000 Everybody knows that.

00:27:36.000 But they can't subcontract out that to a private entity and have the private entity do

00:27:41.000 what the federal government couldn't do directly.

00:27:43.000 It's still a violation of the First Amendment.

00:27:46.000 One of the things we did in Florida as governor, I signed legislation expressly prohibiting our state and local government employees from colluding with big tech for any type of speech censorship or to police quote misinformation or disinformation they are not allowed to do that as a matter of law as president i'll issue an executive order basically barring federal employees from colluding with big tech like we've seen in the past but i think this whole idea

00:28:15.000 of freedom in our society has got to be viewed through the lens of, yes, we know big government can be bad for freedom.

00:28:22.000 There's no question about it.

00:28:24.000 But we live in an era where a lot of these big private concentrations of power are exercising kind of government-like power.

00:28:32.000 I mean, if you have Wall Street banks collude to deny funding for, say, gun shop owners, well, that's an indirect attack on the Second Amendment.

00:28:43.000 When you have different types of tech companies colluding with government to censor certain subjects, that's an attack on the First Amendment.

00:28:51.000 So, you've got to understand that freedom's under attack not just from government power.

00:28:58.000 There's also concentration of private power, which does threaten a free society.

00:29:07.000 In the spirit of this invitation towards unity, Bobby, I was interested to hear your welcoming of, if not the endorsement of Trump, but at least welcoming the fact that Trump likes you.

00:29:21.000 Bobby, I know that a lot of people here admire Donald Trump for the easy manner with which he engages with people.

00:29:30.000 Even when Trump says something like, we'll just take that oil from Venezuela, that seems like, to some people, refreshingly open when you have Biden making a Freudian slip and saying Iraq when he means Ukraine.

00:29:44.000 Perhaps because when he reaches inside himself words like exploitative war based on resources that is profitable and not undergirded by verifiable facts.

00:29:56.000 is the sort of contextual complication that he uncovers there. So can you tell me what

00:30:01.000 you consider to be the distinction between a political figure like Trump, what you regard

00:30:08.000 as his appeal and how it highlights some of the problems that career politicians like

00:30:15.000 Joe Biden appear to have?

00:30:18.000 Well, you know, I've been very critical of President Trump, but I try to keep my critiques

00:30:25.000 on a policy level because I think that that's a healthy thing for our country.

00:30:31.000 One of the things that I'm trying to do with my campaign is to end this toxic polarization that is, I think, more dangerous for our country than at any time since the American Civil War.

00:30:44.000 And, you know, everybody, like, if you talk to any Democrat, left-wing, right-wing, left-wing, moderate, whatever, they'll all say that polarization is one of the, you know, worst thing that's happening to our country.

00:30:56.000 But then, if you ask them, well, how do we, how are we going to solve that?

00:31:02.000 There's not really an answer.

00:31:04.000 And, you know, people criticize me for not putting hate on Donald Trump.

00:31:10.000 But I think that's where it's got to start.

00:31:13.000 I talk to anybody and I don't compromise my own values.

00:31:17.000 My values are the values of the Democratic Party that I grew up with.

00:31:22.000 They've never changed.

00:31:23.000 The values of my father, the values of my uncle, that has never changed.

00:31:28.000 But, you know, my uncles, all of them, and my dad were willing to talk to people and debate with people that they didn't agree with.

00:31:37.000 My uncle, Edward Kennedy, Has his name on more pieces of legislation than any senator in the history of the United States.

00:31:48.000 And the way that he did that was by reaching across the aisle.

00:31:51.000 So he would come home on weekends to the Cape, where our whole family was gathered, and everybody in our family is a Democrat.

00:32:00.000 And he would bring home Orrin Hatch, or Congressman Kasich, or Harry Bird.

00:32:10.000 And people that we thought were, you know, threats to our country and our society and, you know, the moral authority of America, etc.

00:32:20.000 But these were his closest friends.

00:32:22.000 And he found something in common with them that was beyond politics, that they were all chosen this very difficult life of, you know, being in public service.

00:32:32.000 And he found things to talk about and they loved each other, you know, they wrote poems to each other, they painted paintings for each other and gave them to each other as gifts.

00:32:43.000 He was able to, he never compromised his own values and he was happy about that, but he could get through those personal relationships.

00:32:52.000 He made Orrin Hatch his partner in addressing the AIDS crisis at a time when most Republicans were very punitive towards people who had AIDS, and yet Orrin Hatch stepped away from that and said, this is something that we have to address as a nation, and we have to address with compassion.

00:33:14.000 And they were able to find that in each other, and I think we have to look for You know, as Cheryl just said, we're all, we all want the same thing.

00:33:23.000 We all want healthy children.

00:33:24.000 There's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children.

00:33:27.000 We all want the best for our children and we want to stop the school shootings.

00:33:33.000 Nobody wants that.

00:33:36.000 How do we focus on the values that we share in common rather than, you know, spiraling off?

00:33:43.000 And hatred and division around the issues that are holding us apart.

00:33:49.000 And I, you know, I think Donald Trump, I'm not a fan of Donald Trump's.

00:33:55.000 I've known him for many, many years.

00:33:57.000 I've sued him twice, both times successfully.

00:34:01.000 But, you know, the one thing I think that he's done is that he's talking to Americans who otherwise feel utterly forgotten.

00:34:10.000 And he's talking in their language and he's putting his finger on something that I think all of us need, that the people who support Donald Trump feel that they're regarded by the elites as deplorable people and that, you know, they're not part of our country.

00:34:27.000 And I think Donald Trump made them feel like they were part of our country, that they're being listened to.

00:34:34.000 He's willing to break things, and there's so many people in this country now who are so frustrated with the political system and with, you know, political leadership.

00:34:44.000 They feel like that leadership is serving the needs of this oligarchy, this corporate kleptocracy, and that they've been completely forgotten, and they want to break things.

00:34:57.000 They want, you know, and a lot of them, like I, you know, Represent a thousand families in Columbiana County, Ohio.

00:35:07.000 And you know, they have Trump signs on all like sprout, like mushrooms on all the yards down there.

00:35:12.000 And the people are living in a kind of poverty that is so desperate, so dire.

00:35:18.000 Um, that I never thought I'd see anything like that in our country.

00:35:21.000 And they don't, if you talk to them, I was with a group of them in a diner and I said, you know, what, what do you think Donald Trump's going to do with you?

00:35:28.000 And they said, we don't care.

00:35:30.000 As long as he breaks things on the other side.

00:35:34.000 And I think that, you know, at this point, they don't believe any politician is going to actually help them, but they just want to be heard.

00:35:44.000 And he seems to be able to, you know, to connect with them on that basis.

00:35:48.000 And I think, you know, my father, He used to look at Latin America and he saw the same thing there that is now happening in our country, where you have these huge aggregations of wealth above, you have these feudal oligarchies, and then below you have widespread poverty.

00:36:07.000 And my father said there's going to be a revolution in those countries.

00:36:10.000 And right, you know, up until my uncle's election, the U.S.

00:36:14.000 policy was to fortify those oligarchies because they were anti-communist and to give weapons to the You know, the juntas and the military strongmen that were, you know, that were tied in with those oligarchies because they were anti-communist, but they were keeping down the poor.

00:36:33.000 My father and my uncle said, America needs to be on the side of the poor.

00:36:38.000 They need to be, you know, in those countries.

00:36:40.000 And so they started the Alliance for Progress so that they could end run the oligarchies and give money directly to the poor.

00:36:47.000 They started USAID, they started the Kennedy Milk Program, they started Peace Corps so that they could put America on the side of the fort. 0.76

00:36:54.000 My uncle!

00:36:56.000 Made two trips abroad that were his favorite during his presidency.

00:37:00.000 One was to Ireland, which was one of his last trips right before he died, where he told them, you know, I'll be back in the springtime.

00:37:07.000 And then the other was to Colombia in Latin America.

00:37:12.000 And there were two and a half million people who came out on the street in Bogota to greet him.

00:37:17.000 And he was there with The, you know, the left-wing leader, Jaires Carmargo.

00:37:23.000 And the people were, the emotional level of, you know, when they saw my uncle, the people were absolutely, you know, they were crying and they were cheering.

00:37:34.000 And Jaires Carmargo said to my uncle, do you know why they love you?

00:37:40.000 And my uncle said, no.

00:37:42.000 And he said, because you put America on the side of the poor.

00:37:46.000 And you know, and my father said, there's going to be a revolution.

00:37:49.000 And either the communists are going to own it, or we're going to own it. 0.77

00:37:54.000 And we need to put ourselves on the side of the poor so that we can, you know, so that we can harness those revolutionary energies.

00:38:02.000 Or on the side of idealism and democracy, all the same things happening in our country today.

00:38:07.000 You know, there's going to be a revolution.

00:38:11.000 And it's either going to be Donald Trump's revolution or it's going to be a revolution that sort of restores America the idealism and the democratic values that, you know, I think my uncle and father represented.

00:38:24.000 Bobby, will you, Bobby Kennedy, get money out of politics by changing the practice of allowing donations to essentially, ostensibly, essentially run these political movements and bypass the process of democracy?

00:38:41.000 and i'm gonna we're gonna let cheryl now go back to uh do the rest of my side effects then 1.00

00:38:47.000 um okay i'm gonna let you guys finish this conversation um We've gone to the trouble of loading those into a deck, so I had to press those buttons.

00:39:02.000 If you win the presidency, don't you get so trigger-happy pressing buttons just to see what they can do?

00:39:06.000 That's the last thing we do after we narrowly avoided that Cuban Missile Crisis.

00:39:10.000 We don't want you bullsying up your legacy on that one.

00:39:14.000 We're going to replace Helen the Chief with that girl. 1.00

00:39:22.000 First of all, it's been great talking to you.

00:39:24.000 I'm going to let you guys finish this very serious conversation and I'm glad you're having it.

00:39:31.000 Cheryl, thank you.

00:39:32.000 I'm looking forward to meeting you when I'm out there having presumably lost a pull-up competition.

00:39:38.000 I'm going to be counting.

00:39:40.000 I mean, I hope I get to be the counter of the pull-ups when this goes on.

00:39:45.000 I'm going to be, you know, shouting one, two.

00:39:48.000 I don't know how many you can do, Russell.

00:39:50.000 I hope more than two, but... That smacks of corruption!

00:39:54.000 Having the wife of one of the competitors count in.

00:39:57.000 Oh, no.

00:39:57.000 Next, you'll be suggesting Dominion voting machines, which verifiably work, by the way.

00:40:02.000 Verifiably work!

00:40:04.000 Okay, bye!

00:40:05.000 Cheryl! 1.00

00:40:07.000 That's a good out.

00:40:08.000 She knows how to do an exit. 1.00

00:40:09.000 That's a professional actor right there.

00:40:12.000 So, Bobby, thank you for allowing us to participate in your relationship with Cheryl.

00:40:18.000 That was very kind and generous of both of you.

00:40:20.000 Thanks very much.

00:40:21.000 So what do you think about, like, you know, I covered a lot there, but I know you're a man who gives a long answer and I can identify.

00:40:26.000 So I wanted to talk about the censorship stuff, the stuff that's been taken down off YouTube.

00:40:30.000 But significantly, because we know that when he was talking to our friend over there, Crystal, over at Breaking Points, that she pushed on the stuff about donations.

00:40:40.000 And as I say, I'm excited by the Kennedy name and that your family have done great things.

00:40:47.000 But some people will think, well, this is just ultimately another establishment Politician.

00:40:51.000 And what about also, mate, like, you know, Trump prior to, like, I know a lot of people watching this will love Donald Trump, but it's my personal belief that in office, Trump didn't drain the swamp, Trump granted tax breaks to the richest people.

00:41:03.000 So, what specifically around this, like, you know, censorship we can cover, but also I'd love you to cover, what are you gonna do to get money out of politics through donations, through lobbying, 700 lobbyists from the military-industrial complex, more than one for each person in Congress, What are you going to do about this important and defining issue, please, Bobby?

00:41:24.000 Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very difficult issue, but it's ultimately the most important one.

00:41:31.000 And if I can just go back, you know, we actually did lose our democracy at one point in American history during what we call the Gilded Age, which was in the 1880s and 1890s, in the time, the years after the Civil War, when really corruption overtook the idealism of the American experiment with self-governance.

00:41:55.000 And at that time, There were no direct election of senators, so the senators were chosen by the legislatures in our country, and the legislatures were owned lock and stock and barrel by the trusts.

00:42:07.000 The big sugar trusts, the rail trusts, the oil trusts, the coal trusts.

00:42:17.000 And those trusts were themselves controlled by interlocking boards of these big families, these oligarchical families of the American aristocracy, the Rockefellers, the Whitneys, the Fricks, the Morgans, the Carnegies.

00:42:35.000 And they were not only, so the senators were being, it was said at that time of the Pennsylvania State Legislature, There was nobody in that legislature who was for sale.

00:42:48.000 Because John D. Rockefeller already owned them all and he would not sell any.

00:42:54.000 And that really was the case in all the major legislatures in this country.

00:42:57.000 They were owned by these big social titans, these robber barons.

00:43:09.000 At that time, there was no income tax in our country.

00:43:13.000 So the amount of money, you know, Rockefeller was much richer than Bill Gates or Elon Musk is comparatively today.

00:43:22.000 He controlled, I think, 80% of the oil in the world.

00:43:28.000 And so you had this tremendous wealth.

00:43:31.000 There was no income tax.

00:43:33.000 There was no protection of workers.

00:43:35.000 There was no, you know, there was no child labor laws.

00:43:39.000 And they really suppressed American democracy because the legislatures then were involved and they controlled the party so they could choose the President of the United States, which they did time after time.

00:43:53.000 And then a group of things happened.

00:43:55.000 One, there was social movements, broad, grassroots social movements.

00:44:01.000 At the beginning of the 20th century, the populist movement, which is in the countryside, the progressive movement, which was in the cities, the reform movement, which was Republican, the populist movement was Democrat, but they got together.

00:44:14.000 And then you had muckraking journalists who played a critical role in Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis and many, many others. 0.73

00:44:26.000 McClure's Magazine, which was, you know, this font of exposes about corruption in government that played a cue that everybody in the country read back then.

00:44:38.000 And then you had one figure, Teddy Roosevelt, who came out of the aristocracy himself but was unintimidated by it and was willing to stand up to it and had these notions about bringing them under control.

00:44:55.000 And he got into office over the next few years.

00:44:57.000 They passed child labor laws, a 40-hour work week.

00:45:01.000 They gave women the vote.

00:45:02.000 They made direct elections of senators.

00:45:04.000 They passed a corporate income tax.

00:45:06.000 They passed antitrust legislation.

00:45:09.000 And for the first time, they broke up the Standard Oil Company, which is the biggest company in the world.

00:45:17.000 But the most important law they passed, which was in 1908, was a law that made it illegal for corporations to make direct contributions to federal elective candidates.

00:45:30.000 That was in 2008, exactly 100 years later, and it restored democracy.

00:45:37.000 And then we had the New Deal after that that created this robust middle class.

00:45:43.000 The 50 years following World War II, the great prosperity, when we grew the middle class into the greatest economic engine in history, we owned half the wealth on the face of the earth, and the institutions of our democracy were essentially, well, tiny bits corrupt, but essentially incorruptible. 0.60

00:46:02.000 Everybody believed them.

00:46:03.000 People believed the press.

00:46:05.000 During my uncle's presidency, 80% of the country said they believed anything that the U.S.

00:46:11.000 government told them, the same level of trust for the American press.

00:46:16.000 The courts were pretty much incorruptible, and the regulatory agencies were functioning.

00:46:22.000 So we had really a model democracy for the rest of the world, and the rest of the world imitated it, and 190 nations became democracies.

00:46:31.000 It pays pretty much on the U.S.

00:46:33.000 model.

00:46:35.000 Now, in exactly 100 years after we passed that law that really gave us back our democracy, the Supreme Court issued in 2008, I think it was 2008, the Citizens United case.

00:46:52.000 And that Citizens United did something very unusual and I think very troubling and dangerous.

00:47:01.000 Which is the Supreme Court said that speech, that donations, that monetary donations to a political candidate are the equivalent of speech.

00:47:12.000 And so they cannot be regulated.

00:47:14.000 They're protected under the First Amendment, under freedom of expression.

00:47:17.000 So you're, and there's no other country that says that.

00:47:20.000 You know, all the Western democracies in Europe allow very stringent regulation of campaign donations.

00:47:31.000 We had this very conservative Supreme Court that gave this revolutionary holding that opened up a tsunami of wealth that began pouring into the political process.

00:47:45.000 And here's the problem now is that, you know, prior to that time, presidential elections cost less than a billion dollars today for all sides.

00:47:59.000 Today, You know, this coming presidential election will probably go up to $3 or $4 billion.

00:48:05.000 And if a candidate, for example, in New York State or California or Florida, a candidate needs to raise $40 or $50 billion or even $100 million to run for elective office and get into the Senate, well, if you have to raise that money, it means that you have to make several, maybe 1,000 calls a week To people who are going to give you $10,000 donations.

00:48:36.000 When those people are giving you that money, most of them are not giving it out of a patriotic impulse.

00:48:43.000 They're giving it because they have an expectation that there's going to be a return on that investment.

00:48:48.000 And, you know, it may be a small return, meaning that you will return their phone call if they call you sometime in the future and give them your year for 10 minutes at least, or 20 minutes.

00:48:59.000 That's what they can get for that 10 grand.

00:49:02.000 But they all have that expectation.

00:49:05.000 And so if you have, you know, 3 or 4,000, 5,000 people have given you $10,000 apiece, and these are the top rungs of our society, and you have to answer all their phone calls every day, you're not going to have much time to listen to the little guy who calls you and never gave you anything.

00:49:23.000 And, you know, and for a politician, Everything they do is about raising money for the next election.

00:49:32.000 And they have an advisor whispering in their ear all the time, that guy's going to give me money, that guy isn't.

00:49:40.000 And so we now have arrived at a situation in our country where, which is the exact situation that we had a revolution to get away from, which is a rule by the oligarchy, a rule by the aristocracy, because the only person, people of the ear of Congress is this aristocracy.

00:50:00.000 And if you look, you know, recently at all the Democratic Party, the legacy media outlets, that are attacking me in this very, very vicious way, you know, ad hominem attacks that, you know, are very kind of personal and, you know, not policy related, but personal to silence me.

00:50:21.000 They all have become part of this system where they're, you know, they're They're protecting the interests of the elites.

00:50:32.000 And, you know, a couple days ago, I talked with David Remick, and I was pointing that out to him.

00:50:37.000 He said, well, you're part of the elites.

00:50:39.000 You know, you are an elite.

00:50:40.000 You were born into the elite.

00:50:42.000 And this is true.

00:50:44.000 But I've spent my lifetime challenging the rule of the elites.

00:50:52.000 Somebody the other day, I went to a dinner in Las Vegas and I made a little bit of a statement about my campaign and a guy next to me And then the people in this room were the highest level people in our government, you know, including the former head of the CIA, the head of the State Department, you know, two State Department Secretaries of State at that table.

00:51:16.000 And I said something that made everybody at the table angry, and the guy next to me Turned to me and he whispered to me, they consider you a traitor to their class.

00:51:28.000 And I think that's true.

00:51:30.000 I think that's how the press views me in our country.

00:51:33.000 And I think that's how, you know, a lot of the DNC views me in our country too, that I'm a traitor to this.

00:51:41.000 You know, this system that has us being governed not by democracy, but by the inverse of democracy.

00:51:48.000 It's governed by a new aristocracy of people who don't see themselves that way, but that's who they are.

00:51:59.000 Before we get any further, this is sort of a nice story in a way.

00:52:04.000 Joe Biden, who I believe he's the president of America, is in charge of it.

00:52:09.000 That's what they do.

00:52:10.000 They hold elections and then they get the best one, the best American, to be in charge of America.

00:52:16.000 Are those elections fair?

00:52:17.000 I believe that they are fair.

00:52:18.000 There's certainly no evidence to suggest they're anything other than fair.

00:52:22.000 Do the Russians ever get involved?

00:52:23.000 The Russians? 0.92

00:52:24.000 Some people say they get involved, other people say they don't.

00:52:26.000 Certainly there's no information that could be detrimental to the advance of the preferred establishment party that's held back, but I believe systemic change is what's required.

00:52:36.000 Here though, I come to Joe Biden With sympathy in my heart, not because he's a stooge of a system that will never deliver real change to the ordinary people of America who deserve better, but because I've been in the situation he was in.

00:52:50.000 It was Martin Luther King III's wife...

00:52:55.000 His wife, Andrea, I think is her name, it was her birthday and he wanted to sing Happy Birthday to her.

00:53:01.000 And have you ever been in that situation where you're singing Happy Birthday and then you realise that when it's going to get to the bit, Happy Birthday dear!

00:53:09.000 And you think, oh no, I don't know the person's name.

00:53:10.000 But what you can do is you can just drop out for that bit and the other people are going to sing.

00:53:14.000 There's got to be other people doing it though.

00:53:16.000 There's got to be others.

00:53:17.000 In this case it was only him.

00:53:18.000 You can't be on mic when you're doing it.

00:53:20.000 And also don't instigate happy birthday if you know that in that crucial lyric you've not got what you need to get through it.

00:53:28.000 Future-proof yourself.

00:53:28.000 No.

00:53:29.000 Future proof yourself, Joe Biden.

00:53:32.000 If you know that you've got a bunch of top secret files in your numerous residencies, don't go, right, Donald Trump's done the worst thing anyone could ever do.

00:53:41.000 He's got a bunch of secret files.

00:53:43.000 Yes, we got him.

00:53:44.000 Finally, we got him.

00:53:45.000 Get the FBI involved.

00:53:46.000 Get the FBI!

00:53:47.000 They should investigate this!

00:53:48.000 This is unconscionable!

00:53:49.000 Woah, woah, woah! 0.99

00:53:50.000 What's all these files all over your gaff, mate?

00:53:52.000 Oh, sorry about that.

00:53:53.000 Sorry about that.

00:53:54.000 I can't talk to you about it.

00:53:54.000 My lawyer said I can't talk about it.

00:53:57.000 Meanwhile, is it your birthday?

00:53:58.000 Happy birthday to you!

00:53:58.000 No.

00:54:01.000 Happy birthday dear... Also, when you watch this, you see the moment when he realises he doesn't know the name, and then the thing that he comes up with instead of a name is frankly not good enough.

00:54:14.000 But congratulations today, the honorees, including your wife, who I understand, uh, is it her birthday today?

00:54:24.000 Well look, my wife has a role in our family.

00:54:27.000 When somebody's birthday, you sing happy birthday.

00:54:29.000 Are you ready?

00:54:30.000 Oh, it's weird custom.

00:54:32.000 Bloody hell, man!

00:54:33.000 It's because, you know what it is?

00:54:35.000 It's because in acting, you would call that playing the obstacle.

00:54:38.000 He's always trying to present something that's not what he's actually doing, because what he's thinking is, how can I seem normal and cogent?

00:54:45.000 How can I seem normal and cogent?

00:54:46.000 Well, normal people sing happy birthday, don't they?

00:54:49.000 Right, I'll sing some happy birthday myself, but You're not supposed to be pretending to be normal.

00:54:55.000 That's not your job.

00:54:56.000 Go out there and pretend to be normal.

00:54:57.000 Your job is be the President of the United States, be the Commander-in-Chief, represent the will of the American people at a divisive time when the systems have become corrupted, when people are terrified about globalism, when people are worried that corporatism has overtaken democracy.

00:55:11.000 That's your job.

00:55:12.000 That's your job.

00:55:13.000 But if you are going to sing Happy Birthday, for God's sake, know the name of the person you're singing Happy Birthday to.

00:55:20.000 Happy birthday to you!

00:55:23.000 Happy birthday... I want you to, while you're watching, try and spot the exact moment when he realises, oh no, I do not know the name of Andrea.

00:55:32.000 I don't know it.

00:55:33.000 I'm gonna have to say something else.

00:55:34.000 Watch for that moment.

00:55:35.000 Watch for it.

00:55:36.000 Happy birthday to you.

00:55:38.000 Happy birthday, dear Lalvin.

00:55:42.000 Happy birthday, dear Lalvin.

00:55:45.000 I don't know the name.

00:55:46.000 I don't know the name.

00:55:47.000 It's about to be Lalvin.

00:55:48.000 People are called Lalvin, aren't they? 1.00

00:55:50.000 Isn't Lalvin people's names? 0.99

00:55:52.000 Martin Luther King.

00:55:53.000 What if I could just get all the essence of Martin Luther King into a word?

00:55:53.000 Lalvin.

00:55:58.000 Happy birthday, dear Lalvin.

00:56:03.000 Happy birthday to you!

00:56:06.000 Now where are the files?

00:56:10.000 Oh dear, oh dear.

00:56:10.000 There he is.

00:56:12.000 Shame really, innit?

00:56:12.000 I don't know, I mean there's another nine seconds in the clip, what's he gonna do?

00:56:15.000 Do an encore?

00:56:16.000 Happy birthday to you!

00:56:20.000 Well, it's hell turning 30, but you gotta No, that's not good enough.

00:56:27.000 Not the age joke.

00:56:28.000 I'm 21 again.

00:56:29.000 The only thing that should have followed him saying, well, should have been, I'm sorry.

00:56:33.000 Well, I'm sorry.

00:56:35.000 I'm sorry that when I'm honouring you, Andrea, I don't know your name.

00:56:39.000 And I'm sorry that I replaced your name with Lalvin.

00:56:45.000 It is a privilege to finally welcome Dr. Cornel West.

00:56:48.000 Hello, sir.

00:56:50.000 Oh, my dear brother, and I salute you there, brother.

00:56:53.000 You're the real thing, though, man.

00:56:55.000 You got the courage to be yourself.

00:56:57.000 You got the courage to take a risk.

00:56:58.000 But most importantly, you're a truth teller and a witness bear.

00:57:03.000 Thank you for saying that.

00:57:04.000 I was a little bit scared to meet you because I've been going on a lot of right-wing media, what are called right-wing media outlets.

00:57:04.000 It's so kind.

00:57:14.000 I watched you of course on Joe Rogan and we've been trying to get you as a guest before that.

00:57:18.000 I've looked at some of your master class philosophy course.

00:57:23.000 I admire you a great deal.

00:57:25.000 And when I talk about liberal politics, progressive politics, when I talk about the left, one of the voices that I hold in my head and my heart is yours.

00:57:36.000 And I've began to feel that liberal media has become so disconnected from the people that they're supposed to represent.

00:57:42.000 that the British Labour Party have become disconnected from the people they're supposed

00:57:45.000 to represent, that the Democrat Party is no longer a voice of bringing people together

00:57:50.000 but in my view uses cultural issues to drive people apart and are disingenuous even in

00:57:55.000 their apparent support of previously and let's face it, currently oppressed cultural groups.

00:58:02.000 Dr. West, what do you think is happening in our culture?

00:58:05.000 What is our duty in media spaces?

00:58:08.000 How can we bring about a new unity when people are living with so much fear?

00:58:13.000 Thank you.

00:58:14.000 I think we need two things, my brother.

00:58:17.000 One is we need a truthful analysis.

00:58:20.000 And the analysis has to be one in which it focuses on the precious lives of poor and working people, no matter what color they are, wretched of the earth from around every corner of the globe.

00:58:31.000 But that means keeping a focus on what you actually do.

00:58:34.000 Military and military complex.

00:58:37.000 The militarism abroad, and Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and big money.

00:58:43.000 Big money and big military have become what the monarchs and oligarchs were many hundreds of years ago.

00:58:50.000 They have power that's unaccountable, unanswerable, and irresponsible.

00:58:56.000 And it's so easy to get caught in issues of race and gender and sexual orientation.

00:59:00.000 It's very important. 0.99

00:59:01.000 White supremacy is vicious. 0.99

00:59:02.000 Male supremacy is vicious. 1.00

00:59:04.000 Homophobia, transphobia are vicious. 0.99

00:59:06.000 Anti-Jewish, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian. 1.00

00:59:09.000 They're ugly. 0.99

00:59:10.000 But if we lose sight of what is going on in the American empire, in the Russian empire,

00:59:17.000 in the Chinese empire, when it comes to highly centralized forms of power

00:59:23.000 and authority that's crushing everyday people and ordinary people,

00:59:28.000 we don't have the right kind of analysis.

00:59:30.000 But you also need vision.

00:59:31.000 And this is where your stress on spirituality is crucial, on morality, indispensable.

00:59:38.000 Why?

00:59:39.000 Because people are feeling nihilistic.

00:59:41.000 They're feeling impotent.

00:59:42.000 They're feeling helpless and hopeless.

00:59:44.000 And they're feeling as if there's nothing we can do.

00:59:47.000 That's not true.

00:59:48.000 Ways of awakening, ways of spiritual and moral renaissance can take place.

00:59:54.000 They have taken place.

00:59:55.000 When?

00:59:56.000 When you got courageous brothers and sisters, artists.

01:00:00.000 Like yourself, truth tellers, like so many others, the Chris Hedges and others, trying to be honest.

01:00:07.000 The Matt Beatties and others, trying to be honest and saying, look, neoliberalism is dying.

01:00:16.000 One of the big... Neomatism is escalating.

01:00:19.000 The American empire is wrestling with spiritual decay and moral decrepitude in part because centralized power at the highest levels of our economy and tied to military with its politicians bought off by big money and war profiteering elites are making citizens feel as if There are nothing but consumers, nothing but commodified entities.

01:00:42.000 So that truth telling and the visionary work becomes crucial.

01:00:46.000 And that's what I've seen you do over these years, though, brother.

01:00:50.000 I'm telling you, man, it's a beautiful thing to behold.

01:00:53.000 Thank you for saying that, because your praise is a meaningful balm at a time where I've felt, if not attacked, because I also get a lot of love, I come from the world of entertainment, so I'm somewhat praise-oriented, I have to be honest.

01:01:11.000 But I have felt, sometimes, I've felt, am I doing the right thing?

01:01:15.000 Is this the right way to conduct this conversation?

01:01:17.000 You've brought up so much, even in your first response there.

01:01:20.000 I've been considering for a while that materialism, rationalism, and post-enlightenment values have led inexorably, even if inadvertently, to a state of nihilism such as you describe, that it's very difficult with populations of scale to instantiate a centralized set of values, ethics, and meaning And it appears with this divisiveness that I feel that somehow the culture is benefiting from has become worse and worse in recent years.

01:01:48.000 A few just like placeholder arguments to consider, Cornel, as we hopefully advance our conversation, sir, is my friend Adam Curtis, the documentary maker, who said, no one ever made a left-wing case for Brexit.

01:02:02.000 No one has, and I would add to that, no one has ever considered what the emotional timbre of Trump was, what it is that he reaches in people, what it is beyond the rhetoric and divisiveness, what it is within that emotional quality that is reaching people.

01:02:20.000 Given that this is a contemporary news show that we are streaming right now, it's worth bringing up an issue that's becoming somewhat defining of our time, the January 6th insurrection.

01:02:31.000 It seems impossible to say that both those events and the Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of the murder of George Floyd are in a sense a demonstration of the problems that centralised authority We'll always bring about that until we have a time where people that corral around these separate issues, these separate publics, before these separate publics, if these separate publics cannot recognize that ultimately they have to confront the same authority, we will not experience the kind of unity that both of us apparently crave.

01:03:07.000 How do you think we have to frame the conversation both for people on the neoliberal establishment left But also for people that identify with patriotism and what are called these days right-wing politics so that we can overcome and not only accept but love and embrace cultural difference in order to meaningfully confront these forms of centralised media, political, financial and military authority that are thriving in this climate of division, sir.

01:03:37.000 Yeah, I think we always want to begin with a fundamental commitment to wrestling with what it means to be human.

01:03:45.000 Because when you get to our deep humanity, that functions at a level that is much more profound than what color, than what gender, what sexual orientation.

01:03:57.000 Why we all wrestling with organized greed at the top, especially, but across the board, we all wrestling with various forms of hatred and self-doubt inside of us.

01:04:06.000 We had to be honest and candid with ourselves, just as we're honest and candid with the powers that be.

01:04:11.000 That's precisely what the legacy of the Martin Luther King Jr., and the Fannie Lou Hamers, and the Ella Bakers, and the John Coltrane, and the Aretha Franklin.

01:04:19.000 And I would listen to a little Loose Ends, and I would listen to a little Soul to Soul for my British connection here.

01:04:25.000 When you listen to that music, my brother, it touches your soul.

01:04:25.000 What?

01:04:29.000 The soul is always deeper than what color you are.

01:04:32.000 It's deeper than your gender.

01:04:33.000 That's why the arts become important.

01:04:35.000 That's why you love Richard Pryor.

01:04:37.000 That's why if Pryor was alive, he'd love you.

01:04:40.000 He'd say, oh!

01:04:41.000 This brother's the real thing.

01:04:42.000 He's like George Carlin.

01:04:44.000 He's telling the truth coming from his soul, but unique voice.

01:04:47.000 Now, of course, the voice of Black, the national anthem of Black people is what?

01:04:51.000 Lift every voice, not lift every echo.

01:04:54.000 We're not going to be an extension of an echo chamber.

01:04:56.000 Neo-fascist right wing, neoliberal Democratic Party, both of them Not just inadequate.

01:05:04.000 Both of them are major obstacles at this point for the empowerment of everyday people.

01:05:09.000 So that again, the spiritual dimension, the moral sensitivity becomes important.

01:05:14.000 And then, for example, when you go to Trump's people and you say, lo and behold, they're not homogeneous.

01:05:21.000 They're heterogeneous. 0.98

01:05:22.000 Some of them are racist.

01:05:23.000 Some of them are less racist. 1.00

01:05:25.000 Most of them catch in hell. 0.94

01:05:27.000 Most of them are wounded economically.

01:05:29.000 Most of them feeling as if they have been losers in the corporate globalization in the last 50 years.

01:05:35.000 They are right about that.

01:05:37.000 We got to bring serious critique to bear on any kind of white supremacist, male supremacist, homophobic or transphobic sensibilities that they might have, but also recognize they are human beings just like us.

01:05:50.000 And the fundamental question is the question that you've wrestled with, and I've wrestled with, What does it mean to be a wounded healer rather than a wounded hurter?

01:06:01.000 If you're wounded and then you're going to somehow demonize the vulnerable rather than confront the most powerful, you're going to end up with a right-wing populism Rather than a progressive populism, or most importantly in the language of Sheldon Wolin, my dear brother Bernard Harcourt, his new book on the cooperative movement, on Nancy Fraser's cannibal capitalism.

01:06:26.000 What are they talking about?

01:06:28.000 Solidarity.

01:06:30.000 But you can't have solidarity unless you have analysis and vision enacted by persons like yourself and others that say, you know what?

Stay Free - Russel Brand - July 27, 2023

TRUMP 2024 | Can Anyone Challenge TRUMP’S UNSTOPPABLE Influence - Stay Free #177

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