Stay Free - Russel Brand - Trump in Gaza - a construction project? – SF533

00:00:00.000 The End

00:02:29.000 Hello there you awakening wondersteaders.

00:02:34.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:02:37.000 Oracle special with the great Neil Oliver and Lara Logan, where we'll be talking about three defining news stories this week.

00:02:45.000 First, Lily Phillips and ethics and morality and the pornographization of culture and even interaction. 0.62

00:02:51.000 Secondly, Trump's...

00:02:53.000 Acquisition of the Gaza Strip.

00:02:56.000 Just empty rhetoric or the wrecking ball horror that his detractors fear.

00:03:02.000 And finally, USAID, the CIA in different forms under different guises.

00:03:08.000 Is that the reason that neoliberalism and social democracy has fallen away into failure and being replaced by this kind of...

00:03:15.000 Populist nationalism best defined by the Trump MAGA movement.

00:03:19.000 We'll be talking about all of those subjects and more.

00:03:21.000 If you don't have Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now and use the code BRAND to get a reduction in addition to...

00:03:29.000 More content from me, like me, a shooting range, me doing different interviews, me hanging around.

00:03:34.000 You'll also get additional content from Glenn Greenwald and Dan Bongino and Crowder, as well as an ad-free experience over on Rumble.

00:03:41.000 For the first 20 minutes or so, we will stay with you on X, YouTube, Facebook, wherever you're watching this, but then we will be...

00:03:47.000 Our home on Rumble.

00:03:48.000 And don't worry if you're a local subscriber, we'll continue to provide that content until you find the time to join us over on Rumble Premium, our main home.

00:03:56.000 So without any further hullabaloo, ludicrousness or needless linguistics, let's welcome to the show Neil Oliver and Lara Logan.

00:04:04.000 Lara Logan, Neil Oliver, thanks so much for joining me today for Stay Free Oracles with Russell Brandt.

00:04:19.000 You two being the oracles in this instance.

00:04:22.000 Thank you for joining us, Lara.

00:04:25.000 Russell!

00:04:28.000 Neil and I last week soldiered on as bravely as was possible without you.

00:04:32.000 We felt somewhat impeded.

00:04:34.000 Did quite well, didn't we?

00:04:35.000 As I recall.

00:04:36.000 Yes, that's right.

00:04:37.000 We looked like twin denim armchairs in a club for men that you simply didn't penetrate, Lara, and it's on you.

00:04:44.000 And perhaps the reason I'm using such gendered and eroticised language is our first subject today is Lily Phillips.

00:04:51.000 Now, I recognise that Lily Phillips is not at the very forefront of the news cycle right this minute. 0.71

00:04:56.000 Over the next hour, we will be talking, of course, about Trump's acquisition of Gaza and additionally USAID. Which some people, me specifically, are calling the story of the century.

00:05:08.000 And if anyone else uses that phrase, they're a plagiarist plagiarising directly from me.

00:05:12.000 But first we're going to talk about Lily Phillips.

00:05:14.000 Not just Lily Phillips in her capacity as an OnlyFans model.

00:05:17.000 I want to tell you why, both of you, why I'm interested in Lily.

00:05:21.000 And watch out for any purility, prurience or unwarranted attention here.

00:05:27.000 I am struck by Lily Phillips because a lot is enshrined in this story.

00:05:32.000 Lily Phillips famously slept with 100 people in a day, and marathon and gargantuan sex sessions are hardly news. 1.00

00:05:38.000 They've existed in pornography and in culture for a long time.

00:05:42.000 Something that's fascinating about Lily Phillips and the OnlyFans phenomena, though, is the normalization of the commodification of sex. 0.97

00:05:49.000 We not only have the commodification of sex, which we've had, I suppose, for as long as we've had prostitution, but now we have the normalization.

00:05:56.000 And almost banalization of that commodification, i.e.

00:06:00.000 the idea that anybody can sell sex at any time.

00:06:05.000 And here's an example that really made this hit home for me.

00:06:10.000 My wife told me that she heard of a fitness instructor that simultaneously does OnlyFans.

00:06:16.000 And when I heard that, I thought...

00:06:18.000 Of what it would do to me if I didn't have a consistent and robust moral framework in the form of Christ Jesus.

00:06:25.000 If when I'd been any age from 14 to 30 in my single adult life, I suppose, or post-pubescent life at least, if I'd have known that you could meet a human being, interact with them at a grocery store or outside a schoolyard or indeed in a fitness class, and then you could pay money to see that person intimately expose themselves in a way that typically...

00:06:47.000 Hopefully they only would to a loved one or a gynaecologist.

00:06:50.000 I don't know what that would do.

00:06:52.000 Do to me spiritually.

00:06:54.000 And when I think of that ad infinitum, when I think of the phenomena of pornography, when I think of its impact, the commodification of all that is sacred, it helps me to understand something that is culturally pervasive that probably hasn't yet been correctly defined.

00:07:07.000 Lara, I know you have strong views and are a strong advocate for anti-trafficking measures when it comes to women and children.

00:07:15.000 I also know that you've been the victim of rape. 0.68

00:07:18.000 And I wonder how you feel about the sacredness and sanctity of sex and what the commodification of sex, whether it's someone like Lily Phillips or even someone like me, who when I was a famous person was being indulgent, hedonistic, epicurean to a ludicrous degree.

00:07:33.000 What do you think is the impact of the commodification, commercialization and normalization of that commodification when it comes to the erotic?

00:07:42.000 Dear Lara.

00:07:45.000 You know Russell.

00:07:47.000 I think the only thing I can tell you is what I told my children, is that they want you to believe today that you can have physical, intimate interactions, sexual interactions with people, and that it doesn't take anything from you.

00:08:05.000 And I think that's just a lie.

00:08:07.000 And I think that's part of the reason that Lily Phillips, in the documentary film that was made about her doing this stunt, Is crying, right?

00:08:16.000 She's weeping.

00:08:17.000 And it's obvious that this person who, for whatever reasons, I don't know enough about her and her life and what brought her to that point, but this is a person whose soul is just being obliterated.

00:08:34.000 I mean, I was lucky enough to be raised to love myself.

00:08:40.000 You know, and to have a sense of self-worth.

00:08:43.000 I'll tell you what my mother told me when I was a young girl.

00:08:47.000 She said, I'm just going to be honest with you.

00:08:49.000 She said, if you want to come cheap, there isn't a man in this town who won't take you.

00:08:54.000 She said, they'll be lining up from here to Timbuktu.

00:08:58.000 And I tell you something.

00:08:59.000 She said, at your funeral, you'll still be that girl.

00:09:03.000 You'll be that girl that everybody took a ride on.

00:09:06.000 You'll be the town bicycle that everybody loved to ride.

00:09:08.000 And she said, it's up to you to put a price on yourself.

00:09:12.000 Because if you don't put a price on yourself, nobody else is going to do that.

00:09:16.000 And she said, and while you're at it, don't worry about letting me down.

00:09:20.000 Just worry about letting yourself down.

00:09:22.000 Because if you never let yourself down, you'll never let me down.

00:09:26.000 And she said, and the other thing I want to tell you is, if you get pregnant, don't listen to anything anyone says. 0.95

00:09:32.000 There's no good way out of it.

00:09:33.000 Doesn't matter whether you have an abortion, whether you give your child up for adoption, whether you have to become a teen mother.

00:09:41.000 These are all hard, hard choices.

00:09:44.000 And these are mistakes that have a cost that stays with you for life.

00:09:50.000 And she said, you don't want to be in that position.

00:09:52.000 Trust me.

00:09:53.000 Just don't put yourself in that position.

00:09:55.000 And not everybody has a mother like that.

00:09:57.000 Not everybody grows up with that sense of self-worth.

00:10:03.000 Obviously, become a society that when you take the meaning out of life and the meaning out of spirituality, if you say, well, God, it doesn't matter. 0.99

00:10:11.000 Religion is corrupt and priests are all pedophiles and it's all evil and horrible and we're better off without it. 1.00

00:10:18.000 What you essentially do is you take purpose away, you take meaning away, you really take spirituality away. 1.00

00:10:26.000 This concept that you can find spirituality in nature and it's got nothing to do with God is sort of ridiculous to me.

00:10:32.000 And what you do is you end up with a very sad, very rich, but very broken, empty little girl. 0.77

00:10:41.000 That's what I see.

00:10:42.000 When I see that little girl, I know she's 100% responsible for her actions and for her choices.

00:10:49.000 She's old enough.

00:10:50.000 She's made choices.

00:10:52.000 The other thing my mother would say is everybody pays the piper, right? 0.85

00:10:56.000 There's no getting away from everything.

00:10:58.000 There's a price for everything, and you don't get to choose if you pay it or not.

00:11:03.000 You pay it.

00:11:03.000 That's how it works.

00:11:05.000 So she's going to pay the price and is paying the price, obviously, for her actions.

00:11:10.000 But we live in a society where people can profit off of that, all the people that are around her that are profiting off it, all the men.

00:11:18.000 I would hope to God that I didn't raise a son that would be lining up to be one of those hundred men that just wants to be there.

00:11:27.000 But I'm not unrealistic.

00:11:29.000 I know how the world is.

00:11:31.000 For me, it's soulless.

00:11:34.000 And I think it's indicative of the fact that we've become lost.

00:11:39.000 We've lost our sense of decency.

00:11:41.000 We've lost our sense of humanity.

00:11:43.000 We've lost, I mean, when you're putting yourself out like that, it's just, it's physically disgusting to me. 0.73

00:11:51.000 It's literally disgusting.

00:11:53.000 I can't fathom it. 0.97

00:11:55.000 And I have nothing but pity for all the people that are involved in elevating that and putting it out and profiting off it because you sold your soul and you sold it to the devil.

00:12:06.000 And that's, you know, that's between you and the devil and God if you believe in it.

00:12:11.000 But, you know, it's an indictment on us.

00:12:15.000 On us all and it's also a warning because this idea that you can do OnlyFans and you can do a little bit here and a little bit there.

00:12:23.000 OnlyFans is grooming and it's grooming for a much darker world just like pornography is training. 0.90

00:12:30.000 You know, traffickers today they use pornography to train kids so that they know what to do when they put them to work.

00:12:38.000 That's what it's for.

00:12:40.000 And that's what it's used for.

00:12:41.000 And I understand if you're a person out there that says, well, what's wrong with looking at a little bit of porn or whatever?

00:12:46.000 What you do in your private life is what you do in your private life.

00:12:49.000 And that may very well be true.

00:12:50.000 It's not for me to say.

00:12:52.000 But what I do think each one of us has a responsibility to do is to look at the whole picture.

00:12:58.000 And when you are raising young girls to believe that there's some kind of achievement in selling yourself and selling your body, I mean, sex is always sold. 0.62

00:13:08.000 We're not unrealistic about that.

00:13:10.000 You can't be self-righteous and say it's okay to do it in a movie with mood lighting and make it look beautiful, and it's somehow different.

00:13:17.000 No, it's the same thing.

00:13:19.000 It is the same thing.

00:13:21.000 And so we have to ask ourselves and come to our own decisions is where we stand on that.

00:13:27.000 But when you get to the point where a girl is doing that to herself and people are trying to elevate her for that, people are offering her more money and better deals and all the rest of it, there's going to be nothing left of that girl.

00:13:41.000 When they're done with her, there'll be nothing left of her.

00:13:45.000 They're not only elevating her, but also simultaneously denigrating her.

00:13:49.000 That formed part of the conversation between Lily Phillips and myself, which I approached openly and transparently as a person that in the past has had Not a complicated relationship with sex, an exuberant relationship with sex, and I discussed that exuberance.

00:14:02.000 All right, stay on there.

00:14:05.000 I didn't know how else to describe it.

00:14:07.000 I'm enthusiastic, man.

00:14:09.000 By the way, actually, Laura, I heard that there was a point where that dog in your room made a low, grumbling sound while out of frame, and I'm glad that the dog has subsequently been revealed, because otherwise, Lord alone knows what conclusions we might have drawn from it.

00:14:26.000 Unseen beasts that roam.

00:14:29.000 It was certainly alarming.

00:14:32.000 If you're watching this on X or YouTube, remember that this show in its entirety is available exclusively on Rumble, and you should become a member of Rumble Premium to get ad-free content as well as additional content, including early access to the content I made.

00:14:46.000 Please...

00:14:46.000 Please use the code BRAN to get access to that.

00:14:48.000 Here's a small part of the conversation between Lily and myself where she talked about how she started on OnlyFans.

00:14:56.000 And Neil, after that, I'd love you to come in on what you think happens to morality and the very idea of sex as sacred when it's introduced to the...

00:15:05.000 To mass technology, because I think that's an important part of this story, not just ethics and pornography, but the impact of technology on morality.

00:15:13.000 Here's Lily Phillips talking about how she got into the OnlyFans. 1.00

00:15:16.000 I was, like, 80 and I started to hear about this OnlyFans.

00:15:21.000 For me, I thought it was, like, the perfect job because it, you know, combines something I love, sex, with, you know, a job.

00:15:32.000 And, like...

00:15:32.000 You know, being able to monetize off that and being creative.

00:15:37.000 And so when I went off to university, I knew that what I went to university for wasn't quite what I wanted to do.

00:15:47.000 I wasn't really sure why I went to university.

00:15:49.000 I just kind of went because everyone else was.

00:15:51.000 And then that's when I was like, you know, I'm going to start.

00:15:55.000 Later we'll be talking about USAID, which until pretty recently I would have considered to be one of the great controversial moments in the Trump administration.

00:16:03.000 But of course, since then, there has been the Trump acquisition, let's call it, of Gaza.

00:16:07.000 We'll be talking about all of that a little later.

00:16:09.000 But first, Neil, I'd love your response, mate, on the Lily Phillips phenomena and the impact of technology on pornography and the impact of pornography on the human spirit and what your reaction is to this.

00:16:22.000 I find it difficult to follow Lara talking about it because, you know, one of my basic reactions to the story is that I do believe that sex is profoundly different for men and women.

00:16:39.000 That's my opinion.

00:16:41.000 You know, I think there's no way of...

00:16:46.000 Of making broad generalisations that, you know, that sex is just sex and that it affects men as it does women.

00:16:52.000 And I do think comment on the Lily Phillips story is more relevant coming from a woman and from women because, you know, a male response to the act is profoundly different.

00:17:07.000 But I suppose what I thought right away was, I think she's 23, is that right?

00:17:13.000 She's about that age.

00:17:16.000 And she's obviously been in the industry for a while.

00:17:23.000 She was younger when she started in the industry.

00:17:26.000 And I'm a dad of, you know, my daughter's 21. And so I, you know, anything that happens to any young woman, whatever it is, I automatically think about it in relation to mine.

00:17:46.000 I'm just frankly horrified at the thought of it.

00:17:51.000 I think there's no way, I don't think there's any way of looking at what happened to Lily in that project, in that stunt, as Lara called it, without seeing it as a violation.

00:18:12.000 But without saying that she was in any way coerced, we're taking it as read that she was completely compliant with the event, but looked at objectively.

00:18:28.000 I heard her use expressions at certain times when that coverage that Lara's talking about, where she seemed to be distressed about what had just happened, and she was talking about one in and one out.

00:18:40.000 There's no way you could listen to the testimony from her own lips without... 0.51

00:18:45.000 It sounded like violation.

00:18:48.000 And again, you know, I'm always just reflecting that back and thinking about it in relation to my own flesh and blood.

00:18:56.000 But I think that, you know, again, I mean, my wife...

00:19:01.000 You know, has talked with all sorts of conversations about sex over the years, you know, for all sorts of different reasons.

00:19:10.000 And she has always reiterated to me that it's very different for a woman than it is for a man.

00:19:15.000 And that's always been my instinct.

00:19:17.000 And I've had the testimony from people that are very close to me, very intimately close to me, that reinforces what I've always thought.

00:19:25.000 And I find it very difficult in that context to imagine that...

00:19:30.000 A woman, a young, a very young woman like Lily can commodify sex in that way without taking a profound hit. 0.99

00:19:39.000 If you want to see the rest of this show, you'll have to join us over on Rumble.

00:19:42.000 Click the link in the description and join us there.

00:19:44.000 Let me ask you both.

00:19:46.000 Wait, can I interrupt and ask you both?

00:19:48.000 Would either of you have done it?

00:19:50.000 Would you have been one of those hundred?

00:19:53.000 When I was younger, I wouldn't have hesitated.

00:19:57.000 I maybe wouldn't have wanted to be in a context with loads of men, but what I was aware of when speaking with her was the kind of, and I declared this in the conversation, is that the periphery of my being, there is a kind of shadow that is stimulated by the image of absolute Lack of inhibition or prohibition around sex.

00:20:18.000 And I said, when I was younger, I would have, I can, I said, like, almost like a phantom limb, as it were.

00:20:24.000 I can feel the sort of haunting of the power of the erotic.

00:20:28.000 And that is to acknowledge its sanctity, its literal sacred set-apartness.

00:20:33.000 So yeah, I would have, when I was younger, like, not...

00:20:36.000 Perhaps literally have been in the line, but certainly I would have co-signed the idea that we should engage in sex abundantly with any consenting adult who's up for it, that there should be no censure.

00:20:49.000 Totally, I lived like that.

00:20:51.000 But would you have been like number 80, number 85, number 90? 0.99

00:20:56.000 Would you have been the hundredth guy in a day to go and have sex with a young woman? 0.99

00:21:03.000 Yes, I recognise now, as the man I am here as a follower of Christ Jesus, I hear how outrageous and ridiculous what you're saying is. 0.98

00:21:09.000 But what I can tell you is, there was a time when I was about 23 or 24, when I probably was still using drugs, where I filmed something with a sex worker, stayed at her house, and she was working and stuff, and I had sex with her at the end of it. 0.94

00:21:23.000 And I remember part of what felt eroticised was the fact that this is a person that had been objectified.

00:21:29.000 And there is also, may I say, some sort of warped sense of some kind of peculiar reverence, some perverse, I suppose is the word, reverence, of cherishing and treasuring sexually a woman that has been through that. 0.60

00:21:44.000 I remember I've slept with a bunch of sex workers. 0.98

00:21:46.000 I've had sex in situations with more than one, and sometimes significantly more than one, woman. 0.99

00:21:53.000 And I remember that it was the feeling of kind of the erotic power in that.

00:21:58.000 That is quite close to love.

00:22:02.000 About dominion, subjugation and exploitation.

00:22:05.000 It can sometimes be this extraordinary and subtle warping of love and sanctity and intimacy.

00:22:13.000 So I don't think...

00:22:13.000 To your point, Neil, about men, I'd like to turn this over to you again, if I may.

00:22:20.000 She talked about that much of the ire and condemnation she had received in particular online came from pious men. 0.97

00:22:27.000 Like, sort of saying, like, ugh, she's disgusting. 1.00

00:22:29.000 And like she also said, but... 0.93

00:22:31.000 Guess who's lining up?

00:22:32.000 I wonder what we do with that tension.

00:22:34.000 I would never, not in a million years, judge not.

00:22:41.000 I don't know her.

00:22:43.000 I haven't walked her life.

00:22:48.000 I don't know anything about her.

00:22:53.000 I'm not going to condemn what she did because I think that's...

00:23:00.000 She's a human being.

00:23:03.000 She's a life.

00:23:06.000 When I say that I'm appalled, I'm only reflecting on it and empathising with the situation in which she put herself.

00:23:15.000 And then further, not imagining, but the very idea that anything like that would happen.

00:23:21.000 Any of mine would want to be involved in anything like that.

00:23:24.000 I just have to say that that frankly appalls me.

00:23:27.000 But I don't want that to come laden with any kind of pious Victorian dad style, you know, walk through the streets with a flaming pitchfork about it.

00:23:37.000 You know, she's a, you know, God love her. 0.54

00:23:38.000 She's a human being.

00:23:42.000 She's a life.

00:23:43.000 And she's doing her thing.

00:23:46.000 I am genuinely...

00:23:47.000 I'm so fascinated and impressed to hear you speak, Russell, because you speak with such honesty.

00:23:55.000 I think it's very, very powerful that you're frank and that you find, actually, in the moment, persuasive ways to talk about the ways in which that kind of situation can be profound.

00:24:14.000 But I myself, I don't have any experience of it. 0.73

00:24:18.000 Me, personally, I've only ever wanted to be the only erection in the room.

00:24:24.000 And the very thought about there being a queue of guys, you know, priapic at the prospect of what... 0.94

00:24:32.000 That's anathema to me.

00:24:34.000 But again, I'm not, I mean, whatever, people are into group sex and multiple partners and all of the rest of it.

00:24:43.000 And I'm not making a judgment on it.

00:24:45.000 But I can only seek to empathize with the situation and think, I just feel very, my sense is that Lily Phillips, having gone through that and whatever else that she has gone through, having gone through that and whatever else that she has gone through, there will be long term unhappy consequences as a result Maybe I'm wrong.

00:25:11.000 But I can only conclude from my experience of life and having been intimate with and spoken to a number of women that there's no way that what she has been doing and what she seems to be proposing to do next, there's no way that that can be processed and become a happy part of a life going forward.

00:25:34.000 Hopefully she'll survive it and come through it.

00:25:38.000 Russell, let me add.

00:25:40.000 That's all.

00:25:41.000 It is sad.

00:25:43.000 And I want to just add one quick thing that will answer your question about the technology.

00:25:47.000 There's a broader problem here when you step back from the personal impact to Lily and the personal choices made by the people that encourage this.

00:25:56.000 And that broader impact is, yeah, group sex is one thing, but now you're adding in technology, right?

00:26:03.000 Now you're adding in social media and the vehicle by which OnlyFans Literally, because of the economies of scale, because this can now reach people all over the world, the amount of money in it is enormous.

00:26:18.000 And it's like nothing we've ever seen before.

00:26:21.000 There's nothing that Playboy ever did at its heyday that comes close, right?

00:26:26.000 We're talking about technology that is making this instant and is making this accessible and is making this...

00:26:34.000 Hey, Barry!

00:26:37.000 Sorry.

00:26:37.000 It's making this happen on a scale that has never, ever been seen before.

00:26:42.000 And what it's doing at the same time is it's encouraging our kids.

00:26:47.000 This is, you know, the problem with what Lily Phillips is doing is that she's being rewarded for this. 0.55

00:26:52.000 She's richer, you know, than any young girl can ever imagine.

00:26:56.000 She can have anything she wants.

00:26:58.000 She can do anything she wants.

00:26:59.000 You know, she's being painted as being powerful in her own way because there's a whole ideology today that sex workers make the choice, they're not the victims, the prostitutes of old were, that there's something powerful and that we should empower them because they have every right. 0.98

00:27:16.000 She said, I love sex and basically I don't want to go to college and do the hard work.

00:27:20.000 I don't want to be enslaved. 0.57

00:27:24.000 Right?

00:27:24.000 And live my life like everyone else is living it.

00:27:26.000 I can do two things I love and I can make, what is it?

00:27:29.000 It's easy money.

00:27:30.000 And what do we know about easy money?

00:27:32.000 Easy money is always the same.

00:27:34.000 Easy money always comes at a cost.

00:27:36.000 Because there is no, the thing about life is that there are certain fundamental principles.

00:27:42.000 You get out of something what you put in.

00:27:44.000 You know, things are a product of hard work.

00:27:47.000 How much work are you willing to put in?

00:27:50.000 And everybody wants to take shortcuts and they want to tell themselves that they can change the rules.

00:27:54.000 But the rules of the game, in a sense, they never really change.

00:27:58.000 And the reality is that when you try to take these shortcuts, it usually means that there's something darker there.

00:28:04.000 And what technology has done is it's taken all of that darkness.

00:28:08.000 And it's created a marketplace for it.

00:28:11.000 So whether it's the OnlyFans, or whether it's the Hurtcore, which is sadistic pornography, or whether it's the snuff films, these things through technology and the dark web, they have a broader audience, they have a broader reach, they have more power than they ever have, and they're setting an example for all of our kids that it's okay.

00:28:33.000 What they're doing is they're saying it's okay.

00:28:35.000 It's okay for you to sell your soul if it gets you a pair of designer shoes.

00:28:39.000 It's okay if it gets you an Instagram, a crown, it makes you an influencer, it gives you followers, that this is the way to live now.

00:28:48.000 And we're all okay with it.

00:28:50.000 And there's nothing essentially wrong with it.

00:28:52.000 And, you know, I mean, my heart breaks really when I see her in that film talking about what happened.

00:28:57.000 But then I take a look at her ex account and it's, you know, I mean, I mean, there she is, selling herself and setting an example for all of our kids that this is what you've got to do if you want to succeed.

00:29:11.000 And that has an impact.

00:29:13.000 You know, I remember my son and my daughter, young, having an argument once.

00:29:17.000 And my daughter is feminist, you know, like me, and so on and so on. 0.94

00:29:20.000 And she said, if boys have the right to sleep with anybody they want, this is about six, seven years ago, then girls should have that right too.

00:29:28.000 And I turned around and I said, That's not really the whole point.

00:29:34.000 That's not really the whole point of the argument.

00:29:36.000 I said, when, you know, you, yeah, sure, people can have sex and say, oh, it was just, it was just physical and it didn't mean anything at all.

00:29:45.000 Sure, you know, there's, that happens all the time.

00:29:48.000 I said, but this is, you're taking the mystery and the magic and everything that matters, you're taking it out of this and you're making it now, like, there's many other lilies out there.

00:30:00.000 Many other Lilies.

00:30:01.000 You can find them.

00:30:02.000 There's a girl who did 100 guys in a weekend in New York that was on Instagram.

00:30:09.000 There's lots of other videos.

00:30:11.000 It's not just Lily.

00:30:13.000 She's at the top.

00:30:14.000 Of the game.

00:30:15.000 But they're setting the stage, they're letting you know that there is nothing, that you lose nothing, that you give nothing of yourself, that there's nothing spiritual and magical about that connection that comes from physical intimacy, not just the sexual part of it, but when you really love someone and when you bring all that together, they're taking that away from our children.

00:30:37.000 That's what they're actually doing.

00:30:39.000 Certainly I would say that there is an impact for men as well when it comes to promiscuity, even though I take and acknowledge Neil's points that there are biological and anatomical differences that likely have...

00:30:52.000 Bear out psychologically and even spiritually on the mind of the sexes. 0.63

00:30:57.000 All of that and more is covered in the conversation between Lily Phillips and I. I don't think I didn't notice that Lara Logan's dog during that conversation appeared to disappear to tend to her OnlyFans account for canines, which I'm calling in my mind like bony fangs or OnlyFangs, something like that.

00:31:13.000 I'll come up with something for it.

00:31:15.000 Remember, we are speaking about Trump's extraordinary acquisition of Gaza and the shockwaves that that's sent.

00:31:21.000 Around the world as well as USAID and that story.

00:31:24.000 First though, here's a quick message from our partners without whom we can't make this content.

00:31:29.000 Do you like paying taxes?

00:31:31.000 Of course you bloody well didn't.

00:31:33.000 But the Tax Network can meaningfully help you.

00:31:36.000 The IRS is the largest collection agency in the world.

00:31:39.000 And it just stepped up enforcement for 2025. If you owe back taxes or have unfiled returns, do not wait for the IRS to come after you.

00:31:46.000 Simply avoiding your tax troubles is the worst thing you can do.

00:31:49.000 That's how they got Al Capone!

00:31:51.000 God rest his soul.

00:31:52.000 Getting ahead of this is the smart move.

00:31:54.000 Never contact the IRS alone.

00:31:56.000 Turn it over to the team at Tax Network USA. Why?

00:31:59.000 Because not all tax resolution companies are the same.

00:32:02.000 Tax Network USA is a preferred direct line to the IRS. This means that they know which agents to deal with and which to avoid.

00:32:10.000 They've got a bad phone.

00:32:11.000 The IRS, they're sending in a bat signal to the IRS. Hello, it's McGilliguddy. 0.94

00:32:16.000 Not McGilliguddy! 0.99

00:32:17.000 He'll tax the ass off you! 0.99

00:32:19.000 Hello, this is Tiffany. 0.99

00:32:22.000 Proceed!

00:32:23.000 The Tax Network USA has proven strategies that are designed to settle your tax problems in your favour, whether you owe ten grand, or ten thousand dollars, or ten million dollars.

00:32:31.000 Their attorneys and negotiators have resolved over a billion dollars in tax debt.

00:32:35.000 Talk with one of their strategies.

00:32:36.000 It's free!

00:32:37.000 Stop the threatening letters, stop looking over your shoulder, put your eye...

00:32:40.000 IRS troubles behind you once and for all.

00:32:43.000 IRS troubles? 0.91

00:32:44.000 Yeah!

00:32:45.000 Get out of here.

00:32:45.000 I'm marching forward into a tax-free future.

00:32:48.000 You're still going to have to pay taxes.

00:32:49.000 But it's minimum.

00:32:50.000 Minimum!

00:32:51.000 That's got to be the principle, isn't it?

00:32:53.000 Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash brand.

00:32:58.000 Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit...

00:33:02.000 TNUSA.com forward slash brand.

00:33:04.000 Thank you so much for joining me on Stay Free Oracles with Russell Brand and Neil Oliver and Lara Logan.

00:33:11.000 We've already discussed Lily Phillips.

00:33:12.000 You can see that interview now on Rumble Premium or wait till next Monday when we'll be streaming it.

00:33:17.000 On Rumble.

00:33:18.000 If you get Rumble Premium using the code brand, you get access to all sorts of additional content from me and other Rumble creators as well as an ad-free experience.

00:33:26.000 Now, many people saw the advent of the Trump administration as an end to the global order, as a significant shift in the trajectory of presumed Kafkaesque institutional tyranny.

00:33:39.000 The Trump movement was a spoke in the wheels of a particular type of globalism with the announcement that Trump says that...

00:33:48.000 We are going way beyond the tongue-in-cheek talk of the Panama Canal and Greenland into an extraordinarily contentious area, perhaps the most contentious area in the history of...

00:34:02.000 Our kind.

00:34:03.000 And to hear Donald Trump talking about it in the kind of extraordinary terms of construction, as if it's just another deal, has been pretty startling for some.

00:34:12.000 Not for people, though, who on the periphery have claimed that MAGA Trump is just another iteration of centralized global power playing out in democracy.

00:34:20.000 So what does this tell us about the Trump administration?

00:34:23.000 Here's Donald Trump himself talking about the acquisition of Gaza.

00:34:27.000 We'll be talking about that after this.

00:34:29.000 The US will take over the Gaza Strip. 0.97

00:34:31.000 And we will do a job with it, too.

00:34:34.000 We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.

00:34:41.000 Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings.

00:34:45.000 Level it out.

00:34:46.000 create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.

00:34:54.000 If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what's happening in Gaza, why would they want to return? 0.99

00:35:07.000 The place has been hell.

00:35:09.000 Trump is the most, let's say, unpredictable and exciting political figure.

00:35:13.000 If you can divorce your own political perspectives from it.

00:35:17.000 Perhaps since the...

00:35:19.000 Great leaders of the 20th century and all that might be packed into some of those extraordinary leaders.

00:35:25.000 But he still has the capacity to surprise.

00:35:28.000 I don't think any of us expected him to turn up in Israel next to Netanyahu saying America are going to take over Gaza.

00:35:33.000 By what authority can Trump make that claim?

00:35:36.000 And what does this do?

00:35:38.000 Neil, to the already pretty entrenched divisions between the left and right, the left will claim that this is an example of the megalomaniarchal Trump that they always feared, and it's difficult really to see how this was part of his America First campaign agenda.

00:35:52.000 Neil, how are you dealing with this?

00:35:55.000 I looked on at Trump saying, listened to Trump saying these things alongside Netanyahu, and I'll be honest with you, I don't...

00:36:07.000 I don't understand precisely what he could possibly have been saying, really.

00:36:13.000 I mean, I listened to the words more than once, but I still don't understand.

00:36:19.000 What does he mean?

00:36:21.000 And was he deliberately using language in such a way that it left it dubious?

00:36:29.000 I mean, as you said, as you alluded to, I mean, by what authority could America take Gaza?

00:36:36.000 Take Gaza from whom and under what legislation or under what right?

00:36:45.000 Is that possible?

00:36:47.000 Is that what he meant?

00:36:48.000 I don't know.

00:36:50.000 Obviously, you go back a year and more ago and his son-in-law was talking about beachfront property in Gaza and it being an enormous investment opportunity and all of the rest of it.

00:37:01.000 I listened to that at the time and thought...

00:37:04.000 Did anybody know that he was going to say that there?

00:37:07.000 And then you watch Trump in that press conference and you think, did anybody know that he was going to say that there?

00:37:14.000 And Benjamin Netanyahu didn't seem to understand, judging by his body language, it didn't seem as though he had been pre-warned about what Trump was saying.

00:37:22.000 He didn't understand.

00:37:23.000 So there's just this whole bubble of uncertainty hanging all over it, because in the face of it, it sounds like it would be...

00:37:31.000 To any rational person, it would be completely illegal and impossible for the USA to take Gaza, level it and redevelop it and decide who was going to live there, which is what he certainly seemed to be saying. 0.84

00:37:46.000 And then that bit in the second clip, you know, where he says Gaza's been such a terrible place, why would anybody want to go back to it? 0.99

00:37:54.000 So that's open brackets.

00:37:55.000 The people who previously lived there are not going back there.

00:38:00.000 Whether they want to or not, he seemed to be implying that whoever was going to live in the redeveloped Gaza was not going to be the people who have spent seven decades and lifetimes of hurt and pain trying to hold on to something.

00:38:19.000 So, in short, I look on it and I don't know how to interpret what Donald Trump said there.

00:38:25.000 It seemed impossible.

00:38:28.000 I suppose many of us were wondering what a newly emboldened 2025 version of Donald Trump might look like with him, confirmation pending, surrounded by legitimising and, in my view, brilliant figures like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard.

00:38:43.000 I feel like my general...

00:38:46.000 The opinion of Trump changed over the years as to, oh, this dude is a wrecking ball when it comes to globalist power, and even though he is a nationalist and a populist, people love him because he's kind of funny and affable, and he's an old-school entrepreneurial tycoon-ish figure that regards everything as a kind of a deal opportunity.

00:39:03.000 Kind of from that perspective, there are aspects of this rhetoric, at least, that aren't surprising.

00:39:09.000 But when it comes to the most contentious historical issue that encompasses ideas like imperialism, colonialism, And spiritual legitimacy of the rights to claim land, claims that could, of course, be made by Aboriginal Australians or Irish people to the British or Indian people to the British or Native Americans to currently settled residents of the United States of America.

00:39:31.000 It's a massive and enormous question.

00:39:33.000 Laura Logan, I think that you're generally pretty supportive of Donald Trump.

00:39:37.000 How dare you reconcile your broad support for Trump with this sort of extraordinary piece of geopoliticking?

00:39:46.000 Well, I also did a double take.

00:39:48.000 You know, it came out of left field.

00:39:50.000 I wasn't expecting it, and I had to listen to it a couple times.

00:39:53.000 I saw different headlines and different people commenting on it, and I had to go to the original video to listen to it just to sort of wrap my head around it.

00:40:02.000 I'm not 100% convinced that Trump meant what he said.

00:40:08.000 I don't...

00:40:09.000 I don't think he's making it up.

00:40:11.000 I think that Neil's very astute observation there of Jared Kushner.

00:40:15.000 I remember when he said that about beachfront properties in Gaza.

00:40:18.000 And it also stuck out because, you know, Gaza obviously is, on the one hand, you have this massive destruction.

00:40:25.000 But then on the other hand, I have been to Gaza and I have seen the ginormous Porsche dealerships and all the luxury car dealerships and the very wealthy parts of Gaza, especially.

00:40:37.000 Especially after Hamas came in, they stole so much from the people and it helped them to keep the people in poverty because that was very much a recruiting tool for them. 0.99

00:40:52.000 And not to say there weren't other issues, it's just something that's not often remarked on or not often known because people don't generally go to Gaza and see these things for themselves.

00:41:01.000 But I'm always, you know, this is one of those situations.

00:41:06.000 Where I immediately hold and try to figure out what is this really about?

00:41:12.000 Because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

00:41:15.000 I mean, it sounds, you know, it sounds simple in one respect.

00:41:20.000 Oh, we're going to, you know, take over Gaza and rebuild it. 0.99

00:41:22.000 Well, rebuilding, I've seen that in Afghanistan.

00:41:24.000 I've seen it in Iraq.

00:41:25.000 I've seen it in Syria, South Sudan.

00:41:27.000 I mean, all over the world, right?

00:41:29.000 Rebuilding is hard.

00:41:31.000 And obviously people are very entrenched there.

00:41:33.000 I didn't take that clip.

00:41:35.000 Of Trump saying, you know, why would anyone want to go back there as meaning that they're going to bring other people in?

00:41:42.000 Neil, I can see why when you take a clip like that in isolation, it can make you think that.

00:41:46.000 I took it more as, why would these people want to come back to nothing?

00:41:51.000 Like, why would they want to come back to the life that they had?

00:41:54.000 We're going to fundamentally change what's here, and we're going to make it better for them.

00:41:58.000 Like, that was my read, and I did listen to a little more of it, so maybe that's...

00:42:03.000 Maybe that's why I took that a little differently.

00:42:06.000 But this is what I would say.

00:42:08.000 When Trump said we're going to take the Panama Canal, I don't think he had any intention of taking the Panama Canal.

00:42:14.000 What he wanted was exactly what he got.

00:42:16.000 He got Panama to say, we're not going to play with China anymore.

00:42:19.000 If you're going to threaten us, people have to believe he's serious.

00:42:23.000 Because if they don't believe he's serious, it's not going to work.

00:42:27.000 He's got no negotiating power.

00:42:29.000 He's got no leverage.

00:42:32.000 Well, I can't be sure, but I imagine that if you sat down with him, he would have a very, you know, reasoned, articulated, substantial argument telling you why he means it.

00:42:42.000 But I'm not really sure that he does.

00:42:44.000 And it's the same thing.

00:42:45.000 And in terms of how could they legally do it now?

00:42:48.000 The only way they could legally do it was if the Palestinian Authority, the people, you know, in charge who legally owned Gaza, were, I mean...

00:42:58.000 We agreed, made an agreement with the U.S. And I don't think it's beyond Trump to do.

00:43:04.000 I mean, we don't really know at this point.

00:43:06.000 We don't have a good granular idea of how much legs does Hamas still have in them.

00:43:12.000 And what about Hezbollah and the Iranians?

00:43:15.000 There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that I know about that is not reported, where Iran has taken massive, massive, massive hits to their infrastructure.

00:43:26.000 And people blame everything on the Israelis.

00:43:28.000 Even when the Israelis don't actually have the military capability to do what's being done, which tells me that the people who are really doing it are the U.S. So I know that there's a lot going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of.

00:43:41.000 I mean, of course there are people within Hamas that are completely ideological and cannot be bought, just like anybody else.

00:43:48.000 But there's also a lot of them that can be bought.

00:43:51.000 There's also a lot of them that have paid a very heavy price at this point, have been brought to their knees.

00:43:56.000 And I don't know what kind of deals are going on behind the scenes.

00:44:00.000 I wouldn't put it past them to make some kind of crazy deal.

00:44:04.000 It seems insane.

00:44:05.000 It does.

00:44:06.000 It seems insane on the surface.

00:44:08.000 There's no question about it.

00:44:09.000 But that's when it doesn't add up.

00:44:12.000 I know I'm missing pieces of information, and they're critical pieces of information.

00:44:17.000 So I don't want to be definitive.

00:44:19.000 I just find it very difficult to contemplate even the possibility in the real world.

00:44:25.000 That Trump's sponsors and major donors and Benjamin Netanyahu and the party of which he is the front could entertain the idea that Donald Trump was going to redevelop Gaza, by whatever means, and reinstall the incumbent population now into a lovely Gaza.

00:44:57.000 And that was one way in which one might have read what Trump seemed to be saying.

00:45:03.000 But I find that impossible.

00:45:04.000 But I think the other thing to be, you know, when you look back on the history of, which is from 1948, or even further back, you know, you go back to 1917 and the Balfour Declaration.

00:45:17.000 And when you look at it from the distance of time and think that in that instance, You know, Britain invited itself to decide to give away a territory that it didn't own and had no ancestral claim on to someone else without any consultation whatsoever with the incumbent population.

00:45:44.000 And that incumbent population was frightened and forced away from it.

00:45:50.000 You know, from their homes, from their olive groves, from their fruit trees and all of the rest of it.

00:45:57.000 They were just forced out of it and found themselves disenfranchised and exiled in living memory.

00:46:06.000 And it seems absolutely, it's surreal now to watch Donald Trump representing the United States of America seeming to now take claim ownership of part of that territory and again decide, it's surreal now to watch Donald Trump representing the United States of America seeming to now take claim ownership of part of that territory and again decide, you know, without direct reference territory and again decide, you

00:46:36.000 Now looking on at Donald Trump as the next person coming in saying, well, I'm just going to tell everyone what's going to happen here.

00:46:44.000 Let me throw something controversial at you both, okay?

00:46:49.000 Let me throw something controversial at you.

00:46:50.000 Neil, I understand it, and that's why I don't really believe it.

00:46:54.000 I'll be honest with you.

00:46:55.000 I have nothing to base this on, but my gut instinct is he's playing a hand and he doesn't really have any intention of doing that.

00:47:02.000 I don't know what he intends to do, but I don't think it's that.

00:47:05.000 But on the other side of this, let me ask you both a question.

00:47:09.000 I have been in one war after another, after another, after another.

00:47:15.000 And they never, ever, ever end.

00:47:18.000 And they never get better.

00:47:19.000 And people are entrenched in the population, and they use the population, and they exploit the population.

00:47:28.000 And I'm not excusing anyone, right?

00:47:30.000 I'm not saying these people are worse than the US, or that the US is better than Hamas.

00:47:36.000 I'm not saying that.

00:47:38.000 I'm just saying we are in a very interesting moment here.

00:47:45.000 Modern history, where there is someone who's not playing according to the rules that we have seen.

00:47:52.000 And the rules that we have seen, going back to the Balfour Declaration, or whether it's the Durant Line in Afghanistan, or whether it's the separation of Rwanda.

00:48:00.000 I mean, I'm a product of colonialism and all the rest of it growing up.

00:48:04.000 In South Africa, I've seen that all over Africa.

00:48:07.000 I've been to probably 40, 50 countries where I've seen that.

00:48:11.000 So I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:48:13.000 One after another, you can trace modern warfare to decisions that were made by the Arabs, not just the Brits, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the French. 0.58

00:48:22.000 I mean, all of them have their legacy of imperialism that has torn tribes and societies and countries and areas apart.

00:48:30.000 All of them have it.

00:48:31.000 And before that, there were also Other forces doing that long before the British ever set foot in Arabia.

00:48:39.000 You know, I mean, there were things that were happening with the Ottomans.

00:48:43.000 The Ottomans went into those lands. 0.76

00:48:44.000 I mean, so depending on how far back you want to go in history, you can find this cycle repeating itself, repeating itself.

00:48:51.000 And now I'm curious to see if this is actually a moment where we're going to change the rules of the game.

00:49:00.000 And I don't know that that's right.

00:49:01.000 And I'm not saying it's good.

00:49:04.000 And I don't even think it could work.

00:49:06.000 Honestly, I don't think the US could rebuild Gaza. 0.58

00:49:09.000 And that's probably one of those clips where someone will play it and show how wrong I was 10 years later.

00:49:14.000 But I just know what's involved in rebuilding.

00:49:17.000 But what I am interested to see here is what exactly is at play?

00:49:23.000 Because not every Palestinian supports Hamas.

00:49:27.000 Not every Palestinian wants the genocide.

00:49:30.000 of every last living Jew, right? 0.94

00:49:33.000 Not every Palestinian wants a return to what they had before. 0.77

00:49:38.000 And I don't know if this...

00:49:41.000 I don't know what this means.

00:49:42.000 When it doesn't make sense, there's a reason it doesn't make sense, right?

00:49:46.000 And this doesn't make sense on the surface.

00:49:50.000 Trump's leadership, I suppose, has always contained a component of staggering havoc.

00:49:58.000 That he tore apart the playbook when campaigning to be the leader of the Republican Party.

00:50:02.000 He tore up the playbook when electioneering against Hillary Clinton.

00:50:07.000 And in his first term, domestically, there was this sense that we're dealing with a leader that's not confined by norms.

00:50:14.000 Those norms themselves have to be undergirded by sets of moral authority that broadly have...

00:50:21.000 To see Trump playing that out on a geopolitical scale, we are at the kind of nexus of the issue that's around which appear to web ideas such as colonialism, imperialism, spiritual power, is extraordinary.

00:50:36.000 And I take your point, Lara, that to end this sort of ancient cycle of violence, what kind of epoch-shifting act and figure does it require?

00:50:45.000 Is it the return of Christ?

00:50:47.000 Is it a UFO to...

00:50:49.000 Land at the site of the temples?

00:50:51.000 Or is it?

00:50:53.000 The sort of extraordinary individual power of Donald Trump that's going to provide this fracture and warping in our understanding of reality.

00:51:02.000 Like you, Laura, I can't actually imagine it.

00:51:05.000 And like you, Neil, I sort of have this sense that, does Donald Trump mean that?

00:51:08.000 Does Donald Trump just go out like...

00:51:09.000 And what I really think it is, it's a sort of Donald Trump being Donald Trump, this person that uses tactics, rhetoric and behaviours that are way outside of what we've come to accept as normal political discourse.

00:51:23.000 It's like guerrilla politics.

00:51:25.000 He'll just say a thing and now we're all having to deal with this new reality that's almost been spoken into being by him.

00:51:33.000 And it's so sort of absurd and extraordinary that you almost can't keep up with all of the moral, ethical, national, historical, colonial narratives that have preceded it.

00:51:47.000 It's like, it's like and it's not like...

00:51:51.000 Being there, you know, the Peter Sellers movie about the American president.

00:51:55.000 Obviously, Trump bears no...

00:51:57.000 I'm not suggesting for a moment that he's like the character that Peter Sellers plays in that film, but the character Chancey Gardner would say things and everyone else would just interpret it for him.

00:52:10.000 You know, he would just say these...

00:52:11.000 He would just say things as they occurred to him.

00:52:13.000 And all these, in inverted commas, cleverer, statecrafty people around him would say, ah...

00:52:19.000 You see what he's done there?

00:52:21.000 That's very, very clever.

00:52:23.000 It's a bit like that.

00:52:25.000 You know, Trump just seems to speak.

00:52:27.000 And then people talk about playing 3D and 4D and 5D chess with what he may or may not be doing.

00:52:35.000 But he says something and then we're doing it now.

00:52:39.000 And everyone in the State Department runs about going, ah, I know what he meant.

00:52:45.000 Because what will happen now is.

00:52:48.000 And maybe he did mean that, but it's also possible that he just speaks.

00:52:52.000 Well, and it's also possible that he has a different plan.

00:52:56.000 I mean, like you said, Netanyahu's body language showed that it wasn't something that they had sat down in meetings and figured out and knew exactly what to say.

00:53:06.000 And it didn't seem that way.

00:53:08.000 But we don't know because we weren't there.

00:53:10.000 But what we do know, you know what I do know?

00:53:13.000 I know that the new director of foreign assistance at the State Department, Who would presumably be quite heavily involved in a project like that.

00:53:22.000 I know this is a very serious person and someone I've known for 20 years.

00:53:27.000 And so I think we have to wait and see.

00:53:33.000 I think that's the thing, is not to be too reactive.

00:53:36.000 I think that's my point.

00:53:38.000 It's easy, you know, if you're like, oh, if you feel for the Palestinian people, well, how dare he?

00:53:44.000 How dare he say that he can just come over and take this?

00:53:47.000 Who does he think he is?

00:53:48.000 Or if you hate Donald Trump and you're right, I told you Donald Trump was like Hitler or whatever it happens to be, you know, whatever your position is.

00:53:55.000 This kind of knee-jerk reaction is sort of fostered by social media because we've taken the critical thinking and the thought out of it and the time out of it.

00:54:06.000 I think we need to give this one time to play out.

00:54:08.000 I don't think he meant for a second that he's going to annex Greenland, for example.

00:54:13.000 However, the U.S. does pay all the bills in Greenland.

00:54:16.000 And there are a lot of people in Greenland who say they want to be part of the U.S. But is that what he really wants?

00:54:21.000 Is he angling there?

00:54:22.000 You know, to say, okay, if we're going to pay your bills, there's certain things we're not going to let happen.

00:54:30.000 We're not going to let our adversaries use this against us.

00:54:33.000 Or, by the way, is Greenland the door, you know, to Antarctica and a whole lot of other stuff that's been going on that we don't...

00:54:40.000 I mean, there's a lot of unanswered questions about what's been going on in Antarctica all these years.

00:54:45.000 Why did John Kerry come back from Antarctica and say that no one was allowed to go and visit?

00:54:51.000 Why did Admiral Byrd at the end of the Second World War report that he'd been in massive battles in Antarctica?

00:54:58.000 What exactly is there?

00:54:59.000 So, you know, I feel like this is one of those situations where, within a very short amount of time, we're probably going to learn a lot more about what he really meant.

00:55:10.000 Surely there's only so many times, though, that you can play...

00:55:12.000 I mean, he just says, see Panama, I'll have that.

00:55:16.000 See Canada, I'll have that.

00:55:18.000 Greenland, I'll have that as well.

00:55:21.000 I hear what you're saying.

00:55:23.000 When he says it in Panama, the Panamanians go, all right, hang on, hang on. 1.00

00:55:27.000 We might have to rethink exactly what we're doing.

00:55:29.000 But how many times can you play that card?

00:55:34.000 Well, it depends on your other cards, Neil.

00:55:36.000 It depends on what's in your hand.

00:55:38.000 Because if that's your only card, then you're like the boy who cried wolf, and no, it's not going to work very well.

00:55:44.000 But that's not Donald Trump, right?

00:55:46.000 I mean, he's president of the United States of America, so he's got a strong hand.

00:55:52.000 Yeah, Neil, you could be a Panamanian diplomat in that outfit, as a matter of fact.

00:55:57.000 You're the exact sort of person that they'd send to negotiate for their canals.

00:56:01.000 And I love your analysis.

00:56:03.000 There's no question.

00:56:05.000 We could put you anywhere and you'd thrive and succeed.

00:56:08.000 There's no question about it.

00:56:09.000 I also enjoyed your Chancey Gardner from being there analysis, that he is somehow an avatar and cipher for all of our projections.

00:56:17.000 I've pondered similar things myself.

00:56:18.000 Certainly, it seems that Donald Trump is bringing to international diplomacy the sort of sense of a wild and occasionally unbridled havoc that he's brought to various strata of US domestic politics.

00:56:30.000 And perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.

00:56:32.000 And maybe, like you said, Laura, we should wait and see what will happen.

00:56:35.000 We can't make this content without the support of our partners.

00:56:37.000 Here's a quick message from one now.

00:56:39.000 What if I was to tell you you can lose weight without trying?

00:56:42.000 You can't.

00:56:43.000 You have to try.

00:56:44.000 What if I told you there was a magic pill you could take?

00:56:46.000 There might be.

00:56:47.000 But this is not that.

00:56:49.000 This is an honest and earnest attempt to healthfully lose weight while retaining your health and sanity to boot.

00:56:54.000 Lean.

00:56:55.000 Lean was created by a medical doctor and a university researcher.

00:56:58.000 I don't know if that's one or two people.

00:57:00.000 A man can be many things, you know.

00:57:02.000 The clinical team behind Lean say if you only have a few pounds to lose, non-prescription Lean is not for you.

00:57:08.000 Just exercise a little more.

00:57:09.000 Lean is for frustrated dieters who want to lose meaningful weight but aren't into injections.

00:57:14.000 You know, you don't want to be taking the older Zenpik or similar brand when in fact it's a deadly, deadly intoxicant and might have long-term consequences and be addictive, allegedly.

00:57:22.000 Those are not my opinions, I'm just supposing.

00:57:24.000 Lean, that's the root for you.

00:57:26.000 The science behind lean is impressive.

00:57:28.000 It's natural studied ingredients target weight loss in similar ways.

00:57:32.000 1. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar.

00:57:34.000 2. Helps control appetite and cravings.

00:57:35.000 3. Helps burn fat by converting fat to energy.

00:57:38.000 If you're ready to lose weight a smarter way, let me get you started with a 20% discount.

00:57:43.000 Just use the code BRAND20 at TakeLean.com.

00:57:46.000 Just use the code BRAND20 at TakeLean.com.

00:57:50.000 USAID or USAID. Even the way you say it.

00:57:54.000 It's politicised.

00:57:55.000 If you call it USAID, you're likely on the left and regard it to be a bit like Band-Aid, but for international forum diplomatic aid granted to America's friends around the world.

00:58:04.000 If you call it USAID, you see it as the apparatus of the deep state.

00:58:08.000 And this is the conversation that's unfolding right now in real time with the likes of AOC advocating for USAID or Joy Reid saying that it's a kind of coup against the state to destabilise and even abandon it.

00:58:20.000 Here's Representative Jamie Raskin saying...

00:58:23.000 That Elon didn't create USAID, so he can't destroy it.

00:58:28.000 And I'll be looking forward to hear what you make of this after Lara Logan.

00:58:31.000 Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people.

00:58:41.000 And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it.

00:58:48.000 And who's going to stop him?

00:58:49.000 We are.

00:58:51.000 We're going to stop him.

00:58:53.000 USAID cannot be created or destroyed, only altered, or does that matter?

00:58:58.000 Lara Logan, where do you stand on the USAID story? 0.54

00:59:05.000 Well, I've got to be honest, Jamie Raskin is disgusting to me. 0.99

00:59:09.000 He is one of the most awful human beings on the face of the earth. 1.00

00:59:14.000 And he's pathetic. 1.00

00:59:16.000 And why do I dislike him so much? 0.99

00:59:18.000 Well, because he was one of the chief architects of the persecution and the cover-up following January 6th, who felt nothing to tear apart families and destroy lives and put innocent people behind bars.

00:59:29.000 So I find my skin crawling having to listen to him.

00:59:35.000 But the funny part there is he says that the Congress created USAID for the American people.

00:59:41.000 No, USAID is a foreign aid, international aid agency, right?

00:59:49.000 So it wasn't created for the American people.

00:59:52.000 Most of the American people had very little idea that USAID even existed before this happened.

01:00:00.000 Most of the American people had no idea that their money, their tax dollars, were being taken to fund things like, let me see.

01:00:10.000 George Soros' fund to install prosecutors that follow their ideology.

01:00:16.000 And you can see their handiwork in San Francisco, which has been destroyed, New Orleans, which is down the toilet, you know, and so on and so on and so on, right?

01:00:25.000 Most Americans, the majority that voted Donald Trump into power, do not support George Soros or the Open Society Foundations or any of the groups in his affinity network.

01:00:36.000 And so they are shocked to discover that hundreds of millions of dollars of their blood, sweat and tears Is being used to finance things that they regard as basically slitting their own throats.

01:00:50.000 So when Jamie Raskin and these people, they talk about oversight.

01:00:54.000 They didn't do any oversight of USAID. In fact...

01:00:58.000 In fact, what USAID did was bypass Congress.

01:01:02.000 They bypassed oversight.

01:01:04.000 And they created the power unconstitutionally and against the law.

01:01:08.000 They created the power for these satellite offices of USAID that was spread all over the world to completely bypass everyone and get money directly.

01:01:18.000 You know what really irks me, Russell, is I have to say this.

01:01:23.000 People are very cavalier about American tax dollars.

01:01:28.000 I am not.

01:01:29.000 Because I live in a beautiful tourist town in one of the wealthiest counties in Texas.

01:01:35.000 And the vast majority of people living here do not take a vacation because they can't afford it.

01:01:44.000 Most of the kids that come to my house, and there's 20 or 30 of them every weekend, have never been on an airplane. 0.98

01:01:49.000 And it's not because, as many Europeans think, They're a bunch of ignorant Americans who don't give a shit about the rest of the world and think America is so great, I don't need to travel. 0.99

01:02:00.000 They can't afford to travel. 0.99

01:02:03.000 They can't afford to go outside the borders of the United States.

01:02:07.000 They can't afford to fly from one state to another state.

01:02:12.000 Most of them don't have medical insurance because their families can't afford it.

01:02:18.000 I just, I cannot say it strong enough.

01:02:21.000 I don't have a fancy house.

01:02:22.000 And a lot of these kids, when they come to my house, they've never seen anything like it.

01:02:27.000 And most, you know, many of these kids are white.

01:02:30.000 Some of them are Hispanic.

01:02:31.000 I live in a mostly white town.

01:02:33.000 I'm not going to apologize for it.

01:02:34.000 It just happens to be the case.

01:02:36.000 You know, but obviously we have a lot of Hispanic people here.

01:02:40.000 And my kids have lots of Hispanic friends, and so do I. But, you know, this is not a...

01:02:47.000 This is not a racial thing.

01:02:49.000 This is American kids of American parents. 0.76

01:02:53.000 Their parents don't often...

01:02:54.000 They always work.

01:02:56.000 They often work more than one job.

01:02:58.000 And they live just to survive and exist.

01:03:03.000 They can get by if they don't ever get sick.

01:03:05.000 And they don't ever need to see a doctor or they don't ever get hurt.

01:03:08.000 But if anything goes wrong, they're in real, real trouble.

01:03:12.000 These people, it's their tax dollars.

01:03:16.000 It's their blood and their sweat and their tears and their sacrifices.

01:03:22.000 They have been denigrated.

01:03:23.000 They've been dismissed.

01:03:25.000 They've been disregarded.

01:03:27.000 They have been targeted. 0.99

01:03:29.000 They're treated like they're absolutely worthless.

01:03:32.000 Until when?

01:03:34.000 Until somebody wants to...

01:03:36.000 They want their tax dollars to pay for my kid.

01:03:40.000 I'm some elite person in Washington, D.C., but somehow I don't think my kid should have this burden of their fees from college, so the American taxpayer can just pay for it.

01:03:52.000 The American taxpayer can finance, let me see, trans operas in Serbia.

01:03:58.000 Do you know that program was 50 million dollars they were funneling into LGBTQ causes outside of congressional oversight into Serbia?

01:04:08.000 You know, the kind of things that they have been financing, it's not just these outrageous programs overseas in foreign countries.

01:04:18.000 It's not just that you're paying for children in foreign countries to get scholarships and to go to university, but you're not doing that.

01:04:26.000 For American kids.

01:04:28.000 It's not just that Americans don't believe in many of these things.

01:04:34.000 It's that what you've done is you have taken the United States government and you've used it as a slush fund to finance an ideology that is profound, that ultimately is the death of everything that these people who are paying for it actually believe in.

01:04:54.000 And you've done it You've done it in darkness.

01:04:59.000 You've hidden what you're doing from the American people.

01:05:01.000 And so any person who's standing up now and says, oh, how dare E.R. must do this and how dare we have to stop this tyranny and we need oversight.

01:05:10.000 We need to know what they're doing.

01:05:12.000 It's incredible to me.

01:05:14.000 As usual, they never want to address the substance of what you're dealing with.

01:05:18.000 And of course, what they also don't want to address is that the president, through his executive order, When you are violating the law, as the USAID has been doing, they've been violating the law over and over again.

01:05:32.000 They've been money laundering to all these affinity groups and all these NGOs and they have been pushing this through.

01:05:38.000 They've been stealing from the American people and all so that they can keep these people subjugated. 0.94

01:05:43.000 Americans are very giving people.

01:05:45.000 You only have to look at philanthropic rates to know they don't like people to suffer and they're willing to help.

01:05:52.000 But no one's been helping them.

01:05:54.000 The quality of their life has been going down and down and down.

01:05:58.000 Almost none of the kids that I know had Christmas.

01:06:01.000 One of the kids I know, he got socks and t-shirts, a couple of them.

01:06:07.000 Three pairs of socks, three t-shirts for Christmas.

01:06:10.000 A lot of these families can't afford Thanksgiving.

01:06:13.000 They can't afford to buy a Thanksgiving turkey.

01:06:16.000 They can't afford to travel, to be together.

01:06:18.000 This is standard.

01:06:20.000 For people all across America today.

01:06:22.000 I don't think that any of these people want innocent people to suffer.

01:06:28.000 But when you find out that less than 10% of the money that has supposedly been going to help poor people or people in need in foreign countries has actually been reaching those people.

01:06:39.000 When you find out that Angelina Jolie and Sean Penn, these people were paid millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

01:06:49.000 Buy USAID to take trips to Ukraine, to Ukraine, so they could do photo ops that could justify hundreds of millions more dollars going to finance a war that nobody believes in, that is absolutely unwinnable, that is costing lives on a daily basis.

01:07:09.000 I mean, it's unconscionable what has been done. 1.00

01:07:15.000 And for the Democrats to focus on Elon Musk, And to go there with their stupid little pathetic posse. 1.00

01:07:21.000 And by the way, it's not just Democrats who have benefited from this system. 1.00

01:07:26.000 There is a plethora of Republicans whose hands are as dirty as every single one of those small, little people that stood and staged their protests and went out there.

01:07:39.000 So this is not, I'm not painting this as a partisan thing. 0.73

01:07:42.000 They just chose to stand on the wrong side of history.

01:07:45.000 Elon Musk has been given legal authorities by Donald Trump.

01:07:48.000 I haven't read every contract.

01:07:51.000 All I'm going to say is...

01:07:52.000 The Trump administration learned its lesson the last time around.

01:07:56.000 When they were being, every single thing that they were trying to do was being attacked by the other part of this affinity groups who go after them with lawfare and try and shut them down with legal actions.

01:08:08.000 They learned their lesson from that, and they were a lot more careful this time.

01:08:11.000 It doesn't mean that they're foolproof, but they knew what they were doing, and they're making sure that they act with legal authority every step of the way.

01:08:20.000 Trump's declaration that Gaza could be occupied and developed is...

01:08:26.000 Perhaps the kind of rhetoric that defines the fears of MAGA Trump's opponents, that he could be a Megalomayanak unbridled influence on global politics, is an idea like USAID, the kind of pinnacle of that kind of globalist neo-left politics that preceded it, i.e.

01:08:48.000 because we are so philanthropic we're going to tax you, because we're better than you we're going to make moral choices for you, we're going to invest in ideas that you...

01:08:56.000 And it won't just be philanthropic and humanitarian altruistic causes.

01:09:03.000 It will be...

01:09:05.000 To some degree, participating in the 2014 coup.

01:09:08.000 It will be funding foreign news organisations like the BBC who have received USAID contributions.

01:09:14.000 Do you feel, Neil, that USAID is one of the defining initiatives of the type of politics that appears to be dying with the advent of MAGA-style nationalist populism?

01:09:28.000 I was...

01:09:30.000 The statement amongst many that was made about Because it's a front for the CIA, Neil.

01:09:48.000 That's why.

01:09:49.000 Everybody knows USAID has been a front for the agency for a long time and so has the State Department.

01:09:57.000 It's so simple.

01:09:59.000 The fact that AID, everybody reads it as aid.

01:10:03.000 It's like puppies.

01:10:04.000 Everyone likes aid.

01:10:06.000 But it's actually the Agency for International Development.

01:10:10.000 The acronym doesn't stand for what you might be invited to think when you see US aid.

01:10:17.000 And that it was a bigger budget than the CIA, that it was a front for the CIA, and that it was understood around the world.

01:10:24.000 I think possibly people in America maybe came late to their understanding.

01:10:29.000 It was understood all around the world as a front for the CIA. And people on the right and people on the left had grown very, very suspicious of it.

01:10:38.000 You know, the fact that USAID involvement in Cuba, under the auspices of helping with AIDS and HIV, but at the same time they were really just trying to pull people in to foment a colour revolution against the regime.

01:10:55.000 And that you had people like the rightist, the right-wing president of El Salvador, you don't want anything to do with that kind of operation because we know they're at it and we know what they're up to.

01:11:07.000 In the same week, the leftist president in Mexico was saying the same thing.

01:11:13.000 People on the right or left of the political spectrum around the world were saying, no, USAID is a cover.

01:11:20.000 It's all about fomenting regime change.

01:11:22.000 It's all about fomenting colour revolutions and all of the rest of it.

01:11:26.000 You know, go into a country in Africa and promise to irrigate the fields.

01:11:29.000 But we really know what it's all about.

01:11:32.000 And America and, you know, myself, you know, you come late to the, admittedly come late to the game and understanding what these things are all about.

01:11:41.000 And I think it's a, it is a potential, as Russell, you were teeing it up as a matter of enormous significance that Donald Trump, in his first few days in office, has shut the HQ and pulled the plug on it.

01:11:55.000 But as I heard Mike Benz, Mike Benz, who is...

01:11:58.000 who amazes me with his every broadcast, I heard him saying that although the HQ has been shut down, it's potentially the case that everything that USAID were seeking to do has now just been taken under the wing of the State Department.

01:12:21.000 That the ideology may have gone nowhere and that the objectives may have gone nowhere and that the funding may just have been redirected so that it's now in the State Department.

01:12:30.000 In which case it would make Marco Rubio the most powerful Secretary of State in history because of the international reach that it would give him potentially.

01:12:43.000 So again, it's one of these ones that it's too early.

01:12:46.000 everything I think we've been saying tonight about everything, apart from Lily Phillips has been about, you have to wait and see you know, it's just too early to tell exactly what is meant by what, on one reading of it, may be a truly momentous decision, But the wider world has evidently been well aware that when you see USAID coming into your country, it's not about irrigating the fields.

01:13:12.000 It's not about building airports.

01:13:15.000 It's not about making people's lives better.

01:13:18.000 It's about getting in under the skin to push American foreign policy.

01:13:25.000 And I want to just add to that.

01:13:27.000 One thing, Neil, that gives me hope that it's not going to be what Mike Benz described.

01:13:33.000 We've seen that happen over and over again, right?

01:13:36.000 I think we talked about it with the WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

01:13:40.000 So he has good reason to talk about that.

01:13:44.000 And I have reservations about Rubio.

01:13:46.000 We'll see what happens.

01:13:47.000 But knowing who Trump just put as the Director of Foreign Assistance at the State Department, I know this is not the same game.

01:13:57.000 Because that person is the one who went into USAID in Trump's first term and uncovered what they were doing.

01:14:04.000 And he's part of the reason that this is all happening today.

01:14:08.000 So Trump has outmaneuvered them.

01:14:10.000 In this case, I do know for a fact that Trump has outmaneuvered them.

01:14:15.000 Because he's already taken care of that side of it.

01:14:18.000 This isn't going to be a just transfer.

01:14:20.000 And also, you know, listening to you, you made me realize that we all wondered how Trump was going to take on the CIA. We know how he tried to do it last time.

01:14:31.000 And he was told, you know, you go after the intel agencies, watch out, they're coming for you.

01:14:35.000 And they did.

01:14:36.000 And they made his life a living misery.

01:14:38.000 Well, guess what you just did?

01:14:40.000 You removed that front for the CIA, which was a massive, massive Part of their operations and he took that down before he took the agency out.

01:14:50.000 So that's very interesting to me.

01:14:52.000 When we talk about the 5D chess, that would be a 5D chess move, right?

01:14:57.000 And already having people that are in place in those blocking positions so that you don't have that shifting of the money and it doesn't just flow around.

01:15:06.000 That will be interesting.

01:15:08.000 I agree.

01:15:09.000 We still need to see how it plays out.

01:15:10.000 And the last thing I want to say is, did you see what happened to Politico after USAID's money got frozen?

01:15:18.000 Did you see that Politico couldn't pay the salaries of their employees?

01:15:24.000 Did you see all the money that USAID has been putting into U.S. media?

01:15:29.000 It's not supposed to be like that.

01:15:31.000 I mean, they've committed crimes.

01:15:33.000 They have violated the Constitution.

01:15:36.000 I think it's still what we know is the tip of the iceberg.

01:15:40.000 It's good that you say that, because under all of it at the moment, in the UK and in the US, which obviously I don't know in the same way as I'm aware of the Constitution, let's say, in the UK, one of the fundamental, one of the two or three truly fundamental problems, as I see it, is that We live in a lawless West.

01:16:09.000 In the UK, and it's apparent in the US as well, in terms of the way in which the Constitution has been set aside in all but name, and in the same way the Constitution in the United Kingdom has been set aside, the powerful have put themselves in situations where they have sought to set aside the law.

01:16:30.000 You know, they operate...

01:16:33.000 In complete disregard of the law.

01:16:36.000 And although they disregard it, they can't get rid of it.

01:16:40.000 The law is there.

01:16:42.000 We talked about it last week, or we talked about it the first week that we were all together.

01:16:46.000 Yeah, you should have come, Lara.

01:16:47.000 Maybe if you'd shown up, you'd know what me and Neil talk about.

01:16:50.000 Yeah, Lara.

01:16:53.000 But it's drawing attention.

01:16:57.000 We'll have to wait and see whatever Trump is actually up to.

01:17:00.000 But what is being laid bare is that at the highest levels, it's lawless.

01:17:07.000 And that's a very dangerous stone to have been unturned in the rock pool to make too many people aware of.

01:17:16.000 Because if the powerful and the decision makers disregard the law...

01:17:20.000 Then it sends down a cascading signal that there is no law.

01:17:25.000 And that's very interesting to watch, to put it mildly.

01:17:30.000 So perhaps at the very least what Trump is doing is exposing the blatant lawlessness of the people that are supposed, perhaps more importantly than anything else, but to uphold the law.

01:17:45.000 How brilliant.

01:17:46.000 At the start of this conversation, while we were discussing Lily Phillips, we talked about how technology amplifies beyond scale and magnitude ideas that have to be understood molecularly, i.e.

01:17:57.000 the sanctity of sex, the sanctity of that exchange.

01:18:00.000 Prostitution is the advent of the commodification of sex, but when you add technology to that and mass broadcast, you create a moral problem that goes way beyond its simple amplification.

01:18:11.000 Then when we discussed the type of statecraft, You can sort of see that there are large,

01:18:38.000 millennia-old questions in that region that need to be handled correctly, deftly and carefully.

01:18:44.000 You can see in the USAID story how the delegitimisation of neoliberal social democracies has taken place precisely because they use philanthropy and altruism as a mask for corruption, use their deep state agencies in ways that are veiled and deceptive,

01:19:01.000 and that Donald Trump, once again in this instance, appears to create a kind of havoc with his unusual guerrilla tactics in these arena and with the deployment of an agenda that's difficult to understand for casual observers.

01:19:14.000 Perhaps he just does see things in entrepreneurial terms, construction, development, deals.

01:19:20.000 Maybe that's what it is.

01:19:21.000 Certainly I don't feel qualified to say, but I certainly feel more edified and better educated on these subjects haven't listened to you, Neil, with your ever-palescent, glorious, Gandalf-like wisdom dispensed from by the hearth, this time in a safari suit.

01:19:39.000 And we are never more illumined than when in your occasional presence, Lara Logan, rhinestoned and magnificent, offering insights and incendiary, invective, almost, it seems, unvaryingly.

01:19:55.000 Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us for this episode, Lara.

01:19:59.000 Thank you.

01:20:01.000 Thank you.

01:20:02.000 And Neil, it's always wonderful to be joined by you.

01:20:06.000 Always my pleasure, Russell.

01:20:07.000 And thank you, Lara.

01:20:08.000 Lovely to see you again.

01:20:10.000 Pledge both of you!

01:20:12.000 Promise me that we'll do this all over again next week in a new news cycle so that once again we can enjoy the occasionally avuncular, always oracular vernacular of these fantastic contributors.

01:20:25.000 Thanks very much for joining me today for Stay Free Oracles with Neil Oliver, Lara Logan and Russell Brand.

01:20:32.000 See you on Monday for that interview with...

01:20:36.000 Lily Phillips, where we'll be talking about the commodification of the erotic technology, morality, and of course where I'll be contributing from the perspective of a former womanizer and player myself.

01:20:48.000 Remember, if you get Rumble Premium and use the code BRAND, you get a discount as well as access to all of my content, and Lord alone knows there's enough of it, as well as an ad-free experience on Rumble.

01:21:00.000 Thanks for joining us today.

01:21:01.000 See you next week.

01:21:01.000 Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

01:21:03.000 Until then, if you can, stay free.

01:21:05.000 Switch on, switch

01:21:35.000 on. Switch on, switch switch on.

01:21:44.000 Switch on, switch on. switch on.

01:21:53.000 Many switching, switch on, switch on.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - February 06, 2025

Trump in Gaza - a construction project? – SF533

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript