Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice in relation to the Trump administration, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars and a fine of $250,000, plus a 10-year fine for conspiracy to commit perjury, conspiracy to wire fraud and money laundering, and conspiracy to make false statements and cover-up. We're joined by Briana Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders' former press secretary, and Gareth, on-screen assistant, to discuss all of this and much more on this episode of RUMBLE. Stay tuned for a special bonus episode where we chat to a member of the local community about Trump's impending arrest, and what it means for the future of political movements in America. Stay free with Russell Brand here on Stay Free With Russell Brand, whether you love or loathe Trump. We don't care. We believe in your right to freedom, we believe in decentralised power, and we believe that you should live freely as who you are, wherever you are - whoever you are. And we're here to make sure that you're not playing by the rules and regulations you're living up to your potential in a democracy that doesn't allow you to do so. In this episode, we're going to be talking about the political movements that lead to Trump's rise, and why we should all be fighting for what's best for you, not by playing by them, and how they can help you live up to the rules you're being played by them in the best possible way possible, and not by the ones we can have the best version of democracy and freedom we can achieve their full potential, and that we can all live in the most authentic version of freedom and justice and dignity and freedom and dignity, and the freedom we all have in all of our lives, no matter where we are in the world we're living in the only democracy we're in the country we can find it. Stay free, and stay free, wherever we're at. - Russell Brand - Stay Free, We Don't Care, We'll See The Future, We're All of Us, We Can't Be Wrong, We All We Know That, All We Can Have It All We'll Talk About It, We Do It, And We'll Have It, and We're Not Better Than That, And That's Good Enough, And So Much More! -
00:02:05.000What glorious show is ahead of you if you stay with us.
00:02:09.000Wherever you're watching, we only do the whole show in its entirety, unexpurgated on Rumble.
00:02:13.000If you're watching us on YouTube, click over to there around the 20-minute mark, because that's when we start really kicking into some serious news and some heavy, heavy truths.
00:02:44.000A new martyr that if allowed to rise, Phoenix Light would rescue us all.
00:02:47.000Let us know in the chat what you think about that because we'll be responding to your questions, particularly from a member of our locals community.
00:02:54.000We'll be chatting to you In there, we've got some fantastic guests coming on.
00:02:57.000We've got Brianna Joy Gray, who was Bernie's former press secretary.
00:03:01.000What I'm going to ask her about, Gareth, on-screen assistant, is I'm going to ask her, do you think that there was a sort of an emergent rise in populism around 2016, you know, when Bernie was running to be the Democrat leader, when Trump was on the rise, that the Democrat Party decided to crush within its own ranks and to double down on centralised authoritarianism And that we could have a different type of politics.
00:03:55.000That sounded almost, I would say, climactic.
00:04:00.000I don't even know what emotion that's conveying.
00:04:05.000Let's have a look at how it was conveyed elsewhere on the mainstream media.
00:04:09.000After all, part of our function on this show as well as building a movement to meaningfully respond to systemic corruption is to Analyse mainstream media reporting to see what tropes and tricks they get up to.
00:04:20.000We're going to be talking about more than whether or not these charges are, you know, trumped up, whether or not it's a misdemeanor that's being turned into a felony.
00:04:26.000We're going to be talking about more than whether the Steele dossier that was funded by legal fees by the Democrat Party or campaign funds, you know, for legal fees, making it a highly comparable case.
00:04:36.000We're going to be talking about more than just the minutiae.
00:04:38.000We're going to be talking about the philosophical We don't care here on Stay Free with Russell Brand whether you love or loathe Trump.
00:05:01.000We believe in your right to live freely as who you are, whoever you are, wherever you
00:05:05.000are and that Trump and his immense juggernaut of power that he has generated is being resourced
00:05:13.000We're going to be looking at some of his propaganda materials and much of the propaganda material used to bring him down.
00:05:18.000We're going to be citing Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky.
00:05:20.000We're going to be having a hell of a time and still a little bit of time for winky jokes.
00:05:24.000That's what we call them in our country, as well as looking at the rise in inequality that leads to these kind of political movements.
00:05:29.000But before any of that, let's have a look at the mainstream media.
00:05:32.000And if you're watching us on YouTube, remember to click over to Rumble eventually because we're going to do a There's a bit of British reporting on AstraZeneca that just makes you sigh.
00:05:44.000It makes you sigh with the recognition that the whole time you were right and that what was revealed about power during that period of time is still playing out and it's still not being addressed.
00:05:55.000But first let's have a look at the mainstream media reporting on this story.
00:05:58.000Tonight, security in New York City is ramping up.
00:06:02.000Less than 24 hours from now, Mr. Trump is expected to depart Mar-a-Lago, arriving at LaGuardia Airport before his historic and unprecedented court appearance in Lower Manhattan.
00:06:26.000This is what most people think, I suppose, is when you know that it's ultimately, or at least initially, a misdemeanor to spend campaign funds in that way.
00:06:56.000That would be a much better story, let me tell you.
00:06:59.000It's not genuine concern about illegitimate action, is it?
00:07:04.000It's obviously an attempt to derail Trump's ongoing successful campaign where, astonishingly, he's up to 30 points ahead of Ron DeSantis.
00:07:13.000In spite of Ron DeSantis becoming something of a darling of the post-Tea Party territory that Trump emerged from, What we consider to be an interesting aspect of this is, of course, the inadvertent martyrdom of Donald Trump.
00:07:29.000Your own Ralph Waldo Emerson said, The martyr cannot be dishonoured.
00:07:33.000Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame.
00:07:36.000Every prison a more illustrious abode.
00:07:40.000Let's see how the mainstream continue to martyr Donald Trump.
00:07:44.000On Tuesday, Mr. Trump will spend the night at his Trump Tower apartment, already protected by Secret Service and an enhanced NYPD detail.
00:07:53.000Along busy 5th Avenue, barricades have been set up as far as the eye can see.
00:08:04.000If only we had some kind of magnifying device, the kind of magnifying device that I use when reporting on this story that makes everything seem much worse and much more important than it is.
00:08:25.000Also, it's just people are flocking, but that could also just be people going shopping.
00:08:29.000Look at these people dressed in white with bag straps over their shoulder.
00:08:32.000One woman so astonished by Trump's impending arrest, she put a hat on.
00:08:37.000The region, the police presence here also only expected to grow in the coming hours.
00:08:41.000A carefully coordinated presence only expected to grow.
00:08:44.000So it's like everything is about the amplification of the story.
00:08:48.000We talk a lot about the spectacle that is generated by the media, don't we?
00:08:52.000And it's in evidence here, this is something we can talk to Joy Brianna Gray about, is that both sides are participating in the creation of a spectacle that prevents meaningful democracy or the redistribution of power ever taking place.
00:09:03.000We're not even talking about the redistribution of wealth, we're talking about the redistribution of power, the ability for you to control and run your own
00:09:36.000Images and messages must follow one another without interruption.
00:09:40.000But silence is exactly that blip in the circuitry, that minor catastrophe, that slip which on television, for instance, becomes highly meaningful.
00:09:50.000A break laden now with anxiety, now with jubilation, which confirms the fact that all this communication is basically nothing but a rigid script An uninterrupted fiction designed to free us not only from the void of the television screen but equally from the void of our own mental screen whose images we wait on with the same fascination.
00:10:21.000It's been oft said that since 2016 Even the ongoing condemnation of him on outlets like MSNBC and CNN and all of the fake news media that he would disavow amplified his success, benefited him as much as it benefited them.
00:10:38.000In a sense, they are in an ongoing pact.
00:10:45.000I know loads of you think that Trump is the anti-hero that he purports to be, and maybe he yet will be, but we do have a four year term in office by which to evaluate the principles that he ran on and how they were executed.
00:11:00.000Let us know in the comments if you think Trump is the real deal.
00:11:04.000Let us know if you think that anyone could make a difference within a system as corrupt as this one.
00:11:09.000Certainly much of his rhetoric is potent and powerful.
00:11:12.000We'll have a look at this, a bit more of this mainstream propaganda that's, you know, plainly anti-Trump.
00:11:18.000Then we'll look at Donald Trump's response video and you'll see how he's just so masterful at managing his side of the narrative.
00:11:25.000Let's look at the mainstream propaganda.
00:11:27.000Coordinated security effort by the NYPD, court officers, US Marshals, and the Secret Service.
00:12:18.000We've got a new propaganda campaign in town!
00:12:21.000That's very interesting because when you think about how January 6th has been reported on wherever you stand on that issue, whether you think of it as a demonstration or an insurrection, It's becoming increasingly plain that this sectarianism within United States politics and media is beneficial to centralised power.
00:12:41.000I feel, and have felt for a long time, that you should find people that you politically or culturally disagree with and be really, really nice to them and give them a big cuddle.
00:12:49.000That way perhaps we can form new and meaningful alliances against this kind of hysterical propaganda.
00:12:55.000Although I will say, the mainstream media reporter He's so enthusiastic about it, I'm starting to like him.
00:12:59.000And they're not all bad in the mainstream media.
00:13:00.000We've got a mainstream media journalist coming on later because we saw him respond to those riots in France.
00:13:32.000Let us know in the chat and the comments.
00:13:33.000It's being treated like a ceremony, that you have to inflate the egregiousness and seriousness and the severity of Trump as a character in order to justify it.
00:13:43.000And it is even, it's got some of the same, a very good observation, Gareth, it's got some of the same paraphernalia, the crash barriers, the reports, the punditry.
00:14:03.000Yeah, some of the people were wearing dresses that Disney characters were wearing.
00:14:07.000In fact, it's one of the things that made me believe in conspiracy theories, which I don't, because I insist on using facts and highfalutin quotes to tell news stories.
00:14:15.000But if you look at the number of people at the Royal Wedding that were wearing Disney princess dresses, you'll go, is this real?
00:14:20.000Like, you know, when you see, like, the Simpsons predict stuff.
00:14:23.000You know, the Simpsons predicted Trump and all that kind of stuff.
00:14:26.000They're always predicting things on The Simpsons.
00:15:14.000If it is really, really serious, this hush money to Stormy Daniels and the misuse of campaign funds, then I'll tell you, the Democrat Party ain't going to look good, because you know they're up to all that kind of gear.
00:17:54.000I think that the vulnerable people of the world must learn to love one another.
00:17:59.000That we should be looking to form new kinds of alliance and that you should be able to express yourself culturally and sexually in a consensual context however you want to.
00:18:06.000Other people's religion is none of your business.
00:18:08.000Other people's racial identity is irrelevant.
00:18:10.000That we must all come together and confront centralised power.
00:18:20.000Let's start using our membership forum to poll people, to get their information, to create a new manifesto.
00:18:25.000Not where I'm going to try and run for government or anything like that, but where we will support selected candidates.
00:18:30.000I guess that's what his point now, isn't it?
00:18:32.000And a lot of the kind of, I guess you could call it propaganda or whatever's coming out, is that he's saying that there's now the establishment and the anti-establishment, and what he represents is the anti-establishment.
00:18:41.000And that's, as we kind of know, Well, he sort of does.
00:18:44.000That's difficult to deny, even using Martin Guri, the revolt of the public's analysis, that the terms left and right are irrelevant now.
00:18:50.000Now what you have is the centre and the periphery.
00:18:52.000And he is a peripheral figure, which seems somewhat ludicrous because he's a billionaire tycoon.
00:18:57.000Rhetorically, he has the ability to say things like they're not going to do anything because they're all tied up with big pharma, big business corporations.
00:19:04.000But later in the show, please, God, if we have time, if this mainstream media clip doesn't keep yielding so much content, we'll be Looking at some of the things that happened under Obama's presidency, Biden's presidency, and Trump's presidency, and you'll be astonished to learn that all of those administrations benefited the ultra-rich, benefited the elites.
00:19:30.000Think of redistribution of power, so that you have power in your own life, so you have meaning in your own life, so that who you are can be freely expressed within reason.
00:19:40.000Why do you need an image for fingerprints and handcuffs?
00:19:48.000This is the most overproduced thing I've ever seen.
00:19:51.000It's like the opposite of how we do shows.
00:19:54.000Me, please, will you look at these papers?
00:20:14.000There's some crash barriers out, there's going to be a trial, they're making it sound worse than it is because they want to bring down Trump as an opponent rather than address the problems that led to Trump in the first place, systemic corruption, a Democrat party that's been hollowed out and supports corporate elites, they're not going to do anything about that because they can't do anything about that because of the way they're funded, so they're going to keep He's banging on about Trump the whole time, even though they know that that elevates and amplifies his message.
00:20:37.000They've made the calculated risk that they're going to be able to somehow get through this, either by incarcerating him or making it unacceptable for him to run.
00:20:45.000So that's the way they're rolling the dice.
00:20:47.000They're certainly not going to do anything about Big Pharma, certainly not going to do anything about lobbying, certainly not going to do anything about insider trading, certainly not going to bring about a peace deal in the war between Russia and Ukraine while the military-industrial complex continues to benefit.
00:20:58.000All those things are off the table, so I guess what we're left with is theatre and spectacle. So the division shouldn't be between
00:21:04.000people that think Donald Trump is the answer and people that think that
00:21:07.000Donald Trump isn't the answer. We should find a new accord, a new agreement. Those
00:21:11.000of us that think that centralist politics is utterly corrupt and will never
00:21:14.000deliver anything more than further corruption.
00:21:18.000To fly out of New York and return to Mar-a-Lago.
00:21:21.000I have to see one more helicopter shot of Mar-a-Lago.
00:21:25.000I'm gonna go there on a golfing holiday.
00:26:06.000I imagine that he's probably having a snack now and probably eating it in that sort of cocky way that some people eat nuts and carry on talking to you.
00:26:15.000And they sort of like maybe drop a nut like... Like as if they've got a tic-tac dispenser using their own little fist as a tic-tac dispenser.
00:26:21.000Yeah, he's probably using his fist as a tic-tac dispenser right now on the plane.
00:26:33.000Is there mainstream media coverage of it?
00:26:35.000Can we see like, is there, I bet someone, there's there's a shot somewhere of a Donald Trump getting on an airport, on an airplane going up some stairs.
00:26:42.000And will he be able to get all the way up them?
00:26:45.000Unlike the current incumbent of the White House, that poor old doddering staggering sod, always looking like he's gonna get blown over by a propeller at any moment.
00:26:53.000Yeah, see if we can get, we'll carry on watching Trump's thing, but we'll say, we're going to get you now live footage of Donald Trump going up some stairs or walking across some asphalt.
00:28:19.000We showcased so many different types of rallies and speeches of Donald Trump and this one is entirely different as now we are taking skybox camera footage of his motorcade taking him This is like a spectacle, and a magnificent spectacle.
00:28:47.000Guy Debord, who wrote The Society of the Spectacle, talks about terrorism and who is a judge to be a terrorist.
00:28:56.000This is like, you know, those of us that are my age, and that would have to include me, No, that helicopter shot of a motorcade evokes but one image.
00:30:53.000I feel pretty confident in all this stuff.
00:30:55.000What's so interesting about all this is, you know, we've spoken about the similarities and corollaries to the Hillary Clinton case with regard to Russiagate and the Steele dossier, but what we don't talk about maybe is about The law and when you're talking about what maybe Jon Stewart was saying or people on the left are saying, well, you've got to obey the law and everyone's got, you know, that's why Trump deserves this.
00:31:14.000But like when we know things about, for example, and we've talked about it so much, but about senators and Congress people owning stocks and shares in the companies that they regulate, we know that they're making millions and millions of dollars.
00:31:27.000Yeah. In what is presumed or what is apparently legal.
00:31:32.000Now, should that be legal? No, it shouldn't.
00:31:34.000So when you're talking about the law, yes, fine.
00:31:36.000OK, if he's guilty of this and it's only him that's guilty of this
00:31:40.000and the Democrats aren't guilty of anything, then maybe he deserves it.
00:31:43.000But there are things going on that should be prosecuted.
00:31:47.000I mean, I think that is Guy Debord's point about terrorism, Gareth, who is legitimized in doing that.
00:31:52.000And look at that, they've arranged it like he's being given a hero's departure.
00:31:55.000There are flags, there are cars pulled over.
00:32:17.000What they are at risk of doing, even while condemning Trump, is creating a new chapter in his mythology.
00:32:24.000Because the simple fact is, they cannot attack truthfully, authentically, or in good faith.
00:32:29.000Let's have a look now at some statistics around wealth inequality.
00:32:32.000We'll leave that magnificent and soon-to-become iconic shot of Trump's departure to his own arraignment.
00:32:38.000The richest 1% make 84 times as much as the bottom 20% in the US average income before taxes and public assistance by Household Income Group in 2019.
00:32:48.000Just have a look at that little graph that shows you how wealth inequality in the country of the United States plays out.
00:32:54.000Average incomes for the richest Americans have skyrocketed.
00:32:57.000You know that during that pandemic period, it was beneficial for the most powerful interests in society, big tech, big pharma, big government.
00:33:06.000Detrimental, not just for the poorest Americans, but for ordinary Americans, for ordinary business people.
00:33:12.000Look at the last three administrations in the United States of America, and in a sense, we are all part of the United States of America now, unless we are in Stalingrad or Beijing.
00:33:22.000Under Obama, Obama admits 95% of income gains go to the top 1%, that's in 2013.
00:33:26.000Trump, in 2020, the top 1% of Americans have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90%.
00:33:29.000in 2020. The top 1% of Americans have taken 50 trillion from the bottom, 90% Biden in 2022.
00:33:36.000The 10 richest men double their fortunes in the pandemic while the incomes of 99% of humanity fall.
00:34:06.000Top 1% of Americans took 50 trillion from the bottom 90%.
00:34:10.000Listen to this from Tromsky on the strategy of distraction.
00:34:13.000The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction, which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, Gareth was just talking about people in Congress owning stocks and shares in companies they're supposed to regulate, by the technique of flood or flooding, continuous distractions and insignificant information.
00:34:33.000Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and
00:34:42.000All information that we could call that the hermeneutics of the powerful there.
00:35:19.000Create problems, then offer solutions.
00:35:22.000This method is also called problem reaction solution.
00:35:25.000Cast your mind back for a couple of years now, and this is not conspiracy theory stuff that I'm declaring here.
00:35:32.000This is just notice how events chronologically unfolded.
00:35:36.000So, it creates a problem, a situation, referred to cause some reaction in the audience, could be a war, could be another kind of crisis, to create some reaction in the audience.
00:35:48.000So this is the principle of the steps that you want to accept.
00:35:50.000For example, let it unfold and intensify urban violence or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant's security.
00:35:59.000is the applicant's security, laws and policies to the detriment of freedom, or create an economic
00:36:05.000crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights under dismantling of public services.
00:36:11.000Lovely little 10-point plan on distraction by Professor Chomsky who is about as left-wing,
00:36:16.000he's probably far far right, he'll probably be with me in Mar-a-Lago, Professor Noam Chomsky.
00:37:07.000We're going to be talking to her about the rise of populism and the inability of centralised, corrupt political organisations ever to address the needs of the American public and the global population.
00:37:20.000Should we have a look at a... Earlier on today, we made an in-depth piece about the nature of the charges levelled at Trump and the level of ineptitude and corruption that led to his rise in the first place.
00:37:54.000And also, is more time being spent on trying to bring down Donald Trump than assessing the problems that led to his rise?
00:38:02.000I know a lot of you love Donald Trump.
00:38:05.000You see him as the representative of your anger, of anti-establishment rhetoric, of possibility for meaningful change.
00:38:12.000My personal feeling is that during Trump's presidency, not enough changed to warrant his rise.
00:38:18.000That's something we can continue to talk about in the chat.
00:38:21.000I believe what's required is systemic change.
00:38:23.000This particular case, and we'll get into the logistics of it to a degree in a moment because of course it's steel sealed and no one really knows exactly what's going on, seems comparable at least to the Democrats' funding of the Steele dossier through legal funding, if not exactly the same.
00:38:38.000But isn't that what characterises our time?
00:38:41.000That the differences between the two parties, the differences between their misdemeanours and their felonies is not significant enough And isn't Donald Trump, above all else, serving as a kind of distraction and focal point for democratic ire, rather than an opportunity to meaningfully change the systems that led to his rise in the first place?
00:39:01.000We are coming on the air with historic news for the first time ever.
00:39:06.000In a way they are still committing the sins they've always committed around Donald Trump.
00:39:14.000Using hyperbole and excitement, even from the position of condemning Trump, they celebrate Trump.
00:39:20.000Most likely, as many people have commented, that this case will increase Donald Trump's chances of success.
00:39:26.000You can only imagine that his detractors know that and understand it and are willing to do it anyway.
00:39:32.000I'm beginning to think that what Trump's primary function is in the media space is as a kind of magnet for attention in order that ordinary corruption and hypocrisy can continue.
00:39:43.000Whether these charges are legitimate or not and whether or not this will amplify Trump's message and serve as a kind of martyrdom It's not what I'm primarily interested in.
00:39:52.000What I'm interested in, and I believe you should be most interested in, is why is Trump still occupying the same cultural space that he has been occupying ever since he first stood for election?
00:40:05.000He represents the voice of many dispossessed and angry Americans.
00:40:08.000And even if you believe, like I do, that Trump isn't going to meaningfully address those problems, why are those problems not being addressed elsewhere?
00:40:16.000First the historic indictment, now the political fallout.
00:40:20.000President Biden deliberately avoiding the topic.
00:40:25.000But Republicans tonight are slamming it as a Democratic DA trying to take out President Biden's top political opponent with a bogus legal case.
00:40:33.000You already know that these legal charges are somewhat trumped up.
00:40:37.000That it's a misdemeanor that's being conflated with a felony.
00:40:40.000That there are comparable crimes, if indeed they are crimes, which I suppose we're saying that they are, Although the indictment is still sealed, every indication is that this case is extremely flimsy on the merits and especially shabby given the historic import of the first ever indictment of a former president.
00:40:52.000to discredit Trump, which was similarly a misuse of campaign funds.
00:40:56.000Although the indictment is still sealed, every indication is that this case is extremely
00:41:00.000flimsy on the merits and especially shabby given the historic import of the first ever
00:41:13.000The payment was agreed to near the end of the 2016 campaign, and then Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid it with his own funds and Trump reimbursed him across 2017.
00:41:23.000In the Trump Organization books, the payments were called legal expenses, suggesting they were for ongoing legal work.
00:41:28.000This was dishonest, but at most is a misdemeanor.
00:41:31.000The idea of going after a former president with all the political consequences involved on such a piddling charge was so self-evidently absurd that no minimally self-respecting prosecutor would do it.
00:41:41.000So it sounds like something illegal happened, but something that is a minor misdemeanor is not likely the genuine motivation for all of this furore.
00:41:50.000It seems that what's more likely the motivation is a desire to bring down Trump and the desire to bring down Trump has remained consistent.
00:41:58.000Then there's the problem that the campaign finance offence would be a violation of federal and not state law and such a crime has never been prosecuted in New York.
00:42:05.000There's also a question of whether the statute of limitations has expired on these supposed offences and on the credibility of the two star witnesses, confessed fraudster Michael Cohen and a porn star among other issues.
00:42:16.000Whatever else is true about this case, it seems that it's not the kind of robust catch-all case that is required to bring down a figure like Trump without the accompanying risk that it turns him into a kind of political martyr.
00:42:28.000And also what I feel like morally and ethically is you know and I know that the motivation behind all this is not Oh no!
00:42:37.000What's actually happening is Trump continues to be a threat to centralised authoritarian politics, so he's having to be taken out of the game.
00:42:45.000Whether you like Trump or don't like Trump, what you should be interested in addressing is the systemic problems that have led to his rise and the ongoing inability to address them.
00:42:55.000What this case shows us, as well as the media reporting of it, is that the media needs Trump And the Democrat Party needs Donald Trump, precisely because they are unwilling to make the necessary legislative and political changes that would make Trump irrelevant.
00:43:10.000From the beginning of his rise, Donald Trump has been able to say, this is a corrupt system, I stand between you and them, they don't want me, they want you, and I'm preventing them from getting you.
00:43:20.000And this rhetoric remains incendiary and effective because no one is willing to make the kind of changes that would make Trump redundant.
00:43:28.000If you could meaningfully change big pharma prices, I know a bill has been introduced but I also know that it's ultimately meaningless and doesn't go far enough.
00:43:36.000If you did not have a Democrat party that was funded by the military-industrial complex, a financial industry that was in the thrall of Wall Street, then Donald Trump would not be such a powerful and effective opponent.
00:43:46.000Donald Trump would become cut off at the knees if the Democrat party, or indeed the Republican party, or any political movement, was interested in, and committed to, representing the needs and requirements of ordinary working Americans.
00:43:58.000It's the inability and lack of desire to address this that's led to Trump's rise, and it continues to fuel the Trump phenomena right now, when some people thought, oh this is over now, this is irrelevant.
00:44:07.000The fact that he's polling higher than Ron DeSantis, the fact that his arrest is garnering so much attention, shows you that there's still an unaddressed need at the heart of our political systems.
00:44:16.000That there is a requirement for a new kind of politics.
00:44:19.000You know me, I don't personally believe that Trump is the answer.
00:45:03.000This trimmer is the future of grooming, and some say the greatest ball trimmer ever.
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00:45:44.000Oh, it's really actually quite satisfying because you can hear it.
00:45:51.000Diva Dog Mum, most of Congress don't know how to speak or interact with the ordinary Americans, aka voters constituents who they're supposed to be representing, and they don't truly want to interact with them.
00:46:02.000That's what the rise of populism is facilitated by, is this inability to engage in ordinary discourse, don't you think?
00:46:41.000Do you think that this ongoing carnival that surrounds Trump is an emblem of the ongoing inability to address the systemic problems that created Trump in the first place?
00:46:56.000And will you tie into that a little, because of your personal experience and understanding of Bernie Sanders, how a centralist and establishment politics, in particular, in this case, obviously, the Democrat Party, Have a vested interest in crushing voices that resonate with ordinary people, whether or not you believe those voices to be legitimate and effective.
00:47:16.000Look, I do believe there is a way to confront Trump to say, if you're someone who's invested in him not becoming president, to make sure that's a reality by occupying the space that he occupied so effectively in 2016.
00:47:28.000The reason that Trump was able to be so effective was because there was in fact a void, a void of politicians who are willing to call up, call out the corruption of both our And although many on the left would say that Trump's critiques of corporate politics, of the swamp, etc., were made in bad faith and that his tenure in the White House proved that he didn't really have any real commitment to addressing some of the foundational policies he talked about on the campaign trail.
00:48:00.000It is true that when he was campaigning in 2016, he was talking about things that were real vulnerabilities for Hillary Clinton, talking about things like trade deals that sent American jobs overseas, talking about how unseemly it was that Hillary Clinton had this close relationship with the banks.
00:48:14.000And as a former colleague of mine, Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs Magazine pointed out in a really prescient article in early 2016, in some ways that was a perfect matchup.
00:48:23.000Um, Hillary Clinton's vulnerabilities against Donald Trump's strengths and her also inability to hit him on his weaknesses because they were shared weaknesses.
00:48:31.000And Bernie Sanders represented a version of Trump, somebody who, because he spent so many years as an independent operating outside of the Democratic Party, critiquing the Democratic Party and its excesses, someone who ran, was the only candidate who was running without taking any corporate donations, was really free to make the kind of arguments Trump was arguing.
00:48:48.000and potentially actually land the punch when he was in office.
00:48:52.000And that was a real threat to the Democratic Party.
00:48:54.000And so you saw similar maneuvers to rig that primary and keep Bernie out of a general election
00:49:00.000context like the ones that you're seeing right now, I think.
00:49:03.000It seems like your analysis and the comparisons that you made are a demonstration of the requirement
00:49:09.000for voices that are outside of the rigid and rigged centralist conventional political system.
00:49:16.000If we discount the possibility that this case is really about upholding and protecting the law,
00:49:22.000and I imagine that most of us don't believe that this is really about what...
00:49:26.000You use campaign funds to pay hush money?
00:49:43.000Is it that they would, in fact, rather face Trump than DeSantis?
00:49:47.000Is it that they thought that the Republican Party would implode?
00:49:50.000Why would they take this course of action, even though we can discount amending their own policies to be truly representative of all near Americans?
00:50:05.000Yeah, I think it's genuinely confusing because I don't think it's strategically viable.
00:50:09.000For one, there is an anticipated, anticipated charges coming out of Georgia, which I think are a much stronger case, a much more substantive case that have to do, it's expected that they will have to do with a call Donald Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to change the election result.
00:50:27.000I think it's a big mistake the Democratic Party has made to make so much of the focus of, you know, stop this deal in 2020 and 1-6 about the events that happened on 1-6 and the kind of optics and the kind of the visceral presentation of people, quote unquote, storming the Capitol, instead of what I think is much more substantive crime, which was the President of the United States trying to call around and lean on state elected officials to come up with fabricated Fake undemocratic election results.
00:50:59.000That being said, so that's the one issue.
00:51:01.000Why not wait for the Georgia case, which is more substantive than the New York case?
00:51:06.000One answer to that that I've heard some people put forward is that the Attorney General Bragg basically is getting it from all sides in New York.
00:51:13.000Progressives are very unhappy with him because of some tough on crime policies that aren't really geared toward lowering the crime rate in the state, but are punitive and trying to You know, it seems as a political effort to posture and gain more favorability among conservative voters.
00:51:29.000At the same time, conservative voters don't like him because it's perceived to be, you know, progressive.
00:51:37.000And that this is seen as a good political win for him because everybody in New York or so many people in New York hate Donald Trump.
00:51:43.000So this could just be someone screwing the pooch on a local level for their local benefit, despite it having long-term negative implications for the Democratic Party.
00:51:52.000Because we know that the Democrat Party have in the past financially supported MAGA candidates in order to intoxicate the electoral pool and elevate them to the forefront of the voters' minds, and indeed to make them the candidate going forward, it's impossible for us to approach an issue like this in good faith.
00:52:12.000In a sense, Brianna, don't you think this demonstrates how, I mean, this literally spectacular contemporary politics has become, that we cannot take these events in good faith, that we have to examine them strategically from the perspective of, as you said, optics and propaganda, because ultimately
00:52:33.000Neither, in my view, political party can be relied upon to meaningfully represent the people they were elected to, and they focus instead, with their allies in media, on creating more bifurcation and opposition, instead of genuinely focusing on improving the lives of ordinary Americans.
00:52:49.000I think in some ways the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to make Americans believe that we live in a bifurcated country.
00:52:56.000We, you know, we have open conversations right now, the elected politicians talking about some great separation that's going to happen and people are drawing maps carving up the United States of America as though all of us don't have relatives, you know, blue people don't have relatives that live in the red parts of the country and vice versa.
00:53:12.000As though we don't have pockets of blue in states that go blue because of how dense cities are, but have many, many red people, you know, considered leading people in more rural areas.
00:53:24.000I find that to be really anti-democratic and really anti-American and a problem, especially because the reality is that when you look at what American voters' priorities are and how they feel about various policies that have been put forward to address those issue areas, there is wide agreement.
00:53:41.000So you have 7 out of 10 Americans supporting policies like Medicare for all.
00:53:44.000You have 62 percent of Americans supporting a $15 minimum wage.
00:53:47.000Florida, which went for Trump in 2020, had on its ballot a $15 minimum wage, which passed
00:53:53.000with 60 percent of the vote, in red Trump country Florida.
00:53:57.000Eighty-three percent of Americans want there to be negotiation over prescription drug prices
00:54:15.000And I think that Donald Trump gave a lot of lip service to those needs, unfortunately didn't bring those to fruition and instead focused on a tax break, 83% of which, the benefit of which went to the top 1%, and other kinds of the same kind of crony capitalism that we're used to from establishment candidates.
00:54:31.000But it is a lane that is very popular.
00:54:33.000I think that's what happened with Bernie in 2016.
00:54:35.000He simply ran in good faith on those policies as someone who could run in good faith in those policies, because again, he was the only one not taking corporate cash.
00:54:42.000And I think that's so central to this.
00:54:44.000Being free from that corporate influence allows you not to just run on these issues, but to stick the landing.
00:54:51.000So when we hear so much about how divided the country is, and when we're, I think your Chomsky example
00:54:56.000was so important in the earlier segment, when we're asked to focus, when so much of the news cycle
00:55:02.000is on how people feel about something like a drag show, or whether or not a certain book can be banned,
00:55:08.000people can have their different feelings about those kinds of things and choose to raise their
00:55:11.000families and move through the world the way that they want to.
00:55:14.000But why is it that when asked what your political priorities are,
00:55:17.000none of that comes anywhere near the top, economic issues as they always have been are near the top.
00:55:21.000And yet we get so little attention paid to those issues.
00:55:24.000Well, it's because both corporate parties aren't willing to do anything about those issues
00:55:28.000if they will negatively impact their corporate donors.
00:55:32.000I think you're absolutely right, Brianna, and I feel sometimes that we are continually agitated into a kind of primal state where we're not able to correctly assess reality.
00:55:44.000I was recently publicly called far-right.
00:55:48.000Because I had conversations with people that operate in what you might call, once would have called, the conservative media space.
00:55:56.000Explicitly what I was talking about in some of those conversations was this.
00:56:01.000I asked this question to sort of a very conservative online broadcaster, namely Ben Shapiro, to not be opaque.
00:56:08.000And I said, like, you are very traditional, orthodox Jewish guy.
00:56:11.000It's pretty clear what your views are on abortion and stuff like that.
00:56:15.000Would you be willing to stand on a platform based around decentralization and maximization of local democracy alongside people that were passionately pro-trans, passionately pro, for example, the BLM movement?
00:56:34.000That he would be willing to form alliances of that nature.
00:56:37.000Now, we can query whether or not that, you know, I tend to try to have good faith conversations with people not out of my credulity, although I'm sure that is a component, but out of my hope that it is possible to change the world.
00:56:52.000That it's going to require, as you said in your example, where there are pockets of blue and red and vice versa, it's going to require new alliances, otherwise we're going to continue to occupy this jammed channel of cultural conflict when new alliances are possible.
00:57:06.000So I think that Your contribution to the conversation in your last answer was important.
00:57:10.000And how do you think we can continue to reframe arguments around the economic issues that are important to people?
00:57:15.000And do you think it's possible for a new independent movement to be created?
00:57:18.000Or do you, like I know a lot of people do, think that you can change the Democrat party from within or the Republican party from within, depending on your biases and alliances?
00:57:26.000Or do you think you have to do all of those things simultaneously?
00:57:30.000Well, to take the last part first, I am at this point quite skeptical of efforts to change the either party from within.
00:57:39.000As someone who works for Bernie Sanders, obviously running as a Democrat, despite identifying as an independent, I think in many ways he was The best possible candidate, the best possible moment to test whether or not you really could change things from within the Democratic Party, whether you could really infiltrate.
00:57:55.000And what you saw, not just in 2016, when Democratic Party insiders admitted to the primary being rigged, people like Donna Brazile, and even Elizabeth Warren coming out and saying,
00:58:06.000admitting that the DNC in its own legal briefing admitted that it did not feel like it needed to be impartial
00:58:44.000People focus in politics too much on whether someone is a good person or a bad person, a nice guy or a bad guy.
00:58:50.000My critique of Trump, liberals will encourage you to critique Trump on the basis that he is crude or uncouth or, you know, mean and throwing toilet paper or paper towels at hurricane victims and, you know, those kinds of You're right.
00:59:10.000And Joe Biden is supposed to be a nice guy who likes ice cream and loves his family and the Pope and that's supposed to mean something to me.
00:59:22.000None of it means anything at all to me.
00:59:24.000What I look at when I am looking to support a candidate, to the extent that I'm still invested in electoral politics, is whether they take money from corporate interest.
00:59:33.000It is not an accident that Joe Biden won when he took more money from the pharmaceutical companies than anybody else in the Democratic primary.
00:59:39.000It's not an accident that Joe Biden won and then immediately appointed a, as a senior advisor, Steve Reschetti, a former pharmaceutical lobbyist, and appointed as a secretary of defense, former head of Raytheon.
00:59:53.000And Joe Biden, in a weirdly candid moment, potentially a senior moment, admitted as much at some point on the campaign trail that, you know, when you pay, You're going to go to the front of the line.
01:00:02.000It doesn't mean that I'm going to do whatever you want me to do, but of course you get access to the front of the line, and that's what politics is.
01:00:07.000And if we want to have any hope of getting all of the things addressed that Americans prioritize, whether it's health care or a living wage or stronger labor protections or just shrinking military budgets and less military interventionism, you have to have candidates that aren't taking money from those interest groups, point blank, period.
01:00:24.000In a way, it's the only question that matters, because if you can answer that question correctly, if you can get money out of politics, you will get meaningful systemic change.
01:00:32.000Of course, both parties are ultimately sewn up by the same financial interest.
01:00:36.000And of course, if you pay money, you do get to the front of the line, which is also the policy at Legoland, I happen to know, because once I was willing to pay it, and I still feel guilty about it, as a matter of fact.
01:00:46.000Brianna's podcast, Bad Faith, drops every Monday and Thursday.
01:00:50.000Brianna, why don't you come to the United Kingdom that we live in and do your podcast from the community festival that we do every year between July the 14th and July the 17th.
01:01:00.000Do the podcast live from there and we'll talk about anti-corporate stuff.
01:01:04.000If that's an invitation, I'll look at flights.
01:02:04.000We've got the mainstream reporter that first came to our attention in this moment with his incredible bravery.
01:02:10.000Before we say hello to Brett, and what else would he be called other than Bruce, coming from Australia, let's have a look at the moment where he first came to our attention.
01:02:28.000As chaos continues over the nation's planned pension reform, Time after time, police sending off baton chargers to try and force back the protesters.
01:02:37.000We're very quick to criticise the mainstream media on this channel because usually they deserve it.
01:02:41.000Let us know in the chat and the comments if you agree with us.
01:03:35.000And I said, let's go down to Placidal Opera, where that night was the big general strike and where most of the concentration of the protesters and the police were, and to see what's going on.
01:03:47.000So we got down there and you saw what happened.
01:03:49.000I mean, that happened, I'm quoting myself, it did happen time after time.
01:03:53.000There were many police charges and I learned that delicate cycle which goes on between the protesters and police which is the protesters for a long time standing around chatting smoking and then decide to up the ante in a way so they start throwing rocks at police and bits of timber and then the police line up and that's when you realize something else is about to happen and they start charging and there's no stopping it once they charge they keep moving you've got to jump out of the way
01:04:22.000Well, you're going to be knocked aside or grabbed and a tear gas starts flying.
01:04:27.000So again, it was just doing my job, which is go and see what happens.
01:04:31.000Do you not worry, Brett, that if you spend too much time around those protesters, you might, like Laurence Fishburne in the film Deep Cover, get lured into it and yourself become a kind of French radical who opposes centralised neoliberal power and takes to the streets.
01:04:48.000Have you not worried about that, Brett?
01:04:53.000It was the first thing that occurred to me, but I have to say, I did have some great conversations.
01:04:57.000Within that limited, tear-gassy environment, I did get to hear from young people.
01:05:01.000And to be honest, it was mainly people around 20, sort of student age, who I spoke to about their concerns.
01:05:22.000And some people, being young students, do speak excellent English.
01:05:26.000A lot of them were saying they felt it was unfair that this was being forced through by Emmanuel Macron by decree with that unusual wrinkle within the French Constitution which allowed him to bypass Parliament or the Assembly and allow this change, the retirement law, to go through.
01:05:42.000I mean, to be honest, I come from a country where retirement is 67.
01:05:46.000I live in London where retirement is about to become 67.
01:05:48.000So I was curious about why in a country where you have to retire, where you can retire at 62, the fact that it's being raised to 64 was so controversial.
01:06:04.000In a way, Ben is the real hero of the piece.
01:06:06.000French Ben, who's fixing everything, he's translating, he's not even on camera, he's the wind beneath your wings.
01:06:14.000And that's an appropriate metaphor, Brett, because it often happens to you, more than once, but once it was captured on camera, where your news reporting is so...
01:06:23.000Charismatic and even erotic that you're literally attacked by the flying creatures of the sky.
01:06:29.000But to see that, you are going to have to join us on Locals, our membership community.
01:06:34.000We're going to do an additional 15 minutes.