Stay Free - Russel Brand - TRUMPED UP CHARGES | Legit or Bullsh*t!? - #106 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

00:00:00.000 So, I'm going to show you how to get to the top of the mountain.

00:00:20.000 First, you need to go to the top of the mountain.

00:00:30.000 Then, you need to go to the bottom of the mountain.

00:00:40.000 Then, you need to go to the top of the mountain.

00:00:50.000 Then, you need to go to the bottom of the mountain.

00:01:00.000 you Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.

00:01:03.000 You're watching Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:01:05.000 We are a little bit late because we have been swimming in a deluge of propaganda.

00:01:12.000 Trump's trial awaits us.

00:01:16.000 His speech from Mar-a-Lago has been delivered.

00:01:20.000 We can now unpack the 34 charges and decide for ourselves whether they are misdemeanors or felonies and how they stand up against the great war crimes of recent history.

00:01:34.000 We're going to be having a deep look at how the crimes of Trump stack up against the crimes of Biden, Obama, Bush and Clinton.

00:01:43.000 And what laws we uphold.

00:01:46.000 What are our true values?

00:01:48.000 And, in a sense, how this spellbinding, hypnotic show is distracting us from deep, deep truths.

00:01:57.000 We've got a fantastic guest coming up.

00:01:58.000 We've got Adam Andrzejewski.

00:02:00.000 What's amazing about this guy is he spends all his time bothering people that have access to, I would say, files of incredible corruption.

00:02:11.000 Let's have a look at Donald Trump ignoring the mainstream media's pleas for a quote and then look at a virtual child getting an exclusive.

00:02:22.000 Have a look.

00:02:23.000 President Trump, will you come speak to us?

00:02:26.000 President Trump?

00:02:28.000 Trump then walking out of court without a word.

00:02:30.000 How did you plead, President Trump?

00:02:32.000 How did you plead?

00:02:35.000 There you go, the mainstream media unable to get Donald Trump's attention.

00:02:38.000 You'll have noticed that every single detail is being amplified and magnified, essentially because there's very little to look at in reality.

00:02:46.000 But now, we live in a world where at Jar Sosa 25 is able to extract an exclusive on the street.

00:02:56.000 Check this out.

00:02:57.000 Donald Trump, tell them you innocent, bro.

00:03:01.000 You innocent.

00:03:02.000 I remember that, bro.

00:03:04.000 Amazing!

00:03:05.000 It's a persecution, not a prosecution.

00:03:08.000 In a way, I think you can see right there, Gareth, not in microcosm, but in that opposition, the problem that we have now.

00:03:21.000 The mainstream media once had sole access to information.

00:03:26.000 Now we all have access to information as well as the ability to communicate it.

00:03:31.000 So what the mainstream media now requires is either authority and legitimacy, which it can no longer make claim to because of the way that it is funded, because of its biases.

00:03:42.000 So now what it needs is to be able to delegitimize the opposition.

00:03:48.000 The fact is, is that a kid on the street has extracted more information from Donald Trump than MSNBC, than CNN.

00:03:58.000 And so, in a way, the theatre and the performance of media has become more valid than its actual access to facts.

00:04:10.000 Yeah I think one of the things that the mainstream media were really excited about with this case was that obviously cameras weren't allowed inside the courtroom and so one of the comments I think Robert Sherman who's coming up later was really excited and a piece that we were looking out of his yesterday where he was saying you know it's like the old days it's because people can't use social media inside the courtroom they're going to have to come straight out and report to the mainstream media so this was a chance for the mainstream media to It's extraordinary really.

00:04:35.000 I guess that's what we're living in.

00:04:37.000 this case. They tried and failed with Trump and a kid on the street using

00:04:40.000 social media has got more access. It's amazing. It's extraordinary really. I

00:04:45.000 guess that's what we're living in. Centralised authority is being

00:04:49.000 continually challenged. They have the opportunity to revise their models and

00:04:54.000 accept more democracy, accept more decentralisation, accept that there are

00:04:59.000 different ways of reporting, different ways of seeing reality, or double down on

00:05:04.000 authoritarianism by condemning and smearing peripheral figures, whether they

00:05:08.000 are in media or in politics.

00:05:11.000 Their legitimacy is, I think, being not only eroded, but almost completely vanquished.

00:05:18.000 When you see them Criticizing and condemning Russia for the arrest using the espionage act of that Wall Street Journal journalist while Assange remains in prison in Belmarsh.

00:05:33.000 You recognize that the hypocrisy is so pronounced that there's barely anything that you can trust them on.

00:05:43.000 They must know that putting Trump in this position gives him the opportunity to do stuff like this.

00:05:50.000 I think about this often.

00:05:52.000 If you are one of the virulently anti-Trump folk that really are passionate about your hatred of Trump, that see him as the epitome of the problem, I wonder how you feel when you watch him at Mar-a-Lago And he is able to say there was the first impeachment hoax, there was the hunt a Biden laptop thing, there was the attempt to ally me with Russian disinformation.

00:06:16.000 I wonder how they process that.

00:06:19.000 I wonder how they are able to say no Biden is significantly different in these these ways.

00:06:26.000 I don't know how you can legitimize your condemnation anymore other than in the sort of Vulgarity of Trump say, because I'm talking about how they condemn and criticize him.

00:06:36.000 Interesting what you're saying about the Hunter Biden, because obviously that was broken on.

00:06:40.000 Twitter wasn't it and then repressed on Twitter and it's interesting at the moment with all the mainstream reaction to Trump and of course we saw Matt Taibbi recently in Congress and this issue of kind of mainstream versus social media or independent journalism is really playing out with this and you really see in the Trump case the way in which the mainstream media focus on such minutiae like whether or not Donald Trump stares in a certain direction or you know Moves from left to right.

00:07:09.000 And yet at the same time, there's the kind of vilification of independent journalists like Matt Taibbi.

00:07:13.000 And you really feel that that's where truth is coming from now.

00:07:16.000 Independent journalism, even through like social media.

00:07:19.000 And we're seeing it play out in front of us, the ridiculousness of the mainstream and its focus on the minutia.

00:07:25.000 You're right, like they sort of, they question the credibility of a journalist like Matt Taibbi. 0.97

00:07:31.000 But then, as you say, on the mainstream media, they try to sort of suck Yeah.

00:07:36.000 analysis out of the angle of Donald Trump's head in a courtroom.

00:07:41.000 Oh, he's walking this way.

00:07:42.000 He's definitely angry.

00:07:45.000 All they have now is speculation undergirded by lower third graphics.

00:07:50.000 That's what they can offer now.

00:07:52.000 But just endless pontification.

00:07:55.000 Here's Trump in the sacred Mar-a-Lago.

00:07:59.000 He's Camelot. 0.56

00:08:00.000 One of the things I enjoy most is the way Trump's over first in Mar-a-Lago is if it's like a new

00:08:05.000 Jerusalem.

00:08:06.000 They even came here to Mar-a-Lago.

00:08:09.000 That means sea to lake.

00:08:10.000 In case you didn't know.

00:08:12.000 Does it mean sea to lake? Yes, it does.

00:08:14.000 I can confirm now that that's what it actually means.

00:08:17.000 Let's have a look at a series of clips from Trump's rebuttal and address from the sacred Mar-a-Lago.

00:08:25.000 The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to

00:08:25.000 Let's have a look.

00:08:32.000 destroy it. 0.55

00:08:33.000 Thank you.

00:08:34.000 Thank you.

00:08:37.000 They attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations.

00:08:43.000 Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:08:44.000 Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.

00:08:47.000 Impeachment hoax number one.

00:08:49.000 Impeachment hoax number two.

00:08:51.000 The illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago, right here.

00:08:58.000 That's like one of his main points, is that it's an unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago.

00:09:02.000 Yeah, leave Mar-a-Lago alone. 0.86

00:09:03.000 Don't drag Mar-a-Lago into this.

00:09:05.000 Have we come so low that we've... We've not suffered enough.

00:09:10.000 For God's sake, what are we, dogs?

00:09:13.000 We're animals, for God's sake.

00:09:15.000 Please, once we start invading Mar-a-Lago... What have we got left?

00:09:20.000 Who are the criminals now?

00:09:22.000 Because what is Mar-a-Lago?

00:09:23.000 I don't actually know.

00:09:24.000 I can't, like, when you see it from above, is it a golf course?

00:09:27.000 Is it, like, a hotel?

00:09:28.000 I still don't fully... All I know is I want to go Mar-a-Lago.

00:09:32.000 Yeah, I bet it's fully booked.

00:09:34.000 The amount of press it's getting these days.

00:09:36.000 Gosh, if you struggled to get a single dwelling, you'd have to sleep in a janitor's cupboard, in a closet.

00:09:43.000 And this is a bit where he talks again.

00:09:45.000 Again, if you don't like Trump, and I know loads of you absolutely adore him, but if you don't, I wonder how you deal with the Hunter Biden laptop thing.

00:09:53.000 I wonder how you deal with the Steele dossier stuff, like the Clinton administration spent, or the Clinton campaign, excuse me, spent money on.

00:10:03.000 And where we go later, when we're going to analyse this with a little more depth in a minute, we start talking about how successive American presidents in any properly judicious government would be facing trial for war crimes.

00:10:20.000 Even if you feel like this is a super serious thing and that Donald Trump should be like, you know, banged up for misappropriation of campaign funds or double entry bookkeeping or hush money to Stormzy Daniels, how do you compare that with war crimes?

00:10:35.000 We're going to look at that in some depth in a moment.

00:10:37.000 Let's have a look at a bit more Mar-a-Lago stuff.

00:10:40.000 Just recently the FBI and DOJ in collusion with Twitter and Facebook In order not to say anything bad about the Hunter Biden laptop from hell, which exposes the Biden family as criminals and which, according to the pollsters, would have made a 17 point difference in the election result.

00:11:03.000 And we needed a lot less than that, like about 16.9.

00:11:06.000 It would have been in our favor, not my favor, our favor, because our country is going to hell.

00:11:19.000 He's able to bring up significant points that seem more important than the amplification of a misdemeanor to a felony.

00:11:29.000 When he talks, too, about bringing the world to the brink of Armageddon, you feel like, what are our priorities here?

00:11:38.000 Should we have a look at some of the charges in a little more DL.

00:11:43.000 So we can try and get a handle on this thing.

00:11:46.000 So the 34 charges hinge on hush money payments the former president allegedly made to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

00:11:53.000 Yet paying hush money to prevent publication of an adulterous sexual encounter is not a crime.

00:11:57.000 Alexander Hamilton did it.

00:11:59.000 Wow.

00:11:59.000 He's got a whole musical about him.

00:12:02.000 Yep.

00:12:03.000 So did thousands of other high-profile Americans.

00:12:05.000 None of them ever disclosed such payments on public corporate records.

00:12:08.000 Okay, so that in itself is not distinct.

00:12:11.000 In order to turn a questionable misdemeanor into an even more questionable felony, Bragg has had to allege that the reason Trump made false entries was to cover up other crimes.

00:12:20.000 Here is where the indictment is at its weakest.

00:12:22.000 Although the indictment itself does not specify which crimes were allegedly in Trump's mind, the statement of facts indicates that they generally related to election issues.

00:12:30.000 But if it's that, then the Steele dossier, the Russiagate stuff, the Hunter Biden laptop, they all feel like they exist in the general environment.

00:12:40.000 They're kind of comparable Uh, cases of, like, the use of funds or trying to manage the outcome of an election.

00:12:48.000 It's not distinct or discreet enough.

00:12:51.000 The theory is that Trump hid the real reason for the hush money payments for the purpose of helping his campaign rather than to hide the adulterous affair from his wife, children and business associates.

00:13:00.000 It's weak at best and nearly impossible to prove at worst.

00:13:06.000 Okay, sort of not really enough distinction, but have a deeper look at this.

00:13:11.000 If you're watching this on YouTube now, click over onto watching us on Rumble, because we're going to look at this in a little more detail, comparing it not just to sort of other potentially frivolous or necessarily amplified misdemeanors, but to the most incendiary charge that could ever be levelled at a global leader, war criminality.

00:13:32.000 Certainly a charge that's being levelled at Vladimir Putin, But is it a charge that could be levelled at recent US Commander-in-Chiefs?

00:13:42.000 Here's the news.

00:13:43.000 News, have a look at this.

00:13:43.000 No, here's the FN News.

00:13:53.000 The historic unprecedented charges against Trump have landed.

00:13:58.000 Do they justify the media frenzy and is what Trump has done any worse than other former presidents of the United States?

00:14:07.000 It isn't.

00:14:09.000 Before we get into my perspectives, let's see how the mainstream media are telling you this story.

00:14:15.000 Tonight, Donald Trump, the first president in American history to become a criminal defendant.

00:14:21.000 All day, New York City on high alert.

00:14:22.000 It's weird when they say high alert, it's just people with their hands in their pockets, people just standing around.

00:14:27.000 This hyperbole is what much of the case is about.

00:14:30.000 I've often thought that with the British monarchy, the crowns, the paraphernalia, is to distract you from the fact that these are just some people, actually.

00:14:38.000 They're just people.

00:14:39.000 When you look at it cosmically, from outer space, the Queen, God rest her soul, How much of the amplification, hysteria, magnification of this case is actually serving entrenched systemic power?

00:14:53.000 Is what Trump's done that bad when compared to what other presidents have done?

00:14:58.000 We're talking on the scale of war criminality. 0.67

00:15:00.000 So again, just for you lot, some of you really love Donald Trump and I'm okay with that.

00:15:04.000 Some of you really hate Donald Trump and I'm okay with that.

00:15:06.000 What I'm interested in is systems.

00:15:08.000 What I'm really interested in is change.

00:15:12.000 Real change being delivered to all of us.

00:15:14.000 A genuine conversation and the opportunity for people who hate Trump and love Trump to come together and recognise our systems are not working.

00:15:21.000 Our media is lying to us.

00:15:23.000 Trials like this are being used as mass distractions.

00:15:26.000 Huge amounts of money are being conveyed to the military-industrial complex.

00:15:31.000 Finland's joining NATO.

00:15:32.000 Julian Assange is still in prison.

00:15:34.000 And we're talking about misdemeanors being amplified into felonies.

00:15:38.000 You have to learn to put aside your personal feelings.

00:15:40.000 You have to look at systemic corruption.

00:15:43.000 Police lining the streets around Trump Tower as Trump raised his fist, giving a wave as he stepped into a car.

00:15:49.000 Like they're actually having to talk about the nature of it.

00:15:52.000 He waved his fist, giving a wave. 0.98

00:15:54.000 Then I think it was this finger, the index, that went down next, and then the dirty finger, then the wedding finger, then this little pig he stayed at home though. 0.91

00:16:02.000 As his motorcade made its way downtown, sources tell ABC News that apart from his secret service detail, the former president rode alone. 0.69

00:16:10.000 No lawyers, no family, no advisors with him.

00:16:12.000 He's alone.

00:16:13.000 He's ruined everything.

00:16:14.000 So this is sort of anti-Trump, isn't it?

00:16:16.000 Because if this was a pro-Trump channel...

00:16:18.000 Donald Trump needed nobody.

00:16:20.000 He used only his own breath and farts to pump himself full of courtroom power for the arraignment, a word you now know about and care about.

00:16:29.000 So the inflections, even around the minor details, inform us what the media outlet wants us to believe.

00:16:36.000 The very fact that there's this much hysteria shows you something significant is happening.

00:16:40.000 Even though it's ultimately ephemeral amplification that we're dealing with, there is something underneath it.

00:16:45.000 And what I believe that is, and what Trump's success has always been based on, is all of us know the system is broken and it doesn't work.

00:16:53.000 All of us can see that Biden was elected on a set of pledges and promises that he hasn't delivered on.

00:16:58.000 I know loads of you that are political experts will go, well, hang on a minute, he did that big farmer thing.

00:17:03.000 Yeah, that's not really made a difference.

00:17:05.000 It's only a few products.

00:17:06.000 It's not going to affect their profits.

00:17:08.000 Oh, didn't he release everyone with cannabis?

00:17:10.000 That's not made any difference.

00:17:11.000 There was no one in federal prison for cannabis.

00:17:14.000 All of the administration, all of the legislation, it gives the impression of change without affecting elite What I believe Trump is, was, perhaps will forever remain, is a kind of organic wrecking ball and rhetorical genius.

00:17:30.000 My personal belief is that Donald Trump is not able to change the systems of corruption whether he wanted to or not.

00:17:36.000 I also believe that these charges are ultimately a way of removing him from the presidential candidacy, I believe that's true, but the main thing, the potent energy that has to be addressed is people are sort of shuddering, shaking, vibrating with rage against this corruption and centralised power, whether it's media, political or financial, is trying to repress it and locate it all in the figure of Trump and these charges, which I know some of you think are serious and a lot of you think are ridiculous.

00:18:02.000 Approaching criminal court in lower Manhattan, Trump posting on social media, seems so surreal. 0.98

00:18:07.000 Wow, they are going to arrest me.

00:18:10.000 That's a weird diary.

00:18:11.000 This is part of Trump's success.

00:18:13.000 Like, because he is like... That's the sort of stuff all of us read on WhatsApp messages to one another.

00:18:17.000 Can't believe it.

00:18:18.000 Can't believe I'm actually going to jail now.

00:18:20.000 Gonna get the old fist ready for the fist pump. 1.00

00:18:22.000 What he does brilliantly is he accesses us at the point of the personal.

00:18:27.000 I believe that's where he has managed to harness all of this energy.

00:18:31.000 If you are a pro-Trump person, then you can ask yourself what he did in office that was better than any of his predecessors, and I know perhaps you'll point to Record around not starting any new wars, for example.

00:18:41.000 But what I will say is try to focus on systemic corruption rather than the individuals.

00:18:46.000 That's what I'm trying to do, because I find this exciting as well, because it's a circus, because I've been grown on it.

00:18:51.000 I've been schooled in these images.

00:18:52.000 I watched the OJ trial.

00:18:54.000 I saw the assassination of JFK.

00:18:56.000 I understand the semiotics of shooting a motorcade from the sky.

00:19:00.000 I know that is evocative and powerful, but really try to think about it for a moment.

00:19:04.000 We're on There are limited resources.

00:19:07.000 There are systems of power that seem unimpeachable through democratic process.

00:19:11.000 What are we going to do?

00:19:13.000 Outside court, small groups of supporters and opponents.

00:19:16.000 Police keeping the peace as the former president arrived.

00:19:19.000 It's weird because seeing that I love Trump, I believe Stormy Daniels,

00:19:23.000 is being reduced to a kind of a binary sport.

00:19:27.000 It's not that.

00:19:28.000 And even if it is that, let's say it is that in fact, that shows you that that's not going to create solutions.

00:19:33.000 That's just more fanfare, more hyperbole, more hysteria.

00:19:36.000 What we have to focus on is what's happening down here.

00:19:39.000 What's happening politically?

00:19:41.000 How are these parties funded?

00:19:42.000 How is democracy functioning?

00:19:44.000 And while we settle for reform on one hand, like minor reforms, oh we got this healthcare thing through, or things are gonna get slightly better over here, powerful institutions and powerful interests are carrying on unimpeded.

00:19:55.000 I mean that literally.

00:19:56.000 Right now.

00:19:57.000 Your homes are being taken over by Blackstone.

00:20:00.000 Assange remains in prison.

00:20:02.000 Finland join NATO.

00:20:03.000 Huge amounts of money funneling to an unwinnable war.

00:20:07.000 Let's face it, Russia versus America, no one wins. 0.86

00:20:10.000 Inside, Trump surrendered.

00:20:12.000 He was arrested, booked, and processed like a common criminal.

00:20:15.000 Like a common criminal, which we on this channel believe him to be.

00:20:18.000 Let's look over now at Fox.

00:20:20.000 A martyr like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, or even, actually, yes, I'm gonna say this, Jesus!

00:20:26.000 Jesus.

00:20:27.000 Jesus was arrested and murdered.

00:20:29.000 What's amazing about that is that the reporter just goes... instead of...

00:20:35.000 Trump was taken upstairs in an elevator usually reserved for judges.

00:20:35.000 Jesus!

00:20:39.000 Stone-faced officers Stone-faced officers.

00:20:43.000 That's telling you nothing is happening, because every minor detail is being amplified.

00:20:48.000 Imagine if they reported on Julian Assange like this.

00:20:50.000 Julian Assange, still in prison, didn't do anything wrong.

00:20:53.000 Snowden, still exiled in Russia, just was basically a hero.

00:20:57.000 So, again, don't get caught up in whether you like or hate Trump.

00:21:00.000 I'm sorry to tell you, that's actually irrelevant.

00:21:02.000 Whether you loathe Trump or love Trump, you are doing what the system wants you to do, because you're caught up in the cyclone of this.

00:21:08.000 Instead of thinking, Wait!

00:21:11.000 How do we change it?

00:21:14.000 Will you come speak to us, President Trump?

00:21:16.000 Yeah, he's just going to break off from that and have a casual chat.

00:21:20.000 President Trump, what's going on?

00:21:22.000 Who are you? 1.00

00:21:23.000 Oh, do your research, shut up. 1.00

00:21:23.000 Where are you going? 1.00

00:21:25.000 Then that first picture, Trump at the defendant's table.

00:21:28.000 That first picture, that first tender kiss, your first lover, the virginity of the pictures finally taken. 0.99

00:21:36.000 Ridiculous. 0.96

00:21:37.000 It's amplifying everything into significance. 0.92

00:21:39.000 When that takes place, you better be sure that something else is happening.

00:21:43.000 I don't mean in a conservative ...spiritorial way.

00:21:45.000 I don't believe that there's any card race going, let's use this Trump trial and underneath it will slip through all this legislation.

00:21:50.000 I'm just meaning the whole spectacle itself.

00:21:53.000 While our eyes are here, it's business as usual.

00:21:55.000 You better believe billions are moving around.

00:21:57.000 You better believe that the truly powerful are doing their thing right now.

00:22:02.000 Whether you believe he's a martyr or the worst person ever to have lived, I believe when it comes to the truly powerful, you don't know their names.

00:22:08.000 His shoulders slumped, hands in his lap, flanked by his lawyers.

00:22:12.000 Shoulders slumped, hands in his lap, heart broken inside, a silent tear, a look into the middle distance, a broken man. 0.99

00:22:20.000 Trump sat boldly with an erection firing little seeds of justice out of the tip of his purple dick because that's red and blue combined because he's the messiah of a bipartisan new dawn. 1.00

00:22:33.000 It's beginning. 0.99

00:22:34.000 Pleading not guilty to those 34 felony charges that he repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.

00:22:48.000 I mean even when you just read that, that does sound like concealed damaging information, bit Hunter Biden laptop, used funds, bit steals dossier.

00:22:56.000 Now I know if you're a super pro-democrat person then you're going No!

00:22:59.000 It's different!

00:23:00.000 It has to be different than that!

00:23:02.000 It has to be different!

00:23:03.000 But it's not different enough, is it?

00:23:06.000 That's our whole argument.

00:23:07.000 It's not different enough.

00:23:09.000 If you want to stop the rise of someone like Trump, if that's your deal, you have to offer something meaningfully different.

00:23:14.000 We are going to change America.

00:23:15.000 We are going to change these systems.

00:23:17.000 We are going to help you live a meaningful life.

00:23:19.000 We are going to help you awaken to who you truly are.

00:23:22.000 And how are we going to do that?

00:23:24.000 We're going to stop our relationship with the powerful dominant interests that currently control the trajectory and agenda of power.

00:23:31.000 That can only mean this.

00:23:32.000 Get money out of politics.

00:23:33.000 Create more decentralised democracy.

00:23:35.000 No one's talking about that because on the significant issues, they all agree.

00:23:39.000 Trump orchestrated a criminal scheme with his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen and his friend, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, to pay hush money to at least three people, including porn actress Stormy Daniels.

00:23:51.000 Hush money?

00:23:52.000 Pecker? 0.99

00:23:53.000 Porn actress? 1.00

00:23:54.000 I mean, what's going on? 0.95

00:23:55.000 Incredible soap opera.

00:23:57.000 Try to access for a moment the great depths within your own consciousness.

00:24:01.000 Try to experience experience that you're in a universe right now that at the

00:24:04.000 submolecular level miracles are occurring even as we speak that we can create 1.00

00:24:08.000 new realities do not remain in this dominion of idiocy. An effort allegedly to 0.99

00:24:13.000 prevent damaging stories from tipping the balance. They can't say all of

00:24:17.000 this and not talk about the Steele dossier. As you know I am NOT pro-Trump I am pro-change

00:24:22.000 I am pro democracy I am pro you. These are felony crimes in New York

00:24:26.000 State no matter who you are.

00:24:29.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:24:30.000 We live in a real fair system.

00:24:32.000 And that's why there's not a long history of former American presidents killing kids around the world and never facing any consequences.

00:24:39.000 And you already know that.

00:24:41.000 And you sort of have been trained not to care about that.

00:24:44.000 And that tells you something very, very significant indeed.

00:24:47.000 We just accept that when you're in that position, you do things that are unimaginable, that by any sensible metric would be illegal.

00:24:56.000 So if we're going to talk about the illegality of these 34 misdemeanors and amplifying them into felonies because they could have led to other crimes and they could be about concealing information in order to XYZ, forget that it sounds pretty similar to some stuff that the Democrats have done.

00:25:10.000 Why are we talking about that when what we could be talking about is building a better world where it's not business as usual for American presidents to bomb and kill children and then be rehabilitated as cozy uncles?

00:25:22.000 Trump may be the first former president to face criminal prosecution, but that fact in and of itself is a damning condemnation of the US system of impunity that has long permeated our system of American exceptionalism.

00:25:34.000 So the very notion that underwrites this from a liberal, neoliberal perspective is Trump may think he's above the law, but oh no he's not.

00:25:43.000 Whoever you are, don't matter if your name's Trump or Joe Blow, you're gonna face justice.

00:25:47.000 Let's see if that holds up.

00:25:49.000 The case against Trump would be a mere footnote of history, albeit a wild one, if the US actually believed in holding presidents and other top officials accountable for their crimes, including those committed in office.

00:26:01.000 George W. Bush continues to enjoy his rebranded life as the nice painter man who can joke around with Ellen DeGeneres.

00:26:08.000 In fact, most people probably think Ellen DeGeneres is worse than George W. Bush now because she's rude to the staff. 1.00

00:26:13.000 What she didn't do, Backstage at the Ellen Show is bomb children and sheer hugs with the Obamas. 1.00

00:26:20.000 Dick Cheney is somehow still alive and popping his head out to remind us that his dark soul is still lurking.

00:26:27.000 The truth is that all of them should be serving substantial prison sentences for directing and orchestrating the gravest of criminal activity, war crimes. 0.88

00:26:35.000 And what that tells you is when corruption is that extreme, it is systemic.

00:26:39.000 If a system can accommodate illegal wars and war criminality, it is the system itself that needs to be held accountable.

00:26:47.000 If Cheney, Bush, Obama, Clinton, both of them, are all war criminals, then that tells you, uh-oh, we're going to have to redress the system.

00:26:55.000 If you address and change the system, you start to impact the truly powerful organizations and institutions that control it.

00:27:03.000 So Trump For all of his amazing rhetoric, or, you know, depending on your view, his heinous crimes, is a sideshow that stops you addressing the system itself is corrupt and needs to be changed.

00:27:15.000 And as long as you're caught up in this from either perspective, you're not going to hold these people and this system accountable.

00:27:20.000 Trump's prosecution is not evidence that our much vaunted justice system can actually be applied fairly and evenly to all, even a former president.

00:27:28.000 What it really shows is that it's possible to prosecute a cartoonish villain, even one who served as president, who happens to be widely despised by the so-called adults in the room.

00:27:38.000 When Barack Obama first took office, he assured the CIA that no one would be prosecuted for running a secret global kidnap and torture regime under Bush and Cheney.

00:27:47.000 We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards, Obama famously said later.

00:27:51.000 So Obama, remember all that excitement.

00:27:53.000 I do.

00:27:54.000 I remember when Obama stood on that stage with his family and Oprah Winfrey, I was thinking, oh my God, this is historic.

00:28:00.000 This is gonna mean change.

00:28:02.000 But secretly, while all the fanfare was happening, Obama had assured Cheney, Bush, and the powers behind them, nothing's gonna change, they don't need to worry about those war crimes.

00:28:11.000 What that tells you is it's a continuum, a continual line.

00:28:15.000 Later he referred to the heinous program as, we tortured some folks.

00:28:19.000 We tortured some folks.

00:28:21.000 Imagine for a moment that people that are being tortured don't exist beyond some wall in your imagination.

00:28:28.000 Imagine that there's someone that you love was tortured as a result of that regime and that Barack Obama would just seamlessly take the baton from Bush, Seamlessly pass it to Trump.

00:28:39.000 That there's a baton that passes through.

00:28:41.000 I know those of you that love Trump believe that what he is is an anti-establishment radical.

00:28:46.000 Fine, if you believe that.

00:28:47.000 Have a look at his time in office and we can continue that conversation.

00:28:51.000 What I am contesting is the system is so robust that it can accommodate the fluctuations between the Democrat and Republican Party because it owns both of them.

00:29:00.000 You know that by now, right?

00:29:01.000 Obama would go on to approve more drone strikes in his first year in office than President Bush carried out in his entire administration.

00:29:08.000 The alleged peacemaker, very much like his predecessor, didn't he win a Nobel Peace Prize?

00:29:12.000 I think he did!

00:29:13.000 I think, like, while bombing children, you win a Nobel Peace Prize. 0.70

00:29:15.000 That's not a good system!

00:29:17.000 A system that goes, oh, but it's more complicated than that.

00:29:19.000 No, it isn't!

00:29:20.000 The alleged peacemaker, very much like his predecessor, should be considered for the label of international war criminal. 0.67

00:29:26.000 Let's move on to present day and President Joe Biden. 0.99

00:29:29.000 Now forget the incompetence, forget the lying, forget the ineptitude, the ridiculousness, the senility. 0.98

00:29:36.000 Let's focus on war criminality. 0.84

00:29:38.000 Joe Biden's first strike and his expansion of the US drone war occurred just weeks into his presidency when at least four members of the Popular Mobilization Forces were killed in strikes in Syria and Iraq.

00:29:49.000 Previously, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi steadfastly refused to even consider impeachment proceedings against Bush.

00:29:55.000 The system depends on such bipartisan impunity.

00:29:59.000 Bipartisan impunity.

00:30:00.000 That means that they are safely contained in a continuum.

00:30:03.000 That means that Trump's trial and Trump's charges are a distraction.

00:30:08.000 And if you want to fetishise this and say, no, it's important that the law is upheld, Well, what law do you think is more important?

00:30:13.000 These laws or those?

00:30:15.000 And, you know, perhaps say both.

00:30:16.000 Well, let's do both then. 0.99

00:30:17.000 Because, no, I don't see this shit on the news. 1.00

00:30:20.000 Why is this shit not on the news? 1.00

00:30:21.000 Because if you put this on the news, you'd have to make meaningful change. 0.99

00:30:24.000 You'd have to make meaningful change.

00:30:27.000 No prosecutor is reviewing Trump's rollback of US limitations on killing civilians abroad, and there will be no indictment for the women and children killed under his watch.

00:30:36.000 So there were some, according to this.

00:30:37.000 If he goes down legally, it would be for his tawdry or white-collar style infractions, but not for any war crimes he committed as president.

00:30:45.000 This we do not do.

00:30:46.000 In fact, the US government threatens to use force against any international body that even thinks of doing so.

00:30:52.000 History has proven a knack for timing, and around the same moment Trump was learning of his impending criminal charges, Russian President Vladimir Putin was hit with a war crimes indictment by the International Criminal Court or ICC.

00:31:04.000 Putin's invasion of Ukraine has created an interesting predicament for the US Empire on these matters.

00:31:09.000 President Joe Biden said last year that Putin is a war criminal and has suggested he should stand trial for the Ukraine war.

00:31:15.000 He should be prosecuted as a war criminal, right? 0.64

00:31:18.000 Because of the crimes.

00:31:19.000 Not because his name or what he looks like or whether he poos himself or whether he's shaking in a bunker.

00:31:24.000 Because of the crimes, right?

00:31:25.000 But Biden's administration has slow-walked cooperating with the ICC.

00:31:29.000 In fact, the Pentagon has blocked such cooperation for fear that prosecuting Putin would set a precedent that other nations could readily cite to demand equal application of the law to US officials and personnel.

00:31:41.000 So there you are.

00:31:42.000 All the while that the Biden administration is saying that Putin is uniquely a tyrant and a war criminal, Secretly, they're like, we better not prosecute this because we're war criminals, because the system is corrupt, because the type of change that's required will never be discussed by us.

00:31:56.000 So whether it's Putin is a baddie, or Trump is a baddie, or Clinton is great, all of that rhetoric is fine because it's inconsequential.

00:32:03.000 When it becomes consequential, like, yeah, let's stick Putin before a court.

00:32:07.000 Guess who else is going to court?

00:32:09.000 Biden! 0.89

00:32:09.000 Obama! 0.89

00:32:10.000 Bush!

00:32:11.000 No way.

00:32:12.000 No change.

00:32:13.000 Not for you.

00:32:13.000 Not ever.

00:32:14.000 Enjoy your TV show, kids.

00:32:16.000 Enjoy your TV show while the system is doing just fine.

00:32:20.000 Since the end of World War II, the US government has waged a judicial proxy war over its vanquished enemies and less powerful nations under the banner of international justice.

00:32:29.000 The Nuremberg Principles, which governed the trials of Nazi and Imperial Japanese war criminals, represented a powerful framework for holding even the most senior officials accountable for war crimes.

00:32:39.000 But there was a crucial caveat built into the system.

00:32:43.000 These principles were designed never to be applied to the US and its allies.

00:32:47.000 Since 2002, the US, by its own law, will never subject its personnel or those of its allies to the ICC, and reserves the right to conduct a military operation inside the Netherlands, where the court is based, to liberate its own accused war criminals.

00:33:01.000 My God, if it ever happens, they're sending in the Navy SEALs.

00:33:04.000 But they would never, you know, use that to blow up a pipeline.

00:33:08.000 That must have been Russia blowing up their own pipeline as a sort of prank on Russia. 0.68

00:33:13.000 For more than two decades, the U.S.

00:33:15.000 position on international prosecutions has been to oppose a permanent international court that would have jurisdiction equally over all war criminals, regardless of their nationality or position of power.

00:33:25.000 That would be fair.

00:33:26.000 That would be justice, rather than a television show, which we all enjoy, but let's remember it's a television show.

00:33:31.000 Instead, it's encouraged ad hoc tribunals set up to prosecute war criminals from places like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and other African nations.

00:33:39.000 And remember what did Trump say? 0.99

00:33:41.000 Bullshit countries. 1.00

00:33:42.000 You can't say bullshit countries! 1.00

00:33:47.000 Let's set up some bullshit trials in bullshit countries so that we don't ever have to face the consequences of our war crimes. 1.00

00:33:53.000 And also, Donald Trump, he said bullshit countries. 1.00

00:33:57.000 All we did was meant bullshit countries. 1.00

00:33:59.000 We didn't say it, though. 0.98

00:34:01.000 The whole purpose of this from the U.S.

00:34:03.000 perspective is to ensure that these laws will never be applied to Americans or their friends.

00:34:08.000 And now that stance is revealing its moral bankruptcy in the face of Putin's crimes in Ukraine.

00:34:13.000 All of this has made a farce of the notion of international law.

00:34:17.000 The prosecution of Trump should thus serve as a reminder that the US does not actually believe in holding its most powerful citizens accountable for even the most serious of acts.

00:34:17.000 It's a farce.

00:34:27.000 And that position has real consequences, including in how it can be weaponized by criminals like Putin. 0.94

00:34:33.000 So there you are!

00:34:34.000 There is something called justice.

00:34:36.000 There is something called law.

00:34:38.000 There is something called systemic corruption.

00:34:41.000 None of that is on trial today.

00:34:44.000 You might believe that Trump's crimes are being amplified in order to generate a political trial.

00:34:49.000 Of course you're right.

00:34:50.000 You may believe that America is doing something just and exceptional in the world.

00:34:55.000 About this, you are very, very wrong.

00:34:58.000 America has a long history of war crimes.

00:35:01.000 America does not represent the people of America. 0.97

00:35:05.000 America represents the corporations, globalist corporations that have no more allegiance to you as American citizens than they do to me as an Englishman or people from Shit hole countries like Rwanda or the Netherlands or Yugoslavia. 0.94

00:35:18.000 Those places are just corporate dominion.

00:35:21.000 And while we're locked into this show trial, which I'll admit is fantastic and fascinating, watching Donald Trump, who I'll admit is fascinating and amazing, whether you like him or don't like him, you're watching him, the ratings are going up, Business is booming.

00:35:34.000 The ads are happening.

00:35:35.000 Even if you hate him, you're watching him, aren't you?

00:35:37.000 You're participating.

00:35:38.000 Or if you love him, you're not addressing this, are you?

00:35:41.000 We're all playing the game. 1.00

00:35:43.000 We are allowing them to bludgeon us into dull idiocy. 1.00

00:35:46.000 We must awaken now. 1.00

00:35:48.000 We must demand real systemic change.

00:35:50.000 We must look for new alliances.

00:35:52.000 But that's just what I think.

00:35:53.000 Let me know what you think in the comments and the chat.

00:35:54.000 I'll see you in a second. 0.98

00:36:07.000 Got it right eventually, because he did actually say shithole countries, not bullshit countries. 1.00

00:36:12.000 CTHU1HU, I looked up her porn vids and they're pretty shit. 1.00

00:36:18.000 That's not the research that was required. 1.00

00:36:20.000 Wait a second!

00:36:21.000 Let's see this!

00:36:22.000 Even if Stormzy Daniels' porn vids are any good!

00:36:25.000 She's not even that good at pornography! 1.00

00:36:27.000 I like that we did a whole video there about how this is all we should be looking into war crimes and the military-industrial complex.

00:36:34.000 The real search is, is this any good?

00:36:37.000 This just in!

00:36:38.000 Stormzy Daniels' porn videos ain't even that bloody good! 0.89

00:36:43.000 But!

00:36:43.000 Now here's a person that understands the deep state at depth, who knows how power works and how power obfuscates.

00:36:51.000 It's Adam Andrzejewski from OpenTheBooks.com.

00:36:56.000 We've met before and I thought I loved you then.

00:37:00.000 And Adam, if anything, you've become yet more beautiful.

00:37:04.000 Thank you for joining us again.

00:37:06.000 Mr. Brand, it is great to be here.

00:37:08.000 Thanks for having me back.

00:37:10.000 I'm honored that you would even come back after some of the travesties that took place last time.

00:37:17.000 Adam, thank you for coming.

00:37:18.000 What I want to ask you about primarily is, given the nature of the charges that Trump faces, it's worth investigating whether they are particularly unique or particularly pronounced or specifically and Obviously worse than the types of crimes that ordinarily take place within political campaigns and campaigning.

00:37:40.000 Can you give us any sort of references that perhaps contextualise Trump's charges?

00:37:47.000 Well, it's a sad day for the American people on a lot of levels, Mr. Brand, but specifically, you know, I'm from Illinois.

00:37:53.000 It is the Super Bowl of corruption, and our governors are legendary for their corrupt practices.

00:37:59.000 At a recent point, four out of our last nine governors served time in the federal penitentiary.

00:38:05.000 And so, you know, we've got a unique perspective on this.

00:38:08.000 It is a new era of brass knuckle politics across the entire country. So for

00:38:13.000 example, if you're Hillary Clinton, if you have the Clinton Foundation and it's based

00:38:18.000 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Pulaski County, there's a prosecutor there. And you better

00:38:23.000 be able to justify your quarter billion dollar endowment or the 75% drop in your

00:38:31.000 fundraising between the time you left Secretary of State's office and 2020.

00:38:36.000 If you're Nancy Pelosi, and if you are, you know, if there's a new Republican president, you'll probably get a knock from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and they're going to ask you to justify your stock market trades.

00:38:50.000 If you're President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, the entire family on a new Republican president, I mean, this opens up a whole Pandora's box.

00:38:58.000 It is a troubling moment in the history of the country when a local prosecutor goes after a former U.S.

00:39:06.000 president and leading contender in a major party and decides to arrest I suppose so.

00:39:14.000 So what you're saying is, is you have to have a legitimate and transparent authority to conduct an investigation like this.

00:39:23.000 And it's clear, even from the examples that you have cited, that there is no moral authority.

00:39:30.000 That how would Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi stand up to rigorous investigation?

00:39:35.000 How would The Hillary and Bill Clinton Foundation look under scrutiny in their relationship with some of their donors.

00:39:45.000 And more broadly, there is so much systemic corruption, the relationship between politics and finance and the military industrial complex,

00:39:55.000 lobbying itself, the number of people in Congress that own stocks and shares in companies they regulate.

00:40:00.000 It's so murky and so messy.

00:40:02.000 And in fact, obviously that's to some degree what led to the rise of Donald Trump.

00:40:07.000 His anti-establishment rhetoric being what most people who love him find appealing about him.

00:40:13.000 That if you are going to start to address these types of issues legitimately,

00:40:17.000 not as part of a political witch hunt to get rid of a sort of a potential

00:40:23.000 or an obvious potential opponent, then you're gonna have to dismantle the machine itself.

00:40:29.000 Well, jailing your political opponents is no solution.

00:40:32.000 And look, Trump never had a chance here.

00:40:36.000 Take a look at the case from 2011.

00:40:37.000 A twice-running former presidential candidate, a former U.S.

00:40:42.000 Senator from North Carolina, a Democrat, John Edwards.

00:40:46.000 Well, the Justice Department came in and indicted him on six counts.

00:40:52.000 For allegedly taking a million dollars worth of campaign cash, actual campaign cash, to cover up his affair with a mistress.

00:41:01.000 Okay, he beat those charges.

00:41:02.000 Five were eventually dismissed.

00:41:04.000 The one that went to the jury that rendered a decision, he was not guilty.

00:41:09.000 In this case, Trump is being prosecuted for not paying $130,000 for Stormy Daniels and disclosing it as a campaign expense.

00:41:19.000 The exact opposite of John Edwards.

00:41:20.000 So you can't have it both ways.

00:41:22.000 This is a flimsy case, and quite frankly, it's a sad moment for the American experiment.

00:41:29.000 You can't call America an experiment at this stage, Adam.

00:41:33.000 Clearly, some results are already in.

00:41:36.000 Now, I wanted to ask you a little more about earmarks, which I believe you're going to demonstrate to us is a great example of bipartisan corruption.

00:41:47.000 At the moment, I don't even know what earmarks are.

00:41:50.000 Will you please, as you have done ever since the moment I first clapped my hungry eyes upon you, educate us, Adam?

00:41:57.000 Well, earmarks are the currency of corruption in Congress, Mr. Brand.

00:42:01.000 So, earmarks, they were dead for 10 years.

00:42:04.000 There was a ban on them because they were so abused in the past.

00:42:08.000 Earmarks is quite simply a legal bribe, doled out to maximize the power of the House Speaker.

00:42:14.000 They dole out earmarks.

00:42:16.000 on these big spending bills, the omnibus, minibus spending bills, to make them bipartisan on the votes.

00:42:22.000 So you give away a member pet project in their district, and then you grease the skids for the vote.

00:42:28.000 So in the last omnibus spending bill in December of this year, it was a $1.7 trillion bill.

00:42:35.000 There was 7,500 earmarks in that bill, costing the American taxpayer $16 billion.

00:42:42.000 And some of the examples are just absolutely outrageous.

00:42:45.000 So you've got You've got a million dollars on a macadamia nut research earmark in Hawaii by the U.S.

00:42:54.000 You've got a million dollars doled out to the Great Blacks in Wax Museum by Kawame Nfume, a congressman from Baltimore who actually has a wax statue in the museum.

00:42:54.000 Senator.

00:43:09.000 You've got You've got a million dollars doled out for a new stairway, not to heaven, but to the beach in Mondo Beach, California, so the surfers can hit the waves faster.

00:43:20.000 You've got a million dollars doled out for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

00:43:26.000 You've got $3 million doled out for the hip-hop museum in New York.

00:43:30.000 You've got $3.5 million doled out by the Republican U.S.

00:43:33.000 Senator Susan Collins in Maine for the Irish Heritage Museum.

00:43:39.000 The examples are endless.

00:43:41.000 Can you tell us a little more about the collusion between Big Pharma and the government?

00:43:46.000 In particular, we want to talk about the Buys Dole Act.

00:43:54.000 Recently when we saw Joe Biden railing against the pharmaceutical industry, we were struck

00:43:59.000 by his failure to use an existing piece of legislation to prevent people paying $190,000

00:44:06.000 a year for a cancer drug.

00:44:08.000 I understand that you know more about this than us, and frankly that's not hard, but

00:44:12.000 would you please share that knowledge?

00:44:15.000 So at $180,000, $190,000 a year for this prostate cancer drug, by the way, which is really effective,

00:44:22.000 activists felt that this would be a great test case example for the National Institutes

00:44:27.000 of Health to finally come in and use what's called their march-in powers to be able to

00:44:33.000 knock down the price of that drug.

00:44:35.000 The National Institutes of Health, they weighed in and they did not use their power.

00:44:41.000 They did not use their regulatory power to knock it down.

00:44:44.000 So on its face, This looked like a great textbook example.

00:44:47.000 There was a high price.

00:44:49.000 The National Institutes of Health, the U.S.

00:44:51.000 Army, everyone agreed had helped fund the development of that drug.

00:44:56.000 UCLA had received those federal grants, and they had pioneered the technologies to help that drug actually come to market.

00:45:03.000 They had licensed it to the pharmaceutical company, a foreign one from Japan, so you have a foreign pharmaceutical company to boot.

00:45:10.000 And so they felt this was a great, honest face, this would be a great textbook example to see if, for the first time in history, NIH would use its power to regulate and knock down the price of that drug.

00:45:21.000 In Japan, for example, it's $30,000, not $190,000 a year.

00:45:22.000 Well, the Biden administration decided not to use it.

00:45:28.000 And look, I think it's because this ran right up against the Pfizer footprint, against the Pfizer fiefdom.

00:45:37.000 So UCLA, which had licensed the technology to the pharmaceutical company, had collected a half billion dollars between 2012 and 2016 on royalties.

00:45:47.000 But then they sold their future royalty stream out through 2027 for over a billion dollars to Royal Pharmacy, who was then quickly acquired by Pfizer.

00:45:58.000 Even though the patent for the drug is held by the Japanese pharmaceutical company, the U.S.

00:46:03.000 market is run by Pfizer.

00:46:05.000 So now, Russell, you have Pfizer, when they make a sale since 2016 in the United States, not only do they reap the profit from their sale of the pill, but they also reap on the backside a piece of the royalty payment as well.

00:46:19.000 They're double-dipping every sale on that pill.

00:46:21.000 So I don't think the Biden administration wanted to get in the way of Pfizer.

00:46:25.000 Double dipping is unhygienic in any language, isn't it?

00:46:29.000 It's disgusting to hear of the double dip going on at a time like this during a high-profile case involving a pornography actor.

00:46:40.000 It's disgusting to hear that the double dip is being practiced so flagrantly. 0.57

00:46:45.000 Adam called you Russell then for the first time.

00:46:46.000 I saw that and I enjoyed it.

00:46:48.000 I felt that was more intimate.

00:46:50.000 You can double dip me in the brand or the Russell, Adam.

00:46:54.000 Last time we spoke, you were a good enough sport to pluck at random a book from behind yourself and read a passage.

00:47:02.000 I see those books behind you as your throne of authority.

00:47:06.000 What particular piece of hermeneutic knowledge will you share today, Adam Andrzejewski?

00:47:13.000 Hey, I actually prepped a book for you, Mr. Brand.

00:47:18.000 It's called The War on Waste.

00:47:20.000 I mean, we need, I want to throw a gauntlet challenge down to President Biden, House Speaker McCarthy, To embrace the transparency revolution, declare war on waste.

00:47:32.000 I think they'll find it a target-rich environment at every level.

00:47:35.000 This is a book that was done by Peter Grace at the behest of Ronald Reagan back in the mid-1980s.

00:47:40.000 It was called the Grace Commission.

00:47:42.000 And what they found was, when they took a look at federal spending in the 1980s, that 30 percent, 30 cents on every dollar was wasteful spending.

00:47:51.000 And nobody You mean nobody today believes that that situation is any better?

00:47:59.000 God, you're adorable.

00:48:01.000 One of these days, I'm going to come to that corrupt state you're dwelling in and give you such a cuddle. 1.00

00:48:07.000 The day that I'm in that frame with you, able to pluck those leather-bound books from that shelf will be a great day for me.

00:48:14.000 Adam, thanks once again for continuing to educate us.

00:48:17.000 You can follow Adam's work by going to openthebooks.com.

00:48:21.000 We're very grateful to you, both for the great work you've done and for the beautiful face that you have.

00:48:26.000 Thank you.

00:48:27.000 Thank you.

00:48:28.000 We'll see you again soon.

00:48:29.000 Thank you very much.

00:48:30.000 Now, almost as if we're a genuine news channel, we're going to go directly to... Well, no, we're not going to go directly.

00:48:38.000 We're going to see... Like, we've been dabbling in mainstream media for a little while now.

00:48:42.000 We spoke recently to an Australian journalist who was live at those Parisian riots.

00:48:49.000 You know like all of the the media actually outnumbered the public outside the courtroom where Donald Trump was about to be arraigned and he's now been arraigned and like you I didn't use the word arraigned until about 48 hours ago well here we are co-opting and hijacking our own correspondent Robert Sherman before we talk to him let's see him in action on the mainstream media before seeing a different side to a man that I believe to be incredibly handsome And lucid.

00:49:17.000 Let's look at Robert Sherman doing the news.

00:49:19.000 No matter how you slice it and no matter how you feel about it, this will be a historic day for the United States.

00:49:25.000 It has never happened before.

00:49:27.000 And this is what we're seeing on the streets of New York City.

00:49:29.000 This was yesterday awaiting the arrival of former President Trump.

00:49:33.000 Large amounts of media.

00:49:35.000 It has become a total media frenzy out here.

00:49:39.000 Robert Sherman, or as we know him on Stay Free, The Shermanator.

00:49:43.000 Robert is joining us now.

00:49:46.000 Hey, how's it going, mate?

00:49:47.000 Well, I'm feeling a lot better now that I've just gotten such a warm compliment and a warm welcoming.

00:49:52.000 Thank you so much for having me, Russell.

00:49:54.000 What was it like being there in that media throng?

00:49:57.000 Is there a lot of competition to get the best spot?

00:49:59.000 Is there a lot of elbowing one another?

00:50:01.000 What's the vibe like between reporters on the scene?

00:50:06.000 You know, I mean, typically at a small story, there's a little bit of camaraderie in something like this.

00:50:11.000 Nothing of the kind.

00:50:12.000 And I'll tell you this, Russell, that I thought that the biggest media circus I'd ever see was the Super Bowl or something like that.

00:50:18.000 Not even close to what we saw here.

00:50:20.000 You had media outlets coming in from Germany, Japan, Australia.

00:50:24.000 I mean, you see some of these images, people just crawling on top of one another to get the same photo that the person right next to them is going to get.

00:50:32.000 I've never seen a scene like this before.

00:50:35.000 Do you feel pressurised to amplify particular details?

00:50:40.000 Because, let's face it, not much really happened.

00:50:42.000 Donald Trump came, he waved a bit, he went into a courtroom.

00:50:46.000 Do you feel under personal and professional pressure to create a narrative out of, in a sense, just ordinary details?

00:50:57.000 No, not at all, especially over at Art Network, because this was something that we really talked about here, is that, look, have you had this narrative coming in that there would be, you know, all of this activity happening here, you know, the potential for riots and things like that?

00:51:10.000 And we said, look, unless the narrative actually happens, don't play into it at all.

00:51:14.000 That was our perspective.

00:51:16.000 So we try to stay away from that as much as possible and just give you the facts.

00:51:20.000 That's good, because we're trying to do that here.

00:51:22.000 We sort of like see ourselves as, I suppose, an anti-establishment news organization that looks to create alliances from across sectarian divides and infuse our content with the potential for spiritual awakening.

00:51:38.000 We've got no one on the ground, and that's where we could collaborate.

00:51:41.000 You, the Shermanator, could be regularly essentially doing what you're doing anyway, but then doing a bit of it for us as well.

00:51:49.000 Maybe for cred, and if it came to it, possibly for money.

00:51:55.000 No, it's pretty unbelievable scene that you had out here today.

00:52:00.000 Nothing like it at all.

00:52:01.000 But as you said, you know, a whole lot for nothing.

00:52:03.000 And I think one point to make here as well is that, I mean, you see all these scenes of the people who were outside as well.

00:52:10.000 I feel compelled to tell your viewers that at least four out of five people who were out here yesterday were either members of law enforcement or members of the press.

00:52:19.000 I mean, yeah, you had demonstrators who were out here, both for and against the president.

00:52:24.000 But I mean, press certainly outnumbered protesters.

00:52:27.000 It wasn't even close out here.

00:52:29.000 In a way, it's like the spectacle is creating and consuming itself.

00:52:35.000 It's almost like if there were no media and no law enforcement there, the event kind of wouldn't be happening.

00:52:44.000 I'm sure that you're familiar with the writing of Jean Baudrillard.

00:52:47.000 Certainly, if you watch this channel, we're always banging on about him.

00:52:50.000 Because he talks continually about how the media is creating a sort of synthetic reality that we're all existing in.

00:52:57.000 And when you look at the work of someone like Chris Hedges, you realise that you're not capable of fully understanding the horror of war, nor would we like to.

00:53:05.000 So war is kind of simplified to a sort of game.

00:53:08.000 Justice is simplified to a kind of game.

00:53:11.000 And all of us are in our own ways participating in it.

00:53:15.000 Do you ever feel compromised, Robert, or do you feel like you're able to keep in alignment with your personal principles even when participating?

00:53:25.000 As you know, I accept that we are also in the reporting of a sensational story that's doubtless being amplified for the purposes of entertainment rather than justice, say.

00:53:36.000 And you know, I mean, that is what you have to do as a journalist.

00:53:36.000 Right.

00:53:39.000 And I'm not going to lie to you.

00:53:40.000 I mean, everybody who's out here who is a journalist has an opinion on what's going on here.

00:53:44.000 You have to put that aside.

00:53:46.000 And of course, you know, your viewers are well aware of it.

00:53:50.000 There are some people who don't do that.

00:53:51.000 But you have to put it aside.

00:53:52.000 You have to just call the balls and strikes as they happen out here, which is what we've been trying to do.

00:53:58.000 But, I mean, of course, you know, there are some people who don't do that.

00:54:00.000 And there's some people who do, you know, stoke the flames a little bit.

00:54:03.000 I would push back, though, and say one thing, though, is that a large part of the reason that so much of this attention came down here was because of the former president putting so much, so much of a limelight on this case with some of the things that he put on social media a couple of weeks ago.

00:54:18.000 Of course, the indictment brought a lot more attention to that, but it's not as if the limelight just is created by the press.

00:54:27.000 There is a starting point as well, and sometimes we just come out here.

00:54:31.000 I suppose so, yeah.

00:54:32.000 One of the things we try to do is use it as a means to pose this kind of story with other stories like, you know, we've done some analysis on NATO and tomorrow we're talking to Aaron Maté about NATO's expansion into Finland, for example.

00:54:50.000 And we are just really trying to tackle the complexity of being respectful of various and often opposing mainstream and alternative news perspectives.

00:55:06.000 But I can see and feel that you're really open to that.

00:55:09.000 So in a sense, this could be the beginning of a longstanding and eventually,

00:55:13.000 I would say, erotic collaboration.

00:55:15.000 Well, open to anything as well.

00:55:18.000 Really appreciate you having us on, Russell.

00:55:20.000 Thank you so much.

00:55:21.000 Robert Sherman there.

00:55:23.000 The Shermanator. 0.91

00:55:24.000 Look at that.

00:55:24.000 What a pro.

00:55:25.000 What a brilliant segue.

00:55:26.000 We couldn't do that.

00:55:27.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:55:29.000 Live on the scene, the Shermanator will be joining you again for sure. 1.00

00:55:33.000 Thanks so much, Robert.

00:55:34.000 It's good to chat to you, mate.

00:55:36.000 Thank you for having me.

00:55:37.000 There he goes.

00:55:37.000 Take care.

00:55:38.000 One of the best goddamn journalists, I'd say. 0.98

00:55:43.000 Questions about Baudrillard and eroticism, I can't imagine. 0.98

00:55:47.000 I think he dealt with it very deftly, didn't he?

00:55:50.000 In his bar, bar.

00:55:51.000 I thought he was more relaxed with us.

00:55:53.000 Very relaxed.

00:55:54.000 I think we bring out the best in people.

00:55:56.000 I'm not taking all the credit for Robert Sherman's personality.

00:55:59.000 That's a complex thing that's come about over time and his whole family have to take credit for, as well as culture itself.

00:56:05.000 But I reckon we bring out the best in him and perhaps in each other.

00:56:08.000 Who could possibly say?

00:56:10.000 Hey, guess what's happening?

00:56:12.000 Tomorrow, as I just said to the Shermanator, we've got Aaron Maté coming on to talk about NATO, to talk about the use of this trial.

00:56:21.000 We're going to talk also about how one of the things that Trump said that was I would say somewhat iconoclastic and challenging was that you don't even need NATO.

00:56:32.000 Why not disband NATO?

00:56:34.000 That's the kind of rabble-rousing stuff that Trump came out with that caused so many people to condemn him and so many people to adore him.

00:56:42.000 If you want, you can sign up to Locals for weekly guided meditations, live podcast recordings.

00:56:47.000 There's all sorts of stuff that we do here.

00:56:50.000 We're going to be having a break We're going to have a break soon.

00:56:53.000 Over the time of Easter, whether you consider it to be a pagan festival or a Christian festival, or simply something that's happening in your hemisphere, we're going to have a little break to regenerate and renew ourselves.

00:57:04.000 So we're on on Thursday, we're on on Friday.

00:57:06.000 Friday we're going to have a fantastic show.

00:57:08.000 I think we're going to have an interview with Rainn Wilson from the office, talking about his new book, about spirituality and stuff.

00:57:16.000 These books are coming out in a little while.

00:57:17.000 So we've got some fantastic shows coming up this week.

00:57:20.000 Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - April 05, 2023

TRUMPED UP CHARGES | Legit or Bullsh*t!? - #106 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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