Trump has been charged with conspiracy to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, but what does this mean for free speech and democracy? Glenn and Deb take a look at the details of the charges, and whether or not they are connected to the Biden family. They also talk about Tucker Carlson's interview with Hunter Biden's former business partner, and if there are significant revelations in there that ultimately amount to the criminality of the Biden Family. And of course, today we re talking about Trump s arraignment, and we re also talking about what this means for Free Speech, and what that means for democracy. In this episode, we ll be talking to Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, pioneer, investigator, investigator and co-conspirator, about all of this, and much more. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase when you enter the RUMBLE Rewards Program. We'll be giving you 20% off the purchase price of $99 or more when you become a patron, and 5% off when you buy your first month's membership when the offer ends on January 31st, 2020. Thanks to all our sponsorships! and our patron(s) get 10% all year long, plus a free shipping discount when you sign up to our VIP membership offer! If you like what you're listening to our podcast, you get 20% OFF the entire service, you'll get 5% OFF THE PODCAST! FREE PRODUCERPRODCAST and we'll be getting 10% OFF for a year, too! We're giving you a FREE PROMOTIONAL PROMOCIAL PROMO AND 7% OFF OFF THE FIRST MONTH TO BUY A SUBSCRIKE AND VIP SUPPORTING TALKING TO VIPISION AND PATREON AND VIPILARY? Subscribe to our new ad-FREE VLOGS! You'll get 7 DAYS TO WIN 5 STARS AND FREE PRICING AND VIP PRODCAST AND PROGRAMS PRODOCALYPSE AND FREE TRAINING PROMETICALLY PRODOGRAVOR AND VIPIZER SUPPORTED INCLUSION AND PODCRIBE TO WIN A VOTING PRODCATIONS! Subscribe To Our NEW WEBSITE!
00:00:40.000Welcome to the limitless glory that you participate in through the miracle of your own consciousness, through which you can control your anatomy and indeed your life.
00:00:49.000If liberty should ever return to a planet, there's increasingly interested in centralizing authority, surveilling us, controlling and censoring us.
00:00:58.000Well, for the first 15 minutes, we are on YouTube, so there will be a degree of censorship.
00:01:03.000But after that, we're going to be on Rumble.
00:01:05.000And of course, today we're talking about Trump's Third arraignment and we're talking about what this means for free speech, what this means for democracy.
00:01:12.000In our item here's the news, no here's the effing news, we'll talk a little bit about Tucker's interview with Hunter Biden's former business partner and whether or not there are significant revelations in there that ultimately amount to the criminality of the Biden family.
00:01:28.000Once we get to being exclusively on Rumble, our home, where we revel in free speech, where we bathe in the ambrosia of free speech, where we sup upon the sweet teat of free speech, we'll be talking to Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, pioneer, investigator, friend and Co-conspirator over on Rumble.
00:01:50.000But first, let's talk about your free speech, my free speech, everyone's free speech.
00:01:55.000And if you want to enjoy a little bit of free speech right now, press that red button on your screen.
00:01:58.000You can join our locals community where free speech is our watchword.
00:02:02.000They're speaking in there so freely even now.
00:02:04.000People are talking about the federal government.
00:02:06.000Close-up pictures of dear Dianne Feinstein.
00:02:47.000I mean, the fact that, you know, this is all about whether Donald Trump made knowingly false claims, whether he had the right to make those claims, if he honestly believed that the election results were wrong, and that that's what this whole thing is hanging on to.
00:03:02.000It's extraordinary because it's a high court case where a former president is potentially being indicted that hinges upon epistemology and ontology.
00:03:46.000Smith's indictment cites Trump's speech on January 6th as a feature of his effort to sow doubt about the election and allegedly organise a conspiracy to overturn it.
00:05:14.000The problem is, I suppose, is that with the ongoing conversation, which we'll be covering later in the show, around the Biden family's business dealings and the degree to which Joe Biden knew about and was involved with Hunter Biden's business interests, in particular with Burisma in Ukraine, If corruption becomes part of the system, not a bug but a feature, how can a charge of corruption in any way harm Trump?
00:05:40.000You'll be aware that since these allegations have amped up, since these prosecutions have increased in intensity, so has Donald Trump's Popularity is extraordinary to find ourselves in a time where our trust in the establishment is so low, our loathing of conventional politics so charged, so heady and high, that if an anti-establishment figure is significantly attacked, we like them more.
00:06:08.000This leads us to an important question, and I'd love you guys to answer it.
00:06:11.000Do you think that the Democrat establishment are strategically attacking Trump, knowing this will increase his popularity, because they would prefer Biden to face Trump in 2024 than any other candidate?
00:06:26.000Or do you think they're making a mistake?
00:06:53.000Certainly Tulsi Gabbard says that the Trump indictment is a political kit job.
00:06:58.000Let's have a look at Tulsi Gabbard saying that now.
00:07:03.000This is yet another example of how far President Joe Biden's politicized Department of Justice is willing to go to try to destroy his main political opponent I suppose that's what Trump himself and Trump supporters would say.
00:07:46.000He did incite an insurrection on January the 6th.
00:07:49.000I guess the events of January 6th, I mean, hence why the media use that imagery so often, that, you know, the violence, whatever you want to want to call it, plays into, I mean, they use it all the time in that respect.
00:08:00.000But obviously we know, you know, we know the reaction of Hillary Clinton to Trump winning and the whole Russiagate thing.
00:08:05.000So this is something that there's precedent for.
00:08:08.000We know that Democrats have denied election results, and if Stacey Abrams did it in Georgia.
00:08:12.000This is not something, it's not you're not at this point taking something that has never happened before.
00:08:29.000And a further complication is most people's belief now, or at least a significant number of you believe, and hasn't it been proven that there were FBI operatives in the crowd on
00:08:39.000January the 6th and it's possible that their actions contributed significantly to the escalation of
00:08:45.000events. So it's by no means as plain as they claim and the degree of piety with which they attest to
00:08:53.000this corruption is delegitimized by significant suspicion around Joe Biden's involvement with
00:09:00.000Hunter Biden, keeping the Hunter Biden laptop story out of the press, the Russiagate stuff
00:09:04.000and how that was handled, the fact that there are deep state operatives working on January the 6th,
00:09:09.000the whole thing is very difficult to hold And one of the things we talk about continually when discussing the war, in particular say the Dianne Feinstein vote, her saying aye when plainly, visibly and televisually being coached to say aye, is not only is that sort of ridiculous and sad and to see yet another elderly, gosh forgive the word, cadaverous political figure being coaxed, coached and cajoled into obeying what?
00:09:49.000What we're being invited to accept is no scrutiny, appraisal or auditing of these military budgets.
00:09:55.000What I reckon, guys, and what we discuss all the time here at Stay Free, is the significant fact that we're not participating in the discourse around our politics.
00:10:12.000And all the while we're caught up in this sort of cacophony of odd racket around these issues.
00:10:19.000We're unable to gain sufficient perspective and view the fugue of corruption that pervades All of these institutions.
00:10:26.000We can't get a moment to ask the significant questions, although we will be asking Glenn Greenwald some of those significant questions when he joins us on Rumble in just a few minutes.
00:10:34.000If you're watching us on YouTube, there's a link in the description.
00:10:36.000We're only going to be on YouTube for a few more minutes.
00:10:37.000But I think, you know, as Tossi Gabbard says there about, you know, how this is being used, I think it's showing in the polls how this is being viewed.
00:10:45.000People are I think growing tired of what's happening with Donald Trump.
00:10:52.000And again, as we've just stated about Stacey Abrams or Russiagate or whatever it is, even with Trump and the last charge when it came to keeping those documents and war with Iran and things, people are starting to see there's another side to this story and that things are being used in ways that could definitely be called politicising them.
00:11:11.000We see again and again in the conversation over here in locals, people saying, I didn't used to like Donald Trump.
00:11:17.000I was cynical about Donald Trump, but the way he's being treated here is revealing.
00:11:22.000Again, with the boxes of censored governmental material, It seems like a lot of political figures do comparable things and more significant than that was the fact that they pertain to a plan to attack Iran.
00:11:33.000I've already forgotten that because I'm caught up in this latest arraignment.
00:13:12.000If they shut down Bernie, they're sure as hell going to shut down RFK.
00:13:15.000At least it shows now that there are new emergent possibilities for communication.
00:13:19.000And indeed, that's why we believe these censorship laws are being pushed for.
00:13:23.000That's why protests are being shut down all over the world, even in places like Florida.
00:13:27.000Ron DeSantis came on our show and it seems to me that a lot of you that are sort of right-leaning and interested in the Republican Party do not see DeSantis as a legitimate alternative for a very interesting reason.
00:13:38.000We were discussing this earlier, let's have a look at the headline, because people don't see him as humorous Or human.
00:14:08.000Yeah, you find that for me because I think it's interesting.
00:14:10.000One of the things that we sort of talk about with Donald Trump is the fact that, in a sense, his appeal and his impact is predicated on his persona and his charisma.
00:14:20.000Whenever you see him talk, it's what's most striking of all, is the fact that he doesn't sound like other politicians.
00:14:26.000Now, when Ron DeSantis came on our show, I don't know about you, Gareth, but I was sort of struck by how statesmanly he was.
00:14:33.000He did seem like an authoritative figure.
00:14:35.000Even when coming on a show like ours, his set-up looked most presidential.
00:14:40.000But I guess I'm coached into seeing political figures in a particular way.
00:14:46.000And someone like Trump, who talks in that anachronistic, idiosyncratic, peculiarly humorous, blunt, occasionally rude way, is more appealing.
00:14:57.000When you have someone saying, yeah, we just invade Venezuela and take their oil.
00:15:02.000When you hear someone say, I know about these loopholes because I use them.
00:15:17.000Yeah, if you say, I can see why Donald Trump is popular, I can see why he appeals to people, even apart from the politics or the reactions of, for example, Obama's reign as president, even apart from all of that, just in the way that he conducts himself, if you say that, it's like you're, you know, I don't know, You're saying something that you shouldn't.
00:15:36.000This is an odd passage from this New York Times piece.
00:15:39.000It says, the share of Republicans who said Mr. Trump was more fun than DeSantis, that's 54 to 16 percent, and he doesn't come across with humor, many people said of DeSantis.
00:15:50.000because these are very human characteristics, the kind of human characteristics that the Chrome orb,
00:16:42.000If you're watching this on YouTube, we're only going to be there for a few more minutes.
00:16:45.000Glenn Greenwald is even now preparing to answer some pretty challenging questions on this Trump phenomena and the issue of free speech that it brings to the forefront.
00:16:56.000If you want to stay for that conversation, you can have to click on the link in the description.
00:17:00.000And if you're with us on Rumble already, why not just take that extra plunge?
00:17:03.000Go from being, and I was going to use some terrible analogies around addiction there that will not be appropriate on YouTube, where people are That's a pretty good statement there from you, mate.
00:17:11.000There's a lot of intelligence in this locals chat.
00:17:13.000It's very important, I think, for you guys to continue to write in and to keep us attuned to what you're feeling.
00:17:17.000Sanders tried to peel away populism from Trump but he's failing because big-money
00:17:20.000republicanism and gratuitous fake smiling have possessed him. That's a
00:17:24.000pretty good statement there from you mate. There's a lot of intelligence in this
00:17:29.000locals chat. It's very important I think for you guys to continue to write in
00:17:33.000and keep us attuned to what you're feeling. Hey listen, have you heard?
00:17:39.000Zelensky says there will be no compromise with Moscow.
00:17:43.000There certainly won't be, because Russia is a military machine that will stop at nothing.
00:17:49.000And yet, most Americans who are in the main funding this war, do you know that you, the United States of America, have spent more on this war than Russia?
00:18:00.000Americans have spent more... America, who are not in this war, because it's not a proxy war, have spent more money on it than Russia, and 55% of you are sick of that.
00:18:10.00055% of Americans said US Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine, and 45% say that Congress should continue to.
00:18:19.000That's what strikes me most of all as surprising, Gareth, is the significant number of people who are happy with it, but you said that's sort of an odd way that American demographics and politics Yeah, I mean, look at any election in the United States and how close that they all are.
00:18:31.000I mean, this ultimately is starting to come down to lefty-right.
00:18:35.000You know, there's certainly a large number of Republicans now that are at least trying to counter some of the actions in terms of the increased military spending that's going on with the Democrat Party.
00:18:45.000We saw the way that Dianne Feinstein was kind of coached by her cohorts into No, no, that's not what we're saying today, Diane.
00:18:53.000The world's changed a lot since the 1960s.
00:18:54.000that as well, was it? Because she sort of momentarily, there's where she was like,
00:18:56.000no, no, we've got to stop. We've got to build a better world, build on diplomacy
00:19:02.000and communication. How can we ever end this war by continually funding it? And
00:19:07.000how can we continue to claim to the American people that this is a humane
00:19:10.000and humanitarian war, rather than a war driven by profit?
00:19:14.000No, no, that's not what we're saying today, Diane. The world's changed a lot since
00:19:18.000the 1960s. Now war is good. You're unpatriotic!
00:19:31.000Well a lot of people said I as well when it came to should we stop this audit from being formed into spending on Ukraine as well because that's been voted down also.
00:20:17.000This is an extraordinary time where wars are being bundled together.
00:20:21.000A two-for-one war is never going to be a bargain, even if you're enjoying some of the footage of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian warships in the Black Sea, which I think is pretty strongly connected to and affiliated with Russia.
00:20:38.000If you're watching us on YouTube, we're going to have a look at this bit of mainstream media reporting on Ukraine attacking a Russian warship, which again represents a sort of a pivot and change of direction in this conflict.
00:20:50.000Ukraine now aggressively attacking Russian naval targets, that's no longer a defensive measure.
00:20:58.000I'm sure you'd agree, let me know in the comments.
00:20:59.000But more importantly than that, we're going to be speaking to Glenn Greenwald about free speech, the ongoing Trump trials, this ongoing bifurcation throughout our culture, the inability to openly communicate, the meaning of morality in a system that is as ethically moribund.
00:22:14.000What do you think's on the line with the Trump arraignment, Glenn?
00:22:18.000Do you feel that, given that this is a trial that's about free speech and free speech is being curtailed, where do we find ourselves now if the Dem establishment continues down this path?
00:22:34.000I was just actually reading a very good and interesting article, and characteristically so, in the New York Times by the former Bush Justice Department, Harvard Law professor Jack Oldsmith, who seems to think Trump at least acted very poorly, if not criminally, but nonetheless is warning about the widespread perception that already exists that most of our institutions of authority are corrupted and politicized and can't be trusted, which is always dangerous in a democracy.
00:23:00.000The only institution that polls well these days is the military, meaning the soldiers and the armed forces, not the people who run the Pentagon.
00:23:08.000And that's never good for a democracy when the only thing people trust is the military.
00:23:12.000And, you know, his argument is, is that no matter how you slice it, this actually is a case where the current government looks at polls, sees that there's only one person who's likely to be able to challenge Joe Biden and defeat him for reelection.
00:23:26.000And that's the person whom his Justice Department happens to be prosecuting in multiple cases, two so far and counting, and not just cases that have been brought, but ones that rely upon highly dubious interpretations of law.
00:23:40.000It's not like these are murder cases or rape cases or bribery cases, things people traditionally think about when they hear of criminal accusations.
00:23:47.000They're very, you know, kind of distant and vague accusations that do depend a lot on free speech rights.
00:23:55.000And it's just only going to worsen perceptions that the Justice Department and justice system generally can't be trusted.
00:24:03.000It's often a sense that America is a somewhat solipsistic nation.
00:24:08.000Do you imagine that if this were happening elsewhere, it would be regarded as the kind of corrupt antics of a banana republic, a takedown of a powerful political opponent?
00:24:22.000How much have our institutions altered that we can incrementally move into this position without identifying that that's what's happened?
00:24:33.000As you say, not egregious criminality, but somewhat diffuse and tangential.
00:24:42.000Do you think that this is something, if we were seeing it in Latin America or Central America, forgive the dismissiveness of that appraisal, we would regard it as crackpot, banana republic conduct?
00:24:54.000Yeah, I mean it's interesting the reporting that I did in Brazil in 2019 and 2020 that ultimately led to my indictment but that nonetheless freed Rua da Silva from prison was based on exactly that argument that he was in prison, Rua was, at a time when he was leading all public opinion polls for his re-election in 2018.
00:25:13.000He had a 15-20 point lead on everybody including Jair Bolsonaro.
00:25:18.000And what was obviously a politically inclined prosecution and a politically inclined judge, namely inclined always to be against BT, ordered him arrested, convicted him quickly, and rendered him ineligible to run, which let Jair Bolsonaro run and win in 2018 without having to face the law.
00:25:36.000Maybe he would have won, we'll never know.
00:25:39.000The establishment in Brazil hasn't done exactly the same thing to Bolsonaro, knowing that he's probably the only person who can So of course this is the sort of thing that happens in countries that don't trust democracy.
00:25:59.000It's ironic, Russell, because when I first started writing about politics in 2005, the first book I wrote was an argument that the Bush and Cheney administrations and the top officials in it had committed obvious crimes, war crimes, through things like torture and rendition and warrantless spying on Americans.
00:26:15.000And when Obama got into office after promising to let his attorney general prosecute the people who did that if it warrants, immediately he announced there will be no prosecutions.
00:26:24.000He said we have to look forward, not backward.
00:26:27.000And the entire DC class agreed with Obama saying only banana republics prosecute their political opposition.
00:26:34.000And that was for real crimes like torture and kidnapping and You know, killing people and spying without warrants, not these kind of attenuated theories of criminality on which the Biden Justice Department is now relying to prosecute Trump, their primary political opposition.
00:26:50.000And yet Obama arrived in office on waves of optimism, ushered in under a banner of change and hope.
00:26:59.000It's pretty plain that the scepticism and cynicism that many people feel for their institutions is well earned.
00:27:09.000We did a poll earlier and most of our audience, like 90% of our audience, believe that the Trump prosecutions are a distraction from corruption and criminality within the Biden family.
00:27:20.000And how effective can prosecuting an opponent be for corruption when most people think that the institutions themselves have lost all moral authority, and in the case of the current American government, that the Biden family in particular criminal. How much do you think, as Trump's lawyer, one of
00:27:38.000Trump's lawyers, suggested this case is a retaliation to and response to
00:27:45.000matters that pertain particularly to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden's relationship
00:27:49.000around his business and Burisma in particular, Glenn?
00:27:52.000Well I think that's the other key part of the context and that's one of the things that Professor Goldsmith
00:27:56.000in that article I mentioned in the New York Times this morning highlighted
00:27:59.000was that at exactly the same time the Biden administration is prosecuting
00:28:04.000Donald Trump, they are also protecting and shielding Hunter Biden who is guilty of
00:28:09.000far more blatant and obvious criminality, just blatant political corruption,
00:28:13.000tax evasion, a refusal to pay taxes, hiding assets, misaccounting for
00:28:18.000In a way that most people go to jail for many years and Hunter Biden gets this incredibly generous deal that was so shocking to the judge that it immediately crumbled upon the slightest bit of judicial scrutiny because she couldn't believe that the Justice Department was really offering him this full-scale immunity given how many other crimes are pending and given how he was allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanors for what she has seen many times in her short judicial career are treated as serious felonies.
00:28:46.000So when you set that aside, that kind of You know, sweetheart deal given to Hunter Biden, aside to this politicized prosecution, it becomes even worse.
00:28:53.000And Russell, I think this is the key question that is central to everything that was embedded in the question that you asked, which is, I know, like me, you're often accused of having changed your political views or having moved from the left to the right, etc., etc., even though you haven't changed any of your political opinions at all.
00:29:07.000As somebody who's listened to you for quite a while, I know that to be true.
00:29:10.000The reason that's happened is because what is the relevant metric now is not so much left versus right, But it's anti-authoritarian versus pro-authoritarian or anti-establishment versus pro-establishment.
00:29:22.000Namely, do you think the loss of trust that these institutions of authority have suffered is valid or not?
00:29:29.000Do you think that they deserve the contempt in which they are held by a large portion of the population?
00:29:35.000I believe it's absolutely justified to hold in contempt these political agencies, the U.S.
00:29:41.000security state, the corporate media, big tech, for all kinds of reasons.
00:29:45.000And I think standard classic liberals, you know, by which I mean just Democrats, ordinary Democrats, even the part of the left that claimed they were launching a revolution under Bernie Sanders and AOC and the like, Have come to view these agencies as their allies and therefore legitimate and that more than anything is the relevant fundamental distinction that I think define defines our political spectrum much more so than old definitions of left versus right.
00:30:08.000Yes, and the deserved contempt that you described appears to be accompanied with an unwillingness to enter into a good faith conversation and advocacy for censorship.
00:30:23.000One of the defining issues of our current news cycle is this ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the manner in which it is funded, primarily of course by US taxpayer dollars, and yet it's not something that can be When did advocacy for war become a liberal standpoint?
00:30:44.000When did an unwillingness to discuss the expenditure on American tax dollars become an ordinary policy?
00:30:51.000Was it the same as this in the Bush-Cheney administration that you publicly criticized and referred to earlier?
00:31:00.000Is it them that have shifted their position rather than people like you and I?
00:31:07.000You know, I think the media, the corporate media, was notoriously pro-war on terror, pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush.
00:31:15.000The New York Times had to apologize institutionally for the lies they spread to sell the invasion of Iraq to a liberal population.
00:31:22.000A lot of the lies came not just from Fox News and the Republican Party at the time, but also, and more importantly even, from leading institutions in American liberalism like the Atlantic and the New Yorker.
00:31:33.000And the New York Times, which were battering liberals every day to believe that the invasion of Iraq was necessary, that the excesses of the war on terror from the Patriot Act of torture and the like were all necessary.
00:31:42.000And so there was really a kind of closed system that didn't really tolerate a lot of dissent.
00:31:48.000That's actually the reason, the primary reason why I started writing about politics in 2005 was a reaction to this inability for dissent to be aired.
00:31:55.000But I have to say, Compared to the war in Iraq and that whole era after 9-11, where at least we have the excuse that the U.S.
00:32:04.000really had suffered a cataclysmic attack on its soil, there is so much less dissent and so much more homogeneity.
00:32:11.000Now, on most questions, but certainly the war in Ukraine, in the EU, where you used to be, and now I think good for you are not, but still near it, the EU at the start of the war made it illegal For any social media platform to host Russian state media like RT and Sputnik.
00:32:31.000That's the reason why this platform, Rumble, is not available in France because Rumble refused to remove RT at the orders of the French government.
00:32:39.000The attempt is to just close the information system completely so that the Western population is completely propagandized.
00:32:46.000All around the world, Russell, you know, especially in like these so-called BRICS countries and developing countries, Almost everybody is against the war in Ukraine, views it as something that NATO and the US provoked, assigns 50-50 blame to Moscow and the West, if not more to the West even, for having provoked it, refuses to join in with the sanctions regime.
00:33:05.000And yet in the West, we're constantly told the entire world, the entire international community is united behind the United States in this noble effort.
00:33:13.000And I think now, as that polling you referenced demonstrates, that shows that a majority of Americans 55 to 45 no longer want the U.S.
00:33:21.000to continue to fund the war in Ukraine.
00:33:24.000They're starting to realize yet again that they were propagandized about a war, that they were convinced at the start they should support and are now coming to oppose.
00:33:31.000And I should say, if we look at the ideological breakdown of that poll, overwhelmingly, by far, the group that most supports the U.S.
00:33:39.000financing of the war in Ukraine are self-described liberal Democrats, 75% of them.
00:33:47.000If it weren't for that, the margin would be even much bigger.
00:33:51.000It makes me wonder if people have any intuitive or essential morality at all.
00:33:57.000Or are they rather just fielded, shepherded from opinion to opinion in accordance with the preferences of the centralist authority?
00:34:09.000When we have the bizarre spectacle of yet another cadaverous statesperson being cajoled into compliance, this time in the form of Dianne Feinstein, do you feel that there's almost an archetypal truth emerging in the political space?
00:34:25.000That our institutions and those denizens of it are beginning to visibly decay before our eyes?
00:34:34.000That this will not be resolved in the typical cycles of A bipartisan electoral oscillation, but will require an institutional reckoning, significant change.
00:34:49.000In fact, the kind of things that rhetorically great political orators have always referred to, hope, change, an America where communities and individuals are empowered, whether that's Trump saying that or Obama saying it, God knows they all say it.
00:35:02.000Do you think that figures like Robert F. Kennedy could ever flourish within the Democrat Party?
00:35:07.000And do you think that what's required is a kind of new political mechanic emerging from these new independent media spaces that we participate in?
00:35:17.000Do you start to feel, and I know that this is a big part of your journey and you've been an activist and an advocate and much much more over the last 10, 15, 20 years, but you're starting to feel that independent media will become politicised as a Yeah, I mean, it's basically the only thing about which I'm optimistic.
00:35:36.000You know, on my show last night, my Rumble show, we interviewed The director of this documentary that was released last year, I don't know if you saw it, but if you haven't, I really recommend it, called The Orders of War, which used FOIA requests to unearth all of these documents showing how producers and directors in Hollywood of the biggest mass-marketed films work in complete partnership with the Pentagon and the CIA to the point they give them script approval,
00:36:02.000They can only get films made if the Pentagon and the CIA approve of these films for the most part, in part because Hollywood's a huge business and doesn't want to alienate the US government, but also because a lot of these films need access to things only the Pentagon can provide.
00:36:16.000And the film really is about how potent propaganda is, how it kind of infiltrates every component of our, not just political eyes, but our cultural eyes, where it's even more insidious when our guards not up.
00:36:27.000If you go to the film to see Godzilla, you don't know that the CIA and the Pentagon has helped shape the script.
00:36:34.000And so when I look at things like the history where every time the US has a new war to present, every time the ruling class of Washington has a new war to present, the population gets on board with the war at first and then turns against it, which is what happened in Ukraine.
00:36:47.000I think it's because propaganda is very effective.
00:36:49.000They know how to play on people's emotions, including positive emotions.
00:36:55.000If you show somebody the victims of a war, the civilian victims of a war, the way they did constantly when it came to Ukraine, but never do for U.S.
00:37:03.000Like, when do you ever see a victim of an American war in Iraq or Pakistan or, you know, Yemen or Afghanistan or Syria or Libya talking about, you know, the lives lost and the ambitions crushed?
00:37:15.000You only see it when you hear from Ukrainians talking about Russian missiles that fell, and so people connect to this.
00:37:20.000They're stimulated emotionally, and sometimes it's a good emotion, but they're being so manipulated by a propaganda science that has been developed over decades.
00:37:29.000And then you combine that with this newfound fixation using the Internet to censor more than we've ever been censored.
00:37:37.000This relentless campaign to take off the Internet, anything that raises questions or dissents
00:38:31.000And yet, as you've observed, Rumble is already not available in France and perhaps elsewhere in the EU because of Rumble's refusal to de-platform Russia today.
00:38:43.000Seems to me that forces and legislature is being marshaled to prohibit and certainly inhibit the rise of independent media spaces and that we're kind of Sleepwalking into the normalization of censorship and even your cited figures on support for the Ukraine, ongoing financial support for Ukraine in their conflict with Russia, suggest that many people will just blindly and blithely support ventures such as this.
00:39:12.000So whilst you say you're optimistic, I sometimes feel Like pretty scared that in the end they're going to just say you're not allowed to have rumble anymore.
00:39:24.000And I feel like something is happening in Brazil with a significant podcast being censored.
00:39:29.000And do you feel that there is a kind of consensus among the powerful, even though they may have conflict elsewhere, to manage emergent voices such as the ones that we're discussing in independent media spaces?
00:39:45.000You know, what's happening in Brazil is very scary, and it's also very illuminating.
00:39:49.000I mean, I've lived here for almost 20 years, so obviously I focus on it in part for that reason, but also because Brazil is a huge country.
00:39:55.000It's the sixth largest country in the world, second largest in our hemisphere.
00:39:58.000It has a lot of, you know, environmental resources like the Amazon and major oil resources.
00:40:05.000It's a country of great geostrategic importance, and it has been part of the democratic world for, you know, since 1985 when it redemocratized.
00:40:14.000But what has happened over the last four years, first in the name of fighting Bolsonaro, just like everything in the US is done in the name of fighting Trump, like it used to be justified in the name of fighting the Soviet communism.
00:40:24.000And after that, Muslim extremism, there's always some enemy that justifies authoritarianism to keep the population fearful.
00:40:30.000But in the name of fighting Bolsonaro, they've essentially adopted a completely authoritarian mindset and implemented a system Uh, censorship so extreme that it's genuinely impossible for me to exaggerate or overstate it.
00:40:42.000It's so extreme, in fact, that the New York Times, before the 2022 election between Lula and Bolsonaro, when they were obviously rooting for Lula to win, raised flags on two occasions about how extreme it was becoming.
00:40:55.000They consolidated all the power to censor in the hands of a single member of the Supreme Court, who is very pro-PT and anti-Bolsonaro.
00:41:12.000This person shall be denied access to be able to speak.
00:41:15.000He imposes massive fines if this isn't immediately obeyed.
00:41:18.000There's that person that you referenced.
00:41:21.000He was once called the Joe Rogan of Brazil because he's in his mid-20s.
00:41:25.000He built this enormous audience, was the most influential podcaster in Brazil.
00:41:29.000Millions and millions of views every show, every day on YouTube.
00:41:32.000He got banned off YouTube, booted off YouTube.
00:41:36.000He went to Rumble, where Rumble signed him, and now the judge has ordered Rumble to de-platform his show and has, because Monarch found a way, his name is Monarch, found a way to kind of circumvent it, he opened a criminal investigation, this judge did, fined him $300,000, which is the equivalent of $75,000, all without an accusation or a formal trial or anything else like that.
00:42:02.000He can't speak about politics, even though he's been convicted of no crime.
00:42:05.000And all the people who defend this stuff, like the influencers and the academics and the government officials, constantly are flying to Paris and Berlin and London and Amsterdam, where they have these conferences that they're studying Brazil as a test case for how far the EU and then the US can go.
00:42:21.000The difference with the US is that there is a First Amendment that Brazil doesn't really have.
00:42:30.000In general, if establishments, by definition, see something that threatens their hegemonic hold on power and on people's brains, they will Feeling to attack it.
00:42:39.000It's what they did to the Internet broadly.
00:42:41.000The Internet was supposed to be this revolutionary tool of liberation and innovation.
00:42:45.000They looked at that and they said, we can't allow that.
00:42:48.000They centralized everything in the hands of four corporations that are easily manipulated and controlled by the US government, the corporate media.
00:42:55.000And now they are trying to implement formal laws.
00:42:59.000That is the thing that I do worry about.
00:43:00.000on the internet, if that really takes hold, what hope is there? That is the thing that I do worry
00:43:05.000about. As you said, I do think there's reason to be concerned as well. Oh, that's pretty cool.
00:43:09.000Plus you explained something really important to us there that I'd not properly understood before.
00:43:14.000That by corporatizing and commercializing a formerly truly free space, you create a meaningful and manageable ally, even whilst creating the tension between what is regarded as old media And these new emergent titanic spaces.
00:43:32.000But that is a much easier tension to manage than the potentially disastrous and cataclysmic scenario where there are all manner of free diffuse oppositional voices existing online with sufficient power and ability to accumulate and grow to attack and even bring down a government.
00:43:51.000I suppose after they saw it in corporate spaces like, you know, with Napster and political spaces, perhaps, you know, with Brexit, Trump, Even Podemos and Sarita, possibly these kind of online spaces, contributed to those successes.
00:44:04.000They had to, as you've just said, generate a large corporatist entity that could become enmeshed with and that they could have true complicity with in order to have the kind of corporate power that in the last century would have been rightly regarded as literally fascism.
00:44:24.000They cannot tolerate anything that they don't control.
00:44:26.000And I think one of the things that's interesting to remember, especially for people who are old enough, unfortunately, that includes you and me, to remember what the internet was like in that kind of advent in the early stages when it was all euphoric.
00:44:39.000is that it was completely decentralized and anonymous.
00:44:42.000You could do anything on the internet and you wouldn't be tracked, you wouldn't be connected to your name.
00:44:46.000There was a great freedom that came from it.
00:44:48.000And the idea of the internet was supposed to be that it would be a way to empower individuals to speak with one another, to exchange information and ideas, to organize without having everything mediated by centralized corporate and state authority.
00:45:04.000A lot of the people who run these big tech companies were the pioneers of that kind of era, and they do still have this thing in them that resists this control.
00:45:13.000But when you have a public company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, when your personal wealth is a billionaire, and your acceptance in good liberal society is dependent upon social acceptance, which all human beings are kind of constructed to crave, it's in our DNA because we're tribal animals, There's so many different weapons to control, even people who seem very wealthy and powerful, you know, like Mark Zuckerberg or the head of Google or, you know, in the previous regime, Jack Dorsey.
00:45:41.000Where if you threaten them with enough legal and regulatory reprisals, or you print enough New York Times articles accusing them of having blood on their hands for their refusal to censor, eventually they will start to capitulate because they are, no matter how wealthy they are, susceptible to being controlled and co-opted by other institutions that are more powerful than they are.
00:46:01.000And as you said, as long as you keep it in the hands of a tiny number of corporations, it becomes very manageable.
00:46:06.000Monopolies, duopolies, and this kind of centralized authority, even if it's under the auspices of private enterprise, can be controlled in the way that you described.
00:46:16.000What struck me is that there are sort of historical precedents in social spaces.
00:46:22.000Two examples that come to mind is in Orwell's accounts of Barcelona in homage to Catalonia, in the first flushes of revolution, there's this genuine sense that there's syndicated, localised or consensus-derived authority that eventually coalesces into more overtly communist organisations and eventually into Franco's right-wing dictatorship.
00:46:47.000And then in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, there are these accounts of this rather blissful Paris, where people are giddy on sort of utopian revolutionary sensation, which ultimately becomes militarized, centralized, colonialist.
00:47:03.000In a sense, that template is, it seems to be one that has an almost archetypal power.
00:47:09.000And the way that you describe the seduction of even these oligarchical, or certainly potent The figures in the tech world, Zuckerberg et al, is in a sense just a large-scale version of what we're all experiencing when we're propagandized.
00:47:23.000When we're like, oh yeah, I suppose you do have to have a war against Russia.
00:47:26.000Oh, I guess I probably should censor people on social media.
00:47:31.000In the end, we are all susceptible to quite primal forces and quite deep psychological stimuli.
00:47:41.000George Orwell has this preface that was supposed to be, I think, the preface to his book about the Catalan movement.
00:47:50.000I don't recall exactly which book it was supposed to be part of because it never got published.
00:47:54.000It was right after the war, the World War II, and it was just simply deemed too offensive to publish where he talked about Soviet communism under Stalin and all of the obviously repressive weapons they used to control the population and crush dissent.
00:48:11.000But he then said we in the West are really in no position to boast about how we're so free because oftentimes The way more effective means of controlling human minds is not the overt means of putting prisoners into camps or into prison, or dissenters rather, into prison or camps, or sending people in black uniforms with guns to kill people who criticize the government.
00:48:36.000The much more effective way is through these subtle and insidious means of controlling the means of communication, which is through mass media.
00:48:43.000And putting the prison, not putting people in prison, but putting the prison in their mind so that they're just never exposed to dissent.
00:48:51.000You know, the socialist activist Rosa Luxemburg once said, he who does not move does not notice their chains.
00:48:58.000Where, you know, you can think you're free, but it's only because you're so conformist and so compliant that nobody considers you threatening.
00:49:05.000Nobody considers you enough of a danger to try and do anything against you.
00:49:09.000And so you say, look, I'm saying everything I want and nobody bothers me.
00:49:12.000But that's because everything you're saying serves establishment interests and establishment orthodoxies.
00:49:16.000I think that's very much the world in which we live.
00:49:19.000And bizarrely and paradoxically, the Internet is making it worse.
00:49:22.000The Internet is, you know, when I was doing this reporting, the Internet in my view, became the single greatest weapon of coercion and monitoring ever created in human history.
00:49:34.000It is also now becoming the single greatest weapon of propaganda and thought control, even though it was supposed to be the opposite, because they've been so successful in commandeering control of it, centralizing how it runs in the hands of a tiny number of people, and then controlling them.
00:49:49.000That's the reason why so many people, these people hate Elon Musk with such a passion, because even though he's been far from perfect in it, He's at least saying that he won't comply with these dictates and threatening their control over the flow of information.
00:50:03.000And that's why they feel like he has to be destroyed.
00:50:05.000And I think that shows you how much this control is of the most vital importance to them.
00:50:10.000Indeed, in the documentary Citizen Four that covers your investigation and the revelations that Edward Snowden made, the way that I observed him was as if he were patient zero in a real-life Bentham Panepticon.
00:50:28.000He is the first prisoner that recognizes that he is indeed being observed thought by thought, action by action, data point by data point, that this insidious form of control can now be enacted through the omniscience of a kind of cyber panepticon where we are all observable from every conceivable angle through recourse and observation and correlation of our actions.
00:50:57.000Yeah, you know, just quickly, it's funny when Snowden first contacted me at the end of 2012, he was very worried about disclosing to me any information about him or saying much of anything.
00:51:09.000And he kept saying, essentially, I can't because we're constantly being watched and it's too dangerous.
00:51:15.000And of course, even though I was a critic of the NSA at the time, a harsh critic of the U.S.
00:51:18.000security state, I was thinking to myself, this guy seems kind of crazy, like very paranoid.
00:51:23.000And of course, as it turns out, he was right because he had in his hands the documents proving it.
00:51:30.000And even though I thought I was kind of immune from the propaganda, I immediately started thinking, oh, this guy's kind of paranoid and crazy.
00:51:36.000Of course, that's not true to that extent.
00:51:38.000And only once I saw the documents was I able to really see the full extent of it.
00:51:42.000It just shows you How again, even those who think we're kind of resistant to propaganda are really susceptible to it because it's not just a superficial field of discipline.
00:51:52.000It's something developed over, you know, many decades involving the study of psychology and sociology and all kinds of other fields of discipline.
00:52:16.000They can turn on the microphone whenever they want to, yo!
00:52:19.000Okay well let's get you back to your ward now!
00:52:22.000So we were like talking earlier about how like stuff that almost you get disoriented by extreme conspiratorial discourse like there are nanobots in these medications and you know the earth is flat and then when they say oh there's this chrome orb that's going to read your retina and we're giving that data directly to the government and we're piloting that now in Kenya you think well that's not as bad.
00:52:59.000I mean, the thing that amazes me Russell is if you go back and look at the weeks after the 9-11 attack, when obviously most Americans were traumatized, everybody was like, look, whatever you have to do to prevent this from happening again, go fucking do it.
00:53:53.000No one thinks about the Patriot Act anymore as being this grave threat because it's been normalized.
00:53:58.000And every time we let one of those things go, we allow a little more censorship on the internet, we allow a little more dissent to happen, we allow the EU to make it a crime for social media companies to platform Russian media if they want to and close our information circle just a little more.
00:54:13.000Every time somebody starts having a political awakening because of their age and they start paying attention, what they're connecting to, the reality and the normality of it, is totally different than it was even 10 years ago.
00:54:23.000And the things they're conditioned to automatically accept and not even realize they're accepting becomes more and more extreme.
00:54:30.000And you're so deluged with stimuli that there's a kind of much commented on cultural amnesia that you almost can't be bothered to recollect that three years ago these measures were introduced, this was why lockdown was conducted, this is the reason that we had this set of regulations.
00:54:51.000It all seems like it passes so quickly.
00:54:53.000We're in a sort of state of hyper-stimulation and we're so overwrought and fraught and there's so much information that to be steadfast and principled becomes so superhuman that I think one would have to be devout.
00:55:08.000That the only way that you can have principles now is if you believe in If not God, something that's so like God that it may as well fall under that term, i.e.
00:55:19.000some values and principles that are not swayed by what you are materially offered and what you are given as information, what you are offered as truth, that ever-changing carousel.
00:55:31.000Thank you, Glenn, for being someone that operates on that plane, for having endured what you've endured in the I'm sorry.
00:57:08.000All the greats, they're in there right now.
00:57:11.000Now, as Glenn talked about there, one of the problems with the ongoing persecution of Donald Trump, whether his wrongdoings are real or imagined, is the fact that so many of you, 91% of you, according to a poll, believe that the indictments and arraignments are a distraction from the corrupt actions of the Biden administration.
00:57:30.000Tucker's recent interview with Hunter's former business partner gives us a fascinating insight into that, and we contrast Hucker spoke to Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner.
00:57:55.000He said Joe Biden knew about Hunter's business deals and yet Joe Biden said he knew nothing.
00:58:04.000Hey, did you see that Tucker spoke to Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner, who claims that Joe Biden knew about Hunter Biden's private business dealings?
00:58:14.000And you would think that maybe he would know.
00:58:25.000Do you think if you're Hunter Biden doing a deal with Ukrainian or Chinese businesses, you're going to mention and leverage your father's position as the VP to make those deals move more smoothly?
00:58:35.000Let me know in the comments in the chat.
00:58:36.000Let's have a look at the conversation between Tucker and Devon Archer and his crazy, made up, moralistic Dickensian name and see what we think together.
00:58:46.000People aren't in business in Washington for the most part, and most people don't have business skills that I noticed in 30 years of living there.
00:58:54.000So really, the business of Washington is selling access.
00:58:58.000Not just under Biden, but that's what people do.
00:59:01.000I think that's one of the core misconceptions.
00:59:04.000It seems like understanding a regulatory environment means selling access at the end of the day.
00:59:09.000Selling access is the business of Washington.
00:59:12.000This is a city built on lobbying, donations, finding loopholes, manipulation, knowing the law, manipulating the law, having a wife who regulates big tech companies, and investing in big tech companies.
00:59:26.000Finding ways to do things legally that should be illegal.
00:59:31.000That's how I interpret it, and I think that's how most people on Wall Street, whether they admit it or not, interpret it.
00:59:36.000It's been reported, and you have said that there were occasions when Joe Biden would call in with clients present on a speakerphone.
00:59:56.000So Joe Biden, who is very much a product of Washington, of course must have known that he was calling in to effectively a business meeting that his son was having.
01:00:05.000I mean, he must have understood that that was kind of what his son was selling.
01:00:10.000Well, that's, I mean, it's hard for me to speculate on that.
01:00:13.000But like, I guess my question, just to keep it to the facts, Joe Biden, then the sitting vice president, knew that there were Hunter's business associates in the room.
01:00:23.000Yeah, I think I can, I can definitively say at particular dinners or meetings, he knew there were business associates and he, you know, we, or if I was there, I was a business associate too.
01:00:33.000While Donald Trump fights for his freedom at this time.
01:00:37.000We're asked and invited to consider what the symbol of Washington represents.
01:00:42.000We're told it represents democracy, integrity, transparency, and ethical clarity.
01:00:48.000But if, as our man Devon there alleges, it's simply a town that grants access, a kind of knocking shop, a brothel for access, a place where you lube and grease the wheels of commerce, Well, what is Washington a symbol of, really?
01:01:04.000And is what Donald Trump knew, or didn't know, or deliberately said, or didn't deliberately say, of less significance than the fact that the whole system is just a corrupt soft-sell for the interests of the powerful?
01:01:16.000Now, the allegation is that Biden must have known.
01:01:19.000This revelation contradicts past comments made by the President, who said in 2019 that he never spoke with his son about business dealings.
01:01:27.000I suppose that is what you would say if you wanted to avoid controversy.
01:01:30.000I've never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings, Biden said in 2019 in Iowa.
01:02:04.000Don't you sometimes feel that the very things that they accuse others of doing they're doing themselves?
01:02:08.000Let me know what you feel in the comments.
01:02:10.000Do you kind of think that Hunter Biden probably was to some degree using his father's position as vice president and a long-term congressperson to get business deals that he might otherwise not have got?
01:02:19.000I mean it's basically obvious isn't it?
01:02:22.000So I think Or if, you know, any of the other colleagues from the D.C.
01:02:26.000office or the New York office were there.
01:02:27.000So, yeah, at times there were from the, you know, to be, you know, completely clear on the calls.
01:02:33.000I don't know if it was an orchestrated call in or not.
01:02:36.000It certainly was powerful, though, because, you know, if you're sitting with a foreign business person and you hear the vice president's voice, that's prize enough.
01:02:43.000I mean, that's pretty impactful stuff for anyone in the world.
01:02:48.000It's been reported, and I know that it is true, that the Hunter and his brother were very close to their dad.
01:03:07.000So the power to have that access and that conversation, and it's not in a scheduled conference call, and it's a part of your family, that's like the pinnacle of power in D.C.
01:03:27.000So that's ultimately what's being alleged here, an abuse of soft power.
01:03:32.000While most of the media's ire and focus is on the Trump indictment, isn't it worth simultaneously considering the impact of these allegations, particularly when we know that the Hunter Biden laptop story was deliberately kept Out of the press and social media, to a degree, with the collaboration of the CIA.
01:03:51.000As this story continues to unfurl, doesn't it look more and more likely that at its heart is real, legitimate, destabilising corruption?
01:03:59.000Last week, Hunter Biden appeared in court for charges related to tax crimes, and prosecutors alleged that he received over $600,000 from a Chinese Communist Party-backed company.
01:04:09.000I started a company in 2017 called Hudson West, Your Honour, and my partner was associated with a Chinese energy company called CFC, Hunter Biden said.
01:04:17.000When asked by the judge if he received $664,000 from the Chinese company, Hunter Biden said, I believe so, yes, Your Honour.
01:04:24.000However, during a presidential debate in 2020, Joe Biden said, my son has not made money in terms of this thing about what you are talking about, China.
01:04:38.000Now, that was a confusing sentence, but I think, at its heart, was a denial of Hunter Biden making money from relationships with a Chinese commercial entity, which appears to have been the case.
01:04:49.000During the 2020 debate, Trump made numerous comments about Biden's alleged connection to China, including one moment where he said, Hunter Biden makes millions of dollars from China.
01:04:57.000China ate your lunch, Joe, and no wonder your son goes in and he takes out billions of dollars, takes out billions of dollars to manage, he makes millions of dollars.
01:05:07.000The problem is with the ongoing condemnation and attacks on Donald Trump is that he regularly is able to point to examples of corruption made by his opponents.
01:05:15.000The only way to ever oppose a figure like Donald Trump is by saying, look, we are not corrupt.
01:05:31.000The very conditions that have allowed Trump to arise to this position of prominence continue to be committed, continue to be doubled down on.
01:05:38.000This won't be sufficiently and significantly reported on.
01:05:41.000You won't see Joe Biden saying, look, I was wrong.
01:05:43.000I have been involved in Hunter Biden's business dealings.
01:05:45.000I have made speaker phone calls during meetings.
01:06:15.000Also, I'm a recovering drug addict myself.
01:06:17.000It's very difficult to run an international energy business if you're smoking any crack at all, I would say.
01:06:23.000So if this is true, he's doing bloody well and he deserves that money.
01:06:27.000Mr Biden was the Obama administration's point man for Ukraine, which was fighting Russia's first invasion.
01:06:33.000And he can't claim ignorance about his son's dealings.
01:06:36.000Amos Hochstein, a senior energy official in the Obama administration, warned the Vice President in 2015 that Russia-backed media were using Hunter's presence on the Burisma board to undermine the US anti-corruption message.
01:06:48.000The problem with all this corruption, go on, it undermines our anti-corruption message because it's corrupt.
01:06:55.000The following year, a top diplomat in Kiev, George Kent, was even more blunt in a message to state.
01:07:00.000Ukrainians, Mr Kent said, heard one message from us and then saw another set of behaviour with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules in the oil gas sector.
01:07:12.000It's one thing to develop relationships in office that turn into business opportunities later, the way Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, did in the Middle East.
01:07:19.000It's another to leverage the office while in office to promote the family business.
01:07:22.000As Mr. Archer said, the advantage of the Biden brand is that legally people will be too intimidated to mess with them.
01:07:28.000This is another example of how the condemnation of Trump and Trump affiliates starts to look ridiculous when there are comparable events within the Biden administration.
01:07:38.000What there should be, it seems, is a thorough investigation, and perhaps Hunter Biden's trial is precisely that, into What exactly has gone on between the Biden family and all these energy companies?
01:07:47.000This is no longer a salacious scandal about a man's behaviour while under the influence of addiction.
01:07:53.000This is deep institutional financial corruption involving a vice president who claims that he is the new figurehead for a brave and bold new government.
01:08:01.000But really, this is the kind of corruption that we're all used to, isn't it?
01:08:04.000Whether or not Joe Biden took a dime from these dealings, this is a form of political corruption.
01:08:09.000Covered up by the press in 2020, it will be an issue in 2024.
01:08:12.000Democrats should worry that as more facts emerge about the Biden mix of politics and business, it could help Mr. Trump neutralize his many legal vulnerabilities.
01:08:20.000That's precisely what is happening, is that the charges, allegations, and attempts to indict Trump seem less significant and legitimate in light of this information.
01:08:30.000How many times do you think you met Joe Biden during the course of your relationship with Hunter?
01:09:21.000Joe Biden's official position is that he's had nothing at all to do with Hunter Biden's business dealings.
01:09:27.000That Hunter Biden is like some sort of plucky street urchin who's made it in the wild world of Ukrainian mineral energies and gas and Chinese business just as a sort of coincidence.
01:09:39.000Like, by God, I was just being vice president over here.
01:09:42.000Meanwhile, over there, What's Hunter doing?
01:09:43.000He's becoming an international business person!
01:09:46.000So there's no connection between those two facts.
01:09:48.000Here's Hunter Biden's business partner producing a letter from Joe Biden saying, oh sorry I couldn't get away from President Who because I'm the Vice President and I'm probably supposed to be engaged in protecting American national security rather than babbling in Hunter's business dealings.
01:10:03.000Can you see that even if they can't demonstrate that Joe Biden financially benefited from the situation, it's pretty plain that he was involved.
01:10:11.000It's pretty plain that at very least there's nepotism.
01:10:13.000It's pretty plain that at least he was using his position as vice president to advantage Hunter Biden.
01:10:18.000In a way, I can get myself into a state where I don't care about that, where I'm like, oh, well, this is the world, isn't it?
01:10:29.000I'm not the Vice President of the United States, and I'm not denying that that happened, and we're not in the middle of a great and glorious fiasco where Donald Trump is supposed to be indicted, one, because of his relationship with Stormy Daniels, two, because of some financial corruption issues, taking those boxes, three, because of inciting an insurrection inside his mind.
01:10:48.000We can prove he did it inside his mind.
01:10:50.000What I'm saying is that no one has a fortress of moral authority or a pulpit from which to address us as people who say, listen, this guy's corrupt.
01:12:01.000But like he's saying, I didn't see that.
01:12:03.000Personally, when I see stuff like that, let me know in the comments if you agree.
01:12:05.000I think, all right, well, he's probably telling the truth because, you know, you could say, oh, maybe that letter's not real or maybe this guy's making it up.
01:12:19.000Trump's saying this because he knows I'll beat him like a drum or I'll play him like a pan pipe or some other extraordinary musical analogy.
01:12:26.000But the fact is, Something that we're all beginning to understand, I think, is that the Biden administration was never going to be the answer.
01:12:32.000It's simply doubling down on a problem.
01:12:34.000So it's enough to be sitting at a meal at Lake Como with your new Ukrainian friends, and while your dad happens to call, let's put them on speaker.
01:13:09.000At one point, They told Hunter to, quote, call his dad?
01:13:14.000Yeah, I mean, I think referencing the email that you put earlier, there was constant pressure to send signals, to leverage all of his, you know, his dad included, but the Biden brand, all of the, you know, the D.C.
01:13:33.000insider and relationships to help Burisma survive.
01:13:37.000I think that's the You know, at the end of the day what we're talking about.
01:13:43.000It was that ability to help on the geopolitical stage, keep them out of trouble, keep them out of investigations, unfreeze assets.
01:13:55.000If that litany of advantages that come with Hunter Biden's name are to be believed, then it's not an appointment that's based on Hunter Biden's business, prowess, instincts and insights.
01:14:08.000It's a very real set of advantages that come with having Hunter Biden involved in Burisma there in Ukraine.
01:14:16.000It's not like we're bringing Hunter Biden onto the board and did you know that Joe Biden's actually his dad?
01:14:21.000It's like we're getting this guy because Joe Biden's his dad so that we can unfreeze assets, so that we can avoid investigation.
01:14:27.000What else do you imagine they're paying dear Hunter Biden 664 grand for?
01:15:08.000It was hiring lobbyists and law firms and various NGOs to help clear the path from regulatory roadblocks at the end of the day.
01:15:23.000This is what we all believe, isn't it?
01:15:24.000With the Melinda Gates Foundation, with the Clinton Foundation.
01:15:27.000But all of this stuff that's dressed up as philanthropy is either tax evasion and avoidance, or it's ways of legitimising connections or exerting influence that will later play out financially.
01:15:36.000Oh, we think that you guys should use these medications!
01:15:38.000Buy up a load of stocks in those medications.
01:15:42.000We've seen this again and again and again.
01:15:44.000The problem comes when a political figure claims that they're different.
01:15:47.000The problem comes when there's actual criminality, tax evasion, tax fraud, payments that are being made plainly for influence rather than expertise.
01:15:55.000But the idea was by having that relationship and by saying, I met with the vice president in Washington, that gives him the swat.
01:16:03.000Yeah, I think at the end of the day, that's the...
01:16:05.000You know, the prize or the, you know, being able to have, whether it's on speakerphone or in person, the prize is that contact and that access to power.
01:16:17.000The reaction to what you've said in public, to what you said to the committee on the Hill in Dallas, to what you've been telling us in this interview, is that like, There's no corruption here at all.
01:17:01.000Yeah, I think that's not factually right.
01:17:07.000Whether or not Joe Biden took a dime from these dealings, this is a form of political corruption.
01:17:11.000Covered up by the press in 2020, it will be an issue in 2024.
01:17:15.000Democrats should worry that as much more facts emerge about the Biden mix of politics and business, it could help Mr Trump neutralise his many legal vulnerabilities.
01:17:23.000Whether or not Devon Archer's claims lead to a kind of legal indictment or proof of corruption, in my view, they're not nothing, are they?
01:17:31.000When you consider that so far what Biden's spokespeople have offered is, oh, this is just a bunch of kerfuffle and claptrap and balderdash coughed up by the Republican Party as a distraction, nitpicking, just an attempt to bring down a good and honest man of integrity, that plainly isn't the case.
01:17:48.000Sooner or later, Biden's going to have to give a speech, isn't he, where he goes, look, Look, I know I said I had no dealings at all, but I did come on speakerphone.
01:17:55.000I did have direct dealings with Devon Archer.
01:17:57.000I did create at least the impression that I was an ally and supporter of my son that enabled him to get jobs with companies he wouldn't otherwise have got, with the assumption that he could leverage his relationship with me to ensure that meaningful advantages could be leveraged by Burisma when it comes to things like unfreezing assets and avoiding investigation.
01:18:15.000Seems to me these are pretty significant claims and significant charges.
01:18:20.000Added to which Ukraine finds itself the center of a geopolitical disaster that's costing the
01:19:15.000And surely we've noticed that it's summer and it's getting hot out there,
01:19:20.000but I'm getting pretty hot down there.
01:19:21.000Now, if you wear traditional old-fashioned underwear, like your granddad, you and me will be vulnerable.
01:19:28.000To sweating and chafing all over our precious reproductive organs.
01:19:34.000Once that temperature's high, I mean, I don't know what Donald Trump wears on his privates, but I'll tell you, Joe Biden, that guy goes commando.
01:19:41.000Summertime is not an issue if you wear sheath.