Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - LIVE WITH RUSSELL BRAND | TRIGGERED Ep.143

00:00:00.000 you you

00:05:58.000 welcome to another episode of triggered This is going to be a fun one because we have Russell Brand in my house.

00:06:17.000 This is like the only place in the house I actually have a little bit of control over.

00:06:21.000 The rest is controlled by Kim and someone else.

00:06:25.000 This is my happy place, so we get to do stuff here that we can't otherwise.

00:06:28.000 We were sweating our asses off this morning.

00:06:31.000 It's been like a sauna thing.

00:06:32.000 I like the zen look.

00:06:33.000 I'm going to have to do that.

00:06:36.000 We'll get comfortable and do it that way.

00:06:39.000 How are you, man?

00:06:39.000 I've been so happy in your home all day long, Don.

00:06:42.000 I've enjoyed the tour.

00:06:44.000 It was pretty generous of you to allow me to have a shower, particularly in your en suite.

00:06:50.000 I've just felt incredibly welcome.

00:06:52.000 Thank you so much.

00:06:53.000 It's my pleasure.

00:06:54.000 I did not get invited into the shower, just for the record, but I was happy to let you use it.

00:07:00.000 It's actually been a fun day, and for those of you who didn't see it, I did Russell's show earlier today.

00:07:07.000 We sort of had a good time where, you know, I was the interviewee and you were the interviewer.

00:07:11.000 Now we're sort of reversing those roles a bit.

00:07:13.000 I think what we'll do is, just because of the timing and everything, we'll add that to the end of this.

00:07:17.000 So I'll throw to this at the end of the show and you can see the different perspectives.

00:07:21.000 But I think, you know, one of the things we sort of talked about was, you know, it probably wasn't all that long ago where, whether it's, you know, the powers that be or, You and I would have not been a likely conversation.

00:07:33.000 We probably wouldn't have agreed on much, and yet, you know, we've spent all day together and sort of had a great conversation, even with differing views.

00:07:42.000 It was sort of fascinating to me.

00:07:43.000 I think, like, culturally, I would have felt, oh, I'm not allowed to talk to Donald Trump Jr.

00:07:49.000 These are weird people that are from the other side of the culture.

00:07:53.000 And we're not going to be able to get on, we'll have nothing in common, but over the course of the day it's become clear to me and hopefully that's sort of based on pretty integral... This is too far from my mouth.

00:08:03.000 Hopefully it's based on sort of some shared values.

00:08:06.000 I feel like... Do you know what?

00:08:09.000 I reckon that one of the things that's really important and significant is for people to, before assuming that they wouldn't be able to have easy camaraderie and collaborate with people, to get to know people first of all, because I think somehow... Right, right.

00:08:21.000 It doesn't seem that hard, right?

00:08:22.000 If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

00:08:24.000 It's fine.

00:08:24.000 If there's someone you think you won't get on with, go to their house, have a shower in their home.

00:08:29.000 That might augur a brilliant friendship and the possibility for new alliance.

00:08:33.000 So, you know, when you talk about that, I mean, talk about sort of that notion, I guess, there's sort of an element that, hey, if you were even open to that a few years ago, you'd have been derided, you'd have been, you know, there would have been attempted cancellation, but now that they've already tried to do that for all sorts of other reasons, simply for speaking out against the machine for you, there's an element that it's sort of freeing, actually, right?

00:08:58.000 Yeah.

00:08:58.000 As brutal as it can be getting there.

00:09:00.000 You know what?

00:09:02.000 Having been inside the machine before, you recognize that it's got some pretty insidious values and makes some pretty serious demands of you.

00:09:09.000 That there's a moment when you're being celebrated and sometimes you think that's because of something you're doing.

00:09:15.000 Like, oh, I deserve this.

00:09:15.000 This is on merit.

00:09:16.000 I must be creative.

00:09:17.000 I must be brilliant.

00:09:19.000 And in retrospect, you start to realize that you're fulfilling a function for a particular aspect of the machine.

00:09:25.000 You know, maybe for a minute it can utilize you as a Easy kind of symbol of decadence or hedonism or maybe just for a minute your face fits.

00:09:34.000 You're useful. 1.00

00:09:35.000 You know people use that phrase useful idiot a lot. 0.99

00:09:39.000 And then, after a while, maybe the machine no longer can use you, you're not convenient anymore, then it will dispatch you. 0.99

00:09:46.000 By God, heaven forbid you should speak out against it, heaven forbid you should start recognising that this culture can be pretty punishing, that it seems to benefit from separating people, censoring people, surveilling people, controlling people, legitimising citizen management wherever it can.

00:10:00.000 If you start to wake up to those ideas and communicate, The machine will be brutal.

00:10:05.000 It will thresh you.

00:10:06.000 And with that, though, as you say, Don, comes a different kind of freedom.

00:10:09.000 You realize that I'm going to talk to whoever I want because I believe actually in people's individual freedom anyway.

00:10:16.000 So if you have those kind of principles, you believe in free speech and autonomy.

00:10:21.000 Yeah, sort of young people always ask, you know, what can I do?

00:10:28.000 How do I learn?

00:10:29.000 How do I get better?

00:10:30.000 And it's actually to have that discourse, to have a dialogue, not necessarily with someone who's simply agreeing with you all the time, but someone who doesn't.

00:10:38.000 I found I've learned so much more in life from that than simply, you know, regurgitating what academia has told me or what the mainstream media has told me and just, you know, it's interesting the left still thinks of themselves as counterculture but they're agreeing with corporate America and entertainment and all of that.

00:10:58.000 Have you seen the sort of the irony of all of that?

00:11:02.000 Yes, I think that it's an important point that if your ideals are corporatised ideals, if the ideals that you find yourself parroting are able to be utilised to legitimise authoritarianism or control, then you have to examine what they might really be about.

00:11:20.000 For example, the idea of compassion, the idea of open-heartedness, the idea of letting people be who they want to be, to express themselves freely as long as they're not harming anyone else, all these kind of values that I used to associate with the left, you know, free speech, civil rights, the ability to be who you want to be, all of those kind of things, I still believe are pretty important ideas, but I've noted that these ideas that claim to be based on compassion Always end up in facilitating control.

00:11:49.000 And I don't believe in the compassion anymore.

00:11:51.000 And I think during COVID, Don, I felt like we were exposed to perhaps the true agenda.

00:11:57.000 Because, you know, the whole point of lockdowns and taking experimental medications was meant to be, life is so sacred, we must lock ourselves in our homes, we must take these medications in order to protect the most vulnerable people in society.

00:12:12.000 And protecting the most vulnerable people in society Seems like a pretty lovely aim.

00:12:16.000 Who wouldn't want to look after their elders and the elderly? 0.64

00:12:19.000 The people that can't look after themselves.

00:12:21.000 These seem like important values.

00:12:22.000 But now, over time, we saw...

00:12:26.000 Excuse me, that those weren't the motivating ideas at all.

00:12:29.000 They just offered the opportunity for profit, for wealth transfer, to legitimize regulation, to restrict people's movements, to restrict people's freedom, to shame and condemn and criminalize people.

00:12:40.000 So that for me was a big part of the awakening.

00:12:42.000 Yeah, watching, you know, major corporate American chains be sort of exempted from any kind of lockdown because they're critical, but a gym, You know, physical fitness.

00:12:53.000 The small coffee shop wasn't critical, but Starbucks was because they could pay a lobbyist $100,000 a month.

00:12:59.000 It sort of felt like that was the big tell.

00:13:02.000 It was a really awakening moment.

00:13:04.000 It's like, well, what's the difference?

00:13:05.000 I mean, you go into a coffee shop, it doesn't, that doesn't change transmission magically.

00:13:09.000 One coffee shop isn't less transmissible than another.

00:13:12.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:13:13.000 And yet it was almost, that's what we were told was the case.

00:13:16.000 Yeah and some of the things that have been maligned and condemned either as right-wing or far-right or racist or fascist or whatever do include stuff like health and fitness and bodily autonomy and personal awakening and like when you see someone like Joe Rogan being attacked in the way that he was who's someone that to me doesn't appear to be carrying a particular flag when it comes to political ideology just open-minded General speaking, individual sovereignty and freedom.

00:13:42.000 That made me ask a lot of questions and you know I was chatting to, excuse me, is it John in there that you guys work with?

00:13:48.000 Yeah.

00:13:48.000 And we were talking about the That how somehow there appears to be a war against human nature.

00:13:54.000 That when you spend some time away from the culture, he was using the example actually of naked and afraid.

00:13:59.000 Like after a couple of weeks of naked and afraid, people aren't sweating toxins so they're not getting bitten by mosquitoes.

00:14:05.000 Suddenly people that are vegan are willing to hunt and eat meat.

00:14:08.000 He suggests that there is a nature within us that we're being shut off from.

00:14:12.000 Now, you can't follow your every impulse in this world because of course we have to be considerate of one another.

00:14:17.000 But I feel that what we're living in is a kind of prison planet penitentiary that appears to have the inhibition of freedom almost as its driving ideal.

00:14:26.000 It doesn't want people to be awake and confident and proud of who they are and truly proud of diversity.

00:14:34.000 And like we were saying at lunch, it's like there's the promotion of superficial diversity but beneath it homogeneity, absolute homogenization of spirit and of thought.

00:14:44.000 They want diversity of Color, of ethnicity, of sexual preference.

00:14:50.000 The only thing that's verboten, the only thing totally off the table is diversity of thought.

00:14:55.000 The second that happens, that's when they're not so into diversity anymore.

00:15:00.000 You see that on college campuses, you see that elsewhere.

00:15:03.000 I'm sort of curious, obviously.

00:15:05.000 You're a major actor in Hollywood.

00:15:07.000 You were married to one of the biggest people in pop culture and music with Katy Perry. 1.00

00:15:13.000 You've sort of spoken out against the machine now, so you've perhaps seen a little bit more exposure to both sides.

00:15:20.000 Which side, if you had to pick, is actually more tolerant?

00:15:25.000 Because one side preaches tolerance, but it doesn't actually seem to espouse it.

00:15:29.000 A few years ago, when I first started doing stuff on YouTube, I must have been super naive, but just from the background I'm from, a lot of people organically didn't trust politics, didn't trust politicians.

00:15:42.000 Oh, I still don't!

00:15:44.000 Just so we're clear.

00:15:45.000 Right, right.

00:15:46.000 That was sort of just like where I stood.

00:15:48.000 So it's not like I was a liberal left-wing type person.

00:15:51.000 I didn't trust politicians full stop.

00:15:52.000 So one time when I was like doing some promotional work or something, I can't even remember what for, I spoke out and said, I don't vote.

00:15:58.000 I've never voted.

00:16:00.000 Why don't you vote?

00:16:00.000 Because I don't trust politicians.

00:16:02.000 I think they're all the same.

00:16:03.000 I think they're all controlled by the same sets of powers.

00:16:05.000 This is like, you know, in 2015 when I said this, OK?

00:16:09.000 And when I said that, to your point about which side have you found to be more tolerant and which side is more vindictive, the attacks that came from liberal media, the condemnation, the criticism, the cruelty, how patronising they were, it made me realise, hold on a minute, These institutions hate ordinary, in my case, working British people.

00:16:31.000 And I think the same thing became relevant during the campaigning era prior to the election of your father, that there is a sort of malignment and disdain for ordinary Americans.

00:16:44.000 And I think that what we're experiencing now, Don, it seems to me anyway, is any opportunity to legitimize the hatred of ordinary Americans is taken. 0.99

00:16:52.000 Ah, they're racist, they're disgusting. 0.99

00:16:54.000 And it seems like there's a professional class that kind of have a vampiric, parasitic appetite to condemn and control. 0.98

00:17:02.000 And for me, it, like, listen, people that are on the right, whether they're conservative socially, conservative economically, there might be ideas that I disagree with strongly, but I want to be able to talk to people that go, this is why I believe in free market capitalism, This is why I believe you should deregulate here.

00:17:16.000 This is why I believe in Christianity.

00:17:17.000 And I'm a Christian myself now, of course.

00:17:20.000 But, you know, like, you're right.

00:17:23.000 The side that are claiming tolerance appear to be quite condemnatory exactly in the area where tolerance is required when dealing with people you don't agree with.

00:17:34.000 If you don't have tolerance there, you don't have tolerance.

00:17:37.000 You have the exploitation of certain ideas to legitimize control.

00:17:42.000 Let's talk a little bit about Christianity.

00:17:43.000 You were recently baptized.

00:17:46.000 I know we spoke earlier.

00:17:47.000 I said the left doesn't believe in a higher being necessarily, so they create their own along the way.

00:17:53.000 Greta Thunberg for climate change, George Floyd for I'm not sure what.

00:17:58.000 He was a deity for quite some time and seven funerals around the world.

00:18:01.000 You had, you know, Zelensky today as the sort of high lord of Ukraine, which is apparently the most important issue in the world, even if most people don't agree with that.

00:18:12.000 Obviously, during COVID, you had Anthony Fauci as the, you know, the high priestess of that.

00:18:18.000 You know, what was that journey like for you?

00:18:20.000 To, you know, at your age come to Christianity, be recently baptized?

00:18:25.000 How did that happen?

00:18:26.000 Well, I guess probably before, I might have had a more New Age approach to spirituality.

00:18:32.000 I think that, tell me what you've believed on, but like addiction to substances is often an attempt, at least in the philosophy that's helped me get well, 12-step philosophy, is an attempt to address a spiritual malady, some loss, some absence, some yearning at the core of your being that you cannot live without God.

00:18:52.000 If you don't have God, you will create God.

00:18:55.000 At the level of the culture, that may be Anthony Fauci as a kind of deity of health and science.

00:19:02.000 At an individual level, people need to have a God.

00:19:05.000 People need a set of principles, a set of values.

00:19:07.000 And there is something in our nature that yearns after a creator.

00:19:11.000 Now when you get clean from drugs and alcohol, you know, I went to a place that was pretty, well, secular for sure.

00:19:17.000 Secular.

00:19:18.000 Atheist almost.

00:19:19.000 But they still have to instruct you that you are using drugs and alcohol As to give your life purpose and to cope with the lack of purpose.

00:19:28.000 In the same way that there might be animal drives within us that are being denied, there are spiritual drives within us that are being denied by the culture.

00:19:38.000 And so by getting clean, you know, you have to surrender to a higher power.

00:19:41.000 You have to hand over your will and your life.

00:19:44.000 And this process began, and I must be pretty dumb and a kind of slow learner, but over the 21 years that I've been clean and sober, I've obviously moved closer to a spiritual life.

00:19:54.000 Meditation, recognizing that values like kindness and service and humility, while difficult to achieve, are certainly worth pursuing.

00:20:03.000 Then, as the pressure increased recently after being publicly attacked and accused of the worst things, in my view, that a man can be accused of, and at the same time as dealing with some personal difficulties that have proven to be incredible blessings, actually, because, as I mentioned to you earlier, my son was born with some life-threatening conditions that required Surgery and pretty significant intervention.

00:20:25.000 I experienced a stripping away.

00:20:27.000 An absolute annihilation of the idea that I am any kind of sovereign in my own life.

00:20:32.000 And a recognition of my total lack of power.

00:20:35.000 The acknowledgement that even having been involved in entertainment and show business for as long as I'd been, that I still cared deeply about what other people thought of me and that I'd made an icon of myself.

00:20:45.000 Not consciously, but I cared so much.

00:20:47.000 And when all that was destroyed, I found myself pretty raw.

00:20:53.000 And in this place of rawness and fear, even though it brought out really kind and compassionate and brave and bold people, I want to mention at this point how strong Chris Pavlovsky in particular was at Rumble. 0.94

00:21:03.000 He shut that shit down when people were saying, you've got to boot people off. 0.85

00:21:07.000 Those attempts to censor, always using a crisis to assert control. 0.99

00:21:12.000 What I found in this place of despair, really slowly and not through any will of my own, I've got to say, John, It's like, oh my God, Jesus Christ is always present.

00:21:20.000 I've always known.

00:21:21.000 I had this tattoo ages ago.

00:21:22.000 I had this tattoo ages ago.

00:21:24.000 I've had this fascination with the figure of Christ but never before been willing to accept the idea of God come to earth in the figure of a human being to experience our suffering as a transaction, as a sacrifice for all of our sins.

00:21:38.000 To recognize that I can't ever achieve the mercy and forgiveness that I need, but it has been freely given to me by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

00:21:47.000 And this is something I'm like, it's not like, you know, I've only been a Christian for a month, so like I'm reading, I'm learning, I'm reading the Bible, I'm going to church, I'm learning about it.

00:21:56.000 What it's given me access to is grace and compassion.

00:22:00.000 And I think that these are the things that are lacking, not only in my life, but in the culture that, you know, you were like a member of on one half of, you know, half of the America loves you and loves your family, half of America vilifying, hating, condemning.

00:22:14.000 You know, we joked about it earlier that still on your Wikipedia page, they're saying Russia scandal, Russia collusion.

00:22:20.000 That's been proven to be untrue.

00:22:22.000 It's been proven to be untrue.

00:22:24.000 The culture doesn't believe in redemption.

00:22:25.000 The culture doesn't believe in salvation.

00:22:27.000 The culture doesn't believe in Jesus Christ.

00:22:29.000 It believes in materialism and power and control.

00:22:32.000 Now, both of us in different ways experience some, you know, material privilege.

00:22:36.000 Of course, you've been open about what, you know, your background is.

00:22:38.000 We hardly need to examine it.

00:22:41.000 And I've gone from a position of not having access to those kind of things to having access to it.

00:22:45.000 And what I see now is that where the real exploitation and control is, is taking place nefariously, invisibly, insidiously, behind politics somehow.

00:22:55.000 That there are big choices that have to be made by your country and by mine if we are to prevent further authoritarianism, further autocracy.

00:23:03.000 And for me, the kind of technological feudalism that we face under the auspices of compassionate neoliberalism

00:23:12.000 is far more terrifying than even the worst projections of the detractors of Donald Trump,

00:23:18.000 who say, oh, he'll stay in office forever.

00:23:21.000 They've lost their touch with basic values, and they are pretending that compassion and care

00:23:26.000 are at the heart of their ethos, when control is the only thing that you can track all the way through it.

00:23:31.000 Yeah, what was that like?

00:23:33.000 You know, when they recently sort of, they went after you, terrible accusations as, you know, no one's heard anything about it in nine months or whatever it was, but it doesn't stop the attack from happening.

00:23:43.000 And the attack these days is though, it's the gospel, right?

00:23:48.000 They did it to my father the same thing.

00:23:49.000 You know, he apparently sexually assaulted someone 30 years ago, but, you know, it's like he was hiding for 30 years and they magically found him, right?

00:23:55.000 You've been out there with one of the most famous people in the world, and one of the most popular people in pop culture, him sort of the same way.

00:24:02.000 And yet, the second you took a stance that wasn't 100% in line with sort of the rest of that group, you know, they went after you, arguably in the most horrible way possible.

00:24:15.000 There doesn't seem to be any evidence of this, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore.

00:24:20.000 I mean, where does this end?

00:24:21.000 Because it doesn't feel like a good place.

00:24:23.000 Media outlets collaboratively utilized anonymized sources and it seems to me there has been some considerable unusual collaboration and involvement of various agencies And departments.

00:24:38.000 The whole time that I was famous, I was talking about, I'm a womanizer, I'm a womanizer, I love women.

00:24:43.000 You weren't even hiding it.

00:24:44.000 No one had a problem with it.

00:24:45.000 It's like, that's fine.

00:24:47.000 I feel grateful to say that women found me very attractive.

00:24:50.000 And I have to be honest enough to say that the conduct that I engaged in was very promiscuous and very, very selfish.

00:24:57.000 And when you're as selfish as that, of course, it has to be acknowledged.

00:25:03.000 That that kind of selfishness is not in alignment with the kind of values, spiritual values, that I would like to live with now and I wish to God I'd lived with then.

00:25:12.000 But to conflate that, and to amplify that, to confuse that, and to mendaciously fabricate that that is in alignment with crime and criminality, And as you say, this didn't occur while I was in Hollywood.

00:25:26.000 Yeah, you were on the cover of every magazine in the world.

00:25:29.000 It's not like, oh, that's the guy that did it.

00:25:31.000 You weren't hiding.

00:25:34.000 You weren't in a monastery for 25 years and then magically you came out and they recognized that guy.

00:25:41.000 The culture's telling you that you're supposed to be promiscuous.

00:25:43.000 The culture's telling you you're supposed to be hedonistic.

00:25:47.000 Like, if you're a single man and you're fortunate enough to have women find you attractive, this is meant to be the greatest thing that you can be.

00:25:55.000 This is meant to be celebrated.

00:25:57.000 And over time, like all forms of, I would say, addiction-driven behavior, One, I come to recognise, no, this is not the way to live.

00:26:07.000 And like, I've got a family, and I live differently, and I, you know, listen, to tell you the truth, Don, I don't look at pornography in my life.

00:26:15.000 I do not masturbate.

00:26:16.000 I have my attitude to, like, I try to find the sacred in everything now, including sexuality.

00:26:22.000 We are supposed to be living sacred lives.

00:26:25.000 We are supposed to be living sacred lives.

00:26:27.000 And my God, my life was not perfect, but it was never criminal, always consensual.

00:26:33.000 And the culture, curiously, that tries to suggest that we should be living this decadent, hedonistic lifestyle, when it suits it, it metastasizes whatever it wants to into whatever it needs.

00:26:43.000 Utility.

00:26:44.000 Utility.

00:26:45.000 Always.

00:26:46.000 How can we shut down dissident voices?

00:26:48.000 How can we control opposition?

00:26:49.000 That's sort of the great irony, I guess, right?

00:26:51.000 The same culture that is literally out there promoting that, sexualizing it, oftentimes sexualizing our children, you see, on a daily basis, is the same culture that then attacked you for what they were essentially encouraging for decades.

00:27:05.000 Yes.

00:27:05.000 They would have actually lauded you for similar just promiscuity, maybe not the other what I believe to be totally just false accusations, as evidenced by the fact that it seems to be going nowhere.

00:27:16.000 You still have to deal with the bullshit, but you know, if it was real, you'd still hear about it. 0.98

00:27:20.000 We all know what crime is. 0.99

00:27:21.000 We all know what consent is.

00:27:22.000 We all know what it is to understand when people are interested, and thankfully, as I've said to you, I was in a position of Outrageous access, and I was pretty foolish to think that you can just live like this.

00:27:35.000 It's not a way that I would encourage sons or daughters of mine to live, but I recognize that a lot of people live that way.

00:27:42.000 Promiscuity and that kind of licentiousness, let's call it, is kind of celebrated throughout the culture.

00:27:50.000 Sexuality is amplified throughout the culture, used to objectify and commodify almost everything.

00:27:57.000 So, you know, in that, you know, there was sort of the natural, I guess, collusion between the media, a lot of the tech platforms automatically, you know, they take sort of an anonymous accusation and it became the gospel, right?

00:28:10.000 I mean, YouTube wanted to throw you out, the UK government wanted you immediately demonetized from many of the platforms that you were out there on.

00:28:18.000 What was that attack?

00:28:19.000 Because to me, and again, now I'm sort of an expert at this because it's happened to us every way, shape, or form.

00:28:24.000 They did the same thing to my father.

00:28:26.000 You know, 30 years later, magically.

00:28:29.000 But the attack is so vicious.

00:28:32.000 It's so coordinated.

00:28:33.000 It's so obvious.

00:28:35.000 What was it like being in that moment from those same people who, again, Even months earlier would have had you on the cover of their magazines and would have been promoting you at all costs.

00:28:46.000 You'd have been boosted in the algorithm instead of smothered entirely.

00:28:51.000 I suppose as it says in the Bible, by their fruits shall ye know them, that if the result is Demonetization, shutting down de-amplification, shadow banning, shutting down of the voice, then you get to understand potentially what the motives are.

00:29:05.000 What it's like on a personal level, as you must know, is pretty terrifying.

00:29:08.000 It's pretty terrifying to see the ability to coordinate, to control, to metastasize, to fabricate.

00:29:13.000 All of those things are pretty frightening, but as I mentioned to you privately, it was happening at the exact same time that my Infant son was undergoing life-intervening cardiological surgery.

00:29:26.000 He was born with a condition called Tetralogy of Fallot.

00:29:28.000 And when you're dealing with that, when you're in a children's hospital, when you're walking through an oncology ward to avoid paparazzi, a children's oncology ward, seeing children who are presumably not all of whom are going to make it, I had the blessing of recognising however important this might seem to me, however unfair this might seem to be to me right now, it is insignificant in the overall scheme of things.

00:29:51.000 I felt very blessed to have that kind of insight and incredibly blessed that You know, the surgeons and medical workers that treated my son had the expertise and the experience and the genius to save his life.

00:30:04.000 So, I had a... You know, sometimes God, always God, does for you what you cannot do for yourself.

00:30:11.000 I was not about to awaken to the fact that I needed to radically change, that I needed to live a different life.

00:30:17.000 And thankfully, even though that was not an experience that I would wish upon even my worst enemies, Yeah, every once in a while I think we all have those experiences where you realize the stuff that we actually worry about is really trite.

00:30:36.000 I told you at lunch, a similar experience yesterday.

00:30:38.000 The young man, I won't say his name, but Got to our system.

00:30:42.000 Super big Trump fan.

00:30:44.000 Congenital heart issue.

00:30:45.000 Going into surgery.

00:30:46.000 Not expected to live.

00:30:48.000 Wasn't expected to live past his first birthday.

00:30:50.000 Now he's in his early 20s.

00:30:51.000 But not looking good.

00:30:53.000 And all he wanted to do was speak to some Trumps because he's a huge fan.

00:30:56.000 Also, severely autistic.

00:30:58.000 And I spoke to this kid who next month, I guess, is going into a surgery that he's not expected to come out of.

00:31:03.000 And he was Happier to speak to me than I am about just about anything in life. 1.00

00:31:09.000 And I'm saying, what a fucking asshole I am. 1.00

00:31:11.000 I was bitching about, you know, there was a fat guy in the coach seat on the plane that I was in. 1.00

00:31:15.000 I'm like, argh!

00:31:16.000 It was like my day was ruined because someone's overflowing into the seat next to me yesterday.

00:31:20.000 I'm like, man. 0.99

00:31:23.000 I'm a dick. 0.99

00:31:24.000 Because in the grand scheme of things, the little things that sometimes ruin our days are bullshit compared to what some people are going through. 0.98

00:31:32.000 And then you see them have that sort of spirit and that joy despite that, and you're like, perspective.

00:31:37.000 Christianity, they say, does not mean that you are inoculated against suffering, but your suffering becomes purposeful and meaningful.

00:31:47.000 And I've been able to recognize that my life is not about me and what I want, and I continually, like, the needle flips between self and God, and I have to work so hard to make it stay towards God.

00:32:00.000 But when you have the opportunity or blessing to be around people that need you, to be engaged in purpose and meaning, then you experience the kind of relief and grace of that.

00:32:12.000 I can't live in that selfishness no more, Don.

00:32:14.000 Like, there's sort of like, you know, you have a little call with somebody.

00:32:16.000 I remember speaking to someone telling me about how their son had died from a drug overdose, and I was on a movie set in the trailer, and like, I sort of felt like, oh my God, I don't know how, like, she started crying on the call.

00:32:25.000 Her kid had, like, taken, like, ecstasy, I think was the drug, and had died, and she just said, like, you know, she was talking to me about that experience.

00:32:33.000 I felt like, wow, in this moment, I've got to be qualified to handle what she's saying.

00:32:37.000 I don't feel qualified, but I've got to be qualified.

00:32:40.000 This was some years ago, and I think if you look back at your life, you'll find whoever you are, that there are moments where you're being guided towards meaning and purpose.

00:32:48.000 You're being shown that life isn't what you're being sold.

00:32:51.000 It is not about the avoidance of fear and the fulfillment of desire.

00:32:56.000 It is about...

00:32:59.000 About trying to become a conduit for something higher, shall we say.

00:33:03.000 Yes, I guess talk about that in the context of addiction.

00:33:06.000 I didn't realize it was 21 years.

00:33:08.000 I mean, that's a long time you figured that out.

00:33:10.000 Actually, before this interview, a very good friend from college literally texted and saw that I was going to be on with you.

00:33:16.000 I guess she had read your book.

00:33:20.000 about addiction and it was like that was the first thing she took in a long

00:33:24.000 process towards sobriety. The same thing. So you've definitely moved the needle.

00:33:29.000 What, you know, what made you have, what was the catalyst to start that change?

00:33:33.000 Obviously it's something, you know, quite difficult for a lot of people.

00:33:38.000 My father actually was talking yesterday about it.

00:33:41.000 His brother died of alcoholism and he's never had a drink in his life.

00:33:44.000 My dad is just stone cold teetotaler and he was literally talking about it in a speech.

00:33:50.000 What would have been had he gone down that path?

00:33:52.000 I think there's a genetic component to a lot of these things and people's ability to become addicted to something.

00:34:00.000 Some people can go have a couple drinks and move on and never do it.

00:34:04.000 Start and can't stop.

00:34:05.000 I'm more one of those, and that's why I try to do the same thing and stay away from it.

00:34:11.000 How did that start?

00:34:12.000 What was that journey like?

00:34:15.000 What are the things you would tell others who are struggling with the same thing to be able to get them over the hurdles?

00:34:19.000 Because I imagine it's not a one-size-fits-all formula.

00:34:22.000 Plainly within your genealogy, there are some pretty powerful drivers, I would say.

00:34:28.000 We are an all-or-nothing family, but that's wonderful for That's wonderful for, you know, great things.

00:34:35.000 It's not so good when it comes to vices.

00:34:37.000 Yes.

00:34:37.000 The vices, that's easy to go way over the line, right?

00:34:40.000 Yes.

00:34:41.000 It's great for work ethic and it's great for getting certain things done.

00:34:43.000 There's a sort of drivenness that probably comes with that same, I'd even call it sort of manic personality.

00:34:51.000 Yes.

00:34:51.000 But, you know, you add in the bad stuff and it can go wrong really fast.

00:34:55.000 The people that came up with the 12 steps upon which I based the book I wrote that your friend was kind enough to compliment, They realized that there is a yearning, even the phenomena of craving, the desire for a drink or for a drug, a kind of magnetic pulling towards, what is this longing?

00:35:14.000 And what does the wanting want really?

00:35:16.000 After I'd been clean and sober for about 10 years, I began to recognize what was plainly written in the great texts, which themselves were derived much from Christianity.

00:35:25.000 In particular, there was a group called the Oxford Group, which were a first century Christian movement that believed in principles like restitution, and service, and confession, basic spiritual principles, in addition to the ideas and philosophy of Carl Jung.

00:35:40.000 I, through reading it, recognize, like you, like everyone, we are looking for something.

00:35:46.000 We are looking for purpose and meaning, and we find it in a variety of ways.

00:35:50.000 Those of us that have a propensity towards addiction are unable to curtail something, even when it becomes destructive.

00:35:57.000 Even when the drinking of the alcohol or the taking of the drugs becomes destructive, because it's filling an unfillable hole, unfillable without a spiritual solution, it gets right out of control.

00:36:06.000 And that was exactly my experience.

00:36:07.000 And when I saw other people that had got clean and sober using the 12-step method, when I heard them and when I read the literature, I recognized this is exactly what I have.

00:36:16.000 I'm trying to fulfill a void using material methods.

00:36:21.000 You can't fill a spiritual hole Using material means.

00:36:25.000 So, like, even the pursuit of fame, the pursuit of money, the pursuit of all of these things is driven by a longing for something.

00:36:31.000 And that's why even latterly, being specific and surrendering to, in particular, Jesus Christ, has made an impact.

00:36:39.000 Because that is what's woven throughout the 12-step process.

00:36:42.000 You must surrender.

00:36:44.000 You must recognize you have a spiritual malady.

00:36:46.000 You must recognise the way out of this is to surrender yourself.

00:36:49.000 You've been worshipping God all along.

00:36:51.000 It is the God of yourself.

00:36:53.000 You think that what you want and what you're afraid of is the be-all and end-all.

00:36:56.000 And that's why it takes sometimes a profound experience like you described, speaking to that young man who you said might not survive that operation, that wakes you up, oh my God, I've been living in an illusion.

00:37:05.000 Now, the sustenance of this awakened state I don't find very easy.

00:37:09.000 That means I have to regularly spend time with other people that have issues with addiction.

00:37:13.000 I have to remind myself You know, every day you pray and you meditate and you get in the cold plunge and you read for me now the Bible and I stay in touch with other people that have addiction issues and I remember that kindness and service is the way that I'm supposed to be living and then I get distracted again.

00:37:28.000 There's something, Don, inherently Sisyphean about it.

00:37:31.000 That you wake up and you've forgotten and you have to push the boulder all the way up the hill again.

00:37:36.000 But there is something so beautifully simple in you are not what the world revolves around.

00:37:42.000 You better find some purpose and meaning in your life.

00:37:44.000 And I think that that particular spiritual solution is available to anyone whether you're an alcoholic or a

00:37:49.000 drug addict or not.

00:37:51.000 And that's why I think partly the culture is trying to obfuscate.

00:37:53.000 It's trying to tell us that your whole purpose is your individual fulfillment.

00:37:57.000 Your whole purpose is, you know, be you, just be yourself.

00:37:59.000 And of course people should be their authentic selves, but all of us, you know, that's why don't we all...

00:38:04.000 But is anyone?

00:38:05.000 Meaning, I feel like, you know, how few people are actually their authentic selves, right?

00:38:10.000 You see, you know, like I know people, right?

00:38:13.000 They're on Instagram and it looks like they have this perfect life,

00:38:16.000 but it's a disaster.

00:38:16.000 I know them, you know, actually, but the image that they're putting forth,

00:38:19.000 how much of that is sort of a social construct, a creation, because we feel like we have to show that to people.

00:38:26.000 I know people that they're miserable in their own lives that would otherwise be happy

00:38:30.000 because they're watching other people who they think are happy,

00:38:33.000 who are actually miserable, and they're not, they don't have the illusion.

00:38:37.000 They're not living the illusion that's created instead of the...

00:38:40.000 The culture certainly seems to be encouraging us, oddly, to not be ourselves.

00:38:45.000 And even over the course of this day, I go from... We've met before and we've chatted a little bit before, but, like, because I've come here to your home, In good faith.

00:38:55.000 And because I've been welcomed with such kindness and good grace, over the course of the day, you start to realize and you see what people really are.

00:39:03.000 You see warmth and kindness and gentleness and sweetness.

00:39:07.000 Hey, don't ruin my reputation.

00:39:10.000 You see chauvinism and fascism and sexism.

00:39:13.000 Listen, we bonded over a champagne glory hole like a year ago.

00:39:16.000 You see white supremacy.

00:39:19.000 Like, you know, yeah, we did bond over a champagne glory hole, and I'm going to provide context for that, Don.

00:39:24.000 Please do!

00:39:26.000 That'll go really wrong otherwise.

00:39:27.000 The phrase, champagne glory hole, is not going to... I mean, this is a Rumble audience, so they're used to free speech, but at the Rumble offices opening in Sarasota a few months ago, maybe even a year ago, I guess, a year ago now, there was an interesting, what has to now be described as champagne glory hole, where it was kind of like a hedge, And through the hedge were human arms holding champagne glasses.

00:39:51.000 Now, neither you or I drink, so we took the opportunity to comment on those arms coming through a hedge clutching champagne glasses and what might be on the other side.

00:40:00.000 I think that was my icebreaker.

00:40:01.000 Like, you know what?

00:40:02.000 Let's see where this goes.

00:40:03.000 Then we end up having a great chat that evening.

00:40:05.000 And because you coined the phrase champagne glory hole, I realized... TM, I'm going to trademark that now.

00:40:10.000 We can do something with this.

00:40:11.000 It's a brand that could go places.

00:40:13.000 This man is not what has been rendered through the legacy media.

00:40:18.000 How else?

00:40:18.000 The man that they are portraying could not have come up with such a cute phrase so instantaneously.

00:40:24.000 Well, it was pretty sporadic, but it was fun.

00:40:29.000 And that was a great night.

00:40:30.000 And again, it was one of those things for me, the same thing, right?

00:40:32.000 I mean, I grew up in New York City.

00:40:34.000 Most of my friends were probably pretty left-leaning.

00:40:37.000 You know, I was always probably pretty right-leaning, but there were certain things that I didn't get involved with because of the business we were in.

00:40:44.000 We sold high-end real estate to people in major cities.

00:40:47.000 You know, we had hotels, so we sold to everyone around the world.

00:40:50.000 It was very difficult to sort of have to...

00:40:54.000 Live in a world where you had to pick a side.

00:40:55.000 Yeah.

00:40:58.000 And I realized as a business guy, I went from, hey, you got to cater to everyone to, no, I can actually do fairly well being loved by half a country, then being agnostic to the entire nation.

00:41:10.000 But that's not a natural transition.

00:41:13.000 As you've gone perhaps a little away from Hollywood to this, a lot away from Hollywood, What was that transition like?

00:41:23.000 Was that difficult?

00:41:23.000 Were you, you know, content with it?

00:41:25.000 Was it just sort of... That had to be a severe change. 1.00

00:41:32.000 One of my mates once said, you see yourself on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard and you think you must be some real hot shit. 0.99

00:41:38.000 Then you realize that's just an inadvertent side effect of someone else making money out of you. 0.99

00:41:43.000 and you realize, okay, you're just in this temporary role, in this temporary role.

00:41:50.000 Now, as long as you are a useful commodity within that system, it will celebrate you.

00:41:56.000 Now, it didn't happen in a very dramatic way.

00:41:57.000 It happened kind of gradually.

00:41:58.000 I wanted to live back in the UK.

00:42:00.000 I wanted to have a family, and I'm very lucky that I've always been

00:42:02.000 a stand-up comedian, and I'm also kind of lucky that I've always worked with people,

00:42:06.000 for example, Gareth, who's through there, that recognize the way that media is altering and changing.

00:42:10.000 We just started doing stuff on YouTube.

00:42:12.000 I was still doing the occasional role in a movie.

00:42:15.000 I was still doing bits and bobs, as we say in Britain.

00:42:18.000 But it wasn't defining me so much.

00:42:21.000 I'd by then gotten married to my incredible wife.

00:42:23.000 I'd had children.

00:42:24.000 I was starting to awaken from the idea that there was something in this worth having.

00:42:30.000 Sometimes I feel for the people that are still in that world, that it's a beguiling and alluring world, but it is a cannibalistic and parasitic world.

00:42:40.000 So it just happened very organically.

00:42:42.000 Because, you know what, why would it be that you would even head into entertainment?

00:42:45.000 What is it you want to do?

00:42:46.000 Really, what I like doing is making people laugh, mucking around, telling the truth.

00:42:50.000 You know, man, I wish someone had suggested a seminary to me at eight or nine years old.

00:42:55.000 I wish someone said, you probably should become a monk or a priest.

00:42:58.000 You're not going to do very well with substances.

00:43:00.000 You're not going to do very well with indulgence.

00:43:02.000 You better learn how to direct your energy towards something higher.

00:43:06.000 Otherwise you'll direct it towards yourself and it will spill out.

00:43:10.000 It'll be chaos, you know?

00:43:11.000 So it happened kind of gradually and what it's like actually is liberating.

00:43:15.000 What it's like actually is freeing.

00:43:17.000 What it's about actually is like recognizing that some of these categories are put there in order to keep people apart from one another and then when you start having conversations with people that you're told that you're not going to get on with, you recognize, hold on a minute, what they're trying to do is polarize everybody so that there's not a possibility for consensus and radical change, a deep institutional change, change to some of the structures that, it seems to me, need radical change.

00:43:44.000 I'm only speaking about my country, but it seems like it might be true in yours as well.

00:43:48.000 You're right.

00:43:50.000 You brought up something interesting.

00:43:51.000 You brought up comedy.

00:43:52.000 I always think of you more as an actor, a comedian as an actor, but also a stand-up comic.

00:43:58.000 Talk about stand-up comedy today.

00:43:59.000 I mean, I look at the stuff, the classic skits that I thought were some of the funniest stand-up perhaps ever.

00:44:08.000 Dave Chappelle doing Clayton Bigsby as the black white supremacist, right?

00:44:12.000 You couldn't do that today.

00:44:15.000 You think, is comedy making a resurgence because the pendulum has overcorrected?

00:44:19.000 Because there felt like there was a while that comedy was dead.

00:44:23.000 And now people are starting to poke back fun at it.

00:44:26.000 But it succumbed to sort of the woke mindset where you couldn't say anything because anything could be deemed offensive to someone.

00:44:33.000 And God forbid you offended the 0.00002% of a small group somewhere with comedy because it could be misinterpreted.

00:44:42.000 How has that played out over the last years as you've watched?

00:44:44.000 It's interesting to track, isn't it?

00:44:46.000 Because ultimately these are corporatized spaces and you can see from the success of great comedians like Ricky Gervais and the ongoing success of Dave Chappelle as well as the emergence of a brilliant comic like Shane Gillis that ultimately if people are funny it's gonna have a kind of currency And, in the end, the same way that Spotify stuck with Joe Rogan because it must have made market sense, and the same way that Netflix having got edgy about Chappelle ultimately decided to keep that relationship, that, in a way, the ideas around comedy and maybe freedom of speech, you could say tangentially, are winning out.

00:45:26.000 And also, I think, Don, there are several cultures now It's okay to have a culture that is kind of homogenized and neutralized and sanitized, as long as there is another culture where people can say what they want in good faith.

00:45:38.000 And I think the idea has always been in comedy, the intention.

00:45:40.000 I think people can diagnose when there is hatred in something.

00:45:44.000 And I don't think there's hate.

00:45:45.000 Brilliant comics are not hateful.

00:45:47.000 They might use rage even, but not hatred.

00:45:50.000 And I don't think that, you know, some of the comedians that we're listing, these are very skillful, brilliant people that sort of are motivated on some level by love and by ideals that are worth revering.

00:46:01.000 Well, guys, we're going to break for two seconds.

00:46:03.000 We're going to go to ads, and we'll be right back with Russell Brand.

00:46:06.000 So stick around.

00:46:07.000 Also, guys, for all the headlines that we spotlight on the show, check out my news app, MXM News, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream media bias.

00:46:17.000 Okay.

00:46:17.000 The other side, as you've seen with everything, right?

00:46:20.000 Oh, you don't like it?

00:46:20.000 Build your own.

00:46:21.000 You don't like it?

00:46:21.000 Build your own.

00:46:22.000 So guys like me, we actually go out there and do that.

00:46:26.000 Any support you guys can show us is absolutely critical.

00:46:29.000 Makes that all worthwhile.

00:46:30.000 And again, it's about getting that message out there without that bias.

00:46:33.000 We'll show you both sides.

00:46:34.000 So check it out.

00:46:35.000 MXM News, like minute by minute.

00:46:37.000 Download it.

00:46:38.000 Get all your news there.

00:46:39.000 That's the basis of this show.

00:46:41.000 All of that stuff's up there.

00:46:42.000 You can curate your own news depending on what you're into.

00:46:44.000 If it's sports, even getting into local, Uh, but, you know, politics, however you want.

00:46:49.000 You can choose, so you see what you want to see.

00:46:51.000 You get both sides of the argument.

00:46:53.000 You know, we'll show you the New York Times.

00:46:54.000 If you want to see that, we'll show you both sides, and you can make an informed decision.

00:46:59.000 Not just be spoon-fed a narrative of BS.

00:47:02.000 It takes guts to support programming like this because, you know, it may go a little nuts every once in a while.

00:47:07.000 So make the parallel economy the center of every one of your purchases with Public Square.

00:47:13.000 On Public Square, you can buy with your beliefs and let your dollars reflect your values.

00:47:18.000 Do not give your money to companies who hate your guts.

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00:47:26.000 If you're a business, guys, there are literally millions of consumers looking to find you.

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00:47:42.000 So list your business on Public Square and move our country one step closer to defeating said woke capital. 1.00

00:47:49.000 You gotta reject DEI, ESG, all the rest of the far-left madness.

00:47:54.000 Download the Public Square app.

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00:47:57.000 Anywhere you want.

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00:48:00.000 Shop with your values.

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00:48:03.000 And together, we will build the patriot economy and save our country.

00:48:08.000 Also guys, make sure to protect yourself from Biden inflation with the Birch Gold Group.

00:48:12.000 Our country is literally $34 trillion in debt.

00:48:16.000 Biden inflation is only making it so much worse. 0.51

00:48:20.000 And the Fed, you know, every day they just keep printing money, man.

00:48:22.000 You hear the printers going all day long, and it just means your costs go up and your quality of life goes down.

00:48:29.000 There are a couple interesting charts in today's Wall Street Journal about the real impact of inflation and people's earnings.

00:48:37.000 And you compare that relative to Trump and you see just the disaster we're in.

00:48:42.000 In just the last week, as we've seen gold surging, as Americans look to guard against What seems like almost inevitable economic disaster.

00:48:50.000 So like I always say, I want you to be prepared.

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00:49:42.000 Okay guys we're back with Russell Brand.

00:49:46.000 We've actually been having a sort of a great conversation all day.

00:49:49.000 It's interesting, even, Russell, in doing this now, it's like, did I cover that already?

00:49:53.000 But I figured, you know, while we covered the part about alcohol and staying away from that, I think we still can have a cigar, one of perhaps the last vices.

00:50:01.000 Yes.

00:50:03.000 I'd love to join you. 0.98

00:50:03.000 Maybe we'll get going on this and get you clipped and circumcised. 0.98

00:50:10.000 That was very deftly done. 0.69

00:50:11.000 You know, not my first rodeo.

00:50:12.000 Thank you.

00:50:15.000 I'll give you that.

00:50:16.000 Thank you.

00:50:17.000 So, you know, we were sort of talking about comedy and it's interesting now, you mentioned there is, there does seem to be a resurgence.

00:50:23.000 I thought the actual, the great one, were you in the room by the way when that happened with Ricky Gervais when he called out Hollywood at the...

00:50:29.000 I wasn't there at the Golden Globes.

00:50:31.000 Because that was epic.

00:50:33.000 Yeah, I marveled at that.

00:50:35.000 I sometimes watch that as for a kind of catharsis, as a kind of release, to sort of see someone do that, to see someone confront people to their faces so boldly and so brazenly.

00:50:46.000 It's fantastic.

00:50:47.000 It was, I think, sort of comedically a masterclass as an award show emcee to confront your audience like that.

00:50:55.000 Because I've done gigs like that, like for MTV and stuff like that.

00:50:58.000 But to be as bold as he was, and as funny, and as confronting, it's one of the best things I've seen in those kind of spaces.

00:51:10.000 Which, you know, they can be pretty dry rooms.

00:51:13.000 Oh yeah.

00:51:13.000 Well, I guess we were talking a little bit about that earlier, right?

00:51:17.000 We just sort of, you've been in there, you've met some of these stars, people always ask me, you know, which is your favorite Hollywood person that you've met?

00:51:24.000 And the answer is like, honestly, like, Many are sort of simply vacuous.

00:51:28.000 They may be a talented actor, but it doesn't mean there's a lot beyond that, right?

00:51:32.000 You may like the character that they play, but in real life...

00:51:37.000 Oftentimes not all that impressive as individuals.

00:51:40.000 What was your experience like that?

00:51:41.000 I mean, you seem, in talking to you, you're well-read.

00:51:45.000 You're not like the CliffsNotes version of a book that someone, they read one book one time.

00:51:50.000 I always joke, sort of like the LeBron James picture where he's holding a book upside down to make it seem like he's reading, but not realizing it's upside down.

00:51:58.000 What was that like in Hollywood?

00:52:00.000 Well, you know, because it took me a long time to come up, I was like 30 before I made any money out of show business.

00:52:08.000 And what I recognized is that a lot of people that I've been living in bedsits with, you know, like small single room apartments, a lot of people that were like signing on, like living off benefits, trying to pursue a career in comedy or acting, these people were also kind of brilliant and great.

00:52:23.000 And sometimes that, and then the people that I met, I met some people that were, I mean,

00:52:27.000 I have met amazing people in Hollywood that are kind or funny or brilliantly gifted.

00:52:32.000 I wouldn't say it's as sort of simple as, oh, no one's got, you know, because some of

00:52:35.000 them were amazing.

00:52:37.000 But like what I did notice is there seems to be a good deal of good fortune and luck

00:52:41.000 that the luck, you know, that the right place, right time.

00:52:44.000 Kind of, because a lot of people are just scratching out and eking out a living like when I was doing stand-up comedy in front of five or ten people.

00:52:52.000 They were brilliant, and just the right thing don't happen, or maybe there's not, I don't know, the lucky breaks, or maybe enough persistence.

00:53:01.000 I don't know.

00:53:02.000 But what I kind of agree with is that it's I don't want to say there was a kind of don't meet your heroes type of disappointment because I did meet some really really lovely and kind people.

00:53:12.000 I can think of quite a few actually.

00:53:15.000 But overall it was not a world that was fulfilling and overall I have better interactions on a day like today.

00:53:21.000 Like where you took me for lunch, meeting that guy, what's he called?

00:53:25.000 Nyaka.

00:53:26.000 Nyaka.

00:53:26.000 Meeting a guy that sort of tasted food from Nelson Mandela, that tells that story so beautifully, that speaks so patriotically, that rendered the story in a way you couldn't understand.

00:53:36.000 South African man, he works here where we live, he's become a very good friend of ours.

00:53:41.000 He was literally a food taster for Nelson Mandela for years.

00:53:44.000 And, you know, he's an immigrant and now an American citizen, and he's more patriotic than the vast majority of, like, naturalized-born Americans that I know, and it's sort of an amazing thing, and his story's incredible.

00:53:57.000 But yeah, you see a lot of that, and that conversation to me is often more interesting than the conversations I've had with, you know, sort of the celebrities that everyone else is curious about.

00:54:05.000 Yes, this is what I find as well, and also patriotism is changing.

00:54:09.000 You know what's happened is I've spent more time in your country talking to people like in the military, people that are like, you know, some people that have pretty high rank in the military, talking like that they now sound like rebels and radicals, like they are not with the government of your country, you know.

00:54:24.000 There was a time where, as a British person, if I was critical of America, I would assume that, even though I was never criticising American people, that patriotic people reject that.

00:54:34.000 Now, patriotic people are very, very angry about the way that their country is being governed, even when it comes to things like war.

00:54:41.000 And therefore, support the troops used to be a way of bypassing sensible conversation about war.

00:54:47.000 Correct.

00:54:47.000 You're not allowed to say anything.

00:54:48.000 If that person checked the box and they were a veteran, they're beyond reproach.

00:54:52.000 And it is interesting, actually, because we're having this conversation on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

00:54:58.000 I was actually supposed to be over there.

00:54:59.000 A bunch of my friends who were former veterans, I was going to jump into Normandy.

00:55:02.000 They did this, like, they're reenacting sort of the Normandy landing.

00:55:06.000 A bunch of my friends who are veterans and the guys from Black Rifle Coffee, and I was supposed to go.

00:55:09.000 And then I literally hurt my knee three weeks ago and I had to get surgery.

00:55:14.000 Uh, and you know, needless to say, my doctor's like, yeah, you can't jump out of a plane for a little while, which really sucks because I was going to jump out of a plane with them.

00:55:21.000 And that just feels like an amazing experience.

00:55:23.000 But, but I think of, I think of, you know, the guys that did that, you know, stormed the beaches at Normandy or jumped into, you know, behind the lines at Normandy.

00:55:33.000 And I look at.

00:55:35.000 I look at some of the stuff we see today, you know, furries and some of the lunacy with the trans general and the dog mask. 1.00

00:55:45.000 And I'm saying, what would those veterans, what would they think of what's going on in this country today?

00:55:52.000 You know, that they were so willing to lay down their life for, you know.

00:55:56.000 I don't know.

00:55:58.000 I'd be second guessing what I'm jumping for, which perhaps explains a lot of the lack of ability for the military today to recruit.

00:56:06.000 Because while most of the door kickers are still very much patriotic Americans, the leadership has lost their minds.

00:56:13.000 This has happened everywhere, hasn't it?

00:56:14.000 But, like, perhaps that's always been the case. 0.91

00:56:17.000 There's that famous World War I edict about the British military lines led by donkeys. 0.50

00:56:24.000 And, like, you know, maybe that's true to this day.

00:56:26.000 And the individual freedom of people to dress up and do whatever they want is a, you know, why not?

00:56:31.000 Be who you are.

00:56:31.000 But to not acknowledge that there is an archetype in our kind called the warrior, that certain demands need to be made of people that they Put themselves in that kind of position.

00:56:41.000 It's a denial of nature.

00:56:45.000 Now, with that jump, were you going to do that jump on your own, or were you going to be strapped to another person?

00:56:49.000 Oh yeah, the static line jump.

00:56:50.000 I used to paraglide.

00:56:51.000 I'm a licensed airplane pilot.

00:56:52.000 You can do all this stuff.

00:56:53.000 I've jumped off things with parachutes.

00:56:55.000 You can jump out of things with a parachute.

00:56:58.000 I'm not static line certified, but I have We talk about propensity.

00:57:04.000 Mine is I have an incredibly underdeveloped sense of self-preservation, so everything I do is usually designed to... I'm waiting for medical technology to get ahead of my early-onset arthritis, because I've broken every major bone in my body doing everything stupid. 0.97

00:57:19.000 I see some scar there. 0.96

00:57:20.000 I got a lot of scars.

00:57:22.000 This is surgery last week.

00:57:24.000 I realize my shirt's shedding.

00:57:27.000 But yeah, so... You like that?

00:57:29.000 You like that sort of adventure?

00:57:30.000 Yeah, I love that sort of adventure.

00:57:31.000 You know, everything I do, I sort of take it to, you know, I'm a scuba diver, but I went all the way to Trimix, where I'm just going down to, you know, three, four hundred feet deep.

00:57:38.000 And, you know, again, I don't do well with just enough.

00:57:41.000 By the way, it probably comes to the conversation of addiction, which is, you know, you know, Going out and having two or three drinks, for me, wasn't enough.

00:57:50.000 You know, if I went out and had two or three, that became six or eight, or ten to twelve, or, you know, whatever it may be.

00:57:57.000 The off switch, where it says, okay, now we've had enough, that doesn't necessarily exist with me.

00:58:01.000 Right, that can be a great gift, but also an incredible curse.

00:58:04.000 So, right, yeah, another hundred feet, another gin and tonic, let's go another hundred feet lower, jump out of another plane.

00:58:10.000 Why do we need parachutes?

00:58:11.000 They're holding us back.

00:58:12.000 That kind of thing.

00:58:13.000 Yeah, so it's interesting you talk about that.

00:58:14.000 I had a friend of mine, Christian Craighead.

00:58:17.000 He was a British SAS officer, so from your side of the pond.

00:58:21.000 And he was the guy that went into, remember the, I guess it was a hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya.

00:58:27.000 Al-Shabaab had taken it over.

00:58:30.000 And this was during the peak, you know, toxic masculinity.

00:58:32.000 And if you're alpha male, it's terrible. 1.00

00:58:34.000 You know, everyone hates alpha males until shit goes down and you need some alpha male shit, right? 0.99

00:58:39.000 And so this is the guy that was, he was driving by his British SAS and, you know, he literally threw on a mask and got his AK-47, you know, and ran into this, you know, hotel complex, took out a bunch of these terrorists, saved a bunch of people, and all of a sudden, you know, the British government's out there denouncing him, and he can't write a book about it, he can't, I'm like... 0.99

00:58:57.000 That's what I want from my operators.

00:59:01.000 Those guys, those actual warriors.

00:59:04.000 That guy saved lives.

00:59:05.000 It was 100% the right call.

00:59:07.000 You're going to wait 45 minutes for them to massacre a bunch of people and to do it by the book, and yet you're watching the UK, maybe one of the greatest militaries in the world, and all of a sudden, just a few years later, a few decades later, denouncing Exactly what we're supposed to train our warriors to do.

00:59:31.000 And it's interesting to see that mindset.

00:59:34.000 I don't know what the future is of that civilization.

00:59:36.000 Are we at the tail end of a civilization if we're denouncing that kind of behavior?

00:59:43.000 But we've got to make sure we're recognizing the 4,376 genders, which no one can articulate or name, And yet it's treated as though it's the gospel.

00:59:52.000 Joseph Campbell, you're a brilliant academic and author.

00:59:56.000 He said that when someone has got the apparel of a warrior, when you've invited someone to take a vow or an oath, put them into service, put them into uniform, ask them to risk their lives, you can't suddenly apply a different kind of mentality.

01:00:10.000 You know, I was chatting to your mate John out there about, you know, that 21, 22 veterans a day commit suicide.

01:00:17.000 The astonishing statistics of the number of vets that are homeless, even people in active service having to use food banks.

01:00:26.000 And it makes me realize that something is falling apart, the core of these institutions.

01:00:32.000 Now, you know where I stand on all this.

01:00:33.000 I really think that people like celebrate absolute diversity

01:00:37.000 of course, but also recognize the significance of tradition.

01:00:40.000 And in a country where you have full autonomy, where you have actual electoral democracy,

01:00:46.000 where you have maximum decentralization, where you have maximum ability for people to be free,

01:00:51.000 then I think, you know, like surely for maybe hundreds or thousands of years, there would have been,

01:00:56.000 we would have lived in tribes across the world where we would not have expected homogeneity

01:01:01.000 that you'd have had glorious gods and different creations and different ways of hunting

01:01:06.000 and different ways of surviving.

01:01:08.000 And there would have been a true understanding of the difference of cuisine,

01:01:11.000 rather than as we've touched on before, Don, Superficial diversity underscored by homogeneity, as you said earlier, of thought.

01:01:18.000 The role of the warrior, the role of the hero, like for me, I mean, unless there's something you're missing out that story, someone who pulls on a mask and takes out an AK in the sweet name of freedom, it's difficult not to admire.

01:01:31.000 But there does seem to be an affront on masculinity in general.

01:01:36.000 You know, Allowing men to play in women's sports. 1.00

01:01:40.000 You know, everything's toxic masculine that would have been otherwise just normal gender roles.

01:01:46.000 I mean, I think, you know, we've seen that as it plays out in sports.

01:01:49.000 We see, you know, high school and college male athletes that are journeymen in their respective sports.

01:01:55.000 They, you know, they start competing against the females and they're winning national championships or they're taking away scholarships from actual biological women. 0.99

01:02:06.000 Why has that become so encouraged? 0.99

01:02:08.000 I mean, that seems like it started, it certainly stemmed from sort of a Hollywood mentality, and yet, I've been sort of speaking out against this for years when I was like, this is fucking bullshit, and I put it out on Twitter, years ago even, and that was when Twitter was 95-5, you know, sort of liberal to conservative, and even there, Even there... Man, I hate Don Jr. 0.97

01:02:30.000 with a passion, but you know what? 0.97

01:02:31.000 He's right about this one.

01:02:32.000 Like, I can't believe I'm agreeing with Don... It doesn't feel like there's actually... It's even a 50-50 issue in pop culture.

01:02:41.000 It's probably like 90-10 the other way, and yet...

01:02:45.000 The way it's pushed to the world as though everyone agrees that this is 100% normal and totally acceptable.

01:02:51.000 It doesn't make any sense.

01:02:52.000 Yes, I do wonder what ideologies drive it.

01:02:55.000 And remember, as I've said to you before, I completely believe in people's individual freedom.

01:02:59.000 But it seems that sport is an area where there are metrics that are designed to generate fair competition, for example.

01:03:06.000 Age groups, you know, like seems to be where it's accepted that there are categories that are worth observing.

01:03:14.000 I heard before that perhaps it is this replacement of God at the centre of our universe with the individual at the centre of our universe that means that everything, nature, biology, Ideals.

01:03:29.000 Everything can be regarded as a kind of relative value.

01:03:34.000 No absolute value.

01:03:36.000 For me this potentially creates a kind of chaos.

01:03:40.000 Now I would yield to anyone who knows more about sport than I do but it seems that there might be a reason That elite sports appear to be categorised around gender and have been historically, that you don't generally have men against women in football or boxing or MMA or whatever.

01:03:58.000 It seems that experts have arrived at that being a good system.

01:04:02.000 When it comes to the ideals behind why there is the promotion of people's right to free expression, I agree with free expression, but that should It should mean the right to freely be Christian, the right to freely be super traditional, the right to be as progressive as you want.

01:04:17.000 In a society where people have their maximum amount of freedom and control over their own lives, but no right at all to intervene and control other people's lives, other than in the obvious areas for which there are already laws, I feel that that is a way of diffusing this ongoing cultural war.

01:04:33.000 Because I do worry, actually, Dom, that after this election, In which, you know, the detractors of your father and the movement around him say that he will take office and remain in office forever.

01:04:47.000 When we saw, when your father was elected president, just an entire term filled with subsequently proven to be untrue claims that there was Russian collusion.

01:04:56.000 continue to this day, that it seems that the vision appears to be kind of seared in.

01:05:01.000 But if there are different types of America emerging, maybe the ideas behind federalism should be doubled down on,

01:05:08.000 because my understanding as a visitor in your country

01:05:11.000 is that the point was having the maximum amount of freedom and democracy in

01:05:15.000 each state, in each region, so that people could determine for themselves.

01:05:18.000 And if people vote to live in a certain way for electoral democracy, then maybe they should

01:05:24.000 be able to do that.

01:05:25.000 And you shouldn't, you should remove the subject.

01:05:28.000 You know, like I saw that CNN guy a minute ago saying about, you know, if this, you know,

01:05:32.000 if his name weren't Trump, he wouldn't be going through this trial.

01:05:36.000 And in real, you know, that's the point.

01:05:37.000 Imagine CNN actually admitting that.

01:05:39.000 I mean, if CNN is willing to admit that, that shows, if they acknowledge it, and let's just

01:05:44.000 say, you know, the Communist News Network doesn't usually acknowledge something like that.

01:05:48.000 That's sort of been interesting and telling.

01:05:51.000 That's the point of justice being blind.

01:05:52.000 The statues are always depicted as being blindfolded and carrying a scale because it's not meant to happen.

01:05:58.000 But you're not meant to evaluate it on the personality.

01:06:01.000 You're meant to evaluate it based on the principle.

01:06:04.000 And if this country or this culture is determined to toxically tear itself apart, Then perhaps ideas like secession, perhaps ideas like maximum amount of representation electorally become more significant.

01:06:20.000 If people in certain regions want to live a certain way, then I don't think you should even ask what it is, other than the obvious laws that we already have in place.

01:06:28.000 Live how you want to.

01:06:28.000 I mean, for me, that is what liberty and freedom means.

01:06:32.000 Because I meet people with all manner Of backgrounds and all manner of expressions of self and I think they're entitled to them and that's like, I think you yourself said, you don't really care.

01:06:43.000 People are like, if you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone.

01:06:45.000 Are we going to cooperate and get along?

01:06:47.000 Do we care about this country?

01:06:48.000 Do we care about the planet?

01:06:50.000 Do we think that the people who claim that they care about immigration aren't using it in some shady way?

01:06:55.000 Do we think that the people that are talking about climate change aren't exploiting it?

01:06:59.000 If always the result is more control, more opportunity for citizen management, more opportunity to censor, more opportunity to shut down dissent, then I think that that's what it was always about.

01:07:08.000 It was never about compassion.

01:07:09.000 Yeah, nine out of ten doctors agree with whoever's paying for the study, right?

01:07:13.000 It's one of those.

01:07:14.000 I like that you brought up sort of the notion of federalism, because you've been in Florida for a few hours and you've already ripped off the sleeves of your shirt, so you've fully adapted the Florida man personality.

01:07:23.000 I'm going to get me an alligator.

01:07:25.000 I'm going to push it into a garbage can. 0.97

01:07:28.000 I'm here now. 0.96

01:07:29.000 This is me.

01:07:30.000 I'm embracing this state.

01:07:32.000 You're thinking about possibly moving here to the States?

01:07:35.000 I must say it's appealing.

01:07:36.000 There's a lot of things I love about my country and there's a lot of things that I adore.

01:07:40.000 I'm English.

01:07:41.000 I'm English to my very core.

01:07:42.000 But I've got to say, like, you know, it seems that this is a pretty appealing place to live.

01:07:48.000 Pretty appealing place when you've got rumble here, when you've got a free speech movement, when you have a lot of people that are interested in preserving the kind of values that I care deeply about, yeah.

01:07:58.000 And also, you've been so hospitable, you know, not many people let me just turn up in their, you know, and use their shower and their bathroom and stuff like that.

01:08:04.000 Next time we'll run over to the Bahamas and we'll go, you know, have some fun and But, so talk about, you know, the UK, right?

01:08:11.000 I looked at, I think COVID was a big awakener for everyone.

01:08:14.000 I used to think, you know, hey, it was the US and, you know, Canada and the UK and Ireland and New Zealand and Australia.

01:08:21.000 These were bastions of freedom and democracy.

01:08:23.000 And yet, Not so much.

01:08:27.000 The UK seems to be ahead of us.

01:08:28.000 I've read the articles about, you know, you misgender someone. 0.99

01:08:32.000 You have a nice beard there.

01:08:34.000 It's similar to mine.

01:08:35.000 Thank you.

01:08:36.000 But if you were a female and I called you a man because you have a beard, I'm supposed to... 1.00

01:08:41.000 I'd be jailed for two years.

01:08:43.000 What's going on there?

01:08:45.000 What's happening to free speech?

01:08:47.000 Not that it exists as it does for us as part of our constitution, but I think it's under attack here as well.

01:08:53.000 And also the rest of Europe.

01:08:54.000 We don't have a constitution.

01:08:56.000 What's that?

01:08:57.000 We don't have a constitution, so it makes things a little more amorphous.

01:09:00.000 During the time that I was attacked, an online safety bill was passed which, guess what, granted people the ability to censor and control online information.

01:09:08.000 Like in your country, agencies that were previously deployed in Middle Eastern nations to track

01:09:13.000 terror and control it online are being deployed against domestic populations.

01:09:19.000 There seem to be patterns taking place in our country that are taking place in yours

01:09:23.000 and it always seems to be about leveraging control and the, you know, whether it's the

01:09:28.000 EU or UN or NATO creating new bureaucratic opportunity to legitimise profitable wars.

01:09:35.000 Man, I don't know.

01:09:37.000 Even if we just track our shared interest of Rumble, you can see that Rumble were kicked out of France because they wouldn't take Russia today off of their platform, our platform.

01:09:47.000 Then Russia shuts Rumble down in Russia.

01:09:50.000 Well, the best was the article saying, Rumble's an apologist for Russia, and then Russia bans Rumble as well because they didn't take down the other stuff.

01:09:58.000 Actually being true free speech, probably the only platform like that, certainly in the video side of things, even remotely true.

01:10:05.000 I mean, even other big platforms that talk a lot about free speech, it's like, well, we're, you know, we don't want to get thrown off in Turkey or in France, so we'll give a little bit.

01:10:13.000 We don't want to get thrown off in Brazil, so, you know, we'll accommodate, you know, the regime because, you know, we feel having a little bit of a voice is better than none.

01:10:22.000 And it's like, wait a second, but if the little bit of the voice is essentially propaganda, What's the purpose?

01:10:28.000 Don, they've admitted that the whole category of malinformation means information that's true that they don't like.

01:10:36.000 It could be.

01:10:37.000 They're not even hiding it anymore.

01:10:38.000 It's like, no, no, no, it's real.

01:10:40.000 We understand it's true, but it's just not convenient.

01:10:42.000 Yeah, because of how fast things are happening now, you can track in real time.

01:10:46.000 Hold on a minute.

01:10:46.000 These people were censored during the pandemic.

01:10:48.000 They were telling the truth.

01:10:49.000 They've admitted they were censoring true information.

01:10:51.000 The statistics about the efficacy of the supposed medications have had to be evaluated.

01:10:56.000 The subject of excess deaths can't be properly discussed.

01:10:59.000 Adverse events can't be discussed.

01:11:01.000 Platforms like YouTube still are using the WHO's metrics and regulations to control free speech.

01:11:08.000 The WHO in their treaty wanted censorship of the nations that sign up to the treaty.

01:11:13.000 as part of it, the control of free speech I think might be the fundamental issue because

01:11:19.000 with free speech you can disagree with one another, you can say well I hear you man but

01:11:23.000 I don't agree with that and then you can reach a consensus democratically. In fact I think

01:11:26.000 that's what underscores all of it. They recognise that this technology could change, is changing

01:11:30.000 the world. They recognise that people that they don't want to get into positions of power

01:11:35.000 are getting into positions of power.

01:11:37.000 Referendums, or referenda, ain't going their way.

01:11:40.000 Elections aren't going their way.

01:11:42.000 And they're beginning to realise that they have to assert some sort of centralised authority.

01:11:47.000 And they're having to create categories to do it.

01:11:49.000 They're having to shut down dissent to do it.

01:11:51.000 They're having to criminalise political opponents to do it.

01:11:53.000 They're using what institutions they have and calling that democracy, instead of what it appears to actually be, a new And I think that tyranny is sort of evolving.

01:12:08.000 It's interesting, right?

01:12:10.000 People like me caught on to what was happening on the censorship because I had a big social sort of following prior to getting into politics, right?

01:12:18.000 So when you were, you know, A reality show, The Apprentice, or whatever it may be.

01:12:22.000 When I was pushing that, oh, it's agnostic, it's entertainment, I could see what was happening. 0.69

01:12:27.000 But because I do my own social, when I hit that button, I know what it's going to do.

01:12:30.000 I know when a tweet or whatever it may be, a post, ah, this is a good one, ah, that's going to go hot, it's going to go big.

01:12:36.000 But then I'd watch, and I'd be like, oh, it's going big, and then boom.

01:12:40.000 I mean, you get 1,000 retweets in the first hour and seven more over the next 24, and you're saying, wait, what just happened?

01:12:47.000 So, you know, I called this out and I'm like, I'm being censored.

01:12:50.000 How do you know?

01:12:50.000 It's like, well, because yesterday when I, you know, my average tweet did 5,000 retweets.

01:12:54.000 Today it's doing, you know, 13, you know, like just double digits, not 13,000, 13.

01:12:59.000 And I'm like, something happened.

01:13:01.000 And it's very palpable.

01:13:03.000 But now, it's sort of interesting.

01:13:05.000 I see, you know, AI is getting involved.

01:13:08.000 And they're allowing people to sort of see what they want to see

01:13:11.000 that they're already following.

01:13:13.000 But they want to make sure there's also no growth beyond that.

01:13:15.000 So people believe there actually isn't a suppression.

01:13:19.000 There actually isn't censorship because they're still seeing what they're following, but no one knew it.

01:13:24.000 I can see that on my meta platforms where I used to get half a million likes a post.

01:13:29.000 Now I'll get 30,000 to 50,000 maybe, sometimes 100,000, but 10 to 20% of what I used to get.

01:13:31.000 sometimes a hundred, but you know, 10 to 20 percent of what I used to get. But I've also had zero new

01:13:38.000 growth in two years, essentially. You know, zero new followers, zero new users. So the people who

01:13:44.000 are already following me can kind of see me, but no one from outside of that world will do it. And

01:13:48.000 if I get a spike, the next day it's gone and neutralized.

01:13:52.000 Kim has had to refollow me, I think, seven or eight times, where she's just following me and all

01:13:56.000 of a sudden she isn't.

01:13:57.000 Yeah.

01:13:59.000 Have you noticed that as well, and have you noticed that accelerate since the nonsense when they started attacking you?

01:14:07.000 Yeah, extraordinarily, of course.

01:14:08.000 And again, it's something that we were aware was happening, because when they threatened to break up those monopolies, a pact was plainly made.

01:14:17.000 To act as a censorship unit in the same way that Legacy Media seemed to have been doing for quite some time.

01:14:25.000 You know, like I had a brilliant conversation with Mike Benz, who told me that a CIA cutout funded even the PhD research of Larry Page and Serge Brin, the eventual creators of Google, even at the point while they were at Stanford, I believe, University, they had relationships with a CIA carve-out.

01:14:44.000 He then went on to tell me That, of course, when Google Maps got launched, you know, if you just look at these things superficially, you think, oh yeah, what ingenuity, these entrepreneurs came up with Google Maps.

01:14:53.000 But satellite technology is not something you can access willy-nilly or easily.

01:15:00.000 Some kind of group or agency granted them access to satellite technology in exchange, according to Mike Benz, for back-channel access to the use of Google.

01:15:12.000 Now we're beginning to understand that these platforms exist in order to surveil and control.

01:15:17.000 Anyone who saw Edward Snowden on that documentary Citizenfall saw someone like Awakening, like they can track you here, they can track you there.

01:15:24.000 We get so quickly used to the idea that the control of information, the control of citizens is absolutely paramount.

01:15:30.000 You can't have a population of intercommunicated, awakening civilians that are brave and bold and willing to sacrifice themselves and willing to form new alliances.

01:15:39.000 You have to, in a sense I suppose, somehow castrate us in as many ways as possible and control information as steadfastly as possible.

01:15:49.000 To prevent the natural flow of what's happening in spaces of power.

01:15:54.000 It is dissipating.

01:15:56.000 There is no reason to have centralised control to the degree that there has been.

01:16:00.000 Freedom is almost a natural condition at the level of the individual and the level of the community.

01:16:05.000 And I think this is the true war that we're participating in, and in various ways we experience it.

01:16:10.000 And that's why categories like Left and right are irrelevant now because it becomes little more than a device to prevent consensus.

01:16:19.000 Talk a little bit about your thoughts on Snowden, maybe even Julian Assange.

01:16:23.000 It's interesting, my thoughts on that have changed so dramatically because of what I've been exposed to.

01:16:28.000 The kimono has been opened.

01:16:32.000 No, because I used to say, hey, the FBI, the CIA, these are patriotic American organizations, until they went after me.

01:16:37.000 And I'm like, wait a second.

01:16:38.000 And when they started going after me, even then, for a while, I was like, well, there's got to be something there.

01:16:44.000 I'm obviously not aware of it, but they've got to figure it out.

01:16:46.000 But no, no, no, they didn't.

01:16:47.000 There was nothing to figure out.

01:16:48.000 It didn't matter.

01:16:49.000 It was by design.

01:16:50.000 It was for them.

01:16:52.000 And if you ask me, when the Assange stuff first broke, or the Snowden stuff, I'm like, what? 0.57

01:16:57.000 It's a traitor.

01:16:57.000 I'm like, no, no, no.

01:17:00.000 Our government has been lying to the people.

01:17:01.000 They've been lying to Congress.

01:17:02.000 They've been lying to the world.

01:17:03.000 It's all been there.

01:17:04.000 And now that that's exposed, it's like, wait a second, uh...

01:17:08.000 It's a little different.

01:17:09.000 So, you know, where I would have been sort of radically against both of those guys, I look at that.

01:17:14.000 They should be freed and they should be given a platform to stop this stuff from continuing.

01:17:20.000 Where do you stand on that?

01:17:22.000 Julian Assange has been incarcerated in various ways for nearly 10 years now.

01:17:26.000 He's still likely to be extradited to your country, even though, blessedly, he's been granted the right to appeal.

01:17:32.000 And you gave an example of what a hero is earlier.

01:17:35.000 In a military context, the hero is over.

01:17:37.000 A person that is brave enough to run towards danger, willing to sacrifice themselves for a higher good.

01:17:43.000 In the context of journalism, a hero is a person that's willing to convey true information to the people and knowing that there might be risk involved.

01:17:52.000 I don't know that Julian Assange knew that he would be put in Belmarsh, a maximum security, A category prison, for five years now without trial, waiting extradition under the Espionage Act, as yet unpardoned.

01:18:04.000 And I feel like, you know, earlier when we were chatting, For me, the two things, and I know that you are not your father, but you bear his name and of course you work closely with him.

01:18:12.000 The two issues that, for me, I'm curious about are the pardoning of Assange, whether Assange will be pardoned if there was another Trump presidency.

01:18:23.000 And the acknowledgement that what went on in the pandemic, what went on with Big Pharma's power, what went on with Big Pharma's profits, what went on with their legal indemnity and their ability to mask and redact files and information, that for me is an area where I think a lot of people would like to see some sort of change.

01:18:42.000 And so what I mean Well, we'll air our interview that we did earlier at the end of this, so we'll flip to that, and I discuss sort of my thoughts on that.

01:18:48.000 I've been pretty open about that.

01:18:50.000 I'd love to get you in front of him to talk about his, but yeah, I think so many people's views on all of that have changed.

01:18:56.000 I mean, again, when they raided Mar-a-Lago using the FBI's hostage rescue team, we found out ten days ago, they were, you know, Allowed to go live fire if, like, what, my father's gonna, you know, like he stole the beefs to drive down to January 6th, right?

01:19:10.000 He knocked out two Secret Service agents.

01:19:12.000 That was gospel.

01:19:12.000 That was congressional testimony under oath as though that happened, even though, of course, that didn't happen.

01:19:17.000 Now, if my father was able to disarm two 30-year-old heavily armed and well-trained armed agents and steal a car and do, I'd be like, I'm probably more likely to vote for him now than I would have been otherwise.

01:19:28.000 But you see, again, that manipulation snowed in.

01:19:33.000 I don't know what the counterargument is.

01:19:36.000 Our government was breaking up.

01:19:37.000 He didn't create something.

01:19:40.000 He released what we were lying to Congress about.

01:19:44.000 The Washington Post, when they raided Mar-a-Lago, put pictures of the quote-unquote classified documents. 0.97

01:19:48.000 It's all bullshit, but they put it on the front page of that thing. 0.86

01:19:51.000 It leaked from the FBI within minutes of this raid. 1.00

01:19:54.000 Man, that was crazy.

01:19:55.000 So wait, he's guilty of doing this under his documents that he's able to declassify, that he's able to have under lock and key, guarded by Secret Service.

01:20:04.000 The FBI comes and raids and all of a sudden there's photos of these on the front page of the Washington Post within 20 minutes?

01:20:12.000 Who's exposing classified documents to the world?

01:20:14.000 It doesn't seem like us, it seems like them, and yet there's no accountability for that.

01:20:19.000 Edward Snowden's in exile in Russia.

01:20:21.000 Julian Assange has been in jail for a decade. 0.97

01:20:25.000 What about the people that were doing the illegal shit that they published? 0.95

01:20:27.000 I mean, what happened to them? 0.99

01:20:29.000 The answer is nothing, and it's like, what the fuck? 0.97

01:20:31.000 We saw the same thing in 2008. 0.98

01:20:32.000 What appeared to be a lot of financial mismanagement, at least, and total corruption, at worst, that created a crisis that still impacts us culturally and socially to this day.

01:20:45.000 Nobody, except for I feel like one person, was ever found culpable for that disaster.

01:20:49.000 That was an opportunity for the change and hope that Barack Obama was elected under to be made manifest.

01:20:56.000 This was when the Occupy movement grew.

01:20:58.000 This is when populism of a variety of hues emerged.

01:21:02.000 Now it seems to me that when something happens like the legitimization of lethal force for that raid, the extraordinary collaboration and corroboration of the media, it seems, unless that's standard, unless Always when they do those raids, they legitimize legal force. 0.97

01:21:16.000 Then for me, that's some shady shit right there. 0.80

01:21:18.000 And the other thing is, how many times have the New York Times apparently been involved? 0.98

01:21:22.000 Like with the arrest of that Jack Tashera, that whistleblower, they were involved in the arrest.

01:21:26.000 Yeah, what happened to that?

01:21:27.000 I mean, you have someone that releases essentially information.

01:21:30.000 We are boots on the ground in Ukraine, and we're fighting a proxy war, but that's pretty clear against Russia, the world's largest nuclear superpower, by volume of missiles or warheads.

01:21:41.000 And then it's like, gone.

01:21:43.000 Like, well, so did we just stop doing it because of that, or they just don't want us to know that it's continuing?

01:21:47.000 I mean, seems like a big deal.

01:21:50.000 Yeah.

01:21:51.000 I've never seen a bigger story disappear from the media faster.

01:21:56.000 It was almost like, I don't know, we actually, this is going on, but we want to continue it, so we just got to make that go away.

01:22:00.000 That guy's never going to be heard from again.

01:22:01.000 Yeah, they vilified the kid, as they always do.

01:22:03.000 Oh, he was a weird kid, you know.

01:22:06.000 And then the actual information is lost, the same as with the other leaks pertaining to Snowden and Assange and their various cases.

01:22:14.000 It's extraordinary.

01:22:15.000 And even with the revelation that there were CIA bases across Ukraine.

01:22:20.000 Again and again, we're seeing...

01:22:22.000 Biochemical labs?

01:22:23.000 What could go wrong?

01:22:24.000 We've seen this one before.

01:22:25.000 Dual purpose research.

01:22:26.000 All of these ideas that were like, you know, you are crazy, this is a conspiracy theory.

01:22:30.000 By the time we get that information verified, all of the people that are conveying it have been smeared and attacked and condemned as dissenters.

01:22:38.000 People are getting jail sentences left and right.

01:22:40.000 It's an extraordinary machine and I'm starting to feel that it is quaking and quivering and falling apart.

01:22:47.000 That even though it sometimes feels terrifying, we might be on the precipice of the kind of revelations and the kind of uprising that could lead to meaningful change.

01:22:58.000 When you have a legacy media that is clearly working in conjunction with the deep state, amplifying the state's messaging, de-amplifying the messages of dissidents, creating continually disruption and cultural conflict, it's pretty plain to me that these are maybe the death threats.

01:23:13.000 froze of a dying system, that something new has to emerge.

01:23:18.000 And whether it's in alignment and faith to the constitutional edicts of the forefathers

01:23:23.000 of your country, I'm not in a position to say.

01:23:26.000 But what I do believe in is that there are fundamental things, like individual freedom,

01:23:29.000 collective freedom, electoral representative democracies, that are being lost at a radical and terrifying pace.

01:23:37.000 So as an outsider, but someone who's also spent plenty of time here, what do

01:23:41.000 you see happening in November.

01:23:44.000 Well, I'm like, to be honest, I'm sort of, after the pandemic period, and after sort of seeing, like, for example, some of the pledges that have been offered around the escalation of hostility between Ukraine and Russia.

01:23:56.000 There will never be boots on the ground.

01:23:57.000 Oh, they kind of are boots on the ground.

01:23:58.000 We'll never use American munitions in Russian territory.

01:24:02.000 We're kind of doing that.

01:24:03.000 Yesterday, Novgorod, or whatever the Russian city there, like, attacked by U.S.

01:24:07.000 arms.

01:24:08.000 I don't think it's beyond the bounds of possibility that some sort of crisis event might take place that prevents an election.

01:24:14.000 It doesn't seem beyond the bounds of possibility that... Well, it actually seems to me more plausible than not, right?

01:24:20.000 Sure.

01:24:21.000 Either World War III or, you know, I'm reading about, you know, another bird flu strain coming out of Mexico.

01:24:27.000 It's like, here we go again, folks.

01:24:31.000 Fool me once, shame on you.

01:24:32.000 Fool me twice, shame on me.

01:24:33.000 And now it's like, we're at, like, fool me the 37th time, and it's like, we're going to keep going for it.

01:24:39.000 Do you see, you know, enough people?

01:24:42.000 You know, again, I feel, obviously, I'm so jaded on that my whole ethos right now is, you know, being at sort of that counterculture, trying to, you see that other argument.

01:24:50.000 But, you know, regular people who are working hard to get by.

01:24:52.000 You know, world's not easy, no matter what.

01:24:56.000 Do you think they see that yet?

01:24:58.000 I think, for example, look, some time ago people started talking about, oh we might have to prepare for a Trump presidency, you might have to have some... It was so rough.

01:25:07.000 Prosperous economy, no wars, peace deals in the Middle East, I mean it's terrible. 1.00

01:25:10.000 Oh no!

01:25:10.000 What a disaster!

01:25:12.000 Yeah, never any acknowledgement of the culpability, never acknowledgement of the hypocrisy, never any acknowledgement of the corruption, only condemnation of the extraordinary number of people that are incredibly passionate about the movement of which you are part.

01:25:26.000 I don't know, man.

01:25:27.000 I have serious doubts about the institutions that are now being called democratic, that are being called democracy.

01:25:36.000 Again, we used to believe that democracy meant that the will of the people through the ballot box would be enacted by systems of service.

01:25:46.000 Now, what it seems like is there are some institutions that are controlling and will not give up control.

01:25:51.000 And it seems that more and more, That the things that the opponents are accused of are the things that are being practiced in a literal Orwellian flip.

01:25:59.000 From the outside, it seems to me that, I don't know, I can't envisage anything.

01:26:02.000 And it seems weird with something that's sort of coming up on us so soon that it's, you know, what's going to happen?

01:26:07.000 Is your father going to be jailed?

01:26:09.000 Is the election going to be cancelled?

01:26:11.000 Is there going to be some sort of crisis where it's like, oh, we're not holding elections anymore.

01:26:14.000 Everyone get in your houses for some reason.

01:26:16.000 Yeah, it's interesting watching at least the mainstream television.

01:26:22.000 We've got to prevent the guy that's arguably leading the presidential election in all of the polls, but certainly the leader of the Republican side, one of the party systems.

01:26:31.000 We've got to save democracy by making sure he's not on the ballot.

01:26:38.000 I'm waiting for, like, you know, Ashton Kutcher to jump out of a cake and be like, you're being punked.

01:26:42.000 Like, you're going to preserve democracy by not letting people vote for who they want to vote for?

01:26:45.000 I don't understand.

01:26:46.000 Please, like, give me more.

01:26:49.000 But it's just, well, no, no, we said it.

01:26:50.000 We don't have to explain it.

01:26:52.000 It's just, that's right.

01:26:53.000 Yeah, democracy with only one sanctioned outcome is not a desirable... It's not, in fact, democracy.

01:27:00.000 That's anathema.

01:27:01.000 Yeah, I wanted to ask you before, like, you know, we've been talking all day long.

01:27:05.000 You mentioned just briefly that there was a point where you were in a pretty agnostic political space.

01:27:10.000 You're a reality TV star and you're the famous son of Donald Trump, a billionaire.

01:27:20.000 When it was announced that you were going to be entering into new territory, political territory, did you imagine that it would be as terrifying and as toxic and that it would entail what it has done?

01:27:32.000 Not as much, meaning it's much more vicious.

01:27:35.000 We knew it would happen a little bit, right?

01:27:36.000 I tell the story when my father announced it was June 16, 2015.

01:27:40.000 And that was sort of the infamous escalator ride as depicted in The Simpsons.

01:27:45.000 But he did that, and I remember the elevator ride before that when we were all there as a family.

01:27:50.000 And my father, I always tell the story, it was in my first book, Triggered, ironically, like this show.

01:27:55.000 And I told the story where he looked me in the eyes and he goes, And now we find out who our real friends are.

01:28:00.000 And that was a... Like, wait a minute.

01:28:03.000 So he knew what was going to happen.

01:28:05.000 Maybe not to the level, but he understood.

01:28:07.000 He was friends with a lot of those people in Hollywood, then all of a sudden he was the devil.

01:28:11.000 And I'm like, the people who said we were the most terrible people in the world, I was like, well, you know, we had dinner like three weeks ago.

01:28:17.000 What are you talking about?

01:28:18.000 All of it.

01:28:18.000 So he knew that that was going to happen and he did it anyway.

01:28:22.000 I think in 2020, I think he knew that if he would have just stopped, You know, it would have also stopped the pain.

01:28:28.000 They wouldn't have come after that way.

01:28:30.000 You know, as long as they got their way.

01:28:31.000 But it's just not really his style.

01:28:34.000 And, you know, he understands what's at stake.

01:28:36.000 So he's just gonna keep fighting.

01:28:37.000 For me, it was an interesting thing, because I think, you know, the reality, you know, I told you earlier in the interview, I grew up on sort of construction job sites.

01:28:44.000 Yeah, I like that.

01:28:45.000 Those were my friends.

01:28:46.000 You know, my outdoor stuff.

01:28:47.000 I hang out with, you know, sort of good, you know, just regular Americans.

01:28:51.000 That's where I spend most of my free time.

01:28:52.000 I choose to do that.

01:28:53.000 The reality is, like, growing up, even in New York City my whole life, That was probably more pretend.

01:28:58.000 I could do it and, you know, throw on a tux or a suit with, you know, every other, you know, monkey and dance and whatever it is and do that just fine.

01:29:06.000 But I was actually probably faking that much more than I was actually what this world was, you know, sort of defending, you know, at least the rights, the freedoms, you know, that hardworking American, the forgotten man and woman, as we sort of refer to it, right?

01:29:20.000 And so, as brutal as all of this process has been, and it's much worse than we envisioned, For me, it was actually kind of freeing, because I actually got to be who I probably am in real life for the first time in what was then essentially 40 years.

01:29:36.000 I was always conservative-leaning, I was always very pro-2A, but I also built buildings in New York, and that wasn't a popular position, so I could feel that way, I could do that on the weekends in my free time, but I couldn't do it very publicly, because there was a cost.

01:29:52.000 Once we sort of went all in, I was like, great, I get to be who I am.

01:29:55.000 And it worked out well.

01:29:57.000 So as brutal as the process is, as costly as it is, you know, they tried to throw me in jail and treason and all that.

01:30:02.000 It was like, for me, it was actually quite cathartic.

01:30:05.000 It was very freeing.

01:30:06.000 Yeah, I wonder if, like you, have ever thought, is there a way out of this?

01:30:10.000 Because, of course, some of it is like... No, now I'm all in.

01:30:13.000 You know, I'm public enemy probably number two, at least in our family.

01:30:19.000 And that's okay.

01:30:20.000 I mean, I find, you know, when we talk about Earlier, talking about purpose in life, I'm like, no, now I got mine.

01:30:25.000 I turned out, hey, I was decent at building stuff, I'm probably better at this, and I'm willing to do that, I'm willing to have that conversation and that dialogue, and I can articulate it, and I have a big platform that I'm willing to utilize, not just to...

01:30:39.000 You know, well, I can't offend anyone, so I'm going to try to grow.

01:30:42.000 I don't have to be, you know, someone from Hollywood where they can just be friends.

01:30:46.000 Like, I've picked a side, and that's fine.

01:30:48.000 And, you know, the things I'm fighting for are actually to create the things I thought actually existed in America that had, frankly, been missing for quite some time.

01:30:57.000 You know, bring back actual freedom, not sort of, you know, a bastardized notion.

01:31:01.000 Yeah, yeah, sure, you got freedom.

01:31:02.000 You just can't do that.

01:31:03.000 You can't do that.

01:31:04.000 So, you know, I'm fighting for an ideal that I believe Up until I sort of got exposed to it, I believe existed, but probably didn't actually exist.

01:31:14.000 Do you feel that there are, on the cultural left, ideas that are interesting to you or that have changed you for the positive?

01:31:23.000 Do you see things in that?

01:31:24.000 Let me give you an example.

01:31:26.000 Some of us, I think, have a willingness to really analyse what we take for granted and to look at, oh yeah, those traditions or perhaps those institutions maybe are punitive to some groups and beneficial to other groups.

01:31:41.000 Oh, I think without question.

01:31:42.000 Right, so there's ideas that you are open to.

01:31:44.000 I think without question, but you see all sorts of these things. 0.51

01:31:51.000 I'm not ever pretending that we've lived in a perfect society on this, but I do think the cure for some of these things gets a little bit ridiculous.

01:32:00.000 You talk about the argument...

01:32:02.000 We must have reparations.

01:32:04.000 Slavery was an incredibly dark time in America, and it happened all over the world,

01:32:08.000 and frankly, still up until recently, and in some places still happens today,

01:32:12.000 whether it's sexual slavery or the essential enslavement of women and children around the world for these things.

01:32:18.000 And if you look at the lithium mines from China, I know we have to have electric vehicles,

01:32:25.000 but no one wants to learn how the sausage is made, or acknowledge how the sausage is made,

01:32:30.000 and how we're beholden to China.

01:32:32.000 So no, I think, you know.

01:32:35.000 You know, when we talk about, you know, people always write, well, you want to make America great again because you want to bring back slavery. 1.00

01:32:40.000 That's fucking lunacy. 0.99

01:32:41.000 Like, not at all. 0.99

01:32:43.000 But we do want to bring back sort of the values where we all were actually equal, where there can be an actual meritocracy, not where, you know, I joke with my boys, right?

01:32:55.000 They're white men with the last name Trump. 1.00

01:32:57.000 They're fucked. 1.00

01:32:58.000 I was like, you gotta become trans if you wanna, you know, you wanna get, you know, you see that in the trans movement, right? 1.00

01:33:04.000 It's not about being equal.

01:33:06.000 You know, I told you, I was like, hey, if you're an adult, you know, you want to do it, I don't care.

01:33:10.000 I actually don't care.

01:33:11.000 I'm, you know, libertarian on the issue, whatever, but I don't want to pay for it.

01:33:15.000 I don't want to hear about it ad nauseum. 0.97

01:33:16.000 I don't want to be, you know, penalized for not adhering to your ever-changing whims as it relates to pronouns and bullshit. 0.99

01:33:22.000 I don't want to have to be subjected to that and stay the fuck away from my kids. 0.99

01:33:26.000 And yet, that's not what they want. 0.96

01:33:28.000 You know, you say, oh, we're not letting children at the pride parade, therefore we're not going to show up.

01:33:32.000 It's like, why?

01:33:33.000 I thought it wasn't about indoctrinating children.

01:33:35.000 I thought it was just about, you know, you don't have drag queen story hour at elder age hospice care centers.

01:33:43.000 It's only in front of children.

01:33:45.000 It's clear they're doing that indoctrination.

01:33:46.000 So, you know, there's no question, you know, nothing's been perfect in this world.

01:33:51.000 It's not a perfect place.

01:33:52.000 And by the way, it never will be, right?

01:33:53.000 It's probably not human nature to be perfect.

01:33:56.000 Someone will always, Create havoc.

01:33:59.000 I think the universe is probably guided a lot by chaos.

01:34:04.000 But it feels like today's correction, it's just...

01:34:10.000 An extreme reversal of that.

01:34:13.000 I think now, when you look at a lot of the policies, it's reverse racism.

01:34:18.000 It's like, well, that's OK, because it's against a white man.

01:34:20.000 So it's OK to do that.

01:34:21.000 You see some of the policies of DEI.

01:34:24.000 Well, we're going to make sure that there's X number of X color people that are pilots. 1.00

01:34:29.000 It's like, well, what if they're not qualified?

01:34:30.000 It doesn't matter.

01:34:31.000 We're going to put them in charge of a plane at 36,000 feet, flying 700 miles an hour.

01:34:36.000 And what could possibly go wrong?

01:34:39.000 The answer's a lot.

01:34:41.000 You see that with the air traffic control stuff that's been come out recently.

01:34:43.000 It's like, well, if you perform well in science and you were competent, you know, you're actually at a disadvantage to someone who was a terrible student to become an air traffic controller.

01:34:52.000 I'm saying, what is going on here?

01:34:56.000 That's literally government policy.

01:35:00.000 So, there's definitely things I've changed my mind on.

01:35:03.000 I think there's plenty of issues on the conservative side that I don't agree with.

01:35:07.000 I don't agree with any dogma completely. 1.00

01:35:09.000 I think if you buy into it, I think you're probably a fool. 0.97

01:35:13.000 But I can say, hey, for the most part, I agree with X, Y, Z, or this, and there's always exceptions, and things change, and I think things evolve. 0.98

01:35:20.000 But they've evolved sort of regressively, in my opinion, these days.

01:35:24.000 Yeah, and while you were talking then, Don, I was thinking that, God, it sounds so complex that in the end, I suppose that we have to look at things that I was talking about with Kim earlier, like forgiveness, redemption, salvation, compassion, love, good faith, ideas that you don't find in a materialistic set of values, but that you do find enshrined in spiritual value systems.

01:35:48.000 And those are the kind of things that are starting to slowly transform my life, and where I sense that there might be some hope and opportunity, because one way or another, this country is going to have to be healed or torn apart, and I don't see people talking about that.

01:36:06.000 This world?

01:36:07.000 No, it's hard.

01:36:07.000 I mean, I have guys that are friends of mine that are either, you know, let's call it independent or even even former democrats

01:36:16.000 that have sort of come around and I mean these are successful rational people and they're

01:36:21.000 asking like hey can we actually survive this I mean is like is a civil like these are

01:36:26.000 rational people in asking questions about is there a potential for a civil war in America

01:36:31.000 They actually think it's very realistic.

01:36:33.000 And I'm like, holy crap, if they're thinking that, imagine what sort of the extremes, you know, the ends of the spectrum are saying. 0.76

01:36:39.000 But we saw that, right? 0.66

01:36:40.000 2020, the summer of love.

01:36:41.000 I mean, it didn't look much like a summer of love.

01:36:43.000 And yet, you know, it was a mostly peaceful protest where buildings were burned in the background.

01:36:47.000 And, you know, we looted, you know, a Gucci store because I guess, you know, a pair of Gucci shoes and a purse is, in the name of social justice, makes it okay and it's acceptable.

01:36:57.000 You know, that's not a society that I'm, you know, that I think is going to be too long for the world, unfortunately, and yet we've normalized that.

01:37:04.000 So I think we have a lot of work to do.

01:37:06.000 Yeah, I think so.

01:37:07.000 Maybe if we just smoke cigars, share showers... And talk.

01:37:13.000 And talk with people from the other side.

01:37:15.000 I think we can probably make a lot.

01:37:18.000 Stop.

01:37:18.000 Tune out the mainstream media.

01:37:19.000 Tune out the narrative.

01:37:20.000 That's got to go.

01:37:21.000 Tune out the machine.

01:37:23.000 Uh, have actual dialogue.

01:37:25.000 You can do that respectfully.

01:37:26.000 It doesn't have to be, uh, disrespectfully.

01:37:28.000 And I think we can probably come a long way, Russell.

01:37:30.000 Yeah, I agree, Don.

01:37:32.000 I feel a lot better about it than I did when this cigar was here.

01:37:35.000 I felt...

01:37:38.000 Less hope.

01:37:40.000 And maybe I'm just high on nicotine right now.

01:37:42.000 It could be something, right?

01:37:42.000 It could be asphyxiation, suffocation and nicotine.

01:37:46.000 But now I feel like, man, whatever we may disagree on, it is plain that the real threat to freedom is globalist, corporatist, authoritarianism, always looking for opportunity to Assert civilian management to control currency, to control free speech, to centralize authority, to limit the ability to communicate.

01:38:07.000 That can't be the goodies.

01:38:10.000 That cannot be the good guys anymore.

01:38:12.000 Not even a little bit.

01:38:13.000 Well, guys, I know Russell has to catch a plane to get out of here to go to the other side of Florida.

01:38:17.000 I only go to places in Florida now.

01:38:19.000 Only Florida.

01:38:20.000 The sleeves are off my shirt.

01:38:21.000 I'm staying.

01:38:23.000 The free state of Florida as opposed to the People's Republic of New York where I spend most of my life.

01:38:26.000 But guys, stick around if you want to check out what I did with Russell earlier.

01:38:30.000 Sort of a little bit of a role reversal.

01:38:33.000 Stick around.

01:38:33.000 We're going to air that right here next.

01:38:35.000 But thanks for tuning in, Russell.

01:38:37.000 Thank you for For being that voice, for taking that leap, for stepping out of that world and fighting for these things.

01:38:45.000 Because I think it matters and we need more people to articulate those thoughts, to have that conversation.

01:38:50.000 When more people become unafraid to actually have that conversation, when they sort of disregard the social consequence of that, I think we can actually make real progress.

01:39:00.000 Whether it's champagne glory holes or cigars or Kim's Well, I don't threat that there are cameras in your shower.

01:39:08.000 It seems that we are creating new opportunities for revelation.

01:39:10.000 If we want to go viral, I may or may not have the video, so we'll see what happens.

01:39:15.000 Guys, thanks so much.

01:39:16.000 Stick around.

01:39:17.000 Russell, appreciate it, man.

01:39:18.000 That was great.

01:39:19.000 Great talking to you.

01:39:19.000 Thanks, man.

01:39:20.000 We'll speak freely, but after that first 15, we'll be exclusively available on Rumble, the joint home of both Dear Don and myself.

01:39:28.000 You are a resident at Rumble like me.

01:39:30.000 I am.

01:39:31.000 I am.

01:39:31.000 Listen, I think I was the second The second verified user on Rumble after Bongino.

01:39:38.000 Bongino was verified, then you were verified.

01:39:40.000 Yeah, well, it was right when all of that stuff happened with, you know, Twitter 1.0, where all of a sudden they cancelled the President of the United States, and I had a large following there, and I said, wait a second, this could disappear in two seconds.

01:39:51.000 You could see what was going on, and, you know, reached out with Dan, started talking with Chris Pawlowski, the CEO, and I was on there and have been there ever since.

01:40:00.000 It's, you know, arguably the only You know, true free speech video platform.

01:40:05.000 You've experienced what YouTube will do and the manipulation there.

01:40:09.000 And so I thought it was such an important thing to do and to support.

01:40:12.000 That's why I'm here and that's my home.

01:40:15.000 Also resident in this home, in this house and on Rumble is Kim Guilfoyle, who will be joining us in a minute.

01:40:22.000 Also, although not simultaneously, for numerous reasons, mostly technical, but also social, we feel like we'll have conversations successively.

01:40:31.000 We're all talkers.

01:40:33.000 Yeah, we could have an interview of just everyone talking simultaneously and no one will be able to hear anything So what I like about this conversation, so if you're watching us on YouTube There'll be a link up in about 15 minutes And you'll have to click the link and follow us over to rumble and hopefully if you permit me Don We'll be staying live on local so become an awakened wonder and join us there where we will be smoking cigars freely together yes and Discussing subjects as varied and vast as masculinity, liberty, freedom and what revolution and indeed insurrection means in the modern world.

01:41:05.000 Don, thank you very much for having a conversation that just a few short years ago would have seemed impossible.

01:41:10.000 We've only met once before at the Rumble launch.

01:41:14.000 in Sarasota. And I remember then thinking, wow, I'm moving into a different environment now. I'm

01:41:19.000 having conversations with people from the Trump family, people from a different world, in your

01:41:24.000 case an outdoor hunting fishing person. According to your Wikipedia page, as of today you were still

01:41:31.000 involved in a Russia gay hoax. In a way, this conversation couldn't have happened five years 0.51

01:41:36.000 ago because I occupied an entirely different world.

01:41:39.000 It's a miracle that it can even still happen today, to some degree, because we live in such heavily censored and controlled spaces.

01:41:45.000 What do you think it means when people from different cultural pockets find themselves allying on the basis that now there is so much freedom, so much impediment to freedom, so much censorship, so much control, and so much to be afraid of when it comes to establishment authority, that new alliances simply have to be formed?

01:42:04.000 I think it's a great start.

01:42:06.000 You know, I think a lot of the forces that you're talking about in censorship and suppression, I think a lot of that's been going on probably for decades.

01:42:15.000 It was the extreme nature of the last few years, maybe the last eight years, that I think woke up a lot of people to exactly what was going on.

01:42:23.000 When we started speaking, I said, there's probably not a lot we would have agreed on politically or otherwise eight, ten years ago, and yet We're sort of in this same fight against these external forces that, at this point, honestly, to me, scream just pure evil.

01:42:39.000 It's just total control.

01:42:41.000 There's nothing they won't do.

01:42:43.000 And as we talked this week, you said, on my Wikipedia page, I don't check it because I think Wikipedia is literally the The basis that everyone else uses to spread misinformation and create censorship in an artificial means.

01:42:56.000 But yeah, I'm still an agent of Russia, even though that's been totally disproven, and even though a Hillary Clinton campaign pushed these lies, and our three-letter agencies blindly bought into that, and they leak the information to establishment media, in that case the New York Times, which writes an article that they use as the basis for an investigation to try to destroy a presidency, which is As far as I'm concerned, an affront on democracy, but according to them, that's actually saving democracy somehow.

01:43:24.000 We don't know how, but they will tell us that ad nauseum.

01:43:27.000 It's difficult to wrench your head out of the domestic environment that all of us inhabit.

01:43:33.000 I mean primarily culturally.

01:43:35.000 And for a moment, consider that if we heard of a foreign country where a political opponent While simultaneously having their previous policies plagiarized, policies which whilst in office, Donald Trump was significantly condemned.

01:43:55.000 I'm talking about the travel ban and various attempts to curtail or otherwise control immigration.

01:44:03.000 While Donald Trump was in office, He was attacked by the same media now that are attempting to significantly amplify and support Biden's recent executive order when it comes to the border.

01:44:16.000 Now, you seem to be saying, Don, that that is both an inept policy rather than pure patriotism.

01:44:22.000 It's a lie.

01:44:22.000 It's just optics, right?

01:44:23.000 The Biden border policy is 4,000 guaranteed amnesty every day with all sorts of loopholes for additional people.

01:44:31.000 And just so we're clear, You know, Obama's homeland guy said a thousand a day would be overwhelming.

01:44:38.000 So now we're at 4x plus all the loopholes.

01:44:41.000 So it's the optics.

01:44:43.000 They're appearing to do something, but I'd ask, even if they're appearing to do something, maybe that's a start.

01:44:48.000 Why'd it take three and a half years?

01:44:50.000 Did we think there was any good to come from, I don't know, human trafficking?

01:44:55.000 The child sex trafficking, the fentanyl crisis that, you know, has killed, you know, kills, let's call it a hundred thousand Americans a year.

01:45:02.000 A hundred thousand, just so we understand what that is.

01:45:04.000 That's two Vietnams a year. 0.95

01:45:07.000 Two Vietnams a year. 0.87

01:45:08.000 Vietnam was, you know, ten plus year war.

01:45:10.000 Two a year, and we barely talk about it as a crisis.

01:45:14.000 I mean, that's where we are.

01:45:16.000 Where's the media talking about that?

01:45:17.000 Because, you know, they will make it seem like they're trying to do something, and it's all smoke and mirrors.

01:45:22.000 It's nonsense. 0.91

01:45:23.000 We've got Vietnams everywhere we look. 1.00

01:45:25.000 Ed Dowd, reporting on excess deaths in your country, says that in the two-year period immediately post the pandemic, if we can even say post-pandemic at this point, there was a Vietnam worth of excess deaths.

01:45:38.000 We're living at a time, it seems to me, where centralised authority and the potential for a kind of technological feudalism is using as its biggest weapon the threat of a ...second Trump presidency to augur and allow them to create authoritarianism that's much more akin to versions of tyranny that we've seen in literature, yes to a degree in George Orwell, but notably in Aldous Huxley, and the kind of terror and dread that I get from reading Franz Kafka in books like The Trial, where there's this new

01:46:13.000 This invisible, cruel bureaucracy that tells you that it's helping you, tells you that it cares about you, won't give you details or facts about where power actually lies, uses really kind language, all the while inhibiting your freedom, turning people against one another.

01:46:32.000 I recognise now that's a much bigger threat to freedom than even the worst portrayal of the MAGA movement and Donald Trump.

01:46:40.000 That frightens me more at this point.

01:46:43.000 It should.

01:46:43.000 I mean, listen, we've been hearing people screaming about fascism for eight years, nine years, and yet look at the actions of those people.

01:46:52.000 They are the ones literally trying to jail their political opponents.

01:46:56.000 They are the ones who, you know, gave a total pass to, you know, the very peaceful protesters of the 2020 Summer of Love who happened to burn down major cities in America, billions in damage, people actually murdered.

01:47:09.000 You juxtapose that to, you know, January 6th, You know, which, as far as they're concerned, was, you know, the greatest insurrection in the history of insurrections also happened to be the first unarmed insurrection in the history of the world, and yet they utilize that narrative over and over again, right?

01:47:26.000 They create a narrative, you see the sound bites, you see every aspect in mainstream media picking up on every talking point.

01:47:32.000 It's always the same.

01:47:33.000 You put in the three words and it becomes gospel, right?

01:47:36.000 Now, as of this week, it was, you know, convicted felon, like, you know, without looking at the details of this case, right?

01:47:42.000 Convicted felon is the new one.

01:47:44.000 Joe Biden can't run on anything, so he's running against a convicted felon.

01:47:47.000 How can you allow that?

01:47:48.000 Yes.

01:47:49.000 Disregarding all of the corruption of his family, all of the corruption and the illegalities that his son has done. 0.99

01:47:56.000 I mean, you know, you compare me online, you know, to Hunter Biden, and I am the devil, and he is, you know, someone who simply suffers from addiction, not is just a total piece of garbage, has sold out our country. 0.99

01:48:08.000 You know, I get it. 0.86

01:48:09.000 I am not the upstanding citizen that he is, according to CNN, but the reality is that doesn't jive if people get below the surface.

01:48:18.000 Just the narrative that they're spoon-fed.

01:48:19.000 Yeah, what I'm starting to think is that when you can see powerful institutions leveraged and utilized in a particular direction, you can observe likely where the power lies and where power And what its agenda is, and where it's projected towards.

01:48:36.000 It must be very difficult, I suppose, for anyone that's living in your country right now, but in particular for someone in your family, to try to contemplate what's happening on a larger scale.

01:48:47.000 Because when an election is approaching, there is a kind of generalised hysteria.

01:48:52.000 And both sides, to a degree I suppose, are amplifying the enmity between the two camps.

01:48:58.000 I feel that something's happening at a global level, and perhaps it's easier for me to see that as a person that's not from your country, but it seems that when you're looking at EU policy and UN policy and Canadian policy, Australian, Irish, particularly say for example, just take the subject of censorship, it appears that something is being coordinated on perhaps even a global scale to generate conditions where if in response there's just a jet ski going by, there's just a jet ski going by, that's where you live, Don Jr.

01:49:29.000 riding the Stars and Stripes in a jet ski.

01:49:33.000 It's the most American thing I've ever seen.

01:49:34.000 It really is.

01:49:35.000 It feels a little Kenny Powers.

01:49:36.000 Yeah, that's the battle I had in mind.

01:49:39.000 Get the pinvipers on and get on a jet ski and let's rock and roll.

01:49:43.000 Express ourselves.

01:49:46.000 Yeah, it seems that something's happening on a global level that's primarily designed to prevent people communicating freely.

01:49:51.000 So the next time crises are exploited to introduce more authority, the same way that it was in the pandemic, the same way it appears to be around wars, and might yet be in a more generalised way, perhaps connected to climate change, when people's individual freedoms are restricted, The ability to, in real time, communicate about it and say, hold on, this doesn't seem to be true.

01:50:13.000 You know, but it seems, for example, Don, that the WHO treaty was designed to prevent what happened in the last pandemic happening.

01:50:21.000 It was essentially a treaty to be able to lock Joe Rogan in a box, stop people communicating freely, demand that people take medications, be very vague about what constitutes a pandemic.

01:50:34.000 It could be a whole variety of things.

01:50:36.000 Do you see The true power of America being transcendent of even your most obvious enemies, the Democrat Party, and involving forces like the three-letter agencies.

01:50:47.000 But do you see it as being transcendent of not only America's interests, but America even as a nation?

01:50:53.000 Oh, a hundred percent.

01:50:54.000 I mean, I think it's so broken, and I think that globalist mindset has taken such control of even America.

01:51:00.000 Uh, you know, I saw that on us.

01:51:01.000 We, you know, we talked about, you know, still being an active collusionist with Russia, uh, and me and, uh, you know, at the time when that was going on.

01:51:08.000 And I'd say it's safe to say I was the number two target after my father of Russia, Russia, Russia, of the hoax. 0.66

01:51:15.000 But at the time, I'm saying, well, I mean, the FBI said this, Rob.

01:51:19.000 There's got to be something.

01:51:20.000 Like, I wanted to believe that as a patriotic American, everything I had sort of grown up thinking about my country was real.

01:51:30.000 That it wasn't, you know, smoke and mirrors. 1.00

01:51:31.000 But it's actually all bullshit. 0.99

01:51:34.000 Back then, I was fighting to preserve what I thought was real. 0.94

01:51:37.000 The reality is that is gone, and we're fighting to actually make that reality exist, because it does not exist right now in these things.

01:51:46.000 You saw that across the board.

01:51:48.000 You saw it, you know, this week with the Fauci trials.

01:51:50.000 It makes that relevant again.

01:51:51.000 I mean, I remember as someone who is not a virologist saying, like, of course, Of course the Wuhan virus started in the lab that studies the exact virus in question at the place that was ground zero.

01:52:07.000 No, no, no.

01:52:08.000 It started from four feet outside of that lab, Russell.

01:52:11.000 Magically.

01:52:12.000 Magically.

01:52:13.000 And, you know, you don't have to be a virologist to say, of course that's the most plausible place for it to start.

01:52:18.000 But if you were a virologist?

01:52:21.000 If you were in academia, if you had research grants, if you said that, you'd be cancelled.

01:52:26.000 Your government funding would be pulled by Fauci because they were clearly trying to control a narrative.

01:52:31.000 And that goes forward in each and every one of these things that we see.

01:52:37.000 It's not limited to that.

01:52:38.000 They get what they want out of that weaponization at the time.

01:52:42.000 And, you know, two, three, four years later, when the truth actually comes out, there's no accountability.

01:52:47.000 There's no mea culpa.

01:52:49.000 No one gets sent to prison.

01:52:51.000 They ruined businesses.

01:52:54.000 They destroyed lives.

01:52:56.000 They did that under the auspices of science, and yet there was no actual science there.

01:53:01.000 And we knew that even at the time, because we saw the Fauci emails to his colleagues.

01:53:07.000 Yes.

01:53:08.000 It did not jive.

01:53:09.000 You know, when he was talking to doctors, it did not jive with what he was telling the American public each and every day when he was living his 15 minutes as a, you know, celebutant, you know, rock star on television because he never met a camera he didn't love.

01:53:22.000 And that's the problem with our system.

01:53:25.000 We encourage and allow the best bureaucrats to succeed.

01:53:30.000 The people who are the most vicious in the PR game.

01:53:35.000 Fauci was never the best doctor.

01:53:37.000 He's been wrong about everything since the 1980s.

01:53:38.000 But if you said, during the pandemic, if you said anything about that guy...

01:53:42.000 You were out.

01:53:44.000 He was the left's deity for a two-year period.

01:53:48.000 He was a god.

01:53:48.000 They don't believe in actual god, so they create their own, right?

01:53:52.000 They had Greta Thunberg as the high priestess of climate change. 0.74

01:53:57.000 They go to Fauci as the lord of COVID.

01:54:03.000 George Floyd for a shorter period of time, but that was a temporary deity of the left for a while, and today that's dominated by Vladimir Zelensky.

01:54:12.000 You know, leading one of the most corrupt nations in the world, who we will blindly send trillions of dollars to for an end result that has not yet actually been articulated to me, and I do this kind of, at this point, for a living.

01:54:25.000 They just blindly follow these things, and we must believe the gospel, and we must believe everything is above board.

01:54:31.000 But I think they've overplayed their hand in each and every one of these instances so much that rational people, people with an IQ above like seven, They're actually questioning these things now, and I think that's the biggest thing for us.

01:54:43.000 We have to question all of these things.

01:54:45.000 Don, you've brought up so much there.

01:54:47.000 I'm so glad that you've brought up the new erected, forgive the word, pantheon of gods that are casually strung and slung before us in the absence of real faith and in the absence of real love.

01:54:58.000 That's something I want to discuss more, because when you do have just a material and rational purview, it is very easy For the state to replace God, for a set of ideals to replace God that are tethered to, it seems to me, some pretty corrupt values.

01:55:14.000 And I'd love to talk to you in a minute about how we might see a resurgence of religious and spiritual faith.

01:55:20.000 I'd like to talk to you about the complexity of being born the son of your father, the obligations that's placed upon you and the times when that must have been challenging for you because we casually spoke about what it's like to disagree with a family member in any family, let alone in your family.

01:55:36.000 You've already tagged the idea of Hunter Biden and the way that the failings of a particular son can be forgiven and elsewhere utilised and maybe both sides are guilty of that in their own way.

01:55:49.000 We're going to leave you on YouTube right now, so click the link in the description.

01:55:53.000 Join us on Rumble for the rest of this conversation.

01:55:57.000 We'll be joined by Kim Guilfoyle.

01:55:59.000 In a little while, we'll be talking more about the unique position America finds herself in At this moment. 0.99

01:56:05.000 Remember, consider joining locals as well because me and Don Jr.

01:56:08.000 will be smoking cigars, driving fast cars, firing off rounds of firearms into the sky in a giddying celebration of freedom.

01:56:15.000 Click the link in the description.

01:56:17.000 Join us over there now.

01:56:19.000 Don, this collapse of religious faith, and this erection of new deities, I think is pretty fascinating, because perhaps, like, you know, right at the beginning of this, the reason that I became sympathetic, first of all, to Donald Trump, when I was a person that was on the other side of that argument, when I was elected, you know, just to be playing with you, sir, like, at the beginning, I was like, you can't have Donald Trump as President of the United States, that's crazy.

01:56:39.000 Like everyone, everyone knows.

01:56:41.000 I get it.

01:56:42.000 Right, that's where I was, of course.

01:56:45.000 But then I saw the way that when the MAGA movement started to grow, and I saw the way that the media class was condemnatory of Americans that were supportive of Trump, I became very suspicious and cynical about their motives.

01:56:59.000 I also noticed a similar thing happened in my country during Brexit.

01:57:01.000 That there's a kind of appetite to condemn ordinary people.

01:57:04.000 Now you're obviously a very affluent man, and you're obviously from a very wealthy family,

01:57:09.000 and yet emotionally and socially and culturally, there seems to be some kind of resonance

01:57:14.000 between the MAGA message and ordinary Americans.

01:57:18.000 And I'd really like to talk to you a little about that, but I've just been told that I've got to do an ad.

01:57:23.000 So we're going to just throw to one of our partners now, and then I want to talk about what is the connection between Trump and ordinary Americans, and why do the current establishment in the form of the Democrat Party loathe ordinary Americans so deeply, and how are they able to continually use compassion?

01:57:39.000 Let's have a look at this message from our sponsors.

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01:58:40.000 We're back from a commercial.

01:58:41.000 You may have been able to hear us because we are using very up-to-the-up-to-the-very-moment technology, aren't we, John?

01:58:48.000 Yes.

01:58:48.000 We just got this technology to do this about an hour ago, so we're just do it live.

01:58:53.000 Who cares?

01:58:54.000 We have no idea in the words of Bill O'Reilly.

01:58:57.000 F it.

01:58:57.000 No, we can just swear.

01:58:58.000 Fuck it. 1.00

01:58:58.000 Let's do it live. 1.00

01:58:59.000 We can say that.

01:59:00.000 That's what I like about Rumble because I can actually...

01:59:02.000 Can be who you are.

01:59:03.000 Yeah, like, well, you know, I sort of, I grew up on construction sites, right?

01:59:06.000 It was a little, you know, it was a little different.

01:59:08.000 So I understand I totally come from a privileged place.

01:59:10.000 I understand I'm a son of a billionaire from New York, but my father was a little different with the way he pushed us from that world.

01:59:18.000 You were on sites when he had construction projects in New York.

01:59:24.000 Those were my first jobs, right?

01:59:26.000 I was joking.

01:59:27.000 I'm the only son of a billionaire, with my brother, I guess, who can drive a D10 Caterpillar bulldozer.

01:59:33.000 Can you?

01:59:33.000 Because we actually did those things.

01:59:35.000 If you're going to build a building, you better know how to dig a foundation.

01:59:38.000 You know, watching someone do it and actually spending a summer doing these things yourself are two very different things.

01:59:44.000 And I think to sort of where we left before the break, you know, that's perhaps how Trump had an understanding of sort of real people in America, right?

01:59:52.000 It wasn't just a guy that sat in a, you know, in a gilded office.

01:59:55.000 He did that too.

01:59:57.000 But, you know, he got down on the ground being a builder, not just a tech guy where you're sitting at a computer all day, you know, spending time on job sites, spending time with construction workers.

02:00:07.000 Uh, you know, I think, while very unlikely on paper, he had a very, very good understanding of where those people were for, you know, a 30 or 40 year career before he ever got into politics.

02:00:19.000 And I think that's what was unique about him.

02:00:21.000 He understood those people better than, you know, the elite snobs at the New York Times who couldn't understand, who are these people voting for Trump?

02:00:27.000 We don't know a single person who would vote for Trump in our, you know, little cocoon in Washington, D.C.

02:00:32.000 It's, it's absolutely shocking, and yet, You know, he resonated so well with real people because it wasn't the first time he actually spoke to real people, unlike so many of our political class.

02:00:42.000 Yeah, because people always try to score points with that I-was-talking-to-my-plumber type of rhetoric.

02:00:48.000 It's the way that politicians in your country and in mine automatically operate, pretending that they're down with ordinary people.

02:00:56.000 And I've questioned from the outside, how has this person, in the case of your father Donald Trump, been able to achieve this affinity With ordinary people and you say socially and historically because it's just been part of he was he ran things different So like just did that.

02:01:11.000 I mean, he's always at heart.

02:01:13.000 He's always sort of still, you know the boy from Queens Well, like again, he was he was blessed and privileged and you know, we get that we don't we don't discount that we we don't You know pretend we don't understand that But you know, that's sort of his where you break it down, right?

02:01:28.000 He did the sort of outstanding lavish things, but you know at heart He wants to have a cheeseburger and watch a baseball game, right?

02:01:36.000 He's a regular.

02:01:37.000 I was the guy decades ago that coined the phrase, you know, sort of blue-collar billionaire.

02:01:42.000 And people at the time, what are you saying?

02:01:44.000 It's like, now you get it.

02:01:45.000 They never got it.

02:01:46.000 They actually criticized me greatly for apparently not understanding something, but it turns out they were the ones that just didn't understand, you know, let's call it, you know, 300-something million people in America.

02:01:56.000 The reason I know something strange is happening is because my country, which is of course heavily influenced by American politics and American economics and American geopolitical objectives, does still yet have its own culture, and in particular around the time of Brexit, We saw and I was uneasy about what I saw as a kind of blanket condemnation of ordinary people, a kind of a willingness to sort of say that people that voted for Brexit were racist and like people in the north of the country or let's say blue-collar or working-class regions

02:02:28.000 were idiots. And like during the cycles of these elections it's become pretty clear that 1.00

02:02:34.000 there is a kind of contempt for American values, for the values of ordinary people of numerous

02:02:41.000 cultures. So this kind of, whether it's a charismatic ability or just an organic connection

02:02:48.000 to ordinary people, is a surprising phenomena.

02:02:52.000 Do you feel it as well?

02:02:53.000 Do you feel comfortable?

02:02:54.000 Because I suppose you've grown up in a very different environment as any child of a billionaire would.

02:03:00.000 You know, I think I did.

02:03:00.000 It was sort of, it was interesting, I think, because of that.

02:03:03.000 The guys, you know, going and working on a job site during the summers at 14, 15 years old.

02:03:08.000 You know, I actually probably relate much more to that.

02:03:10.000 That doesn't mean, you know, I don't, you know, throw in a tux every once in a while and go do some rubber chicken dinner.

02:03:15.000 But, like, my friends are actually far more heavily based in sort of just ordinary America, right?

02:03:21.000 That's who I spend my time with, the outdoor stuff that I do, all that.

02:03:24.000 You know, I don't...

02:03:26.000 You know, I choose to spend my time there because that's where I'm actually more comfortable.

02:03:30.000 So ironically, getting into sort of politics was actually far more natural for me because those are the people I was spending time with anyway.

02:03:37.000 You know, throwing on, you know, going to a rubber chicken dinner.

02:03:42.000 You know, I was actually faking that, whereas for politics I'm not actually faking it.

02:03:46.000 I'm just being who I naturally am.

02:03:47.000 Does that make sense?

02:03:48.000 Yes, it does.

02:03:48.000 And I think what it says to me is that elitism is real.

02:03:53.000 There's this kind of like, look, I recognize economic elitism and I recognize privilege.

02:03:57.000 I live a pretty privileged life myself.

02:03:59.000 question about that. But what I'm like interested in is the kind of contempt

02:04:04.000 and hatred not only for Donald Trump, your father, because I can see how that's

02:04:09.000 politically expedient and necessary to amplify him as a threat as a kind of you

02:04:13.000 know the obvious example that is continually used is to try to portray

02:04:17.000 Donald Trump as a reboot in of the militaristic dictators of the last

02:04:21.000 century even though this is a president has already had four years in office and

02:04:25.000 didn't seek to use the military to shut down...

02:04:28.000 accomplished peace deals. I mean we went from signing peace deals in the Middle East to having you

02:04:33.000 know what you any one of the number of conflicts that could escalate into the

02:04:37.000 World War three and yet Trump was the dictator. You know you can't it's hard to

02:04:41.000 reconcile that I mean the the level of mental gymnastics to yeah to try to...

02:04:47.000 Even understand the narrative of today's left is really getting complicated.

02:04:53.000 It's very hard.

02:04:54.000 The reality on election day in November, you will have had four years under Trump and you will have had four years under Joe Biden.

02:05:02.000 That doesn't happen often where it's not just talk or rhetoric.

02:05:05.000 It's actually you've had real world experience.

02:05:08.000 When were you better off?

02:05:10.000 Name a metric, a single metric, where we are better off today than we were four years ago.

02:05:15.000 You know, the adults were back in charge, but they took back in charge and they withdrew from Afghanistan, and Americans are killed for the first time in 18 months in a conflict zone, and rather than taking accountability or acknowledging stupidity or whatever, we have our Secretary of State, the adults who are back in charge, gets on a world stage before Congress and says, he's shocked and dismayed.

02:05:36.000 And I quote, you know, that the Taliban did not install a more diverse and inclusive government.

02:05:40.000 I'm saying, I don't know guys, like, if you want to be dismayed, fine.

02:05:45.000 You're shocked that the Taliban didn't have a, you know, a trans contingent, Russell.

02:05:49.000 They didn't take those things into consideration.

02:05:53.000 And we are shocked that that didn't happen.

02:05:54.000 I'm like, They threw people off buildings for being homosexuals, you know, like, for the last 20 years. 1.00

02:06:00.000 We've been at war for that.

02:06:01.000 It's not we didn't understand them.

02:06:03.000 We've been at war for 20 years.

02:06:05.000 We thought magically they were going to change because, you know, corporate America put up, you know, trans flags for Pride Month.

02:06:13.000 Those are not serious people.

02:06:14.000 And yet those are people who are making literally trillion dollar decisions, not just for Americans, but for people around the globe.

02:06:22.000 Don, one of the things that we can use to draw points of distinction because it spanned both administrations is, of course, the pandemic.

02:06:32.000 Now, I recognize that at the beginning of the pandemic period, we were in a different environment.

02:06:37.000 And Donald Trump's enthusiasm for Operation Warp Speed, as well as some of the things that he said that in retrospect were pretty interesting around hydrochloric... I can never say that word.

02:06:48.000 Hydroxychloroquine.

02:06:49.000 Well done, man.

02:06:50.000 Well done.

02:06:51.000 Like, you know, he did have an interesting approach.

02:06:53.000 But do you feel that if Donald Trump outright said these vaccines weren't what they claimed to be, and some people won't even use the term vaccines now, gene therapies, weren't what we thought they were, Excess deaths needs to be looked at, adverse events needs to be looked at, and the big pharma companies need to be examined in the same way you would around the opioid crisis.

02:07:17.000 Do you think that many of the people in his base, in addition to, I'm assuming, other people, would find that appealing?

02:07:24.000 I actually think so.

02:07:25.000 I mean, you know, and I agree with all of that.

02:07:27.000 I think, you know, when he takes criticism for that, I think you have to go back in hindsight.

02:07:32.000 Right, if Trump would have fired Fauci when we all started questioning it, he would have been impeached in...

02:07:40.000 Seven seconds, and he would have had a hundred percent of the... You know, again, they turned someone into a deity.

02:07:46.000 They did that very much on purpose, because they could use that as a crudgel against Trump.

02:07:51.000 Yeah.

02:07:51.000 If he questioned these things, he saw that, you know, hey, hydroxychloroquine, it turns out it's actually right.

02:07:57.000 You know, remdesivir, whatever the other ones were.

02:07:59.000 Hey, it was right.

02:07:59.000 He was looking at all of these things as potentials, but guess what?

02:08:03.000 None of those, you know, a drug that's been out in the open market for 50 years, None of that meant money to big pharma and to those

02:08:10.000 institutions, those same institutions that I guess we found out, I guess, part of the, you know, NIH or whatever it is,

02:08:16.000 the scientists there, they've made $70 million in royalties for this things that they came up with that don't seem to

02:08:23.000 have been effective at all, yada, yada, yada.

02:08:25.000 At the time, he would have been killed for going against a Fauci. 0.97

02:08:32.000 That's not even a pretense.

02:08:33.000 Same thing with, you know, January 6th.

02:08:35.000 You know, they show you a couple videos of, you know, they're certainly some bad actors, right?

02:08:39.000 You know, we don't, but like...

02:08:42.000 7, 10, but that was the video they showed you.

02:08:45.000 And then for the 14 days between that and the transition of power.

02:08:48.000 Well, why didn't he pardon everyone?

02:08:50.000 Well, because the only thing we saw, the only thing that was made available to the public was this image of like, hey man, that could look like an insurrection.

02:08:57.000 Then you see, you know, now we see videos of grandmothers taking selfies, like within the velvet ropes, those people were questioned by the FBI and thrown in jail for years.

02:09:06.000 You know, now we know that, but at the time, What did we actually know?

02:09:11.000 What was made available to us?

02:09:12.000 I mean, it took two years to get even the basic information out.

02:09:15.000 It took years to get the videos out of, you know, again, the insurrectionists conveniently being escorted and toured through by armed officers.

02:09:24.000 We have Christopher Wray a couple months ago saying, well, we can't release the videos because we had too many agents undercover.

02:09:31.000 Well, you had agents undercover that were armed in there, and yet you did nothing?

02:09:37.000 They just, they allowed literally an insurrection?

02:09:40.000 Yeah.

02:09:41.000 Just like, you literally, if Trump went against Andy, you're literally killing grandmothers.

02:09:45.000 You're literally doing that, Russell.

02:09:47.000 You know, it's insane, but again, that's the point is, these narratives are created, they're weaponized at the time.

02:09:53.000 I guess this week we saw the Hunter Biden laptop be entered into evidence in his, you know, what should be one of many, but you know, I'm sure he'll get off because that's the way the system is designed right now, but it was entered into evidence in his trial.

02:10:08.000 I mean, I was told by 52 high-ranking intelligence officers in the CIA that that was Russian disinformation.

02:10:16.000 Yeah.

02:10:16.000 You know how I knew it wasn't Russian disinformation?

02:10:18.000 Because, like, he didn't come out and say it was Russian.

02:10:20.000 Like, if that was my laptop, and it wasn't true, I'd say that.

02:10:24.000 If it was my laptop and it was true, at the time, my father would have thrown me in Gitmo, and rightfully so.

02:10:29.000 I'd still be there.

02:10:31.000 I'd be in Gitmo right now, and that would have been right.

02:10:35.000 Of course it was accurate, and of course those 52 intelligence officers had no way of knowing, but it didn't stop them from weaponizing that.

02:10:41.000 You know, months later, when it started leaking and these things, you know, 17% of the American populace said that would have changed their vote away from Joe Biden had they known that that was accurate, that we were that corrupted.

02:10:52.000 As we're, you know, honestly, as we're possibly on the brink of World War III, with the world's largest nuclear superpower by volume of intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads, Russia Are we making policy decisions? 0.63

02:11:08.000 That are simply influenced because one of our other enemies has more information about a kid that was corrupted and broken and taking all sorts of money for God knows what, for things he had no business actually making.

02:11:19.000 Like, our media is not even asking that question, Russell.

02:11:22.000 Like, are we possibly getting ourselves into World War III because this administration is acting to further cover up other things?

02:11:29.000 Like, maybe they are, maybe they're not.

02:11:31.000 But the fact that we're not even asking, like, is it a possibility?

02:11:35.000 Of course.

02:11:35.000 Like, I look at all of the America last decisions that we see from the Biden, whether it's energy, whether it's this, whether it's the dealings from China, you know, bringing down our strategic petroleum reserves and cutting off American energy.

02:11:46.000 I'm like, not one of these things is good for America.

02:11:50.000 Could they be done because there's undue influence?

02:11:52.000 And given all of the information that's out there, given all of the shade, you know, if that was my laptop, it would be a problem.

02:11:59.000 It wouldn't just be someone struggling with addiction.

02:12:03.000 Yes.

02:12:03.000 Like, you know, it would be a serious issue.

02:12:06.000 It'd be non-stop news.

02:12:07.000 I know that because I saw what happened in Russia, Russia, Russia, and that was one thing.

02:12:11.000 There are dozens of things and, you know, just absolute crickets.

02:12:14.000 And, you know, I think that in and of itself is, you know, sort of enough to make everyone question, like, what's the, you know, whatever level of disdain you have for sort of mainstream media, it is not enough.

02:12:26.000 It's extraordinary actually that both you and Hunter Biden are in the public eye at the same time as it offers us an additional barometer to see how the different stories are covered in different sections of the media.

02:12:38.000 I'm well aware of what happened immediately prior to the revelation of that story, the lengths to which deep state agencies went to ensure that it was handled correctly and not handled at all and the level of censorship that was enacted and that it's one of the events

02:12:50.000 that enables us to see that not only has legacy media long being controlled by

02:12:54.000 deep state forces, but there are obviously significant attempts and successes in controlling social media

02:13:01.000 platforms as well, Don.

02:13:03.000 One of the things I query sometimes having had a Donald Trump term is

02:13:08.000 that when Donald Trump campaigned very successfully on and I would say in a way

02:13:14.000 that reached a lot of people emotionally that you know this is one of the times

02:13:17.000 where I was watching I was thinking yeah this is what needs to happen you do need to

02:13:20.000 drain the swamp you do need to control the institutions that prevent there

02:13:23.000 being democracy I agree with Mike Benz's analysis that when people say democracy

02:13:28.000 now for example talking about Ukraine they don't mean the electoral process by

02:13:32.000 which a population... The suspended elections in Ukraine.

02:13:34.000 They banned religious institutions. Gonzalo Lira dies in that prison.

02:13:40.000 I think it's such a deep tragedy that Gonzalo Lira died in prison and that the Ukrainian people are dying in such considerable numbers when it appears that there could be a diplomatic solution simply by withdrawing their support.

02:13:53.000 But there's no money in peace, Russell.

02:13:55.000 That's the point.

02:13:56.000 If my father was in there, he gets people at the table.

02:13:58.000 The way to get people at the table is threaten that withdrawal of the money.

02:14:00.000 As long as the generals and the people who are actually not at risk at all on the front lines in Ukraine are making millions, they're pilfering the money.

02:14:07.000 We've seen that, right?

02:14:08.000 We donated money to a city, but it disappeared magically, right?

02:14:11.000 Every time the Ukrainians shoot down a Russian jeep, Right?

02:14:15.000 It's an incredible victory for Ukraine.

02:14:17.000 If they lose a quadrant of a country to Russia, it was a strategic withdrawal. 0.75

02:14:22.000 We see what's happening in real time, and what's really scary is it literally feels like a sanctioned genocide of, frankly, both Ukrainians and Russians.

02:14:31.000 We're just going to send a bunch of Eastern Europeans to die as cannon fodder, and as long as the guys in charge get rich and aren't really at risk, it's going to go in perpetuity. 0.99

02:14:42.000 It's been two years and we have not been told, like, what does victory look like? 0.71

02:14:46.000 Is it, like, just the entire genocide of the Russian population?

02:14:50.000 Is it Ukraine taking over Russia?

02:14:52.000 Is it just going back to neutral?

02:14:54.000 No one's even said that yet, and yet we'll fund it, you know, as though it's, you know, the greatest cause in the world, and it doesn't resonate with the people.

02:15:02.000 I go around, I speak in front of a lot of Republicans around the world, certainly the country, and I think I've done an in-person live survey in front of thousands of people at a time, probably about 60,000, 65,000 people in total over the last two years.

02:15:17.000 Live audience.

02:15:17.000 Hey, is it a top three issue?

02:15:19.000 Zero people have raised their hand.

02:15:21.000 Not a top three issue, Ukraine.

02:15:22.000 Is it top 10?

02:15:23.000 Three people.

02:15:24.000 One happened to be from Kiev.

02:15:25.000 I gave him a pass.

02:15:26.000 One was a guy that's tied to the sort of military-industrial complex, so of course he was getting rich off of it.

02:15:30.000 And another misunderstood the question.

02:15:32.000 He thought it was a double negative, and it was not important.

02:15:35.000 But, so, two people out of 65,000 people thought it was a top ten issue.

02:15:41.000 And yet, you know, Washington DC, it's a number one issue for both sides and they're going to fund it ad nauseam because they're all getting rich.

02:15:46.000 And do you think that that is the type of, is that, because if there is so much deep state power and global power and power being deployed By global agencies, you know, if this is a really a war that is governed by or at the behest of military industrial complex interests and NATO policy, then is it something that, you know, when Donald Trump said we could just leave NATO or we can stop funding NATO, do you think that that is the case?

02:16:14.000 And in recent interviews, Donald Trump said, like, you know, I'll release the 9-11 files.

02:16:19.000 I'll release the JFK files.

02:16:21.000 When in office, are those things able to happen?

02:16:24.000 Or are the various institutional interests too restrictive to prevent that kind of thing?

02:16:28.000 Well, I think they're going to go all out to prevent it, right?

02:16:30.000 You just have to, you know, the reality is you need someone with the resolve to do that.

02:16:33.000 I don't, you know, if we had a bench of people that I thought could actually do that, that would be wonderful.

02:16:37.000 It'd be much easier than getting back into this.

02:16:39.000 I think right now my father's the only guy that can actually stand up to that and I think Perhaps why the level of attack now is so much more aggressive, so much more ridiculous, frankly, but is that coming in as an outsider, it's sort of hard to figure that out, right?

02:16:53.000 The plum book, which is the book of 4,000 jobs essentially appointed by the president, like, you come in as an outsider, 4,000 jobs, like, you can find five maybe of people that you like, and then 4,000 that, well, I think, I guess he's, you know, I guess he's on our team.

02:17:06.000 Who knows?

02:17:07.000 You know, currency, it's not like business.

02:17:09.000 You sort of understand in business what everyone's motivation is.

02:17:11.000 Whether it's money or success or what, you get that.

02:17:14.000 In DC, you know, someone could be on board with everything that you're doing, but they'll snake you to get a favor from a reporter who he's working on some sort of other.

02:17:22.000 It's just, it's a lot more nebulous.

02:17:25.000 And so, you know, I think the fear of Trump is that now that he's got four years, now that he understands those workings, now that he understands who can be trusted and who can't, Uh, that notion scares them much more because I think he can be much more effective in a second term than he ever could have in a first, especially when you consider the sort of, you know, the first two years were occupied by Russia, Russia, Russia, maybe first three years.

02:17:47.000 And then the last year occupied by COVID.

02:17:49.000 I mean, they threw everything at him and yet our economy flourished.

02:17:53.000 You know, job numbers were going up, lowest income earners were getting real wage growth.

02:17:57.000 I mean, success after success after success, and that's before you get to peace in the Middle East, yada, yada, yada.

02:18:04.000 I mean, he had a pretty amazing track record when you consider that he was up against arguably insurmountable forces that, you know, that no other president, right or left, has ever faced to do, you know, the basic duties of the duly elected president of the United States.

02:18:19.000 Hey, Don, Robert De Niro's fear, as well as the fear of the legacy media, is that if Trump gets another term, he will never leave office.

02:18:27.000 He will declare himself dictator for life.

02:18:29.000 Is this just hyperbole?

02:18:30.000 It seems to be outside of the Constitution.

02:18:32.000 It seems to be absolutely unprecedented.

02:18:34.000 With all due respect, your father is an older gentleman.

02:18:37.000 It seems like... You know how I know that wouldn't happen?

02:18:40.000 Go on.

02:18:41.000 It didn't happen the first time.

02:18:42.000 It didn't happen the first time.

02:18:44.000 You know, this time, he's going to do it this way.

02:18:46.000 He didn't do it last time, but he's going to... It's so ridiculous. 0.99

02:18:50.000 And there's powers that would never happen anyway, right? 0.89

02:18:52.000 I think we've seen very clearly that the powers of the presidency can be limited, and are, and can frankly be manipulated.

02:19:00.000 They took what was the most powerful man in the world on paper at the time, and they threw him off of social media, and effectively cancelled him, and lied about him, and have tried to jail him, and find him You know, half a billion dollars for paying back banks on time, because he was actually a businessman, you know, prior to getting into that world.

02:19:16.000 I mean, it's so asinine, not because it's just asinine in general, but because we actually have evidence, similar to we have evidence of four years under this regime, and then four years under my father, and you can compare those things.

02:19:30.000 We know what's happened when his time was up in his first term.

02:19:35.000 I was on the plane with him.

02:19:36.000 We flew down to Mar-a-Lago.

02:19:38.000 We came down here.

02:19:39.000 I came back to my house.

02:19:40.000 That was it.

02:19:44.000 All of a sudden, it's going to be magically different.

02:19:46.000 How many times are we going to fall for this?

02:19:48.000 It's going to be magical.

02:19:49.000 Apparently MAGA people drove it.

02:19:50.000 I would say that was a supportive... Yeah, this area is very MAGA.

02:19:56.000 The jet ski seemed keen as well.

02:19:59.000 We may have to do it later on.

02:20:00.000 Alright, I'm up for that.

02:20:01.000 Don, thank you so much because it's been a very sort of a lucid appraisal about some of the bigger picture issues that pertain to the power that I fear most, which is a kind of global corporatist Power.

02:20:13.000 And my own slow thawing around this issue has been based on if institutional power, both judicial and media, detests this man so deeply while people appear to adore him, at least 50% of the population of your country, then something unusual is happening.

02:20:32.000 Because I don't trust institutional power.

02:20:35.000 I don't trust technocrats and bureaucrats and technological feudalists.

02:20:41.000 So, for me, it's like an opportunity to look at, well, where are the points of alliance and what does freedom and democracy look like in 2024?

02:20:47.000 By the way, take it further.

02:20:49.000 Look at Joe Biden.

02:20:50.000 I mean, he almost collapsed on a stage yet again today.

02:20:52.000 Did that happen today?

02:20:53.000 Yeah, at a D-Day anniversary celebration.

02:20:55.000 He, you know, almost keeled over.

02:20:57.000 Does anyone actually believe... So that's the guy you elect?

02:21:00.000 You think that's the guy that's actually in power?

02:21:02.000 Right.

02:21:02.000 You don't think there's institutions as the marionette of, you know, of this guy who, you know, can't find his way off a stage?

02:21:08.000 Not once, but daily.

02:21:10.000 If this was happening to Trump, you know, he's in the later stages of dementia and Alzheimer's combined.

02:21:16.000 He's clearly 25th amendment.

02:21:17.000 We must get him out.

02:21:18.000 Joe Biden is very competent, folks.

02:21:21.000 We've got to stop this.

02:21:22.000 I mean, it can't be.

02:21:24.000 No one actually believes that.

02:21:25.000 And yet, there is a power that is controlling it.

02:21:28.000 It is doing these things randomly.

02:21:29.000 He's signing off on whatever it is, the policies that have failed our country for the last four years.

02:21:34.000 That's pretty apparent, as evidenced by the economy, by wars, however you want to look at it.

02:21:39.000 So what's going on?

02:21:41.000 It's scary.

02:21:42.000 I mean, it's scary times.

02:21:43.000 Something extraordinary is happening that creates alliances like this.

02:21:47.000 And there are also ulterior powers in this household, and I'm talking about the great force that is Kim Guilfoyle, who will be joining us after this at Don Trump Jr. 0.65

02:21:57.000 Thank you so much for joining us.

02:21:58.000 I've really enjoyed our conversation.

02:21:59.000 We're going to be talking later on my show, so we get to keep going, we get to reverse the We're going to be on local smoking cigars, but after this message from the beautiful Charlize, run by Charlene Bollinger, entrepreneur, outspoken woman, great patriot and Christian, have a look at this advert for these fantastic products.

02:22:16.000 I'll be back with Kim Guilfoyle.

02:22:18.000 I don't know where you'll be.

02:22:19.000 I'm wondering if you're going to watch the conversation.

02:22:20.000 Am I going to see you whiz by in a jet ski?

02:22:23.000 I may just do the jet ski, just feeling a little American right now.

Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - June 07, 2024

LIVE WITH RUSSELL BRAND | TRIGGERED Ep.143

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