OB #8 - Tucker Carlson
It's the dreaded exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson, which is surprising in many ways, and completely unsurprising in others. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand
It's the dreaded exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson, which is surprising in many ways, and completely unsurprising in others. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand
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This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand. | |
I'm Al Wirth and each week I go through an episode of Brand Show with my co-host Lauren B. | |
I was Lauren B. The ghost with the most right here. | |
And I, in my corporeal form, was Lauren B. And I have no idea what we're about to dive into today. | |
No, and you also have a new webcam that is completely washing your face out. | |
I'm excited! | |
You are Victorian, you are a porcelain doll. | |
I look insane! | |
For at least this episode. | |
Until we figure out some kind of filter or something, I don't know. | |
I haven't done anything differently, I promise. | |
I am actually still alive, okay? | |
Full disclosure. | |
Good to know. | |
Those aren't real, just so everybody knows. | |
But, like, I even tried turning the lights down to off, and it was worse? | |
Somehow? | |
As a witness to this thing? | |
It was worse. | |
It was definitively worse. | |
What the fuck? | |
So... Hold the line transparent for a second there. | |
I just don't have a nose. | |
Just... | |
This is the podcast I do with Voldemort. | |
Okay. | |
I really do! | |
Oh, I look like Voldemort today! | |
Cool! | |
Good for me! | |
They're worse things. | |
They're definitely worse things. | |
Check that one off the list! | |
We've accomplished it! | |
If you're listening, you gotta look at least, I mean... Yeah, I would tune in to the video just to see this sheet. | |
I thought I was doing technology right, guys! | |
I really... You are! | |
It's not your fault, it's the camera's fault that you look like a Scooby-Doo villain. | |
You know, it's not on you. | |
But it's just what we have to deal with for the moment. | |
I'm like, real, like, Renaissance or Angelica Houston vibe. | |
Like, which is, you know... | |
I just didn't know that my Morticia Addams fantasies, when I was a young child watching those movies and loving every second of it, I didn't see this being the result. | |
I mean we all have Morticia Addams fantasies. | |
Well, like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. | |
But listen, don't get your hopes up. | |
I'm not trying to write checks I can't cash here. | |
Oh, I'm not directing that at you either. | |
No, no, no, no, no. | |
I'm saying, though, if listeners have never looked and then they expect that, that's not fair. | |
I don't need to waste your time. | |
I'm not trying to sell you built goods over here. | |
I feel like that is an unreasonable standard of beauty for anyone to try and attain. | |
Of course! | |
Oh my god! | |
So there we go. | |
I do wish I had some roses in the house right now so I could make my own meme of cutting the tops off of roses and looking wistfully in the distance with football season? | |
Because that is one of my favorite memes of all time. | |
I just wish I had a Gomez Adams to, like, dote on me at all times. | |
Oh, yeah. | |
Oh, we all do. | |
Of course. | |
Yeah. | |
Acquitted! | |
Yes. | |
Oh, my God. | |
So good. | |
The best. | |
Mike hadn't really seen him whenever we were younger. | |
I don't know. | |
His family, like, paid more attention to him, I think, so we watched less movies. | |
So we re-watched it and it was like, oh they're actually really good! | |
And I was like, um, duh, where have you been? | |
So we have decided that it's going to be a Halloween tradition from here on out as the M's family movies. | |
In addition to another full month of other requirements on our time. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
I mean, Halloween is, you know, you've got to commit. | |
That's my take on it. | |
In any case, Lauren, what is your bright spot this week? | |
Today! | |
So, actually I think recently someone started a subreddit for us. | |
Yeah! | |
It's onbrand underscore pod and that's really exciting! | |
Especially because in conversations- I'm nodding, I'm nodding frantically for anyone who's listening. | |
You need a bell! | |
We need to pull a chin bell! | |
I need the little cat bell. | |
I can hang one off my beard. | |
So, yeah, so we have a subreddit, and there's been discussion of like, there's been discussion of like, what's the etiquette, what do we do, do we make our own, and like, Facebook groups are weird, what do we, you know, there's been a lot of confusion on our end, you know, with all the extra time and energy we have. | |
Bunches. | |
Figuring out where to put it Geez | |
but yeah, so the fact that someone did that and That's pretty incredible to me and I appreciate it so much | |
I was very shocked to be asked whether that's something we we would be interested in you know coming | |
Sure! | |
into existence. Yes, sure. Yeah. Right. That sounds lovely. | |
Like, can I mail you a cartwheel? | |
That's how happy I am to hear that. It's just really cool. | |
Like we didn't have to continue to debate what the etiquette is. You know, it's, this is a | |
project that came out of the Knowledge Fight subreddit, which is a super cool place. | |
I really like talking to everybody there! | |
It's so fun! | |
So, but also, I'm not trying to, like, piss off any mods or, like, break etiquette. | |
No, no. | |
Dick-stepping. | |
I'm not really, you know, trying to be nice about it. | |
Poaching or anything like that. | |
And also it's nice to have a space to speak to our own audience and for listeners of this podcast specifically to be able to talk about shit because every week there's a lot of shit to talk about, right? | |
I know! | |
Yeah. | |
So that's cool. | |
That's cool. | |
And, you know, I think, you know, part of the reason it came to the fore is that our podcast was leaking. | |
People didn't know where else to put the stuff. | |
Right. | |
So it was just leaking into other corners of Reddit. | |
So it's nice to have a place to put it. | |
Yeah. | |
And I have, yeah, actually, yeah, several corners of Reddit now that you mention it. | |
That's absolutely true. | |
But yeah. | |
I've been a little more on top of all the social stuff and kind of getting used to it. | |
So, you know, wherever platform you prefer, you can find us virtually. | |
But having that little enclave is like really cool and also just it's a thing we don't have to decide to do or not, which is just wonderful. | |
Yeah, we don't really have to have any involvement with that at all, to be fair. | |
I mean, we're gonna, but like... Yeah, probably, probably. | |
But it's nice that you can all just kind of do your own thing, too. | |
That's cool. | |
That's really great. | |
So go over there and check it out. | |
Yeah. | |
And what is your bright spot? | |
My bright spot. | |
Other than my face that's blinding you. | |
I was going to say, it's like looking into the sun. | |
It's a pretty bright spot. | |
So as you know, I was on vacation. | |
I was on holiday, as we call it in this country, because we're very antiquated. | |
And I was down in Bournemouth, for anyone who knows the UK vaguely, that's somewhere in the south. | |
And my bright spot in two words is Billy Joel. | |
So on... | |
The rules! | |
Well, on the Friday, I took a trip into London to go to BST Hyde Park, | |
which is like, kind of they do like day festivals with a single headliner. | |
And went to see Billy Joel. | |
Oh yeah, that's right! I didn't know that was also... | |
Also, what happened? | |
Billy Joel was playing London with Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates as main support, which was pretty cool. | |
But yeah, Billy Joel, fucking phenomenal. | |
That rules so hard. | |
Do you know, he's one of those people that, like, I was going through his back catalogue a number of years ago, and with every song I came across, I was like, wait, this is you as well? | |
For fuck's sake. | |
Every single song that this man's ever written is a hit, and I'm just like, how? | |
How did you do this? | |
Anyone that's had like a Billy Joel awakening. | |
It's like, oh, it's vast. | |
And it's got deep cuts that are as vast. | |
Incredible. | |
Incredible. | |
The deep cuts are some of my favorites because they get a little proggy in places. | |
They come out of left fields, you know, get a little weird and jazzy and heavy. | |
And I'm like, oh, man. | |
No, in a live setting, you know, he's 73 and absolutely fucking killed it. | |
I was so impressed and I've seen a lot of the world's best musicians. | |
I've been very privileged to be in that position. | |
He is still at the top of his fucking game, as are the musicians in his band. | |
I was astonished from start to finish. | |
It was mind boggling to me. | |
It was so good. | |
And he did a Beatles cover as well. | |
um did Hard Day's Night um and did uh yeah and did like a little uh there was a little like Led Zeppelin um kind of uh motif thrown in there as well his uh his guitarist um did a rendition of Nessun Dorma um And that was just before going into scenes from an Italian restaurant. | |
I was really confused as to why they were doing it and then they went into the song and it was like, okay, I gotcha, I gotcha. | |
and oh my god just start to finish so cool and my favorite thing about it was that Billy Joel himself in a live setting is so fucking chilled he's so casual it's like you're in his front room and and he's just there having a chat with you between songs and shit you know it's like oh you know What key is this in? | |
I have no idea. | |
Just having a conversation with the guy. | |
When you've got tens of thousands of people, it is impressive to be able to make something feel intimate. | |
That's what I would want. | |
And that's what I would expect. | |
Definitely not what I expected. | |
Definitely not what I expected. | |
I guess I've heard it from other friends that have seen Billy Joel before. | |
Yeah, I guess. | |
Yeah. | |
No, I just, I never expect that from kind of any sort of festival performance, any kind of, especially outdoor performance as well. | |
Yeah, fair. | |
That's a tough thing to do. | |
I saw Phil Collins in the same setting in 2017, you know, and That was a completely different experience. | |
Still great, by the way. | |
He's not the piano man. | |
He's not the piano man. | |
Both equally. | |
That's his deal. | |
That's his whole thing. | |
Which is very fucking cool! | |
To have chops in that way is very specific. | |
He's awesome. | |
And then, you know, he got on the guitar a couple of times as well. | |
And I'm just like, oh, fuck you, Billy. | |
Well, I'm jealous and mad for just a little bit. | |
Just a little. | |
You should be. | |
You should be. | |
I'm a little angry. | |
But it's okay. | |
That was a bucket list one for me because, you know, after Billy, Elton John's just retiring at the moment. | |
He's played his final UK gig, you know. | |
Billy, he's 73, he's going to be gone at some point. | |
Paul Simon's no longer in the works anymore. | |
All of these incredible songwriters are stopping for one reason or another. | |
And they deserve it! | |
It's the right thing to do! | |
They're all fucking ancient. | |
There are good reasons for them to stop. | |
But there's a part of me that's like, okay, and now what? | |
Who are we going to be left with? | |
Fucking Ed Sheeran? | |
Is that the situation that we're going to be in? | |
Because, you know, he's successful, but it's not the same, is it? | |
It's not the same. | |
Anyway, we have a show to do. | |
I'm sure we'll reconvene this discussion in Off-Brand afterwards. | |
You're on vacation! | |
This is tough! | |
Exactly. | |
For us, we've had a week off and everything feels very alien and like we haven't seen each other in a month. | |
But yes, before we get into things, we should thank some of our new patrons. | |
So Xero Hour or Zero Hour with an X. I've never been clear on the pronunciation of that. | |
Either way, you are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you, Zero Hour. | |
Thank you, thank you. | |
Justin and Diane Stevens, you are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you very much. | |
Thank you both. | |
Slightly contentious one, but Bento and Wampus are the world's best cats. | |
You are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you. | |
I believe it for you. | |
Yeah, some people, some people may fight you on that. | |
I won't out of courtesy, but thank you very much. | |
Zero Fox, you are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you. | |
Thank you. | |
Emily Herder, you are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you, Emily. | |
Thank you, Emily. | |
Here's one we recognize. | |
Robb a Baron! | |
You are now an Awakening wonder! | |
You are indeed an Awakening wonder. | |
Cheers Robb! | |
Thank you so much! | |
Thank you. | |
David A. Arthur, you are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you, thank you. | |
Thank you! | |
And Melissa, aka Princess Lean, my liege, my queen, my bean, you are now an awakening wonder. | |
You are indeed an awakening wonder. | |
Thank you very much. | |
That's adorable. | |
Well, so that last one was Natalie of Natalie's Hot Tea, the Elixir of Life, getting back at their sister, which I wholeheartedly support. | |
And it turns out, by the way, that that name was in fact not a sex thing and was actually about Natalie engaging in an epic quest for hot tea in the early hours of the morning at a festival, much to the chagrin of Melissa. | |
Okay. | |
I knew it wasn't a sex thing, but I didn't know it was actually about the beverage. | |
That's incredible. | |
I have to say, at festivals in the UK, you can't walk more than three feet without finding a cup of tea. | |
But thankfully, Natalie did in fact find their tea and all was well. | |
So, there we go. | |
That's perfect. | |
I love it. | |
Yes! | |
And finally, we have someone who's up to the donation to an elevated tier, Juan Jalapena! | |
Thank you so much for your amazing support. | |
We are still yet to name this tier, though I'm close to finishing off the drop for it, actually. | |
But needless to say, when it's in place, we will thank you properly. | |
And you, Benjamin, don't think we've forgotten about you either. | |
Well, Juan Jalapena is a friend of ours and a wonderful artist. | |
Right, yes, I was about to say. | |
No, no, no, it's cool. | |
Where can they find the art? | |
So Juan Juan Jalapeno is a friend of ours from Texas that also does printmaking stuff. | |
He's super talented. | |
Just lovely and wonderful. | |
And you can find him on Instagram for sure. | |
I don't know other socials that he's on, but that's how we keep in touch. | |
So I just I'm so glad you're here. | |
Yes, me too. | |
My wonderful friend. | |
I'm so glad. | |
And I'm so glad that my Texas homies are ripping. | |
It makes me really happy. | |
I love it. | |
It is definitely awesome. | |
And that's because it's the money. | |
It's because I like you. | |
Yeah, I was going to say. | |
We're coming to terms. | |
We're still coming to terms with this whole thing. | |
Yeah, it's true. | |
The money is very much appreciated, but as is your general support and listenership. | |
That is also incredible. | |
And if anyone wants to support us and what we do, become an Awakening Wonder or donate on a higher tier like Juan Jalapeno, head to patreon.com slash onbrand and you will have our eternal gratitude. | |
Absolutely! | |
And as starving artistes, it means a lot. | |
And also please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube or if you listen in the Spotify app, the video should come up there too. | |
Now, let's get into the... And you can see how this webcam has done me so dirty today. | |
Yeah, yeah, you can see... Middle-aged Lydia Dietz, coming at ya! | |
I mean, you can almost see through. | |
Anyway... Translucent Lauren. | |
Right, so... Let's get into the first clip of today's episode. | |
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders. | |
Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand. | |
At the moment, we're on YouTube, but that will only be for the first 15 minutes before we are exclusively on the home of Free Speech Rumble. | |
And of course, our free speech is the free speech to unify in the spirit of love, not free speech to speak hatefully of one another. | |
Of course, the reason we're so excited today is because we are being joined for a world exclusive Now, when I saw this interview was going to happen, I knew we'd need to cover it pretty immediately. | |
And I told you it would be one of the worst we'd have to cover in terms of being generally infuriated by the guests. | |
You sure did. | |
I want your guesses. | |
Assuming you don't know already, who do you think Brandt has as his guest? | |
You know. | |
Okay. | |
I, the desire to cram before the test is real. | |
And like, I just, I can't. | |
And also Mike will look stuff up and I'll be like, you can't tell me! | |
Cause he gets to look up whatever he wants. | |
Oh man. | |
I'm worried. | |
You should be. | |
Easter bunny. | |
I don't want to guess. | |
World exclusive with the Easter Bunny. | |
I mean, do you know what? | |
I'd watch it. | |
I'd be curious. | |
Me too. | |
Okay. | |
Do you want me to? | |
Yeah, just do it. | |
Just do it. | |
Rip off the band-aid and make you miserable? | |
Yep. | |
Okay. | |
Let's do it. | |
We have Tucker Carlson with us in studio. | |
His first interview since leaving Fox News. | |
Thanks for joining us, Tucker Carlson. | |
As your friend, and as someone who watches a lot of your videos, I'm amazed that I'm here. | |
This is prettier even. | |
I'm not gonna give away critical details and jeopardize your safety, but this is, if people could see where you're broadcasting from, I think it's beautiful. | |
And that's not an overstatement, I think it's beautiful. | |
Thank you so much because I think we have a beautiful intention here. | |
We're recognising that independent media and independent politics are beginning to coalesce. | |
It's becoming increasingly unlikely that you can report truthfully, honestly and in good faith, putting forward anti-establishment narratives without being attacked. | |
Fucking come on! | |
So that's right, we have Tucker fucking Carlson, King Beige himself. | |
And as you can see he is elated to be on Stay Free with Russell Brand. | |
Actually in studio as well, he's travelled all the way to the UK for this. | |
Not unsurprising. | |
You can guess from the end there that Brandon Tucker spent a good little while in this interview playing the victim. | |
And in any case, this interview is the first that Tucker has done since his firing from Fox, and consequently it's also gone viral, at least for Bran's content. | |
So I thought we'd best tackle it, you know, early on. | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah. | |
I know. | |
I hate it. | |
I hate it. | |
Well, I will say what is surprising is I've had to suffer through a lot of Tucker's iterations. | |
And it looked like he was actually happy. | |
Like, he had a normal, human, happy response? | |
I have never seen that. | |
Ever. | |
Honestly, this whole interview, from that perspective, is fucking weird. | |
There is genuine joy from him, and I find it deeply unsettling to watch. | |
That's so jarring, because it's the contrast, right? | |
It's bizarre, yeah. | |
Because he'll laugh and smile Those, I mean, those terms are loose! | |
But like, in his content, they're like, huh, that's funny, or, oh, shouldn't we all enjoy whatever? | |
But he's obviously just so upset and miserable. | |
Yeah. | |
So you just kind of assume that's part of who he is, but seeing that he can actually experience happiness like a human person just shows you how much of a piece of shit he is in the way that he acts for his own audience. | |
It's amazing how much of a piece of shit he is for money. | |
No joy! | |
Yeah! | |
That's how much you hate the people you're talking to is that you can't give them an ounce of- I will say Russell is charming and wants to at least Entertain a little bit. | |
Be a little bit of a court jester for his followers in a way that Tucker is not at all. | |
I think Russell is also at least mostly more genuine with his emotions as well. | |
He doesn't tend to hold those back. | |
Unless he's talking to Richard Dawkins. | |
Then he has to just pull the rage back in. | |
But anyway, this first clip we get straight into the firing from Fox. | |
I recall someone in our first episode arguing that Tucker wasn't fired, per se, and no one knows what happened, blah blah blah. | |
Well, here's how he puts it. | |
First of all, I want to start off by asking you, Tucker, how has it been in the six months or so since you left Fox? | |
How have you been personally and how does it compare to the time when you left MSNBC in terms of its emotional impact on you? | |
Well, I've been fired. | |
You know, it's not the first time I've been fired. | |
And I think in our business, when you work for a big company in media and, you know, you say what you think, there's an expectation that you could get fired. | |
So I've always had that. | |
And I've always tried to take the long view, not just on media, but on life. | |
All graves go unvisited in the end, I always think that. | |
So I was surprised. | |
I didn't expect to get fired that morning at all, in April. | |
So I was shocked, but I wasn't really shocked. | |
And I wasn't mad. | |
It's not my company and when you work for someone else that person reserves the right and in fact has inherently the right to decide whether you work there or not. | |
And I don't know why I was fired. | |
I really don't. | |
I'm not angry about it. | |
You can believe me or not, but I think people are not. | |
He seems a little angry about it. | |
And, you know, I wish Fox well. | |
There was, you know, ugly leaking, you know, I'm a racist or whatever they leaked. | |
Or someone there leaked to the New York Times, but I... | |
That's not true. | |
And I think the people who wrote something, you know, that's not true. | |
I actually don't think they did it. | |
And I'm not mad about it. | |
And I've been happy. | |
He's been happy. | |
There we go. | |
That's probably the change that you're picking up on, to be honest. | |
He's so much more human. | |
It's really weird. | |
There was a clip that I cut, that I didn't cut, should I say, immediately after this, where he talks about how he's been spending most of his time with lots of late breakfasts and going fishing, et cetera, and just, you know, having a nice, relaxing time. | |
And I'm like, oh, that's weird. | |
I don't like any of this. | |
Well, or you could just do that. | |
You could just go away forever. | |
Well, again, I don't think I left this bit in, but he said that he couldn't keep himself away from the work, you know, because that's not what life is. | |
He does also later on say, and I think I did keep that bit in, I'm not sure, that he wants to make money and that he hasn't been making money this entire time. | |
Okay, well, at least that's More direct. | |
But in any case he was definitively was fired by his own admission. | |
So there's that. | |
Even if he's protesting he does seem at least a little bit mad about it. | |
Also be mad! | |
That's fine! | |
Also be mad! That's fine! Like, be mad if you want to! | |
Also fine. I think, well yeah, yeah. I think he wants to be seen as taking the high road | |
It's like, buddy, you're Tucker Carlson. | |
The high road doesn't exist for you. | |
You don't need to pretend. | |
It's fine. | |
Oh, yeah, that's true. | |
For anyone who missed it, one of the text messages that came out was Tucker saying it's not how white men fight in response to watching a video of three Jan Six insurrectionists attacking an Antifa supporter. | |
I'm going to quote him here directly actually. | |
From the text, a group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. | |
It was three against one at least. | |
Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously. | |
It's not how white men fight. | |
Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder. | |
Kill him. | |
I really wanted them to hurt the kid. | |
I could taste it. | |
It's how white men fight in your own head in that moment, Tucker. | |
You're a white guy and you identified with the white guys. | |
You disprove your own thought. | |
Mid-thought! | |
Maybe it's the being called out that he takes issue with. | |
But yeah, this guy's not a racist, apparently. | |
It's so outrageous. | |
It's so outrageous. | |
It's not how white men fight. | |
There we go. | |
I mean, here's the thing, you can also, like, I'm tempted to even argue, I can't, but like, Yeah, they do! | |
Yeah, they do! | |
No, they absolutely do! | |
They fucking super do! | |
Yes! | |
You look at history and white men are the sneakiest of fucks in the whole of history! | |
They love cheating! | |
They love to cheat! | |
Yes, yes, a hundred percent. | |
A hundred percent. | |
Anyway, Russell still has some left-wing friends, apparently, so he wants to address the racism question properly. | |
When I went on your show in America, mate, which I enormously enjoyed, and the personal connection with you that we have since cultivated is the thing that I've perhaps most enjoyed, I spoke to some of my friends that are overtly liberal, even though many of them are beginning to recognise that the categories of left and right are shifting. | |
What they said is that Tucker Carlson, when he talks about demographic shifts in the United States of America, how the balance between different ethnicities is shifting over time, that that is codified racism. | |
And some of them, like some of my mates that are LA Democrats, like, you know, me, I don't believe in any political party anymore in this country. | |
Tell me about it. | |
Yeah, no, I agree. | |
But I do still feel that some of the principles that are more typically associated with the left, like recognising that all voices have a value in the conversation and that essentially that racism is bad. | |
So how do you feel about that and what are you talking about when you say there's a demographic shift? | |
I would say a couple of things. | |
First I always try I'm over 50 so like why wouldn't I just say exactly what I think at all times and I do and so if I had Well, whatever my racial views are I would just say them and I'm just saying them now I told you this would be a bad one for being generally infuriated. | |
(laughing) | |
So. | |
(laughing) | |
I hope I will not lose. | |
Too late. | |
I hope I don't go post-verbal. | |
Too late. | |
I know. | |
We're gonna, we're gonna, right. | |
So I've tried to avoid too many instances of Tucker just flat out denying reality | |
because he does it a lot in this interview. | |
That's his whole thing. | |
It's the whole thing is, you know. | |
You're doing this. | |
No I'm not. | |
Fucking shut up. | |
It's difficult to watch and it's just bullshit. | |
But I've kept this one in. | |
So here he's completely denying the reality that people don't just say things that would get them fired, deplatformed or possibly put in prison. | |
Not even Donald Trump is so stupid as to say the things he actually thinks about black people out loud. | |
As for Tucker's talk about shifting demographics, we did cover that a little bit in the second part of our first episode, but it boils down to, you know, great replacement theory that white people aren't breeding enough and then are being replaced by brown people who are breeding more and moving to your country in droves. | |
It's a whole mess of racist bullshit regularly spouted by the human dog whistle that is Tucker Carlson. | |
Wow. | |
Yeah, as soon as- and also, Russell, signing on to and admitting he's having conversations with his famous, rich, liberal friends? | |
Also about- L.A. | |
liberals. | |
Yeah! | |
About the validity of Great Replacement quote-unquote theory. | |
That makes me so livid. | |
I can't... I just... What do you do? | |
But also, like, who are they? | |
I want to know. | |
Tell me. | |
Tell me who you're talking to. | |
Russell? | |
Let me know. | |
I'd be curious to know who is among his friends. | |
Yeah, who's signing on to your bullshit? | |
That is still left-wing. | |
That's outrageous! | |
That's outrageous! | |
Yeah, and it's worth noting as well that whatever response Tucker gives at any point during this interview, Brand takes it at face value and that's it. | |
That's the end of it. | |
I ask a question, you give an answer. | |
Done. | |
I accept all the things you say. | |
And that's just how this is going to go. | |
Great. | |
So yeah, despite the obvious, Tucker is just going to outright lie about the things he's been saying for years. | |
So my views about race begin with my religious faith, which is not very sophisticated, but is sincere. | |
And that begins with the belief, the knowledge, the certainty that God created people. | |
That they're not objects, they're not machines, they're not widgets in a bin waiting to be assembled by some company. | |
They are distinct individuals with distinct souls, and they have equal value in the eyes of God. | |
Doesn't mean they have equal ability. | |
Doesn't mean they all look the same, but it means they have equal inherent value. | |
And my politics flow from that belief. | |
Yes. | |
And so the idea that you would reduce people to their race and say, you know, we're going to treat this person better or worse because of his skin color is repugnant to me. | |
And it's something that I've argued against every day that I was at Fox News, I think all of my life. | |
You can't punish or reward people based on their immutable characteristics. | |
Yes. | |
Because they didn't choose those characteristics. | |
So it's inherently unfair. | |
It's inherently immoral. | |
I'm totally opposed to it. | |
And so if that's a racist position, I guess... Fuck off. | |
You know, I'll just stand and take the punishment. | |
I don't think that is, I think that's an argument against racism. | |
I think it's wrong to reduce people to qualities they were born with and they can't control. | |
Period. | |
Yes. | |
Great pushback there, Ross. | |
This is step-dad level gaslighting. | |
Like, this is maximum step-dad gaslighting. | |
Jesus Christ. | |
Fucking real- I cannot! | |
I can't with this guy! | |
No. | |
No. | |
So, real incisive interview skills coming from Russell there. | |
Just, every few minutes, just go, yes. | |
Yes. | |
Yes. | |
No. | |
No. | |
Go there. | |
Yeah, wow. | |
Wow! | |
So, Tucker supposedly believes that everyone, every human being, has inherently equal value. | |
Interesting, then, that he'd describe trans youth as grotesque and a nationwide epidemic, or that he'd describe child-friendly drag events as attempts to indoctrinate and sexualize children. | |
He also labelled trans people in general as the natural enemy of Christianity, claiming the trans movement is targeting Christians. | |
Oh, And take a look at literally any of his BLM coverage from 2020 onwards and you'll see him engaging in classic coded racism that would make the 90s blush and telling his white audience that BLM are literally coming to get them. | |
Oh man. | |
Oh boy. | |
You told me. | |
You warned me. | |
I was gonna be super mad. | |
And you're right! | |
So, the Great Replacement thing. | |
In a younger time, so I tattooed for a long time, that was my day job. | |
And so you can imagine, listener, you can imagine being in a very, like, heavily male space. | |
And as the altruistic, young, silly thing I've been, that also can't keep their mouth shut to save their life. | |
There was a day where- - No. | |
(laughs) | |
Crazy, right? | |
Crazy. | |
I had this realization, it was like years, I mean, recently I've had this realization, | |
I had this moment in my head, I went back to this time where a bunch of us at work, | |
it was me and coworkers and a client, and we were talking about, I don't even know how... | |
Skin color race came up. | |
It's a legitimate thing you do have to discuss when you're tattooing because people look different. | |
The pictures look different on different people. | |
Yeah, that matters. | |
So we do discuss it and I don't remember what the context was, but boy, I remember the result. | |
I said something like And again, this is in my naivete, my, you know, altruistic, hoping the best that's impossible naivete of being younger and actually identifying skin color as the cause of racism, you know, or not the cause, but like, | |
The indicator that people would look for. | |
And once that's gone, then you have less to be a racist or a bigot about. | |
Again, young and naive. | |
And I was like, oh yeah, I can't wait till we're all just beige and we're all just talking about different skin tones. | |
And obviously, I don't think that that's a good thing, but eventually, Um, if people live together and work together and enjoy each other's company and produce progeny enough, then, you know, it's like, just we'll all be- it's that, like, | |
We're all going to wear a silver suit in the future moment. | |
Yeah. | |
You know, like that's what future, like we're all just going to be beige and we'll all get along. | |
And I was making a funny, like a, again, like a, uh, a hopeful, funny. | |
And one of my coworkers, I didn't get along great with white male coworkers shot daggers at me. | |
With their eyeballs. | |
Oh, damn. | |
And I was like, oh, whatever. | |
I thought it was because I don't. | |
I was like, oh, you're just cranky. | |
And then now that all this replacement theory is like actually bubbling up and I'm understanding where it's come from and the like, oh. | |
White supremacists don't want us to be even a little beige. | |
No, no, no. | |
They don't like that. | |
So that that guy did want to hit me. | |
Didn't just look like he wanted to hit me. | |
He wanted to hit me for saying that because that's the vibe I got. | |
Which, again, not super rare, because I'm not going to keep my mouth shut, but that was one of those moments where I was like, I wonder where he was on January 6th. | |
I'm curious. | |
You've got to wonder how things have developed for these people in the intervening time that you haven't seen them. | |
That Great Replacement idea has changed my view a lot. | |
Um, going, remembering things that I said that I thought were, like, perfectly nice. | |
And then, I'm like, oh, you're making a weird face. | |
Okay, well, I guess we'll be out of coffee. | |
When, really, those guys were, like, super mad. | |
And, um... Yeah. | |
Yeah. | |
And at that time, couldn't say it out loud. | |
Whereas, I bet you they fucking would now. | |
Yeah! | |
Well, they did say stuff out loud, too! | |
It's like... Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
That's the thing, it's the more obscure stuff. | |
Yeah. | |
I'm like, oh! | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
I was a whole different kind of dummy! | |
I didn't even know about this thing! | |
Ah, God to be. | |
Those heady days, you know? | |
Yeah! | |
Ignorance is bliss, I guess, is the phrase. | |
And it really is. | |
The world is a nicer place the less you know about it. | |
Right. | |
But the great replacement there, it reminds me every time I'm like, oh, I was like, replacement would be awesome, cool, let's do it! | |
Replace me, that sounds great! | |
Tie me up! | |
Tie me up! | |
And that's because that's kind of been my my take sort of the whole I'm like, well, yeah, I guess whoever like gets along and enjoys each other's company is allowed to make babies if they want. | |
Cool. | |
Great. | |
That's kind of been my idea the whole time. | |
I had no idea how controversial that truly was. | |
Yeah, when you consider all of the possible configurations of that as well, there are a lot of people that strongly disagree. | |
And all of them can hurl themselves into the sea as far as I'm concerned. | |
Speaking of demographic shifts anyway, let's get back to a bit of immigration stuff. | |
My views on immigration are super simple and I think mainstream and sensible. | |
The fact of who lives in a country more than any other fact determines what the country is like. | |
And so if you change it radically over a very short period of time, you're going to have a lot of social upheaval, a lot of churn. | |
It's going to rattle people. | |
People can't metabolize change. | |
Very well. | |
At all. | |
The Industrial Revolution led to Stalinism, and then the Third Reich. | |
Like, what? | |
These are basic facts. | |
It's not an attack on anyone's color. | |
At all. | |
And I'm, you know, whatever. | |
So, but I would say, so... | |
Weird claim there, but the Industrial Revolution didn't lead to Stalinism and then the Third Reich. | |
That's just, that's an absurd thing to say. | |
The Industrial Revolution of the Soviet Union specifically was overseen by Stalin due to the USSR lagging behind other more developed capitalist states. | |
The Industrial Revolution within the UK, the US, and continental Europe took place roughly from 1760 to 1840. | |
The Soviet Unions, however, began in 1929 and finished in 1941. | |
Very speedy. | |
There was an extreme push to produce enormous economic and military power in as short a time frame as possible, particularly with the probability of World War II looming. | |
The methods through which the USSR was industrialized were brutal and propaganda-laden. | |
But it's fair to say that had Stalin not done it, whoever else was in charge would have. | |
And as we discussed in our Dawkins episode, the role of the Church actually had a much greater effect on the rise and continued power of Stalin. | |
So, meh. | |
That's just a weird and stupid thing to say. | |
I don't get it. | |
That is so random. | |
That's like... | |
The Industrial Revolution is what made the Third Reich happen. | |
It's so tangential to be completely meaningless. | |
But, like, he also stopped himself, like, no, I've got to stop. | |
Like, that's a thing that you think and feel about. | |
He thinks that. | |
About your, like, downtime. | |
You know, he believes that. | |
I would be really curious to know where he got that. | |
What made him think that that is the case? | |
I'd be really interested to know his diet of information. | |
I bet it's not good. | |
Weird! | |
Really weird. | |
In the next clip, Tucker gets into US immigration specifically. | |
Those are my views. | |
I support a lot of, well, I don't know how I feel about immigration as a topic. | |
There are a lot of immigrants I love, including my best friend, for whatever it's worth. | |
So I'm not, of course I'm not against immigrants, like that's insane. | |
But the way that the United States is doing immigration is designed to wreck the country, and to make it unstable, and to destroy any social cohesion whatsoever, or social trust, and make people hate each other, and add to racial, yes racial division, which I hate, because it's not solvable. | |
Racial division is not solvable, apparently. | |
He doesn't elaborate on that assertion, but I'd really love to know more. | |
In order to believe that as true, you'd have to have some incredibly rigid views of the homogeneity of each individual race and their inherent incompatibility with one another. | |
So I would love for him to finish that thought but it doesn't happen unfortunately. | |
Yeah, he hates racial division, this guy. | |
I mean, my young, altruistic, ignorant beige plan sounds great compared to anything he's got. | |
Oh no, I love the beige plan. | |
I love the beige plan. | |
I'm all on board. | |
I'm all on board with the beige plan. | |
If that would work, boy howdy, that'd be great. | |
I, okay, alright, yep. | |
Yep. | |
So next, we have a weird take on class warfare versus racism. | |
In contrast to, say, class division. | |
If we're arguing about class, well at least class theoretically can change. | |
I can ascend or descend classes, but race doesn't change. | |
Because we didn't, we're not responsible for it. | |
We're created that way. | |
So you don't want racial conflict. | |
That's the one thing you don't want. | |
And I feel that in the United States, our leaders not only want racial conflict, but are stoking it. | |
But as a practical matter, just in the context of US politics, and perhaps it's similar in the UK, the term racist or white supremacist or white nationalist, these are terms designed to stop people from talking. | |
I remember the first time I was called a white supremacist. | |
And for whatever it's worth, I don't want to sound offensive, but I grew up in Southern California in the 70s, living with a father who was, in modern terms, very racially progressive. | |
He was always saying, God created people. | |
Racism didn't even make sense to me. | |
That was not a factor in my life at all. | |
And we lived right next to Mexico. | |
Firstly, I also cannot control my class that well, just so you know, Tucker. | |
Most of us don't really have much of a fucking choice in that. | |
Downwards mobility is much more probable. | |
Unless you're Tucker. | |
Unless you're Tucker. | |
With that awesome money. | |
No, he's got generational wealth. | |
True, true. | |
Unless we have an Alex Jones situation happen and he gets sued for billions, which, you know, could happen. | |
So, you know, fingers crossed, everyone. | |
Yeah. | |
It's worth exactly nothing. | |
Yeah, no, it's worth exactly nothing that your father was supposedly not racist, that your best friend is an immigrant or that you lived right next to Mexico. | |
You don't get points for any of that. | |
We're examining you, Tucker, your ideas and beliefs, not where you happen to live. | |
Um, yeah. | |
The leaders- the- saying leaders are stoking racism and not just talking to a mirror are- it's just outrageous. | |
Like, it's inane. | |
I don't know what- I- Mm-hmm. | |
So here feels like an appropriate time to play this selection of clips from Tucker Carlson in the period from 2006 to 2009. | |
It's a compilation from NowThis News, and is a little bit of a supercut of Tucker spouting his actual views. | |
Typical whining from a black politician about how you don't like me because I'm black. | |
Using racism as a defense. | |
Right? | |
You know, I catch you doing something that, well, oh, you're racist. | |
The Congressional Black Caucus exists to blame the white man for everything. | |
And I'm happy to say that in public because it's true. | |
Everybody knows it's true. | |
You know, white men have, you know, they've contributed some, I would say. | |
Like creating civilization and stuff. | |
I don't know, whatever. | |
I don't know, whatever. | |
[ Laughs ] | |
♪♪ I still can't get over, you know, Obama saying, | |
"They're not gonna -- you know, they're gonna attack me I mean, that's just, that's just ridiculous. | |
I mean, that is so low to say something like that. | |
Well, see, Tucker, here's the deal. | |
What everybody knows is that Barack Obama would still be in the state senate in Illinois if he were white. | |
Hey, Tucker, Obama would kick your ass playing basketball. | |
Yeah, of course he would. | |
He's a basketball con. | |
He's black, say it. | |
He's our real brother. | |
I don't know how black he is, but I'm sure he's a good basketball player. | |
He says he is, anyway. | |
I've been watching Obama's wife. | |
Is it Michelle? | |
Michelle, yeah. | |
It seems like they might have her on. | |
They might be whitening her a little bit. | |
What do you think? | |
I'll tell you what, yesterday she got ghetto and started snapping her neck. | |
I was like, that's a real sister right there. | |
No, she needs to do less of that, man. | |
Fuck more people in Indiana and Pennsylvania. | |
She's going to be a problem for him. | |
She's got an edge to her that's bad. | |
yeah i was looking for a little bit about the president of the president of the | |
president of the president of the president of the president of the | |
at the public figure you could get the feeling she got a major chip on her | |
shoulder barney webcam don't come from there's some really good i mean immigrants i just think it's | |
you know people come to this country i have something to offer | |
Be hot, be really smart, you know what I mean? | |
Desirable. | |
Exactly. | |
Hot or smart, that's about it. | |
That's smart, that's right, but people to come over and pick lettuce, I mean, I'm not saying that's an undignified... | |
I mean, that's great, you know, and I admire people who work hard, but on the other hand, is that... | |
Are those people who are going to build, you know, a stronger country 20 years from now? | |
[Music] | |
How could you salvage Iraq at this point? | |
I don't, you know, it's beyond our control. | |
I mean, if somehow the Iraqis decided to behave like human beings or something. | |
I have zero sympathy. | |
for them or their culture, a culture where people just don't use toilet paper or forks. | |
And the way they treat women, you know, I agree with you, their culture is, | |
but you're in their homeland and you're over there as an American who they hate and they | |
want nothing more than the Americans off of their soil. So they're not going to play games. | |
I mean, they can just shut the f**k up and obey is my view. | |
Well, it's never going to be a civilized country because the people aren't civilized. | |
The people aren't civilized. | |
Such a twerp! God! | |
He need to say, "Look, I'm a bigot, okay? I'm a bigot. I don't like Islamic extremists." | |
Like, if you are really heavily into Islam, I'm sorry, I just don't care for you that much. | |
And I don't care what that sounds like. | |
You can call me a racist, you can call me whatever the fuck you want. | |
And at this juncture, you could say that and not catch a lot of shit for it. | |
You certainly could! | |
I'd vote for you if you said that. | |
Basically, we need a racist president. | |
We need to get these Mexicans out here into Islam! | |
Let's kill all the Muslims! | |
I think you're on to something. | |
I mean, not someone who's like a Klansman or anything, but someone who's totally Unbound by PC rules, so we'll just say whatever the hell he wants. | |
Yeah, that went great for us. | |
Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. | |
We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided. | |
Sir, that was awful. | |
So that last clip was from 2018, and illustrates just a little bit how his views have not really progressed. | |
And yeah, in that second to last clip, notice how he basically predicted the rise of Trump. | |
A little bit harrowing. | |
A little bit harrowing. | |
Instead of a southern accent, it's a New York, New Jersey fucking dickface accent. | |
Whatever. | |
Just his specific... Weird rich. | |
Weird rich. | |
Yeah, so that's... | |
That's more of where Tucker actually stands on things, and these are things he said out loud on the radio, you know? | |
This is... He's not... Yeah, so, and I do want to address that, like, a lot of those clips We're from 2008 and that was on the screen, right? | |
So 2006 to 2009, those slips were mostly taken. | |
And when asked for comment on it, he said, oh, I'm not going to wring my hands in contrition. | |
I'd said some naughty things. | |
And that was about it. | |
I do want to say that there's even been discussion and I think is entirely valid that Uh, that Russell Brand himself has said a lot of things that are maybe are different from his current positions. | |
Um, maybe was more vague about his spiritual nature or had different political beliefs. | |
And he has, but he's also clearly evolved over time. | |
So maybe in 2013 or 2018, That was a different Russell than we have now. | |
Yeah. | |
And so I can I just want to point out that the Tucker clips being from 2008 also his he's totally unapologetic about these views. | |
I don't see. | |
An evolution or a change. | |
I think that Tucker's gotten better about talking around it. | |
Yes, yeah. | |
That's what I was going to say. | |
His views haven't changed. | |
His presentation of them has changed. | |
He's a little bit less overt, at least in public anyway. | |
So yeah, and you know, if you put those clips side by side to any of his, you know, previous show that he had with Fox, you know, and they say the same thing, just in a different way, in a more coded way, typically. | |
Oh dear! | |
Yeah, those clips sound like a dad at a barbecue that I would get in a fight with and then leave! | |
Yeah. | |
the barbecue. But and I'd text my friend that I'm sorry, but that their dad's a dick and I couldn't | |
just sit there and listen to it. It's like, it's just crazy. | |
Like it's also like, just yuck. | |
It's just it yeah no it's it's Yucky way to be. | |
It is gross. | |
It's gross and shocking in many cases, the things that he's saying out loud. | |
It's not easy to listen to. | |
Anyway, back to the present day. | |
Next up, we learn that Tucker has feelings. | |
The first time I was called a white supremacist, I was like, jeez, it hurt. | |
It stung. | |
And I thought, I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I know that I'm not one, but I know that that's like the worst thing you can be. | |
That's like calling someone a Nazi, or a monster, or Satan, or like, what is that? | |
And I was bothered by it. | |
It was right when I started my last Fox show, so it was in the fall of 2016. | |
And I did a kind of long, very sincere, I mean it too, sincere script about how, you know, this is what I believe and we're all created by God and you should never punish or reward people based on their skin color. | |
And it had no effect at all. | |
And then I realized the people using those terms are not sincere at all. | |
There's no sincerity. | |
The words have no meaning to them, except as they're useful as tools to acquire political power and to make anyone who stands in the way of that shut up or go away or go to prison. | |
And so once I realized they weren't sincere, then it's like, that's between me and God. | |
And not only am I not a racist, I'm not much of a hater. | |
I really try not to be. | |
Try harder, Tucker. | |
Try harder. | |
He's right about one thing, though. | |
I would love for him to shut up or go away or go to prison. | |
But that's not why we call him a white supremacist. | |
We call him a white supremacist because of the things he says and the actions he takes in stoking racism. | |
Yeah. | |
In fact, I'd like to quote from Tucker's coverage of the BLM protests a few years ago and I quote | |
This may be a lot of things this moment We're living through but it is definitely not about black | |
lives and remember that when they come for you and at this rate | |
They will anyone who's ever been subjected to the rage of the mob knows the feeling it's like being swarmed by Hornets | |
Yeah Be grad if you got swarmed by Hornets | |
I want that day. | |
I would watch it. | |
I would watch it. | |
His implication that the words have no meaning when someone calls, like, the words don't mean anything to him. | |
Like, he doesn't like, it's not that he doesn't like being racist or being a white supremacist. | |
He doesn't like being called the word. | |
Yeah, and what I hear there is that he gets called it so often, it's lost all meaning to him. | |
Yeah! | |
Or it's just like, because that's how he uses words, they're empty tools to hurt people for profit. | |
And to hurt others for profit, like the, you know, question mark, other, for profit. | |
So he thinks that's what people are doing to him. | |
So then he can disregard those people whenever they're pointing out, no, you're a fucking racist. | |
The things that you do and say are racist. | |
You get paid a lot of money to be a racist. | |
Yeah. | |
Next up, Russell almost makes a good point. | |
One of the areas of your answer there that I imagine we could talk about further are the distinctions between having a position on immigration and its potential ability to destabilise an indigenous population. | |
How you, again, cross-reference that with Colonial and imperial history. | |
How you cross-reference that with globalism and an attempt to create sort of like a centralist authoritarian model. | |
You know, that's something we could talk about a lot longer, I'm sure. | |
The distinction between racism and having a position on immigration. | |
You get in the way of their business plan and they call you a racist. | |
That's what's actually happening here? | |
And perhaps, I wonder too, Tucker... | |
I feel so dirty every time I hear Tucker genuinely laugh, and it happens a lot in this interview. | |
It feels so gross. | |
I just think it'd be worse. | |
It's worse. | |
It's worse than the fake ones. | |
It gets even worse. | |
I promise you it gets way worse. | |
Swing and a miss from Russell. | |
Indigenous populations, okay, we're on the right track. | |
Colonialism, imperialism, this is the right course of conversation, good. | |
Globalism, oh for fuck's sake. | |
I think it's fucking outrageous to imply that, because when you say indigenous and why I exclaimed the word indigenous is because Obviously, Tucker is talking about white people in America, period. | |
And probably, I don't know, he'll probably translate that to Europe white also, if you ask. | |
But Russell holding wall, like providing cover by mentioning indigenous people to include And colonial nightmares imposed on indigenous people. | |
Because throughout history, quote-unquote immigration, migration, whatever, has happened. | |
And it's fucking fine. | |
It's fine. | |
Well, yeah, this is it. | |
And notice how instead of actually raising these points, he just brushes past them saying, oh, we could have a lot to talk about. | |
Yeah, we could. | |
We're not gonna, but we could. | |
We'll actually have the fucking conversation then. | |
Please do get into colonialism and imperialism and how that ties into Tucker's positions. | |
It's what I talk about! | |
It's your show! | |
That's completely reasonable! | |
You get to do it if you want to! | |
You don't have to be like, no, no, no! | |
Talk about it, by all means! | |
Do you think that Tucker was also talking about indigenous people being impacted by colonial quote-unquote immigrants? | |
Do you think that that's what he's talking about? | |
Or if you follow that, will you find out that Tucker doesn't really mean that at all and never has? | |
Okay, okay. | |
I mean, if he stayed true to the things that he said, he would leave the United States. | |
So, you know, there we go. | |
He's like, well, child of an immigrant, buddy. | |
My best friend's an immigrant, actually. | |
Oh, fucking hell. | |
My best friend is black. | |
Like, shut up. | |
Just shut up. | |
In the next clip, Russell stares down the barrel of the camera and just riffs a little bit. | |
The next question I'm going to ask you, Tucker, there's a viewer question. | |
This is from @theboss. This is on Locals. If you want to watch this on Locals, press the red button and join our Locals | |
community. | |
We aim to have conversations like this all the time because my belief is actually an optimistic and hopeful one of | |
humanity that we share more with one another than divides us and | |
that there are ways of reorganizing society radically and that our categories and our lexicon has to alter | |
significantly because left and right are starting to become redundant | |
when there are so many similarities between the left and right. | |
When both appear to be driving towards centralist authoritarian models where you are surveilled and censored at will, where free conversation is closed down on the basis that there is some other authority that knows better than you what you mean when you're speaking and that they have the right to shut you down. | |
So when he says that there are other authorities who know better than you what you mean when you're speaking, what he's actually saying there is, I say all this awful shit that leans on racist, homophobic or anti-semitic roots and I'm pissed off that people keep calling me out on it. | |
Hi, Russell. | |
We'll be here as long as we have to, buddy. | |
And hating the holy shit out of your fake ass. | |
That's crazy. | |
Like, I couldn't even keep paying attention. | |
I mean, we got a Bramble. | |
That was a classic Bramble. | |
Yeah, a little bit of one. | |
A powerful one. | |
And that was, I couldn't keep, because like, I don't believe in racism and bigotry and blah blah blah. | |
This is it. | |
You wouldn't have Tucker on your fucking show! | |
You wouldn't have Tucker on your show. | |
Why is- you can't say that with Tucker fucking Carlson sitting next to you! | |
Everything you said is out the window! | |
Or into the sea! | |
He's not just got Tucker on his show, he loves Tucker as well. | |
Clearly! | |
He's so on board. | |
And next up, Tucker seems to be a bit awestruck by Brand as well, which is quite unsettling. | |
Press that red button and join us over on local so you can ask questions to Tucker. | |
I'm assuming that your questions for Tucker although a bloody I'll answer any question that you throw my way. Let | |
me tell ya Bosses, what is your relationship with Trump like now? | |
But before Tucker tells us what his relationship with Donald Trump is like right now having said once like, you | |
know Those text messages remember that stuff | |
And then publicly saying that Donald Trump is significant. | |
Plus, we've got to talk about RFK. | |
Plus, we've got to talk about censorship. | |
Plus, we've got to talk about the military industrial complex. | |
Plus, we've got to talk about the Hunter Biden laptop. | |
And plus, we've got to talk about Big Pharma. | |
And in order to do that, we have to have free speech. | |
That's why you've got to click on the link in the description. | |
Join us over on Rumble right now. | |
And if you're with us on Rumble... Bye-bye, YouTube. | |
We love you, you 6.4 million Awakening Wonders. | |
If you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button and join us on Locals and post your questions there. | |
There's so much to ask you. | |
I'm so grateful to you for coming here. | |
I love this! | |
Do you like it? | |
Are you happy? | |
I love it. | |
Have you got everything you need? | |
Can I offer you any more snacks? | |
Nicotine? | |
Gum? | |
I've got my nicotine. | |
I've got my Pellegrino. | |
I had my coffee. | |
I'm in my happy place. | |
I'm so glad that you're comfortable here. | |
Thank you so much. | |
It means a lot that you've given us this interview. | |
Thank you very much, Tucker. | |
So that was kind of gross. | |
It's also fairly impressive that Russell can speak so clearly with a mouth full of Tucker's balls. | |
Yeah, right. | |
That's a brown little nose you got there, buddy. | |
How's this shit smell? | |
That's amazing. | |
I don't even want to be hateful. | |
I'm not trying to come for anybody's laugh or the way they talk because If you pit Elle and I against each other in a velvet vocal cords contest, I'm going to lose. | |
And I know that. | |
And I've, you know, like, my laugh can be a bit shrill. | |
I'm not coming for that. | |
I think what's upsetting is It's so dissonant. | |
Like, sir, something in you is still capable of joy. | |
Now there's a lot of gunk. | |
It's like the laugh has to come through all the gunk and misery that he feels and has to impose on everybody else. | |
It's jarring. | |
It's just jarring. | |
Bizarre. | |
The contrast between the shit that he says and then the You know, you're like, oh, oh, this is, this is unsettling. | |
Um, is the only word. | |
It's just, I'm sure people hear that when he's like, I'm sure in arguments with him | |
where people are trying to be very serious and say, hey, I'm calling you out, | |
even just in his personal life. | |
Mm. | |
And that laugh comes out when he's gaslighting. | |
Like, that's the laugh that's like, oh, I don't even know what you mean! | |
Instances of that will come up later, and it is pretty gross to see. | |
So, in this next clip, we hear Tucker's thoughts on Trump. | |
Where am I on Trump now? | |
Well, I love Trump. | |
Personally. | |
There we go, that's about all you need to know about Tucker's position on Trump. | |
At least publicly. | |
Romantically. | |
Spiritually. | |
Generally. | |
Financially. | |
In every way it is possible. | |
Yeah, who knows whether he's still texting about fucking hating the guy, but also, who gives a shit? | |
His public presentation is what matters, and in the next clip he elaborates a little more on specifically why he loves Trump. | |
In fact, let me ask you, what do you think that Trump's current foreign policy views are, if you can think of any? | |
Foreign policy. | |
Oh, uh... | |
Either anti-interventionist or hyper-interventionist, depending on who you're talking about? | |
And maybe killing people in other parts of governments occasionally when he wants to? | |
Okay, okay. | |
You're hedging, but I'm gonna give it to you. | |
I'm gonna give it to you with the first one. | |
I'm using the information that I have available. | |
So let's, I'll show you. | |
Here's what Chaka loves. | |
There was a raking scenario? | |
Here's what Tucker loves so much. | |
But when I think about Trump right now, so it's July of 2023, you know, I'm struck by his foreign policy views. | |
You know, Trump is the only person with stature in the Republican Party, really, who's saying, wait a second, you know, why are we supporting an endless war in Ukraine? | |
And leaving aside whether Trump's going to get the nomination or get elected president or would be a good president, you know, I can't even assess that. | |
All I can say at this point is I'm so grateful that he has that position. | |
He's right. | |
And everyone in Washington's wrong. | |
Everyone. | |
And Trump is right on that question. | |
And it's a big question. | |
That war is reshaping the world. | |
It's reshaping the economy of the world. | |
It's reshaping populations. | |
I mean, I was just in Romania last week, you know, which is, of course, shares a border with Ukraine. | |
The refugees in that region, the number of people killed in that war. | |
I mean, Europe will never be the same because of this war. | |
And it really matters. | |
And Trump alone among Popular figures in both parties understands that, and I'm grateful for it. | |
Whether he gets the nomination or gets elected, you know, words really matter. | |
Saying something true out loud matters. | |
And he is saying true things about Ukraine, and God bless him. | |
That's how I feel. | |
Cool, I get one gross point. | |
Hooray for me! | |
Yup. | |
So that makes more sense. | |
Russian asset Trump is living up to his promises and pro-Russia Tucker fucking loves it. | |
Which is, as we've demonstrated before, a position that Brand entirely shares. | |
So all three of these figures want Ukraine to lay down arms and for Russia to do whatever the hell they want. | |
But in each case, they drape themselves in anti-war narratives as a flaccid defense for their abhorrent position. | |
Lucky us. | |
I'm not sure why he was in Romania, by the way. | |
I didn't actually look that up. | |
I mean, I'd love to take a vacation to Romania. | |
That'd be incredible. | |
But also, question mark? | |
Yeah, I was gonna say. | |
Who paid for your trip? | |
I don't know! | |
Anytime we're delving into Eastern Europe, there is a possibility of it being a white nationalist thing going on there. | |
I'd love to see the sites! | |
I like old churches! | |
I don't think that's why he was there. | |
I mean, he may have taken in a church too, but I don't know. | |
Yeah, it just seems like a bit of an odd choice of destination, just kind of off the cuff. | |
He doesn't strike me as a fellow, like, old, dusty, musty, tiny museum person. | |
Maybe he is, I don't know. | |
We can usually sniff ourselves out, though. | |
Yeah, no, absolutely. | |
He does talk about the Cotswolds a bit later on. | |
He does like it there. | |
He may surprise you that there's a way that he's going to piss you off later, actually. | |
It took me by surprise, so I think it's going to get you. | |
Buckle in everybody! | |
Next up, though I didn't cut the clips of Brand continually bringing him up to no avail, in this next clip Russell finally managed to push the RFK question to Tucker. | |
So Trump generated, I suppose, a new type of populism. | |
He rebooted politics, he reordered the Republican Party. | |
But perhaps, is it fair to say that, other than the significant fact that he was less militaristic significantly than other comparable presidents, at least recent presidents I mean by that, Do you think that he delivered in office? | |
Why do you think he remains so fascinating? | |
Do you think that the Americans, broadly speaking, that are attracted to Donald Trump are attracted by his foreign policy stance? | |
No. | |
Or do you think that there's something else? | |
And do you not think that RFK, who is, in my understanding, he's been on the show a couple of times, he's now on Rumble... What else? | |
find him to be a very admirable man. He similarly is vehemently anti-war, anti-this conflict, | |
and seems to also have identified the unspoken intention to be the deracination and annihilation | |
of Russia for globalist and economic reasons rather than the rather naive assumption that | |
it's in any way a humanitarian conflict. It's for democracy! | |
That's my favorite, it's for democracy! | |
Okay, say the people who hate democracy. | |
There it is. | |
Says the people who hate democracy. | |
Fucking hell. | |
So RFK is another pro-Russia tool. | |
As for defending Ukraine, being for humanitarian efforts or for democracy, well... | |
It sort of is. | |
That is as much as it's about supporting Ukraine's right to defend itself against an aggressor who wishes to take over the country, who happens to be an autocratic dictator. | |
Tucker will later criticise Ukraine, saying it's not a democracy, while completely ignoring Putin's reign as dictator, by the way. | |
No shit! | |
What the fuck? | |
It's an imperialist project. | |
Period. | |
I want to bring back the USSR. | |
That's my little vanity project. | |
Yeah, when also all the guys that are like pro-Putin also hate the USSR. | |
Oh, I know, I know. | |
The mental gymnastics- It's so baffling to me! | |
It's incredible, isn't it? | |
You know, these people who lean on all of the- I mean, Alex Jones is a prime example of this, you know. | |
He's, you know, anti-communist, blah blah blah blah blah, you know, came up through the, you know, all the Cold War bullshit, and then was like, I don't know, Russia's great. | |
You're like, wait, hang on. | |
Yeah, right. | |
Yeah. | |
In any case, next we learn Tucker's thoughts about RFK Jr. | |
Well, I love Bobby Kennedy, and I've had him on my show many times. | |
He announced her president on my show, which took a lot of stones on his part, given how despised I am by a lot of Democratic primary voters. | |
It did. | |
I think he's a wonderful person. | |
I'll say that. | |
As a man, I admire him. | |
He said the greatest thing any politician or any public figures ever said to me at dinner a couple of years ago. | |
You know, they've gone after his family. | |
The pharma companies and their agents and the media have really gone after his family, his siblings. | |
They convinced a bunch of his siblings to denounce his views. | |
So painful. | |
And I'm so close to my family, I can't even imagine that. | |
And I said to him, what's that like? | |
I thought I took a lot of shit. | |
I can't even imagine what that would be like. | |
If my brother denounced me, I'd probably shoot myself. | |
I couldn't handle it. | |
Well, yeah, my brother's not going to denounce me. | |
He's my best friend and wonderful man. | |
But anyway, so I said to him, what's that like? | |
And he said, and I'm quoting, I shouldn't be quoting a private conversation, but he said this to me. | |
He said, I've got seven children and they all love me. | |
I don't care. | |
Wow. | |
And I thought, okay, you want us to distill my values into a sentence? | |
That's the sentence. | |
I'm just going to wind that clip back a second because I think we talked about it. | |
Thank you! | |
I didn't know! | |
But yeah, when I heard him say that, I was like, my brother's my best friend. | |
I was like, is he an immigrant? | |
Hold on! | |
Is he adopted? | |
What's the situation? | |
He must have two best friends. | |
Yeah, um, clearly he must have he must have two best friends. | |
Um, let's let's... | |
Fair enough, but it just keeps confusing in this context. | |
I thought I took a lot of shit. | |
I can't even imagine what that would be like. | |
If my brother denounced me, I'd probably shoot myself. | |
I couldn't handle it. | |
So if it was Buck, he would be able to provide the weapon. | |
My brother's not going to denounce me. | |
He's my best friend and wonderful man. | |
But anyway, so I said to him, what's that like? | |
And he said, and I'm quoting, probably shouldn't be quoting a private conversation, but he said this to me. | |
He said, I've got seven children and they all love me. | |
I don't care. | |
Wow. | |
And I thought, okay, you want us to distill my values into a sentence? | |
That's the sentence. | |
Oh, those are not good values. | |
Weird, vague, what? | |
Oh, hey, these children of mine who I've raised, shaped and modelled on my own views and beliefs love me, and nothing else matters. | |
I mean, like, if you're just an average mook wandering about the place, fine, have that position. | |
Bit weird, but fine. | |
But if you want to be involved in running a country, or commentating on the running of a country, you can fuck right off with such a childish, self-centred and idiotic perspective. | |
Also, I do not think it took stones for RFK Jr. | |
to announce his presidential candidacy on Tucker's show. | |
Mostly because the man is not a Democrat. | |
He's a dino, right? | |
Democrat in name only. | |
That's him. | |
He knew his supporters would be watching Tucker's show. | |
It's that fucking simple. | |
That's why he was there! | |
Exactly! | |
Had he announced it on The Daily Show or last week tonight, I might have taken notice, but no. | |
No, he knows. | |
He knows. | |
Oh, I would have noticed too, that's for sure. | |
Oh yeah, that would have, that would have, yeah, I would have, I would have paid attention. | |
Oh man, also different laugh. | |
That like little buck, uh, we're also calling out buck. | |
That's, that's, that's how you really talk. | |
That's, that's how you really laugh. | |
That was a little... I'm quoting Michelle Visage-LaGange-Estrange. | |
I'm invoking that spirit! | |
Tucker, that's how you really talk. | |
That's really crazy. | |
To hear the fake laugh next to the real one. | |
And then also enjoying your... But, like, really? | |
You're gonna shoot yourself if your brother disagrees with you? | |
You're a fucking baby. | |
Like, you shouldn't be trusted to tie your shoes, let alone be on Twitter spouting off bullshit. | |
That's nuts. | |
And the concept that the other Kennedys were forced to denounce RFK Jr.' 's views. | |
Oh, fuck off. | |
Come on. | |
These are adults we're talking about here. | |
Yeah! | |
Maybe your family has an asshole that you just don't call anymore. | |
It's fine. | |
Yeah. | |
Maybe all your family are assholes and you don't call them anymore. | |
And it's fine. | |
I got some text messages from a sister that could curl your toes. | |
Meanest person I've ever met in my whole life. | |
And I'm still here. | |
Usually, usually the family asshole is not a public figure, and you are not also a public figure, so you don't have to bother denouncing them. | |
But in this case, they do. | |
It's nice if your family also thinks you're good, but like, maybe your family's awful. | |
Like, it's just, it's your family. | |
Like, that's so arbitrary. | |
Like, I, as long as I know that all my pants fit at home, that's my values. | |
Those are my values. | |
It's all my clothes fit. | |
Darn it. | |
Like, okay man. | |
Bully for you. | |
You can shop. | |
Great. | |
Like, okay. | |
That's really weird. | |
All my pets love me. | |
That's all that matters to me. | |
That's a much better metaphor. | |
Okay! | |
Okay! | |
My example sucks. | |
Yours is better. | |
We'll keep yours. | |
Okay. | |
No, I think both equally valid from a different direction. | |
In any case, we have a little bit more about RFK. | |
So, I really admire him. | |
I don't agree with him on everything. | |
I do agree with him, I'll just be honest, on most things. | |
On the big things. | |
And so, no, I love what he's doing. | |
I love his bravery, which is just remarkable. | |
The amount that man has suffered for what he thinks is true. | |
The amount of money he's lost, the friends he's lost. | |
He's been ostracized in a way most people can't even understand because he ticked off a drug company? | |
Really? | |
And he's persevered and I really admire him. | |
The quote I want to highlight from that clip is, uh, the amount that man has suffered for the things he thinks is true. | |
Which leads me to wonder about Tucker's position on vaccines. | |
I know for a fact that Tucker has been vaccinated against COVID-19 because he says as much near the end of this interview. | |
And interestingly, that's something that wasn't true a year ago. | |
He was proudly flaunting his unvaccinated status a year ago. | |
So I don't know what's happened, what's changed there, what's going on. | |
But yeah, he doesn't get into it much. | |
But I get the feeling, weirdly, for a guy who's spent a lot of time spreading COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation, that he's actually fine with the vaccine and thinks people who are against them are in the wrong. | |
Again, it's never confirmed, he never actually says it, but it's the impression I've gotten. | |
That is so... Okay. | |
Here's my theory, alright, I'm, listen, shot in the dark, I'm just some asshole, right? | |
I'm, but I'm positive for myself that Tucker Carlson will take every medical everything that he can get his grubby little paws on. | |
And he will knock over, like, he'll knock over old ladies in wheelchairs to get to it. | |
But he will say whatever is advantageous in the moment in public. | |
I'm positive. | |
Again, just some dipshit in the Midwest, in the middle of nowhere, nobody knows or cares. | |
Fine, right? | |
I'm just some asshole. | |
But that's just some asshole's pretty I'd say a weighted hypothesis in this instance. | |
I'm pretty sure that's what's up. | |
And I'm shocked that anyone could think otherwise. | |
Yes, yeah, yeah, I know. | |
Yeah, I completely agree with you. | |
I think he's saying what's expedient in the moment. | |
But you have to say the fair thing, and I can speculate. | |
You don't have to. | |
I don't always have to be fair. | |
There are moments later where I'm not going to be fair to him because he doesn't deserve it. | |
Anyway, in the next clip, Russell reasserts his Christianity and asserts that the democratic process is basically meaningless. | |
If RFK and Trump have risen, as they plainly have, to capture the popular imagination, and yet both to a degree are stymied, shackled or reluctantly tolerated by their party, what does that tell us about the shifting sands of American political life? | |
I think the area where you and I most plainly and overtly align, perhaps other than the belief in God I suppose, is our Deep understanding that the military-industrial complex and Big Pharma are able to exert significant power over the Democratic Party, a democratic process that renders ordinary electoral politics basically meaningless. | |
These two figures are like populist anti-establishment figures in a sense. | |
I think following on from last week, what we have here is a little more apathy! | |
Oh, Big Pharma and the Military-Industrial Complex have rendered democracy as meaningless, apparently, and Tucker just nods along like a little bobblehead. | |
Oh, yes! | |
When really it's a reductive and exceptionally stupid viewpoint to take, particularly from people who supposedly educate themselves on these subjects. | |
But no, what we really have here is sowing distrust in the electoral process, using the platform of millions of viewers from both Brand and Tucker to ensure that people lose faith in democracy and instead churn more money into Brand and Tucker's respective grifts. | |
I just don't know what his solution would be. | |
Like, what's the other plan, sir? | |
Yeah, no, I know, I know. | |
It really is, it's got a real underpants gnomes, like, vibe. | |
We start to nail it down a little bit more towards the end of this episode, actually, which I was surprised about. | |
I say a little bit more, a little bit more. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
Anything at this point. | |
I know, I know. | |
Eventually, one day, he might have an idea. | |
Yeah, like, dude, what? | |
Okay. | |
I know what you don't like. | |
I don't even know that. | |
But, like, I can pretend for the sake of argument. | |
But what do you want? | |
Does all voting work? | |
Does no voting work? | |
Both seem... I don't... what? | |
I don't know. | |
In any case, that was sort of a throwaway line. | |
And Brian gets into the question proper here. | |
What do you feel is the likelihood of either of them being able to pass through the internal mechanics of their parties, you know, in the case of RFK, through the legal hurdles that are being placed in front of Trump at the moment, and what is the role of independent media, in particular, say, a figure like Elon Musk, who seems, at the moment at least, to have the power to fight on that terrain? | |
I know there was a lot in that question, Tucker, but you've got a lot to say. | |
Well, I would say a couple things. | |
The United States has had precisely in 250 years almost one populist president. | |
And that was Teddy Roosevelt, also the most popular president in American history, who was president from 1901, who he served as VP was shot to death, until 1908. | |
Most popular president the United States ever had, and he was a populist. | |
The two biggest populist figures in the moment are Trump and Bobby Jr., and then we had a guy called Ross Perot run about 30 years ago, who roughly had the same politics. | |
Before I get into this little bit here, note at the very start of that, Russell said, sorry there was a lot in that question wasn't there Tucker? | |
Compare that to the five minute question he gave to Dawkins! | |
He's just taking such a different approach here. | |
That was pretty direct from Russell. | |
It was all along the same line of thought. | |
That was amazingly coherent for him. | |
So yeah, I'd say that Tucker's wrong on this one. | |
I would count FDR as a populist president. | |
He wins at getting elected. | |
No, no, no. | |
He was a populist president, I would say. | |
But so was Andrew Jackson, who was president in 1828. | |
And Andrew Jackson was a massive piece of shit. | |
Legendary. | |
Legendarily bad. | |
For anyone who doesn't know, just Google the Trail of Tears if you're curious. | |
Perhaps a bit of whitewashing of history going on here to paint populism in a specific light, I think. | |
As for Ross Perot, I don't have any specific issue with him, I don't know about you. | |
I mean, he's dead now, so... | |
Less of a problem, but you know, I was looking through, you know, because I didn't really | |
know that much about him. | |
I was looking through his stuff and I couldn't find any immediate red flags. | |
He seemed to have some decent ideas. | |
He did some good stuff with his money and some bad stuff with his money. | |
Okay. | |
Pinning that, I'm sure we'll address that at some point, if it comes up. | |
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's unlikely. | |
Also, other people have covered it, so, yeah, and I'm only coming from memory, and I'm not, I'm not doodling in real time, so. | |
As far as I could find from the things he said, there were a lot of things in there that you and I would probably agree with, I would think. | |
Comedy gold in my young life also. | |
Dana Carvey went hard in the paint. | |
So that's for my personal experience as a child. | |
Yeah, he was real funny. | |
But yeah, that's like, it's, uh, I don't, okay. | |
Yeah, yeah, I mean, he was, yeah, definitely. | |
There's a lot. | |
There is a lot. | |
He was the most successful third party candidate ever in terms of popular vote. | |
He won, I think it was like 19% of the vote or something the first year he ran, which is huge. | |
That's huge. | |
A lot of money. | |
Weirdly didn't get any electoral votes, whereas George Wallace fucking did when he ran. | |
He got electoral college votes. | |
Yeah. | |
Anyway, anyway, anyway. | |
It's not hard to find stuff that Lauren's mad about. | |
Just the big book of facts about America and then just first page. | |
Done. | |
Just any page. | |
It took too long as a country to shoot George Wallace and claim better. | |
How about that? | |
So, speaking of making you mad, many of our listeners might not know this, but you're | |
a bit of a history buff, Lauren, I think that's fair to say. | |
This next clip, Tucker wanders into your wheelhouse and- Oh no! | |
This is the thing I think that's going to piss you off. | |
All four of those figures had one thing in common. | |
They were all from the world they criticized. | |
So you think of the English Peasant Revolt, which is one of the most interesting things ever to happen, where they stormed the Tower of London and killed, I think they killed, the Archbishop. | |
I'm from there. | |
I was died in Essex. | |
Yes! | |
Watt Tyler. | |
Yeah, Watt Tyler, exactly! | |
We're not even sure if that was his real name. | |
Watt Tyler. | |
Watt Tyler. | |
But he was a legit peasant. | |
Like, we don't even know when he was born. | |
And that was not an effective rebellion. | |
Of course, they did not free the serfs after that, as I recall. | |
But, the effective populace are the ones who critique from the inside and say, I grew up in this world. | |
Teddy Roosevelt grew up rich, of course, in New York. | |
Trump, Perot, Bobby, I mean, Bobby Kennedy's family is one of the most famous families in the world in modern history. | |
The Kennedys are certainly the most famous family in democratic politics. | |
So these are people who know how the system works because they've benefited from the system. | |
And so their critique is much more meaningful and much more effective, I would say, because they can bear witness to what they have seen. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
So the peasant revolt didn't free the serfs, apparently. | |
That's what he seems to think that that was about. | |
Get what? | |
Tyler's name out of your motherfucking mouth! | |
Really? | |
Like, he brought up my little pet of- of- I have a lot of little pet weird amateur historian projects. | |
And he's gotta bring that one up, like, not even make a point with it. | |
Just mad. | |
Because the peasants who were revolting have motherfucking nothing at all in common with the Kennedys. | |
Get. | |
Banned. | |
That's nuts. | |
Neither does Watt Tyler, you know? | |
That's what I'm saying. | |
Watt Tyler and his ilk have nothing to do with the Kennedys. | |
No, no, I think, I think, I think that might have been part of his point. | |
So he was saying like, Oh, you know, if, if just, if just average people rise up and turn against the system, that it's not going to work, you know, because they're all too weak and poor. | |
He also said that the populace that like, they come from the stock that they, like, They come from where... I'm sorry, maybe I'm confused because I'm mad! | |
That was his original argument. | |
Maybe the argument changed as he kept talking because obviously like he didn't really know the story other than just it happened. | |
I don't know. | |
Yeah. | |
I want to be clear about the people Tucker is talking about. | |
So he's saying that RFK Jr., FDR, Ross Perot, and Trump are all populist candidates or presidents that have come from within the system I think that as being like of the people that like, I also pictured Data Carvey as Ross Perot, which doesn't help me follow the threads of this conversation. | |
But like that, that they come from the, okay, so they come from the system. | |
Yeah, they come from within, which then makes the- Oh, that's why the rebellion didn't work. | |
Right, because nobody came from within, and so it had less weight. | |
To which I say, what fucking system was Trump a part of? | |
He was a shitty businessman who would have made more money by putting his daddy's money in an account and spending his time finger-painting. | |
He was also a shitty game show host. | |
Tell me, what system was he a part of that gives his critiques more weight than anybody else? | |
As for RFK Jr., there's a better argument there, as even if he's a piece of shit with terrible views, he's also a lawyer who spent a long time as a political activist for things like indigenous rights and fighting climate change, etc. | |
Did? | |
But even still, he's not from within the political system, or even the financial system, even | |
if he is a Kennedy. | |
He's a lawyer. | |
Perot's dead. | |
Yeah, Perot's dead, so I'm not even going to get into that properly, but he was still | |
primarily a businessman. | |
I will accept that FDR came from within the system, as he had a long career in politics | |
and as a military leader prior to being anywhere near the presidency. | |
So you know, that's one. | |
Although we were talking about FDR, he was talking about Teddy Roosevelt. | |
Yeah, sorry, I did say FDR then. | |
I meant Teddy Roosevelt. | |
Oh, okay, okay, okay. | |
There we go. | |
Right. | |
Because FDR, yeah, was a politician, but like Teddy Roosevelt. | |
Yeah, was the guy he was referring to. | |
What, sorry? | |
Yeah, that's like military. | |
Yeah, no, no, he was a big military guy and was a politician as well. | |
So he was in the military, then was in politics, then was in the military a bit more, and then became president, etc. | |
And yeah, I'll accept that he came from within the system and then later critiqued the system as president. | |
Fine. | |
That's the one concession I will make to Tucker. | |
It's a big fucking whoop. | |
We're talking about something from over a hundred years ago at this stage. | |
It's strung together in a very loose way. | |
So yeah, sorry guys, getting confused. | |
But at the end of the day, My main job here is just kind of sit. | |
I hope that y'all just enjoy listening to be like lightly tortured emotionally. | |
Just just a little bit. | |
Just a little bit of torture. | |
That's really kind of my only job. | |
So if I get confused or if I don't necessarily follow in a given time, I have to remind myself that I can sound a little dumb and that's OK. | |
Because really, my job is to be the stand in for just some just A bit of gentle schadenfreude, you know? | |
Just getting poked and prodded just a little bit, and I hope at the end of the day all I really need is for folks to enjoy hearing my pain. | |
That's really it. | |
This next clip probably prodded and poked me a bit more than it will you, but it's Tucker illustrating a little bit of ignorance about the UK. | |
Um, I don't think Trump has changed politics in Washington. | |
I think the parties both have been very resistant to any kind of reform and that's very foolish. | |
That's a Ceausescu move. | |
You see things changing around you and you just, you can't metabolize it. | |
You can't sort of change with the moment and then you, you know, you meet a bad end when you become that rigid. | |
Um, I think that Bobby Kennedy and Trump will both have a very tough time getting the nomination. | |
I'm hoping that both of them will, of course, I guess. | |
I'm hoping that their message will be heard. | |
I don't know. | |
I don't even know what I hope for in the process itself, but I want them to be heard. | |
And they can now be heard because there are channels of information that people can tune into and listen. | |
I mean, I would just, I would just, I would amend one thing you said when you said that, you know, these huge multinationals control our politics. | |
Well, they also control our media. | |
Yeah. | |
They do! | |
I mean, pharma, as you well know and often say on your show, is the biggest advertiser on American television. | |
Probably true in the UK as well. | |
So, pharmaceutical advertising is illegal here. | |
Anything that requires a prescription cannot be advertised on television or elsewhere. | |
Our biggest advertisers are Unilever, P&G and McDonald's, who just sell regular shit. | |
So Big Pharma may own your media, but they damn sure don't own ours. | |
On top of which, we also have the BBC, which is paid for by taxpayers and has no advertising on it. | |
So there. | |
Yeah. | |
Wait, no advertising ever at all? | |
On the BBC? | |
No, the only adverts that you'll ever see are for other things on the BBC, yeah. | |
So there are, like, ad breaks, but they'll be for, you know, other shows. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
Any, I mean, I've watched a lot of British TV- oh, yes! | |
Yeah, commercials are fucking awful! | |
Like, it didn't even occur to me, because, I mean, if I ever watch a- British show, which I watch a lot. | |
Yeah, they're just no one's taping it off a TV. | |
It's just the show. | |
Yeah. | |
Because I get ads from your shows when I watch them on like Hulu or whatever. | |
That's amazing. | |
That's Hulu taking you for a ride then. | |
Yeah, exactly. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
That's amazing. | |
Okay, but what I'm saying is amazing is that Tucker doesn't know, like, we take that for granted as Americans, I think. | |
There's a lot of things. | |
And we're learning more every day in this podcast. | |
It's shocking. | |
Do you know, later on, I can't remember whether I kept this clip in or not, but Russell describes him as the most American person that ever was. | |
And I'm like, well, you know what? | |
It is very American to assume that the rest of the world is also America. | |
Only two countries allow I don't know what the other one is, but I just know there's two countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise. | |
There's two. | |
What is the other one? | |
I don't know. | |
The number is depressing enough for me, because we could just not have it. | |
Oh, easily. | |
But, you know, too much money, I guess? | |
I don't know. | |
But then, you know, these other advertisers will step in, like P&G and Unilever and all these fucking other companies have plenty of money. | |
Yeah, they're also like pretty bad and have done pretty horrible things. | |
Yeah, there is that, but you know, it's... Oh, boy. | |
It's by degrees, isn't it? | |
I'll take what I've got over what you've got. | |
Same, yeah. | |
I prefer the other, that's for sure. | |
So next, Tucker finishes his thought. | |
And I've got to say, I have a different perspective to him. | |
And so, you know, there's no incentive whatsoever to question their products. | |
And now we have, because of the social media companies, Twitter and Rumble and probably others, we have less filtered sources of information with fewer gatekeepers and a higher probability you'll hear something true. | |
I think that's a huge change. | |
I mean, how can you... I mean, this is like Samus Dot. | |
This is like, you know, this is like information that the people in charge don't want you to see, and now you can see it. | |
It really is the promise of the internet finally fulfilled. | |
That's my hope anyway. | |
That's an incredibly depressing thing to say. | |
Those of us of a certain age will absolutely remember the heady days in the mid-2000s that to me felt like the golden age of the internet. | |
MSN Messenger, you know, YouTube was a fairly small platform that had like, you could only upload up to like 10 minute videos or something. | |
We all gravitated towards Myspace and DeviantArt and forums. | |
Forums. | |
It felt like a more innocent place. | |
Oh, it would! | |
For the most part. | |
Memes were an entirely different thing. | |
We had NUMA, that whole NUMA thing. | |
NUMA, NUMA, NUMA. | |
Fucking Newgrounds and shit like that. | |
Though I'm aware there are problems there. | |
Yeah, I pine for those heady days of I Can't Watch Cheeseburger. | |
Oh my god. | |
It was just such an innocent place. | |
Give that walrus a bucket. | |
That walrus has a bucket. | |
Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger. | |
I bet you, I bet you, I bet you. | |
Oh, I just, there was a time. | |
Harry Potter, Puppet House. | |
Oh, the days of the hamster dance. | |
Yeah. - I love it. | |
Yeah, that's the promise. | |
And the promise was broken. | |
So contrast that with today, when social media has taken hold properly, and you now have these free speech platforms like Rumble, which yes, have fewer filters, but accordingly drastically lower editorial standards, if any at all, and it makes us No, it makes us far more likely to be confronted with misinformation, propaganda, and outright lies presented as truth, which of course is what Tucker and Brand both want and thrive off. | |
Yeah, this is all marketing. | |
100%. | |
This is pure, unbridled, Wild West capitalism, and it kills people. | |
Every day. | |
That's what the internet is. | |
That's what the internet is here. | |
It's a murderer for money. | |
Period. | |
But also, the thing is, what really fucks me up is we have to sit here and do this because, yeah, major media organizations are not doing enough to combat the disinformation. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
Journalism is being gutted because of capitalism. | |
Well, not because of. | |
One factor is capitalism. | |
Because you have conglomerate corporations that have pushed out any local journalism. | |
We have the BBC. | |
They are doing more. | |
They have a whole disinformation department thing now that is relatively new but I think is doing good stuff. | |
You know there are things out there but just nowhere near enough like journalism on this front has just fucking it's just not existed and so it's incumbent upon us to have to do it which Isn't great. | |
I would prefer that people with journalistic training were doing our job, but as it is, here we are. | |
Yeah! | |
It's just shocking to me to think... | |
To bitch about the state of like disinformation today without looking at, I mean, it's, it's, it is crazy to talk to a person who's in a kind of a totally different media ecosystem because what sells and what pays wins here, period. | |
We do have PBS and I love PBS. | |
It's not enough. | |
It's not nearly enough. | |
Like the highest bidder wins, so whatever sells, whatever's making the most money. | |
So yeah, any critique that they have of mass media, I can't really I can't really come at the face value argument. I agree | |
with the surface basic face value argument. | |
Yeah, they're fucking up and they're doing a terrible job and we are going to have massive | |
consequences because of it. Everyone's just ignoring. Yeah, and even, you know, we have the | |
BBC but the left wing think it's too right wing and the right wing think it's too left wing. | |
Which they care. | |
Honestly, that's always been the complaint. | |
I'm sure that's etched on a cave somewhere. | |
That, you know, that, I'm sure, that there's always going to be that push and pull. | |
And honestly, we need that because there's gotta be some kind of critique. | |
I think there is, not to go off on too much of a tangent, but I think there is a small distinction in the way that the right wing think that it's too left wing, for instance. | |
The way the right-wing think it's too left-wing is on social issues. | |
You know, the trans movement, BLM, etc. | |
The left think that it's too right-wing on political issues, particularly with The political editor, Laura Koonsberg, being a massive fucking Tory, and so things have gone that way for a long time on the BBC. | |
So yeah, there are issues, even though legally it's supposed to be impartial because it's taxpayer funded. | |
It legally has to be, but it's fucking not. | |
Truly, Americans have no conception. | |
Like, I've had to adjust my Perspective. | |
I thought I was well informed and I'm not. | |
I'm still learning constantly. | |
It's really crazy. | |
The difference is massive and shocking. | |
Because if you have a government body, like, yeah, there is a regulation issue. | |
And if you've ever worked at a polling place, if you've ever helped work an election, you know that there's a million little things that have to be just so. | |
And regardless of what you think about, in fact, you can hate government bureaucracy and how slow and inefficient it can be, but there's someone just nitpicking every single step. | |
And you at least, you have some recourse when it's a federal entity, when it's private, when it's just a private company, when it's just the whim of Rupert Murdoch. | |
We have no recourse. | |
At all. | |
And that's what's happened. | |
And it's the Wild Fuckin' West here, and it's terrifying. | |
Pretty much, pretty much. | |
And Murdoch fucking runs roughshod over here as well. | |
That's true, that's true, that's true. | |
As well as the Barclay brothers and whoever else. | |
Yeah, yeah, fun. | |
Next up, we've got a bit of a lighter clip. | |
This next part did genuinely make me laugh, and I know some people hate it when I say brand has comedic chops, but I would say here's an example. | |
We had Stephen Friend on here, and the other FBI whistleblower, and importantly, and perhaps this is the most important thing about that story, one of their brothers and sisters has tattooed stick figures of me on their genitals. | |
That's the defining issue. | |
How has that affected his dating life? | |
It's ruined it. | |
Well, I mean, I think it would kind of narrow the available population down a little bit. | |
It's just me now! | |
I'm the only person who sees that as an advantage! | |
Oh! | |
Well, I am honoured! | |
Do as you will! | |
[laughter] | |
Right, so like, in context of this show especially, it's hard to find the things that he says funny | |
because we're deconstructing all the shit. | |
But especially in the context of the show, it's funny. | |
It's a little bit charming because it's self-deprecating. | |
And most of all, it's disarming. | |
Laughter makes people comfortable with accepting a person and their ideas. | |
It's how charming people get away with terrible things. | |
That part. | |
That part. | |
Yes. | |
Tucker throughout this interview seems to think that Brand is the funniest man alive and then in the next breath will be aggressively agreeing with anything Russell says. | |
And you don't always see that with Tucker in interviews either. | |
This is definitely an outlier. | |
No Jon Snow interview, that's for sure. | |
No, no it is not. | |
No yeah, I think that I've seen folks be kind of concerned and be like, oh I used to be a Russell Fran and I feel so bad and I'd say don't. | |
We all have our things and we all have our things and Um, liar's gonna lie, and you don't know that they're lying until they're found out. | |
So, I think that it's fair that you might feel a little manipulated, and we're here. | |
We're here for ya. | |
Yeah, I wouldn't feel bad about being kind of taken in down Russell's line, because he's Very good at packaging it. | |
He's very good at packaging it, very good at hiding it, very good at obfuscating the things that he's saying. | |
And that's what makes him such a slippery fucker to nail down. | |
It's why writing the notes up for this shit takes me so long. | |
It's because I have to really sit there and be like, Fuck are you saying? | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
Sometimes I do that in real time, very often. | |
No, absolutely. | |
The last word erased all the previous words. | |
Yeah, right? | |
It's not something to feel bad about at any stretch. | |
Especially when he's combining all of that packaging of his with the charm and the chops and every other fucking thing that he does. | |
And packaging it in this messianic kind of parcel. | |
The charm in Good Faith, is one thing but the charm being weaponized is entirely different and that's our complaint yeah yeah exactly it's it's it's having it next to the next thing that he's going to say um you know and that's uh that's the real problem if if this was just him talking shit to Tucker without any of the political bollocks or whatever fine | |
Great! | |
Sure. | |
Have a good time. | |
Sure. | |
But in context of the other things that he's saying, big fucking problem. | |
So next up is Brian's concept of a hard-hitting question. | |
Now, what you've been accused of in the mainstream after you received, I think it was like 40,000 hours of footage from your man McCarthy there, was that you sort of cherry-picked, is the phrase that often comes up, footage to deliberately show that it was to a degree a peaceful event. | |
What is your sincere opinion of what went on on January the 6th? | |
And why do you feel that there is yet an attempt to regard it as a deliberate insurrection? | |
And also within that, I guess the possibility for presenting moments of peace within 40,000 hours of footage does exist. | |
So were you sincere in your presentation, or do you have a particular perspective on how you wanted that event to be seen? | |
Well, let me just say, one of my children was there working in the building and called me during it. | |
And was right nearby when Ashley Babbitt was shot. | |
So I was interested in it from the moment it happened. | |
I was appalled by the vandalism outside by fighting with police officers. | |
I hate violence. | |
From abortion to the war in Ukraine. | |
I mean, I am consistent on that. | |
I'm not a Catholic, but I definitely share those views. | |
I'm not for the death penalty. | |
Not for killing people. | |
I'm not for hurting people. | |
I'm not for violence. | |
Not for the death penalty? | |
I've had those views for a long time. | |
Really? | |
It's all mighty curious that he says he's had those views for a long time when his support for the Iraq War was nothing short of vociferous. | |
Yeah. | |
For anyone who missed this happening, because I missed this, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy released footage from Jan 6 to Tucker Carlson's team without okaying it with the Capitol Police first. | |
Tucker then used any of the quiet moments of people milling about between the waves of violence to assert that Jan 6 was in fact mostly peaceful and that, quote, these aren't insurrectionists, these are sightseers, despite the legion of evidence to the contrary. | |
Yep. | |
It was an outrageous display of rewriting history in real time. | |
It was outrageous. | |
We all were here and we saw this like it's clips where we we've saw the part it's it was crazy to see clips where we saw the crimey part First, come out all over the news. | |
All over social media. | |
And then later, you can recognize the part either before or after the crimey part that was bad. | |
That Tucker was like, it was the most, it was the selectively edited, it was crazy. | |
I'm gonna pick the bits around the crimes. | |
We're gonna look at those and frame it that way. | |
That's exactly what happened. | |
No. | |
Guy doesn't want to eat his fiber, that's for sure. | |
So next up, you know how Fox had the Bulls sued off them by Dominion because Tucker was talking shit about the voting machines? | |
Looks like he's not learned his lesson yet. | |
You know, any violence on January 6th, I oppose. | |
I've said that many times. | |
I was kind of happy to leave it where it was, which is this got completely out of hand. | |
The only reason I ever got involved in commenting on it was, I mean, we did a show that night saying, well, this is awful, right? | |
What happened? | |
Was the lying about it was immediate. | |
This was a racist, white supremacist insurrection. | |
Well, OK. | |
There's no indication to this day that race had anything to do with it at all, like nothing. | |
These are people who thought the election was stolen from them. | |
There's some evidence they were right. | |
We could debate that, but that's what they thought. | |
That's a meaningful thing. | |
If you've got a big population in your country that doesn't believe that your elections are on the level, you need to figure out a way to convince them that the elections are on the level or else you can't have democracy because it's a faith-based system. | |
So that was the first thing I noticed. | |
There was no effort at all to convince people, actually, electronic voting machines are secure. | |
Which they are not. | |
By the way, that's a lie. | |
And any country that has electronic voting machines is by definition at risk of having its elections stolen. | |
By definition. | |
No country that cared about democracy would have electronic voting machines, okay? | |
First thing. | |
But no one even, and by the way, many Democrats have made that point. | |
Not now, but ten years ago. | |
So, bullshit about the voting machines aside, I want to address first what he said about Chan 6 not being racist. | |
I'll go so far as to say the objective on its face wasn't inherently racist in wanting to prevent the certification of Biden's presidency, Though, there was, at this time, a huge conspiracy theory among the MAGA supporters that Biden would immediately step down to allow Kamala Harris to become president. | |
So, maybe there was a bit of an undercurrent. | |
Also, this was the same Jan 6th that the night before, Owen Schreier of Infowars and a gang of morons burned a Black Lives Matter flag in honour of the Proud Boys, shouting, fuck BLM, fuck BLM. | |
This is the same Info Wars run by Alex Jones, who was there bullhorning that day and who is supposedly something of a friend to Tucker Carlson. | |
But he did panic, appropriately, and that was pretty funny. | |
Oh yes. | |
Yes, that was great. | |
Kind of way before other people that were equal to Alex Jones were like, yeah! | |
Alex was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, guys, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
Nope, nope, too much, too much. | |
Alex's instincts kicked in. | |
Yeah. | |
A little bit, and he was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. | |
Cram that toothpaste back in the tube. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
Ask the guys there! | |
Well, that's it, you know. | |
That's what such a motherfucker, and he, like, I'm not on the side of January 6th writers or whatever, but, like, the dudes that were filming themselves and putting it on their, like, live streaming their actions. | |
And we're super stoked. | |
I'd be so fucking pissed that my own team started calling me Antifa immediately. | |
What an insult. | |
You can't even back it up. | |
That's what's crazy. | |
And that's why, honestly, an extremist Your views are like, you know, you got your, you got your little ball of views, but even knowing that the second you take any step that you believe in, probably horrible, but you believe in it, they're all going to throw you away immediately. | |
Yeah, the current conspiracy theory is that basically everyone that was there was an FBI agent. | |
That's the current view. | |
Owen Schroer, by the way, I don't know if you saw this, Owen Schroer is going to prison. | |
So that's good. | |
Oh, he's really going to prison? | |
Yeah, well, that's what I saw anyway. | |
Yeah, I don't know. | |
I thought he was going to plead out or something. | |
I didn't seem that serious. | |
But I also haven't looked into it recently. | |
I could be wrong. | |
I could be wrong. | |
Well, and he also had more charges, too. | |
That's kind of what I was... I feel like the complicating charges are what would get him in jail at all, really. | |
Yeah. | |
I mean, I'm betting this stuff on Alex that he could, you know... | |
Get his way out with. | |
But maybe I'm wrong. | |
Maybe I'm wrong. | |
We'll see. | |
We'll see. | |
I'll look into this. | |
I thought. | |
Yeah, exactly. | |
Well, that's that's a real risk because I think they are still going to have conversations with him about about the pending Alex Jones investigations. | |
Again, they'll all sing on each other immediately. | |
Oh yeah. | |
Leave the team that will sacrifice you! | |
No one are among thieves, you know, it's, it's, um, but yeah, I, I'm, I'll check up on, I'll, I'll, I'll check in on, on Owen Troyer and, um, Yeah, because I thought he was going to prison, but maybe I was wrong. | |
Also, we are so used to no consequences for people that deserve it. | |
I could be jumping to conclusions, and I haven't kept up. | |
I was very surprised that anyone went down for Jan 6th, to be honest. | |
I was expecting slaps on the wrist because these were white people. | |
That's what I was expecting. | |
Specifically, white men. | |
I was expecting that it would be... Well, poor whites also get treated badly and they don't think of it the right way. | |
So it keeps happening. | |
If there was any amount of class consciousness in this country, then we might fix some of the issues. | |
No, yeah, and the right people aren't having cuts, except for Stuart Rhodes. | |
Fully fucked. | |
Yeah, I'll completely fuck that guy. | |
All day. | |
Speaking of, you know, the other thing to mention that is the more obvious point is that white supremacist groups overwhelmingly support Trump and were there that day on January 6th. | |
Yeah! | |
They said it! | |
Saying that, oh, there were no indications that this was racist or that there was any racist blah blah blah. | |
Like, well, okay, you've gathered all the white nationalists in one place. | |
Ask them! | |
Ask them! | |
I'll tell you! | |
Just ask them what they think of Kamala Harris. | |
I bet it's not good. | |
I mean, I don't like her, but for different reasons. | |
She's a cop. | |
Like, I mean... | |
Right. | |
Anyone at that level of government I'm going to take issue with, in at least some way, shape or form. | |
Man, yeah, that's just, that's, ugh, didn't think we were going to be revisiting this today. | |
Yuck. | |
No, no, no. | |
Gross. | |
So the next clip is a little bit long and goes off on a bit of a tangent but it illustrates both the deference that Brand is giving to Tucker in this interview of just letting him go on these monologues and the outrageous bullshit Tucker is using to cover for his side. | |
Um, but, I, the amount of lying around January 6th, and it was obvious in the tapes that I showed, um, is really distressing, and anyone who's covering for those lies should be ashamed of himself, and that would include almost the entire American media, including Fox News, um, people at Fox News. | |
Fox News, to its great credit, let me air that, and I'm grateful that they did, but there, you know, there are people there who were mad at me for airing that. | |
Really, why? | |
If you think I'm cherry picking it and taking it out of context, show me where. | |
People have. | |
And by the way, I didn't make the claim that it was entirely peaceful. | |
It wasn't. | |
Police officers were injured. | |
More police officers were injured at the riots in front of the White House the year before, but whatever. | |
Fuck you. | |
All injuries to police officers or anyone else are bad. | |
I'm certainly not making excuses for it. | |
But I'm asking obvious questions. | |
You said this happened, for example. | |
There was a guy called the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley. | |
They put the guy in prison for years! | |
There's surveillance tape that they hid, until I aired it, showing the Capitol Police trying lots of doors, trying to get into the Senate chamber, the sacrosanct chamber that he wasn't allowed to be in, and then escorting him in! | |
And he kind of wanders around like he's taking a hit of mescaline, just kind of, you know what I mean? | |
And like, he says a prayer, he thanks God for the Capitol Police, and then he wanders out. | |
Now, there are a lot of conclusions you could draw from that, but you cannot call that guy an insurrectionist. | |
That's a lie. | |
And by the way, an insurrection is a very specific meaning, and I'm pedantic about words because they're the currency that I trade in. | |
I mean, that's what I do. | |
I use words for a living, so I care about their specific meanings. | |
That was not an insurrection. | |
It was not armed, and its purpose was not to overthrow the government. | |
It was a spasm of rage that Trump definitely helped inspire. | |
That's true. | |
And the election results. | |
Okay. | |
You know, I'm not actually for that. | |
I don't think leaders should be making people more pissed in general. | |
But that's what it was. | |
It was not an insurrection. | |
Then why'd you do it? | |
Every day, Tucker! | |
Why do you do it? | |
Yeah! | |
Yeah, there's a lot. | |
But no, just not a single interruption from Bran. | |
Not a comment, not a... Not on anything. | |
I see. | |
Right. | |
So here's the definition of insurrection, by the way. | |
A violent uprising against an authority or government. | |
Jan 6 was violent, pretty overwhelmingly violent, and the point was to stop the certification of Biden's presidency. | |
I don't know what kind of fucked up Nazi dictionary Tucker has, but to me Jan 6 was the exact definition of an insurrection. | |
Yeah, as for Jacob Chansley, the QAnon shaman. | |
Did you say he was out already? | |
Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt. | |
Yeah, right. | |
I thought I saw that, didn't pay too much attention to it because I don't really give a fuck. | |
Tucker in his coverage asks why some of the quieter moments of Chansley weren't shown during trial. | |
The peaceful parts of, you know, the milling about, etc, etc. | |
I can take a guess! | |
Firstly, I'd say that we don't need to see every part of a person's life where they aren't committing crimes. | |
We just need to see the bits where they are committing the crimes. | |
And secondly, his case never went to trial. | |
He pled guilty almost immediately to obstructing an official proceeding, which is a felony. | |
So there was no trial. | |
Thirdly, if you watch the footage of the Jan 6 crowd inside the Capitol building and see police being somewhat deferential towards them, it's because the police were outrageously outnumbered and wanted to calm the crowd down so that violence didn't escalate any further than it already had. | |
Like, what were they gonna do, you know? | |
What was the alternative? | |
I mean, Americans don't know what de-escalation looks like at any stretch. | |
Especially from cops. | |
I'd say cops last. | |
Also, so I do know a little more about, just because I'm kind of A little... I don't know, I listen to different stuff. | |
Which, we need a diversity of POV, I think, on this show. | |
I'm not in the same country as you, you know? | |
Exactly! | |
I would probably have a different perspective if I did! | |
The fact that you know as much about my country as you do is crazy! | |
And I'm so grateful! | |
But, Jacob Chansley, I mean... | |
Saying that he did a hit of mescaline like I think he might be a recovery. | |
I don't know like If anything, I would hope that Russell would, like, go to bat for a dude that might be intentionally sober. | |
And maybe I'm talking at a turn, but from my memory, like, yeah, he's one of them high on life guys, man. | |
High on life guys tend to take it pretty seriously. | |
Wasn't he straight edge or something? | |
Wasn't he no nothing? | |
No caffeine, no anything? | |
Because I know that he had a difficult, you know, upbringing, right? | |
And, I mean, it makes sense for, you know, people to have a hard time and then come through it with recovery. | |
I just, of all things, Like, Russell would- I would hope that Russell would go to- I mean, maybe Russell doesn't know. | |
Obviously, that's- I'm not even hoping I remember correctly, but like, saying he took a hit at masculine is like, that's just not nice to say. | |
I don't- I mean, I don't like the guy- He is too busy. | |
Russell is too busy with a mouth full of testicles to be able to push back on any of this. | |
So there we go. | |
That's probably why we're getting the silence, you know. | |
And notice the camera is only looking at Tucker during these long shots as well, you know. | |
Who knows? | |
How dare I be sensitive and thoughtful, even for a person I don't agree with? | |
Who the fuck am I? | |
God damn, that's nuts. | |
It's fair to say you are a little bit kinder than either of these individuals. | |
Let's put it gently. | |
Next up, Tucker immediately fails at his whole not being a hater shtick. | |
And to put Jacob Chansley, an American citizen, a Navy veteran, in jail for years after he was let into the Senate chamber? | |
By uniformed Capitol Hill police officers, and then I play that, and I'm the bad guy? | |
Fuck you! | |
Like, what do you make of that? | |
I'm sorry, it makes me mad just thinking about it. | |
I said I wasn't going to be a hater. | |
That makes me mad. | |
Yeah. | |
And I see people on other channels, it's outrageous! | |
He's trying to minimize January 6th. | |
Well, but what, this guy went to prison! | |
Went to prison! | |
You ever been to prison? | |
Only for visits. | |
Right, okay! | |
It's not very nice. | |
You don't want to go to prison to take a man's freedom away and call him all these names for something he didn't do and then show no remorse at all when you are exposed to have lied about it. | |
As a human being who was locked away in a prison, it's an outrage to me. | |
He pled guilty. | |
He pled guilty. | |
That is it. | |
He pled guilty to the crimes that there is footage of him committing. | |
Done. | |
Fuck your outrage, Tucker. | |
That's it. | |
Yeah, if you're, like, the Innocence Project can help you out with people you should be outraged about. | |
Right. | |
Jacob Chansley, one of them. | |
Right. | |
Sorry. | |
Right. | |
That is it. | |
That is it. | |
In this next clip, apparently Tucker thinks the FBI can't have access to people's bank accounts in the course of an investigation for some reason. | |
The total capture of our banks, for example, by the FBI in the wake of January 6th is completely shocking to any civil libertarian. | |
You can't call my bank and find out what I spent money on. | |
You don't have a warrant. | |
What? | |
That's not allowed under our Constitution. | |
But they did it because it was an insurrection. | |
Okay. | |
So, you know, I don't know, I can't even guess as the mechanics of January 6th. | |
Did the many federal agents in the crowd do this? | |
Did they go along with it? | |
I don't know the answer and I'm not going to speculate. | |
But I know in the aftermath of January 6th, that event was used by predators in our political sphere to increase their power and to disempower the population they supposedly serve. | |
And I'm very offended by that. | |
Not because I'm some crazed populist, I'm not. | |
I don't want to burn anything down. | |
I'm, like, very temperamentally conservative. | |
I like to build things, not break them. | |
But you can't look at me with a straight face and tell me you're defending democracy when you get JPMorgan to go through my credit card statements. | |
You're lying. | |
That's my only point. | |
You're lying. | |
Yes, it is a good point. | |
You're spinning me up, man! | |
Fucking hell, Bran's interview skills are just the absolute worst. | |
Yes, it is a good point. | |
Oh my God. | |
Well, I think Russell knows, and you can see it on his face in real time, like, oh, that's bullshit. | |
Like, I don't even know where to pick, where my foothold is in this statement to agree with you. | |
Cause like, well, this all stinks to high heaven and I'm, I'm full of shit, but you're, oof, buddy, I can't. | |
Masterclass. | |
Yeah, he's like, I don't need, like, that looked like a, I'm searching for anything to agree with you about, because that, that was wild. | |
And you got sued. | |
Like, that doesn't seem like a person who was like, Oh, I agree. | |
It was like, um, he was grasping at straws in that moment. | |
I would as well, if that were my job. | |
My God. | |
So I've mentioned how deferential Russell is to Tucker. | |
I'm going to play this next clip for you and I want you to note how quiet Brand is, how much he just lets Tucker ramble. | |
And while watching it, hold in your mind the interview we covered with Dawkins. | |
How Dawkins was barely able to get a word in edgeways. | |
It always appears that there is a sort of an invisible hand guiding these events, guiding the conversation, amplifying certain voices, diminishing others, and it always appears to somehow benefit centralist, authoritarian institutions, be they governmental, corporate, or financial. | |
Anti-human! | |
And war does it especially, and if I can, and if you'll pardon me, and I don't mean this as criticism of your country, which I love, but I've spent the last week in England, and I've driven all around, It's nice, isn't it? | |
It's beyond belief how pretty it is. | |
But one thing that just, I can't get over, is the stark change, the stark change in architecture between 1939, when you all entered the war, after the invasion of Poland, and 1945 when you, quote, won. | |
Okay? | |
Architecture changed completely, and it went from designs that complemented the landscape around them, and local material, you know, used in ways to, I think, elevate the human spirit, to a kind of architecture that clearly hates people, that is designed to oppress the human spirit and make people feel without value, worthless. | |
And that is ugly and disposable and made out of materials that are not worthy to be lived in, that are disgusting. | |
And you see that not just in England, but also in the United States. | |
Pre-war, as you well know, is a selling point for apartments in New York for a reason. | |
Everything changed with the war. | |
And there's something about war that changes people in a very, very deep way, down to the architecture, which is an expression of how we feel about each other. | |
The buildings that we build to house our fellow man say a lot about how we feel about our fellow man. | |
In my view. | |
And after the Second World War, I mean, it completely changed and it became very aggressively anti-people. | |
Like, what kind of person could come up with brutalist architecture? | |
Or it's many tributaries, and there are many. | |
Brutalism is just the most obvious one, but all architecture post-war is really kind of brutalist, actually. | |
He doesn't know what that word means. | |
What are you saying when you build a building like that? | |
You're saying that the people who occupy the building are worth nothing. | |
That's what you're saying. | |
Whereas you drive through the Cotswolds and people in the pre-industrial age with no electricity and no machines built buildings that are still standing and true to this day using local limestone and thatch. | |
And the result was beautiful. | |
And by the way, I'm not just saying this as an Anglo, whose ancestors lived in this country, I'm saying this just as a human being. | |
I think if you brought someone from the streets of Tokyo to the Cotswolds and said, what do you think of that building? | |
He would say, that's beautiful. | |
Because beauty is inherent. | |
Every person recognizes beauty. | |
Okay? | |
It's not culturally specific, actually. | |
A Shinto temple in Kyoto, I recognize it immediately as beautiful. | |
Because it is. | |
Because it's It's consistent with the symmetry of nature. | |
But the war changed. | |
The war always does that. | |
War makes people less human. | |
It hurts them in some deep way. | |
The survivors I'm talking about. | |
Even the ones whose legs weren't blown off. | |
Not a single interjection from Russell here yet. | |
That was bat shit! | |
I understand you have some thoughts, Lauren. | |
Care to share? | |
So, political me is already pissed, but then he pissed off art me? | |
I told you, he was going to come for you in ways that would surprise you. | |
Russell! | |
No, I'm sorry, not Russell. | |
Tucker! | |
Russell! | |
Say something. | |
Tucker! | |
Say something, fucking hell. | |
Anything! | |
Like, anything. | |
I mean... Things are ugly, because we invented plastic! | |
We invented plastic! | |
And shit's ugly now! | |
That's just a fact! | |
There's that, and also, in the UK specifically... It's the most simple way I can explain it! | |
Like, across cultures, we made plastic, and everything sucks! | |
In the UK, I'm aware the US didn't really experience this from World War Two, but we got bombed quite a lot. | |
Consequently, we had a bit of a problem where we had a lot of people who didn't have houses anymore and we needed to put lots of people in places that they could live and in as cheap and quick a way as possible. | |
So what we did is we built these ugly square blocks of things and big rectangular things, you know, that sure aren't pretty. | |
Lots of people dislike brutalist architecture. | |
I don't think you can. | |
It's modernism. | |
There's a whole aesthetic. | |
It's not just brutalist. | |
That's just a word that sounds mean and bad so he'll use it. | |
Yeah, it wasn't even, there wasn't that intention behind it. | |
It was, this is economically the thing that we can afford to do. | |
This is the thing that makes the most sense. | |
And folks still tried to inject style where they could. | |
Sure. | |
Even in that. | |
And I will say, in America? | |
Way less than in Europe. | |
It's just a fact. | |
Like, if you want to see ugly-ass architecture, we got you beat. | |
We're talking about, you know, building things post-war when... I mean, this country didn't stop using rations until, I think it was at least the mid-50s. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
You know, we were not fucking rich after having the shit blown out of us and having to fund armies traipsing across Europe. | |
You know, it's... Americans have no concept All of what quote-unquote wartime looks like. | |
We don't have a fucking clue. | |
We had rationing. | |
We absolutely mobilized. | |
It was not the same. | |
Wartime happens somewhere else. | |
That's the difference. | |
It's very different when it is on your front door. | |
Yeah. | |
Or it blows your front door up. | |
We don't have that. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
Absolutely. | |
That's outrageous. | |
I just... He's completely fucking ignorant about this country and its history. | |
He is the most profoundly American American. | |
I agree with that entirely. | |
So in the next clip, Tucker and Brand agree to a point that is incredibly bizarre to watch. | |
It's interesting to me how often you appear to be referring to the ulterior energetic force, emotion or essence of a thing, i.e. | |
that beauty could perhaps be the manifestation of love. | |
I've obviously myself observed many times that municipal and state buildings were once plainly an expression of a contract between the people and their government of a good faith relationship. | |
I just thought that! | |
I just thought that! | |
I walked up with my wife in the rain on a village hall in an Eastlitch town in the Cotswolds, and the village hall was so beautiful. | |
And I thought, whoever built that cared about the people. | |
It was built by the people who live there for the people who live there, and they loved the people who lived there because they were related to them or knew them. | |
And that hall, I mean, it was built by peasants without machines! | |
Yes. | |
Yes. | |
Are you creeped out? | |
Because I'm creeped out. | |
Yes! | |
That was a little much. | |
Right? | |
Also, here's the thing. | |
I can't come for somebody that's being emphatic. | |
That's not my... | |
I don't know. | |
I think you can in this case, because it's so fucking strange. | |
Yeah, but I get upset about retractable dog leashes, so I'm not going to come from in that one instance. | |
Fair enough. | |
I will. | |
Especially when it's so fucking out of character for Tucker. | |
I also know I didn't have to. | |
East Leech Village Hall, by the way, is a fairly nice building, but it was originally | |
built as part of an estate, and that building was later given to the village as a reading | |
room which then later became the village hall. | |
So it was actually built for some rich bastard, which is why it's pretty. | |
Most village halls in this country are rectangular buildings with a roof, and if you're lucky, some windows, because they're paid for by the local council, whose budgets can't afford pretty. | |
So there. | |
Well, yeah, it's that or it used to be a church. | |
So yeah, the people with the most money had the prettiest buildings. | |
Yeah, we don't have many village halls that are former churches, unfortunately. | |
That'd be nice, but no. | |
Well, yeah, y'all don't have the same church problem either, so... | |
We have different church problems. | |
A different church problem! | |
I know, that's so weird. | |
It's so funny. | |
So yeah, he's completely off on that, you know, it was built for the people who live here, by the people. | |
No, it fucking wasn't. | |
It was built for some rich asshole. | |
Yeah, but do you want nice city halls? | |
Pay your fucking taxes! | |
What do you think is gonna happen? | |
They don't just grow out of the ground! | |
You have to pay for the building! | |
If you want a nice building, you have to pay for it! | |
Get the fuck out of here! | |
That's crazy! | |
This is the other thing. | |
The reason most village halls are not pretty is because they're paid for by the local council, who don't have any money. | |
You need to give your local governments and governments money, which neither of you want to do. | |
Yeah, the City Hall in St. | |
Louis, where I'm from, is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. | |
Because St. | |
Louis used to have a lot of money that they spent on beautiful buildings. | |
That building should be condemned, but everybody likes it too much, so they still get their driver's license pictures there. | |
But like, it's a gorgeous building, and if St. | |
Louis would still put money back into its infrastructure. | |
It could stay gorgeous. | |
We could have really beautiful public buildings. | |
But like, missing the forest for the trees, y'all! | |
It's crazy! | |
Yeah, right. | |
So, Brand wouldn't be Brand without throwing in an advertisement in the most jarring way possible. | |
So, in the middle of this interview, we get a segment of ads. | |
What? | |
Okay. | |
First up is an ad for Brand's most recent comedy special, Brandemic. | |
It's been a weird couple of years, let's face it. | |
(upbeat music) | |
This is the COVID-19 timeline. | |
January, 2020, patients in Wuhan are infected with a new form of coronavirus. | |
I remember that bit, I remember thinking, who gives a (beep) shit? | |
Tell me when it gets to a point in China I'm (beep) hurt, then I might start caring. | |
Listen! | |
(audience laughing) | |
How much (beep) it's (beep) | |
What on a f***ing bat do you need before you start understanding science? | |
Yeah, but... What? | |
But... What? | |
Well it's just over here the Wuhan Institute of Virology where they're doing | |
gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses! | |
Yeah um hilarious uh I play this mostly to illustrate that this comedy special looks like shit, but also to announce that- It really doesn't look great. | |
No, it doesn't. | |
It gives very, like, lecture at a university hall that you haven't heard of, kind of. | |
Yeah, these are the funny bits. | |
This is the sizzle reel, right? | |
But also, I wanted to announce that as one of our upcoming stretch goals, we will be covering this once we get to $300 per month. | |
And we'll be covering it with clips from the show and hopefully with at least one comedian or former comedian guest to not only dissect the bullshit in the content, but also the actual effectiveness of Brand's comedy. | |
It'll be a two-pronged attack and we'll hate every second. | |
It'll be awful, can't wait. | |
It'll be terrible, I really... You guys can do this to us! | |
Yeah, yeah, and I'm quite sure you will. | |
You have the power. | |
I'd say I'm excited, but... | |
The real dichotomy of emotions, honestly. | |
Oh my god, I love it! | |
I hate it! | |
Thank you, this is terrible. | |
So there were a few other ads in this segment. | |
He knew this was going to be a big one, so he just shoved them all in there. | |
I cut most of them out, but I'm including this next one because I nearly fell out of my seat when I heard it. | |
Is it me or does the future feel more insecure and uncertain? | |
Wars, pandemics, lies, trickery, my cats keep having kittens, the last one's personal. | |
For those who are in the United States, there is a way to secure your hard-earned nest egg. | |
American Heart for Gold make it easy to protect your savings and retirement accounts with physical gold and silver. | |
With one phone call they can have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or inside a qualifying retirement account like your IRA or 401k. | |
Oh, that's right! | |
Brand is in the gold game. | |
Yeah. | |
The classic gold game. | |
We've seen Alex Jones hawking for literal decades, and Brand has gotten in on it. | |
Grifter bingo! | |
Yes! | |
Yeah, right? | |
Oh, man. | |
Wowie wow wow. | |
Okay. | |
So the buying gold itself isn't inherently messed up, but what is are the various claims used to sell said gold that often can't be backed up by the actual market value of the thing. | |
And the blatant fear-mongering surrounding it, um, as we've just watched. | |
Uh, so, you know, such as saying, you know, the economy's gonna collapse, but if you have physical gold, even if you never lay eyes on it, that's safe as houses. | |
Yeah, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, Yep. | |
Bram's in on the gold there. | |
It's great! | |
Oh, I feel like we just won a gross, weird prize. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
God. | |
So anyway, but back to the interview. | |
And Brand actually asks a question. | |
I needed that. | |
Thank you. | |
Worth asking? | |
Yeah, no, no, no. | |
I couldn't leave that out. | |
I couldn't. | |
No, what a gift. | |
I appreciate you. | |
Well yeah, Brand asks a question that is worth asking. | |
Now that we're deeply embedded in Rumble, why the hell did you leave Fox? | |
Tell us the truth! | |
What are you not permitted to say? | |
Tell us! | |
Tell us! | |
So do you think they sacked you because of Jan 6? | |
Do you think they sacked you because you're too anti-establishment, too anti-war? | |
Tell us. | |
I honestly don't know. | |
I will say, you know, my views changed dramatically over the course of 20 years. | |
As I've said many times, I was a kind of half-hearted booster of the war in Iraq, which is hard to believe. | |
But, you know, that was in 2003. | |
And so my views for the last 20 years have been, and I realized, and I repented of that, and I feel sick even thinking about it now. | |
Yeah, so there was nothing even remotely half-hearted about Tucker's support of the Iraq War. | |
He would call anyone who didn't support the war cowards who didn't support the United States, and would border on calling them treasonous. | |
He was one of the most vocal and full-throated supporters of that war, and I'm not going to accept his rewriting of history. | |
He has since apologized for and walked that back a few months ago, I think. | |
I don't really give a shit. | |
That's extremely cowardly. | |
That's the I'd say peak cowardly moment. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
To walk those views back. | |
You're 20 years late, and quite a few dollars short, so fuck off. | |
So there could be a myriad of reasons that Tucker was fired, between the Dominion lawsuit, racist text messages, and mounting legal costs for a lot of claims he made in his show that counted as defamation, but my personal belief is that it was the text calling his audience morons and elaborating on how much he hated covering Trump that did it. | |
That's where I stand. | |
He showed his ass to his audience in those texts that he believed would always remain private and there was no quick way to come back from that. | |
But, you know, that's just my take. | |
Well, from what we know, I mean, and also like polling data, blah, blah, whatever. | |
But like, it doesn't feel like his audience was particularly penetrable in their own mind palaces. | |
Kind of sounds like they could get in trouble for the Jason. | |
Mm-hmm. | |
Here's the thing. | |
We'll never know because New York can fire. | |
Like in New York, you can fire people for any reason. | |
You don't have to give a reason. | |
That's an at-will state, right? | |
Yeah. | |
It's another at-will state, which most states in the Union at this point are, which is bad. | |
It's a very, very, very bad thing. | |
But that's also, yeah, we lack transparency in that regard. | |
So even Tucker doesn't. | |
Maybe they never told him. | |
They don't have to. | |
Legally. | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
I could believe that. | |
I could believe that. | |
Yeah. | |
I mean, it was quick. | |
It's crazy, but they did it. | |
In the next clip, Tucker nails down the reason he thinks he was fired. | |
But my views have remained pretty much the same for the last 20 years. | |
They've evolved, you know, as things have changed. | |
But in general, I've been skeptical of the storylines and all kinds of different things. | |
And I certainly was for the 14 years I was at Fox. | |
And they were always, they didn't agree with me, of course, I don't think, but they were always very nice to me and they always let me say what I wanted. | |
Not one time did they tell me not to say anything. | |
So I was always grateful to Fox and I am in retrospect grateful to Fox for that. | |
So that never changed up until the moment they called me and said, you know, we're taking the show off the air. | |
And so I can only speculate. | |
I know, but I do think as a general matter, not even about me, the war in Ukraine is a red line for For a lot of people in business and politics. | |
Ah, so he was fired because of his coverage of the Ukraine war, apparently. | |
That's so stupid. | |
I know. | |
Which Russell said when we covered his Tucker coverage the first time. | |
Yeah, for being anti-war was Russell's perspective, which is complete bollocks. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
And notice also as well that Tucker just said, when I got the call that they were taking the show off the air, they didn't even give him a face-to-face meeting. | |
They just called him up and were like, nope, bye. | |
I mean, it's kind of fun. | |
For me. | |
In my heart. | |
I mean, I don't feel bad. | |
I don't feel bad for him, but it's like, ugh. | |
God, they didn't even respect you enough to call you into the office. | |
That's... Okay, well, let's hear a little bit more about his take on Ukraine. | |
And you see it in our politics in the U.S., where the leaders of the Republican Party in the Congress, who really are repulsive in my view, are now supporting sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. | |
Ukraine is losing the war, obviously. | |
The United States could, and Ukrainians are dying in huge numbers, and the country's being destroyed. | |
And so the U.S. | |
could force a peace like tonight. | |
They could. | |
Uniquely, they have that power. | |
And they won't. | |
And they're continuing to allow Ukrainians to be killed and the country to be devastated. | |
So, I don't know their motive. | |
I can only guess. | |
But I know that if you criticize that, they really are intent on making you be quiet. | |
The version of peace that he's saying the U.S. | |
could force tonight is Ukraine laying down arms and letting Russia do whatever they want. | |
That is the only form of peace the U.S. | |
could force, and that is what Tucker wants. | |
So does Brand, of course. | |
Instead, he's saying that the U.S. | |
are allowing the country to be devastated and Ukrainians to be killed. | |
To which I'd say, killed by whom? | |
Who is it that's doing the killing, Tucker, and why? | |
Oh, it's Russia, isn't it? | |
Maybe we should deal with the murderers rather than blaming the dead people for getting killed, eh? | |
I'd also like to push back on assertions that either side is winning this war, but Russia especially have been dealt some pretty fucking heavy blows over the last few weeks, so... Yeah, I mean, that whole Wagner Group debacle doesn't look like It's not good for Russia. | |
Not good for Putin. | |
So this next clip, Tucker just takes everything Brand says at face value it seems. | |
With the pandemic being reframed in such a short period of time, and with this cultural amnesia always being... Has it been reframed? | |
In a sense it has, like we now know that there are no clinical trials for transmission, that 96% of people are asymptomatic. | |
cannot spread the disease, that they were considerable, like the myocarditis, all of | |
that, the lockdowns didn't work. You're making me feel bad for getting all those shots. The | |
six feet to ten feet was arbitrary, and now we're looking, and now already we're being | |
invited to kind of forget that that sort of happened. | |
So all of what Brandt said there is bullshit that we've covered before. | |
It's literally all nonsense. | |
But it's fascinating that firstly, that Tucker admits to being vaccinated and further just seems to be like, oh yeah, no questions here. | |
Oh, they've all lied about it. | |
Okay. | |
I'll just, whatever you say. | |
All those shots. | |
Okay. | |
All those shots. | |
That means he was first in fucking line. | |
This is it, this is it. | |
I'm willing to bet he has boosted up the wazoo. | |
No questions, no questions. | |
I do wonder about his position on vaccines, like I said. | |
The cultural amnesia shit. | |
Fuck off. | |
That's literally your project right now. | |
This is an abusive relationship and I don't appreciate it. | |
That's Russell's whole shtick. | |
In this next clip, Brand asks a very specific question, but the answer from Tucker is quite different and his response is almost Brand-esque. | |
And with Biden inadvertently saying Iraq instead of Ukraine, do you feel that these kind of Freudian errors are simply because in time we will regard this conflict in the way we regarded Iraq? | |
This is not to say I'm not sympathetic towards Ukrainian people, but that it was primarily motivated by the interests of the military. | |
Industrial Complex, the stated plan for BlackRock to rebuild Ukraine in a comparable way that Halliburton were able to exploit the conflict in Iraq, and indeed a secondary agenda to diminish Russia's capacity to be a superpower on the world stage. | |
Do you think these things will become explicit and broadly accepted? | |
And in a similar way, the people that have been rallying for war using peculiar tropes that we always assume to be of the right of patriotism and a lack of alliance, do you think that those people will undergo some kind of reckoning, Tucker? | |
I hope so. | |
I mean, the key to joy and wisdom is admitting that you're not God. | |
That is, that is the key. | |
That's the key to life, in my opinion. | |
Admitting you're not God. | |
And if you can't do that, you are doomed. | |
Because you're not God, by the way. | |
That's a fact that you can't change. | |
You are not God. | |
Okay. | |
Period. | |
Breaking news for me. | |
There he said it pretty hard, that one. | |
That's the moment. | |
That's my take home. | |
Oh, okay. | |
Well, that's it. | |
I'm out! | |
I mean, do you think he just wasn't listening to the question? | |
Like, what? | |
He just completely fucking just... | |
You're not God. | |
That was gloopy. | |
These girls are having fun at their slumber party. | |
Right. | |
Right. | |
And maybe avoid telling someone with a well-documented God complex that they're not God if you want to be friends with them. | |
I've little doubt that if anyone but Tucker had said this, Brand would have pushed back with his, oh, but we are all God, spiel, which would have reaffirmed his sense of grandeur. | |
Well, no, he's like, no, I'm out. | |
If we gotta admit we're not God, bye, I'm out. | |
Whether he meant it that way or not, he was like, too rich for my blood! | |
Yeah, not takin' it. | |
Not takin' it. | |
I am Jesus, I am God, I am everything. | |
You may not be God, but... Sign up to my locals, Tucker. | |
Sign up to my locals. | |
Let's meditate together. | |
Let's do some fuckin' yoga. | |
In the next clip. | |
So there's a bit of a habit of Brand telling on himself every now and then in this show. | |
Tucker decides to take this to a new extreme. | |
It's essential to happiness and to honesty to admit when you're wrong. | |
And it's so freeing. | |
I mean, it's the basis of the recovery movement. | |
I realized I was powerless. | |
And I just have lived that and I understand very well, personally, the human impulse to hide being wrong. | |
No one wants to admit being wrong because in so doing you admit you lack the power that you pretended that you had. | |
But I just find it so liberating. | |
I was wrong. | |
I thought this, it turned out not to be true. | |
I was wrong. | |
I didn't know. | |
I am not God. | |
Once you say that, everything, then you realize there's nothing to be afraid of. | |
By the way, everybody already knows what you're lying about. | |
People know who you are. | |
I tell my children this all the time. | |
You think you're getting away with it. | |
I'm secretly whatever it is. | |
Everybody knows. | |
And they love you anyway, or they hate you anyway. | |
It doesn't matter. | |
We know because we can smell. | |
We're like dogs. | |
We know who the other person is instantly. | |
You're wrong about everything, you wallpaper-paced Nazi, you human wingtip. | |
You've been wrong about so many things, I was wrong are literally the only words that should come out of your mouth until the inevitable heat death of the universe. | |
And his wrongy-ness is so obvious to anyone that looks at it that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid. | |
Like, yeah. | |
Yeah, man. | |
Yes. | |
You're obviously a liar. | |
Yes, yes. | |
It's so hard to listen to you talk because it's all lies. | |
I have to reconfigure my listen brain To understand, okay, right, everything he says is a lie, and not because I think that. | |
When I look into anything, I'm like, oh, that's fucking super not true, crazy. | |
And then you see that people are saying untrue stuff enough, you start to put it together. | |
It's really... | |
I noticed your eyebrows raised a little bit when he mentioned recovery. | |
I was curious, too, because I was like, is Tucker an addict? | |
Or is he pandering? | |
The only thing I could find was that he had surgery a year or two ago and was kind of super into the pain meds that he was given and was like, oh, I understand opioid addicts now a bit. | |
That's not recovery though. | |
No, he's never been to rehab or anything like that. | |
The only thing I could find to do with Tucker Carlson and rehab was a satirical piece about him going to rehab for telling the truth too much and that he'll get back to just telling pure lies after his stint in rehab. | |
So, yeah, yeah. | |
Complete, complete bollocks. | |
Next up, we learn that Tucker doesn't respect himself. | |
And I hope people who are wrong about COVID can take the life-affirming path of admitting the dignity preserving. | |
When you admit you're wrong, you actually preserve your dignity. | |
When you continue to lie, you lose your dignity. | |
People don't get that. | |
They think it's the opposite. | |
Oh, I have to... No, I was... Actually, I was kind of... Stop the bullshit. | |
We all know. | |
Admit it and become fully human. | |
Then you can respect yourself. | |
How can you respect yourself if you're lying? | |
You can't. | |
If he truly believes that, it is impossible for him to respect himself in any way. | |
I was, I was alive. | |
I'm dead. | |
I've died. | |
I'm an ex-Lauren. | |
I'm, I can't, what? | |
Table flip. | |
Kick a hole in the wall. | |
What am I supposed to do with what I just watched? | |
Like, I can't... Oh, boy. | |
Just... Okay! | |
It's denying reality to a pretty extreme extent. | |
Learn how to hear narcissists! | |
The really effective ones sound super slick. | |
This is an excellent example. | |
Of what, like, alarm bells should be going off, and what he's saying is so close to the truth. | |
That's, I feel like, what Russell, like, compared to Alex, what we're familiar with. | |
Alex is a wingnut, and Russell, I think people might classify him as a wingnut, but I don't think that's true. | |
They're way, and Tucker, they just, they scoot way closer to the truth. | |
Which to me is way more insulting and insidious. | |
Yes, it's much more insidious, much more difficult to combat as well. | |
That made me question for the first time ever, does Tucker believe what he says? | |
I've never thought that once in my life. | |
But watching him, I think that that's a lie detector test he could pass and I don't know how. | |
No, he knows he's full of shit. | |
Right! | |
But that was a good spiel! | |
There's no way that he doesn't know. | |
Like he doesn't know that his show is racist. | |
I forgot to include this fucking clip, actually. | |
Did you see, I think it was a couple of years ago, one of the writers from Carlson's show... Oh yeah, he's a full-on Nazi. | |
Full on Nazi on the message boards and everything else. | |
I remember that quite well. | |
And Tucker worked with this guy for decades, so there's no fucking way that you work with this guy and don't know that he's a racist piece of shit. | |
That you work closely with a writer on your shows. | |
Reward that writer handsomely for their work. | |
Well, I guess then what I'm wondering is, like, what's in his brain that lets him have that spiel pop out? | |
Like, what compartments? | |
You know, like, how is he recycling? | |
Yeah, what part of his brain is telling him that the things he's doing is fine? | |
Yeah, that's... It's shocking to see. | |
It's a different side that I don't want to. | |
I hate him. | |
But it's interesting to see. | |
It's not comfortable seeing the totality of this guy. | |
I hope it comes through for listeners as well as watchers. | |
Watching is kind of another layer to it, I think. | |
I'm slightly envious of listeners in a way, because you don't have to look at his fucking mug. | |
You know, his constant smirk and occasional frown and fucking, oh! | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
I feel like I just, I'm afraid of coming, I'm not afraid of coming across as dramatic. | |
OK, never a day in my life. | |
Do I have the luxury of being afraid of that? | |
What if I could? | |
But I just, I wonder. | |
How? | |
Because it is different if you're just hearing it versus watching it and hearing it. | |
And so I just I do wonder if there is something that he can get away with by like where where does he get away with like what he what? | |
Mm. | |
Where is the, like, the friction point of the lies and stuff that I wonder if it's easier if you're not looking at them? | |
I don't know. | |
I mean, sound off. | |
Let us know. | |
I'm very interested to see if there's a difference for y'all, because, like, obviously I will have already watched it. | |
So from personal experience, I do find it much easier not having to look at them. | |
I'll say that, you know, the Knowledge Fight guys have covered some of Tucker's stuff so far. | |
And I will say, you know, I've also had to look at some of it because Brand covers it pretty much every show that Tucker does. | |
So, you know, I've had to look at it, and I've gotta say, I definitely prefer listening to watching, because there's just something about that guy's fucking face. | |
It's outrageous. | |
It's the worst. | |
Yeah. | |
I think it's all the lies that come out of it. | |
It's bad. | |
It's definitely got something to do with it. | |
It's definitely got something to do with it. | |
But there is just something that makes me want to give him a slap. | |
I don't know. | |
I don't know what. | |
I don't know what. | |
But there's just something. | |
And I feel like he inspires that feeling in a lot of people. | |
Oh, I admit that wholeheartedly. | |
Yes. | |
Yeah. | |
The next clip, we get into a small section that is just two guys smoking weed and talking shit. | |
For those watching, pay particular attention to Tucker's face and how enthralled he is by brand here. | |
This is, I believe, the undergirding idea of perennialism by Aldous Huxley, where he contrasts various theologies and notes that the primary idea, whether it's in the Vedas or coming from Meister Eckhart, is this transcendence of self. | |
The acknowledgement that this vessel, this idea, this synaptic crash of self, this mess of memory and projection can be transcended through and via a connection to God. | |
And this, I was wrong. | |
Ultimately becomes, I was irrelevant. | |
The rustleness is irrelevant. | |
There is a way through this. | |
There is a pathway. | |
The denial of this transcendence, or even this imminent relationship with a higher power, a higher force, defines our age of materialism, rationalism. | |
All things can be measured in ways. | |
This is why you have lumpen and brutal block buildings, abundant, and an annihilation of elegant thatch. | |
strewn across the countryside because there is a denial of beauty, there is a denial of God. | |
Yes! | |
And I feel that when- Because they're challenges to our power. | |
Yeah dude, they're challenges to our power. | |
Whoa, don't bugger out that man. | |
Yeah, he's just all in on Bran at this stage. | |
It's a fucking weird thing to watch. | |
I just feel myself almost making the same face because I was just trying to follow what Russell was saying. | |
Yeah, it's like, my eyes were, I was like, uh, what? | |
Where were you? | |
Okay. | |
The things that Brand was saying are complete bollocks, but it was fascinating to watch. | |
It was kind of funny, yeah. | |
Well, and also like... Yeah, I get what he's saying. | |
I'm not even gonna... Moving on. | |
So next, Russell makes a point that goes way over his head. | |
In a way, people want feudal power. | |
People want total power. | |
I want absolute dominion over my life. | |
But there now is, of course, a tendency to mask this intention. | |
The idea that this is for your security. | |
This is for your safety. | |
We are trying to help you. | |
This is what sort of busted me up, Tucker, during that whole... Just goose-stepped for me! | |
Stop lying! | |
What's the big deal? | |
We just marched through Nuremberg! | |
Totally true though! | |
I'm more comfortable with just put on a uniform and point a gun at me. | |
Stop telling me it's for my own good you're lying. | |
Like I know that's not true. | |
Well, authoritarianism necessarily had to become veiled. | |
Those kind of optics of the rallies and the flags was identifiably a problem. | |
But the urge and the will to power has remained consistent. | |
I suppose in a sense where we appear to align very strongly is we don't like being told what to do, that we're willing to surrender, willing to learn, willing to take on new ideas. | |
Rallies and flags! | |
They're a problem! | |
Rallies and flags. | |
Does it make you think of anyone in particular? | |
And yet, Brand is seemingly oblivious to the thing he just said. | |
And Tucker's like, of course, of course. | |
Well, you know what? | |
They don't live in America. | |
He doesn't live in America. | |
Russell doesn't live in America. | |
No, but I mean even over here. | |
I'm making the biggest fucking excuse I've made for him yet. | |
This is someone who ardently defends and obfuscates for Trump, so I don't think you need to give him an out in any shape or form. | |
He doesn't have a leg to stand on. | |
That rallies and flags are passe and not politically effective is bonk. | |
I don't know how to address that. | |
He was saying the kind of presentation of it, you know, kind of wrapping authoritarianism in rallies and flags as is necessary to kind of to mask it is a problem. | |
And I'm like, well, Yeah, you're the guy that you keep supporting. | |
Yeah, it's a fucking problem. | |
I'm in agreement with you. | |
It's just you are completely oblivious to who you're talking about. | |
Yeah, what? | |
Like, my brain even took that interlude somewhere different because, like, rallies and flags are... Okay, all right. | |
Rallies and flags are a problem. | |
Yeah! | |
It's obviously... okay. | |
And he's saying, oh yeah, authoritarianism is what always gets wrapped up in these rallies and flags, and yet doesn't seem to acknowledge that that's Trump. | |
That's entirely what the guy is about. | |
And even Tucker is like, well yeah, of course. | |
Doesn't even bat a fucking eyelid. | |
Also, both of them are perfectly happy being told what to do, as long as it's by someone they like. | |
If RFK Jr. | |
got into office tomorrow, they'd both be perfectly happy doing whatever that lunatic mandated. | |
It's complete nonsense. | |
Well, they wouldn't, though. | |
That's the thing. | |
They'd pretend that they would, until it actually happened, and then they'd bitch about the same shit. | |
I don't know. | |
We saw with Trump, you know, no one, I think all of his supporters, pretty much, including Trump himself, didn't expect him to win, and then they had to spend the next four years squirming about while they disagreed with the things he did, you know? | |
They'd pitch a fit until he publicly called their wife ugly, and then they would, like, Be cowed. | |
That's not really, like, that's not willingly. | |
I just, okay. | |
But like, they, yeah, you're right. | |
Well, I mean, you're right. | |
But it also gets old, like, they also still want, like, they still want a bitch. | |
Oh yeah, they'll bitch about something. | |
The classic thing that they did with Trump is instead of blaming him, it'd be like, oh no, it's all these people in the deep state, or it's all these people in his cabinet, they're the problem, or this general, or that fucking secretary, or whatever. | |
Yeah, exactly. | |
Yeah, exactly. | |
So, you know, there's always some. | |
Exactly. - He did what he wanted to. | |
Him and his family got in there and got their, they secured their bag. | |
And now he doesn't want to go to jail and that's why he's running again. | |
That's it. | |
Yeah. - That's it. | |
So, yeah. | |
In any case, next we delve a little deeper into one of Brand's core beliefs. | |
I did mention this earlier that we were going to get a little bit more specific. | |
So here we go. | |
There's nothing to suggest that the state of nation is a permanent one. | |
It's a relatively recent advent. | |
It's pretty plain that one of the ways that the cultural war can be continually leveraged, even issues where I imagine you have strong views, and indeed these are arguments that define your country, certainly more than mine, although everyone's affected by them. | |
Pro-gun versus gun control. | |
Pro-choice versus pro-life. | |
The identity politics issues. | |
Are we ever There's nothing in our evolution that would suggest we should live in countries of 300 million people all following a single credo. | |
Isn't it necessary and indeed obvious that this ulterior driving energy, be that through technology or different forms of identification. | |
I mean, imagine if like 2000 years ago, you'd grabbed someone from Iceland and someone from Sudan and someone from London and said, right, you lot, you're all the same, live together. | |
That's exactly right. | |
So what Brown seems to be getting at is we should all have small separate countries and communities based on our beliefs and cultural backgrounds and those things should not mix. | |
Which sounds a lot like isolationism to me and it also plays perfectly into Tucker's feelings on immigration and having to mix with brown people. | |
Also, people from different backgrounds have coexisted for literal millennia, particularly in enormous cities like London or New York, for instance, where there have been influxes of immigrants from all sorts of different backgrounds and communities. | |
As someone who lived in London, I can tell you, people get along just fine. | |
Well, also the notion that like, oh, that's so insane to throw all these different people together and then tell them to coexist. | |
Yeah, the Romans did that. | |
They did that. | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
It's not absurd. | |
It's, it was very common as an understanding that was probably more like egalitarian than, okay. | |
Yeah, and you know, there's also a big distinction about whether people are doing that voluntarily as well. | |
You know, if you move to a place and there are lots of people from different, you know, you expect that. | |
Yeah, it's a stupid fucking perspective. | |
This word choice in that moment was just completely wrong. | |
just up is down. Yeah, like wrong. But either way, we're getting into slightly more specifics | |
anyway, because he is thus far, he's mostly just been harping on about, you know, smaller communities, | |
smaller democracies, blah, blah, blah, without getting more specific. Whereas whereas now he's | |
saying, okay, you know, you can't expect, you know, the countries of 300 million, you know, | |
with all differing beliefs, etc. | |
You know, that's not natural. | |
That's not how we're supposed to be. | |
And so we, you know, we should all therefore have Yeah, smaller countries and communities based on our beliefs and cultural backgrounds. | |
Okay. | |
Yeah, like an ethnostate. | |
Like, to think that ethnostates are the solution. | |
Is as naive as Young Lauren's beige plan. | |
The beige plan won't actually work because people will still find ways to persecute each other, and ostracize each other, and abuse each other. | |
Out of the two, I'll take the beige plan. | |
I appreciate that. | |
I do feel like my plan is slightly better, but people will still find a reason! | |
And that's why an ethnostate is not the solution! | |
No. | |
No, no it is not. | |
In the simplest possible terms! | |
Yeah, I look forward to hearing this concept of brands develop. | |
So in the next clip, one of my current main fears is stayed, at least for now. | |
So, aren't we, isn't it obvious and necessary that what has to change is the nature of democracy itself? | |
And would you, and I guess, I imagine, I can guess, because you've said about, you know, shooting's a hobby of yours, you've already said that you are anti-abortion, would you be willing to, as it were, stand on an ideological if not political ticket with people that had opposite views on you when it came to like trans and raising kids trans and stuff like that? | |
If it meant that you and your community would be completely at liberty to raise your children and run your community how you wanted to. | |
Well, of course. | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah. | |
So, I mean, I have no plans to stand for office. | |
Is that the same as running for office? | |
Yeah, we stand. | |
You stand. | |
We run. | |
We're English. | |
I've come here. | |
Now, I'll be here for a while. | |
Simply elect me. | |
Hey! | |
Can I have some power? | |
America, we run as fast as we can. | |
Sprinting about, gathering up them donations. | |
But of course, and by the way, I mean, the real, like, the Tower of Babel didn't work for a reason. | |
That is commentary on, you know, written by the ancient Hebrews 3,000 years ago, but still a sort of deep commentary on people and how to organize a society. | |
And like, human differences, I said at the outset, people are united in their value. | |
I think their value, each person's value is identical because they're all created by the creator. | |
So Tucker isn't running for office. | |
At least not yet. | |
Thank fuck for that. | |
Given that Russell seems to be asking similar questions like this to idiots like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson as well, it does make me wonder whether he's planning some sort of super shithead political party in the back of his mind. | |
I'm not sure, but I'm... | |
Slightly concerned about the prospect of that. | |
Because it's definitely something he would do. | |
Definitely something he would do. | |
Maybe... I don't know, it sounds too hard. | |
He's such a coward. | |
It does, but also... Like he's such a coward. | |
But also think about how much money they could make. | |
Maybe. | |
You put Brand and Tucker and Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and all these fucking dickheads in the same party saying we want systemic change, give us money. | |
Yeah, they would have to share money. | |
They don't want to do that. | |
I don't know. | |
Yeah, they'd have to share money, but it would be a lot. | |
It would be a lot. | |
I think that it makes, I feel like, um, I think that it's obvious why they don't run for office. | |
Because, like, they don't have to disclose any of where they get their money from right now. | |
Yeah, right. | |
I mean, the politics, you kind of sort of kind of have to a little bit. | |
Like, I mean, most of the rules are completely destroyed in this country. | |
Citizens United. | |
But. | |
I feel like he would have already done it unless he really can't get the Twitter views up, in which case that might be. | |
Did you did you see how his numbers are looking, by the way? | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah, I saw that reposted and somebody said like de-platforming works, which is true. | |
Yes. | |
Yes, no, absolutely. | |
The announcement of his show was like 30 million views or something and now he's down to like 3 million. | |
There's been a gradual decline and it's pretty wild. | |
Well, because he's also using the Tower of Babel as his reasoning? | |
I don't know. | |
Did he just claim that that really happened and it was a Hebrew account of like history? | |
No, no, he says that it's- Or it was a fable. | |
It was a fable. | |
Yeah, it's analogous to things. | |
But also, could you not think of a more recent example? | |
No shit. | |
That's what I'm saying. | |
Of what you're thinking. | |
Just, you know, something that isn't 3,000 years old, maybe. | |
So yeah, at the end there, we're circling back to Tucker's supposed belief that everyone's equal as they're all made by the Creator to him. | |
And yet it feels like there's a but coming. | |
So let's finish the other half of Tucker's thought in this next clip. | |
But people are different. | |
They are. | |
I have four children. | |
They're not all the same, right? | |
People are different. | |
And they kind of live the way they want to live. | |
And it's sort of any effort to make them live In ways that you want them to live that they don't want to live like is doomed to Concentration camps kind of in the end like you need to use a lot of force to make people Change basic habits that they've decided they want so That suggests to me much smaller Administrative zones or countries or whatever you want to call them the problem is technology makes it really easy to manipulate huge groups of people Doesn't it? | |
From London, my driver's from Brazil. | |
A country I love. | |
It's very similar to the United States in a lot of ways. | |
And she's from Southern Brazil. | |
And I said, are there Brazilians in London? | |
Yeah, but most are from the north. | |
Do you see them? | |
No, I don't see them. | |
I don't, I don't trust them. | |
I don't like them. | |
Oh, they're from southern, they're from northern Brazil. | |
Okay. | |
And I said, well, why don't you split into two countries? | |
And she said, everybody wants to, but we can't because we've got a central government and it's not in their interest. | |
And I thought that's the story of a lot of the world. | |
It really is that like, I have a lot in common with my neighbors. | |
I lived on a street in Washington for many years where I had, I think everyone on the street voted differently from the way I vote. | |
We had, there were a bunch of different races on the street, and I felt like we had a lot in common. | |
And I think everyone on the street felt that way, but everyone else, because it was our street! | |
Do you know what I mean? | |
So like, we would have been a pretty good self-governing country of, you know, 11 houses or whatever in Northwest DC because we had this fundamental thing in common, which is geography. | |
Money! | |
Money? | |
Uh, so... | |
Yeah. | |
Massive gates. | |
I think you have those in common, too. | |
Massive, massive gates! | |
Yeah! | |
So, Tucker is all on board with small, homogenous countries, it seems. | |
As for Brazil wanting to split into two countries, there is a separatist movement, particularly in the South, but Tucker is grossly oversimplifying the issue. | |
We don't have time really to properly dissect South American politics at this stage, but suffice to say it's a little bit more complicated than, oh, everyone wants to split into two countries but the government won't let us. | |
In any case, I'd be really curious to know what Tucker's neighbors actually thought of him. | |
You could describe our civil war that way too, if you're really oversimplifying. | |
Yeah, I'd be really curious to know what Tucker's neighbors actually thought of him, especially those who were apparently non-white. | |
Don't forget! | |
Class solidarity! | |
Rich people are the best at class solidarity. | |
And that's exactly what he talked about, and I don't even think he knows to acknowledge it, because he's been Richie Rich his whole life. | |
He probably doesn't even see it. | |
Well, no, I don't think you can at that stage, can you? | |
Right, yeah. | |
His final suggestion there that geography is enough to unite people is nothing short of facile, and this next clip illustrates why. | |
And I do think ultimately we'll get back to that, because I think it's a much more natural way. | |
Loose alliances of small places is a much more natural way to govern, in my opinion. | |
But we're a long way from that. | |
And it seems that the homogeneity ultimately is driven by systems of dominion and the requirement for profit. | |
Exactly. | |
And that the ideology is secondary and its function is to create division. | |
That's its point. | |
Even when we as a team start talking about how do we talk to Tucker about trans issues, cultural issues, when we're talking about we say, oh, it's difficult, isn't it? | |
Like, you know, as soon as we start talking about trans athletes or Virtue signalling or positive affirmation. | |
It becomes, in a sense, it becomes divisive. | |
I don't know what's divisive about positive affirmation. | |
No. | |
But what if someone on Tucker's street was trans? | |
What then? | |
What if someone on his street was an Antifa supporter or dressed in drag? | |
All of a sudden his perfect little self-governing street falls the fuck apart. | |
And that's why we can't just fucking, you know, govern everything by geography, you moron. | |
He's also a fucking liar because it's just like the vaccine thing. | |
Because a trans person probably has lived on his street. | |
A drag queen probably has lived on his street. | |
And he's a coward. | |
So he would just be perfectly nice and polite. | |
And he might even invite him over for a brewski and a barbecue. | |
Yeah, yeah, probably. | |
And then he would say, hideous vitriol behind, that's why fucking Proud Boys and fucking Nazis cover their face in this country, because people don't, like, they don't want people to know how they really feel. | |
No, no, exactly. | |
Because there are consequences that they don't want to face. | |
And good, Proud Boys. | |
You keep fucking hiding, you miserable cunts. | |
Yeah, so, ridiculous. | |
Next up, Russell asks some questions from his Locals audience. | |
Okay, so here we are. | |
Is it possible for anyone left in the mainstream media to say what they think? | |
That's from At Lorna, who's one of our followers on Locals. | |
I can answer that really clearly, no. | |
I mean, you can within certain boundaries. | |
You know, like, you can be against Bud Light or for Bud Light or whatever, but you can't say, Ukraine is not a democracy, so stop saying we're fighting for democracy. | |
You cannot say that. | |
No one does. | |
Just before I launch into this, I do want to say I have noticed Tucker's gotten progressively redder throughout this interview, and has the small glisten of sweat on his top lip. | |
I do feel like Russell just runs his studio hot 'cause he's there nearly half naked, | |
whereas Tucker is in a suit. | |
You know, and that's, yeah. | |
He's suffering less than old Dawkins, for sure. | |
Oh, for sure. | |
Dawkins was having a tough time. | |
That was a rough day. | |
God love him. | |
Not God, I guess. | |
Endless nothingness love him. | |
Void love him! | |
So Ukraine is a democracy, just it doesn't function the exact same way as the USA, but you know everyone's democratically elected and the USA State Department has said as much. | |
The biggest issue however that Tucker is glomming on to here is that there was a decision to ban a party from Ukrainian Parliament. | |
Specifically, the Opposition Platform for Life, which came second in the most recent elections. | |
What a party name. | |
The reason they were banned is that they had significant political ties to Russia and the leader of that party, Viktor Medvedchuk, is a pro-Russia oligarch who has been charged with treason and was under house arrest but escaped and his whereabouts are currently unknown. | |
Yeah, my guess would be somewhere cozy in Moscow. | |
In essence, when you're at war with a country, it makes pretty good sense to not have overt agents of that country in your own parliament. | |
But Tucker is pro-Russia, so fuck that noise, I guess. | |
That's the basis of his, you know, Ukraine isn't democratic thing. | |
In between him calling Zelensky a rat, etc. | |
Charming fella. | |
Charming fella. | |
Next in a little bit of a term, we learn what Tucker thinks about the JFK assassination. | |
Hey, this is from at sunpatchpatriot. | |
With all these conspiracy theories coming out as true, is there anything that's still covered up that you think holds weight? | |
You know, now that they have more information about UFOs and stuff, do you think there's anything that's not been uncovered that you... Yeah! | |
Biden just reclassified the Kennedy document 60 years after his assassination. | |
No one, even peripherally involved, is still alive. | |
So what could possibly be the sources and methods that were supposedly showing the world by declassifying these are so outdated they're irrelevant. | |
They were using disappearing ink in 1963. | |
Why in the world would we be continuing to hide the truth about the Kennedy assassination 60 years later? | |
And of course the answer is obvious, because it implicates not individuals, but institutions. | |
And reveals them as complicit in a murder and in the overthrow of the U.S. | |
government. | |
And the U.S. | |
government is complicit in the overthrow of the U.S. | |
government. | |
And that's the truth. | |
I know that for a fact, because I interviewed someone who saw the documents. | |
So, he's asserting that US institutions, probably the FBI, plotted and carried out the assassination of JFK in a successful coup. | |
And his certainty of this is based on interviewing someone who has supposedly seen the documents, whatever those might be. | |
Some fucking real quality journalism going on here. | |
That's crazy. | |
Okay. | |
I mean, I just, here's the thing. | |
I don't like the, there's, there's a whole new breath of life into the bandying about of the Kennedy name in American discourse to which we refer as Camelot. | |
Like, yeah, the Kennedy name carries some weight. | |
Still. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
And I'm not gonna touch the JFK assassination situation. | |
Bad news fucking bears, man. | |
It's bad news bears. | |
But I don't think it's an accident to be invoking that narrative again because the fact that RFK Jr. | |
has the K. | |
Period. | |
Does more work than any political campaign he could ever do. | |
And that's what fucking bothers me and really worries me. | |
Because we didn't think Trump could do it. | |
I didn't. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
No, no, there's always an outlier of a chance. | |
And somebody saw the documents? | |
What? | |
Yeah, I know, right? | |
I interviewed someone who saw THE documents. | |
What fucking documents? | |
Shut up. | |
There's lots of documents that are public. | |
Like, they're still fully public. | |
Like, it's not... What? | |
There was a clip that I didn't include because it was mostly irrelevant, but it was Tucker saying, oh no, I grew up in the 70s and 80s where we didn't really, you know, glom onto conspiracy theories because there really weren't any. | |
What? | |
Yeah, I know. | |
I know. | |
That was my thought exactly. | |
I have a house full of reputation, by the way. | |
Yes. | |
Yeah. | |
My partner may or may not be fully obsessed with Cold War era conspiracy theory and did his master's thesis show about it and wrote about it. | |
It's just complete horseshit. | |
And then also you have the gall of him to say that, and then later on in the show be like, oh yeah, JFK, that was a conspiracy. | |
It's like, wait, hang on. | |
It's apples and bananas, man. | |
Okay. | |
All right. | |
Okay. | |
Just grab back in. | |
We're going to go a little bit more on the classified documents next. | |
And so, yes, there is much that remains secret. | |
I'm not going to speculate. | |
You don't need to be conspiracy nut. | |
In the United States, we have over a billion federal documents that remain classified. | |
A billion! | |
Going back to the Second World War. | |
So, that's a democracy? | |
That is not a democracy. | |
It's just not. | |
Tell me how it is! | |
Yes, in a sense, the very category of classified, except in matters of national security, obviously indicates a kind of parental relationship. | |
You used the metaphor. | |
Yes, thank you. | |
That's exactly... I'm stealing that. | |
That's exactly... indicates a parental relationship. | |
That's right. | |
And I didn't sign up for that. | |
We're locking the bedroom door. | |
You can't know what's happening in here. | |
Yeah. | |
I want to know what's going on in there. | |
When I did look once, it was disgusting. | |
God, look at that screenshot. | |
Happy Tucker, I don't think so. | |
I don't really care too much about classifieds. | |
I don't really care too much about classified documents. | |
I think it's unlikely anything buried in them will be anywhere near as interesting or as explosive as Tucker or Brand seem to think, especially as the reasons for classifying government documents can be incredibly broad. | |
When you consider the wealth of things that could cause damage to national security if publicly disclosed, It could be something seemingly minute to you and I, but somehow important to some foreign entity who wishes the country ill. | |
And so things are classified with, I would say, an increasingly broad brush, supposedly to be on the safe side. | |
Also, what entity could possibly even produce that amount? | |
A government bureaucracy, in my mind, There is no system that requires more paperwork, so just citing a number is not enough for me to move the needle. | |
No, no, especially when you're considering, you know, that that's supposedly since World War Two. | |
I'm like, well, that's a long time. | |
That's a long time with a lot of... Yeah, I think that's like maybe low. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe. | |
You know, when you consider there are 330 million people, you know, a billion things over, | |
over what, 80 years or whatever, is not that much really. | |
Yeah. | |
Not, not, not that much. | |
Not terribly fast. | |
But yeah, apparently having anything that's classified makes it not a democracy anymore, apparently. | |
That's absurd. | |
That's absurd. | |
Complete fucking nonsense. | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah, so next we have our final clip of the show where Russell gives the game away a touch. | |
Listen, we're going to do a little bit on locals. | |
So if you're watching this on locals right now, you're welcome. | |
We'll see you in a second. | |
Press the red button on the bottom of your screen and join us in locals. | |
We're going to play true and true or false. | |
Not true and false. | |
That's complex. | |
We play the game true and false. | |
Oh my God. | |
It's simultaneously true and false. | |
You're now enlightened. | |
Welcome. | |
Welcome to the limitless bliss that was always within you all along. | |
You can follow Tucker on Twitter, obviously, True and false perfectly describes Brand's style of propaganda, though I would possibly amend it to a bit true and mostly false. | |
Yeah, that brings us to the end of this interview with Tucker. | |
He then fucks off onto locals for I think about 10-15 minutes answering more questions and shit, but that was behind a paywall so I couldn't get to it. | |
Thank God. | |
Yeah, there is that. | |
Mm-hmm. | |
Mm-hmm. | |
Yeah. | |
Mercy. | |
Yeah. | |
Felt good, right? | |
No! | |
Not at all! | |
I mean, it was creatively difficult. | |
It's everything I could have possibly expected, I think. | |
Yucky, yuck. | |
But, I mean, you know, Useful, truly. | |
While the individual weird gas lighting lies were jarring, you're painting a picture and it's a picture we're gonna have to keep dealing with. | |
Yeah. | |
Yeah. | |
So yeah, no, I agree. | |
And I you know, I was expecting to have to deal with with Tucker in earnest. | |
I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon. | |
But you know, not not a bad thing to have to front load it, I think. | |
Hmm. | |
And if you want a cleansing moment, us listeners, just for fun, go watch the Jon Stewart, Tucker Carlson interview. | |
That's really like, that should have been it for him. | |
It's shocking that it wasn't, but it's so fun. | |
It's satisfying to watch as a palate cleanser. | |
That's what I would recommend personally. | |
Mm-hmm. | |
If you want to see Tucker Carlson get bitch slapped, it is incredibly satisfying. | |
Lovely. | |
It's a lovely moment. | |
No question. | |
Right, we are going to move to off-brand now. | |
But first up, if you want to find us on any of the social medias, we should be at theonbrandpod, I think, on almost everything. | |
And our subreddit, as Lauren announced, is onbrand underscore pod, which is super cool. | |
If you want to drop us an email, say hello, that is theonbrandpod at gmail.com. | |
There should be a link in our Spotify things if you want to leave us a voice message or whatever as well. | |
Or email one. | |
You can do that too. | |
Or email one equally. | |
Yeah, just record a thing and send it to us. | |
That's cool. | |
Because I have to download the audio file anyway, so it really doesn't matter. | |
Also, what the fuck was I going to say? | |
There was another thing I was going to say. | |
Patreon! | |
That's it. | |
If you want to support us and what we do and give us some of your hard-earned cash, we're immensely appreciative. | |
Just go to patreon.com slash onbrand. | |
I think that's it. | |
Have you got any plugs this week, Lauren? | |
Uh, I, well, um, I brought some new fun things that I will be taking to a wolf bait and be girls in Chicago. | |
If you're around Logan, I've been sewing a lot lately. | |
So let me, let me put you on. | |
So here we go. | |
Um, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm a fringe lover. | |
My favorite color is fringe. | |
So I've been, so this is printed and then sewn banner. | |
Yeah. | |
From the, from the, uh, from the great folk artist, Dr. Bob and his amazing sign. | |
And also, uh, Mike and I have been making, Ooh, Ooh, the, Light hates that. | |
Neon weird alien skull plaques. | |
Made a bunch of these. | |
Very pink, but I'm into it. | |
It's super neon. | |
It's the thing that he made for, it's like, uh, actually a workshop he did up in Alaska. | |
And so I've making them all into, yeah, you know. | |
Always making stuff and I'm gonna try to have a drop so anybody that is listening and wants to get some art things. | |
I usually focus on like assignment stuff but I'm gonna try to focus more on online shop stuff. | |
So that's coming. | |
So probably in August I'll have my first like drop if anybody really wants to get some Art things from me and sometimes me and Mike, depending on what he's got laying around that I can glue to a piece of wood. | |
Yeah, yeah, just like new fun shits coming down the pike for me, but no more events for a while, fortunately. | |
That's good. | |
Less stress on the weekends, you know? | |
Yeah, well, and and I would say, you know, hit us up on socials. | |
I've been I will be probably The person you'll be talking to more so. | |
Most likely. | |
Yeah, and I've been working on it. | |
I'm not great at it, so your patience and understanding, I pre-thank you. | |
I do lurk around. | |
I occasionally respond to things. | |
If it's in the email, it could be either of us. | |
YouTube. | |
YouTube, I do try and reply to those, I think. | |
There's a learning curve, we're getting there. | |
And I think we're actually doing pretty good. | |
There's also a lot of it, so you know, it's keeping track of everything, right? | |
And yeah, we will also be more active on the Patreon in future, and we're about to go and record Off-brand, which will be Patreon-exclusive, just us chatting shit post-show, basically. | |
So yeah, throw us a couple ducats, a couple clams, a couple bones, and then you can find out about Off-Brand and see if you want to hear us shoot some shit! | |
Talking complete bollocks, yes. | |
Shit will be shot! | |
Yes, figuratively. | |
I hope. | |
I hope, I really hope. | |
Anyway, in the meantime, yeah, we'll see you next week for hopefully not more of this fucking hell. | |
Need to deal with RFK at some point properly. | |
I don't know whether that'll be coming up. | |
There was a guy, he had a conversation with one of the, was it Jack Dorsey, the Twitter guy? | |
Had a conversation with him, I know, recently. | |
There's been a lot. | |
I have been studying for that test. | |
Sorry. | |
But not Russell Stump! | |
I don't know if that's a dumpster fire or not. | |
I haven't looked at it yet. | |
We'll find out. | |
Either way, there'll be something next week and it'll probably be horrible. | |
Okay. | |
See you then! | |
Yeah, see you then! | |
Oh god. | |
Bye! |