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Sept. 14, 2023 - On Brand
02:16:59
OB #19 - Big Pharma

We explore Russell's feelings on big pharma, or we would, if he could shut up about Joe Biden for half a second. 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's Show with my co-host Lauren B. That's me, Lauren B., and I have no idea what we're about to get into today.
Yeah, none of it's good, but first... I do know that!
I do know that part.
I am aware.
It is explicitly bad.
So first, Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing?
My good thing before the bad thing is how dumb I am, guys, listeners, friends, countrymen.
So in real life, When you have like a big messy shelving system where in your living space, you just have to cover it because it's horrible.
And even if it's not messy, it looks messy.
And so I.
I covered my wire shelves, pen and that, with like a college hacky sack tapestry I found for $2 at a thrift store because, oh no!
And it wasn't even like, and that was kind of the backdrop behind me to hide my creative nightmare.
And it's not even long enough.
You can still see like the bottom.
So you can still see mess if you really look for it.
Which is stupid because I was like, oh, someday I'll be able to have a background where you can just see the art that I make.
Oh, or wire shelves.
I can just hang it up and put it behind me right now.
Revelation.
And I don't have a good camera this week.
I'm sorry.
We're still working on that.
So it's kind of hard to see, but my dumb ass did not figure this out until three months in three months.
Good for me.
So yeah, I'm glad that I got there and that's nice.
I want some of Mike's stuff too.
I'm glad I got there eventually, but it is, Amazing.
Then I was like, I wish I could do that.
Wire shelves.
Do you know how many hooks for things I have in my home?
Oh, a billion.
Like I have a room, I have a room dedicated to bullshit hooks on displays and stuff.
Cause I also do in-person events and it didn't occur to me until today to do that.
Well, you know, the alternative was that you never thought of it at all.
So, you know, there we go.
Just gliding through this world without one thought.
That's definitely the kind of thing that I would do.
Just, just, you know, intensely thoughtful aside from like the few blind spots where I'm completely fucking oblivious.
That is, that is definitely.
Oh my.
So what's your good thing?
What's your good thing before the bad thing?
My good thing before the bad thing this week, Lauren, is rugby!
It is the Rugby World Cup that has started, which is great.
Yeah, very excited.
Every four years.
Oh yeah, I'm enjoying it so far.
Don't get me wrong, we're like a week in, but Wales' first match, their pool is a little bit of a difficult pool.
They faced off against Fiji, which I'm sure you'll appreciate as a Red Dwarf fan.
I know.
You shall, you mean.
You shall.
Wait, so Fiji is like awesome at rugby?
I love that.
Fiji are fantastic at rugby.
They've been kicking the shit out of England not that long ago.
That's the funnest fact I've learned in a while.
Who else has a great team?
Japan.
Japan have a fantastic team these days.
Well, they didn't used to.
It's only in recent years that they've kind of really, really come along, but they're all quite short, but really fucking stout.
But anyway, the Wales-Fiji match was excellent.
Some really brilliant rugby played and Wales won, you know, so it was a great time for me.
I was very pleased.
What do we yell when Wales wins?
What do we say when Wales wins?
Yeah!
Is what we say when we're... There's no like guttural G's and H's combination?
I mean, if you watch any of the matches, you can hear like traditional Welsh songs being sung in the audience and that kind of thing.
So that can be quite cool.
So fun.
It's great, it's great.
But yeah, the Welsh team have had like a really kind of rough few years under the former manager Wayne Pivack.
He did his best, but he just, he was shit.
Yeah, and now they've got Warren Gatland back, who has transformed the team back to fighting shape, and they're doing tremendously.
I'm very excited.
It's hopefully going to be a really good World Cup, and then France are kicking ass and taking names because they won the Six Nations recently.
They've got a really good team at the moment.
It's just, yeah, it's really good.
France beat New Zealand the other day in the rugby.
Is that important?
New Zealand are like, you know, world top usually.
It's between like them, South Africa and Australia a lot of the time.
Okay.
And yeah, Wales are up against Australia soon.
We usually do quite well against them recently, so I don't know what's going to happen.
I'm very excited.
Can I be very Midwestern and say that's a hoot?
That's just a hoot.
It is a hoot!
It really is a hoot.
It's awesome.
It's awesome.
So yeah, I'll be at various points in the week settling down with a couple of beers and watching that, you know, and I don't do much of the sports ball, but rugby union, that's where you'll find me.
We might have to live stream.
Cause I want to watch a thing and I'm not going to figure it out by myself.
I need a person to ask.
This here platform that we are using does have live stream capabilities.
So I'm sure we could maybe figure that out.
That could be fun.
That could be fun.
But yeah, so that's really cool.
Rugby is awesome.
Nice!
Rugby is nice.
Now, here is the spot where we would usually thank our new patrons, but we don't actually
have any this week.
It's okay, that happens.
Some weeks we have eight or ten, and some weeks we don't.
Though I would like to take a second to encourage any of our listeners who've considered it
to take the plunge.
We have masses of additional content for patrons on our Patreon, and we have some great stretch
goals including covering the Brandemic Comedy Special with at least one comedian guest,
and going through ten hours of Brands Book Revolution, with the final big goal being
two episodes a week of This Here Show on Brand.
That's really where we want to get with this, to even attempt to match the amount of content that Russell is putting out week by week.
You can get more stuff by becoming a patron.
Yeah, no, exactly.
It starts at two bucks and we have options.
We can offer more things to patrons the more that we get as well.
Yeah, totally.
Just because there are things that we think would be fun, you know, we've mentioned a potential lore and history hour, and you know, I think we're probably going to do a news roundup for our off-brand this week, which is going to be fun.
We do a Music is Nice segment sometimes, so you know, we could really kind of amp those up a little bit with your support.
So yeah, if you do want to support us in what we do, become an Awakening Wanderer, join the Invisible Hand, or donate on an elevated tier, Head to patreon.com slash on brand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
As a patron, you will also get a shout out on the show and access to our patron only show off brand where we talk about pretty much anything but Russell Brand.
And please note that while you can 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.
Right, so, this week, while the Primer Part 2 is bubbling away in the background, we have been blurst with an editorial about one of Bran's main narratives.
I say blurst because that means blessed and cursed.
For anyone who doesn't know, we've been blurst.
So, yeah.
As ever, I'm going to let him introduce the topic.
We beat Big Pharma this year!
Did Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat Big Pharma or did they kowtow to Big Pharma with a mealy-mouthed bill that benefits no one?
Here we go, a full piece covering Big Pharma but with the unique slant of being able to throw shade at Joe Biden while he does it.
Content warnings for this show include hypocrisy, spin, lies of omission and outright bullshit.
Hmm.
Okay.
You excited?
No, I hate these editorials so much.
They're awful.
Yeah, they suck.
They suck.
And, here's the thing.
We've had two instances where Jacobin, a news source that we had at least tangentially respected in our periphery over the years, and two times, It's been a disaster.
Like, the actual reporting has been a mess, and I don't want to become a Jacobin Debunk Podcast!
Yeah, it does feel like we seem to be getting quite a lot of that.
I don't like that!
That's not what I signed up for!
There might be a little bit more today.
We'll see.
Let's get into it with our first clip.
I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!
I knew it!
Let's uh...
Okay, okay, fine.
But or I just...
Oh, we're a Jack-o-lantern, okay, okay.
Let's get into it with our first clip.
Okay.
Now do you remember when Joe Biden was campaigning?
In fact, even in administration, we beat Big Pharma this year.
Remember this?
We beat Pharma this year!
We beat Pharma this year!
And it mattered!
Well, guess what that amounts to?
It isn't a victory over Big Pharma.
The bill has been watered down.
unmitigated, almost as if somehow Farmer supports and funds the Democrat Party, and the Democrat
Party are unable to successfully legislate on behalf of the electorate that they were
voted in to serve, whose taxes they require, and whose problems they ignore.
Except for of course, saying stuff.
I mean, we can all say stuff, baby.
Indeed we can.
And Russell doesn't know the meaning of shutting the fuck up.
So, one of the predictably recurring themes that doesn't get examined by Brand is going to be exactly why this bill got watered down, because it did, that much is true.
It's the way passing a bill into law almost always works, except in the incredibly rare cases of landslide electoral victories allowing one party to push through almost whatever they want.
Pretty much never happens.
No, at least not for decades.
No.
Basically, if you want something to pass, you have to compromise, heavily reduce your own ambitions, and probably make the odd backroom deal here or there.
This has been the case in the US since the Compromise of 1790, where Alexander Hamilton ensured the US capital would be in Virginia rather than New York in exchange for getting his financial plan past Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
In the case of the Build Back Better Act, however, a different problem made itself evident in the form mostly of Joe Manchin and partly of Kirsten Sinema.
See, the Senate requires 50 votes for a bill to pass to reconciliation, and Mr. Manchin was the swing vote, which allowed him the keys to the fucking castle.
The original version of the bill was to cost an estimated $3.5 trillion before a wild Joe Manchin appeared, the Democrat-in-name-only senator from West Virginia.
He initially objected to the bill, citing the cost, not enough of a focus on combating inflation, and the bill having a too aggressive transition to clean energy.
Fuck off with that.
Manchin personally insured a number of cuts, including to paid family leave, child tax credits, removal of a methane fee on energy producer emissions, removal of a Medicare expansion to include hearing and dental costs.
Oh my god.
Oh my god!
Yep.
He opposed sending direct payments to companies that generate clean energy for consumer use.
He capped energy spending at $300 billion and also demanded a lower corporate tax rate.
He ensured that the bill was reduced to $2.2 trillion, effectively cutting it by a third.
All that said, I can't actually find too much about how the farmer side of things was watered down, so I'm led to believe that it's more or less going to plan-ish.
The validity of which we will get into as we go through the editorial.
And if you're familiar with West Virginia, as in America, right, then you know that coal Is the main what has been the main kind of driving force behind the economy there for many many decades and even though
People who work for or work in coal mines are constantly suffering and are constantly under just terrible working conditions.
The couple guys that own all those mines make a lot of money.
Joe Manchin is the whim of a few coal Robber barons.
Legitimately.
Pretty much.
That's that dude.
And that's gross.
And his daughter legitimately is one of the pharma monsters that people who care about real news and real life are mad at.
So people can say they're Democrats all day long.
From Joe Manchin to my fucking alderman, and it doesn't mean anything.
And in that regard, it's difficult to really, like, it's difficult to hear Russell say things I completely agree with.
From a different perspective, but I completely agree.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, no, I completely agree.
Manchin is a unique piece of shit.
He is talking about retiring, so fingers crossed on that front.
I think he was on about going to head up some university somewhere, do something there.
I'm like, yeah, please.
Oh, I bet!
Please, fine.
PragerU.
Fuck off.
I want to say it was like Pittsburgh or something.
Pennsylvania.
It was something.
Something with a P. Something with a P. Doesn't matter.
So next we hear from the mainstream media, specifically CNBC.
Let's have a look at how the mainstream media are presenting this latest catastrophe.
We're going to go to the White House now.
The president talking about the drug price adjustments.
Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh this is so important now. Duh duh duh duh duh duh. It's so up it's own bum. Isn't it? The
news of its grace.
We're going over live. I've grown my forehead a bit bigger, especially for this piece of news, where some bullshit's
about to be conveyed to you. Oh!
[Applause]
Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon.
Please have a seat.
Good afternoon.
It's a room full of leaders.
I'm looking at three people on the stage and none of them are leaders.
Well, thank you, everyone, for being here and for all the work that you have done leading up to today.
You've said leading too many times already.
I want to thank, of course, our nation's champion, President Biden.
Hyperbole, nonsense, bullshit instead of actual substance.
OK.
Vice President Harris has gotten as far as the introduction and already the speech has been written off as having nothing of substance.
It's like, well, yes, there's nothing of substance.
You haven't let them say anything yet.
It would be like me going, hi, Russell, and him saying, see, these people have nothing to say.
It's like, well, yeah.
Also, she was saying that the audience were leaders.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was confused by that.
And he was like, those aren't leaders on the stage.
And I mean, it sounded like weird pandering, but I don't know who she's talking to.
No, I'm not 100% sure who was in the audience and I don't really care that much.
I also don't think that Russell should be commenting on shows seeming to be up their own asses when he regularly claims He regularly claims that he and his audience are going to cause a fucking revolution.
That's without even mentioning his fancy studio or the amount of fanfare and pretense that surrounds his show.
Subscribe to my local channel.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But also, that first cut, it was just a bumper.
It was a bumper graphic.
Yeah.
On the news!
I guess they should have more farting birds.
Would that help Russell?
It is weird to say like, let's see what the mainstream media thinks when it's just them introducing the clip, you know.
It's like, well, they're not saying it.
Okay.
Complain about it, but it's an aesthetic complaint.
I think he mostly just wanted to make a joke about the guy's forehead.
I think that's what that was. Um, glass houses, my friend.
It's like, I didn't see who was talking. I'm assuming it was at Wolf Blitzer. I don't remember,
but like, okay. Um, yeah.
The forehead I was looking at, when he was talking, it was just... It was Russell's.
Yeah, it was Russell's!
Maybe it's half your face!
No, it's true, the hairline doth recede, you know, which happens, but also, you know, like you say...
It's fine!
Like, it's fine!
It's also fine, but like you say, you know, glass houses, right?
The thing is, I'm not an ad hominem attacker person for real.
Like, yeah, I'll make an observation.
With this guy, there's no need to.
No, but I'm not into that, like, if I'm trying to make some kind of hard-hitting point, then no, I'm not going to, like, I can point out something like, well, that strikes me funny, but I don't take that seriously.
Even if, like, from the most cynical view, just making fun of what somebody looks like, It just weakens your argument?
Yeah, completely.
Go after who they are.
You can't help what you look like for the most part.
The next clip somewhat piqued my curiosity.
Now pay attention to the hyperbole being conveyed because what's about to be expressed is that a bill that began as we are going to meaningfully control Big Pharma, particularly after the Purdue crisis, the fentanyl epidemic, the exploitation of the pandemic that you funded, we're going to reign Big Pharma in.
86% of Americans or thereabouts want to see caps on drug prices.
We said we're going to deliver.
Look at what Only the mainstream media would tell you that this is anything like a success.
Only the mainstream media would tell you that this is anything like what you voted for.
Because this is as watered down and diluted and as ineffective as some of the **** that we've been offered in recent years.
We'll get into whether this farmer plan is a success in a little bit, but I kept this clip in mostly because I was curious as to why the hell he bleeped that phrase out.
And after careful lip reading, I am 99% certain what he said was booster shots.
So the full sentence would have been, this is as watered down and diluted and as ineffective as some of the booster shots that we've been offered in recent years.
Yeah!
You know, a few people have had the balls to try and tell me that Russell isn't anti-vaxx.
As for why it was bleeped out, most of these editorials that we're looking at end up making it to YouTube.
This one sits at around 700,000 views so far, with a further 130,000 on Rumble.
He loves his home of free speech, where he wouldn't have had to bleep out the words booster shot, but it's just not profitable enough yet.
Yet.
As previously mentioned, Russell's audience on Rumble has grown more than 20% since we started doing this a few months ago, so it won't take long if he carries on at this trajectory.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's bad.
But also, like, if you really care and if you really think that it's, like, worth it, why are you still on YouTube?
Like, we know why you're still on YouTube.
Yeah.
We know why.
To trick people.
I need money.
That's why he's there.
Yeah, to trick people.
He's got the bigger audience on there, you know, six and a half million.
So he's going to carry on and he's, you know, there's shit on there every single day.
Yep.
Every single day.
Wow.
So next we get more about Russell's feelings on the age of the USA's legislators.
For your leadership and commitment to lowering costs for working families in every way.
Lower costs to working families in every way.
Quite a claim.
Let's see what gets delivered.
So we are here today with the firm belief that in the United States of America, no senior should ever have to choose between whether they are able to fill a prescription That's what he's come down to!
This is a great new policy!
What it is, if you're senior, that's very old, not you, you're great, you're a champion, carry on.
If you're another old person, not Mitch McConnell...
Or that lady that had to be nudged into voting yes.
Just say aye.
Okay.
Aye.
An old person that's not running the country, and if you are old and you'd like to run the country, come on in!
You can't be too old!
We've proved that!
If you're an old person, you don't have to choose between expending your remaining resources with Big Pharma or putting a couple of groceries in your fridge that you can't afford to keep chilled because your energy bills are so high.
Democracy!
We beat Big Pharma this year!
That's it.
That's the offering.
That's the offering.
That's what we're all getting so excited about.
This is what all the vilification of Trump's about.
This is what we don't need to consider Robert F. Kennedy or Marianne Williamson or Cornel West or people that at least seem to understand humanity from a better perspective.
A very, very old person, if they're not too busy running the country, will be able to both get a couple of apples and continue to funnel their remaining dollars into the hands of Big Pharma.
Thanks for the democracy.
How's the war going?
Do you need any more money for that?
Some incredible conflation of events going on here.
So this has nothing to do with Trump, RFK Jr., Marianne Williamson or Cornel West and I'd be surprised if any publication anywhere even mentions them in covering this issue because the actual criticisms of all of those individuals ranges mostly from they're fucking insane to they're fucking incompetent and considering only one of them has ever held elected office before it's not a huge wonder but None of that has anything to do with this act or Big Pharma.
As to your point, Russell, of, oh, this is what it's come to, this is what we should get excited about, is it?
Well, put simply, yes.
People are excited about not having to pay as much for medicines in the future, about not having to consider whether they should eat or buy life-saving drugs.
This is an issue that's gone on for decades and has never been addressed, including by Donald fucking Trump when he was president.
Yes, people are excited by this actual change, and instead you want to promote the guy who did nothing to fix the problem.
It's also weird how he goes between like U.S.
stuff and U.K.
stuff because we have not had the jump in energy bills that Europe has had to deal with.
No, no, no.
And so no, that's not what she was talking about.
She was just talking about also apples in the fridge.
OK, but like she was talking about buying food like full stop.
Because there's also a lot of supplemental programs that sometimes only senior citizens have access to, or it's very, very difficult unless you are of retirement age to access.
Like, I don't know, man.
This feels, as a very, very poor American, this feels wildly out of touch.
And all of our parents are old, so we know.
Isn't it strange how to you, as a poor American, an incredibly rich British guy seems out of touch with where your head's at?
And your life experience.
Is that strange?
Yeah, the difference in the energy crisis situation, that is something that Russell would definitely not be aware of, I'm pretty sure.
Because I remember reading...
I remember reading a little while back that things are about two-thirds worse here compared to the US.
I remember reading that.
It does change based on region, but for totally different reasons.
So yeah, California would be going through something different than we would be in Illinois.
Texas is a whole other ballgame.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
So, like, you know, it's hard to even say, yes, this blanket thing about America, because, oh my God, we're so big.
It's such an unwieldy country.
Total, total, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Get a grip.
I mean, he doesn't have to.
Why would he?
Especially with, you know, states like Texas who just want to do everything themselves.
You know, it's like, well, okay.
Enron, guys.
Enron.
Yeah!
Bad news!
In the next clip, Russell cites an article, and Lauren, I'm gonna give you one guess as to the source.
Oh no!
Maybe I'm thankful that I'm prepared.
Okay, let's do it.
Let's do it.
Okay, let's have a look.
Democrats may tout this as a victory against Big Pharma.
Oh, they are.
I mean, they're applauding, they're pleased as punch.
That fridge that they're talking about is full of their farts.
Here, have some more farts!
Oh, it's going so well!
The smell of democracy that's come out of my ass!
But all ten of the drugs up for negotiation are already being sold in other countries at fractions of what pharmaceutical companies are charging for them in the United States.
The history is, you will pay much more money than other countries.
I already are!
I know, I know.
We beat Big Pharma this year!
Not compared to Algeria, or Sweden, or Iceland, or Somalia, but you know, we're just America, right?
Oh my god!
Oh my god!
Once again, we have an article from Jacobin.
However, mercifully, I can say this one, when taken in its entirety, is actually railing against Big Pharma itself and the pharmaceutical company's apparent problems with this act, rather than just flinging shit at Joe Biden or Obama like we've seen elsewhere.
This one is okay.
So that's nice.
However, Russell is of course cherry-picking sentences that in isolation seem bad, but the slant of the article is very much one of, this is all Big Pharma's fucking fault.
The argument being presented by Brand is that because other countries are getting drastically better prices for these drugs, what the Biden-Harris administration has achieved is meaningless.
He said, the victory is you will pay much more money than other countries, Leaving out the fact that US citizens have always paid much more money for drugs than other countries.
Like 600% more.
Already.
So yeah, if we could reduce it to 3 or 200% or even the same, oh boy!
Oh, ticker tape parades in the streets if we can pay the same as other equally developed countries.
Here's the thing, he leaves out the fact that due to this Inflation Reduction Act, as it's now named, the US citizens will be paying much less than they have previously.
But of course, the negotiations haven't taken place yet, and so there's actually no way of knowing whether US citizens will pay more than other countries because it's not been decided.
So Brand is just flat out making that up.
He's assuming for some reason that it's going to carry on pretty much at the same rate.
Um, that it's going to, you know, a thousand percent in some cases.
Um, so yeah, he's, he's literally pulling this out of his ass.
Um, the, uh, like it's such just, he doesn't know.
He doesn't know allowed to like the government is legally not allowed to negotiate.
Like I, there's no other countries that are like that.
You are legally not allowed to negotiate prices for drugs, and the fact that we can is major!
Yeah, exactly.
That's what this has achieved, which Bran doesn't think is anything at all.
I don't know if that speaks to his ignorance or his idiocy more, but I think it's both.
I really do.
This is such an own goal!
It's so annoying to watch a person claiming other people are sniffing their own farts in this... The current estimation is that the ability for Medicare to negotiate drug prices will save the government 98.5 billion dollars over the next decade.
Those newly negotiated prices will affect drugs at home from 2026 and in clinics in 2028.
Also, you may have noticed that when Kamala Harris began speaking that to her stage left there was an older gentleman stood there.
Seemingly random guy.
His name is Stephen Hadfield.
He's 71 and has a rare type of blood cancer as well as diabetes.
He actually introduced Joe Biden and made clear that because of this act, where Mr. Hadfield previously paid $400 a month for insulin, he now pays $35 a month.
That on its own, to me, is a fucking victory that should be celebrated.
Right?
Giving a 71-year-old with blood cancer and diabetes, you know, $365 extra every month that he doesn't have to fucking spend on insulin, that is a victory.
That deserves celebration.
Also, another reason to not make fun of what people look like, because I almost said something, and then I didn't.
Well, I found it mighty curious.
He looked like he was having a hard time standing up there, and now we know why!
He did, in an ill-fitting suit, and I'm like, well, it probably fit him not that long ago.
Poor fucking guy.
Well, it struck me, because I was like, Russell didn't make fun of this guy, and he is making fun of people's appearances today, and he would normally leap on that.
Especially in his whole jag about, oh, people being old.
I'm like, oh, well, there's an old guy on the stage right there.
And yeah, Brands didn't make fun of him because clearly someone looked that up and was like, oh no, no, no, no, that's too far.
Or they cut it out.
They were like, yikes!
Or they cut it out.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
Because you can hire people that cut stuff out for you.
I mean, in that case, these editorials should be about three minutes long, but that's just my take.
Just, I want to hear one real thing out of us!
Like, one!
One!
Okay, alright.
This is nuts!
There are a couple of real things, but again, coming from the wrong direction.
So, the next clip struck me as a little bit dumb.
And drug makers are reporting huge revenues from those foreign sales, so they're able to spread the costs internationally because they're globalists, like your government.
Okay, so the reason that sentence is in the Jacobin piece is to make the point that these enormous pharmaceutical companies charge sometimes 20 times less for the same drugs in other countries, but still make enormous profits.
So there's no reason that they can't then charge a lot less in the USA.
That's why that's in there.
Rather than address that point and say, hey, yeah, fuck these guys.
Brands just accuses the pharma companies and the US government of being globalists, which is a bad thing.
Again, for those at the back, globalist is often code for Jew, though it can be difficult to pass whether Russell is just being wholesale antisemitic or he's mad that the world isn't divided into tiny theocratic ethnostates like he wants.
In either case, I'm not a fan.
Imagine the government of America not being globally plugged in.
Right.
What?
That's bananas!
Why did you say that?
America was... What do I do with this?
The American Revolution was propped up by France.
It's literally in the conception of the country.
Globalist from the beginning.
That's the point, in a way.
That's like the job of federal government!
That's why it's there!
Foreign relations, right?
All that kind of shit.
How about, I've got a list, 500 items I could probably rattle off right now off the top of my head before I complain about a federal government being global.
That's great.
Globalist.
Globalist.
Yeah.
So, speaking of ethnic states.
700,000 people watch this?
700,000 on YouTube, yeah, and more on Rumble.
It's great.
And speaking of ethnostates and the many, many people watching this, Russell in this next clip stokes a little bit of xenophobia.
In some cases, Americans whose tax money subsidizes the development of virtually all medicines approved for sale in the United States are just... Sorry, did I not mention it?
You've already paid for the drug once, and you're going to pay for it again, much more than other countries, but are you not going to... Why are you not applauding?
Because this is progress, remember?
What about the champion?
Don't you think they deserve...
A little round of applause?
Are being charged 1000% more than foreign patients for the same drugs.
You're 1000% worse than foreign people.
Don't go building that wall.
You're gonna need those guys.
You're a thousand percent worse than foreign people.
Just an excellent thing to be saying to a near million people who saw this video.
I don't know.
Okay.
Can you help me understand what the point was?
I am lost.
What is the point that he's trying to make?
It's hard that he uses clips from the article.
You're worse than foreign people.
Because you're paying more for drugs, you are worse than foreign people.
And he then kind of puts that into a whole thing about the wall.
Well, in this case, he's making a joke about Mexico.
Oh, because we got to the wall at the end.
Yeah, because we got to the wall, yeah, which is real helpful, real nice.
Yeah, real swell.
Yeah, it's not a wall, it's a razor wire underwater that they're finding pregnant women trapped in, and they're instructed by border patrol to push into the water.
Yeah!
That's your wall.
Your wall.
Gross.
Okay.
Okay.
So, here I would also like to point out there is a difference between the research and development of drugs and the manufacture of drugs.
That's way less of a buzzkill thing to say.
Yeah, right.
This was the point that I thought of.
The US government subsidizes pharmaceutical companies in the research and development of medicines because ultimately it's good for the country to not just have a pure profit motive as the deciding factor for what drugs get developed.
In terms of drug pricing, R&D is a factor for sure, but there's also the actual manufacturing of the drug, which can in some cases be surprisingly complex.
The US is not funding the manufacturing of any drugs that I'm aware of, and therefore the cost of that is transferred to the taxpayers.
It's not, you're paying for this twice by any stretch of the imagination.
Yeah, that didn't make That didn't make sense to me.
That threw me first.
You contribute through taxes to the research and development and then you buy the manufactured product and then you pay for it to be manufactured.
The issue I think comes with patents.
Being able to patent a drug you didn't come up with, company, ex-company, don't do that.
He doesn't mention that at all.
Almost as though, despite having Big Pharma, that big fucking topic of Big Pharma where there is plenty to criticise, despite that being there, because it doesn't also throw shit at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, that's not sufficient apparently.
Yeah, it's all about the Democratic Party instead.
The reason Jacobin have included this tidbit is to support the notion that the USA should be paying far less for drugs, considering there's a financial contribution to the research and development of said drugs.
I don't know, I entirely agree.
Same.
It's worth noting that other governments like the UK, for instance, do also fund the R&D of pharmaceuticals, but quite a bit less than the USA.
So, you should be getting something.
We pay far less than you.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, way less.
Way less.
It's a farce.
It's incredibly farcical.
The videos of watching British people guess how much things cost are hilarious for the saddest of creators.
Almost as though we have a system of socialized healthcare where our system is able to negotiate with the people who sell the drugs.
Almost as if that's Boy, I wish we could do that.
Oh, wait, we can now!
We can now!
Hey, hey, maybe, do you know what?
Fuck it, that's worth celebrating.
Crazy, right?
Russell disagrees.
Russell disagrees with us on that score.
In the next clip, he just flat out makes some shit up.
The cash haul disclosed in drug makers earnings reports suggests that pharmaceutical companies will still be able to reap enormous windfalls even if Americans can finally access prices closer to those charged on the global market for some drugs.
So what's been negotiated is a deal with their donors in Big Pharma to adjust the administration so that across a quarter or a year their profits remain unaffected.
You think that Albert Baller, Moderna, Pfizer, all those guys, the FDA, don't have tight relationships with the government?
What power do you think this government, look at them, look at them, what power do you think they have to protect you?
Let me know in the comments.
So what Russell has just said is not true.
He just said there's been a deal to ensure that the pharmaceuticals profits stay the same over a longer period of time, like perhaps a quarter of a year.
So in essence, the act is symbolic, according to Russell.
No, he's just making it up and he provides no evidence to support what he's saying.
In fact, if it is just business as usual, then more of the same and the pharmaceutical companies are going to make the same amount of profit.
How come six pharmaceutical manufacturers, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, have taken the Biden administration to court in an attempt to block the negotiation program?
Yeah, the industry's main trade group and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce have also filed suit, by the way, so that's great.
They're all claiming that the federal government is violating the first, fifth, and eighth amendments to the Constitution, which deal with... Really?
Yeah.
Which deal with freedom of speech, just compensation for takings, and excessive fines.
My prediction... Shut up!
I can't wait to hear that they win.
Oh man.
My prediction is that they'll be unsuccessful.
I hope.
As long as it doesn't go to the Supreme Court, I hope.
I don't think even they could try and make that stretch.
It would be so much of a stretch, even for them.
Do you know how many of the cases, this has never happened before, how many of the cases that they have ruled in favor of Non-existent, like, plaintiffs that aren't, like, not even president.
President is gone.
But, like, even the cases themselves, they should have been thrown out on their merit because they're fake.
The plaintiffs aren't even real.
So, I don't put anything past them.
Like, they can play make-em-ups all the way down.
True.
The conventional wisdom is that it won't get anywhere, but we will... I sure hope so.
I hope so.
We will see.
Oh, I want to be wrong so bad.
I really do.
I don't have much I think a medication costs.
Yeah.
I have a dog in this fight.
Yeah, right, right.
Healthcare investors consulting firm Avalere claimed in July 2022 that $455 billion in revenue would be lost by drug manufacturers over the next decade because of this act.
So Russell is just flat-out lying and fear-mongering to further radicalize his audience against the Democratic Party and the Biden-Harris administration.
That's all he's doing.
That's all this is in aid of.
He's lying to make money.
And that is the definition of a grifter.
For any fucking one out there wondering, that is that definition.
And this man is it.
He is a grifter.
He is grifting.
He is telling lies for profit.
End of story.
Oh, actually, one of the subjects that I would really like, if you subscribe to the Patreon, I would like to transparently, because here's the thing, we have a Patreon that you can choose to subscribe to if you want, but our content is free.
Um, and we are very clear and upfront about everything that we are offering and our intent, and you can ask us via email yourself if you want to.
And we're very transparent about, like, we are obnoxiously transparent.
Probably too transparent.
Yeah, probably.
Well, I can't change my brain.
Sorry, sorry, can't do it.
That would if I could.
But like, because obviously it's way more profitable to not be transparent.
We don't have ads, we don't have any, we don't have ads, we don't have sponsors, nothing.
I would love to get more into, like, there's a whole network of passive income that supports people like Russell.
So when we say, you know, it does sound a little bit underpants gnomes, you know, like, say lies?
Profit.
It can come off that way.
If you're not familiar, I completely understand.
And even, like, fascinating individual grifts, like if you watch the McMillions documentary or whatever, that's fascinating in a specific context, but there's a lot of just being able to pump money Into your organization and you have to misrepresent yourself in order to make that money and I would love to be able to get into that a little more for folks because some people have been asking it and it's really interesting and I don't have time to do it.
There is a difference.
The most crucial difference is between putting out content and making money off it and lying and making money off that.
And he's doing the latter on a regular basis.
Exactly.
So next up, we have a bit of mental gymnastics.
President Joe Biden pledged during his 2020 campaign to repeal the existing law explicitly barring Medicare from negotiating lower prices with drug corporations.
Last year, Democrats finally passed a drug price negotiation provision, but the measure was much more limited than lawmakers originally proposed.
I wonder what happened.
I wonder what kind of conversations took place.
Let me know in the comments if you think maybe Big Pharma was somehow, I can't imagine how they're able to assert control and influence.
I mean, God, is there any record of Joe Biden just before his election in 2020 telling a room full of donors There is.
That did happen.
And that is what's happening now.
As you can see.
As you can experience.
Who are you going to believe?
Kamala Harris or your own lion eyes?
Here's the thing that confused me about this clip.
If Joe Biden went into a room of rich people and said, nothing is going to change, whose legacy would he be continuing?
Who was the president before him?
Well, Donald Trump.
So if this did happen the way Brand is saying it, it would have been Biden essentially saying, I'm going to continue the same things that Trump has been doing, which he should be totally fine with because him and his audience fucking love Trump.
Of course, the notion that Biden would continue Trump's legacy is fucking insane.
So here's what actually happened.
This is a nice angle.
It's creative.
Yeah, right, right.
In 2019, Joe Biden was at a fundraiser in New York in front of around 100 immensely wealthy people.
It was hosted by the CEO and founder of Eaton Park Capital Management.
Yay.
Then candidate Biden gave a speech stating he wouldn't want to demonize the wealthy and that no one's standard of living will change if he's elected.
Basically, yep your taxes will go up but you'll be fine don't worry about it.
Quote, we can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it's all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished.
No one's standard of living will change.
Nothing would fundamentally change.
And of course, he's addressing a hundred immensely wealthy people, so it's nothing would fundamentally change for you.
In the same speech, Biden also said, quote, you are all extremely successful people, but with all due respect, Wall Street didn't build America.
The wealthy didn't build America, unquote.
Oh, I like that.
I like that.
I mean, I'm less than thrilled about Yeah, I get it, I get it.
As a candidate for president it's quite obvious that what he's doing is...
Asking for their money while also saying, yeah, I'm going to tax you a bit more.
I am going to do that.
But, you know, it's not going to fuck you that hard.
You'll be fine.
That's fundamentally what he's saying.
I'm going to tax you a bit more to give more money to the people at the bottom who did build this country because it wasn't you.
But please give me money anyway and vote for me.
I would like to hear all politicians say that a lot more.
Yeah, I'm into that.
And I also, I mean, it's just the...
He's being so intentional.
I don't know if it's even intentional.
The obtusitude of, like, just... We all talk about Joe Manchin all the time.
We all know what Joe Manchin does.
Everyone has to sit and listen to play-by-plays of miserable, terrible things that Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema, two individuals, have done.
And, like, I just...
I mean, it's always, like, it's always a handful of these jokers that, like, I, there's, okay, okay.
Yeah, exactly.
It's so hard to address any real part of the problem without going completely off the rails.
Like, he's so far away from reality.
From where the actual fucking issue lies, yes.
And, you know, it doesn't help that even the things that he's covering, like this Joe Biden giving a speech where he says this, it's like, well, yes, he did, but you're removing all of the context surrounding it.
So it means something completely different.
That's all you've done.
That's all you've achieved there.
Yeah, I mean, like I am really hung up on the like the power bill thing, like the, you know, like the, the
electricity, you know, like the power bill costs thing and how bonkers that is because the people
that may have experienced like a huge jump in their power bills. One.
One, people that are gonna be like, that are sitting ducks for exactly this kind of misinformation.
And it's a totally different set of problems.
It's a completely different set of problems that are entirely like within a state system that is In really bad shape and so this distraction if someone listens to this doesn't understand like if someone listens to this and is like yeah my power bills have gone up what you should be doing is talking to your your like state legislature to your own power companies instead of blaming
Biden and Harris, like that's so misguided.
And if this is the only person, like the only place a person hears that, they're going to be so confused about what to do.
Because on state levels, individuals can get something done.
And he's just smoke and mirroring them away.
Yeah, yeah.
He does that with most of reality, it turns out.
This is just so clear!
In terms of the pharmaceutical portion of the Inflation Reduction Act being reduced, the only thing I could really find was the number of initial drugs to be considered for negotiation being reduced from dozens to just ten.
Over the next four years, however, Medicare will negotiate prices for up to 60 drugs covered under Medicare Part D and Part B, and up to an additional 20 drugs every year after that.
So, you know, it's going to have, in years to come, a cumulative effect, let's put it that way.
I think the tactic was to take it more gradually, as everything has to be done in the States at this point.
Yeah, at least that's how this administration intends it to happen.
Yeah, right.
So next, we get into why these specific drugs have been targeted first.
The new law will allow Medicare to begin negotiating prices effective starting in 2026.
Come on, most of those seniors will be dead by then.
Is it from or with old age?
I don't know, they're dead anyway.
On a select handful of expensive drugs that have no generic competition and have been on the market for at least nine years.
That's how your country works.
And I say this as a person that loves your country, that's lived in your country, that cares about America.
That's what's negotiated.
Well, could we only do it with drugs that have no generic competition?
Okay.
And have been on the market for at least nine years?
Sure.
That's the conditions.
That's who they work for.
You pay, they profit.
No Russell, that's how your system works.
Your audience pays, you profit.
So for reference, next year there will be an expansion of the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce the length of time the drug has been on the market before being considered for negotiations.
That is in the works.
So, why were these specific medications chosen?
Well, I will read from the White House website on this one.
Quote, These 10 drugs are among those with the highest total spending in Medicare Part D. Millions of Part D enrollees depend on these vital treatments to treat life-threatening conditions including diabetes, heart failure, and cancer, but many struggle to access their medications because of prohibitive costs.
Unquote.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services selected the drugs through a process that prioritized ones that account for the highest Medicare spending, have been on the market for years, and do not yet face competition from rivals.
So basically, they went for the biggest fish first, which makes perfect sense to me.
Representatives from Merck have described it as extortion and unconstitutional.
Oh yes, Russell, Big Pharma are just totally fine with it, you lying fuckwit.
Hmm.
Well, also like generic, the thing is like, is he complaining about not negotiating generics?
Because generics are already cheap.
They should be anyway.
No, no.
Generics are so much cheaper.
Again, we're talking about patents on drugs.
That should be one of the big things because also one of the big things we should be talking about.
Lauren, finish your thoughts.
And also, by negotiating drug prices, having that capability, then we have a foothold in potentially making change throughout our medical system.
Because right now it's just a wall.
It's just a brick wall and we can't do anything about it.
So this could open up avenues to maybe curtailing the insane patent levels.
Well, this is what the pharmaceutical companies are afraid of, and rightly fucking so, they should be.
We need to chip away at their power.
Yeah, because fingers crossed that's what's going to happen.
Next, we get a stupid point based on speculation.
But four of the ten drugs on the Biden administration's target list may not even have their prices negotiated in the end thanks to the incoming generic or biosimilar competition.
So what they've done is like lawyers, they've tied it up and sewn it up in every conceivable way so they cannot lose.
That's what it means, corporatist democracies such as the ones that we have.
We have a similar thing in our country as well.
It means they cannot lose.
No matter who you vote for, you think Ah, right, what I'm going to do is vote for them.
Yeah, we thought that might happen, so we formed comparable relationships with those guys.
It's not going to be, oh, drat, damn, oh, look, they voted for the other ones.
Oh, no, we only funded this one.
They fund both.
I mean, in terms of campaign funding, there's absolutely an element of that, but that's not what we're discussing here.
So the article that Jacobin link as their source for four of the ten drugs possibly not ending up having their prices negotiated is one from Endpoints.com, a pharma news site, essentially.
Basically, the manufacturers of four of the drugs listed have signed deals for biosimilar drugs to be made, and accordingly, if it's competitive in the same way or is indeed a generic version, then it would be removed from the list of negotiations.
However, it's up to the U.S.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to decide whether something counts as competition.
Ben Rome of Harvard's Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law said that, quote, clearly CMS does not want companies to game the system by allowing a generic or biosimilar that doesn't offer meaningful competition, but I'm not sure how that will play out.
Unquote.
And Stacy Dusetsina, a professor of cancer research at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine, said in an interview, quote, that is exactly why CMS has to monitor for bona fide generic marketing, because companies could otherwise not challenge generic market entry, but do so with a shady deal that isn't real competition.
Unquote.
Basically, this is something of a non-issue.
If there's a meaningful competition or a generic keeping the price down, Medicare will of course go with the cheapest and, you know, will take the thing off the list because it doesn't need to be on the list anymore.
But in these cases, you know, they're drugs that are able to be priced at whatever the hell the pharma companies feel like because they have no competition.
And that is unlikely to change unless they allow for generics to be made, which would ultimately be less profitable than just taking the hit on price negotiations.
It's pure speculation in this article and from Brand as to whether those four drugs will be taken off the list, but neither of them know for sure, and I seriously doubt that they will be.
Well, also in addition, who knows if political, like if this, um, these types of legal changes being made, who knows what kind of like pressure that drug companies are feeling and they would rather take a half measure or a half step.
Maybe we don't have to wait 10 years for, they want to get ahead of it rather than, Push back and push back and push back if they feel like they're fighting a losing battle in this arena.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So who knows if those four drugs are, like, if their profits are under threat, they might be doing a cost-benefit analysis of like, okay, this is not the fight that we want to pick.
Let's just comply and maybe get a better deal than when we're forced to by the government.
Yeah, yeah.
There's also the aspect that just because they produce a biosimilar drug does not immediately make it competitive.
Just because something exists doesn't mean it's competitive at all.
How much of a market share does it have?
Tell me that, right?
I've tested that theory in my own body against my will!
Yeah, they can be different!
Biosimilar is not bioidentical!
No, for sure, for sure.
And there's the question of marketing and all of that.
If it's not competitive in terms of the actual market and it's not keeping the price of the other thing down, then I don't think it's going to do much.
And the pharma companies don't want generics to exist because, as you say, incredibly cheap.
So what they'll inevitably do is like, OK, well, we're going to have to suck it up and deal with these price negotiations.
After having a hissy fit and filing a bunch of lawsuits, but they'll fucking get there in the end because we'll make them.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
Well, they do have the option to not comply with the price negotiations, but they're faced with massive fines if they do.
So it's definitely in their best interest to just kind of suck it up and go along with it a little bit.
Yeah, you have more control.
If you're getting pushed to a breaking point, if you pull back and like, okay, it's a plea deal negotiation.
It's like, you know, these little Jan Sixers like Enrique Terrio are just crying in their beer that they aren't going to get to have anymore.
About these gigantic sentences, but they had sweet plea deals that they didn't take, and they took it to court and they lost.
That is a gamble that especially corporate legal systems do not want to take a gamble.
They're not trying to gamble.
It's not worth it.
No.
Because they understand that if you fuck around, you find out.
Exactly.
And that's what happened to the Jan Sixers, and that's what would happen to them, so they're not willing to risk it.
They'd rather have agency in some way.
And the way that they can, that's reasonable.
Duh.
Duh.
Okay.
Yep.
Next, we get some classic Russell Brand breaking news.
The companies making the 10 drugs on the Biden administration's target list have been selling the products for far less elsewhere.
See, the injury is an insult.
In 2021, a government analysis found the pharma industry should emerge mostly unscathed from the Build Back Better bill.
The cost to the industry and its pace of innovation will be minimal, the analysis found.
That's the deal that's been done.
2021.
Real breaking news, Russ.
Well done yet again.
The article being referenced here is from Fierce Pharma, another pharma news site.
Obviously, all of this is before the bill was even signed into law and before the decisions on which drugs would be chosen was made.
At that time, the Congressional Budget Office at that stage estimated that the bill would cost the pharmaceutical industry about $160 billion.
That may have been a conservative estimate, it turns out.
Basically, this is old predictions based on old information, most of which turns out to have been wrong, and it means very little at this stage.
That's outrageous.
Congrats on finding an article that says this, but it's a couple of years old, buddy.
It's such a reach!
He's literally reaching into the past to find it.
That's amazing!
That's amazing!
I mean, here's the thing, if you're reporting on something that happened in the past...
Look up all the stuff you want.
But it's now, like these are new things, like legislation changes and develops.
Sometimes we had no recognition throughout the process.
How dare you use two-year-old information?
Okay. Okay.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we can all play that game, Russell, you know.
I don't want to!
But we can, right?
Sure, sure.
If I went back far enough, I could find bonafide medical information telling me that you are not allowed to run more than a mile and a half, otherwise your uterus falls out, right?
I could find that in a book of medicine somewhere.
That will be there.
Depressingly, yes.
Absolutely.
There we go.
We can all reach into the past to find bullshit, Russell.
Okay.
Next, we have yet another change of source.
Pharmaceutical companies in the US raised drug prices 1,186 times in 2022.
This is very curious because essentially it shows you how the system functions.
There's a little bit of fanfare and some celebratory rhetoric, some nauseating hyperbole, but actually backstage where the real governing happens.
A deal has been done to ensure that the government is able to fulfil its promises to say some words in public without ever impacting the pharmaceutical companies.
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.
It's back!
For those of you listening, that segment, which we have encountered before, the first two images are marching jack-booted military legs and viruses that look like the cartoon of COVID-19.
Yes.
Yes.
After saying, and wasn't that citation from 2022 that he said even in like the article that he cited?
I'll get to that in a minute.
I'll get to that in a minute.
Okay.
Well, well, well.
All right.
So yeah, I thought they'd opted for that more subtle transition that we've seen to ads, but no, we get the BLEEP BUY SOME GOLD BECAUSE LIFE IS SCARY!
There's just no escaping it, fuck me.
Obviously, what Brand said just beforehand was bullshit about backroom deals being done, because the pharma industry are kicking the fuck off about this.
I do, however, just want to highlight that statistic at the beginning there, that pharmaceutical companies in the US raised drug prices 1,186 times in 2022.
It's from CommonDreams.com, which is a left-of-left sort of site, and they're referencing information from the Patients for Affordable Drugs organization.
It seemed like a lot, so I looked into the methodology of them producing this statistic, and I'll quote from them directly.
Quote, if multiple brand names existed for drugs with the same active ingredient that varied in concentration or route of administration, it was counted as multiple price hikes.
So basically, if a single drug then had four other companies making the same thing, even if just the name was different or the dosage, that was counted as five separate price hikes.
Accordingly, that brings the list of 1,186 down to 133 drugs that actually had their prices raised.
Bit more reasonable.
I'm still not great, but you know, the thing is, I'm not against what patients for affordable drugs are trying to achieve in presenting the statistics that way, but I am against them being used for fear-mongering by Russell, particularly when he then uses that fear to sell some gold and exploit his audience.
Immediately.
Instantly.
And also the way that it's like, If people are already buying the, like, inflammatory, impossible rhetoric, if they're already buying in, they could think that a bunch of drugs, or all drugs, or a giant portion, they hiked prices 1,000 plus times, not that it was each a separate incident.
An instance of hiking a price.
It was almost all drugs we put up by a thousand and something percent all at once.
The way he presents it is not particularly clear.
Especially like, oh, we've watched the price of eggs incrementally, you know, like go up all year.
The world is crazy!
The world is crazy!
Buy some gold!
Yeah, right?
It's not great.
Next, we come out of the ad and we bleep our way back to the editorial.
Get up to $5,000 of silver and protect your future in this crazy, crazy world with some solid, precious metals literally made in stars.
The pharmaceutical and health products industry spent $263 million on lobbying in Washington in 2021.
But I doubt that has any impact on these kind of decisions, do you?
In 2021, Democrats accounted for roughly 60% of $177 million in pharmaceutical industry lobbying and campaign donations.
So that would make an impact, I suppose, in the way they regulate and legislate.
That's how we go from rhetoric around we beat Big Pharma and we're going to cap drug prices to we're going to cap drug prices in a way that doesn't impact the profits of drug companies and therefore cannot meaningfully improve your life.
Okay.
The silver thing at the start was that I think Hartford Gold have a deal on where you can get up to $5,000 worth of silver for free, depending on how much gold you buy.
We do have real physical gold, but also it's available as an ISA, so you might not ever have to actually see it and we don't have to actually show it to you.
And you don't know her.
She goes to a different school in Canada.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it'll probably cost you more money to get it sent physically.
We'll probably take a lot more off the top.
And you'll probably have to email us every day for three years until there's a class action lawsuit and we just fuck off somewhere else and take your money!
Wow!
Because otherwise we have to prove that it's real and we have this gold, whereas if we just stick it in an ISA for you, then we can lie!
Um, anyway, I want to look into this, this weird gold stuff.
So bad.
So bad!
Hartford Gold.
Yeah, we might take a look at that.
Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot of content.
Patreon.com slash On Brand everybody, help us out.
Yeah, that was like such a minor thing because that whole... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So again, this law is going to meaningfully improve the lives of millions of Americans, Russell.
I'm going to quote directly from the Reuters piece, which actually did the analysis.
Quote, the industry, which traditionally gives more to Republicans, channeled around 60% of donated campaign funds to Democrats this year.
Unquote.
So in essence, this was something of an outlier, an attempt to curb the Build Back Better Act, or the Inflation Reduction Act, as it's now known.
By bribing Democrats into opposing the bill so it never came into law.
One of the Democrats opposed to the act was Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, who received $466,000 from the industry that year.
I mentioned earlier how she was a piece of shit.
Well, here's why she was acting in opposition of the bill.
Of course, her paltry protests were ultimately unsuccessful, thankfully.
What is interesting is that Brand is neglecting to mention who else was opposed to the bill.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican, said, quote, I want drug prices to be lower, but we have to do it in a way that doesn't undermine the creation of new drugs.
Oh my god.
quote. Current analysis shows that this act will prevent possibly one drug coming to market to
thus far. So yeah, real, real big, real big effect. That sounds like a maybe asterisk to
also do we need it?
I doubt it.
Maybe we do, I don't know, but like, just say it.
I don't know.
But the thing is, if we do and that one's not being brought to market, I bet your ass, you know, in this competitive economy that some other company is going to make something that does the same fucking thing because there's clearly money in it.
Anyway, here's another quote from Joe Grogan.
I really want to, every time I see that name, I'm like Joe Rogan.
No, it's Joe Grogan.
Oh, I've been tricked.
I thought that you misspoke.
Or you had another portmanteau.
No, no, no.
That's his name.
It could be Grogan, to be fair.
That's the Chia Pet.
Joe Grogan is the Chia Pet of Joe Rogan.
It could be Grogan, but I think it's Grogan.
He's a combination of Grogu and Joe Rogan.
Just a very cute, tiny green Joe Rogan.
You also have to combine the two.
It just occurred to me that Joe Rogan doesn't have any hair, so he can't get a chia pet.
Yeah, that's true.
Joe Grogan is a former pharmaceutical industry lobbyist who led the United States Domestic Policy Council under then-President Donald Trump and continues to advise GOP lawmakers on health policy.
Tremendous.
Uh, quote, every year more drugs are added onto the negotiations, so the impact is going to increase over time.
And now that you have demonstrated savings, Congress can expand the law to save more money in the future, so there's no question it's a slippery slope.
It's up to Republicans to try and arrest the slide down that slope, unquote.
I mean, that's not even trying to cover your bullshit, is it?
That's, that's, oh, this is, you know.
This is going to save money for people.
We've got to stop that.
He's saying these words out loud.
Oh, yeah.
He's saying these words out loud.
Oh, honey.
Oh, they do it all the time.
I know.
But still.
So, yeah, the Republican Party uniformly across the board voted against this bill to try and prevent it from coming into law.
It's the Republicans, the people that Russell platforms and supports, who were trying to make sure that drug prices weren't able to be negotiated.
But not a single fucking mention of that from Russell.
That's exactly what I was thinking!
And honestly, it's such a bummer that, like, that, yeah, we, um, as anyone on, like, anyone on the left, Um, we have to focus on two dickheads who we hate, who have, like, have sold a bill of goods to their constituents and then throw them away immediately as soon as they get elected.
Instead of, yeah, you're right.
How about, like, there's one or two votes that we do complain about all the time.
But there's, what, 50?
That's just in the Senate?
Votes That we should also be complaining about, but they're Republican.
So let's maybe, I mean, because those Republicans could also vote in favor of their constituents, but they don't.
All 50 of them.
All 50 of them.
Why are we focusing on the wrong?
I mean, yeah, it's again, it's a bait and switch.
Yeah.
Man, oh man.
Yeah.
Also ban lobbying!
Let's ban lobbying!
I would love that!
Not against it, not against it.
Again, in this country it just tends to get a little bit more obfuscated, but it's an improvement, I think, maybe.
But yeah, politics never used to be this fucking ridiculous in terms of the partisanship.
It never used to be this bad.
But yeah, it's insane.
And you know, the fact that we have whips, those exist.
As a position in a political party, you have whips to get, that's the person's job, to get other people, that's their name, to whip other people into voting the same way as the figurehead of the party.
That's their position, that's their job.
Yeah, if you go against that over here, then you get removed from the party.
That's the way that operates here, which is fucking madness!
Oh, that'd rule!
That'd be great!
But also, like, I mean, we lose so much!
Would it?
Would it?
Over here, it's absolutely... They get removed from the party, but they don't get removed from office, and like, I don't know, it's...
Yeah.
Well, they then have to stay as an independent and then they lose the next election is basically what happens.
Still not bad!
What has happened.
No, but what you then have is everyone is, of course, afraid of losing their job.
And so they're like, well, of course I'm going to go with the whip because otherwise I get kicked out.
And so everyone just goes along with it no matter what.
I mean, I do think that what we maybe need to say a little bit more is not only like what we just said is like the disparity and who's getting the pressure from, you know, like the like popular narrative of pressure and, you know, like hyper examination when there's plenty of Republicans that could also just like vote in favor of the people.
So saving money for the government Russell does never say taxpayers when it's saving money.
It's saving money for the government, but spending is costing the taxpayers.
That seems very obvious to me.
And it's not just a Russell thing, that's a very common thing, but the government saving money is the taxpayer saving money.
Yes, absolutely.
Every government official is elected to be A representative of their constituency.
So why are we not looking at it from a constituent standpoint where we need to, instead of making it a weird sport ball game, what does your constituency need?
Why does there need to be a whip anywhere?
You should have your finger on the pulse of what your voters want you to do.
And not even your voters, everyone that lives in the place you're responsible for.
That's the whole point.
This is nuts!
Yeah, the whole system is completely fucking balanced.
The fact that our system can be so polarized is evidence that the notion that you are representing your constituents, whether they voted for you or not, that idea is so long gone when it's literally the job description.
No, I know.
It's supposed to be the job, and yet it's been fucking abstracted out of the job description.
Imagine, of all the states of the union, that the dude in charge of West... Like, the dude from West Virginia is like, my constituents, oh, they can afford to pay for all these drugs.
How dare you try to save them money?
Oh yeah!
Does he even get mentioned?
And all the other things he fucking took out of that bill.
Because he was solely responsible for the removal of this shit.
Does he even get mentioned?
Oh my god.
Does he get mentioned at all?
No, not by Brand.
No, no, not at all.
Not at all.
Which is funny because you'd think he would bring it up because Manchin calls himself
a Democrat, right?
You would think I would fucking bring it up if I was Russell.
I'd be like, oh, look at this guy.
Isn't he a fuckhead?
You know, he's taken away all of this nice stuff you were going to get.
But no, no, I guess tangentially that would have meant that Joe Biden has some positive intentions for the country and we can't allow that.
He really is couching all this information as something useful that you can use and you can take home.
He is making it so much harder for anyone who takes him seriously or listens to him.
Those 700,000 listens to him.
Making it so hard to make sense of the world.
This obfuscation is a level that is actively harmful in just understanding the problem.
If the near a million total people who've seen this video so far try and go out into the real world and have a conversation with someone about this, They are going to be met by baffled looks and confusion.
That's what's going to happen.
And then, of course, those people are most likely going to be too polite to call them on their bullshit.
So they'll be like, yeah, anyway, the weather.
Yeah, right.
Did you see the game last night?
You know, because we as a society generally don't thrive on conflict.
All it does is keep them in the ecosystem.
If you completely fuck up their thing of information, then they can go, well, I'm right and everyone else is wrong.
Because that's the way that Russell presents himself and everything else.
I'm right and everything else is wrong.
Man, this is bad.
It's almost like he's a bad person.
What do you know?
Huh.
That could be argued, you know.
I've not considered trying that.
Maybe...
Maybe.
Mmm.
Mmm.
That's uh, I like where you're going with this Lauren.
Yeah, OK.
I'm onto something, hey!
By Jove, I think she's got it.
I've been on one kind of dumb all day.
I started with text this morning.
You knew, you knew I was feeling silly.
I've been dumb for the last several years.
Next, since 2016 at least, I'm just like, oh, this year has broken my brain.
Fuck it.
Next, we have a delightfully, obviously misleading statistic.
Oh, no.
According to Open Secrets, in 2020, the biggest recipient of donations from the pharmaceutical industry was, drumroll please, it's America's champion, Joe Biden, who received $8.6 million.
I'm going to ask you a question, Lauren.
A simple one, and I think you'll know the answer.
What happened in November of 2020?
The most expensive political race, which needs the most money to function.
That's right!
There was a little, tiny election of the President of the United States, where millions of dollars get thrown at pretty much every candidate from private interests, hoping to curry favour for the future.
Biden won out the pharma companies, that is true, though they also donated $6 million to Trump's campaign, according to Open Secrets.
So that's all this is.
But also, but also, oh my god, how mad am I and everybody when they just give the same amount, roughly the same
amount of money to both sides?
I know, I know.
Can we please stop funding campaigns through private donations?
I'm like...
Yeah, campaign finance in the States is... Because, I mean, we at least have fucking regulations over here.
We have... Ours are much stricter than what you have.
Citizens United, baby!
Look into it at some point, US listeners, just how the UK election system functions.
Because, do you know what?
It's not great, it's not perfect, but holy shit is it better than what you've got!
I don't know what's more- And it's not hard.
Yeah, right?
I don't know what's more disheartening to hear is like, oh, he gave eight points because also, yeah, that's bad!
Yeah, that's not great.
But if it's just the same to both teams, how much is that telling you about like- They're hedging their bets, that's all they're doing.
That should tell you everything you need to know about where the actual problems in the system need to be fixed.
It's just so- OK, just like the statistic is so bonkers to throw out.
I would I would feel dumb saying it, even if I were.
I don't know.
You know what?
I, I can't relate to this person's experience.
I don't even know anymore.
Different species for me, I guess.
Just for funsies, I took a look at some of the other industries that donated to these two candidates at the time.
So, oil and gas as an industry gave $1.7 million to Biden and just shy of $15 million to Trump.
to Biden and just shy of $15 million to Trump.
Casinos and gambling gave $688,000 to Biden and $46 million to Trump.
Yeah, I know.
They're in the club!
Oh, for sure, but 46 million- fucking hell.
Fucking awful.
I mean, they must feel bad about that, given that he lost.
Yeah, exactly, that's gotta hurt.
That's got a sting.
Boy, roulettes, hell of a game.
Okay.
And healthcare services slash HMOs.
So, you know, the health insurance people who benefit from the current system,
they donated $6.7 million to Biden and $47 million to Trump.
So I wonder who they were thinking would be better for them as president.
But that Trump, he's just such a great guy!
He's so dynamic and radical, according to Brand.
How dare I go on a tangent about similar donations right before you threw those out?
It's been real!
Get out of here.
That's crazy.
It's so big!
It's been real!
Get out of here.
That's crazy.
Yup.
Yup, there is definitely...
It's so big!
The numbers are so much bigger than it seems.
They're just awful.
Ow!
Absolutely awful.
And way bigger than 8.6 million.
So yeah.
From much worse fucking industries.
But that's fine.
That's fine apparently.
Yeah.
There we go.
So next we go to a piece going back to how Americans should pay less for drugs.
We take the risk of investing early in the product, but instead of that investment reaping us something valuable like affordable prices, we are rewarded with price gouging by the drug makers, the bankroll, the lawmakers who've rigged the rules, and aim to keep them rigged.
That's not free market.
It's a top-down command economy perfectly calibrated for price gouging, and the pharmaceutical industry and its puppet politicians want to keep it that way.
Hmm.
Seems like a pretty accurate appraisal.
Kamala Harris is literally almost crying about a piece of legislation that is wretched and basically worthless.
So that article that Brand is referencing is from October 2021 and was about how COVID drugs should be cheaper because the public funded a lot of the research more than usual.
I agree.
However, it has very little bearing on what we're discussing today.
As for Russell's comments on Yeah, as for Russell's comments on this law, on this act, he says it's wretched and basically worthless.
I don't think I need to hammer the point of how valuable this thing is anymore, it just needs pointing out that he's arguing with this act purely because of who's presenting it.
If Donald Trump had done this while he was president, Brand would be all fucking over it, touting it as another reason that Trump is so engaging and a champion of the people because he's a populist and I really like populists.
Instead, he'll reduce any and every achievement of the Biden-Harris administration to being naught but ash, because it panders to his audience and lines his pockets.
and that's it. Yeah. Well, and for listeners, that last brand clip, it just sounded maybe
like weird static or rushing water. But that was clapping.
And it was just a clip of just Kamala Harris and you thought she was going to say something. No,
it was just her standing at a podium. And it doesn't even let her speak.
No!
It doesn't even let her speak.
She just says this completely outrageous thing.
She's also not crying.
That's crazy.
But she has a vagina, so she must be emotional.
Yeah, she's kind of brown.
Yeah, there is that.
We've already established that Brand is a fucking misogynist, so not terribly shocking that he goes down that road.
So in the next clip, Brand has a bit of nostalgia and idealism for the America that was.
Because we know for years, far too many of our seniors, millions of our seniors across the country have struggled to afford their prescriptions.
And too many of our seniors risked their health as they may have delayed to refill their prescription or they cut their pills in half To try and stretch out the length of time.
Cutting hair to stretch out.
What's happened to America?
What's happened to this magnificent country filled with brilliant men and women?
Full of genius and innovation.
Everywhere you looked in music, in the arts, in culture.
A country where people came together to build the greatest nation in earth.
Reduced to this spectacle.
Okay.
So you can tell he can't actually refute what Vice President Harris was saying there, because he just changes the subject instead of addressing anything.
Completely.
Also, when America was doing really good and thriving and the things that he just said, yeah, taxes were up to 70% on, like, massive corporations and, like, massive profits.
There is that, isn't there?
I'd also, yeah, I'd be curious to know when he believes that the USA was full of innovation and genius, when people came together to build the greatest country on earth.
Most people, when following this line of thought, point to the 50s, a time when women had basically no rights, black and coloured people had even fewer rights.
God forbid you were a woman of colour.
And this is when it was illegal to be gay as well.
Trans rights was barely even on the radar and needless to say if you were trans at that time there was a high probability of you being beaten to death if you were open about it.
This does put Brand's desire to return to traditional values into harsh perspective.
I would also like to refute his idea that music and arts and culture have taken a hit since then.
Culture is inherently less monolithic these days because we have the internet now, but I would still argue that some of the best music and art comes from the United States to this day.
Which, I mean, deep down you're all British so it's to be expected.
I always feel like it's a numbers game, frankly.
Yeah, there's an element.
But no, I would argue that particularly in the genre of rap and hip-hop at the moment, the USA are way the fuck ahead of the curve, with the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Run the Jewels and Tyler, the Creator, producing absolutely astounding, challenging works in the last few years.
Maybe these examples... Chicago's actually doing Brunenbogen Chicago's doing great, but maybe those examples aren't traditional values or white enough for brand.
Not only do we have Chance the Rapper, did you hear about Chance the Snapper?
No.
What?
They found an alligator in Humboldt Park, a gigantic park that we all go to that's lovely and wonderful!
Somebody named it Chance the Snapper.
So, yeah, sometimes we're awesome!
I'll take it!
I love it.
Got Chance the Rapper and Chance the Snapper.
Also, isn't it adorable?
Although, how many musicians are Canadian because they fund the arts even a little bit.
Oh, I don't know.
I just... It's always surprising.
A staggering amount of both musicians and actors that everyone thinks are American are Canadian.
Yeah, kind of wild.
Yeah, it's pretty nuts.
Pretty nuts.
Wonder why?
Isn't Keanu Reeves... Keanu Reeves is Canadian, isn't he?
No.
Um, no.
Oh, man.
Hang on, I'm gonna look this up.
I'm gonna look this up while we're doing this.
Canadian actor and musician.
Yep, he's Canadian.
I was right.
Really?
There you go.
See, even you are surprised.
Keanu Reeves, Canadian.
I was.
Yeah, I was trying to figure out.
Yeah, OK.
He's from his background is extremely diverse.
So I might have just been thinking it was.
Yeah, for sure.
I recently listened to a thing.
Basically, Wizard and the Bruiser did an episode on Keanu Reeves, and they're like, we looked everywhere.
He's great, guys.
We're all... We tried.
We scoured.
And he does have a really diverse background, so... Yeah.
Interesting guy.
I mean, everyone loves Keanu.
Come on.
Come on.
He's just great.
He is just great.
We get to keep him.
Yeah, yeah, he's ours now.
hours now. - Crying for my cold dead hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, absolutely. So next up, Russell brings up
that fucking guy. - So since we took office, President Biden and
I and our administration has taken historic, historic action to cut the cost of
prescription medication for our seniors.
That's the news that comes up.
No senior should ever have to choose between medicine and food.
What's the news today, honey?
No senior should have to choose between medicine and food.
Oh, will they have to?
Yes!
We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month.
What are you so pleased about?
Listen.
Listen to the actual fact.
It's not meant to be a performance.
How dare you complain that a charismatic performer of a president like Donald Trump has garnered the attention and affections of many Americans when they're doing the same thing but less well.
Fucking hell.
So, what they're applauding, Russell, is the price of insulin being drastically capped to stop it running Americans thousands of dollars every year.
That's what they're applauding, and rightly fucking so.
And the balls to say that they're doing what Trump did as president, but less well.
Trump did nothing to deal with pharma pricing or insulin pricing.
He had meetings with the same legislators that Biden did about the same issue, but instead just fucking ignored it after the fact.
There's a great piece in Politico for anyone wondering with then-Congressman Welch saying,
I quote, "He started telling us what medications he took and he said he always takes the brand name
because he's a brand name guy. Then he started talking to Elijah about the 'rat hole' neighborhood
in Baltimore where he lived. Not long after..." Rat hole neighborhood is in quotes, by the way.
"Not long after the issue was completely dropped by the White House." Unquote. So yeah, Trump does
it way better, doesn't he? He does fuck all. He does nothing. "As evidenced by the fact
that that wasn't Mike Pence saying it."
It was Kamala Harris.
Yeah.
But also like, what is, it feels like what he keeps saying is, Oh, we should have something better.
And like, sure.
But you don't offer anything that even looks remotely like a tangible solution.
Yeah.
I don't like half measures either.
None of us do, but like, Your only other option that you ever give is nothing, subscribe to my locals channel, sound off in the comments, like... I don't... I don't... Yeah, yeah.
Donald Trump, RFK Jr., they're gonna fix everything somehow.
They don't specify how, but they're gonna fix it.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, buddy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So in the next clip, Russell, he really does anything he can to minimize the validity of this act.
We will cap the total cost of prescription drugs at $2,000 a year.
And we have made vaccines free of charge.
When I say free of charge, you know the taco stand at the border?
You're paying for those vaccines.
And we've finally allowed Medicare to negotiate the price of medications with big pharma companies.
Okay, you can negotiate.
Negotiate!
Yes, negotiate, like other established countries do.
The thing Medicare have been legally prevented from doing for decades.
Like, how do you think the NHS get their drugs for so much cheaper than the USA, Russell?
They negotiate!
Which is exactly what's going to happen in the US, which is worth fucking celebrating.
As for paying for the vaccines, what VP Harris is referring to is there will no longer be out-of-pocket costs for vaccines such as shingles and Tdap, another sizable win for the average American.
There's no taxes.
Yeah, no, no, it's huge.
There's no taxes going towards the R&D of these vaccines because, obviously, they've already been created.
They've already been R'd indeed.
Yes, yes, 100%.
So it's not fucking Taco Stand, oh, you're paying for them.
No, no.
That was crazy.
Yeah.
What the fuck?
It's so hard to even follow him because I live...
Well, that sounds like that's your fault.
Apparently.
Keep living in reality, goddammit.
We need to live in Russell's reality.
I guess I can go fuck myself.
That last little quip, I was like, table flip.
No words.
It's my own table.
I don't want to flip it.
But Jesus Christ, there is something.
More out of touch that I'm picking up on than American equivalents to Russell, truly.
It's like an extra little, like he's turned up like two more notches.
And maybe I'm making this up, maybe, I don't know, but it's just what I'm hearing Sound off in the comments, let me know what you think!
I agree, I agree.
I don't think he should be talking about this because he doesn't know anything about it.
I hear misinformation from Americans and they just aren't as clueless At least, at least with Americans there is some lived experience, whereas him, even when he lived in America, you know, in his three and a half million dollar place in the Hollywood Hills, even then, if he got ill in any serious way, he could just come back to the UK, because he's a British citizen, right?
He could just, you know, just get treatment on the NHS, which he would do.
Or throw buckets of money, yeah, because he's never had to deal with that reality or the reality of what healthcare actually looks like for the average person in America.
He's never had to deal with that and has no concept of it.
And no one has taken the time to educate him.
And he is just reading bullshit from Gareth Roy.
That's what he's doing.
He is reading the stuff that has been given to him on a couple of sheets of paper and then riffing and hoping for the best.
And instead he is, yeah, he's coming off as woefully out of touch because he fucking is, because he has no idea.
The thing is, it's like, yeah, the commentators in America are rich and out of touch, but it's like, there's just something extra spacey-brainy that I'm picking up on that.
They've had to deal with some of it.
They've had to deal with some of it, at least a little bit.
They've at least had to answer questions.
They've had to get health insurance and go, fucking hell, this is expensive, isn't it?
Whereas him, no.
Not once.
Not fucking once.
Again, if I'm off base, if I'm making it up, tell me.
I want to be.
I want to be wrong.
But there's an extra layer that is especially upsetting that I just don't hear.
Even Fox assholes saying completely insane... Laura Ingraham saying terrible shit.
It's like she at least has some of that lived experience to anticipate and to counteract in her explanation that is missing from Russell.
I feel like it's telling.
Yeah, yeah.
No, absolutely.
He shouldn't be talking about any of this, but he has to.
I mean, I agree with that.
That's simple.
I mean, obviously that.
Obviously that first.
Or, alternatively, he could do the legwork and actually do some fucking research and try to understand these things, but he's not going to do that.
I could take the same shit and, like, I've got plenty of real complaints.
The thing is, he could pretend to make the same points, but from a better informed position.
He's not even willing to do that, let alone actually addressing the reality of the situation of your healthcare system.
But, you know, that would be not enough shit flinging at Biden.
So, you know.
Next, if you thought that Russell's arguments were getting weaker, well, take a look at this.
And as many of you know, we've worked together over the course of my career.
I've seen the stakes of this fight firsthand when I was Attorney General of California.
And now, after that ridiculous cyborg-like address, I'm going to humanize myself with an anecdote.
I met with countless families who are often quietly suffering because they or a loved one could not afford the medication they needed.
I or a loved one cannot afford medication I or they needed.
All that to say...
Great argument.
I thought of a better one!
And make medications more expensive. Yeah, profit and subsidy.
And President Biden and I will continue to use every tool at our disposal
to bring these costs down. And we will hold accountable those who try to put-
We're gonna break away from this and come back.
We're gonna break away from this because it actually doesn't make sense in light of the facts.
I mean, given that it's only a few drugs, all of that rhetoric has been organized to make it sound better than it is.
And even I, as a mainstream news reporter, are struggling to remain enthusiastic about this vile propaganda.
Oh, wait, my forehead's growing.
Is that a side effect?
So there wasn't a single argument there against what Harris was saying.
The reason the news guy cut away was for an ad break, and then to come back when President Biden was speaking after getting the gist of things from VP Harris.
Of course it was.
Yeah, that's how television happens, yeah.
I'm quite certain said news guy understands more about this act and its effects than Russell does.
After all, he's just casually parroting the information given to him by Gareth Roy.
So, yeah, not a wonder that he doesn't have any great refutations for any of what Harris is saying.
No, what you say.
Listen, I'm just some fucking dipshit and I know what you say.
She said that their family's quietly suffering.
Oh yeah?
Well, because if they loudly suffer, you were a miserable attorney general and you would figure out a way to punish them if they were loud.
So they had to be quiet and it's all your fault!
As an example.
Yes.
Yes.
That's all I have to add to that.
Yes.
There were definitely problems with Kamala Harris as an AG, abso-fucking-lutely.
Seems to be doing okay as VP so far, I think that's a role she's better suited to.
She's also not!
The shit that she said about fracking is both evil and insulting!
It sucks!
Pick another thing!
I use the word better.
I know!
It's a sliding scale, right?
Honestly, she has less, like, power over individuals, and that's the... Yeah!
Yeah!
I think she's in the perfect position.
Oh my god!
We're so fucked!
Okay.
Yep.
Um...
If anyone wants to tell me nicer stuff she's done, I'm all ears!
There is stuff!
There is positive stuff.
I can remember at the time... Like, I'm gonna reach back... No, no, no.
I just remember at the time when she was announced as the VP pick, I remember there was a lot of criticism.
But then a few publications and podcasts made an effort to actually find out, okay, let's try and Take a balanced position and see what good has been done as well as the bullshit.
And there was definitely good.
There is some good stuff that she has said and done.
And legendarily, I am a massive buzzkill.
To myself first!
Listen, I kill my own buzz before I get to any of you.
And I would love to revel in the fact that we have our first woman and person of color!
As a vice president that I should be excited I wasn't at all because she's a fucking cop but and like everything I do about her record was awful um just like as far as things that you did that were terrible as a attorney general um Sorry, I don't... I want to be excited!
I want to be excited!
It's such a big deal!
It's like, genuinely, like, representation does matter!
It's a huge deal!
Really, really does.
But again, like, Russell could bring any of this stuff up.
He just doesn't.
Ignorance, I'm not sure, but he just...
He just doesn't, and also his audience are the type to parrot the, you know, Blue Lives Matter kind of thing, so I don't think the fact that she's a co-op would be an issue to them.
I don't see that much, but you watch more than I do, like as far as the Law & Order mania, I don't know.
The comment sections are not great.
So, we have one final clip from Russell here.
So there you go!
I almost myself am astonished to imagine that these two sets of facts, what I've seen on the screen and what we've read from the leather and elsewhere, actually align.
Can this be possibly true?
I feel like I just watched someone introduce some historic legislation, but the facts appear to reveal that only minuscule changes are taking place, presumably because of the effective power of lobbying.
and the influence that pharmaceutical companies appear to have.
Pledges were made, then negotiations happened, then pledges were made that obfuscated the fact that these
changes are minimal.
And I'm gonna make a great deal of difference.
That's as good as it's gonna get.
Watching Kamala Harris do that and think, "Wow, she seems happy about something, surely something
good must be happening."
And maybe occasionally glance at the peeling, yellowing president of your country.
That's as good as it's gonna get.
Because your drug prices ain't going to significantly change in 2026.
Not based on these hard facts.
But that's just what I think.
Let me know what you think in the chat.
Remember, I'm doing stand-up in the UK in September.
Just five intimate gigs.
Come see me there.
More important than that though, stay free.
Yeah, Russell's doing a new stand-up tour, which will inevitably become a special.
It's called Bipolarization.
Great.
Gotta say, not looking forward to reviewing it if we ever get the chance.
Bullshit.
The obvious point to make here is that Russell is saying the facts aren't matching up with what's being said on the screen, but the reality is that what he's presenting are not facts, let alone hard facts.
They're spin, misinformation, outright lies, or outdated bullshit from a couple of years ago that bears no relevance to what's being discussed.
He's saying that drug prices won't significantly change in 2026, and that's easy for him to say right now when it's not happening, But my bet is it's going to be the exact opposite.
Negotiating powers are no joke, and there's no solid reason as to why the USA can't achieve results like the UK or elsewhere.
This is, of course, a gradual process like most things in American politics, but it's fair to say this is probably the most meaningful piece of legislation to protect Americans from pharmaceutical price gouging probably ever.
Definitely in my lifetime, yeah.
And it represents a significant step in getting your country's healthcare system to being something anywhere near tolerable.
Yeah, it's a nightmare.
Also the fact that it's called the Inflation Reduction Act.
That's all because of fucking Joe Manchin.
That's all that is.
It's because he was obsessed with the Build Back Better Act not doing enough to do with inflation, to reduce inflation.
He just kept hammering on that same point.
I get the feeling they named it specifically for him and he was a co-sponsor of the bill in the end.
Dumb baby.
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, I can think of a few.
Inflation reduction acts that I'd be in favor of.
In Minecraft.
Anyway, here's the thing.
Massive corporate monopoly is why.
Because they can, so they're taking it.
The inflation argument is already stupid and completely wrong.
And as far as the popular discussion of American inflation, Y'all have actual material results from pressure around, you know, like military, political pressure around getting fuel for energy.
That makes sense.
There is very little to no reason that all of our prices are like, no, bullshit.
Yeah.
There's inflation and there's, there's inflation and there's artificial inflation and, and And to be honest, we're both very much victims of the latter, because the oil companies are fucking us harder than anyone has ever imagined, and reaping incredible profits.
They are not hurting.
They're just fucking us because they found a good excuse.
That's what's happened there.
They can, yeah.
They found a way to obfuscate, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, it's Russia's fault, you know?
It's like, well, yeah.
No, it's not though, is it?
It's because you raised the prices that you didn't need to do.
That's why it actually is.
And you know, don't get me wrong, Russia's a good excuse and what they're doing is fucked up, but that's not why your prices have gone up.
Yeah, maybe since I've been getting pitched alternative energy ideas as these great, awesome things that make money and we should transition.
Since I was literally a child in grade school, Maybe we should have started doing that and then we wouldn't have had to rely on Russia in the first place.
That sounds far too sensible.
And like, there is nowhere near enough profit to be made right now.
There's a lot of profit to be made.
You know, if you would just, if you would even just invest for like a couple of years, you could make so much money off the renewable shit, but they're just not willing to, they're not willing to give up the profits for that short term.
They're just not willing, which is insane.
That's another thing that I feel like would be so obvious for Russell, and Russell can span out every once, but like... I have gotten too excited, and I'm discombobulated.
I'm a mess right now, because I've wrapped around my own axle.
This has been one of those shows, and it's because it's a subject that hits close to home.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
It hits close to home, and it's complicated, and he is showing absolutely zero understanding of the actual issues at hand, and so it's incredibly frustrating, even for me, and I don't fucking live there, you know?
Well...
My ability to get my medication has a direct effect on the quality of your podcast, so you are tangentially affected!
That's true, that's true!
Because you don't have the pause and help me figure out a word!
I mean, well, what...
He got so close to it, he skirted around it, like, why do corporations get to sue the government if they will lose a profit in the future?
The fact that that is a legal standing at all in this country is a massive problem.
Why are you not saying that?
Because you want their money too, baby.
That's why.
Because you see someone else securing their bag and you want that same bag because you just want more.
Obviously!
Like, there's no... But you know what I mean?
Like, the fact that you can claim as a corporation, hey government, I'm gonna sue you because you're putting policies in place For the people, the government is also a representation of the people, you are going to protect them from our price gouging, because that's what it is.
And we can sue you, we have grounds to sue, because it didn't get thrown out yet, they might, I hope they lose, but it hasn't been thrown out, so that means they do have grounds to sue, Well, someone thinks they have standing.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
No, right.
That's out the window, too.
Cool 2023.
This is great.
I'm so glad we're here.
I just I think about, like, cell phone service all the time now because I was paying.
I was like cheap.
I was paying 168 bucks a month for years for my cell phone.
And now.
15 bucks, 30 bucks a month.
I'm sorry.
You cannot tell me they were doing $150 worth of work every month for me and now magically it's 15 or 30.
Sorry.
Sorry.
No, no, no.
There's no fucking way.
When there is, this is when you get changes.
This is what like, When corporations are like, Oh, keeping it simple.
Well, like they'll make just as much.
Like, do you think that Mint Mobile is trying to take a loss?
No, they are cutting their overhead.
And they're making money!
Like, they're still a company!
And they're still functioning!
Is that even a mosque leader?
I don't think?
Laws and regulations.
That's it.
That's how you fucking deal with this shit.
And you know, I was just thinking about it.
When you think about Russell Brand...
There are so many directions he could go that would have such a legitimate basis to them.
There's so much where he could really have something to say.
And don't get me wrong, he would almost certainly, if left to his own devices, veer off into Covid misinformation and vaccines and all that bullshit as well.
But instead, he just elects to fling shit at Biden.
He doesn't even really, he doesn't actually really properly critique the pharmaceutical system in this editorial.
He just critiques Biden for taking some money from them.
It's like, well, That's just kind of the way the system works at this point, which is fucking broken, but also not necessarily fully Biden.
I mean, you know, he's partly culpable, but come on.
Where's the critique of Big Pharma itself?
Where's the critique of the health care system itself?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It feels, OK, maybe I have my tinfoil hat on, but it feels like Oh, we're gonna get a big swing.
No, no, no, no, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not.
I just like, I'm second-guessing myself because I'm a rational human being and we're dealing with a rational human being.
Okay, okay, okay.
Let's hear it, let's hear it.
We'll judge it based on its merits.
Okay, okay, man.
Here, okay, Russ.
It feels like he is directing his audience away from the problem in such like a simple, it's like simple, digestible, bombastic.
And to use this information to make any material improvement in an individual's life, there is no information whatsoever that is effective to use to move forward in the world and make a change.
There is something to be said, even Alex Jones or whatever, and I don't know if it's just American versus, I don't know.
I don't know what it is, but there's at least like a kernel of maybe even where the problem, I think maybe if it's an accident.
It's just like, you know, a propagandist, I'm just thinking Alex Jones is an easy, easy reference for me to make.
It's like almost accidentally will like tell on themselves in a way, whereas like Russell has to avoid any notion of reality completely.
Yeah.
To keep people hooked into his worldview, because if you go outside of his sphere, nothing makes sense.
Yeah, no, no, that's true.
That's like, that's cult shit, because you're, you're redefining all these terms that only can function and exist within this, like, tight, This, uh, you know, biodome that he's made of, of information that like, it, it, it can't make sense if you try to pick it up and take it out.
And that's like, yeah.
This is, this is what I was saying before, you know, if any of his audience try and take any of these ideas out into the wild, they're just going to be met with confusion because none of it is based in reality.
None of it is based in, you know, and, and the thing is, What they'll then say is like, oh no, you just take all your information from the MSM, from mainstream media, you're being lied to, man.
Come and stay free with us because we've got the truth.
And actually it's just bullshit.
It's bullshit from start to finish.
Just in service of flinging shit at the Democratic Party.
That's all it is.
And again, this guy says he's not right-wing.
Every fucking week!
Every fucking week!
He does anything he can to fling shit at the left and promote the right.
I'm not right-wing!
I've got so many more complaints in my pinky fingernail for the Democratic Party than he can muster in what, a week of content?
That's the other thing is the volume of content, why it's so diff- I would love to address more of it but like there is a method to that too because if you have content that you can check in with every day that is protecting his info bio dome.
Because there's just so much of it no one's going to go through all of it.
Because you're not going to get the right You're not going to be able to take, like, it's creating this special language that only makes sense in Russell.
You're speaking Russellese and you need to, and you can't take Russellese out into the wider world.
That's so dangerous for, like, oh my God.
I would not be, I would not be terribly surprised if the only person who watches all of his content is me.
That would not shock me, because there is so much of it!
He just fucking pumps it out every day, and half of it's bullshit.
The other day he had one, and it was one that I was on the surface considering for this show.
I was like, oh, this is interesting.
And he opens up the show, and you can kind of tell, like, maybe he's got something in his mouth, or there's something happening.
It turns out he'd just been eating what he describes as a complex salad.
So he was just chowing down on salad like just before... So a $35 salad.
Right.
Didn't even bother to wash his mouth out or whatever else before, you know, real fucking professional.
They spend 20 minutes talking shit and looking at the thing that Tucker put up about Obama being gay and a drug addict and having sex with that guy.
Hilarious for so many reasons.
And I thought, oh, it's an hour 15 show, okay.
They spend nearly 50 minutes, five zero minutes, on a football is nice episode that they just shoved in there instead.
For God's sake, Russell!
Yeah, but your standard for content is learning valuable information.
What he's selling is a feeling.
He's selling feelings content.
And that takes way less effort to take in because you don't really have to think.
You just have this person that's reinforcing your feelings or is expanding on these like, oh, these feelings and someone's talking to me and it makes me feel good to be right when no one else is telling me I'm right.
And then it's like it's an addiction.
Like you keep going back to the source that makes you feel right, especially.
I mean, that's that's the whole QAnon thing.
That, like, we're dealing with a serious, like, it's a serious problem because it's this, like, it's this subversion of critical thinking that's like, oh, you're so close.
You're so close.
You just need to flip it just a little bit and you can get it, man.
And that's a regular person, that's not a motivated, like, figurehead that is, like, doling out these little like, this is like little doses
every day of that, like dopamine hit of feeling right and validated when you're
like, you know, it's you against the world,
which like don't even get me started in that whole fucking phrase. But like,
I know, I know.
I was okay with... It's you against the world, but we're also all in this together, and you and me, we're going to start a revolution.
Every couple on Love Is Blind says that, right around their wedding.
I know.
Why does it have to be you against the world?
Why?
Why the fuck would that be a nice thing to say?
No, I don't see being in the position of Bonnie and Clyde as a particularly pleasant experience personally.
They did have a great time!
No, no, history tells me that.
The other thing about Russell kind of putting out that kind of content where he's just obviously not fucking trying is that...
As you say, he's selling himself.
Absolutely.
It's a case of, oh, just come along with me for this ride.
We're just going to have an informal little chat here.
Oh, look, here's me in a salad.
Aren't I accessible?
It's a lunch date.
You can have a lunch date with Russell.
Yeah, and it's much more casual.
You know, there's no editorial in the middle.
It's, ha ha, look at this guy!
Obama had sex with this guy, didn't he?
Ha ha ha!
And that's the content.
And yeah, for my purposes, it's frustrating because there's no fucking meat on those bones.
But that's not what he's selling.
He's selling himself because he is charming to his audience.
You've conditioned me already to have an adverse reaction Instantly.
It wasn't that bad this time.
This one was fine.
This one was fine.
Honestly, again, he was cherry picking.
He was really cherry picking those sentences because they were in there.
But invariably, the next sentence would be, and this is why Big Pharma is wrong.
So, you know, yeah.
Can we call that magnetic poetry?
That's a magnetic poetry because that's how I picture, especially ever since we looked at like at RFK's book.
Because I think that, like, the grift and the...
The disinfo kind of like pundity world has figured out that the complaint that you aren't citing your sources, you do not have citations.
Like for instance, listeners aren't familiar with Alex Jones, like especially if he's just talking most of the time, he will cherry pick and not cite, not direct quote, definitely not putting a site, not putting words on a screen that can be cited or directed back to an article.
And that's kind of the old way.
The new way, I think, that's coming along is way too many citations.
And you can take shit out of context and say whatever you want.
It's magnetic poetry on your fridge.
You can just, you can take these words and say any number of different things depending on how you arrange your pastiche.
And that is, that is a way I do believe that like, Debunking is that much more difficult because it was a lot easier to be like, Encyclopedia Britannica?
Are you effecting kidding me?
Whereas like now we, I mean using, being able to cherry pick from like open sources.
That's, like, you can find reputable, like, you take some reputable outlets, you mix them in with some you-know-no outlets, and it can seem like you have support and you know what you're talking about in a way that was a little easier to dismiss previously.
It's just, it's a different animal.
This is a different animal, and I'm scared.
A slightly more sophisticated form of bullshit.
I don't know whether I can credit Russell with that.
In my mind, I'm still crediting Gareth Roy.
I don't know whether I give him too much credit at some point.
I don't know.
But it still very much feels like he's the mastermind behind it.
I wish we could dig into more of this and we would probably get to these answers More quickly, and yeah, I fucking want to know!
I absolutely want to know!
Behind the scenes guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's so many levels of obfuscation that makes it really difficult to figure out where this is coming from and what the benefit really is.
I do want to bring it back to the point of this podcast and why we're even doing this is to maybe Counteract any of it even a little teeny tiny bit or someone who is like I don't know if I feel this is getting weird or like oh I was into this and it got weird and I left and these and giving someone a place to feel validated and to be like you're not crazy.
You're not the crazy one in this little equation.
Right.
Russell claims that everyone else is full of shit, but... Yeah, it'd be rad if, you know, if like November 8th, 2024, he just disappears, but I don't think he would stay disappeared.
No, no, no.
I predict there's going to be fucking live streaming the election.
There's going to be the whole shebang.
There's no way he's not going to do that, because it's going to make him a shitload of money.
So he's absolutely going to do that, and then we're going to have all of the post-election analysis.
We're going to have all this good stuff.
Oh, weren't the polls wrong?
Is it because they're funded by Democrats?
Yeah, trust me, it's gonna be dogshit.
So hey, we've got that to look forward to.
If anyone wants to support us and what we do, please go to patreon.com slash onbrand.
We would be very, very appreciative.
And we can carry on doing this thing here.
Yes!
Yay!
And if you want to get in touch at any point and drop us an email, it's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
We are also on socials.
Pretty much everywhere is theonbrandpod.
There is a subreddit about us that's onbrand underscore pod.
Go over there and speak to the people there.
They're very pleasant.
There are some very interesting discussions happening there.
It's really nice.
All of the people are very, very pleasant.
And our personal socials, I am at AlworthOfficial in most places, and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b.
Lauren, do you got some plugs for us this week?
Indeed I do!
So, the website is still a mess, but it's coming.
Hey!
Oh my god!
So, actually... What's the saga?
What's the saga?
It's a website for the dead.
Okay, right, let's...
Okay.
I'm going to blog off-brand right after this.
I've got a little news roundup, guys.
Yeah, news roundup.
Set about some things.
I'm excited.
I tricked you, haha!
Right, so, physical, actual things.
Oh, and I get to, I'm also, I just have some bullshit that I also want to complain about, and one of them is, I'm amending my previous plugs for Beverly Art Walk, which is, not this Saturday, next Saturday, September 23rd.
My work, not my individual human body, We'll be at Made Artisan Collective.
I'm pulling out of the stops, I'm making a bunch of new stuff, and this is a place I can sign.
They have a bunch of rad shit.
It's not even just me.
They're great.
And the event's, like, really cool.
That's 12 to 5 at Made Artisan Collective and also just in Beverly.
Go!
It's awesome.
My human person will be at the Jackalope Coffee Anniversary Block Party.
Same day.
11 to 6.
Same time.
And it is a free, like, all-day event.
It's rad.
I'm gonna be vending there.
And they got P. Lander Z to headline at the end of the night.
Last year, it was Fat Kiss.
Exactly what you think it is.
They're amazing.
Okay, cool.
No notes.
Okay.
And that was incredible.
And they got P. Landers in this year, which honestly is spectacular.
I was shocked.
Awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
I made a sound.
Mike had to ask.
People in the Midwest go to this thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then still UFOs over Lubbock is going to be October 6th in Lubbock, Texas.
The first Friday at the Charles Adams Project.
So yeah, those are my plurgs.
Cool!
And a real problem with generic drugs, the tuberculosis vaccine and treatment, I just remembered treatment of vaccine, the 20-year patent is almost up and tuberculosis is a massive problem across the planet.
So if you want to be involved and care about real problems that you can do something about with the medical system, they're currently in court trying to extend the patent for another four years, and it will cost literally millions of lives and tons of suffering all over.
When we've been waiting by we, I mean nice people that don't want folks to suffer and waiting for this patent to run out and
they're trying to extend it and it's a big deal and I would like to direct everyone's
attention from Russell's weirdness to the actual solution that we could pressure our lawmakers
and judicial system into doing the right thing and denying the
extension of a patent.
Weird last plug but I'm on board.
Sorry it's really boring right now.
No no no that is good to throw in there.
Right everybody do as the person says.
That is our show.
We love you very much.
Thank you for listening and we're going to go off-brand for a
For News Roundup, which is great.
Love you very much!
It's great for me because I didn't do the research for this one, Lauren did, so I get to sit here and be flabbergasted, so that's going to be fun.
It's a round table of two.
It's going to be good, it's going to be good.
So yeah, thank you everyone and we will see you next week.
Bye!
Thank you so much and bye!
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