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March 8, 2024 - On Brand

02:02:29

OB #46 - Rand Paul

Senator Rand Paul, a man with interesting hair and a less interesting book to sell, came on Stay Free with Russell Brand. Let's see what he has to say. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand Buy a magnet! - realshinyactualgooooold

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	This is propaganda live.
	I only suggest how to take him out of vote.
	Extraordinary cultural moment.
	Already iconic.
	Already iconic.
	We love you.
	You're welcome here.
	Where did this guy come from?
	It's like he's been doing it for ages.
	He's very confident.
	Plainly, and this is a matter now of fact and record, I'm right wing.
	I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
	Is this misinformation or is Vivek Ramaswamy in the lavatory?
	That's sort of like a poem.
	Is this Eminem?
	Man, if we didn't come together in that stream, I'm assuming it was just the Pete.
	Now these are the kind of conversations I think that the legacy media can no longer compete with.
	Win win win win win win win.
	This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand Show with my co-host Lauren B. That's me!
	I've had such a hard time not saying win-win-win-win-win and then laughing to myself.
	Additionally, I don't know what we'll be covering today, but if history serves, it's usually not great.
	Not great at all.
	It's almost invariably bad, which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing.
	Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing this week?
	Well, this is going to sound like a sponsor plug.
	It's not.
	I guess these do that.
	I guess that's accepted, I think, in this region of the podcast anyway, or in general.
	So there's a documentary that came out on Netflix called The Octopus, and it's a lot of, I mean it's kind of deep diving, it's a murder mystery, it's government corruption, it's CIA, it's a story that Mike and I are like, I've heard parts of this, I've heard of this before, very vaguely, and then some guys really got it together and covered the thing.
	And it's, you know, readily accessible, at least in the US.
	So if you need to change your settings, you know.
	And it's a really, like, it's really, really well done.
	And I it's just like normal people getting kind of sucked into the conspiracy theory pool, but they stay mostly normal.
	And I think I identify with what they're up to and kind of where I feel, you know, like learning about more CIA stuff and more just government corruption stuff and just, you know, The books that we've been wrapping up and talking about and it's really great and the guys that made the movie are
	Given, oh, interviews all over town, you just search it and you find it.
	Every single interview I've listened to that just has happened across my feed, they go into, they're like, oh, we didn't even have time to cover this in the documentary, and there's like a whole other section.
	And it's, I mean, obviously they do like a little bit of an overview, but then for every, like, they're, almost none of the information is overlapped with other interviews or with the documentary.
	And it's, Fascinating.
	So I'm telling everyone within the purview of my voice right now, if you're interested and you want to go watch it, dig it.
	And then they have all these other interviews that are really, really fascinating.
	And there's like two other bonus documentaries out there so far that I've listened to that are covering the same thing.
	And so, oh my god, I mean, here's the thing.
	You will not get an answer.
	Responsible reporting, especially on this kind of stuff, where records have been destroyed or kept secret or whatever for decades.
	You're not going to have necessarily a sense of finality, but you'll definitely be way more informed and it's really interesting.
	Uh, you know, I didn't, I wasn't great at picturing who I would be as an adult when I was younger.
	The one thing I wanted was to be like a well, like a, like an adult who understood the news and like understood that kind of stuff.
	You know, I was like well informed about the news because I think I had a lot of news informant cosplayers in my Childhood and I'm like, Oh, no, I want to actually know what I'm talking about.
	Not just like shout somebody down at Thanksgiving.
	And I'm really happy with like, being that person.
	And that's like a cool, it's like a cool ass feeling.
	Very erudite way to explain my point by cool ass, but it's very cool.
	And that's something that's like, that's the good part, I think, even though the news or Even though the news can be very depressing and you have a little cry when you finish a book occasionally, but I feel so much more empowered.
	Or as you've said in the past, that knowledge and learning is my kink.
	Maybe that's it for me, I don't know.
	I think that remains true.
	I wish it was everyone's!
	I mean, it's a way to, you know, and there is creativity and I forget about, you know, and like being able to Connect your knowledge, but I understand that it can be very frustrating for people because it's not like concrete.
	There's a lot of I don't know, which I think is useful for like just to keep things and if you're like, okay, this could be 10% true, this could be 40% true, this could be 90% true.
	If you just kind of keep that in your mind, I think, and practicing that I think keeps you from going the way of Russell, the way of You know, these people that we talk about is is being able to hold the hold the
	The uncertainty and then not necessarily be overwhelmed by it, but accept that as part of the reality.
	That's what reality is.
	That's what being a fully realized adult is like.
	You don't get answers in half an hour like a sitcom, you know?
	Yeah, and not everything's black and white.
	There's a lot of nuance.
	There's a lot of everything.
	Ironically, I think that's the kind of thing that Russell pretends to be all about.
	It's like, oh, they're eliminating nuance from the conversation.
	It's like, no, no, we embrace that as a thing.
	Yeah.
	I think we may have identified an issue why I get so worked up and sometimes personally insulted by his views, because he's co-opting.
	He's pretending to Be me.
	And it makes me mad.
	And I think about what I could do with the same resources and the same reach.
	And I want to set his house on fire in Roblox.
	Yeah.
	It just makes me so mad!
	Yes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It is difficult.
	Well, I think if you were able to speak to your child self, it would be a mission accomplished person who definitely understands the news and certainly consumes more of it than anyone I know.
	Well, get on board, everybody.
	Literally everybody.
	I don't have any money.
	It doesn't cost anything.
	Everything I'm finding is free.
	Another plug for the Libby app, the greatest thing.
	One of the best things on my phone that's ever happened.
	Which we do have over here, it turns out, as well.
	So that is a thing in the UK, too.
	So there we are.
	That rules.
	Oh, that makes me happy.
	That's fantastic.
	Free library app.
	Everybody get it.
	So what's your good thing?
	My good thing this week, so I'm in the throes of moving house and I'm still kind of, yeah, most of it's out the way but I'm, you know, I'm still a little bit in the thick of it.
	Hence why I'm in a different room and I'm surrounded by boxes and all kinds of crap, you know, and I'll probably be doing the same thing in a few months time as well which is going to be great but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
	But in the meantime, the one thing that has kind of really kept me going is, well, obviously, you know, music and podcasts and that kind of thing as you're going.
	But mainly fucking energy drinks.
	I've got to say, I've got to give it up to the energy drinks this last week.
	It has been an absolute lifesaver.
	Or I'm there at 2am just like, I'm gonna die!
	That I did not expect!
	That I did not expect!
	Alright!
	I have need.
	I'm not a particularly caffeine sensitive person either.
	I can get through a lot.
	A can of Relentless or something like that.
	Just give me a kick in the ass at two in the morning.
	I'm like, well, I guess I'm packing now.
	Let's go!
	And yeah, that's kept me going.
	I was unloading the van at 3 a.m.
	the other day.
	I was like, oh, thank God.
	Just on my own as well at that point in the cold.
	Oh yeah, oh yeah.
	I think everybody, you get to a certain age and everybody's got like a bad move.
	Like, the move that was like, oh wow, what a low point.
	Just for my, just my mood.
	I actually, around Trump being elected was the same.
	time period that was, like, the worst move I ever had to do.
	Like, distress-wise, volume-wise, location-switching-wise.
	So, that's a fun nugget to have in my brain forever.
	A fun scar on my soul forever.
	Those terrible moves always also coincide with terrible things happening.
	It's just like, oh.
	Potentially, yeah.
	It's probably, honestly, it's probably not the worst move I've had.
	But still, it's, I don't know, I feel like I've moved most years since I was 17.
	And so, you know, I'm pretty used to it at this point, but it doesn't get any easier.
	And you know, with every passing year, I'm just like, oh, fuck this.
	It definitely doesn't get easier.
	No, no, it's just, I can, yeah, I can, I'm just like, I don't know, I need to find myself a cave and set up shop or something and just stay there.
	I'm gonna become a hermit, everybody.
	I was gonna say, if you don't cut your, like, don't cut your hair or fingernails or toenails, I don't know if they're still hiring in the British countryside, but about, what, 150 years ago?
	Hermit was a good gig.
	Yeah, I would have loved that.
	I would have nailed being a hermit.
	Don't get caught down at the pub, though, because that's how they would get fired, which I think is hilarious.
	That's true.
	Yeah, you need to need to find another way to get your booze on.
	Yeah, and community.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Well, well, you know, but we have the internet these days.
	So being a hermit is kind of easier.
	You know, I can, I can get that.
	So, you know, I can do it.
	If there are any, you know, old school patrons with a capital P. With a shed.
	Yeah, that want a hermit to write books about them or whatever.
	That's hilarious.
	That's all I'm saying there.
	Oh dear.
	Now we've got a show to do.
	But first we should thank some new patrons.
	So first up we have Two Fabulous Thespians.
	You are now an awakening wonder.
	Or both of you are awakening wonders I would assume.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you so much!
	That is wonderful.
	We are very grateful to have you.
	And clearly, you will have to do some acting for us at some point because you are, you know, off the stage.
	That would be very much.
	Not sure how we're going to put that in.
	But it's on the table, I guess.
	We can figure it out.
	We can, you know, just, I don't know.
	Film something and send it to us.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	Al, where are we going?
	What are we doing?
	I don't know.
	The wheels fell off pretty quickly.
	Ben Garber, you are now an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you so much!
	Thank you.
	We are deeply appreciative.
	Ranger Tim!
	Hey, we got another profession.
	Ranger Tim, you are now an Awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an Awakening wonder.
	Thank you so much, Tim!
	Thank you, thank you.
	I'd love to know where you are, where you are Ranger of.
	If it's, if it's park or like Texas or, you know, there's, there's so many options.
	You know what, if it's a Texas Ranger?
	I don't need to know.
	You know what?
	I hope you're doing great.
	I don't need to know beyond that.
	Fair.
	Either way, thank you Ranger Tim.
	And finally, One Blade of Grass, you are now an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you, Singular Blade, of course.
	Thank you so much!
	Your resource allocation is fascinating to me.
	I don't know if that's a reference to something, though.
	Well, yeah, there's several references.
	I believe it's a literary reference, I think, or I'm making that up.
	Whatever your reference, I'm here for it, and I appreciate you so much.
	Thank you.
	Deeply, deeply.
	One blade of grass, let us know.
	It could just be a sentient blade of grass.
	It's very possible.
	And if anyone wants to support us and what we do, become an Awakening Wanderer, join the Invisible Hand, or donate on an elevated tier, head to patreon.com slash onbrand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	It is this which allows us to be editorially independent and ad-free.
	And as a patron, you will also get a shout-out on the show and access to our patron-only show, Offbrand, where we discuss anything but Russell Brand.
	And this last week we took a little look at just how bad the comedy of Jim Brewer and Rob Schneider is before discussing some British comedians, which was fun.
	And, you know, getting into a little bit of the Brexit talk and that kind of stuff.
	Which, yeah, yeah, really great chat.
	Terrible comedy, great chat.
	Yeah, an extension of our episode, I think, was pretty decent.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Something that didn't quite get expanded on in the show was just awful.
	If you followed my rabbit trail of references, I'm sorry.
	And we did it so you don't have to, if you haven't yet.
	Because I feel like I made some vague references that maybe not everybody's familiar with.
	And good for you.
	Good on ya!
	The hope was none of you felt the need to go and have to check it out yourself, so we've kind of tackled that for you.
	We've bit the bullet, so to speak.
	So hey, there we go.
	Oh God, I'm sorry.
	Yeah.
	Oh, Lord.
	Lord, those clips.
	Terrible.
	And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you're listening to Spotify, the video should come up there too.
	Now, because of last week's show being a special, it kind of feels like it's been a minute since we've tackled Brussels proper, right?
	And, you know, a fair amount has happened in the world since we last did.
	Marginally less has happened in the world of Russell's show.
	However, when we left off, I was expecting our next show to be covering what's happening with Julian Assange's court case in the UK, and whether he will in fact be extradited to the US.
	Russell and his crew made a big deal out of this, right?
	They went down to London, they set up in a little apartment near the court, you know, so they had a whole thing there.
	They were interviewing pro-Assange protesters, and there was a whole, like, stay-free, live-on-location type thing going on.
	Russell had big plans for that week.
	And court began its session on the Monday, which was mostly nothing particularly eventful.
	And on the Tuesday, it was decided the hearing would be postponed until at least March 8th.
	[laughter]
	And so the court had...
	[laughter]
	Yeah.
	[laughter]
	Oh, that's the most British thing!
	That's the most British thing to happen.
	I just, I love it.
	I loved so much about it.
	Yeah.
	And yeah, it's so that the court had time to review any and all documents submitted from a broader populace that might be relevant to whether Ahsan should be extradited or not.
	Submissions close tomorrow, actually.
	Not to say it's bad to take on, to give time, but just, No, no, no.
	Yeah, it's a good thing.
	It's what news happens.
	Maybe it's a confirmation bias on my part.
	Just seems like that.
	I mean, it happens in America too, sure, but wow.
	That's hilarious.
	Yeah, it did tickle me.
	You know, it's potentially good news for Assange, possibly, but yeah, terrible news for Russell's show because they had to pack up and go home early with seemingly no current content prepped either, so Russell had to put out a couple of pre-recorded interviews to kind of cover the time.
	Womp womp.
	Um, so, yeah.
	[laughter]
	That's... that rule...
	That's so terrible.
	It was great.
	It was great.
	It was... yeah.
	Yeah.
	Ugh.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Ugh.
	Tickled me.
	So since then, this week, he's been back on his usual bullshit, which brings us to, yeah, this week's show.
	It's an interview, and it's someone Russell has previously openly expressed his adoration for on his show, and we've covered it.
	And I'm gonna let you take a guess as to who you think that might be.
	Oh, I have no, oh my God.
	Okay, okay, I'll give a clue to narrow it down.
	This person has some interesting hair.
	And Russell really likes them.
	I'm out.
	I've decided, these questions, I've decided I'm just going to pretend that I don't know.
	Okay.
	I think it's what other people, or I'll try to pretend more creatively in the future.
	This one, Sonic the Hedgehog.
	Okay.
	If only.
	Beakman.
	All right.
	Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future.
	Stop naming things that would bring me so much joy.
	Alright, let's take a look.
	Now, I'll preface this clip by saying that unusually, Russell had a good 10 minutes of preamble before getting to the interview.
	Normally, he just kind of dives straight in.
	And during that, he was solely talking about some COVID bullshit, and that's where we come in here.
	Let's just for a moment remember, you know, if you take this thing, it's over.
	That's Rachel Maddow.
	Don Lemon.
	I think we should shame them.
	Joe Biden.
	Just take the vaccine.
	It's a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
	Where are we now?
	Now, astonishing, isn't it, to see how much the world's changed?
	Now, one voice that's been consistent in this period is the author of the new book, Deception, over 500 pages.
	Fantastic book.
	Potential, well, I mean, he's been a presidential candidate before.
	Will he be again?
	Rand Paul is an American politician serving as the United States Senator.
	He's also the author of the newly released book, Deception, the great COVID cover up.
	There's a link to it in the description.
	I think you're going to enjoy this conversation between me and the Senator.
	Oh yes, you're going to enjoy this conversation.
	Ramen noodle hair is what we're going to be talking about.
	I think he fixed it!
	Interesting hair!
	I haven't seen it lately.
	It's still interesting.
	I'd say it looks better than it used to, but it's still interesting.
	Yeah, so Rand Paul has come on the show and you can almost hear the rapturous applause and excitement.
	It does, of course, hark back to our episode Brand, Rand, Iran, and Wuhan, wherein Rand Paul was claiming Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci engineered and started the pandemic.
	And Russell was like, Rand Paul, we love Rand Paul.
	Does anyone know him so we can get him on the show?
	Mission accomplished.
	And Rand has a terrible book to sell.
	That's why he's here today.
	Now, I have been a little bit busy with the move and everything, but I have made an effort to check out this book.
	I have made an effort to check out the book and take in what I can.
	I can't claim to have read all 500 pages of it.
	Which you will understand in just a second.
	The prose isn't actually all that terrible.
	Because while it does say written by Rand Paul, if you open up the cover, there is actually also a With Kelly Ashby Paul underneath.
	It doesn't say that on the front, you need to open that up to get to that bit.
	So Kelly Ashby Paul is Rand Paul's wife, who is a political consultant and freelance writer.
	The same lady who bought the Remdesivir stocks in 2021 and raised concerns of insider trading on the part of Rand Paul.
	Anyway, she's a writer and so my guess is much of the legwork on this book was in fact her.
	The book itself has some glaring problems, the most obvious being the sort of conspiracy-minded factual inaccuracies one might expect, but I would say the biggest problem is that it's boring.
	You would think a big reveal of how Fauci should be in prison would be at the very least entertaining or somewhat exciting, but actually it's a reheated, rehashed amalgam of conspiracy quote-unquote evidence I mean, I identify with that.
	vouchers, some of which aren't even clear whether he actually ever saw said emails
	because he never responded to them. He was just included.
	I mean I identify with that. I feel attacked.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
	Just the number of WhatsApp groups where I'm apparently lurking.
	Now, this is a problem, obviously, to anyone trying to write a page-turner, a bestseller, and so the polls made the interesting decision to begin engaging in what can only be described as fanfic.
	The book is predictably full of padding, but I was not expecting to deal with the polls imagining the character of, for instance, Shi Zhengli, the bat scientist, as they call her, and how she must have been sweating and paranoid when COVID-19 came to the fore, and that's when she deleted the database at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
	In fact, let me read you an excerpt from that section specifically, right?
	Quote, But now it was a race against time.
	All evidence of the virus so carefully cultivated in her lab must be eliminated, not just to destroy the evidence but to protect any other lab workers from dying.
	Once the danger abated enough for her to think, she knew the next step was to prevent the world from knowing that the virus originated in her lab.
	So late one night in September, on a muggy day with midday temperatures exceeding 90 degrees, Dr. Xi destroyed the online coronavirus database she had so painstakingly compiled over the years.
	Much of that research was financed by the U.S.
	taxpayer.
	The cover-up had begun.
	Unquote.
	It's just sad.
	It's very sad.
	Describing the weather to me as...
	To set the scene?
	Like, I appreciate it.
	It's, I mean, you know what?
	The thing is, and you know that like, we've been, the house has gone very, we're like competing racing through books lately, which frankly, Again, goals.
	I don't know any other child that would have been excited about.
	Also, I think that part of my good thing this week is having a partner that is equally into it and interested and values my opinion.
	And we have a lot of really interesting discussions.
	That's very cool also.
	But man oh man, we also talk about the quality of writing as far as there's some like research and reporting and investigative like books that are easier to find, like some are more exciting to read and like the writing is really good.
	Um, and having a good writer, it's actually that's part of the octopus story is the guy that like the journalist was like kind of a writer first journalist second that was kind of in the middle of the story and and to have good writing, it does make it a lot easier to comprehend and remember.
	These very complex ideas.
	And I think, honestly, if you understand the material, you can explain it in a way that makes sense.
	I just finished the little Moomba plot.
	It's certainly not a good-feeling story to read, but the way the chapters are divided, we're like, wow, it actually helped the learning.
	It was almost like the way that this book was divided up was like, huh, It's really interesting to observe also the literary success along with the communication success in a given book, right?
	I cannot imagine the inco- As soon as he said 500 pages, I was like, that's alphabet soup.
	That's a tome.
	Yeah.
	On this?
	It has to be!
	Or it's... I mean, I don't know.
	Honestly, I'm intrigued.
	I'm intrigued.
	I do have an explanation.
	So firstly, just to cap off that bit, there is a footnote at the bottom of that page with the fiction on it.
	Um, that says, quote, This opening is based on facts, but fictionalizes Shi Zhengli's feelings and thoughts about the origins of COVID.
	Obviously, this reverie is conjecture, and the character does not purport to be an objective portrait of any real person living or dead.
	Unquote.
	So is it fiction?
	So is it a fiction book?
	They South Parked it at the bottom.
	Yeah, is it a fiction book?
	I don't know.
	Also, proof?
	Nailed it.
	Nailed it.
	Good cover, bro.
	Would love to hear the proof.
	Don't care about her feelings, would love to hear the proof.
	There's also decidedly the people that I've been, you know, like the investigators that I've been diving into their work, kind of make a concerted effort to like, Not put a footnote at the end, but specifically say, like, listen, this is conjecture up top.
	Yeah.
	And also gave insight, and then they used the proof and the narrative together, like in one piece.
	I will say, like, the book does regularly have citations in it.
	Like, there are little things and links for me to click and all of that stuff.
	It's just, he never includes citations for the things like that.
	He never includes the citations for the stuff for which there is no evidence.
	Or if there is any of that, it's like, oh, it's a substack page with Alex Berenson.
	Ah, fuck off.
	Okay, I'm not engaging with this.
	And a good chunk of them are like, oh, CNN and all of the terrible legacy media, but also we kind of need them because it makes us seem more legitimate.
	Yeah, it's a whole fucking thing.
	Listening to reporters wrestle with a FOIA request that's been sitting there for a decade with a sheriff's department?
	And finally getting it?
	Like, I can't tell you.
	Man oh man.
	Boy, it sure is different.
	It's a different climate.
	Wrestling a FOIA request out of the hands of the government for a decade.
	Versus a LiveJournal post that says I'm right?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Anonymous source, photoshopped email, you know?
	So, back to the 500 pages thing.
	The question is valid.
	How the fuck did this get to 500 pages?
	And I can tell you in one word.
	Transcripts.
	Approximately half the book is dedicated to transcripts of conversations that Rand Paul has had with Fauci and a couple of others in Senate hearings and whatever else, right?
	That rules!
	That is the best!
	Oh my god!
	Transcripts.
	Yeah, so many.
	And it's not just the straight transcript, right?
	What'll happen is there's a transcript of a portion of an exchange, and then Rand Paul will go, see?
	Look how right I was!
	I nailed this sucker!
	Or it'll be a line from Fauci and Rand will be like, well, this may be the first time Fauci lied to the Senate.
	And then it'll go on to the next bit of transcript.
	You know, he's editorializing around it.
	It's such a weird- It's a book of shower arguments?
	Like it's- Kind of, yeah!
	Honestly?
	I gotta respect the hustle at this point.
	I've come back around.
	That is... You know what?
	It's nearly five stars on Amazon.
	What can you say?
	Well... Well... Well... It must be good.
	People must respond to editorialized shower thoughts.
	That is amazing.
	Yep.
	No, that's incredible.
	Straight up though, like, oh, I'm a smart, I'm a smart man.
	I made a 500 page book.
	You do the work.
	Like, it's just, you're supposed to summarize and then explain it.
	And you just didn't!
	It's very libertarian, frankly.
	Yeah, okay, okay, okay.
	It's so funny, like, you can really tell, kind of, which parts of it his wife wrote compared to which parts of it he did.
	Firstly, her writing is obviously much better, but also, like, his is just, there's so much more just abject hatred events.
	Yeah, vitriol.
	Just written into it, yeah, absolutely.
	Like, the bitchier it gets, I'm like, oh, Ran's back, okay, let's have a read.
	Ugh, dear oh dear.
	What a move.
	That is a solid scam.
	That is a solid scam.
	Okay.
	Oh dear.
	Yep, I wrote a 500 page book.
	Yes, I'm sure you did.
	Could you imagine?
	Could you imagine?
	I think whoever was taking notes that day is the one who actually wrote half of your book, Rand.
	Maybe you should probably credit them.
	Anyway.
	Well, that's Q-drops!
	That's the thing.
	These transcripts are like red meat for people to bake.
	You can read into it.
	In a million different ways, if you are already kind of trying to find, you know, find breadcrumbs, I'm using QAnon kind of like, that's kind of old now, old QAnon lingo at this point, but like, there's a lot to bake.
	Which, I don't think was an accident, but also, what a move.
	What a padding move.
	It's shocking these people don't like drag queens for how much they enjoy padding, frankly.
	That's incredible to me.
	Well, maybe the lady doth protest too much.
	That's all I'm going to say about that.
	Now, Russell is a little self-conscious about just how kind of fawning he was over Rand Paul in this interview, so he starts out with a preface to the thing, and he'll excuse it as politeness before we get to the interview.
	You might think that I'm saying the word Senator too much, or saying the word Sir too much.
	But remember, I'm English.
	And Gareth's nodding.
	I'm English and he's from the South.
	So manners must come to the forefront.
	I hope I did a good job.
	Let me know.
	I know you will let me know in the Rumble chat.
	I know you Awake and Wonders will let me know as well.
	Here's my conversation with Rand Paul.
	We're only going to be on YouTube for a moment.
	So get over onto Rumble.
	There's a link in the description and join us there.
	Here's Senator Rand Paul for our conversation.
	Senator Rand Paul, thank you so much for joining me today on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	Glad to be with you.
	I hear it's a really big program to be on.
	So, you know, everybody wants to get on your show.
	It is a significant cultural artifact.
	We regularly have outspoken members of a worldwide resistance movement of which you have become a significant voice.
	And now with your This book, Deception, in over 500 pages, you have articulated what many people have felt, in fact, due in no small part to your own investigations since the outset of the pandemic, that we have been subject to an unprecedented global deceit and that Anthony Fauci plays a central and key role in orchestrating this deceit.
	What primarily is it that you want us to understand from this book about Anthony Fauci's role in the pandemic and its cover up?
	You know, I think we've never had a cover-up where the proof of the cover-up and the proof of the deceit, the proof of the lying, is so obvious in the words of the people committing the cover-up.
	So we had Anthony Fauci and all these virologists publicly saying, you're crazy if you think this came from the lab.
	It absolutely came from animals.
	But you have them in private, explicitly saying the opposite.
	Not just hedging their bet, but absolutely saying, wow, this is no conspiracy theory, this looks like the most likely thing.
	Some of these scientists were saying, ah, I'm 60-40, it came from the lab, or I'm 80-20, or I'm 50-50.
	But in public they were saying, absolutely no way it came from the lab.
	So it was a dishonesty on a level that we've never ever been able to prove by actually seeing in their own words how I'm going to pause the conversation with the Senator Rand Paul.
	Senator, Senator, I love you!
	Because we've got to come off YouTube now.
	That was quick.
	Rand Paul barely got three sentences in and we've got to leave YouTube.
	Which I think does explain the 10 minutes of filler at the front of this.
	It's like, oh, we need enough of a YouTube chunk to be able to put on there.
	Oh, clever.
	I like significant cultural artifact.
	Yoink.
	Stealing that.
	Stealing the holy shit out of that.
	That rules.
	You know what else is a significant cultural artifact?
	These magnets that I make and you can buy.
	That's a significant cultural artifact.
	Words don't mean shit anymore.
	Let's play.
	Let's party.
	Let's motor.
	That's funny.
	Pretty much, pretty much.
	Oh, everyone tells me it's a great show to be on.
	Yeah, okay.
	Yeah, so I think the reason, you know, them cutting off so early does kind of give a little bit of an indication that a lot of what we're about to be covering does go against YouTube's community guidelines.
	Definitely feels that way.
	Getting hot up top!
	Getting hot up top!
	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
	Out the gate.
	As for the proof of the cover-up that Rand was referring to between the people supposedly committing the cover-up, all that is is the email exchange between Fauci and several other prominent scientists going back and forth on the origins of COVID-19 and what they each thought.
	I'm pretty sure we covered this back in that Rand-a-Rand.
	No, it might have been the WHO episode.
	I think we covered this.
	If we didn't, here it is again.
	So these are emails from January and February 2020 when no one really had a clue what was going on and so the scientists were weighing in on how convinced they were that the virus was not man-made.
	Part of the entire point of this group of scientists was to assess the validity of concerns that the virus might have been accidentally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
	Fauci put the group together after a phone call with Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, which is a health research company in the UK.
	So basically, concerns were raised to Fauci.
	He had a conversation with this guy over the phone.
	Fauci then got some great minds together to discuss and think it out and move from there.
	And within that conversation was, Yeah, I'm 50-50, I'm 60, as to which direction to go.
	But obviously no one really knew anything yet, so they were just kind of feeling it out and trying to assess with the little information that they had at the time.
	All of it sounds pretty responsible to me, to be honest, but according to Rand Paul and Conspiracy Media, it's a smoking gun of some kind because the opinions weren't completely settled in either direction back in February 2020.
	I'm like, what?
	Heaven forbid you think about something first before you make a decision.
	Exactly!
	Heaven fucking forfend.
	Yeah, I would have been far more concerned had they been completely sold either way, to be honest.
	Like, there should at least be a seed of doubt.
	I think that is reasonable in either case.
	Like, you know, just like, hey, we should at least look into this.
	No one should be 100% on that issue, but because no one was 100%, well, there we go.
	There we go.
	Oh dear, oh dear.
	Silly, silly people.
	Now, next up, Russell wants to know about the soul of the country.
	What do you think it does to America's spirit at a time where your country appears to be undergoing a great reckoning?
	What does an event like this do to the country's soul?
	What we saw for about three years as these public health officials came before committees was that they kept blaming the right wing and saying, you're responsible for vaccine hesitancy.
	You're responsible for people distrusting their government.
	And I pointed right back at them and said, absolutely not.
	You're responsible because you've lied to the public.
	You've lost your credibility.
	And I don't think they ever truly grasped that.
	But in the end, it's amazing to me how smart people actually are.
	Because the elitist point of view is that the common man is too stupid to take care of himself, too stupid to make his health care decisions.
	But interestingly with this, if you ask a poll of how many moms are vaccinating their six months old in the United States, it's like a handful.
	You know, they're from the Act Blue Coalition or something, but they're not normal people.
	But very few people are vaccinating their kids because they see no reason.
	It's not a deadly disease for kids, and they have read about that there's a possibility that my kid could have a side effect from the vaccine, but there's not much possibility that my kid could get very sick from the disease.
	So I think the people have gotten smarter on this, but vaccine distrust and distrust of government has grown exponentially because of their dishonesty.
	Who's dishonesty?
	Who's dishonesty?
	Who is bringing measles back?
	Who's threatening to, like, we're gonna have smallpox again?
	And you're... Okay.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Oh, wow.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Bitch, that was a lot.
	ALICE Okay.
	The people have gotten smarter on this, because they're not giving their kids the COVID-19 vaccine.
	Not giving six month old babies the COVID-19 vaccine.
	I mean...
	I can't think of anyone recommending that to a six, you know, it's safe for children of six months old and up, but I can't imagine a general practitioner being like, oh yeah, do it!
	Do it!
	Please!
	Vaccinate your six month old baby!
	It's like, unless it's in, you know, kind of Cases of extreme health, you know, where there's, you know, an immune condition or something else like that, then yeah, maybe, maybe, but that is definitely not the current guidance on what should be happening.
	Yeah, so Rand doesn't actually cite a source for that assertion, naturally.
	No shit.
	Yeah.
	He is generally correct, however, that people aren't getting their kids vaccinated.
	And that's at least partly because while the COVID-19 vaccine is available to anyone over six months old, and both the CDC and NHS do say, well, to be completely safe from COVID, vaccination is necessary.
	Plenty of US and UK scientists and doctors have said, This isn't strictly required unless the child has a compromised immune system or some kind of mitigating health condition.
	Vaccination uptake among children in the U.S.
	of the 2023/24 updated vaccine appears to be 13.1% for reference. But you know it's yeah.
	Well this is all vaccines though.
	This hits all vaccines.
	And we are seeing it happen.
	Like, we are seeing the effects in real time.
	Kids are like, I mean, kids are gonna be contracting and dying of milk leg.
	You know?
	Like, it's old-timey shit's gonna come back.
	And it's terrifying.
	Yeah, we're all gonna get, you know, fucking polio in droves again.
	They've been finding it.
	They've been finding it in the waste water.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, it's terrifying.
	You know, so it does have the danger there in the general narrative.
	And then with COVID specifically, like, it is a sticky issue because, like, the problem with kids is there is a small possibility of undiagnosed or unknown health conditions that haven't been discovered yet because the kid is just too fucking young for it to kind of Be noticeable.
	And you don't want to be finding out by your kid getting COVID and then getting seriously ill because of an unknown underlying health condition.
	It's a tricky situation for parents, and I do get it.
	April is unvaccinated against COVID-19, for instance.
	She's three.
	Because that's just been the medical advice for her so far.
	Um, though there are, there are seasonal COVID shots coming out next month and she may qualify at that stage.
	I don't know.
	Maybe that, maybe it will be a thing, um, for her, but to be clear, she is up to date on the rest of her vaccinations.
	However, I'm, I'm, I'm keeping on top of the rest of them.
	But I think that was useful.
	Do you want to be clear?
	No mumps or rubella in this house, thank you very much.
	No measles, no none of it.
	There's been some moments when you get to know people, before COVID even, as friends of friends and you're hanging out and talking about their family life and Like, yeah, kids, you know, like doing great athletic six year old somehow, you know, like you can run like the Dickens and he's got no vaccines and you're like, oh, and you just try to stop.
	You just stop trying to breathe the air until you can leave.
	He's like, oh, no.
	What?
	Why do you think that's a good thing?
	Our chiropractor acquaintance?
	Friend of a friend?
	Ah!
	Oh, oh god.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Dude, this is so bad.
	Especially in the crunchy circles, you know, that's where that does tend to rear its head quite often.
	And it's so difficult in those areas, especially, because they're usually such, like, generally pleasant people to be around a lot of the time.
	They're like, ah!
	I think they've gotten less pleasant, honestly, so it's a little easier to deal with.
	Times have changed, this is true.
	Do you know what?
	It's been a while since I've been around that many, in all fairness.
	Now, Russell has a question about Ran's book, and this is the only question he asks about it, and it is from literally the first page.
	At the beginning of your over 500 page book, you talk about Li Wenliang, who died under what sounds like suspicious circumstances in China around the outbreak of coronavirus.
	Could you tell me why you see Li Wenliang as a significant figure and what exactly their story encapsulates?
	You know, he was a 33-year-old ophthalmologist, so I was drawn to him because 30 years ago, I was a young ophthalmologist like him.
	He saw these people dying from an unknown virus of unknown origin or a pneumonia of unknown origin.
	And so he decided he'd do the what he thought that was the right thing.
	He would spread the word to fellow physicians that it looks like this is happening again.
	Most of these people remembered or knew about 2002-2003 when SARS-1 came about and so he was warning people it's here again.
	But for that warning, the government arrested him.
	He was accused of spreading gossip.
	He was accused of spreading discord and ultimately of spreading misinformation.
	For that, he was made to sign a confession.
	He was released only when he signed a public humiliation confession that he had done wrong to the state and he was allowed to go.
	But then mysteriously, he gets COVID.
	Maybe not mysterious that he got it.
	A lot of people were getting COVID.
	The death rate for a healthy 33 year old is about 4 out of 10,000 and higher in China.
	It's hard to know what to believe because they said almost nobody died in China and we do think millions of people died even just in Wuhan.
	But it's extraordinary that he died, and I think there are always questions when people die in a totalitarian country, because there's a lack of transparency all over Chinese Weibo, their email chat, all that night people were going, we knew you'd do this, we knew this would happen in the middle of the night, and they're used to this.
	If you remember the guy trying to stare down the Chinese tanks, At Tiananmen Square.
	Nobody knows what happened to him to this day.
	I think nobody really knows his name.
	So that's what happens in China.
	It seems like another extraordinary example of how we are being exposed to unexpected corollaries between anglophonic nations such as ours and this previously presumed communist dictatorship.
	No one remembers Tankman, despite being world famous.
	I mean, nobody knows his name, that's true, but, you know, nobody remembers Tankman.
	That correlation in and of itself.
	You don't know anything about it.
	Okay.
	All right.
	What?
	That's a leap.
	That is a leap and a half.
	The thing is, all this Lab League stuff, and it drives me absolutely crazy, and we do talk about it at home a lot, so I'm primed for it.
	If you're saying this was engineered in the lab, think about any other conspiracy theory you have heard from any wingnut your entire life.
	That should have you so much more scared that it was engineered by the government.
	You should be so much more afraid.
	You should be so much more cautious.
	You should be extra worried.
	and then for him to, for Rand, for Rand Paul to acknowledge, mention,
	and say like, "We think millions died from COVID in China."
	W-w-what?
	[BLANK_AUDIO]
	What?
	Why are you not taking, why did you not take it seriously?
	Like what?
	You should be more afraid.
	You should be more concerned.
	Why do you not think it's harmful?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	If I can't, if I can't parse your logic, and I get that they have, I get that they have like roundabout Like, laughing at Occam's razor, as though it is never- Yes!
	It's beyond their comprehension.
	It's never, it's never the obvious thing.
	They have rationalizations, but this is, it's so, like, you should be scared-er!
	All of your evidence does not, like, does not explain your choices in behavior, then or now.
	Over the last four years.
	Then or now.
	At all!
	What are we doing?
	I think we're making money.
	Money and status, I'm pretty sure that's it.
	Most of what Rand Paul said there was broadly true.
	Li Wenliang was a young doctor, ophthalmologist, who in December 2019 came across a SARS-like virus while he was working in a hospital in Wuhan.
	Obviously, he didn't know that it was anything worse than regular SARS, but China obviously has had incredibly serious SARS outbreaks in the past, and so Li Wenliang was concerned.
	He put the call out on the WeChat messaging app to his friends in the medical profession, telling them to be aware of it and be careful, and to privately tell their families to be careful.
	All a little bit hush-hush.
	However, a screenshot of it went viral, and then Li Wenliang was summoned by police to go and explain himself, at which point he was accused of rumour-mongering.
	The word misinformation never came up.
	And he had to sign a confession of sorts, saying that he wouldn't do it again.
	The Chinese government did this exact same thing to many whistleblowers in China in the very early days of the pandemic, because they wanted to control the flow of information.
	PBS covered this extensively, too.
	It's on YouTube, you should go watch it.
	I suggest everyone does.
	It was a whole thing.
	Li Wenliang then got COVID and sadly died.
	In Rand Paul's mind, it's out of the question that Li Wenliang could have died from getting COVID-19, and so the Chinese government must have killed him for speaking out.
	All the while, we think millions of Chinese people died from COVID, but not this one.
	There's no evidence of what he's saying, nor is there any kind of pattern of the Chinese government doing this to others, at least in the case of COVID.
	When Li Wenliang died, there was actually a rare case of public grief, anger, and an outcry over the government's handling of the pandemic, at which point the Chinese government actually exonerated Li Wenliang and posthumously hailed him as a hero.
	Which, you know, that's unusual for the Chinese government to backtrack on anything.
	I don't think the Chinese government killed Li Wenliang, but if you are conspiracy-minded and don't think that COVID-19 is actually all that dangerous, while it kills millions of people apparently, you can see how you might think it was some great cover-up.
	I mean, I guess.
	I guess.
	It can't really kill people, but this guy died.
	Well, or maybe it can kill lots of people.
	And he was one of them, especially in the early days, you know, prior to any vaccine, prior to any anything.
	Yeah, especially saying it in the next sentence.
	Yeah, he didn't die.
	He definitely didn't die because of the risk.
	Also, I think we understand now, at least we have a better understanding of the concentration of virus present, which means infected people and, you know, infections and rampant infections without, like you said, any of the safeguards or protocols that what they, you know, they refer to as like the Swiss cheese model of trying, you know, all those safeguards that we had in place.
	The actual just amount of viral material around you is you have a worse prognosis.
	You don't need an underlying necessarily a risk factor or there is a mystery risk factor you don't know about until you get sick.
	There's all of these elements that like My worldview, and also my news consumption, it adds up perfectly.
	And it makes perfect sense.
	And somehow, watching two mediocre men twist themselves into pretzels to feed their I don't know.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	To line their pockets, I think.
	We gotta keep it pumping.
	Right.
	Yeah, no, it is one of those kind of crazy moments.
	Because, like, he Does not have access to Li Wenliang's medical records.
	You know, he's assuming that the guy was perfectly healthy.
	The reality is no one knows.
	He might have had a heart condition.
	He might have had any number of things.
	It's also not how COVID works.
	Respiratory stuff.
	No, exactly.
	COVID uses your body against you.
	It's not about, like, it uses your parts It shuts down your parts.
	So if you're healthier, it can ride the wave, potentially, potentially can ride the wave of your immune system.
	Sars type viruses are fucking scary.
	Yeah.
	I think is the reality of it.
	Oh dear.
	Um, yeah, there, there, there is, there is a lot of kind of, um, talking himself in circles, um, throughout this interview and, and next we do get a little bit more of that just now.
	I wonder if the new ways of categorising misinformation and malinformation, as well as the state's power to crush dissent through campaigns, as you've just described in the instance of Li Wenliang, are becoming increasingly common here, as well as the undue and evidently misguided compliance that was able to be induced in the populations of both your country and mine.
	What does this tell us about increasing authoritarianism and centralised power, Senator?
	See, I think that's the point of this book in some ways, is that we kind of expect a totalitarian country to crush dissent, we expect them to weld people into apartments, but we don't expect the West, the liberalized West, to applaud it.
	You know, Anthony Fauci was quite proud of the Chinese, and many of the public health doctors in our country Oh my god.
	the fact that we couldn't act like the Chinese 'cause we had that, what's that terrible thing called?
	Oh yeah, the Bill of Rights.
	And so because of that, they couldn't do all the things they thought
	would be just great to shut down this disease.
	And I don't think any of those things work anyway.
	I don't think you can stop a virus.
	I think a virus is gonna virus no matter what you do, it pretty much goes on until you get immunity.
	And you get immunity through a couple of ways, naturally or through a vaccine.
	So until the vast majority has immunity, the virus spreads despite all things to stop it.
	Bye.
	What?
	Fucking what?
	Ow!
	What?
	What are we doing?
	All the people that have told me they get COVID four or five times and then we're like, well, and either we're relieved, like when we, especially driving around in Texas or, you know, I told everybody about the moment in Roswell where like, we were super psyched to be there and somebody will say that exact thing and say like, I've had COVID four times and like, How immune do you think you are?
	How immune do you think you are?
	What do you think immunity means?
	Natural immunity!
	How many times does it take?
	How many times does it take for the immunity to kick in?
	Getting COVID five times.
	Classico style, natural immunity.
	Good lord!
	So, we shouldn't be able to engage in stricter COVID protocols because that's authoritarian and the US has the Bill of Rights.
	But also, the only ways to achieve immunity is to either let the virus ravage the country or a widespread vaccination uptake.
	And of course, you can't really achieve the widespread vaccination uptake without stricter kind of COVID protocols, generally speaking, or at least public messaging, that kind of thing.
	So, I don't know, I guess in Rand's estimation, you're just fucked right from the start and should just, you know, just let hundreds of thousands of people die.
	Just fuck it.
	We did worse.
	We did worse than the 1913 flu pandemic.
	the 1913 flu pandemic.
	We did worse.
	The leaps and bounds that we have come in health and medicine and organization,
	every technology, right?
	And we did worse.
	Worse!
	Yeah.
	It does say a lot about our society.
	It's so it's so incredibly frustrating and I like just as far as my experience with this was as soon as I saw COVID coming and you know like I have I am not a well person I have to keep an eye on these kind of things I have to be extra cautious also that period of time I was like Going through surgery stuff, so I was, like, really aware and trying to keep my head on a swivel.
	And here's where being, like, a morbid weirdo is super cool.
	I have watched all the documentaries that the BBC and PBS and anyone else that's in any way credible or I can tolerate has to offer on the Black Plague, Spanish Flu, Tuberculosis, smallpox, all the stuff, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	And consistently, like, we have these lessons from history, and it is so, like, and every single time something like this happened to people, there was despair, but there was hope that we would do better next time.
	And then almost as, like, a, there is a coping mechanism that I think we don't, have not reckoned with as human beings, is that we forget.
	Because it's, it's, it's not, like, 9-11, never forget.
	The death toll can be much higher, but it's spread out over a lot of people and over a lot of time, and it's not visible when a pandemic happens.
	In fact, I went to go back to be like, wait a second, I remember learning some stuff from this one PBS documentary.
	The Forgotten Plague.
	I thought it was about the flu.
	It was about tuberculosis.
	I even forgot what The Forgotten Plague, the thing they named the documentary about, because humans have a tendency to forget and move on.
	So you have to make a concerted effort to learn, like, Especially with the Black Plague, the 1300s, 1400s Black Plague, the flagellants were so confusing to me.
	And the flagellants are a section of a hyper-religious sect that came out of the Black Death, socially cropped up out of the Black Death, where they were the super spreaders.
	And also, the plague sounds like a very bad time.
	I don't blame anyone individually for going a little batty, but they were this kind of Catholic understanding or sect where flailing yourself like you're bat, so they're the flagellants.
	They're flagellating their own skin and they're big and just like these bloody messes of germs that would go from town to town.
	You know, like addressing the sins of the people that maybe either haven't had the plague yet.
	Oh, but they're gonna.
	Because this little germ parade shows up.
	And I remember like, man, that's so crazy.
	Why would people do that?
	Oh, no.
	What's happening on the news in March?
	Holy shit.
	And I will say that like, If nothing else, it's certainly enlightening to see how people coped, but that's my word in my head for Rand Paul, for Russell, for everyone pushing this kind of narrative.
	Trucker Convoy is what's first in mind to me.
	They're flagellates, you know?
	They are the They're the vector, and I think a lot of people genuinely think that they're doing something good.
	But at the same time, you have people writing down how they thought and felt at the time, and they're like, please, I wish I had a better way to fix this.
	They're so desperate, and we have it, and we aren't doing it!
	It's crazy!
	Nope, well, not with you anyway.
	Rand Paul, according to him, things like lockdowns don't work.
	To which I say, take a good look at Florida's figures before and after easing up on the lockdown.
	Tens of thousands of deaths that rest squarely on the shoulders of Ron DeSantis.
	But nope, a virus has got a virus, everybody.
	Okay.
	That is so fucking unhinged to hear a virus is gonna virus.
	Okay, Typhoid Mary, really?
	That's... Too many thoughts.
	Logjam.
	Can't get any out.
	Too many rants.
	They're all in the doorway at the same time.
	We're gonna have to keep it moving.
	Too many politicians with the last name Paul, that's my thinking at the moment.
	Anyway, COVID, that thing that killed millions of people worldwide but is also somehow you can get natural immunity to it.
	Next we learn about something even more dangerous.
	But I do think that the story is, is that we began to act like these totalitarian countries.
	So the young ophthalmologist was arrested for spreading misinformation.
	That's exactly became the watchword of the left in our country and across Europe.
	You know, they began shutting down speech that gave a contrary opinion.
	And this is very, very dangerous.
	It's more dangerous than COVID.
	The loss or the shutting down of speech in the free countries of the world is more dangerous than the virus itself.
	And that still goes on to this day.
	The left that once stood up for the First Amendment in our country, some of them are the loudest saying, we're not doing enough.
	We have to get rid of this misinformation.
	And they have a lack of irony that It would be the responsibility of them to decide what is true.
	It's sort of like, oh, I'm a partisan Democrat, and I'm going to decide that what partisan Republicans are saying is not true.
	Who in their right mind would think that that is a way to have a full-throated debate?
	I would never, in my wildest dreams, think that I could shut a Democrat down or somebody I disagreed with.
	Because I believe in freedom of speech.
	But it's amazing that the opposite is not true.
	They are somehow so righteous and so sure of the truth, most of whom are not scientists and know nothing about science, are so certain of the science that they're willing to shut down anyone's opinion they disagree with.
	God, yeah, it is terrible when people who know nothing about science have really strong opinions on science, isn't it?
	Cut to supercut of Rand Paul shouting people down in Congress.
	We don't have that, but I bet it's there.
	Former eye doctors who haven't practiced in at least 13 years.
	Former ophthalmologists who are now politicians.
	Those are the ones to trust on epidemiological issues, unlike fucking Fauci, who is just a dumb epidemiologist, you know, talking about epidemiological stuff.
	If you're an ophthalmologist, Baby, I'm not coming for you.
	I'm not coming for you unless you also say this stuff.
	In which case, that's a bone I have to pick.
	Because I trust your mastery of ophthalmology.
	That is paramount.
	I think if you're a responsible ophthalmologist, you're not claiming that you know other stuff too.
	You're not also an epidemiologist.
	Come on.
	Come on!
	We're not Jordan Peterson-ing it over here, you know.
	I'm a clinical psychologist and also I'm an evolutionary biologist.
	No you're fucking not.
	Sorry, no you're not.
	So yeah, that's definitely a little bit of the game that Rand is playing here, and very much why he likes to focus on Li Wenliang as well.
	It's very much that, hey, this is me!
	This is basically me just in China!
	If only!
	Yeah, well, you know, we wouldn't have to do this show.
	Anyway, the left are trying to shut down the right because we disagree with them, so we're just calling everything, they say, misinformation.
	It couldn't possibly be that the right are engaging in misinformation almost as a matter of course these days, and so the bulk of the talking points are based in bullshit spouted and originated by alt-right propagandists like Russell or Tucker, or, you know, Fucking Matt Taibbi or whoever.
	Oh God.
	Yeah.
	It's a lot.
	It's a lot.
	Yeah.
	Meh, is the correct response.
	What else we got?
	What else are we working with?
	No!
	It's mind-numbing.
	With that in mind, the next clip does tell a lot about my house.
	I'd love it if it were mind-numbing, frankly.
	I'd love it if it were mind-numbing.
	Mine's peaking over here.
	Mine's spiking.
	I'm not numbed at all, unfortunately.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I don't think the next clip is going to help because it tells me that perhaps senators have a bit too much time on their hands.
	He was giving an extraordinary ride in the media, Anthony Fauci.
	I feel like I saw live song and dance numbers take place.
	People even, in fact, sexualising Anthony Fauci at points, taking him to... Oh, please, please, stop.
	We've got to stop there.
	Stop!
	I have the footage.
	I have the footage.
	I wonder what you feel is the role of what has come to be termed the legacy media in creating this somewhat unaccountable hero, Anthony Fauci, who has now just admitted that the figure of a six foot separation we just pulled out of the air that masks weren't effective, while previously having made the ludicrous claim that he, you know, I am science.
	How did the media contribute to the creation of this figure?
	So, just for fun, we will occasionally write op-eds that we submit to either the New York Times or the Washington Post, because they always reject them.
	Every time they reject them.
	We can't get anything published.
	So we sent over to them a comparison between J. Edgar Hoover and Anthony Fauci.
	Because there are similarities.
	They both were in power about the same period of time, 40 some odd years.
	They both accumulated power over that time and the power went to their head and they had their own personal fiefdoms.
	This can happen whether you're FBI director or head of infectious disease.
	Now you would have never thought the head of infectious disease would become so powerful.
	I bet he didn't.
	I bet it's because he didn't.
	I bet it's because he didn't.
	Oh, boy.
	I would be really curious to know just how much of this guy's time is spent writing op-eds about Fauci and trying to get them published.
	Like, urgh, Fauci is like J. Edgar Hoover.
	This definitely seems like an issue more deserving of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's attention than, say, the failing education system in Kentucky, the lack of clean water in Kentucky, or maybe abolishing the death penalty in Kentucky.
	But No, no, no.
	He's going to spend his time writing bullshit op-eds, trying to get them published in mainstream or left-wing publications.
	Great.
	And, like, the New York Times?
	Do you really?
	I mean, here's the thing.
	I think that we've all been re-confronted with the wild irresponsibility of the editorials in the New York Times, and also just a lot of their standards in general have been laid bare in a way that is fucking shocking, right?
	And he can't... You can't, like, you can't finesse your language enough?
	For the New York- because it's not like they don't also publish miserably insane shit as an opinion.
	Yeah, they do all the time.
	They fucking do it all the time!
	And Rand Paul can't finesse his- hand the fucking paper to your wife, I guess.
	I bet she could do it.
	All he needs to do is throw in some rampant transphobia and it'll probably get published.
	I mean, just pretend that you're like a neoliberal – just say what the people that make you mad would say a little bit, and they'll publish it.
	You just change a couple words around, and they're good to go.
	And you can't even do that?
	I think there's a bigger – I mean, I don't know.
	I feel like this is a little bit... I don't think it's the New York Times' fault in this case, sir.
	No, no, I agree.
	But what I love most is that this is apparently a regular occurrence, that he does this often.
	I'm just like, what are you spending your time doing?
	I also don't believe that.
	I don't think that's true.
	Or he just never did it.
	Like, honestly.
	Or he's fucking lying.
	He could be completely lying, and it could be complete bullshit, but if I take it at face value, it paints a picture of a very sad man with too much time on his hands.
	That's all I'm seeing in front of me.
	A very sad man who should be representing his state.
	Yeah!
	I mean, but also, it's a great way to lie, because it makes you sound very fastidious and persecuted at the same time.
	When, like, if I upload a picture wrong to an application for an event or something, and I just don't fix it and miss the deadline, guess whose fault that is?
	Me.
	I'm not being persecuted.
	Or if I apply and don't get accepted to an event or whatever, you know, art market event, guess whose fault that is?
	Like, no, no, that means I, and for whatever reason, I don't fit.
	To assign blame is a stretch.
	Is a stretch that I think we maybe need to pump the brakes on a little bit, their boss.
	Geez.
	Maybe your writing sucks, dog.
	Come on!
	Honestly, it was so obvious, like, the difference between him and his wife in that book.
	Do you feel that fissures have opened up during the pandemic period that are going to be very difficult to close?
	Hoover and he uses it to fling some shit at Fauci.
	Do you feel that fissures have opened up during the pandemic period that are going to be very
	difficult to close? You've already mentioned that trust in science and trust in vaccines
	has fallen radically and it seems to me that there's an attempt to try to address and redress
	that or create systems of authority that don't require public complicity.
	Do you feel that there is a great mistrust in American public officials in some part brought about by Anthony Fauci and I like your comparison to Hoover because you know Anthony Fauci liked dressing up in that mask that apparently did very little and we know that Hoover had some interesting clandestine habits in that area also.
	Yeah, I think that the thing I worry most about coming out of this is the idea that there's different standards of justice.
	You know, one of the things that almost tore America apart back in the 50s and 60s was the idea that if your skin were black, you wouldn't be treated with equal protection under the law, that you were going to be treated differently according to your skin color.
	We have gotten past that to a great degree over many decades.
	But now my fear is that people are being treated differently based on the shade of their ideology.
	Whether what your beliefs are on vaccine or who you follow politically or whose podcast you listen to.
	Good lord, the persecution complex in these people is just insane.
	So we've gotten past most of the racial discrimination apparently, and now these poor anti-vaxxer conspiracy idiots are saying they're being treated like black people were in the 50s.
	Sure fucking thing, buddy.
	Let me know when you're unable to drink from the same water fountain as everybody else, and then we'll talk.
	Or getting lynched for registering to vote.
	Getting lynched for registering to vote.
	Your house burned down.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Kissing a white lady.
	Wow.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, it's... I don't know, that's kind of a new level.
	That's kind of a new level to me.
	Rand, dearie.
	It's not, though.
	I mean, honestly, though, to me it's not.
	This is standard.
	Here's what's cute, especially about the Republicans, about pining for rational discourse and claiming that they're You know, they're like, oh, a return to civility, which honestly, I think that argument on either side is bullshit.
	Shut up.
	Fuck you.
	Just because you can make it sound nice doesn't mean that it takes any of the venom out of what you're actually saying.
	Because, and I cannot get out of my head, like, I've, you know, I've grown up here the whole time.
	And unfortunately, I can remember past fucking like the past 10 minutes.
	I have more than a memory of a goldfish.
	And Where we are at is Marjorie Taylor Greene can enter the president's son's dick into public record, have a blown up picture of Hunter Biden tackle out in Congress, and it was just a thing that happened.
	That is fucking wild to me.
	So don't talk to me.
	Like, no, rational discourse is out the window.
	The notion that that would have ever happened in my lifetime is insane.
	Anybody, like, really, any, like, weaponizing your position in Congress to, like, I don't care, honestly, what you've done.
	No one deserves that.
	No one deserves that.
	It's just, it's like this insidious, exceptionally cruel moment that came and went.
	That's not even a scandal anymore.
	We're talking, like, there was a tan suit moment, and now, like, Kinko's enlargement of the president's son, regardless of what you claim he did, which, oh, it's fucking proof left, right, and center, people are getting indicted and getting convicted of lying about this shit anyway.
	Your team did that, dog.
	Your team did that.
	And I don't care how much he personally may have distaste for Marjorie Taylor Greene, your team did that.
	And everybody's complicit!
	That's crazy to me!
	So fucking shut up about rational discourse, and civility, and respect.
	He's the one being persecuted, is what's happening.
	Fuck me.
	Yup.
	That's the thing.
	Hunter's dick.
	Get out of here.
	And, you know, MadgeTagGadge showing everybody Hunter's dick.
	In Congress.
	Public record.
	Nope.
	I have no patience for your pining for civil discourse.
	No.
	If you want to, the day y'all start, I'll be very interested.
	But you're not.
	You're not doing it.
	So shut up.
	Yeah, and let me know when discrimination is somehow being enforced against you for what podcast you listen to.
	Shut up, you fuck.
	Oh my god, I can't even.
	I can't even with that.
	Rand does elaborate on his point in the next clip, and it is just a run-on sentence of crazy.
	Because Anthony Fauci is clearly guilty of lying to Congress about the gain-of-function, about funding gain-of-function research.
	He's guilty of lying in his own words, because we now have slack emails from February 1st, When he says explicitly they're doing gain-of-function research, he lists the research, which is the research he had funded, and he says he knew they were doing it from the very beginning.
	From the first email—this is the amazing thing of this cover-up—the first email we have a record of is January 27, 2020.
	Fauci gets an email from his assistant.
	He says, wanted you to see this paper, this gain-of-function paper in Wuhan that we funded.
	That's the first email, January 27th, and then the rest of the time is Fauci publicly saying, nothing to see here, we never funded gain of function.
	But he never is prosecuted and won't be prosecuted.
	But people from the previous administration who either were accused of lying or may have lied to Congress are still being prosecuted.
	People who came to the Capitol on January 6th but never entered, that were milling around looking like this and didn't do anything, are still being pursued for jail.
	But if you came here to protest Kavanaugh's, you know, about 100 women lay on the floor and wouldn't leave.
	They were trespassing in the Senate buildings and they were moved, but they were taken.
	I don't know if any of them ever got a ticket.
	Who pays for that Senate building?
	None of them went to jail.
	If they were booked or let go, that's what typically happened to protesters in our country if you didn't hurt somebody.
	But that's not what's happening with January 6th.
	That was a demonstration.
	So people are worried that there's two standards of justice now, and that will lead to further problems.
	It may lead to strife in our country.
	Honestly, I take back the Senate.
	I don't want to say who paid for the Senate building.
	I do think that's a good point.
	But also, I'm already falling in the trap of engaging with his argument on its face.
	It's absurd.
	He took it to January 6th, and you got a chip on your shoulder about Kavanaugh hearings, and he got the job!
	He was not qualified and still got the job.
	The job interview, not the court proceeding.
	I've got to assume it's the only comparable protest he could think of that happened there, right?
	So right, first up, let me deal with that apparent email from Fauci's assistant supposedly confirming gain-of-function research.
	The email from Greg Fulker's never actually mentioned gain-of-function research at all.
	What it did say is that the results of the work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology led to them finding SARS-related coves That can bind to human cells.
	And they also found ones that cause SARS-like disease in humanised mouse models.
	Note the wording of found, not created.
	And these findings had already been published in Nature, the science journal.
	So it doesn't quite seem like they were hiding this information.
	It was all fucking there.
	Because why wouldn't it be?
	Um, yeah.
	Quite simply, Fauci didn't lie to the US government and so has never been prosecuted for doing so.
	That is incredibly obvious by now.
	As for Jan 6th, yeah.
	Some people engaged in seditious conspiracies.
	Some people trespassing.
	Some people engaged in serious acts of violence.
	Others, vandalism of public property.
	Other people wanted to do a fucking coup.
	Blah blah blah, these people fucked around and found out, and they weren't just all milling around the place like Randy's saying.
	No, definitely not.
	We all saw it.
	Yeah, we did.
	It's all there.
	It's all there, as long as you're not watching the fucking stupid edited footage where they've cut every act of violence out, because that was going around for a while.
	And yeah, the protest against Brett Kavanaugh being appointed was so fundamentally different.
	It's absurd.
	Around 300 protesters were arrested for a legal demonstration, and yeah, I'm pretty sure all of them were let go, but also none of them were violent, there was no destruction of property, none of them were planning to overthrow the government, and none of them were shouting to hang Mike Pence, even though there might have been a more justified reason at that time.
	And like, they got arrested!
	They got arrested.
	Yeah.
	And the charges couldn't stick.
	What are you complaining about?
	Okay.
	Cause yeah, all the people that were, there's a ton.
	And like, the thing is, is you can see their interviews all over social media all the time is there's a ton of people that were at January 6th and no charges were filed.
	They were never arrested.
	They're all people that were milling around.
	And that's literally what the courts have been parsing out.
	And to claim that you had to be there, Ignores all of the things that have come out through the court proceedings, that there was a subset of individuals who were planning something more extreme and elaborate, and we have it all.
	No, you did not have to be there to get in trouble.
	Just like a bank heist, if there's a dude who's funding it and organizing it, he can also get in trouble for conspiracy to commit a crime.
	Come on.
	Yep.
	Come on.
	Yeah.
	Come on.
	Exactly that.
	Exactly that.
	So from here, Russell asks a question about secession.
	Certainly the judiciary has been weaponised in the manner that you've described and perhaps in particular against Donald Trump.
	I wonder if with the recent decision to defer to the Supreme Court, it's likely now that the Democrats will ramp up the hysteria around this issue rather than, as many have suggested, undertaking a deep reckoning about the inability of their party to appeal at this point even to their own voters.
	Do you feel that there are crises now in American political life that are unprecedented, that regardless of the outcome of the next election, America may never again heal, that secession becomes a realistic possibility, that the assumption that the nation of the United States in its current form is permanent is starting to be exposed for the illusion that we know that all temporal conditions ultimately are?
	So, what Russell is really driving at here is his idea that we should all live in tiny, theocratic ethnostates, but obviously he is asking a sitting US politician if the US should be broken up into, at the very least, 50 separate countries.
	Which, you know, I don't think it's going to go the way Russell wants them to, so let's see where Rand takes us.
	Well, you know, I never used to think it would be possible that a state legislature could change the rules on the statute of limitations and a woman from 30 years ago could accuse him of something.
	He said she said things are very difficult.
	Who do you believe?
	One side or the other, particularly the longer you are away from what may or may not have happened.
	But this was beyond the statute of limitations.
	There was no legal way for her to bring this forward.
	They changed the law.
	She brings it forward.
	She says she remembers it distinctly because she's wearing a certain jacket that was made 10 years after she says she was attacked.
	Nothing about what she says fits very well.
	And he denies it.
	And there is no proof.
	And you're going to give her $80 million?
	I mean, that's ridiculous.
	Then they sue him for, oh, maybe his estimates on his buildings weren't proper.
	But the banks didn't sue him and he paid them all back.
	And there is no grieving party.
	This is a weaponization we have never, ever seen before.
	but it's going to destroy New York. New York's already got an exodus of wealthy people. You
	think anybody's going to want to do business with a chance that an old girlfriend could
	call from 30 years ago and get 80 million from them? And it's done because they hate Donald
	Trump. It's not going to be done if you are somehow a follower of Democrat politics. It's
	going to be done if they hate your politics. But that's a real problem. The only way it gets solved
	in a way that doesn't lead to further problems would be the Supreme Court
	to take all of these cases and simply say we're not going to use our courts to go after politicians.
	We're not a banana republic.
	We're not going to act like it.
	And all of these are wash.
	I don't know legally where they can take them all up, but I would assume they're going to try to get to the Supreme Court.
	If they all do and the Supreme Court does that, they could essentially wash the slate on this.
	But if he's forced out of business or forced into bankruptcy because of this, $300 million is not chump change.
	He's got to come up with all of the interest.
	It adds up to $400 million, $500 million by the time you get the interest going.
	And it's just patently unfair So, but I think it's also getting the public more to his side.
	I mean, nobody could touch him in the primary after he was indicted.
	Now he looks like he's running ahead in battleground states, despite not always, you know, saying the appropriate thing or even the best thing.
	He's now running ahead in battleground states because people think he's being treated unfairly.
	I mean, he's right about that last part, at least.
	But, wow!
	Wow!
	Also, Donald Trump never saw a bankruptcy he didn't like.
	Period.
	On period.
	There's records.
	That man Bankruptcies were his sport of choice, because obviously exercising depletes your, as Trump very clearly believes, depletes your physical, I don't know, your life bar, right?
	So his chosen sport was bankruptcy.
	Yeah, you lose your Okay.
	That's wild.
	That was a lot.
	That clip was a lot of fun.
	Yeah, that was just a cornucopia of bad takes.
	So sexual predators will only face any kind of justice if they're right-wing, apparently, according to Rand Paul.
	They'll never come after you if you're left-wing.
	Which, okay.
	And he thinks the Supreme Court should somehow wipe the slate clean of all of the allegations against Trump.
	Well, that's wishful thinking that they're all doing.
	That's the party line for sure right now.
	And that people shouldn't be able to take politicians to court.
	Politicians shouldn't have to go into court for any of these things.
	Seemingly anything, according to him.
	Yeah, how long do you think that people should... What's the time, Al, for you, where people that are assaulted, they don't matter anymore?
	You can just disregard them out of hand.
	10, 15?
	What do you think?
	Give me an estimate.
	Yeah, when should I invalidate my existence?
	What time period should I put on that?
	I would, yeah, I mean over here we don't have a statute of limitations, so I'm gonna go with that one, thank you.
	Maybe because it's fucked up.
	Maybe because it's a fucked up thing to even impose on a victim, right?
	It's incredibly fucked up and stupid.
	It's almost like it matters, like consequences regardless of the time are important.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I do love the, like, stubbing of the toe that brought Trump back into court, and she got another set of, like, she, she was like, um, defamation, and the court was like, yeah, we just, we told you the basic things to not tweet in caps.
	Dude like listen to your lawyers if they can like just this one time and he was like no and she was like more money because that's also the only like that's the only sanction that we have is is fine so it always makes a victim look like they're a gold digging you know a mastermind.
	Not that we just want the bad thing to stop.
	We want consequences and the bad thing to stop.
	And that person doesn't deserve to have the platform that they do if they are provably predatory.
	Yeah, and it's like, well, if there was, you know, recourse through the criminal justice system, then I would go that direction, but there isn't, so I'm left with the civil route, so this is the direction I have to go.
	Yeah.
	It's, oh boy.
	So, you know, Rand has some opinions, and as we've discovered, there's a lot of things he doesn't like.
	And, well, next we learn of a piece of legislation that he wants to put forth.
	Do you believe that we have a significant problem when it comes to censorship right now, in particular during the pandemic?
	It was acknowledged that true information was censored, legitimate science was controlled.
	The Barrington Declaration, is that the right word?
	Is that the thing that Jay Bhattacharya did?
	I wonder what you consider to be the power of the state to use proxies to crush dissenting voices.
	What a problem that is.
	I've certainly experienced it myself, as a matter of fact, and I wonder what your view of that matter is.
	I do worry about the government's involvement with big tech and with social media platforms.
	Throughout all of this, we've discovered that the FBI and Homeland Security are meeting weekly with all of the major tech platforms and coercing and pushing and cajoling them to take down information.
	That, I think, goes against our First Amendment, and I have a bill to make that illegal.
	I would prevent any government employee from meeting with anybody from the media to discuss removing constitutionally protected speech.
	The reason we write it that way is there are some speech they claim
	would be in danger or insightful.
	They'll still be allowed to talk about that.
	There are things that are criminal.
	They should be allowed to talk to media about things that are criminal on their platforms.
	But whether or not you think a mask works is an opinion and it can be based on science,
	but it has something the government should have no viewpoint in that
	and should have no power in suppressing it.
	So I have a bill to do that, but I can't get a Democrat on board.
	I wonder why.
	So hang on, this guy is saying that we shouldn't be authoritarian like the Chinese government, but the bill he wants to put forward is banning federal employees from talking to the media.
	Surely that goes against the First Amendment somewhere.
	Surely.
	Just in some kind of principle.
	I can't even engage with the logic, it's too insane.
	ALICE No!
	There isn't logic, that's why!
	It makes no sense!
	ZAC It's just words.
	It's just words.
	ALICE It's like, throughout that clip, you're just like, wait, what the fuck is he talking about?
	And then he's like, musk, ohhhh, okay, okay, now I know where we're going.
	Now I know where we're going, you fucking idiot.
	ZAC Yeah, yeah.
	Well, it's a moron protected class of any kind, really.
	Like, this is the person.
	These are the people that don't believe in any protected class whatsoever.
	They ignore the problems that can be remedied by legally protected classes.
	And people like this joker have been opposed since day one.
	It's called DEI now.
	It used to be called Affirmative Action.
	It's been in their crosshairs from the start.
	This is not surprising.
	From day one, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Oh dear, that's funny.
	So, authoritarian Rand Paul.
	Incredible hypocrisy aside, Rand Paul, yeah, he clearly loves this idea because he is supposedly courting Democratic Senators to get on side with it.
	And in the next clip, we do hear some more troubling views.
	I've tried talking to the couple of Democrats who I think are reasonable, and one of them said this to me.
	He said, well, we have to be able to police disinformation, and what if the Republicans tell everybody that the election's on Wednesday instead of on Tuesday?
	And I kind of thought this to myself.
	I didn't tell him.
	I said, well, gosh, if people are that stupid, maybe they shouldn't vote.
	But I didn't say that.
	But that's what their worry is.
	They think the government, that people are too stupid, and that they would actually not vote, or, oh, text in the name of your candidate and that'll be your vote.
	Nobody believes that!
	I mean, if anybody is that moronic, really, do they need to be voting?
	But I don't think it really works.
	But they're so alarmed that we need the government to prevent people from suppressing the vote by telling them dishonest nonsense on the internet.
	People are way too smart for that.
	People know how to vote.
	It literally happened.
	It's so well documented.
	They think it's OK for the FBI and Homeland Security.
	They didn't used to think that was right.
	I mean, in the 50s and 60s and maybe 70s, the left were the protectors of the First Amendment.
	The right wasn't very good.
	And now the left doesn't seem to care at all.
	They want more government.
	They want more censorship.
	They worry that there's too much disinformation out there.
	Because there fucking is!
	Also, I don't disagree that they don't care at all, and I'm looking at the product.
	Like, yeah, you've been allowed to run roughshod.
	Yeah.
	As a result.
	Yeah.
	Because at best, they're cowards.
	Yeah.
	Like, at best, the liberal contingent are cowards.
	That's what we're hoping, honestly, at this point.
	Yeah, that's true.
	The implications of the reality are actually a lot more dire.
	Yes, much darker.
	Much darker.
	Yeah, so nobody's stupid enough to fall for a misinformation thing about what day to vote on or whatever.
	None of, like, what happened in, you know, 2020.
	Yeah, or the actual firms that were hired.
	Yeah, like the right-wing fucking, like, think-tank bullshit where, oh, they Rampall isn't just making the texting example up.
	That was targeting minority and poor communities, absolutely exploiting the misinformation that was rampant from the right to discredit mail-in ballots, to discredit all of the voting access That genuinely everybody that's used it is like, this is great.
	I never want to go into a place again.
	Mailing in the ballot makes so much more sense.
	I can sit here and research my choices.
	I can be a much more informed voter.
	It's a lot easier for my life.
	Like, everything about, oh my god, that's incredible.
	I mean, that's also like...
	Yeah, you're making the problem and then complaining about it.
	That's amazing.
	That's amazing.
	Yeah, yeah, he's minimizing the issue by saying, oh, nobody's stupid enough to do that.
	Really insulting.
	And then he's also saying, well, I mean, if anyone is that stupid, they shouldn't be able to vote.
	Wow.
	And I mean, well, that's some eugenicist shit right there.
	But, you know, also, I mean, Glasshouse is, you know, the only reason he's a senator is a bunch of people voted for him.
	And I don't know, you've got to at least be misled to think that Rand Paul is a great candidate to put forward.
	That is such an antique framing.
	Like, oh, people are too stupid to know any better.
	Also, I won't caution anybody.
	About making those claims on any side in the room with me now I would caution anyone to say oh if you're too stupid you don't deserve whatever you have no idea what is what these people like the people that you're talking about you have no idea about their condition you have no idea what they're dealing with you have no idea what what systems could have intimidated them
	into being at least confused if not believing it, right?
	There are so many factors.
	I think the hot coffee, like the hot coffee, like debacle, Like, in the 90s, the McDonald's hot coffee debacle.
	I would hope that we all took our lesson, or we should be reminded constantly of the lesson, that the framing that someone like Rand Paul or someone who happens to be a white man in power is framing the situation.
	Maybe the victim is actually very different, and the situation the victim found themselves in is very different from the representation.
	So maybe just calling them stupid is a fucked up thing to do, especially if you're a public servant.
	Whose fault is that?
	Educationalism?
	Work on it.
	Yeah, the one in Kentucky sucks.
	Yeah, it's bad.
	It's really bad.
	Also, it's not just like, oh, you know, someone says it once.
	That's not the problem.
	When it's a concerted campaign, you're like, here are flyers, here are ads, here are all of these things saying, oh, no, no, election day's the next day or the day before.
	Yeah, whatever.
	Oh, yeah, you just need to text this number.
	And if you hear that, you know, 30 times a week, then yeah, maybe you will start to fucking believe it, regardless how intelligent you are or discerning you may be.
	You just need confusion.
	Yeah, that's the thing.
	Being a progressive means you have to actively change, whereas being regressive conservative means that you just have to bog things down.
	You don't have to win, you just have to not lose, which takes way less.
	There's way less Momentum and like inertia.
	You benefit from inertia.
	So even just confusing people is enough.
	Yeah.
	All you have to do is muddy the waters enough to where people don't act and don't know what to do.
	And I will say, you know, the right have an easier time in that regard in terms of messaging.
	Because, you know, it's like with the NRA, you know, the actual message is just, no, that's the actual message.
	Whatever those people are saying, no.
	And you're like, well, it's easy for me to remember.
	Like, I've got that one down pat.
	You know, and it's, yeah, it's... It's those thought stopping statements.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	So next, Russell has a question from the locals chat.
	And surprise, surprise, we get straight into some anti-vax territory.
	Sir, if I may pass on a question from our audience.
	We have a small audience watching us live now of our supporters.
	May I pass on one of their questions?
	Is that okay?
	May I pass on that?
	Oh yeah, sure.
	I didn't know you were asking me.
	I thought I was going to hear the question.
	I was asking politely.
	I detect from your accent that you're a gentleman of the South.
	I'm an Englishman.
	This is a forum where manners must come to the very forefront.
	The question is from atcarina14.
	As more and more evidence emerges that health agencies on a global scale misled and most likely harmed many people, what kind of actual accountability can there be given the scale of the offence?
	Are you talking about harm from the vaccine?
	Yes, sir.
	This has been a discussion for a long period of time, and we just discussed this in the book.
	Congress gave liability protection, so there is no harm to be held to these people.
	They can serve up whatever you want, and it'd be bad enough if it were voluntary, but it's being pushed on you.
	Many people lose their jobs if they're not vaccinated, but if they're harmed by the vaccine, they have no recourse.
	Now, they set up some big vaccine database and then an ability to get some money from the government, but it's not the same because it doesn't chasten at all the companies.
	And really, the insidious part of this is that it's mandatory.
	And then, you know, you got the former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, is on the board of Pfizer, who is then calling Twitter to say, take down this article saying you might be harmed by vaccinating your children.
	That's how bad it is that the former FDA commissioner is now on the board of Pfizer is now telling Twitter to take down information on this.
	So it's disturbing, but it's been going on since the 1970s.
	My dad fought against it, was one of the few people to vote against giving liability protection to the vaccine manufacturers.
	And on the other side of it, they would argue, well, the government mandates these things.
	Well, why should people sue us?
	We're not mandating them.
	The government's mandating them.
	So the government should be responsible for it.
	No one's mandating anything.
	But if they're not responsible for their own products, I don't think they're going to work as hard to try to do no harm.
	You know, to make sure that there's not a harmful aspect.
	So if there's not public liability in some way, then they're just going to happily just ship out poison to everyone.
	That's the theory.
	Right.
	If there weren't, like, exceptions built into every... Assuming that there's even a mandate anywhere, right?
	There have been, and continue to be, valid courses to, like, if you pursue an exception, and there are always, always options for exceptions.
	You can have a religious exemption.
	The shit that you can pull in this country to be the special boy.
	It's everywhere.
	And don't tell me that the constituents of the Rand are unaware of the loopholes that you can jump through.
	Come on.
	Come on, man.
	Yeah.
	Why you keep building them into the tax laws if your constituents don't know how to exploit loopholes?
	Let's be real.
	Let's be real here.
	Let's be adults.
	So if anyone is harmed by the vaccine, they have no recourse, except for that recourse that the government set up.
	You know, the whole, you know, you can get some money.
	The system we all know about now.
	Yes, yes.
	Yeah, we're very well versed.
	The vaccine also isn't mandatory, obviously.
	But you know, it is up to private companies and the government as to whether they enforce COVID vaccination as a matter of public safety upon their employees.
	And whether they decide to then fire someone for not getting the vaccine.
	There has to be a line drawn somewhere in terms of enforcement of public safety over individual liberty, and the overwhelming majority of the world has decided the buck pretty much stops there.
	Which, you know, I mean, there's a conversation to be had, sure, but at the end of the day, the choice is still up to you.
	As for Scott Gottlieb emailing Twitter about a tweet he didn't like talking about vaccinating children, none of that quite happened.
	So Scott Gottlieb, former FDA head who, yes, is now a Pfizer board member, saw a tweet suggesting people had natural immunity to COVID.
	He then emailed a different guy, Todd O'Boyle, who works at the Chamber of Progress, which is a tech trade group, pointing it out as an example of bad information based on one limited study that can then go viral.
	So they were already having a conversation about this, and he emailed it as an example of like, hey, and this thing then goes crazy and then loads of people think that they can build up a natural immunity.
	And then Todd forwarded that example onto someone at Twitter to be like, hey, this is a problem, by the way, guys, because obviously he's in a tech trade group.
	He has the connections.
	Right.
	So actually, Scott Gottlieb didn't do a fucking thing to tell Twitter anything.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And we can't email.
	No more emailing or texting about questions or things that we might be cautious about.
	No more caution.
	Stop having thoughts.
	Stop having thoughts.
	If you worked for anyone at any time ever, or profit from anything at any time, stop having thoughts.
	Also, don't come from the fucking side that barks about the sanctity of right to work.
	Don't bark at me for decades about right-to-work states, and then suddenly you have a complaint about why people get fired?
	Get fucked.
	Get all the way fucked.
	You want to be able to throw people away.
	Like, okay, that's job creators and then immediate firers.
	Well, if it's affecting the straight white man, it's a different question, I'm afraid.
	That's a special issue.
	We've got one final clip from Rand here, though the show isn't over there, but one final clip from Rand.
	And these things were pushed out so fast.
	If they had been voluntary in every aspect, you could at least say people who are frightened could take them.
	People at high risk could take them.
	But they were pushed out and then pushed on healthy people who didn't need the vaccines.
	And that really is a crime.
	And somebody should be punished, particularly in the government.
	The Anthony Fauci's of this world who pushed nonsense and bad science on us, that now he just throws up his hands and says, oh, well, we didn't really know.
	We liked six feet, but we didn't know.
	I was back!
	I was back But on the children I have gone directly and Anthony Fauci
	on the vaccine for children and said does it reduce transmission?
	No, does it?
	Reduce hospitalization or death and he says well, we don't know and I said well
	The reason you don't know is that no child is going to the hospital or dying right now
	No healthy child there are exceptions to every rule but no healthy child with no one fuck them, by the way
	Not a deadly disease for healthy children if your child has an illness you talk to your doctor and you can make your
	own decision but But--
	The vaccine isn't doing anything for healthy children, and it's also doing is doing to the bottom line of Big Pharma.
	So Anthony Fauci and his ilk have basically become salesmen for Big Pharma.
	And this is sort of the tragedy of crony capitalism.
	And I think we have to keep fighting it.
	Thank you very much.
	I think I'm getting the round up.
	I gotta unfortunately go to the floor.
	Good luck out there.
	Thank you very much for representing.
	Thanks for being one of the few people I've asked significant and important questions to people that should be held accountable.
	I'm grateful to you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	So, I mean, yeah, for all listeners, Lauren is clutching at the hammer.
	Hammer's back!
	Emotional support hammer has made a return.
	I mean, so the COVID vaccine does reduce hospitalization and death.
	That was the entire point.
	It hasn't been as extensively tested on children with no health conditions, which honestly I can only think is a good thing, to be honest.
	That we haven't, you know, that's kind of, that's the last place that we want to have to be testing that fucking theory.
	Less bugs means less sick.
	Why is this hard?
	Less bugs equals less sick.
	Less sick, so less sickies.
	I do understand Fauci's hesitancy, perhaps, to comment definitively on the issue.
	And yeah, almost like he's careful about what he says, which is maybe why he's not in fucking prison
	And the the vaccine does also reduce transmission by 30 something percent as we have covered previously
	Even if that wasn't the intention, but it just happens to also do that. But yeah
	This fucking guy Wow Yeah, that was
	It's just it's just a little bit fucking much but now yeah, he's he's gone now
	He's this is the last that's the last round clip that we have to deal with. Oh, he's not
	Well, he's gone through here show Yeah
	Listener, if you choose to take solace in that statement, you go right ahead.
	I abstain.
	Because he's still right here in the good old U.S.
	of A. Good lord.
	Very true.
	Oh, all right.
	It's just every, oh my God.
	(laughs)
	Oh, all right, okay.
	Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.
	And, um, I don't know, like, a lot of this interview, to me, was an example of, like, be careful what you wish for, because I had to cut a lot of stuff out that was just super boring.
	Um, you know, he's, uh, I don't know, there's a lot of stuff where I'm like, Russell, did you really need to have this guy on?
	Did you?
	Did you?
	But hey, you know, he gets to hawk his book and Russell gets the damn draw, you know?
	Yeah, why are we... let's address why he is.
	Yeah, Rand Paul has a book to sell, and Russell has a show to make, and they both have lucrative conspiracies to proliferate.
	That's it.
	We've both got money to make.
	Let's do it!
	I hope it's that!
	I hope it's not just unmitigated venal evil.
	I hope it's not.
	Seriously, I hope you're making a lot of fucking money.
	I hope you're making a goddamn mint because there's no moral, ethical reason that you could possibly have.
	I hope it's sinful.
	How sick that is?
	For me to feel?
	How dare they?
	Very dare!
	It is one of those things where you're like, oh I hope they earn more than that, because that's definitely not enough.
	You would be surprised how little people would engage in this kind of thing for It has shocked me several times, you know, and yeah.
	Rudy Giuliani's Rumble channel is a whole thing.
	The guy has like 10,000 viewers a show or something.
	Oh, America's Got Talent?
	Yeah, he's got a Rumble show that is, I mean, it's entertaining.
	It's entertaining and boring in equal measure.
	Spartacus style.
	Honestly, earned every single one of those followers.
	Go ahead, girl.
	Do your do.
	I can't remember what it was called.
	It is something like blah blah with America's mayor.
	It is something like that.
	Randy.
	Randy.
	Oh, Rudy.
	Oh, Rudy.
	Right, right, right.
	We've got one last clip.
	We've got one last clip.
	And let's take a quick look at what Russell has in store for the rest of the show after Rand leaves.
	One can only assume that it's something incredibly important.
	Now listen, Tucker Carlson called Jon Stewart a tool of the regime in response to Jon Stewart's bit criticising Tucker's Vladimir Putin interview.
	Is the media missing vital viewpoints from both men in its appetite to create its latest polarised battle in the culture war?
	Of course it is.
	I'm so sorry you had to hear that.
	Here's the news.
	No, here's the effing news.
	Thanks for refusing Fox News.
	No, here's the fucking news.
	Tucker Carlson has called Jon Stewart a tool of the establishment, where Jon Stewart thinks
	that Tucker is just, well, a tool.
	But in this phony polarisation and culture war, are we missing the real message here?
	That both these anti-establishment figures have more to teach us than anyone from the homogenised, uniparty, authoritarian centre.
	Yeah, we're not covering this.
	Tucker versus Stewart.
	I think not.
	Yeah, that's the... We know that the bird fart means that there is a swipe and some letters.
	There's 20 minutes of editorial.
	Yes, yeah.
	Right.
	Well, and also for anyone just listening, it's bird fart, Tucker versus Stewart, which if you Google, if you look on YouTube for Tucker versus Stewart, boy, it's a much more satisfying video.
	That I revisit on the reg.
	Yes, yes.
	Oh.
	That's, that's spectacular.
	Let's, let's, let's just- May tuck us somewhere in bow ties.
	Oh man, just as a, as a, as a balm to our souls, let's remember that, that roasty toasty moment.
	Delightful.
	That will, that will live in infamy forever and I love it.
	Yeah, okay.
	Wow.
	Okay, what are we doing?
	I know!
	That's exactly, like, I saw this and I'm like, how do you spend 20 minutes talking about the beef between Jon Stewart and Tucker Carlson?
	Like, what the fuck are you doing?
	And come out on top with Tucker!
	You're gonna side with Bowtie?
	Well, so Russell, this is one of those moments where Russell gets a little bit confused because he used to like Jon Stewart, and I think he still does, you know?
	And so he's like, well, you know, I do like him though, so maybe I've just got to be like, hey, both sides!
	Both sides have a great perspective, everyone, and people are just missing it, you know, because of the polarized discourse that I am propagating.
	Yeah, we're at the real forefront.
	No, we're not fucking covering Tucker vs. Stewart.
	Not a chance.
	Not a chance.
	Am I wasting my time on Russell's thoughts about these two?
	So we're mentioning that it happened and letting Sleeping Beauty- So he bull-sized it?
	Do we get a summary?
	Okay yes yeah no it is it is it is it is just a both sides kind of kind of situation.
	Does he excuse the squeezing and the smelling of bread?
	Is that what?
	That Tucker like in the supermarket.
	In the supermarket yeah.
	It's so fucking funny I can't I can't.
	What I've enjoyed since then have been the Russian reaction videos.
	Russian YouTubers being like, what the fuck is this guy doing?
	You know, that's fun.
	That's fun.
	Oh dear, oh dear.
	Yeah, yeah.
	What a fucking, like, this is the forefront of independent media.
	This is Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	This is a 20 minute editorial about Tucker Carlson and Jon Stewart having a...
	Having a battle of wits.
	SEO.
	That's SEO optimization right there.
	Branding.
	SEO, baby.
	SEO.
	Russell Branding.
	Russell Branding.
	The video wasn't even doing that well, even on his thing.
	That's the funny thing.
	I buried it.
	Good, good.
	Don't be rewarded.
	Was the editorial separate?
	No, no, no.
	Well, so he cuts them out and releases them separately as well on the Rumble channel.
	And normally they do pretty well, but not this one, which I'm like, good, I'm glad you're not being rewarded for this shit.
	This is terrible.
	That's the hashtag dance.
	That's the dance we do with SEO.
	Is it very often.
	A hundred percent.
	Fucking fails.
	Because the game is heavily rigged.
	But I mean, you can't blame a man for trying.
	It's a game we don't play with this show.
	What we do is just take it or leave it.
	There it is.
	Raw dog in the algo.
	Oh yes, yes.
	And we pay the price.
	But here we are, everybody.
	Still independent and ad-free.
	And hey, with that in mind, if you want to support us in what we do, head to patreon.com slash onbrand.
	We'd be very, very grateful.
	If you want to get in touch, it's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	Come and say hi!
	If you would like a Facebook community, there's Ombrand Awakening Wonders.
	Some lovely human beings in there talking about lovely things.
	And if you prefer some anonymous browsing, there is a Reddit.
	There is a subreddit.
	It's Ombrand underscore pod.
	And socials, we should be the Ombrand pod in most places except for where we're not.
	Look for the logo everybody!
	And personal socials, I'm at alworthofficial and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b.
	Definitely on Instagram and also some other places too!
	Oh, we do have a blue sky thing as well, don't we?
	That's the thing that we have.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Find us on Patreon.
	That's a great place to stay in touch too.
	Yeah, that's absolutely the easiest.
	You don't have to pay to follow.
	You can just follow us, too, there.
	You don't have to pay a dime.
	Yeah, 100%.
	And magnets, we have magnets.
	Oh, the Significant Cultural Artifact right here?
	The Significant Cultural Artifact that has real, live, actual gold on it, unlike the grifters.
	So yeah, the link is in the description, everybody.
	And take a little look, a little nosy around at Lauren's shop as well.
	There's some cool stuff there.
	Lauren has been making clients aplenty.
	Well, they're getting there.
	There's magnets so far.
	Right.
	The next big inventory drop and I will say, oh, I'm coming out guns blazing.
	My house is full of stuff.
	That's going to be ready on March 24th.
	And there's going to be updates as best I can on my Instagram and my Instagram.
	If I get to other stuff, I'll be thrilled.
	We'll see.
	But yeah, March 24th, I'm going to have a bunch of new stuff that will be available for sale.
	And everything's one of a kind.
	So when it's gone, it's gone.
	That's why the magnets are a great option.
	Smaller.
	More attractive price point and I can make those roughly the same so I can actually sell them all the time.
	And instead of kind of waiting for the big drop, it's kind of what you have to do when you make one of a kind art.
	I have shot myself in the foot.
	I'm limping around bleeding on this shot foot.
	That's my problem, not yours.
	So I'm trying to make it as accessible as possible in a way that I know how at this juncture.
	But I also can sign all over Chicago.
	You can find all that stuff on my Instagram too.
	I'm not It's not terribly difficult to find in the city and working on that.
	So yeah, March 24th.
	It's a Sunday, it'll be an easy breezy, having a shopping afternoon moment that you can get art if you want to, and be great.
	It'll be a swell time for all of us, I think is what it'll be, and take a look at some cool art!
	All right, everybody.
	Patrons, we'll see you Sunday, I think it will be, for some off-brand.
	And the rest of y'all, we'll see you next week for what will not be more Rand Paul, so we can all look forward to that.
	He fixes hair.
	He fixes hair.
	I gotta give credit where credit's due.
	He has normal-ass hair and has for quite some time.
	I appreciate it.
	Yeah, it's a lot better than it was a decade ago.
	That is for absolutely certain.
	That's totally fine.
	All right, we love you, everybody.
	Thank you very much, and goodbye!
	Thank you so much.
	Bye!
	That's not win-win-win.
	That's lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.

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