The finale of our coverage of Rescue The Republic includes the likes of Jimmy Dore, Heather Heying, Jack Posobiec, and a curious financial situation.
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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 a sort of like a poet.
Is this Eminem? Man, if we didn't come together in that stream.
I think it was just the beat.
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's show with my co-host Lauren B. That's me, I'm Lauren B. And I'm the host that has no, well I kind of know today, but usually have no idea certainly of the ins and outs of what we'll be getting into today.
But it's usually bad. It's almost invariably bad, which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing.
And Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing this week?
I don't know. I can go first if required.
Yeah. Yeah, what's your good?
You start. You go first.
You go first. I will start.
My good thing for this week has been baseball, really simply, and somewhat surprisingly.
So, like, I've been kind of...
I've never really gotten into baseball.
It's a very American sport.
It doesn't really happen over here.
But I've been following Shehey Otani for a couple of years, because, you know, the man's a phenomenon.
You know, just kind of keeping track of, I guess, baseball's Wayne Gretzky is what we're looking at.
And, you know, never been done before, will never be done again.
And at the same kind of time as keeping track of that sort of thing, I'd kind of run out of kind of chill games to play while I was doing other stuff or whatever, and just kind of, To vibe out, you know, I power washed all the things.
I mowed all the lawns.
You know, what else can I do?
And I was like, baseball's kind of chill.
Maybe let's do a bit of that.
And so I picked up MLB The Show 24 or whatever it is.
I've been enjoying some baseball on that.
And I have even watched some, like, full actual baseball games as well.
And I've been like, huh, I like this more than I thought I did.
So that's been nice anyway.
That's funny, because baseball bores me to tears.
That's why I don't participate in it at all.
I completely get that. I completely understand that.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And, you know, it might be the case of, like, if I was actually there, I might be more bored.
I don't know.
I don't know. But in the meantime, hey, it's a nice thing for me to enjoy.
Funnily enough, my dad actually for a while picked up baseball when I was younger, and this kind of came to me as I was there enjoying it.
I was like, oh yeah, shit, my dad was really into the Red Sox for like a couple of years, for some reason.
He just used to put on a baseball game while he was- Of all the teams!
He was really into the Red Sox.
And he would put them on while he was ironing.
And yeah, and I just remember, God, I remember I was like 10 and it was when Albert Pujols was playing and I thought that was just the funniest name in the universe because I was 10.
And yeah, and now I'm like, oh, I'm kind of, I'm understanding it more.
You know, I don't know if it's an age thing or what, but hey, I'm enjoying baseball, so that's a nice thing.
Well, Bull Holes is objectively funny.
It's a funny name, yeah.
Honestly, I'm annoyed at how little discourse was around to validate.
I don't think you need to pretend to think that's a wild ass last name.
It is funny. It is funny.
Yeah. Well, right.
And also as a...
I do think there is a specific...
You know what? I'll give it my good thing just to give this anecdote.
Because like, I don't know.
I'm doing the same shit I always do, guys.
Whatever. Okay.
I don't know. There'll be more stuff on the shop, right?
Soon. Yeah. Click the link in the description.
That's actually a thing. Yeah.
Check it out. Get a magnet.
The shipping's fucked.
Just pick a flat rate.
Oh my god, I don't know why this happens.
It's like flowers for Algernon.
Like the shop, I get it fixed and then it deteriorates.
See, I don't have a lot of gum. I was just dealing with that, so there's not a lot of fun shit to think of in my brain.
Well, just today, right now, it's absurd.
Okay, fair enough. And I just fucking refund you if you overcharge.
It's crazy. Oh my god, so dumb.
Fair enough. Um, yeah, but that, yeah, I'm always, I'm busy making shit.
And, uh, yeah, uh, right.
So living in St.
Louis, you know, the Cardinals were like a really big deal.
Um, Mark McGuire was a big deal.
And, um, you know, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of baseballing about there's, I mean, didn't, I don't know.
Anyway, I don't remember anymore, but, um, And I was, I ended up talking, you know, I was like, I was watching my friend shop actually this weekend and I was talking to people that are from Chicago and there's like a line and I'm like, there's like a line between like White Sox and Cubs fans that's like in the city, like if you grew up here, if you grew up here or if you live here.
Right, okay. Interesting.
And I think that's crazy.
I mean, I get, like, whatever.
Okay. Like, it feels like you're born into it, and that doesn't scream autonomy to me.
But, like, it's just funny that that's like, oh, you live here, you're a Sox, and if you're there, you're a Cubs.
And I'm just like, what if you just hate that baseball games The bajillion that happen every year.
And you're gonna have two for Chicago.
I mean, they're in different parts of the city, for sure.
But it just makes it impossible to get to work.
And then, especially if you live in Wrigleyville, oh my god, which is where Wrigley Stadium is, hence the name.
Having to find a place to park when you just want to go home from work every time there's a baseball game Or other event, by the way, would override any joy I derive from baseball because it's so much more pervasive in my daily life and horrible.
So growing up with the experience of like, oh, fuck, I'm late for work and I'm just like, I'm sitting here and traveling like, oh, there's a cards game!
God damn it!
And so it's always that.
It's always that.
Right. It's always that.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yep.
I've never had that experience, thankfully.
Right. That's the thing. It kind of colors, makes it all a little less fun.
Because it just is an impediment to, like, existing in the world.
Yeah, I imagine it's similar to how I felt about Wimbledon when I was living in southwest London, very close to Wimbledon.
I bet. Yeah, just like, oh fuck all of you.
I met once! Yeah, exactly.
And that's only for a short period of time every year as well.
Yeah! Right!
It's like constant.
Anyway, it's so stupid.
Part of the point of going to a baseball game and why it's fun is you go with friends and you hang out and there's time.
I don't think it needs to appeal to everybody.
Give me a hockey game any day.
Oh no, absolutely.
It's done in a fucking hour and change.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know when you start.
You know when you're done. It's completely fine to not be into a sport.
I couldn't give two shits about football, for instance.
Apparently the rest of the country does.
British football, that is.
Soccer. But, you know, here it is.
Oh, and another fun thing, while my dad was into baseball, there is a company that makes baseball equipment called Worth, and so my dad actually bought some, like, bats and shit that were the Worth brand.
And so I do actually have a Little League bat somewhere, an aluminium one with Worth written on it, so that's fun.
Well, it's custom. Nobody's got to know.
It's been customized.
No, it's a legit brand.
I know that. Yes, I'm saying as a bonus, custom.
Yeah, exactly.
There it is. I was very thrilled and very bad at baseball.
Anyway, we've got a show to do.
Yeah, it seems it.
Hitting the ball is pretty hard.
People don't talk about that enough. It's really hard to do.
Yeah, yeah.
Even throwing it in the right, like, little box, I'm like, now that's...
Also hard! Also hard, yeah.
A lot of it's, like, really hard.
It's very specific skills.
Yeah, right. Anyway, we've got a show to do.
But first, let's thank a new patron.
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14th, yeah. It'll be up on the YouTube.
I'm looking it up. We can fact check this information.
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Right, right.
Here we are at the finale.
Part three! Part three, right.
And I'm going to move it back to this for a second because I've got some, some, some, some, what's the word I'm looking for?
Keeping. Something keeping at the top.
Housekeeping. That's the word. Thank you.
Thank you. Brain not activated today.
Now, I would have liked to have gotten all of this wrapped up in two parts, but honestly, there's too much to tackle.
And looking at it now, I'm actually quite glad it has worked out this way for three reasons.
One, it's given me a little bit more time to dig into some of the detail of the event and its finances now that the dust has settled.
Two, I've been able to reflect on what we were discussing in part two, and I've moved up some of the financial stuff so we can discuss that at the top.
And three, there's been more reporting from journalists who were there on the ground, who were actually there, which has led to a couple of tidbits I otherwise might have missed out on.
For instance, there's a story about how an alt-right prankster slash social media guy called Lionel McGloin Was wandering around backstage and he thought it would be funny to go up to Brett Weinstein and ask him whether his brother Harvey Weinstein was innocent.
Now, the reaction you'd expect from that scenario is, oh, there's no relation or something like that, right?
Take it on the chin, right? That's what you'd expect.
What happened was Brett Weinstein was livid, replied, you want to conflate me with fucking Harvey Weinstein, and stormed off before security then took McGloin's camera from him and later returned it, but with the SD cards destroyed.
Oh, oh, okay.
We're a little bit delicate on this issue, it seems.
Interesting. You know what?
The hundredth time I heard that and I wasn't a privileged white man that was super great at managing my emotions?
Okay. That doesn't surprise me at all.
Nah. Because he also probably was upset that the turnout was...
He probably thought it was going to be more popular.
That's why you make it free. Might not have been the best day for Brett.
That is possible. Which is, events are stressful.
Not a good time to confront somebody with an upset.
That's a great opportunity for a gotcha video.
Someone's already doing a thing and in charge of a very complex...
Yes, yeah, yeah.
A lot of moving parts. Well, one could argue that he possibly shouldn't have been invited backstage by whoever was deciding that these people should be allowed backstage, but eh, oh well.
Another tidbit that I'd- Sure! That I'd- that I'd missed out on was the fact that if you remember the rapper Zuby in part one, you know, getting everyone to wave their hands back and forth, that guy.
One of his two songs, the one with the Rogan clips in that I mentioned, was about, that song was actually about his temporary suspension from Twitter for intentionally misgendering activist Emily Gorchensky in 2020.
I'm like, oh, that's just a whole, whole extra level of sad.
You shithead. Okay, fine.
However, however, I do want to say, and this is part of the reason that we're covering this event in such detail, almost all of the media outlets that have been covering Rescue the Republic don't seem to have taken it particularly seriously, and I think in many cases missed the forest for the trees.
And I'm going to quote a piece The Nation wrote up on it here.
anti-war and pro-Trump, but the event's larger mission was unclear, with many of the speakers
and musicians having little in common. Without a cohesive message, the rally became a chance
for everyone to go on stage and complain. The crowd, which I'd estimate hit a high of 1,500
people, often seemed bored." Unquote. Believable. Now the numbers thing...
The numbers the right-wing were parroting before the event was an expected 100,000 people, with Brett Weinstein claiming it was going to be like Woodstock.
Event promo nonsense, fine, right?
Whatever. The claim since the event, however, has been 25,000 people were there, which is...
Yeah! Which is the figure even appearing on, like, the memes taking the piss out of Russell, so even actually the left-wing sides of the internet are unintentionally hyping these idiots up.
I will say Rescue the Republic themselves haven't made that claim, but a lot of other people around it have, and they are doing no thing to fact check that information on social media, because why would you?
But yeah, high point of 1,500 people feels a bit more accurate, because yeah, even at a free event, these speakers are far less popular than they like to pretend they are.
As for the event's larger mission being unclear, I beg to differ on that score.
One aspect of this is, yeah, to make some money, absolutely, and we will get to that in just a second, but the second part of this event is almost purely ideological.
So far as I can tell, the aim of this event was to bring together under one roof the following concepts and peoples, right?
Anti-vax, anti-COVID shit, libertarianism in general, the so-called anti-war movement, the crunchy New Age types who support RFK Jr.
but aren't necessarily on board with Trump, the Christian right, the anti-trans bigots, and of course the MAGA side of things who are overwhelmingly anti-migration.
The specific aim here was unifying that group into one kind of voting bloc and targeting anyone under that tent who might not be on board with Trump and getting them to vote Trump.
To get the people who might be anti-vax but not vehemently racist to sort of hold their noses so they'll get RFK Jr.
and Elon Musk into office with Trump, which sounds terrific.
Oh my god.
Yuck. With this event obviously being held just over a month out from the election itself, the timing is no coincidence.
And then once that group are all unified under one roof, assuming they stay that way, much easier for audience capture and to make money off them at a later date.
It's a real win-win.
And honestly, this event in a nutshell feels to me like what Russell is trying to accomplish with his show.
It's trying to bring all these disparate parts of his existence into one alt-right place and make money off the result, right?
And I would argue that this event is probably the most successful attempt we've seen yet to bring all of those separate groups of people together.
I can't think of another one.
I know you can't.
There's other ones that happen all the time.
This is an event that's not nearly as special.
And Russell is there.
We should cover it. There's a ton of events that have been...
Getting, especially, like, Del Bigtree and R.K. Jr.
and, like, and Moms for Liberty.
Like, there's a lot of events that happen like this.
Sure. And I think maybe the coverage reflects that it's, like, this is, this has been happening.
This has been going on.
I think that it's absolutely relevant, you know, to talk about it with Russell.
And also, why is he on stage with Jordan Peterson?
It is its own thing. That is its own thing for us.
But, like... In the wider scope, just from what I know, I disagree.
I think that this is one in a constellation.
And the point is, it doesn't need to be successful.
It doesn't need to be singularly successful because this is a process that's been happening.
And these events have been putting the same speakers together Over and over and over again, in different formations.
So, I hear you.
I absolutely get what you're saying.
Yeah. I don't think that, like, genuinely, like, it's relevant for us to see Russell diving in, especially when, like, he could talk to Rainn Wilson a year ago-ish.
I guess a little more than a year ago now.
Because that's not who he gets to show up with anymore.
When he used to have, like, you know, a Successful podcast where people like Matthew McConaughey would come and talk to him.
It's a very steep decline.
But it certainly works very well for other people that have been there.
It is that kind of...
I don't know.
It's where some public figures backslide into and where other smooth operators They meet in the middle.
on like smooth operators on the come up and they're meeting in the middle.
Um, that's, this is like, I mean, it seemed, it's not, it's not old hat.
It seems more of the same to me, but it is absolutely relevant that Russell is joining in.
I think that's a bad sign for Russell's career.
Oh, absolutely. The company that he is keeping at this event is not good.
Yes, that is absolutely correct.
Yeah, so the headline from The Spectator was, Rescue the Republic Didn't Meet Expectations.
And you can find a whole host of similar-ish sort of takes painting the event as a failure because of the anemic turnout.
And as we've already discussed, in most ways, the audience are props and window dressing for the telethon aspects of this, right?
So there's that from the financial point.
But from an ideological standpoint, it's also about how many people are going to watch the stream and clips online, as well as the image of success being presented in that corner of the internet, regardless of the reality.
Right, because it doesn't matter!
That's the thing! Like, it doesn't matter how successful it is!
If Twitter is to be believed, which it isn't, it was Twitter's most-watched streamed event to date, with over a million people watching it.
Okay. I remember as it was happening, there seemed to be a live count of around half a million on the stream that got deleted from Rescue the Republic's Twitter account, This other over a million figure is coming from another guy who spoofed the stream, alt-right shithead Mario Nothal.
And I don't believe any of these numbers, but still, that's the impression being given.
Hilariously, they were almost immediately overtaken by Trump's rally with Elon the other day, which allegedly sits at 14 million people having watched it live, which, bullshit.
Just on its face.
That's absurd. Um, yeah.
Also, we don't know how many of them are hate-watching!
There's that! There's that!
14 million journalists watching!
It's not saying 14 million fans!
It's views!
Yeah, just people like, oh no, what is this?
I mean, yeah, yeah, and I'm very much that type of person.
Literally, that's what, yeah, you watch, you are a viewer, and you're not a fan.
Yeah, exactly.
It could have been 14 million me's, who knows?
Other than the stream itself, who also knows how many people are watching the various clips from all the guests who attended, you know, because everyone's spreading those out.
Out of seven hours of bullshit, there's plenty of them to choose from.
Either way, I would say the impact of this has been sufficient enough to be concerning, possibly, but we won't really know the true impact until at least after the election, you know, but...
I don't know. It's one of those things where, like, with this election being on a knife's edge, like most elections in the U.S. recently, if this little project of repeatedly trying to galvanize this group is successful, it could be a thing that tips it one way or the other.
But, yeah. We won't know for a little while.
I mean...
Well...
I mean, even, like...
People are starting to circulate more pictures of Trump rallies and how empty, like how consolidated people have to be to make it look like a successful event.
That's been going on for a long time.
That's why Trump got triggered in the debate.
And it was very easy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When like, oh my god, you're a baby.
Why would it matter?
It was really quite funny.
And obviously, supposedly the turnout, the one he did with Elon, was actually like, there were a lot of people there.
And he spent apparently a good chunk of time going, there's so many people here.
There's so many people here.
I'm like, all right, buddy. That sounds very self-soothing.
They also knew how to do headliners in a way that this event didn't really do headliners right.
So it makes sense.
And also coming back to the same place.
There's a lot of reasons that that would be more successful.
But it's still like...
The illusion of success and their ability to lie in the face of facts and numbers, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't move the needle for people who are looking to be validated and looking for a reason to kind of like...
Choose that horse in the race and to justify...
It's like, oh, everybody must feel like this.
That's why the rallies are there.
It is to make people who are...
They do not hold views that are common to the average American or even...
They're the most...
Zealous converts, and so yeah, they're gonna show up, and they're gonna feel this way, and then if they see, like, it's this, like, nesting doll of confirmation biases.
Like, I'm hearing what I want to hear, I'm seeing other people, when in my normal life, I'm a freak.
Maybe listen to that part.
Uh, whatever. So, like, why?
Why are you so alienated from people?
And that's, like, that's a, um...
I don't know. It just...
There's a lot of, like...
Whipping up your base and then your base being convinced that they are everybody.
Silent Majority was the exact same tactic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is convincing people like...
Because you're working...
You're doing two jobs at once.
You are confirming and reinforcing your group that is going to feel included and feel justified and feel righteous.
And then you are also...
Intimidating and instilling legitimate concern in the people the group is targeting or just excluding.
Yeah, I think my favorite example is probably One Million Moms.
Both ways. Which has never been One Million Moms.
I was totally gonna... No, it's like what?
20,000 likes on Facebook?
Fucking pathetic. Yeah, but the name is effective, you know?
Oh dear, it was...
I guess! The Million Man March that you stole it from.
Yeah. Sure.
It was effective that time.
Now it's just a fucking wish cast.
Yeah, now it's a bit of a caricature.
For Liberty is a little less checkable.
Yes. There's no count.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
Anyway, let's get to the first clip here of part three.
Now, we've had a lot of the political side, we've had a lot of the anti-vaxxer, and part three in general will, I think, be more of the ideological side.
But before that, let me introduce from later on a pair of guests by the name of Heather Wilson and Jacob Wells, who are relevant to the financial side of things.
And Jacob has a biblical point to make.
The Bible makes a very similar picture about the reality of the world that we live in.
It says in Ephesians 6.12, it says, We don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
We wrestle against principalities, things unseen.
There's a reality beyond what we can see.
I think oftentimes we get so pulled into looking into the political realm The election happening.
All of these natural things that are playing out without realizing that there's actually a deeper reality.
You want to talk about deep state?
This is the deep state.
It is this evil principality place that exists and we so often ignore it.
The reason why there's such an attack on free speech today It's because you can read in the Bible in John 1, the Bible says that God spoke.
It is the essence of speaking that brings life.
And it's the effort to silence speech because speech brings you to life.
And that's what the attack is on, and it also reveals truth.
And the truth is not some fact.
It's not some medical diagnosis.
It's none of that. It's actually a person, and his name is Jesus.
In John 14, Jesus says, I am the way, I am truth, and I am the life.
That's what it's all about.
It is about you coming to know this man, truth himself.
That's why they want to silence your speech, because in silencing your speech, you can't come to know truth.
Aha! So it's a sort of satanic conspiracy.
The truth is not some fact, everybody.
The truth is Jesus. And in trying to silence free speech, then you're trying to silence Jesus.
And that's how that goes.
It's amazing that these people try to say that they're humble.
And that like, well, it's God, but I'm the one saying it.
And you should listen to me because I'm speaking.
Like, they don't frame it that way.
Because it's a big sin.
Yeah. The reality is like, what's the difference between you speaking for God or God speaking through you?
Mmm. Mmm. Interesting philosophical question.
So these two, they're the founders of a company called Give, Send, Go.
You've seen Nazi messaging services.
You've seen Nazi social media.
Well, now we have the Nazi GoFundMe.
Basically, their tagline is the leader in online fundraising.
I love just how subjective that statement can be.
Anyway, their whole schtick is basically anyone who's banned from raising money in a GoFundMe, then you can go over to Give, Send, Go, because that's free speech, baby!
So Nazis raise as much money as you like.
And if you filter their website campaigns by political, because that's an option, It's just a bundle of right-wing grifts happening, like some guy wanted 800 bucks for supporting election integrity.
And there was another one for a campaign against the Deep State raising money for that.
Mike Lindell has been using it to raise money, as a for instance.
Supposedly, Give, Send, Go don't take a cut of any of the campaigns, so I'm a little unclear as to how they make money precisely.
There is a mysterious third-party processing fee of 2.7%, so maybe it's not a third-party actual fee.
No, that's theirs. Right, well, yeah.
Ugh. The third party is me, and I am taking that money.
Yeah. It's like Ticketmaster, like, I'm sorry, the fees are high and there's nothing we can do while putting money in their own pockets.
Yeah, that's them. It's this other third party company that we also own.
So yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Could very well be them.
But either way, this very same platform, Give, Send, Go, is how Rescue the Republic have been raising their money.
So that's where they've been directing everyone to go to make the donations to the event.
And the campaign is still ongoing with people giving money on this very day.
And it's available at givesendgo.com slash rescuethewest.com.
Which I'm like, that's a tell.
When did they change it?
I want to know when they changed it.
That's like, to me, that's so interesting.
Yeah, fascinating. Because there's branding that is visual branding that was corrected.
Listen, we've all put...
Well, not we've all.
Those of us that have had to deal with it, listen, wrong dates, wrong times on a flyer, shit happens.
Okay? I get it.
But when did they have to or want to or did change the name?
And there's no way that we would know, but I'm intensely curious.
Was it the day? It wasn't the day.
But the thing is, it wasn't the day before because they had a poster that had the right name on it, right?
They had a flyer that had the correct name.
Yes, yeah, yeah. And they had done for at least a couple of months.
Did they just not tell the speakers and the people at the event and not realize that those people don't give a fuck about you and they're going to repeat what you emailed them because their assistant put it in their calendar already?
Though, though, the actual fundraiser itself, it says it's created by Angela McArdle, who is one of the three organizers.
So one would assume she would have had to name it.
You know, one would think doing the admin thing.
Or she doesn't give a shit either.
This is a lack of attention to detail that people shouldn't be okay with.
That's just...
But also, listen, events are hard.
Shit happens. Like, I get that.
Yeah. But I'm interested.
Like, did Russell not find out that it was a different name till he fucking walked in and saw someone correct him?
Till he showed up. Yeah, exactly.
And he's like, oh, that doesn't say West.
That says Republic. Huh.
I mean, also, events are cat herding.
That's tough. But...
The fact that that's what it is on the website, that's crazy.
Yeah, yeah. Fucking change it.
Get your shit together, dude.
Come on. It did tickle me.
At the time of recording this, the amount of money raised sits at $446,588.
Yeah. If I factor in crew expenses, the stage and cameras, etc., I would guess this event costing probably around $100,000 to put on.
So, theoretically, not a bad profit.
That's a ballpark. It can swing wildly in either direction, to be fair.
Mostly upwards. But...
Where is that money going is the next question.
And I want to play a clip of the three organizers coming out and asking for money.
So that's Brett Weinstein, Matt Toon, and Angela McArdle.
And I have a small confession to make that when I first listened to this live, I misheard what Brett Weinstein had said.
And I hadn't yet cut this clip when we recorded part one.
Right. Hey guys, I'm gonna make this quick.
We gotta wrap it up. Here's the thing.
This event, all of those speakers, musicians, comedians that you saw, volunteered their time.
We're working as volunteers and the people that we hired to do things haven't been paid yet.
I don't want you to shortchange your kids, but if you can at all throw us something to help us pay the bills so we can get even and do this again at another place at another time, we would be really grateful.
If you can help us out, take a look at the QR code and do what you can.
Mm-hmm. So, I originally misheard him as saying that some speakers hadn't been paid yet.
Well, actually, all the performers and speakers there are doing it for free, essentially at their own cost, and it's the crew that Brett Weinstein hasn't paid, which...
Of course. Of course it's the fucking crew that are left holding the bag.
The people who did any of the work, of course.
That's always how that goes.
But more to the point, the speakers and musicians are there for free, right?
So, firstly, I will say it from a musician's perspective.
Dragging all your shit across the country to play this event for one song for free.
Assong! Assong!
Assong! Absolutely absurd.
Let me tell you, I did plenty of gigs for Exposure living in London, right?
It's a part of the fucking thing, unfortunately.
Even dragging an entire drum kit across London on the tube once.
But there's no way I would have done this event.
Not in a million years.
Um... Absolute madness.
The broader point, however, of the speakers being there for free is that they have all done the calculus in their minds that it'll be worth it in terms of audience capture.
Presumably that's also what the musicians are thinking, or at least the smaller ones.
And maybe Bret Weinstein will owe them one, you know, something like that.
They'll come on, you know, he'll go on their shows or whatever, who knows.
But also, I dare say, particularly with some of those smaller speakers on the bill, they are there to advance the cause as well.
And those causes vary in degrees of both stupidity and bigotry, but none of it's good, right?
And all of it was curated by Brett Weinstein, Matt Toon, and Angela McArdle here, who I do want to highlight briefly.
Um, Brett Weinstein, you know, he's the more famous of the three, and I've already mentioned him.
Um, while by his own description, Matt Toon on the left there is a, uh, Chicago-based Marine Corps veteran, U.S. soccer fan, servant leader, yogi, and ad sales guy, um, who co-founded Rescue the Republic and Defeat the Mandates.
See, they've built on the previous events.
To quote the website, What started as defeat the mandates, an historic idea to bring together the world's leading COVID-19 dissidents in the early days of the vaccine mandates, and rage against the war machine in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict, has now become today's rescue the republic.
Join the resistance, right?
So... Consolidating these things into one.
Wait, consolidating or just changing the name?
Well, yeah, I guess, well, the War Machine thing was very war-specific, the COVID thing was COVID-specific, so I guess, hey, we can do both of these at the same time, everybody.
Now- Or they also all just talk about the same thing all the time.
That's true.
It's weird from an outside perspective to think like, oh, these subjects are connected.
Like, oh, to them, yes. And it makes, listen, they're creating, they're building their own mind palace over there.
And this is how they're doing it.
Okay, I remember all the Defeat the Mandate stuff.
Yeah, right. So same guys.
Yeah, so that's him.
Angela McArdle, on the other hand, by her words, she currently serves as chair of the National Libertarian Party, serves as co-organizer for the Rage Against the War Machine, and is a two-time candidate for California's 34th Congressional District.
And again, in her own words, quote, Biola University is a small private evangelical Christian university in California, and all of their courses are integrated with Christian doctrine.
So, yeah, chair of the Libertarian Party, you know, that's who else is organizing this with a very specific Christian bent.
So basically, just among these three, we have heavy on the Christianity, heavy on the Libertarianism, heavy on the anti-vax shit, a little bit of crunch from Matt Toon being a yogi there, and all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, no, this lineup makes complete sense with these three in charge of who's coming.
No, absolutely. Yeah.
Very, yeah, yeah.
Well, that's also something that's been, it's been researched and reported for a long, for fucking years now.
So, yeah, if there's coverage in, like, a legacy media outlet, it's always frustrating whenever they're like, we don't know why these people, like, Why do they even hang out together?
It's a mystery. Sorry you're dumb.
Fucking get the net.
Pick it up. That's a YP, dog.
Come on. We know.
There's people talking about this and have been, and if you're fucking slow on the pickup, that's on you, man.
That's a bad idea.
That's a bad call.
This is like...
Okay, so this is, I mean, it's like, it's even more usual suspects than I suspected.
Like, okay, yeah, all right.
Well, and also, like, I don't care what, like, I genuinely, like, whatever he says into the microphone about, like, getting fundraising, like, he could, I mean, what, he could say, like, I've got a thousand kittens strung up on On gallows in the back.
And if you don't donate $10, they're all going to get their necks snapped with this one button.
Like, I don't believe, like, straight up, if there is, unless there is some sort of, like, religious organization moment happening or other kind of, like...
Inbuilt kind of like volunteering their time system.
I cannot imagine a show that would still have power if the crew wasn't going to get paid.
Those aren't the people that show up for exposure.
I would think that they're paying everyone to be there.
I don't know if some of those young men that we saw with their little outfits could afford to Put their own bill.
I just like sure say say whoever isn't getting paid to get people like they're they're saying they're lying to get money the whole time like it's all got an asterisk next to it as far as like unless we have like concrete like unless we have invoices then like we don't know yeah no we we getting paid or not but i can't imagine that microphone would have power Yeah, exactly, exactly.
I'm like, well, you definitely paid the company who put up the stage.
You definitely, you had to pay the riggers because they don't generally accept, you know, the stage wouldn't be there if you didn't.
Yeah, and the sound wouldn't be there.
Like, this wouldn't happen.
This has happened before, honestly.
Very entertaining story. It's about how much power the crew really has.
It's kind of incredible. Like...
Can do, yeah. You find out very quickly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely.
So yeah, in terms of that kind of, that money, you know, all of it simply, it stops at Rescue the Republic, you know, in terms of where the money's gone.
That's as much as we know.
And Rescue the Republic is these three people on the stage right now as to where any of that money's gone in terms of like profits and whatever.
Who knows? I'd be shocked if some of it didn't make it into Brett Weinstein's back pocket.
But we can't know.
It's impossible to know, because there's just a wall.
How high did the Give, Send, Go end up?
Or is going? Yeah, still, so yeah, $446,000 is where it's at at the moment.
So yeah, minus, yeah, I would say $100K in expenses, that's $350,000, you know, at a guesstimate.
Sounds like profit off the top to me.
Not a bad day's work.
Yeah, yeah. Alright, so from here we're gonna go back to earlier on in the event.
And next up we have possibly the most hateful speaker of the day.
And everyone brace yourself for some pretty intense anti-trans bigotry that will come up in a little bit.
Specifically we're looking at Heather Hying, who is Brett Weinstein's wife.
Now she co-hosts the Dark Horse podcast with him.
And is also formerly a biologist.
She's anti-vax, and she's also confirmed that neither her nor Brett have been vaccinated against COVID-19, supposedly, and says she takes ivermectin to guard against it instead.
Good luck with that one.
And a fun fact as well, by the way, as a little aside, her and Brett went on real time with Bill Maher back in 2021 to promote the Chinese lab leak theory around COVID. Cool stuff.
I fucking bet they did.
I fucking bet they did.
But he's a liberal.
Yeah, sure, sure thing.
Anyway, let's get to some of her nonsense.
The children of America are once again becoming suspicious of each other on the basis of the color of their skin.
The Democratic Party, which supported slavery, transformed itself into the party that brought us civil rights, has transformed itself once again into the party of racism.
Preaching that the color of your skin is proof of what's inside your head.
Now, the children of America are learning to be scared of one another, scared of disagreements, scared of exploring both landscapes and ideas.
They are locked down in the name of safety, kept from anything that might put them at risk, much the same way that a violent mental patient is restrained in a straitjacket.
Our children are being treated like mental patients, and thus, many of them are becoming mental patients.
Now our children are being drugged and drugged and drugged some more.
Drugs to treat normal childhood variation.
Speed to make the active young boy more compliant in the classroom.
Anti-anxiety meds to quiet the concerns of the sensitive girl and make it far more difficult to learn how to soothe herself down the road.
Children are not normally sick but American children are and ever more so.
We are chronically sick people and our children are following right in our footsteps.
The solution to this is not, as the blue team would have us believe, to negotiate with pharma to make the drugs cheaper.
Most of what ails America's children cannot be solved with pharmaceuticals.
Okay, um, yeah Jesus wept So right off the bat there, an anti-SSR ice creed.
And, you know, I will say for everything she said, citation fucking needed.
And, yeah, all of our children are being treated like mental patients, so they're becoming mental patients.
Uh-huh. Real logic.
Underlying a lot of this is the sort of traditional boomer narrative of like, oh, well, it wasn't this way when I was growing up.
We didn't have anti-anxiety medications and we turned out fine.
And no. Yeah, you just beat the shit out of each other every day.
You definitely didn't turn out fine.
Look at what stage you're standing on, lady.
That is not the picture of fine.
But again, as with the autism and chronic diseases mentioned in part one, mental health issues have always been there.
It's just now we are much more aware and able to diagnose and sometimes, if we're lucky, medicate against these problems so they're far less debilitating for those who have them.
But according to Heather Hying here, everyone just needs to learn to self-soothe instead.
Yes, yes. Self-soothe your way out of mental illness, everybody.
Well, here's the thing.
There is a lot of muddying the waters when it comes to talking about mental illness from these people because she said a lot of things that are very close to real problems and very close to the truth.
So pathologizing and medicating, um, very legitimate fears and anxieties that children have, uh, like getting shot at school or have, like, we know for a fact it has been studied and proven and I think we also all just feel it in our own lives.
The way that we get information now, our brains were not intended to, like, they were not, they're not designed to handle Not just the 24-hour news cycle, but having all of this information in our pockets all the time.
And our brains are not going to evolve in, what, 20 years or whatever to handle it.
It's too much. It's too stressful.
I mean, driving a fucking car puts us in fight or flight.
10 times a day when it would have happened a couple of times a year.
There are situations that are introducing massive amounts of anxiety into our lives that was not previously there.
Pathologizing and medicating very legitimate concerns I agree, not where she's coming from, but I agree, that statement on its face, yeah, it is a problem because kids shouldn't be afraid of getting shot at school.
So that's the thing.
She can be very sneaky and she can resonate with parents that are like, oh, my kid is terrified to go to school.
My kid is terrified of all these things.
And the school either can't or isn't doing anything about it.
And the only option I am left with is medicating a very real anxiety that is based in fact and reality.
We're also not fixing the material conditions that are stressing everybody out.
So, guess who's not gonna help?
The people on this stage.
It's a bait and switch.
She's giving voice to a very common understandable issue and then sidestepping and, like, Skirting the blame and acting like it's a conspiracy when it's just the way that our society has been put together.
But the thing is, is if no one on like the rational side is giving voice to the fact that like, which I don't necessarily agree.
I think a lot of people are talking about how it's reasonable to be scared to go to school as a kid because you might get shot.
That's like, that is totally like medication is for If a bear is chasing you, taking Xanax is not going to make the bear chase you any less.
It might make it a little less stressful, but the bear is still chasing you.
If we're not addressing a lot of these root causes of problems, Poverty and hostile policies and a lack of community.
There's all these elements that aren't getting addressed.
As a person who has been begging for help from medical professionals for over a decade now and getting jacked nor shit, they do want to just throw medication at you.
Because they're like, well, I can't give you money and three doctors at this point?
I mean like sounds like you probably like could you're not like you don't have enough money to live and you can't work in an environment like you've been out of work enough to where it's an issue and so a lot of the stresses that you are having day to day is because like you're not healthy enough to Be comfortable and not worry about this stuff.
And I can't give you money.
And they're not saying that's why you're getting medication.
But it's...
That doesn't fucking help.
It doesn't help someone's, like, mental state if there's, like, a lot of bad shit going on and we're confronted with it all the time.
Now, these people are making it actively worse, actively making it worse, so they are a huge problem, but pathologizing, like, the thing is, is, like, pathologizing doesn't necessarily, doesn't help from the other side either, like, Yeah, yeah.
Walls are being dropped all over the place.
And that's the thing, is like, if you don't give voice to the real concerns of the people, and if you're just saying, well, the stock market's doing good, so don't fucking complain anymore, that gives so much room and so much ammunition to people like this woman who will manipulate...
Manipulate the story for their own ends.
If our society had more of a support structure, she wouldn't have nearly as much ammo, but she does.
That's what's frustrating. In the political sphere, it just feels like the people that have the most power pretend they're powerless and have blinders on.
There's a reason why people like her and events like this can exist and thrive and then just lie about how successful it is.
Yeah. Because it makes the people that are interested feel good.
It's stupid. I hate it.
Yes. And I will say as well, like, on top of all the situational stuff causing, you know, the systemic stuff causing all of these problems, as well, you know, like, puberty and that kind of time is when a lot of mental illnesses first rear their head.
It is a thing that absolutely happens.
And so, like, we need to deal with both.
Fix fucking all of it is what we need to do.
Right. We just need to be honest.
We know all teenagers are fucking horrible.
They're the worst, but that doesn't mean that they deserve to be, to like live bad lives.
Cause they'll just become bad adults.
And that's not good for anybody.
This is not efficient. This is wildly inefficient.
And I do want to say one more thing.
That fucking party supporting slavery shit.
Shooting her into space.
Fuck you. Cause here's the thing.
Let's be real. The whole country supported slavery.
Both parties supported slavery.
It was not bipartisan.
The reason that slavery was finally the reason for the Civil War, there were certainly people that were like, listen, abolitionists have been here the whole time.
The whole time.
The cruelty was not what tipped the scale.
The economics tipped the scale to make the Civil War possible.
And also, slave rebellions genuinely were becoming unmanageable.
It was an inevitability because it was a bad system that was bound to break apart eventually.
I'm saying like that.
Not even the party switch, right?
That's a line that idiotic conservatives use.
Which party had decided what thing.
That's the thing. Yeah, fine.
Say whatever you want. What's the results of what your actions are in the world?
It's not making anybody safer.
You're not adding equity.
You are actively fighting against Equity.
Yeah. For me, it's like, okay, take the party names out of it.
Tell me which ideology was advancing this situation.
Let's go from that.
Was it a conservative ideology?
Or even allowing it to happen, right?
Because... I got fucking bad news about Reconstruction.
It didn't go great.
So, anyone really bragging about how great the Civil War decision, like, you know, the decisive kind of, like, action, yeah, ending slavery in, like, chattel slavery in name to be protected as, like, this legal thing, sure, it's still allowed and still, like, we still have slavery.
It's fucking, it's still enshrined in the fucking Constitution.
And it never stopped.
I just, that makes me livid.
Yeah, like, okay, do we care?
We never really did.
Listen, white lady, fucking, okay, all right.
Right. Anyway, so the kids are all being drugged, right?
She said the solution isn't pharmaceuticals, so what does she think the solution is?
Let's find out.
Hmm. Hmm. The solution does not lie with pharmaceuticals.
The solution lies in part with food, real food, grown by real farmers, not sludge streamed up in a lab and put together in a factory.
Our children are being made sick and miserable by what they eat.
Most of it isn't food, doesn't deserve the name food.
It is hyper-processed, full of agrochemicals, lacking nutrition, but full of addictive potential.
Sure. So many children now diabetic or pre-diabetic have metabolic syndrome, autism.
This is new. These are new problems.
Half of American children are overweight.
Nearly half of them are obese.
Children we're talking about.
And yet Ozempic and its pharmaceutical relatives, the newest magic pills with which to treat your ills, are being given to children as young as six years old.
Yeah, they should go to diabetics.
Instead of medicating children to treat brand new illnesses, we need to address root causes and keep big food, big ag, and big pharma far away from our children.
Okay, so the answer is take away all medications and reform the agriculture and food safety situation in America.
Now, that second part I can broadly sort of get on board with.
The problem is these people don't want further regulation.
They want to dismantle the FDA, and you can see where that might lead to problems.
And yeah, sure.
A Zempic can be prescribed to children as young as six in extreme cases of childhood obesity.
It's tragic, but these situations do occur in rare cases where for whatever reason, be it like diet and like poor parenting, I've seen that happen, or medical issues with things like the thyroid.
Sometimes you do get young children who are so overweight it's a severe risk to their health.
For those cases, a ZenPic can be prescribed and will help the kid lose weight.
It's nobody's first solution, mind you.
The first solution is always uniformly diet and exercise.
But I tell you what, it's good to have a ZenPic there as a backup just in case in these extreme situations.
And of course, the reality of the situation overall that Heather Hying is presenting here is that, right, even if she's somehow correct that medications are the problem and the right food is the solution, she would ban and get rid of all medications tomorrow, but the food and agriculture situation would still be a fucking disaster for decades regardless of who does what because it's impossible to change overnight.
So in actuality, all she's going to be doing is taking away potentially life-saving medications and telling kids to go fuck themselves, especially those kids from poor families or from those families who live in food deserts in the US. Um, and obviously, like, she's wrong on this score anyway, but the plan is bullshit either way.
Uh... Yeah. That's genuinely why I keep saying all the time, like, what does your solution actually...
Like, tell me what it looks like.
Yeah. Oh, you can't even begin to fathom.
You just want to be reactionary and argue against what's...
And not put anything in its place.
Oh, do you have a concept of a plan, even though you've had, what, 12 years to fucking sort it out?
I don't trust you to know what the end result should be.
I don't even think that you have an end result in mind, let alone the end result being any good.
I don't even think there's a notion of a plan, a notion of an alternative.
This big ag shit, she's like, stuff grown in a lab.
Girl, what do you think your food fucking comes from?
Where do you think it comes from anyway?
The cluelessness is fucking amazing to me.
Because the thing is, she starts with this stuff that makes sense.
Like, okay, yeah, there's a lot of environmental toxins that are not taken fucking nearly as seriously as they need to be that end up in our food supply and end up in our air, in our lives, in our bodies.
We're all fucking chock full of microplastics.
You can't even take a second to...
Because maybe that's where your fucking money's coming from.
You can't even take... Like, you're going to bitch at me about SSRIs and not say one word about microplastics and everybody's balls?
Fuck you! Like, that's just...
It's not like it's not on the docket for her, is what I'm saying.
Yeah. Because, like, that's not her sitch.
That's not her sitch. But, like, if she can cover enough...
Subjects and just make vague statements about them to bolster this emotional point.
You're not an expert.
You are a public speaker.
You're not an expert or anything.
I don't know why you are here other than just riling people up because you're not offering any solutions.
You're just bitching about shit and then it's a smoke and mirrors game.
I already explained. Yeah, there's like fucking guns!
Fucking guns is why kids are afraid!
Like guns being everywhere!
Here are these grievances.
Vote for Trump so that RFK Jr.
can get in there and fix all of it.
That's the end game.
Fix all of it. Yeah, he's gonna fix all of it.
Him and Elon Musk. Elon Musk is gonna fire everyone and then RFK Jr.
is gonna fix it. What's gonna happen?
The two most incompetent people.
I'm including babies.
On Earth. That I can think of.
Honestly, they make Trump look like, they make Trump look competent.
Yeah, that's true. I'm not kidding.
And it makes me upset.
Yeah. It's pretty remarkable.
What the fuck are they doing?
Yes. Yeah.
Oh, dear. As promised, let's get to some of the anti-trans garbage from this lady.
Corporations are being allowed to contaminate our children's bodies and get access to their brains by advertising to them.
Meanwhile, the schools are indoctrinating them.
Our children are being indoctrinated into a new religion, a religion called the science.
The new religion called the science has no bearing on actual science, but because it comes wrapped up in a thing with a nice name and a nice package, the new religion is trusted and believed.
The science teaches fantasy.
Fantasy like girls can become boys and boys can become girls.
The new religion called the science teaches fantasy like frosted mini-wheats are healthier than eggs.
And the new religion called the science teaches fantasy like the only way to be healthy in the face of a novel pathogen is to submit to the authorities, comply with their orders, and take into yourself brand new technology that we are now well aware is neither safe nor effective.
Cap it off with a little anti-vaccine thing there, cool.
Yeah, I mean, she's just straight up lying at this point, and I think she knows it.
No one is arguing that frosted mini-wheats are healthier than eggs.
What she's talking about, it was a food compass made by Tufts, funded by the NIH, right?
And what they did was try to rate foods within certain categories for their healthiness out of a hundred, right?
So they've got a fruit category, and fruit dessert with cream and or pudding is rated as 17 for healthiness, and a raw apricot is rated as 100 for healthiness, right?
In the category seafood, dairy, eggs, and meat, a beef hot dog is rated as a 3 for healthiness, while salmon broiled with oil is rated a 95.
Going down the grains section, I will say a series of General Mills cereal brands do rate suspiciously high, but for grains, pita bread is rated a 1 on the healthiness scale, interestingly, and General Mills Cheerios are a 95.
Again, I'm mildly suspicious, but anyway...
That's fucking sketchy!
Yeah. That's legit sketchy!
Yes, agreed. Agreed on that.
All of these are rated and judged as separate categories, however, meaning they're judged on different things within those categories.
And what some dickhead on the internet did a year ago was put a bunch of things from different categories together in the same chart to make it look far more absurd than was intended.
So if you look at the edited together version, you can see, oh, an egg fried in butter is a 29, but Cheerios are a 95.
That's crazy! Whereas actually, they're being rated in different ways for different things.
Nobody is rating apricots on their protein content, for instance, because they would instantly lose that fight to an egg fried in butter.
More protein in the egg, right?
So yeah, the whole thing's stupid.
There are definitely problems with that thing.
I am sus about it in general, but it's just not in the way that they're presenting it.
Yeah, and as for her claims about, you know, girls becoming boys and boys becoming girls and blah blah blah, no biologist in- I love that Erasure song.
How dare she? Ugh.
Yeah, no biologist in the world worth their salt would make the claim that gender is binary because it's not and has never been.
But she doesn't give a shit, she just wants to hang on some trans people.
Alright, yeah, one last clip from Heather Hying here.
It's probably the worst one, at least to me.
The attack on parental rights shows up in myriad ways, both direct and indirect.
In states from Indiana to Texas to Montana, parents are losing custody of their children because they dared to protect them from the fantasy propagated by the science that boys can become girls and girls can become boys.
This summer, following the Biden-Harris administration sweeping new reforms of Title IX, which now explicitly provides protected status to the fantasy concept gender identity, California became the first state in the nation to allow schools to keep such information about children from their parents.
And in Minnesota, Governor Walz signed legislation allowing the courts to take temporary emergency jurisdiction of children when gender-affirming care is not forthcoming.
These are direct attacks on children, on parents, and on families.
The indirect attacks, though, are no less brutal.
They don't seem like attacks, but they are.
A parent, usually a mother, becomes convinced that in the name of kindness and compassion, and that fantasy called the science, they should abdicate responsibility for their children, hand it over to teachers and activists on social media who tell lies.
Lies like, if you don't help trans your kid, he's gonna kill himself.
In fact, when your boy wakes up in the morning and says he's a girl, it is not time to embrace the fantasy.
You did not just get a daughter.
What you have is a boy who is exploring his identity, and it will pass if you let it.
I can't express how many lives this rhetoric is costing every year.
Again, here's the statistic.
Again, in the United States, a member of the LGBTQ plus youth between the ages of 14 to 24 attempts suicide every 45 seconds, and people like this are the cause.
Rhetoric like this is the cause.
Gender-affirming care saves lives, as do puberty blockers, and there's a reason these kids should be kept from their bigoted fucking parents in this situation, because it might just save their life.
Don't like this lady.
Don't like this lady.
No, because here's what's fucking incredible, and I wanted to make sure to look it up, is like, legitimately, directly, right?
The terrorizing that is being allowed in schools because of this rhetoric, right?
I don't know if you've heard about this, but in Pennsylvania, there's a school...
So there's gender-neutral bathrooms as well as gendered bathrooms in the school in Pennsylvania.
And they cut holes in the fucking wall.
So they could see in, and let's see, designed to monitor and prevent misbehavior.
Such openings weren't...
I'll just read the thing. The two windows were installed in recent weeks following a vote in August of the Southwestern School Districts in Pennsylvania.
Conservative Majority School Board, a move the board president said was designed to monitor and prevent misbehavior.
Such openings weren't installed in any of the school's non-gender neutral bathrooms.
That was confusing. So gendered bathrooms.
They don't need monitoring, but gender neutral bathrooms had fucking windows put in.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah. So guess what wasn't real?
There's never been a litter box in a school for kids that identify as cats.
Fuck it. Motherfucking ever, ever.
I bet that they probably have to, like, pour it on the- pour litter on the floor because the schools are so underfunded and broken that that's the only thing that the janitor has to, like, soak up all the water that isn't getting put in the right place.
But that's- it has- that's never happened.
Ever, ever. What has happened is that there are, like, genital checks in some school districts.
There's windows getting put into- like, I'm sorry.
Maybe let's not make- Uh, like, a pedo fiesta.
Could we not do that?
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what- For fuck's sake!
You want to talk about infringing on people's civil liberties?
What about this bullshit? Um, I will say that the thing that school sounds like it's overlooked is that, um, the gays and lesbians can have a fine old time in the bathrooms if they want, you know?
Like, that's, uh, you.
They- they- they missed a- missed a thing.
Oh, dear.
Okay. All right.
That's your take.
Cool. I think that basically since it got national attention, I'm pretty sure that the windows are boarded up, but the fact that they actually spent that fucking money and someone thought it was a good idea to do, or they're still all the fuck over the place.
The fact that the amount of effort that has to be Directed at this, like, inane culture war bullshit.
Yeah, it's... This woman I'm looking at right now, it is 100% on her head.
Yep. That blood and that, like, blood or pain or whatever is on her head.
She is 100% culpable.
And it's just fucking amazing that, like...
The hypocrisy is, like, so blatant.
It just boggles the fucking mind, but also, that's their game.
It doesn't, like, they don't have to succeed at anything.
They just have to be able to do it and say that it's right, and then that's it, because you're confirming biases.
You're not, you're, like, communicating information, like, communicating pertinent, um, useful information is not the point.
It's not what they're doing.
Nope. So they can lie as much as they want.
They're vibing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Egg-fucking-zackly.
But yeah, it's astonishing.
However, we're going to move on from Heather Hying, thankfully.
And we go from the absolutely horrendous- We're not going to publish her address and directions to her house.
Her daily schedule.
No? Seems ill-advised.
We're gonna go from the absolutely horrendous to what was, I think, possibly my favorite speaker of the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage our youngest speaker of the day.
Lucky Basseri is an amazing young man.
He began his political career yelling at his mom through a loud halo when he was eight.
No, he was down at City Hall.
Lucky stood up to the vaccine mandates.
He stood up to his school, his teachers, his classmates, and he wants to be president of the United States someday.
I'm sure he does.
My name is Lucky Basseri.
I am 16 years old.
I traveled here from California.
Because the fact is, our country is on the precipice.
We are at a defining crossroads of our nation.
A pivotal moment that every person here needs to be actively and readily engaged and involved in.
This is the moment to stand.
This is the moment.
Freedom or tyranny?
Liberty or dictatorship?
Now let me ask you, after the last, the pandemic, the four, the last four years of tyranny that we have endured, our waning liberties, are you gonna take it?
I said, are you gonna take it?
Let me tell you something, Gen Z will not take it either!
The youth stand for freedom.
We stand for liberty.
We stand for justice.
And we stand against any and all unconstitutional actions.
But let me tell you something.
As important as this moment is, the flame of liberty will never, ever go out.
They can try to cover it, but it will never, ever go out.
So let me wrap up by this.
You all need to fight.
We need to fight, fight, fight to make America healthy again!
We need to fight, fight, fight to make America great again!
And we need to fight, fight, fight to rescue the Republic!
God bless you all!
God bless America! Oh, god damn.
I've seen this so many times now and it's still making me laugh.
It could be directly lifted from an episode of South Park, I swear to fucking god.
Oh, I thought it was lifted directly from an episode of The Office where Jim gives Dwight the Hitler speech and then Dwight accidentally slays.
Like, kills it?
Because Dwight didn't know what he was saying any more than this.
Like, we just witnessed child abuse.
Literally, literally, right?
Like, so this kid, Lucky Becerra, he's 16 years old, right?
And he's been on the MAGA train since he was 15.
And, you know, I generally don't go in for making fun of indoctrinated children, and I wouldn't if the character wasn't so objectively funny.
I found a piece... I still kind of have a...
I don't know, man.
He's still 16 years old.
Yeah, I know. It's fucked up.
I found a piece he wrote for the Gateway Pundit from last year, right?
And I do want to read a little bit from it to give you the real picture of this little goober.
My high school day in Los Angeles kicks off at 8.45am.
As the morning announcements finish, students are asked to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance.
I rise promptly, placing my hand over my heart as I turn toward the flag nestled in the corner of the room.
A cursory glance reveals I stand alone, met with disapproving stares for my fervent and unwavering allegiance to the greatest country on earth.
Not a single student nor a teacher stands for the flag.
As I return to my seat, I survey the room, preparing myself to get ready for a day of what they call education ahead.
I turn my gaze to the left side of the classroom.
A shrine-like display hangs on the wall, displaying the symbol of the domestic terror organization that is BLM over the background of the Alphabet Mafia flag.
So there's a rainbow flag behind it, right?
Next, I open my Google classroom to see the work that awaits me.
I have to listen to a poem called Princess in Distress, in which a man attempts to compare himself to a distressed Disney princess.
In the poem, he describes his fictional gender transition and encourages youth to do the same as him.
We must read this for our high school summer reading and write a report on it." Yeah, this little fucker's just been completely indoctrinated and just, like, calling BLM a domestic terror organization.
I don't know how much his parents helped him write this, I don't know.
But, like... I have some guesses.
Yeah, I'm just like, holy fuck, this is like, it's fucked up.
And I personally, I'm not comfortable with having kids in politics in general, regardless, you know, how old they are.
And, you know, like, I'm not particularly comfortable with those kids we saw at the DNC thing, for instance.
You know, but like, this is- Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Which kids? What are you talking about?
The ones that came out and were like, Kamala!
I'm like, eh! And I get it's supposed to be a celebratory event or whatever, but at the end of the day, it is politics.
I don't think children should be at these kinds of events.
Full stop! And, you know, it might just be a cultural difference.
I don't know. We have way less children involved in any political events over here.
Dear oh dear. Well, here's the thing.
I think it depends on the kind of thing you're doing.
I mean, because...
Yeah, there's a difference.
The Parkland kids showing up and saying, I'm affected.
I survived a terrifying mass shooting event.
Yeah, that's completely different.
That's completely different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that turning children, like, I mean, this, the, like, I don't know, kids showing up and doing, like, a Chan of Kamala is very, to me, is certainly more milquetoast than, like, this kid has to, his brain has to be pumped full of all of this stuff, and he has to be immersed in it, Yes.
Because I think that saying child abuse, I don't say that lightly.
This is child abuse.
You are terrifying your child for political gain and influence.
There is no fucking way that this kid has...
You have to be a real...
No. There's no fucking way that this isn't coaching from parents.
Did you find his parents at all on social media or anything?
Their internet presence?
I didn't go hunting for his parents, no.
I feel like that'd be very instructive as far as where this actually comes from.
And this is also a really common thing.
There's a lot of stories out of New York that I'm thinking of that are really wild.
In New York City, as far as school board stuff goes, using your kid as a prop for a political end I think is completely different than I mean, I think it's genuinely, like, it's a fucking shame that kids get affected so adversely by these policies and have absolutely no recourse and no one really, like, empowered necessarily to even look out for them.
Like, there's a lot of voices that, like, don't need to do this.
This is fucked up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of speaking for kids in these events.
The thing is, on its face, their policies and things that they're standing for and stuff that they're fighting for, like a Moms for Liberty, what they show up for, like, no, you are only hurting kids.
You don't give a shit about kids at all.
Because kids should be comfortable with politics and comfortable with...
You know, being involved in the political process.
Like, I got a lot out of that as a kid, even just, like, little stuff that we did in school, right?
Like, to understand civics.
Yeah, yeah. Having an awareness of that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah. The civics of it makes, like, that's an empowering, like, lesson to teach children.
I think genuinely, like, politics kind of gets removed from civics and isn't really encouraged to be understood.
And so it's intimidating.
Right. And so this is not civics.
This is propaganda.
This is a pep rally.
This is indoctrination. And obviously there is a delineation between indoctrination and then weaponizing kids for political stuff.
This is both. This is what's happened here.
Scary. Yeah, immensely fucked.
But, this is also the kind of kid, and this has happened with Christian music groups or whatever, or there's sisters that were Aryan nation, musician group, whatever.
This is a really great way to make your kid turn on you and be everything and be the opposite.
There is a part of me that wonders if in 10 years we won't see Lucky Busseri like the biggest lefty left, you know?
We're five, right?
That's kind of like, that's a silver lining to me is like, this is a great way to make a pink Okami, right?
Yeah, potentially. My fingers are crossed for the kid anyway.
Yeah, it happens all the time.
It sucks because there's a lot of indoctrination and control that has to keep people on this path.
Unless he benefits from it massively and it has no compunction as his brain develops.
This sucks. Yeah, yeah.
Alright, so we go from him to, we've got another musical act, and I think it's legitimately the best musical act of the day, with an interesting background.
And I'm not making fun here, there is some legitimate skill with this guy, who is called Struggle Jennings.
I love his top off the bat.
It's a fringy western shirt.
Cowboy hat, aviators.
But somebody hit the breaker.
Lost in the dark till I met my maker.
Fighting for peace while I'm here on God's bakers.
Love thy neighbor. I don't even hate haters.
They say don't be violent in the face of my traitors.
We can talk about it later.
My Savior came in flipping tables.
I'm a crusader. My heart is my anchor.
The angels are crying and smearing their makeup.
You dance with the devil.
I march to their cadence. Feeding my kids with the fruits of my labor.
I paid all my payments.
I'm all out of pieces.
Don't save all your statements.
You stay from your basement.
I stand on the pavement and fight for my people.
Against you, get traitors. I'm all out.
I hear the cries of the crusades for showing what we're made of.
I put money on and on.
I hear the cries of the crusades for showing what we're made of.
Yeah, not bad.
Rhymes are lyrically very God-oriented.
Decent performance, good rhythm.
The band seems solid.
Got this lady doing top line work for him.
Catchy chorus to drive it home.
Honestly, like, legitimately, I would say it's a decent song, and there is a reason for that.
Struggle Jennings here was signed to Yellow Wolf's label, Slumerican, alongside Bubba Sparks.
Now, if you don't know who Yellow Wolf is, he's a white working class rapper who was signed by Eminem to Shady Records.
So you've got this kind of direct through line from Eminem to Yellow Wolf to Struggle Jennings.
Struggle is also good buds with Jelly Roll and does songs with him from time to time.
So I would say like the requisite skill is there unlike a lot of the other performers here at Rescue the Republic.
Now you might be thinking that Jennings specifically is a particular choice of name for the stage reminiscent of Waylon Jennings and Shooter Jennings and you'd be right.
See, his actual name is William Curtis Harness Jr.
He was born to William Harness Sr.
and Jennifer Eddy, who was the daughter of rock and roll legend Dwayne Eddy and country singer Jesse Coulter.
So his mom's parents were both successful country musicians, right?
Oh, country and rock.
Struggle's dad, Harness Senior, was murdered in 1990.
So then Harness Junior, Struggle, spent much of his childhood in the company of his grandmother's second husband, who was Waylon Jennings.
So Jesse Coulter married Waylon Jennings, and Struggle spent a lot of time with the pair of them, apparently.
Oh my god, that's crazy.
I know exactly who that is.
Oh, okay, okay.
It's pretty nuts. And then Struggle then took the Jennings surname as his stage name, and his uncle is, of course, country rock singer Shooter Jennings.
So, yeah. Now suddenly, like, it makes sense, right?
The dude's been surrounded by successful musicians his entire life.
That doesn't explain this song.
No. No, no, it doesn't.
This song sucks ass. Sorry. I get that it's, like, sound as a song.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's still, like...
On a technical level, yeah, yeah. Boring and derivative and like...
Sure, sure. It's stale as fuck.
And it's also like a bad message.
Boo! Zero out of ten.
It does come in...
It's almost like Eminem and Rihanna from ten years ago, you know?
But like, on a technical level, fine.
In terms of style, I mean.
On a technical level, fine.
Where he stands politically is definitely where the problem comes in.
On the one hand, in the music industry, there's a degree of a gig is a gig, but he's doing this for free with his band, meaning likely the event cost him money, potentially, if it is as Brett Weinstein said and none of the performers are getting paid.
In terms of beliefs, I couldn't find that much outwardly on his socials.
The only thing I could really find that wasn't just promoting his music with the t-shirts he sells, which say kill all pedophiles, which could be some QAnon shit, but also it could just be generic vigilante violence.
It is! Yes, but also it could be generic vigilante violence wishcasting.
I've seen that without the QAnon conspiracy stuff as well in general, but also could be.
Either way, he's here at this event, and he's here probably at his own expense.
And honestly, I think that tells us all we need to know.
We don't know that, though.
We have no idea who's getting paid and who's not.
True. And if anybody's going to get paid, the guy that's tangentially, adoptively related to Waylon Jennings is probably the one that's going to get paid.
Because you know how that does work as far as, like, you have...
There's folks that are playing that are paid and there's folks that are playing and they are blessed with exposure and it can be on the same ticket.
So here's the deal.
In Littlefield, Texas is Waylon Jennings RV Park.
It is Wayland Jennings Memorial RV park next to the Wayland Jennings Memorial Museum and
smoke shop.
There's also a gas station.
Listen, humble, but no less effective.
So it's crazy.
I don't know, man.
Yeah, yeah.
That's where that ends.
I don't know. I certainly taste in...
That's a Dwayne Eddy top if I've ever seen one worthy of Dwayne Eddy or Whelan Jennings as far as his blouse, his lovely Western blouse.
But that's it.
Like, this isn't...
And I think that that point was made a lot...
You know, ripped to a real one, you know, Kris Kristofferson, who recently passed away.
People were like passing around clips and quotes and how fucking miles away anyone who is claiming some sort of pedigree to outlaw country They would have nothing to do with any of your views.
No. Even their problematic ones are better than yours.
Yeah. Truly. Yeah.
Get out of here. Absolutely.
It's just... Okay.
Well, at least, I mean...
Yeah. Yeah. But that was a struggle, Jenny.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's a struggle. Yes.
It's a struggle. Yeah. I think his first album, I think, was called I Am Struggle, which I just found hilarious.
Yep. Yeah, fair enough.
Yeah. Anyway, yeah, that's possibly the best musician of the day.
And now we get to some stand-up comedy.
You know, I may not agree with everybody on this stage here on everything, but we agree on the important things.
Freedom of speech and the First Amendment.
I was just in Canada where they have no First Amendment.
They have no freedom of speech.
I actually, when I was there, I bumped into Justin Trudeau.
I was at a meeting of guys who saw the Barbie movie alone.
And he was there.
He needs someone behind him doing rim shots.
I think that's what he needs.
I don't think that would help.
Maybe not. I don't think that would help.
Yeah, Jimmy Dore has hit the stage.
Comedy legend, Jimmy Dore.
And his great takedown of Justin Trudeau there, that he's the type of guy that would see the Barbie movie alone.
My favorite thing about that is in this construction of things, in order to kind of attend that support group, Jimmy would have also had to have go and seen the Barbie movie alone.
You know what I mean? I'm like, this is just...
Or he's a creep crashing that party.
Either way, it doesn't look good.
No. And it's also not funny.
So it doesn't have to be true.
You could make any joke.
Yeah. And instead, you just said that.
Yeah. Not a joke.
Yeah, yeah. According to the journalist that I mentioned before, when Jimmy Dore was on set, there was a lot of silence.
A lot of silence, interestingly.
Anyway, he's got a bit for us about- Are you surprised?
I'm sorry! I am not surprised in the slightest.
But given how revered he is among people like Russell, I'm like, that's interesting.
Okay. Because it's all smoke and mirrors!
They don't actually have to be successful as long as they just say they're successful and someone gives them money to keep doing it.
It is so fake!
Like... All of this is like, to me, this exposes how fake it really fucking is.
Because if any of their hype, those millions of views, that would translate.
Yeah, yeah, it would.
In real life. If it were fucking true.
It would absolutely translate, which is why you don't have that 100,000 there that Brett Weinstein was promising.
Anyway, he's got a bit for us about the COVID vaccine.
I'm sure this will be good. If he makes a joke that's funny, I'll eat my hat.
They go, you have to stay here for 15 minutes in case you die.
15 minutes in case.
I go, if my heart explodes, because that's what they said.
They go, we have to monitor you for 15 minutes in case your heart explodes.
Hey, if my heart explodes, I'm going to sue the shit out of everybody.
They said you can't sue if your heart explodes because they passed the law saying you can't sue if you get injured by the VACs.
I was like, why would they pass the law like that?
They go, because it's safe.
Yeah. And I'm not saying that the COVID-19 vaccine doesn't work.
All I'm saying is everybody I know who got the COVID-19 vaccine then got COVID. Is that how vaccines work now?
Could you imagine if we all got the polio vaccine and in the same year we all got polio?
Say flu shot. Say flu shot. I'd be like, hey, I don't think that polio vaccine works.
Why do you say that, Jim?
I got polio!
But then there's always some asshole.
Well, it's not supposed to stop you from getting it.
It's just supposed to lessen your symptoms.
Oh, well, then I guess it worked.
Flu shot. I guess it worked. Look at me.
I'm a success story over here.
Put me on the poster for the facts.
Yes! Yeah, for anyone listening, he was just limping around the stage as he did those last couple of lines.
Um, and, uh, you know what, Jimmy?
Like, you're 59, which is prime age for COVID to wreak havoc on you, so if you've had it, then, like, you may very well be the- it may very well be the vaccine that saved your life, so maybe someone should put you on the boaster for the vaccine, you silly prick.
Um, yeah, just poorly constructed, and- and you can hear the ten laughs happening in the crowd.
um as he's as he's doing as he's doing this well you know what at least they know it's not funny yeah like it you can hear that like huh like okay oh yeah like the i agree sound not the laugh noise when you hear a funny thing there was there was quite a lot of that during his set funnily enough um and next he's he's funny Poo holes.
That's fucking funny!
That's pretty great! That's funny!
Come on!
So now Jimmy has a bit of a dumb free speech example for us.
Freedom of speech is not for the speech that we like.
It's for the speech that we hate.
When I grew up in Chicago, literal Nazis would march.
Every year they would march in Skokie, which is a suburb filled with Jewish people, and the Jewish people let them march because they loved freedom of speech more than they hated Nazis.
So that's how much we have to love freedom of speech.
No, because they legally could do it.
It wasn't that people that lived in Skokie, stone's throw from my house, were psyched on it.
That's not how that went down.
Right, so the people of Skokie, so these Nazis kept marching, so the people of Skokie specifically passed ordinances to stop the Nazis from marching, which then led to the landmark case of the National Socialist Party of America versus Village of Skokie, Where it was found that their marching was protected by the First Amendment, and so the Nazis were allowed to march.
The Jewish community and the people of Skokie weren't fucking happy about it, Jimmy.
They did everything they legally could.
And in fact, in the summer of 1978, in response to the Supreme Court's decision, some Holocaust survivors set up a museum on the main street of Skokie to commemorate those who had died in the concentration camps.
Uh, the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center remains open today, having been moved to a new permanent location on Woods Drive in 2009.
Yeah. Um, fun fact is, uh, this is the court case that's referenced in my favorite film, The Blues Brothers, um, whereupon being asked why the Nazis were marching in Chicago, Elwood says, ah, these bums won their court case today.
Um, and I personally would like to echo Drake Blues in saying, I hate Illinois Nazis.
Um, Yeah, fuck those people.
I love that subplot.
It's such a good subplot.
It's so fun.
In that movie, Nazis were so not necessary, but it definitely made it so great.
That's what makes it so good.
It's so good. Yeah.
We have no reason for this and we're taking the dig anyway.
Yes, yes. Because someone was upset and put it in the movie on purpose.
Yes, absolutely. Because also those guys are like at least some of those, you know, people that, you know, are from Second City or like from around here.
Right, right. And so they take that idea to SNL and then it's, yeah.
Yeah. It's fucked up.
Yeah, yeah.
That's so... It's just, oh man, you gotta, your head has to be fucking empty and have no, like, experiences to come to this stuff and be like, yeah, you're right.
Yes, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, so dumb example from Jimmy.
That's strike two on that score, at least.
And yet, in the next clip, he makes a point I dare say we will generally agree with.
Right now there's a wave of censorship happening in protests.
That means we have to stand up for the right of protest for pro-Palestinian protesters.
Because if they can shut them down, they can shut us down.
And the people who want to shut down the pro-Palestinian protesters say, well, those college protesters, they don't even know what they're protesting for.
And it's a good thing they don't because if they did, they'd be fucking right.
I have my Zionist friends who try to get me to go along with Israel.
They say to me, they go, Jimmy, you know, I know you support the LGBTQ. You know who doesn't?
Hamas. Hamas doesn't support gay people.
What do you say to that, Jimmy?
I say, oh, I guess we should slaughter their children.
Anyway. People say that Israel's the only democracy in the Middle East.
You know why? Because we overthrew all the other fucking democracies so we could steal their oil.
We love you. Um, yeah, I mean I'm not as, I'm not as mad at that part, like...
The points about Palestine did not go down terribly well with this crowd, particularly, which was interesting, especially, again, according to the journalists that were there.
Wait, what do you mean Palestine didn't?
As in they were anti-Israel?
No, so he's saying pro-Palestine things here that we should support, and whereas the audience were not necessarily agreeing, overwhelmingly, let's put it that way.
Okay, so they were pushing back against his pro-Palestine stance.
Yes, indeed.
On Israel's side.
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I was surprised to hear that at this event.
Everyone else was completely silent on the entire situation, so I was like, ah.
Okay, not mad at that bit.
Okay, I mean, the idea about there being no democracies in the Middle East is fucking racist, you know, because some do exist.
Yeah, Israel's also not a democracy, it's an apartheid state.
Also that! But yeah, on balance, I think that's possibly his best little segment.
Anyway, Well, but that's the kind of thing that he can say that harkens back to, like, if he ever had any kind of leftist ideology whatsoever, then, like, yeah.
To me, this is, like, it's insidious.
I don't know. Because if it's, like, not moving the needle for people that are actually there and if they're, like, not happy to hear it, that also sucks.
Yeah. But, like...
He's like that is gonna give him cover for people on the left which I have seen even people that like Kind of, are very otherwise like very critical of, you know, like mainstream and legacy media.
Like, I gotta agree with Tucker Carlson.
Like, I gotta agree with like Glenn Greenwald.
And they're like, it's this little excerpt from a larger point that is absolutely batshit.
But yeah, they know what to say to sound good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.
There's a Sliders universe where Jimmy Dore is actually great.
We don't have that one.
Yeah, we're in the wrong timeline.
Exactly. Yes.
Okay, so next we get to a former Disgraced Fox News host and sex pest, Eric Bolling, who comes out to take over some emceeing duties.
He's got a little bit of classic pandering to do first.
Wow! Jimmy Dore, everybody!
Jimmy Dore! Look at this crowd.
You're amazing. Very quickly.
Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?
I want to hear her voice first. For Kamala Harris, let me hear you.
Donald Trump, let me hear you.
One more time. Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump. Because if we were in that building right over there, the Democrats would say Kamala Harris just won that vote.
Ah yes, it's the left that are constantly trying to steal elections, huh.
Yeah, it's very interesting to hear all of this very anti-left and pro-right-wing rhetoric when Brett Weinstein, earlier in the day, went to great lengths to claim that it was a cross-party event, that it was the unity movement, that, you know, we've got left-wing ideas as well.
And yet here we have Trump good, Kamala Harris bad.
Okay. That's why Jimmy Dore says that shit.
Hmm. It's just enough for plausible deniability.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because obviously he was lying.
Obviously he was lying.
But it's all about asterisk.
Well, actually, no.
He did say that one thing, so.
Right, yeah, yeah. Both sides.
Get out of jail free situation.
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Which is bullshit.
Speaking of this unity movement, we next have a guy called Brandon Struck come out.
What's going on American Patriots?
He is excited. How's everybody doing today?
Who wants to join me in rescuing the Republic?
Thank God, because we sure do need it.
I want to thank all the organizers of Rescue the Republic for having me.
My name is Brandon Strzok.
I am the founder of the hashtag walkaway campaign.
We are the largest national movement of former Democrats walking away from the Democratic Party.
Thank you. Thank you. This event has been amazing.
It's been one of my favorite events to do that I've ever done in the last six years.
I've done a lot of events.
But most of the time, most of the events I've done have been over on the MAGA side.
I think this event is amazing because we have people all across the political spectrum.
And this is how America should be.
We should be allowed to exchange ideas with one another.
We should be able to disagree with one another.
and we should be able to find common ground and be civil to one another.
But there is one political party in this country that is making that an impossibility.
There is one political party in this country that is seeking to divide us and tear us apart.
And we all must unite together.
I don't care if you're an RFK Jr.
fan. I don't care if you're a Trump fan.
I don't care if you're a Libertarian, an Independent, a Republican.
We must join forces, join hands, and fight the Democrat Party together.
Because that's what it means to rescue the Republic.
That's what we have to do.
Oh, okay.
So you've got to fight the Democrats to rescue the Republic.
So perhaps the unity movement isn't so much, you know, across the left and right, but more uniting the different segments of the right wing specifically, Haas.
You know, unite the right with different branding in a way, at least according to this Brandon Struck guy.
I thought the hashtag walk away was Republicans over Trump first.
Maybe not his project, but I thought that's what that was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this dude is a gay hairstylist from New York who turned himself into a political activist.
He set up the walkaway campaign pack for the 2020 election.
Observers and commentators have raised doubts as to what extent the hashtag walkaway campaign is an example of astroturfing rather than a genuine grassroots movement.
Soon after its founding in 2018, Walk Away received a $10,000 donation from Alex Jones and InfoWars.
In 2019...
Somebody regrets that now!
I need to pay my lawyers!
Yeah, right? In 2019, Struck said Walk Away does not receive major donations and that everything is grassroots support from Americans who send us $5 or $100.
In May 2020, Open Secrets reported that of the $20,104 donated to Walk Away in 2020, a total of $7,521 was contributed by nine donors who gave $200 or more, and one of those was Struck himself.
Elsewhere, Think Progress has characterized the walkaway campaign as a grifting operation, noting efforts by the organizers to sell dinner packages priced in the hundreds of dollars to attendees of their marches.
Okay, that's an interesting little hustle.
Okay, well maybe their messaging just isn't super clear, so it's confusing to me.
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Because anybody can use a hashtag, really.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Either way, this dude is here pretty much specifically to address those who might be on board with Maha, but not with MAGA, and try and be like, no, we walk away from the left is what we do.
Yeah, that's the mission.
And next, we learn that- Well, he's like, I don't usually do MAGA events, right?
No, no, no. I usually do MAGA events.
That's what he said, right?
And I'm like, in my head immediately, I'm like, it says MAHA. They're like, they're trying so hard to almost be MAGA. This isn't a different, like, what an absurd notion that it's a different crowd.
It's a slightly different crowd.
Yeah. Even the branding and the event is trying to piggyback on MAGA with MAHA. That's not a separate idea.
It's even just light blue.
Come on. That's weird. But I think it's trying to drag RFK Jr.'s, the people who don't like Trump who would support RFK Jr., it's trying to drag them over, is the purpose of Maha.
It's trying to, you know, bring those two things into one.
Sure, but I don't think there's that many of those people.
I genuinely don't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's probable.
Now? I don't know.
Yeah, yeah. So next we learn that Brandon Strzok met Russell backstage.
This event has been amazing.
I got to meet Russell Brand backstage.
I had no idea if he knew who I was.
So I walked up to him and I said, hey, I'm Brandon Strzok.
I started the walkaway campaign.
And he was like, I know who you are, bloke.
I follow you on social media.
I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing.
It was a lie. He's not following me on social media.
Russell Brand, follow me on social media.
No, but it's been incredible.
Oh dear. Why are you telling them?
Yeah. You should have told him.
Oh, snubbed.
I can almost guarantee that Russell thought that this dude was someone else.
I can almost guarantee it.
Or he's just being friendly.
Or that. Or that.
But the specific, yeah, I follow you.
In a way that's dishonest. You don't have to lie.
You could just say nice to meet you.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's what's fucked up.
I bet these people blow smoke up each other's ass like it's going out of fucking style.
It's annoying and dumb and should be insulting.
And don't tell the crowd, tell Russell.
Oh my god, why would he say that?
I'm embarrassed for him. This is weird.
I don't like it. It's a weird thing to bring up to an audience.
That's an inside thought, not an outside thought.
Yeah, right. But now to the main grievance that Brandon wants to air.
But it wasn't until I showed up on January 6th to stand up for the American voter that my life really began to get torn to shreds.
I was a scheduled speaker at a permitted event on Capitol grounds and I went to the Capitol on January 6th.
I did not enter the building on January 6th, never went inside.
I did not witness any violence, vandalism, theft or destruction.
I stood outside of the video, outside of the building For eight minutes, shooting a video, which I then uploaded to Twitter.
And two and a half weeks later, my home was raided by a team of FBI agents in tactical gear who got me out of bed at dawn, put me in handcuffs, and took me to jail.
When I got out of 24-hour lockdown in jail, I was told that I was facing multiple...
Felony charges for what I had done on January 6th.
And needless to say, after going through an over-year-long criminal case with the federal government who threatened to add more felonies if I went to trial, I took a plea deal and pled guilty to a Class B misdemeanor for disorderly conduct for standing outside of the Capitol for eight minutes nonviolently shooting a video.
Now, that might sound like a happy ending to you.
Until you learn that even misdemeanor charges connected with January 6th are being treated as acts of terrorism by our government.
I've been placed on a terrorism watch list.
I've been permanently banned by PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, Patreon, Constant Contact, banks, email services, payment platforms.
Just like in China where you get a social credit score and if the government decides that you're not a worthy or good enough person, they'll prevent you from being able to travel or send or receive money or exist in society.
Mm-hmm, okay.
So, are we gonna be talking about reforms for felons who've already served their sentence or something?
Is that where we're going with this, Brandon?
Because we can have that conversation.
Also, there's no way that's true.
The way that you presented that, there's no fucking way that's true.
No, I'm sorry, email providers are ganging up against you and saying, no, you can't have an email?
Really? Really.
Yeah, I think he's more just complaining that it's a lot harder for him to grift now.
So yeah, that was his version of the Gen 6 thing.
Yeah, I was gonna say. Tell me what he actually did.
Can you imagine if he hadn't?
That would be hilarious. So Strzok, he attended Jan 6, he was there, and he spoke to crowds on January 5th, the day before, when there was a lot of rhetoric floating around, flags being burned and that sort of thing, where he referred to the audience as patriots and referred repeatedly to a revolution.
He also told the attendees to fight back and added, we are sending a message to the Democrats, we are not going away, you've got a problem.
All fairly generic on its own, kind of feeling legally defensible.
However, the next day at the Capitol, he urged protesters to take away a police officer's shield, shouting, take it away from him and take it, take it.
Later, as others tried to charge through the entrance to the Capitol, he shouted, go, go, in encouragement.
And the best part is, of course, he filmed himself doing all of this, filmed what was happening, and livestreamed it to Facebook.
That's what I want. I'm like, he filmed himself?
He absolutely did.
A hundred percent.
Don't get me wrong. I know there are situations where people take plea deals where they wouldn't necessarily have to.
This is not one of those cases.
Correct. On January 8th, Facebook closed the hashtag walkaway page, which had more than half a million followers at the time.
The page was replaced with a message from Facebook saying the page had violated its terms of use, and Facebook said the page violated a policy on content that was hateful, threatening, or obscene.
Not soon enough!
Come on! Yep.
And then on January 25th, Struck was arrested in Nebraska by the FBI for impeding law enforcement officers during civil disorder and unlawful entry into a restricted building, as well as disorderly conduct in relation to his role in the violence disturbance.
He pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge in October 2021, which could be punishable by up to six months in prison, and agreed to provide private social media and other evidence to investigators.
Prosecutors postponed strikes December 2021, sentencing for 30 days to evaluate the evidence he had provided, and he was later sentenced to three years probation for his role at Jan 6.
He should make his lucky fucking star for that plea deal as the reality.
I kind of had a feeling.
Oh, silly, silly man.
Oh, dear. Okay.
We get another musical act now, and it's a guy called Five Times August, and I'm going to let him give the introduction to this little thing he wants to play, because the song is demonstrably worse with context.
So while I have your attention, I'm going to play a song.
A song that came out a few years ago that I wrote.
If you haven't heard the name Alexis Lorenz, I want you to look her up online, follow her story, support her, and realize that she is one of millions around the globe that have been injured by the medical establishment.
And we are ruining an entire generation.
And it is time to make America healthy again.
If you are a parent, if you know somebody who is injured, not just through vaccines, but through all sorts of big pharma crap, fight for them.
This song is called Fight For You.
I want to die. As they're holding back the truth No matter what they try I will always fight for you How I save your innocence They are trying to remove I am here, it's your defense, and I will always fight for you.
Yes, I will always fight for you.
I will stand here no way.
I will not give up on you.
I will shield you from the pain.
Uh-huh. Okay.
You don't get to be- no. You don't get to be bored.
I get to be bored. You did this. You've done this to all of us.
Yes, that's true. It is my fault.
I am still bored by it, however.
The song is boring and generic, and it's made all the worse by being, like, a weird anti-vax sentiment in ballad format.
I'm like, what are we doing?
What is happening? And too vague.
Too vague! Well, well, if you keep it vague, you might get some people who don't realize what it's about, and they sign on and listen to it anyway and just think it's a nice song, right?
So the actual case that he was talking about, Alex Lorenz, is quite interesting and a little bit tragic.
So this 23-year-old lady has a rare autoimmune blood disorder, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, or PNH, it's also called.
She went to a hospital in California for a blood transfusion, which is part of the treatment for PNH. She previously has been completely unvaccinated due to, well, she says religious reasons, but she's from a Christian anti-vax family in Florida.
Is it because she, would it make sense that she is immune compromised?
No, no, no, she could have been vaccinated.
She could have been vaccinated.
It was a choice not to, which for someone in that situation I think is quite the choice.
person with an autoimmune disease not being vaccinated and then doing a blood transfusion,
right? And Alexis claims that doctors informed her that she could not receive the transfusion
unless she first received vaccines for tetanus, pneumonia, and meningitis all administered
simultaneously. She doesn't even have tetanus shots. No.
She said that within 10 minutes after the vaccination, she began to experience alarming
symptoms.
Her vision darkened in both eyes, her jaw locked, she began vomiting, and her body swelled and bruised.
Medical experts have voiced concerns about the potential dangers of administering multiple vaccines at once, especially in patients with autoimmune conditions like PNH, as these patients can have heightened immune responses, leading to severe complications.
We know that, right?
Yeah, we know that.
Yes. One such complication, cytokine storms, can cause the body to attack its own healthy tissues and organs.
It can be life-threatening and lead to irreversible damage, right?
Got a little quote here. Unquote.
That's from Dr. Raj Dasgupta, who is the chief medical advisor for Fortune Recommends Health.
To avoid overloading her symptom, it would be reasonable to space out the vaccines and closely monitor for any worsening symptoms.
Doctors have suggested that the vaccines themselves were unlikely the direct cause of Lorenza's severe reactions.
They suggested that her PNH condition may have been unstable and the vaccinations could have triggered a flare-up or allergic reaction.
And there is also the possibility that what she's experienced isn't just from the vaccines, basically, is what Dr.
Guest As Gupta said, PNH can flare up on its own and we have to consider whether the condition itself is behind her severe reaction.
Both factors, the PNH and the vaccines, need to be carefully weighed when looking at what's happening.
And so this case has sparked a lot of debate in the medical community, particularly regarding the hospital's rationale for allegedly requiring the vaccine so urgently.
And Alexis Lorenz is suing the hospital for damages.
So we'll see how all that plays out, but...
Good lord, if that's not a really specific and incredibly rare situation that's occurred, that this guy and Rescue the Republic are weaponizing.
They had like a before and after picture shot that they were showing up on the big screens while he was talking.
Oh my god.
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
And there is a part of me that's like, Well, if you weren't anti-vax, the situation wouldn't have occurred, you know what I mean?
I mean, we don't know, but also we don't know.
Exactly. It's tough, and the whole thing should never have happened, but...
But yeah, not thrilled by this guy then weaponizing and monetizing it, I guess.
Yeah, and this is another example of like, they don't listen the whole time to any rational medical information that's being explained about the vaccine or about COVID or about healthcare in general.
And then they fucking get up in arms and they're like, why did this happen?
Well, we knew. That immune-compromised people could not get the vaccine.
Vaccines aren't magic.
That's not how it works.
And their complications do happen to people.
This is a person that probably could not handle That like vaccination regimen that like that's that's one I mean this is a doctor's malpractice if any if if anything yeah yeah well yeah the the trick is proving that I guess um we will we'll see we'll see how that plays out um because I imagine it's going to be difficult to prove that it wasn't just the piano you know what I mean um that's well even no matter what Like, yeah, we can learn like that.
Just singling that out and then, I mean, talk about it, right?
But what this little fucking pod is doing with it and what this event is doing with it is totally dishonest and really fucked up.
Yep. This is a specific, like, that's not, no, no, no.
It's a specific hijacking of this to be fully anti-vaxxed and to make some money off this lady's car.
Right. Basically.
Right. Yeah, fucked up.
Um, so next the Fox News guy comes back to talk to the crowd, but instead there's a little
technical mishap and a video plays over the top of him.
Soon after I was assassinated in Pennsylvania last month, Bobby called me to express his
best wishes.
He knows firsthand the risks incurred by leaders who stand up to the corrupt political establishment.
He lost his father and uncle in service to our country, and Bobby himself was subject to repeated threats to his safety while being denied protection.
And this is a tribute in honor of Bobby.
I am announcing tonight that upon my election, I will establish a new independent presidential commission on assassin.
Releasing all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Aha. Okay, so Trump is going to release the JFK files, is he?
On the screen here is expose the truth, mahaalliance.com.
He said this back in 2016.
He already said he was going to do this.
He said he was going to do this.
This is a whole, this is a damp squib.
Yeah, just like, why the fuck are we, why should we trust him this time, you know?
Complete nonsense. Also, RFK Jr.
has never been deserving of Secret Service fucking protection, so there's that.
Anyway. We, uh...
We still got it, though!
Yeah, right? Still paid for it!
Yeah, yeah.
It's great.
It's great. Just, yeah.
Monarchy's fantastic. Okay, so we've had the double act of Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson, right?
That was one of the double acts.
And next we have an even more electrifying double act who immediately upset me.
Ladies and gentlemen...
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jack Posobiec.
I'm here with my colleague Mike Benz.
Hello. You guys know. Yup.
But I wanted to know if it would be alright here in Washington D.C. in front of this fine crowd to bring on a special guest.
Would that be alright with you?
Special guest, your presence is requested.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is my six-year-old son Jack-Jack.
And he wanted to come out here today.
Jack-Jack? I don't know.
Jack-Jack, do you have a message for the crowd?
Yes, I do.
What's that? Make America great again.
Oh, he looks like Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle.
He does. He's just saying stuff for fun.
And it's wonderful to see everyone here and wonderful to be here with my family and their support.
Standing like a little queen. Also, I think, Jack-Jack, is this the first time you come out on a big stage like this with me?
Probably. I actually wish we weren't here today, in a way.
I wish we were all doing something else.
I wish we were home with our families.
But I'll tell you something. It's because we love our families.
That's why we're all here today.
Because I don't want this little boy and his brother to grow up in a country that's controlled by communism.
That's vintage.
My wife comes.
So his mother was born in the Soviet Union.
Her name is Tanya Tay. You may know her.
She came from a country that had political prisoners to a free country.
And yet, as we stand here today, her son is now growing up in a country that has political prisoners.
And when this day comes forward and Donald J. Trump becomes president,
every single political prisoner will be pardoned and freed on day one.
Jack Jack, there's even someone that you know who's in jail right now, isn't there?
Do you have a message for him?
Yes. What's that message?
Free Steve Bannon!
Free Steve Bannon!
Thank you, Jack-Jack. Oh, he doesn't know.
That kid's just singing stuff.
Poor fucking kid.
Oh, Dewey's having a ball.
For a while, he wasn't listening to Dad, for those of you who are listening and not watching.
Also, probably that last segment was kind of confusing with the commercial for RFK, but also Maha.
It's not thinly veiled at all, but this little Dewey was just like...
Taking it all in and doing a little, like, standing akimbo and just like, I'm important.
Yes, work me.
Yeah, he seems to be having a great time.
Yeah, yeah. And then got bored.
Yes. And started standing around like, Dan, okay, I'm done.
What am I doing? Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, so I'm not thrilled with this.
Weaponizing your five-year-old son in service of Trump, and Steve Bannon, like, oh, dude.
Like, putting him on stage as a prop for this bullshit.
Um... Jesus Christ.
We have the double act of Posobiec and Benz here anyway to educate us all, I guess is their portion of the thing.
Oh dear. To an ever-dwindling crowd as the night goes on.
So, next up, a bunch of things from Jack Posobiec that are just not happening.
And actually, we do get a good look at the crowd, actually.
Hey folks, I'll tell you something else.
Take a good look around here, folks, ladies and gentlemen.
You are in the belly of the beast as we sit.
We've got the Department of State right over here in Georgetown, Maine Justice, the Department of Justice headquarters, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon over there, the White House over here.
They call us criminals.
They called you a criminal because you supported the Freedom Truckers like Give, Send, Go was just here doing.
They call you a criminal because you refused to be silent.
They called you a criminal because you refused to get an experimental untested vaccine.
They call you a criminal because you're a Catholic and you wanted to organize.
They call you a criminal Because you don't want your sons and daughters being taught transgender nonsense in the classroom.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, take a look around.
We aren't the criminals.
We are surrounded by the criminals.
They are the criminals.
And in 36 days time, in 36 days time, we are going to evict those criminals from office.
And we are going to install We the People as the new rightful leadership of the United States of America.
And I'll tell you, looking at the incredible lineup that I've seen here today and the incredible movement that's going on, It kind of feels like we're watching the assembly of a new generation of founding fathers.
The new founding fathers.
The new founding fathers.
Do you think Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson are included?
I would think the new founding fathers...
What are they founding?
A new republic?
Well, no, they're rescuing the republic.
Yeah, there's no new founding fathers.
That's not how words work.
A new monarchy? I don't know.
Stupid. It's very stupid.
But yeah, I would think the new Founding Fathers would have to be American, so I would assume...
They'd have to found a new thing.
Yeah, that too. They'd have to found something new.
There'd have to be a new...
So don't rescue the Republic.
Yeah, found a new one, I guess.
Destroy the Republic and found a new one.
And then you'd have new founding fathers.
Well, this comes back to this- You fucking idiots.
To Bret Weinstein's phoenix.
You know, we need to phoenix the thing.
You know, turn it to ash. And so maybe that is their plan.
Well, listen, that's also like, if that's the fucking rhetoric, then call it what it is.
That's what's fucking annoying.
But also, like, holding them to anything is impossible.
Because- Sentences contradict themselves one after the other, so they don't need to be congruous.
They don't need to be consistent.
No, no, no. A lot of it's just saying words that get a reaction, and that's pretty much the aim.
Yeah, because this is from the kind of tail end of the evening, so the crowd is really thinned.
So we're talking like half six, I think.
And yeah, we're down to like maybe two, three hundred people left.
Which, good for these two, to be honest.
Anyway, no one has been called a criminal for literally any of the things he said, by the way.
They've just not been called criminals for those things that he said, nor have any of them faced any legal consequences, because none of those things he just mentioned are illegal.
It's very, very simple.
Okay, so now Posobiec finally hands it over to Benz.
And you know something else?
I love the team that we've put together.
Ben, who do they have on their team?
Have you seen their team?
My goodness! The right to be replaced.
But we are not defenseless here.
Everyone is coming from different parts of this country to this event.
It's amazing that we're all here.
But every state right now, and you can go back and tell your state assembly members that they can use malicious prosecution laws.
Every state has some form of malicious prosecution laws.
When prosecutors go rogue, we now don't have Attorney Generals or District Attorneys.
We have prosecution factories out of the state of New York, out of the District of Columbia, and every state's National Assembly can beef up its malicious prosecution laws so that when prosecutors go rogue and they reach into your state to indict you for premeditated jaywalking, You should be able to sue them in state for their rogue activities.
And when that gets implemented, if any state assembly, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, you name it, the moment they start feeling the same thing that they've been doing to you, I think that little delivery system of empathy through something that I've heard is called rule of law, May be able to provide a chilling effect to this because it's not until they feel it themselves that they will understand that Lady Liberty carries a scale and a sword and that does cut both waves.
Cuts both waves. Yeah, sure.
There are hundreds of cases of prosecutors around the country prosecuting people for premeditated jaywalking.
Sure thing, Mike Benz.
Yeah, it's completely nonsensical.
He wants some kind of...
The thing is, I'm listening for...
They're complaining about quote-unquote lawfare, which is actions having Legal consequences where they usually don't, which is not good.
So I'm not hearing what they're even actually- I was listening for what they're actually talking about, because obviously it's not the jaywalking.
He just- No, no, this is- Entirely made up.
Bullshit, yes. He's pushing for some kind of legislation that would limit the prosecution.
Yeah, he's saying we need to beef up malicious prosecution laws in order to stop any consequences from happening to the people that we like because they're all the victims and we're all the victims here and they're coming for you next!
They're for jaywalking, for premeditated jaywalking, they're coming for you!
Does he have a solution?
What is he talking about? Are we going to get to something more illuminating that he's going to say?
Not particularly, to be honest.
Okay. I mean, this is the problem.
This is why I think they're a double act.
It's bullshit and bullshit. It's lie and lie.
This is who we're looking at here.
Well, you described the event. Okay.
That's all of them. I'm gonna say stuff.
There's a little bit more from here on this.
So we get more perspective from Ben's here in insisting a conspiracy theory about the legal cases around Trump, right?
Okay. Our elections are not determined by we the prosecutors.
It's we the people.
And they're doing this prosecution because they're losing in the polls.
That's why all the indictments came down right after Trump did the announcement, not in any of the years preceding or frankly in the 250 years of our history.
So the harder they work to try to stop us, that means we need to multiply tenfold, as Jack said.
But another thing is, is you got to have fun and have love in your heart when you do it, because that is what brings people to this message.
And that is what makes the persecution so visible to the rest of the world.
Come at it with love.
Fight like holy hell, because...
Heaven and hell is on the line right now.
But have the music, have the love in your heart, and be happy warriors.
Because no matter what happens in November, we have a century of battle ahead.
Because the rot in this town is so deep, it is going to take so many layers of disinfectant, and they will throw every obstacle at us along the way.
So you've got to have that love in your heart, because it's going to be a long fight.
Folks, are you going to fight with love in your heart?
Are you going to give it all you got?
Are you going to take their best punch in the face and get right back up and keep going?
And are you going to be here and join me again on January 20th in just a few months time for the second inauguration of Donald J. Trump?
Will you be here? I'll see you here, folks.
And so will Mike Benz. Yep, you guys and the 200 people left watching.
So what I enjoyed about that was Mike Benz being like, hey, even if we win, this is going to carry on.
So, well, I mean, you're going to have to give us money because, you know, we need to keep going with the fight.
Even if we win or lose, this is going to last for years, for centuries, possibly.
You're going to have to keep giving us money.
It's really essential. I heard way more incitement to violence than I did talking about money.
It was like saber rattling, but if like the saber is like the cheap plastic shitty one you get with like a pirate costume.
Like, that's what I heard. Yes, yeah, the MAGA crowd is supposed to fight with love in their hearts, supposedly, which feels...
It's what you can tell yourself to justify how you fucking behave.
Yes, yes. Yeah, sure thing, Ben.
Bullshit rationalization for mean, angry, miserable little people.
Yeah, I think he should go back to talking about the blob.
That was better.
So, alright, now we're at the final speaker here, right?
I guess kind of the headliner of the event, and it's author Walter Kern.
And he opens with a line of what feels like taking the piss, but he means it sincerely, and then he's going to tell us a story.
So this is where you all end up when you do your own research.
LAUGHTER Yeah.
Dark. Dark.
Real dark. My name is Walter Kern.
I'm a novelist.
That's the reason you don't know who I am.
And I've come here to tell you a little bedtime story.
When I was a kid in rural Minnesota, the land of the deplorables, in the late 1960s and early 70s, my mother had a little record player.
The problem was she only had five records and all of them were protest music.
Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary.
I used to listen to the records and I had a favorite song, maybe you know it, If I Had a Hammer.
It was very strange that my mother had these records because she was a young Republican.
Anyway, I was eight years old and I had no idea what this song meant.
It seemed to have something to do with being powerless and dreaming or fantasizing that you had power.
If I had a hammer, I'd hammer out justice.
I'd hammer out freedom all over this land.
I'd hammer out love between the brothers and the sisters.
That was my favorite line.
Because it was so puzzling.
Isn't love between brothers and sisters incest?
Okay, that immediately took that in a weird direction.
Okay, thank you for that, sir.
Anyway, it is weird.
It's weird to me that he was invoking this song, like, If I Had a Hammer by Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes, because it's specifically, very specifically, a pro-communist song, which Seeger performed at a testimonial dinner for the leaders of the Communist Party of the United States, who were then, at that time, on trial in federal court.
Charged with violating the Smith Act by advocating the overthrow of the US government.
It was later then also used as a freedom song of the civil rights movement, and it's become pretty iconic in American left-wing activism, right?
So I'm like, why are we talking about this?
This is weird. And this Walter Kern dude, he's the author of Up in the Air and Thumbsucker, both of which were made in two Hollywood movies.
These days, however, he co-hosts America This Week with Matt Taibbi and is a regular panelist on Gutfeld, apparently.
And yeah, this is our headliner.
Interesting choice. Well, I mean, they misconstrue protest songs and speakers and movements all the time.
What have we dealt with recently?
Morgan Freeman, right?
Just taking a quote entirely out of context.
They're singing, we're not going to take it.
They make signs that say, my body, my choice.
They miss the fucking plot all the time.
And there's no fucking unique ideas in their fucking brain.
I think you could better describe them as the whoosh movement.
The sound of the idea going over their heads.
That's absolutely these people.
Well, they managed to catch it.
And use it wrong.
Like, that's... That's silly.
Like, yeah, that's... I mean, what's crazy is that it does still lend credibility.
It's just like, you know, Alex Jones or Russell or whoever, like...
Using citations from mainstream media sources and citing articles that if the information can be construed to benefit or you can benefit from it or it supports your point, then they're a reliable news outlet.
But if they're saying something you don't agree with and they're not, pick a fucking thing.
Yeah, yeah, it's the exact same thing Russell does.
It's, you know, oh, I hate the legacy media unless they're going to legitimize my point, in which case I'm going to use the legacy media.
Convenient! Oh, very convenient.
Let's let Walter Kern finish his story anyway.
That hammer belongs to us.
It's ours. But why don't we have it?
That's the mystery. That's the question I've spent a lifetime trying to figure out.
And look at this gray hair.
It's been a lifetime.
Why doesn't the singer have a hammer?
Why? Why do we have to dream to fantasize?
Why do we have to wish we had one?
Well, I think I've finally answered it.
We have it right in front of us.
The question is, will we pick it up?
The question is, will we use it?
So I have a request for you when you go home tonight.
When you get home, pick up your hammer.
Pick up your hammer and use it.
It's time to build. Okay.
My mother had one other record.
It was by Simon and Garfunkel.
It also had a song I loved called El Condor Pasa.
I think you remember its greatest line.
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.
Don't be a nail.
Pick up your hammers.
Go home. Let's build a new America.
Yeah, that just kind of confused his point a little bit.
But according to this dude, the reason Pete Seeger didn't have a hammer was, well, he just hadn't picked it up.
There was one in front of him and we all have hammers in front of us and we just need to pick them up and build.
It's almost a sort of real kind of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of narrative because the actual answer to the question of why Pete Seeger didn't have a hammer and why we've had to dream instead of having and all that shit The actual answer is oppressive systems of patriarchal capitalism combined with religious puritism and vehement racism.
Um, ta-da! Oh look, I solved that thing he's been wondering about all his life.
Um, and it wasn't terribly hard to figure out.
Pete Seeger was talking about it back in the fucking day!
That's why he wanted communism in the first place.
Oops, all patriarchy!
Yeah, duh. Yeah!
It's like, god damn. Like, the selections that he had to use from these songs.
Like, he had to be so selective about the lyrics that he even mentioned to obscure and obfuscate the meaning behind them.
Like, it's lifted out of context so as to barely be the same fucking language.
Completely. Completely.
They do it all the time.
And it's... Save the children.
Had to sue them.
It's embarrassing.
Yeah. This is so regular and it's constant.
This is constant. For real though, the My Body, My Choice over mask mandates, that one still makes me mad.
Because we get so used to...
Misquoting or like subverting the point of a MLK Jr.
quote or a Malcolm X quote or whatever, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The issue, I think, is they still feel like they have to do it.
Why do they still feel like they have to do it?
Why can't they just quote David Duke and fucking the Grand Dragon like they want to?
Because they're obfuscating, right?
Also, what they say probably doesn't sound as fancy, so whatever.
Or say your own shit, doofus.
Yeah, you're a writer. You're an author.
The lack of creativity is so apparent.
This is all hack and stale.
I mean, I don't blame you for not getting excited.
Honestly, how supportive you are that you're clapping this much and still wooing, man.
Yeah, yeah. I could, even if I agreed with these people, I couldn't fucking get it up and keep it up all day for this shit.
Couldn't muster a woo after seven hours, you know?
I mean, good on you.
All right, so that was the last speaker.
And then to close out the event, Five Times August comes back with a little sing-along for the crowd.
It's a shorter clip.
That's it. But we'll see how it ends anyway.
With a bang or a whimper.
All right, how we doing?
Let's close it out strong.
We're going to sing along with this last song, all right, everybody?
I want you to sing so loud every liar, cheat, and crook in Washington, D.C. can hear you, all right?
Please do Lee Greenwood. Please do Lee Greenwood.
Please leave a comment. Please leave a comment. We'll see you later. Oh, you want them to sing your song?
Yes, yes, he does. When you hear that, sing along, all right?
Bad stuff. Bad stuff!
I'm gonna die of embarrassment by proxy.
Feels like a whimper already.
You want me scared, you want me weak, you want me broken ass.
You want us trapped while you all laugh behind the scenes.
You want us sick and then we're done. You want us blind and you want us strong.
You want us poor while you get more of everything.
You don't get to tell me what to think and what to do.
You don't get to tell me what is true.
Y'all just liars, teach and curse.
Change the rules and you burn the books and say so.
I don't believe a single word to say.
You're all liars.
You guys are going to say like, who's winning the books, dawg?
Don't believe this time you'll get away.
Okay, I'm not gonna play that.
He only does like the lie lie lie bit at the end.
I was like, oh, I'm not playing this whole thing.
Fuck that. Fuck that all the way off.
So I want to say from a musical perspective, there's another weird thing about this because he's using like a genuinely a weird choice of chords.
He's using like seventh and sus chords and shit, which like the feeling they evoke emotionally is
like a sort of vague kind of feeling, right? Like, whereas for like a protest message, you want like
direct, regular ass diatonic chords that's, you know, fucking sure of itself to drive home the
sureness of the message. So not only is it bad, it's just badly done as well. Instead, like the
actual kind of tonality of the song, it sounds like it should be, I don't know, I don't know.
It's almost like he's bad at it, dude.
Yeah, there's a little bit of that.
I think maybe he's bad at it, and the only thing he wants to do is play his songs, and he found an audience that might tolerate him.
That's a fish in a barrel.
Maybe that's it. Yeah, I will echo the other points.
I don't even still work. I don't...
Echo the eloquence of Matt Taibbi.
Ah, you suck! And that's how the event finishes, right?
That's the closer.
So, you know, built to a crescendo in the middle, and then petered out.
What is fun is that originally, Skillet was supposed to close it out, right?
I only realized it later, but one of their posters literally has the running order on it, which is...
Because I remember looking at that post and being like, why is Russell, like, in the middle?
He's, like, one of the biggest names on this.
Surely he should be at the top.
No, no, they printed the running order.
So Skillet was supposed to close this, which is why their name was on it twice.
Once at the top and once at the bottom.
But then, the day before the event, Rescue the Republic added Jack Posobiec and Mike Benz to the bill, and I don't know whether they added anyone else extra, but I think they just ran out of time to have Skillet on a second time, and so they just, they got five times August out to do this little bit.
Like, ah, we've only got it till seven, guys.
I don't think we can do it.
Sorry, Skillet. They're just gonna play one song though, right?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know what the plan might have, but maybe they would have had a longer set.
They only got one song at the start.
The Defiant only got one song.
Skillet was supposed to come back.
Maybe they would have been able to be more. Maybe we found out who didn't get paid.
Skillet. Or didn't get paid enough.
Yeah. I'm saying, people don't get paid.
It doesn't happen.
Like there's, there's, hmm.
Listen, okay.
And listen, this is everybody.
Aretha got the cash out front, and I put that quote on my shrines with pictures of Aretha Franklin, the queen herself, because it's about knowing your worth.
But also, that phrase kind of made its way around, because knowing your worth and not fucking trusting that it'll just work itself out, especially with black performers.
They would very often get stiffed by a club or by a promoter, and it was so much easier because they didn't really have any recourse.
And so Aretha got the cash up front, and I think Skillet got the cash up front, and it was not enough.
Maybe. Yeah, this is why there are some great stories about Nina Simone from over the years.
Just, like, fucking, like, there was...
Pulling a gun on a motherfucker that was keeping money?
Yes, pulling a gun on a record label executive.
I live! Badass.
I'm like, what a legend.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
Maybe, perhaps some more people should have applied that same tactic to this here event, potentially.
Maybe Skillet did.
Maybe Skillet did.
I guarantee that there's a, well, as far as guarantees go, I think that little, that young man who...
That was embarrassing to watch.
I bet he's a cheaper git than Skillet.
I would say so. For a start, there's only one of him.
He's only got to cut it one way, so he can be cheaper as well.
Among a whole band, that's a lot more thing.
I'll just say from a practical perspective, but also, yes, definitely cheaper for the other more obvious reasons.
Anyway, that was Rescue the Republic, everybody.
Yeah, that was an event.
It was definitely a thing that happened.
We can say it was an event that took place.
It was. Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting back to some of Russell's usual nonsense this next week.
All right, well, I hope everybody's enjoying this.
Yeah, so here's the thing. Yeah, this is like, as far as, I don't know, it just really, I don't know why this is sticking in my cross so bad, but that dude, whatever, I don't know, Bryce, what the fuck his name was, saying that, no, I normally do mega events.
Brendan struck. Yeah, Brendan, right?
Brendan struck Yeah, you're just at a Wish.com version of a MAGA event, which is already, like, subpar.
Maha. Like, seriously, it's like...
Yes, the off-brand, forgive the pun.
Yeah, it's like buying Adidas shoes with three S's or whatever.
Like, yeah, man, you're at the off-brand version of the same thing.
Like, yeah, it's the Wish.com version.
And they are everywhere.
And it's just... Oh, my God.
That, like, all right.
Here's the thing. And I do want to give voice to, like, the challenge.
Because I think, and I took great pains to make these points while we were listening to all these people, that they are so close to saying the right thing.
They are playing on very real concerns.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And very real problems.
And the, like...
Our government, our institutions, the fourth estate, which is the fucking media, should be interceding and not giving them so much motherfucking ammo to work with.
The reason that people make America healthy again should be a push for universal health coverage, for publicly funded Healthcare.
Yep. Public healthcare.
That's what, just like, just like taking care of fucking roads and just like, Firefighters, like, why is this different?
You fucking numbskulls, why is this different?
So, that's what's also so bait-and-switchy about it, is because you're not getting the real deal of anything.
This is all just empty calories.
The things that they are advocating for are going to actively make any of those problems worse.
Exactly. Which is the bait-and-switchiest of bait-and-switches.
Right. Right.
Yeah. Well, and so the point that was made that I think is really salient and was just like ringing in my ears when I'm listening to this kind of stuff.
This guy, and I'm sure a lot of you have seen this kind of like clip going around.
This guy, Peter Kalmas, who is on Democracy Now!
Maybe a couple weeks ago at this point.
He's a climate activist. He's a client scientist and he's a climate activist.
And he made this point.
I think it was after the presidential debate, you know, as far as, like, Kamala saying, like, Kamala Harris, pardon, saying, like, we follow the science.
Like, Dems say over and over and over again, we follow the science.
No, they fucking don't either, because they're not taking climate change seriously.
They're not taking, like, they're not taking a lot of the things that, like, They're listening to slightly more of it.
Maybe they're nodding towards it a little more than conservatives who are actively fighting against any kind of climate action or health action.
And guess what?
Immigration is literally completely interconnected with The climate crisis that is happening that no one in power is fucking talking about in any real way.
Sorry, carbon credits aren't going to fucking do it.
They haven't yet and they're not going to.
We're not reconciling the reality of...
The quote-unquote green revolution, all this shit that also isn't fucking happening.
No, you're kicking the can down the road.
There is no real consideration of degrowth.
I don't hear any politician in America Point blank, period.
Saying anything even remotely responsible about climate change and about, like, also just the impact on the earth.
The fucking waste that, like, is just allowed to proliferate and choke every single nook and cranny of this world.
And, and, like, destroying watersheds so that shit, like, what is happening right now in North Carolina, in, like, in Tennessee, and is happening probably right now as we speak in fucking Florida.
These are man-made problems.
These are exponentially fucking worse than anything we should be seeing.
It's shocking to me that, like, I just...
I don't even give a shit about talking about January 6th because they still haven't done anything to fucking fix that either.
There's no, like...
At best, we get, like...
We don't even get half measures.
We just get a nod in the direction now.
That's what's so crazy about, like...
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right?
I mean, it's so crazy to say that people who are not enthusiastic about voting for the Harris-Walls ticket and being blamed as uninformed voters How many states in this country?
Roe v. Wade didn't do shit for them anyway, including Missouri, including Utah, including Idaho.
Abortion was already very, very seriously restricted and under attack before the Dobbs decision.
And it just doesn't...
The Democratic Party's actions towards the reality don't look any different than someone who's trying to exploit a serious problem that they could fix, or at least fucking try.
Fucking try to fix and exploiting it for fundraising.
Because guess what I get in my fucking inbox is emails and texts like crazy, and I know y'all are too.
It is amazing to me how many fucking texts I've gotten in the last month.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.
It's nuts. So it looks like y'all are scamming and scheming.
Just get caught trying.
I would say there are probably most political issues.
It doesn't feel like an issue of, like, left and right battling it out.
It's right and then people kind of in the middle slash to the right, you know, who are just like...
Eh, we'll give us a token kind of pushback.
They're all on the right. They're all on the right.
The policies are right-wing policies and right-wing stances.
The Overton window is unrecognizable to me.
Yeah, because it's not left and right.
It's this middle right and then the right.
And so the middle of that, the only point of compromise you can get is actually very fucking right-wing.
You know, that's all that's left.
Because of who we have in charge making these decisions.
So yeah, I don't blame anyone for not being infused.
I would just like accountability all around. For not being infused about the decisions.
Right. Everywhere.
Yeah. Yeah, these fucking numbskulls.
Like... Also, but speaker fees, genuinely, that shit's fucking...
It's money laundering, and it's a grift, and it happens on both sides, and if it's a banker or a fucking four-star general, it's all bullshit, and it needs to stop.
And it's just...
Who's raking in speaker fees is Liz Truss, the former prime minister of this country for all of six weeks.
Yeah, she's gone insane.
She says straight up dumb shit.
She claimed recently that she was booted out of office because of, what was it like?
The trans mafia, I think is what she said it was.
And I'm like, aww. Is she gonna, like, rescue the free world or some nonsense?
Yes, yes, indeed, she is.
Yeah, she keeps saying stuff on alternative media.
Yeah, she needs a nap.
Right, right.
But, you know, she seems to be making money, I guess.
Oh, dear. I don't know.
I'm not trying to focus on one side or the other.
I would like these people to have...
There is a point of this coverage, right?
And I would like these people to have less fucking ammo to manipulate.
Because the thing is, they've been calling...
Fucking Joe Biden a socialist for four fucking years anyway.
It's already brain dead.
Who fucking cares?
Like, they're gonna twist it.
Why would you make the conditions so ripe?
Like, why would you make our social conditions so ripe for the picking to serve these people up?
Yeah, fix the fucking problem.
That's what breaks my fucking heart. Like, try, man.
Yeah. Fucking try a half of a thing.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, to try and fix the fucking problem that's there, and you take away the ammunition that they've got, you know?
It's crazy! It's fucking crazy!
And yeah, like, I just, this is, this is, I don't know, man.
Um, yeah, this is...
I don't know. I'm also bored with it, because here's the thing.
There's a roast every year on Drag Race.
Every season, they have a roast.
And having to listen to fucking Jack Posobiec would be like, we're here in the belly of the beast.
First of all, if these people live In Washington, D.C. Baby, they already know every single fucking speaker said the exact same goddamn thing.
If you were on Drag Race and you were at the end of this event and you said the same shit that all the other girls before you said, you'd get docked and you'd be lip syncing for your life.
Fucking get your shit together.
Have any amount of creativity.
Do anything. I mean, it's just fucking boring.
I don't know why people would stand there.
The dopamine hit from confirming your biases must be so strong.
I just don't even understand it.
I don't understand it.
That's not like people fucking talking down to me.
I'd have been mad!
The people who stayed till the end must be real troopers or real massacres, one or the other.
And yeah, I mean, fair play to them, I guess.
Why? Yeah, it's a choice.
It's a choice. A lot of this was a choice.
Oh, dear. Okay, well, that's our show, everybody.
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And if you also scoot around in the place where you can purchase the magnet, you can see all the other cool stuff that Lauren makes, and you can get some of that too.
Yeah! I'll be adding more stuff.
I've got a big batch of bullshit today, and guess what?
I can't add stuff if I've got to fix the fucking It's shippy shit all the time, so just, oh my god.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just pick the standard, I don't know.
I don't want to find it. Oh my god, it's so stupid.
There has been a recent very positive review from Natalie of Natalie's Hot Tea, the Elixir of Life, who was very happy with the things they got.
So that's nice. Yay!
Yeah! Shout out to Natalie.
Okay, well, we'll see everybody on Sunday.
I hope for the live stream. Super looking forward to it.
It's gonna be so fun! It's gonna be really great fun.
That'll be 8pm BST, where I am, and 2pm CST on Sunday.
Alright, well, take care of yourselves and each other.