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Nov. 7, 2024 - On Brand

02:39:53

OB #84 - Dana White: Authentic Dipsh*t

UFC President Dana White came on Stay Free just prior to the election, and had some really dumb White things to say. Watch Nye for free here! Support us on Patreon! Buy a magnet made by Lauren!

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	Hey, LB here.
	If you joined us for the stream with Louder Than Crowder, thank you so much.
	And if you followed us here from there, welcome.
	I feel a little foolish today for having brought an energy of cautious optimism to the chat, but I stand firm in my revolutionary optimism, which is a belief in the bright future of the liberation of humanity rooted in objective material reality.
	Real shit we can do.
	So we have a safe place here to practice how it feels or what it might look like to find a kernel of common ground to build on with people who are different than us while learning to differentiate discomfort from harm.
	Do not cheat yourself out of your own agency.
	Your feelings are valid.
	Give yourself grace.
	When you're ready, seek out mutual aid.
	Seek out community because we needed to find a better way to unite and organize regardless of the election results.
	It's okay to be scared.
	I'm scared too, but I'm also crazy.
	So if you need strength or gumption or will, whatever, I'll happily lend you some of mine and we can share with each other.
	You're smart.
	You're capable.
	Play to your strengths.
	I'm glad you're here.
	Hello everyone, Al here.
	I decided an introduction was needed for this show because we recorded it on election day itself prior to Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.
	Accordingly, the tone in this episode might be a bit more joyous and hopeful than many of you are feeling right now.
	From what I've seen and heard today, there is a lot of sorrow, grief, anxiety, despair, and rage from those with similar views to mine and Lauren's.
	And I think that's the correct response.
	The reality is right now what we need is to give ourselves the grace to feel those feelings, to allow ourselves to mourn what could have been and what should have been, and to brace in fear for what may come.
	Right now, embrace those feelings.
	It is okay to feel them.
	It is okay to grieve, though it is tough.
	Feel those feelings, and between now and January, we will be slowly picking ourselves back up, putting ourselves back together, dusting ourselves off, and stealing ourselves for what will be a difficult, brutal fight for the next four years, at minimum.
	But for today, allow yourself that space to mourn.
	On a personal note, I was obviously very viscerally confronted with the reality that I will be spending the next four years covering this in intimate detail through the lens of someone who is not only broadly supportive of the fascism but almost completely ignorant as to its real world effects, which is an extra level of galling.
	I was also confronted with the fact that, other than having many dear friends and colleagues in the US, the mental toll of covering all of this is likely the worst way that it's going to directly affect me personally.
	Which completely pales in comparison to both Lauren and a substantial amount of our audience who will be confronted with the real-life consequences of all of this on a daily basis.
	And I cannot express how sorry I am that all of you have to go through this.
	I am here in your corner.
	I will be doing whatever I can.
	And that does bring me to the point of what we can do.
	Now, obviously, we're pretty activist in nature over here at On Brand, but it's difficult to quantify what a podcast can do about any of the things about to happen.
	We can inform and entertain and encourage specific acts of activism, which we will be doing.
	But the one thing I found particularly heartening over the last year and a half has been the community that has been built around this show.
	Predominantly not by me and Lauren, by the way.
	It's been all of you in the subreddit, the Facebook group, the Patreon, and our live streams.
	I am continually impressed and grateful for just how kind and genuine all of you are to us and to each other.
	It's not something seen often on the internet.
	And I truly believe that communities coming together and galvanizing is the only way we're going to make it through this.
	We'll be mentioning in the show that we have a live stream this Sunday on YouTube at 2pm CST, 8pm GMT, and while we do usually have a lot of fun, I think there will be an element of this one that will serve as a grieving space for those in our community who need it, as well as hopefully allowing us all to lift each other back up a little bit.
	And I would encourage any of our listeners to come along, or to express yourselves in any of the forums I just mentioned.
	I do feel somewhat powerless in this situation, as I know most of you probably will.
	But one thing I know I can do is come and talk to all of you about it.
	So that's what we'll do, and we'll work our way upwards from there together.
	Until then, enjoy this time capsule of an episode, recorded in some of the last moments of the before times, and revel in learning just how much of a fucking idiot Dana White is.
	It's really something.
	These days, I end every show by asking you to take care of yourselves and each other, and I mean it extra hard this week, and the weeks going forward.
	Look after yourself, look after the people around you in both your communities and this one.
	Please.
	And with that, here's our show.
	This is Propaganda Live.
	I only suggest how to think about a vote.
	Extraordinary cultural moment, already iconic, already iconic.
	We love you, you're welcome here.
	Where did this guy come from?
	It's like he's been doing it for ages, he's very confident.
	Plainly, and this is a matter now of fact and record, I'm right wing.
	I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
	Is this misinformation or is Vivek Ramaswamy in the laboratory?
	That's a sort of like a poet.
	Is this Eminem?
	Man, we didn't come together in that stream.
	I'm assuming 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 Wirth, 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 idea what we'll be getting into today, but it's usually pretty 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?
	Well...
	We're recording on Tuesday.
	We are.
	It's election day.
	And this will be published on Thursday.
	So, Lord only knows what Thursday I'll be feeling.
	Yes.
	Or even Wednesday.
	We'll see.
	So, I was racking my brain.
	I was like, boy, I'm like, brain is 100% worried.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Anxiety is palpable.
	Yep.
	Right.
	So, I think by Thursday, I'll be so incredibly fucking thankful that I won't be getting political texts anymore.
	Oh, man.
	At least I fucking better not.
	So, I think Thursday Lauren is going to be really excited that, like, I won't be.
	Yeah, no matter what happens, that'll be...
	Up to 20 texts.
	Texts a day.
	It's incredible.
	It's genuinely stunning.
	It makes me hate everyone.
	I have never received an election-related text in my life.
	Ever.
	Probably because it's illegal.
	It might be.
	It might be.
	I imagine there's things you can voluntarily sign up to.
	But yeah, I've never ever experienced that.
	And it sounds horrendous.
	It's gotta be said.
	You know how email's been rendered virtually useless?
	Oh well they've done it with your phone number now.
	Great.
	What a good plan.
	What a good society that we've built for ourselves here in the good ol' US of fuckin' A. What's your good thing?
	My good thing is, so I mentioned a while back going to see the filmed version of the play Nigh, starring Michael Sheen as Zaniron Bevan, the founder and creator of the National Health Service, and a pinnacle of Welsh socialism at large.
	It's an incredible piece of work with some outstanding acting from every cast member involved, really well written, all that stuff.
	And thanks to the National Theatre, at least in the UK and the US, Nigh will be free to stream from November 7th to 11th.
	So that's, you know, Friday to Monday, I think.
	So everyone can watch it for free.
	I personally am very excited to watch it again.
	And also, here's a little preview.
	I will be leading an off-brand about Nigh the play and the historical man himself next week, as well as the conditions the NHS was created in.
	I'm going to include the link in the description so everyone is welcome to do their homework.
	And in this case, the homework is watching a truly phenomenal play.
	And also, might I suggest, it might make a nice engaging distraction from all of the election bullshit this weekend.
	It might just be a couple of hours to just watch some really good actors do a thing, you know?
	But yeah, I'm excited for that.
	Very, very excited.
	And it's very cool that the National Theatre are doing this.
	Or, if you're so stressed, you can watch it.
	If you find yourself just re-watching The Office, which I think a lot of people are just going to be stressed associating.
	Comfort watching, yep, yep, yep, yep.
	Yeah, it's okay too, and you can get there when you get there.
	Yep, that is also perfectly fair.
	Yeah, fold it in.
	Don't stress and fold it in.
	Indeed.
	I started associating, ooh, a couple days ago.
	I'm like, oh, I'm just not...
	Yeah.
	Feeling anything.
	Yeah.
	I've unplugged my feeler completely.
	I'm over here and, like, the anxiety in the last couple of days for me has been pretty outstanding.
	So, like, Jesus, I can't imagine.
	So, yeah, do what you've got to do, everyone.
	Right.
	But, yeah, I hope it can be enjoyable for some of you anyway.
	All right, well, we've got a show to do.
	But first, let's thank a new patron.
	So, Laura O'Neill, you are an awakening wonder.
	You are indeed an awakening wonder.
	Thank you, Laura.
	Very much appreciated.
	Thank you so much.
	Deeply, deeply appreciated.
	And if you do enjoy the show, please leave us a five-star review wherever you're listening, and please do share us with your friends, loved ones, or anyone you think might enjoy this project of ours.
	It would be hugely appreciated and goes to great lengths in helping us continue.
	And if anyone wants to support us financially in what we do, become an awakening wonder.
	Join the invisible hand or donate on an elevated tier.
	Head to patreon.com slash onbrand and you will have our eternal gratitude.
	It is this which allows us to be editorially independent and ad-free.
	And as a patron, you will also get a shout-out on the show and access to our patron-only after-show off-brand.
	And this week, Lauren led part two about Russell's magic EMF-blocking necklace he's been hawking.
	This time going all the way back to the 1800s to discover what orgones are, what organite is, and how it relates to the crazy magic necklace from Aztec.
	I did a journalism!
	Yes!
	I did one journalism all on my own.
	Legitimately.
	Actual journalism.
	I found the link.
	There was a whole journalism in there and it was good.
	It was satisfying.
	Very good.
	Yeah.
	Now we know.
	Now we know.
	I'm really happy with it.
	Really interesting.
	Really good.
	Really hilarious.
	So yeah.
	Head to patreon.com slash onbrand to check that out and the many, many hours of other content up there.
	And please know that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube or if you're listening to Spotify app, the video will come up there too.
	Also, reminder, this Sunday 10th we will be having our own on-brand live stream on the YouTube where we can all hang out and patrons can ask questions.
	There should be a post up on the Patreon.
	And it'll be a lovely time.
	So that's this Sunday, 10th of November, 8pm GMT, 2pm CST. We hope to see you all there.
	It's going to be really good fun.
	Yes, please.
	Yes.
	I just want to talk to you guys.
	I love it.
	Especially, yeah, especially this week of all weeks, I'd love to have a chat with everyone.
	That would be very nice to just decompress a bit.
	Right.
	A quick Russell allegations news update right up top.
	The investigators looking into Russell's UK SA allegations have finally passed their findings over to the Crown Prosecution Service, and it will be up to them as to whether there is enough evidence to press charges.
	It could take a little while for them to come to a decision on that.
	And we can only hope, but as we have no statute of limitations over here, everything's on the table, and it's at least a remote possibility in this moment that Russell will end up in prison or fleeing to Bali.
	So, you know, fingers crossed.
	You know, it'll be interesting.
	It's so hard not to look into right now.
	Let me tell you something.
	Oh, boy.
	Because I'm not supposed to, right?
	Like, that's my job.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	As the person that doesn't know what we're getting into every week that I can't.
	But...
	And Mike was like, have you seen this news?
	And I'm like, just give me the...
	I have to know a little bit.
	I'm so curious and it's really important.
	But I'm trying to keep it.
	Yeah, at the moment...
	But there's not much to know.
	No, it's a procedural update at this point, basically.
	So yeah, but it's chugging along.
	It's moving forward.
	Things are happening somewhere.
	Which is great news.
	It is good.
	It is legitimately good news.
	Yeah.
	Alright, so let's get into our show.
	And this will be the last piece of content that we'll be dealing with from prior to the election.
	And as mentioned, we're recording this on election day itself.
	As it is, what we'll be looking at is also a pre-recorded interview from last week, which was then put out on Friday.
	One other interview that Russell did was with Naomi Wolf, who was there to sell her nonsense anti-COVID vaccine book.
	And the other was this thing that we're going to look at.
	As ever, let's let Russell introduce the guest.
	Hello there, you awakening wonders.
	Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand and what a special day it is because Dana White is on the show and he's going to be talking to us about, well, I guess, appearing at Madison Square Garden.
	He's going to be telling us about how he built the UFC from next to nothing or certainly a niche sport.
	And he's going to be talking to us about this unique political moment now and whether or not...
	On the 5th of November, which for British people like me is a significant day, look it up, baby, will be a day for fireworks, explosions, and change, or will we be on the precipice of something perhaps possibly terrifying?
	Hmm, yeah, the symbolism isn't lost on me that the US election is being held on Guy Fawkes Night, which in the UK commemorates the time I do try to blow up Parliament.
	Well, several dudes, actually, but he was kind of the main guy that was put up for it.
	Yeah, it's interesting.
	Do y'all do the fireworks for RealReal?
	Like, is everybody gonna...
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	No, it's a whole thing.
	There's a bonfire, like, effigies are burned every single year.
	You know, it's a whole thing.
	In kind of recent decades, the effigies have been updated.
	Like, we've had Margaret Thatcher effigies instead of Guy Fawkes.
	There have been like Vladimir Putin.
	However, the way it's taught like in schools and everything is Guy Fawkes is the bad guy, you know, is the baddie.
	And we should, you know, that's why the burning happens.
	But I do feel like there is also some sentiment of like, this guy had kind of the right idea. - I mean, isn't that just the word?
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Well, at least most people that wear that mask, well, it's both sides equally, but half of them are completely clueless.
	Yes, yeah, most people know it as the anonymous mask called V for Vendetta.
	Exactly right, yeah, they wear their Guy Fawkes mask and they're like, it's like, yeah, get your laws off my body at mask protests, so yeah, it's great.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Interesting.
	Anyway, yeah.
	So we've got Dana White to deal with.
	And, you know, his background is honestly not interesting enough to warrant a long intro.
	So here's the headlines.
	He went from being a boxer-sized instructor in Boston to a fighter manager in Las Vegas, managing Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.
	Dana happened to know a couple of billionaires, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, from the private Catholic high school he attended.
	And then through contract negotiations with his fighters, he also learned that the UFC was up for sale and was in, like, financial ruin, basically.
	So Dana White persuaded the Fatitas to buy the UFC for $2 million back in 2001, and put Dana at its helm as public-facing president and CEO, and also give him a 10% stake in the company.
	It's now worth between $11 and $12 billion.
	Um...
	Dana has been raking it in since at least the mid-2000s, so while he's new money rather than inherited wealth, his income has been in the millions for at least a couple of decades, and his net worth is over a billion dollars at this point.
	There are some other factors to this guy that will come up as we go through, but the main headline is we have another incredibly wealthy white man on Russell's show to tell us all how it really is.
	Like, God, that's what we need.
	I'm fascinated because of the BJJ connection.
	Right.
	Like, the jujitsu of it all.
	And Russell – so Russell is a BJJ practitioner as well.
	I think he trains with one of the – Like a lesser Gracie, no offense, just saying.
	Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I looked into that a while back in an off-brand that we did.
	Yeah, weirdly, and it is weird, but Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu does not come up in this interview at all, which I find strange.
	Well, they're businessmen.
	Yes, right, right.
	And they're there to do a thing.
	I think that's something that's interesting to look at in and of itself.
	Okay, so Russell opens the interview and we're going to start with some pretty aggressive ass-kissing.
	Dana, thank you so much for joining us for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	Thanks for having me.
	Where are you?
	Somewhere unusual?
	I'm in Vegas, in my office.
	From where he runs his global empire, from where he influences and impacts the world.
	Dana, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to communicate with you.
	I've waited a long time to talk with you.
	I've admired you for a long while.
	You're a unique and fascinating figure in our culture.
	And I suppose at the moment, while we're on the precipice of an election in your country, people will be interested in the fact that you have a pretty intimate relationship with Donald Trump.
	Obviously, there's more to you than that.
	You've created a living carnival, a return to gladiatorial values.
	You're an avatar of new masculinity, or at least a return to traditional masculinity and the values that that might have.
	You've been bold when it comes to the commercial space and commercial partners.
	You're confrontational.
	In previous conversations, you've told me you never say anything unless you mean to say it.
	And I wonder how you see your story and your biography as aligning with where America is right now, in particular when it comes to authenticity.
	So maybe we'll start there.
	How has authenticity served you in your career and your ascent?
	And can you give us examples, Dana, of where you think authenticity has served you and where authenticity has cost you?
	Interesting.
	Yeah, I think that we're at a day and age now where people know who's authentic and who isn't.
	I grew up in an era in the 80s where You know, you would always have, whether it was sports figures or politicians or whoever it was, CEOs of companies reading canned statements that lawyers wrote for them.
	That was never my style.
	I've always been, you know, honest and, you know, upfront.
	For instance, in my business, if you stay home Saturday night and pay $50 or whatever it is for our pay-per-view, And the fight sucks.
	I'll be the first one to tell you that the fight sucked and it wasn't a good fight.
	I won't try to spin it at the press conference to tell you you just saw something great.
	I don't know.
	No refunds though.
	The way that I have been.
	Yeah.
	I mean, he's still got your $50 at the end of the day.
	Why say that part?
	Why say that part?
	That's the important...
	Yeah.
	He's not like, oh yeah, if it sucks, I will offer a refund.
	It's, oh no, I'll agree it sucks and I will take your money anyway.
	Sucks to suck, dawg!
	Sorry!
	We shit the bed, but I still have your money.
	It's not a sustainable business model for most people, but he's been doing this a while, like on multiple occasions.
	Oh, I disagree.
	Fair enough.
	It's not an ethical business model, but it's incredibly lucrative all over the world to sell bills of goods and profit.
	For years, on multiple occasions, I've seen this dude trashing fights up and down his own cards at UFC events, like, after the night.
	And I'm like, dude, this is your show!
	What are you doing?
	You know, it's like someone is shouting from the audience, this sucks!
	And he'll, like, run down from the stage and be like, yeah, this does suck!
	And then run back up on the stage again, and you're like, Bugs Bunny or something.
	I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
	Okay, wait, wait, wait.
	What do you think is happening there, then?
	Like, he doesn't have to.
	Like, he doesn't have to care.
	It makes him look more authentic.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, 100%.
	100%.
	At the cost of everyone but him.
	Yep.
	That's...
	Yep, exactly.
	And also, I do like that this whole conversation has started with authenticity, because it's an interesting thing to ask of Dana White.
	Because, for instance, between 2001 and 2015, he spent that entire time cozying up to Democrat politicians in order to cut the red tape which had been preventing the UFC from operating how they wanted.
	It was banned in, like, 30-something states for a long time.
	So...
	Yeah, John McCain called it human cockfighting.
	He did indeed.
	He did indeed.
	So yeah, I think maybe Dana White is more flexible than he'd like to admit on certain things.
	But honestly, I think if we take him at his word that what you see is what you get and he's just going to be his authentic and honest upfront self, it actually ends up being much worse.
	Because, like, we'll get to the Trump stuff in a minute, because that's a whole fucking thing.
	But the UFC has followed a very, some might say, eerily similar pattern to the WWE, with multiple lawsuits being filed over fighter safety and wages, many of which are still ongoing today.
	There are current lawsuits in the courts at this moment, as well as plentiful accusations of the UFC having a monopoly over the industry.
	And to be clear...
	Did they merge?
	That's like, they did a merger.
	Like, it's the same company now, basically.
	Yeah, they've bought most of the competition.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So, yeah, it's not like it.
	It is the same now, basically.
	It feels very, very monopoly, doesn't it?
	It is!
	The FTC tried to stop it!
	Literally, it was not supposed to be a legal merger, but that doesn't stop companies in America anymore!
	And then the FTC decided there's been no wrongdoing and there is no monopoly.
	That was the latest decision a couple of years ago.
	Just like, oh, great!
	Cool!
	All right, fine.
	Well, sure.
	So, to be clear about how shittily the UFC treats their fighters, right, Karim Zidane of The Guardian, and a good journalist on this kind of stuff in general, reported in December 2022, That unlike the vast majority of sports leagues and organizations where athletes receive between 47 and 50% of the sports revenue generally, the UFC has historically paid out between 16 and 19% of its revenue to its fighters.
	So, like, drastically lower.
	Northwestern University Labor Law Professor Zev Egan told the Bleacher Report in 2013 that Eddie Alvarez's UFC contract was the worst he had seen in the sports or entertainment fields.
	There's nothing that sets a minimum or basic standard of pay that the company cannot go below.
	Egan called the confidentiality clause prohibiting a fighter from revealing how much they are paid a violation of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
	Because it is.
	Employers are not allowed to prevent you from talking about how much you earn.
	That is the law.
	In 2016, James Quinn of the law firm Weil Gottschall& Manges called George St.
	Pierre's UFC contract something out of the 1940s and was blown away by how restrictive it was.
	Quote, they're basically tying him up for life.
	They have no rights and they own all of his licensing and all the other things.
	It's unheard of in other professional sports.
	Unquote.
	In 2020, sports journalist Brian Gumbel called the UFC the one sport in which the athletes seem to have the fewest rights and arguably the least say in their own safety.
	Mark Raimondi of ESPN wrote that it is common for UFC fighters to go into fights with injuries because they do not get paid unless they fight.
	The UFC maintains that its fighters are independent contractors, not employees, and therefore lack the right to unionize under federal law.
	Sports agent Jeff Boris said, if you want to analyze the situation, they're employees.
	The UFC tells them when to fight, where to fight, and whom to fight.
	They tell them what they can wear and also prevent them from fighting for other promotions.
	Unquote.
	So all already incredibly fucked up.
	Not only that, but aside from like the long-term exclusive contracts that these fighters are forced to sign, the UFC also have in their contract something called a champion's clause, which means if anyone wins a championship, their contract is automatically extended at the same rate of pay.
	Which means if you win successive championships, at no point do you get the opportunity to renegotiate your contract despite now being the champ.
	You still get paid the same shit you were before, becoming the champ.
	A 2020 poll conducted by The Athletic found that out of 170 mixed martial artists, 79.4% said they were in favour of organising in a way comparable to the professional unions and associations in other sports.
	Again, according to Jeff Boris, the UFC is against unionization because then they would have to fund things like medical insurance and pensions, share in the licensing and other revenue streams that they don't want to do.
	The UFC has vigorously opposed the efforts of Mark Wayne Mullen to expand the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act.
	Which helps protect fighters' interests from promoters to cover mixed martial artists.
	And this, in that vigorous opposition, that includes the UFC paying lobbyists to oppose the MABRA being expanded.
	And the real kicker here for me, because they're labeled independent contractors, the UFC does not provide long-term health insurance to its fighters.
	So for years, the company only formally offered medical benefits to fighters on its active roster who suffered immediate injuries as a result of fights.
	And again, Mark Raimondi of ESPN wrote that this is another reason UFC fighters go into their matches with injuries, to make it seem as if the injury occurred during the bout, as otherwise the fighter has to pay everything out of their own pocket.
	The UFC also does not offer a pension plan for fighters dealing with injuries after they retire from competition.
	And on top of all that, the UFC has policies that indirectly limit a fighter's financial opportunities.
	So UFC contracts, they have exclusivity provisions, so the fighter cannot compete in other MMA organizations or even other sports while under contract.
	This specific provision is partly the source of a civil lawsuit brought against the UFC by several of its former fighters that alleges the company exercises monopoly and monopsony power in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
	Since 2014, the UFC has had deals with specific apparel companies to exclusively provide uniforms that all fighters must wear, limiting the sponsorship opportunities of its athletes.
	Scott Coker, the president of rival promotion Bellator MMA, stated, They're independent contractors.
	How they're forced to wear a uniform to this day still baffles me.
	It should be against the labor laws or something.
	I think it is.
	I think that's the answer there.
	Anyway, yeah.
	UFC. Deeply, deeply fucked up.
	And believe me when I say this is only the tip of the iceberg.
	And I am sure we- Oh, yeah!
	Oh, yeah!
	Oh!
	There's so much.
	Like, we will be seeing- Are we even going to talk about Chechnya?
	Oh, my God!
	Right, we are going to be seeing successive documentaries about this organization for years to come.
	Like, there's a lot.
	And that's, yeah, that's without, you know, the UFC basically, you know, jump-starting Roger Gracie's BJJ and all that cult shit.
	Like, just all of it incredibly fucked up from top to bottom.
	Which, all of this is to say, if that's Dana White being authentic, then, yeah, real piece of shit.
	Cool.
	Oh, no, I think it is.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I think it absolutely is.
	I think that's telling us all we need to know.
	Listen, I think there's plenty of dudes out here that are like, I'm being authentic.
	I'm like, yeah, you are authentically a massive asshole.
	You're right.
	Yes.
	You are being true to yourself.
	Yep.
	You monster.
	Yeah, like, oh, cool.
	Yeah, you just, you just, you climb out of bed on, step on bodies in the morning and just, that's, you don't ever touch the floor because you're just walking on a trail of bodies that you've left in your wake.
	Cool.
	Yeah, Kareem Zidane, I use some of his, and I want to spell this because people need to check out what he's doing.
	He's incredible.
	K-A-R-I-M, not E-E-M, K-A-R-I-M-Z-I-D-A-N. Yes.
	He's kind of the only...
	He's definitely the main person that's been looking into all this stuff.
	And I love interviews with him.
	He's like, I don't want to be this guy.
	But I have ended up being this guy.
	Yeah.
	I get it.
	I'm here.
	I'm doing it.
	I wanted to do other journalism.
	But he's basically a sports journalist.
	It's like, oh, now I'm the guy for this information.
	And this wasn't my intention.
	Yeah, I used some of it for...
	The BJJ slash Kundalini off-brand episode that I did.
	And I'm so mad that, like, so he just released a three-part series called In the Red Corner.
	In the Red Corner, yep.
	I've had a listen to it.
	Yeah, it's the Donald Trump-Dana White connection, basically, as to what's going on there.
	So it's a three-part series, and I was waiting for the third episode to come out, which was yesterday.
	Real time, not publish time.
	It came onto my podcast feed yesterday, and I was like, oh, I'm so excited.
	So that's literally what I was planning to listen to later today.
	Okay, great.
	Well, one day late.
	Dang.
	It's fascinating.
	It's really interesting.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I recommend it.
	I did have a listen to it for putting this thing together.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, definitely well worth everyone's time to examine that connection because it is concerning.
	Yeah, and his regular podcast, Sports Politica, and it's also how you can find his sub stack, I think.
	Politica, P-O-L-I-T-I-K-A. So Politica with a K. Yeah, man, he's on it.
	And the thing is, is like, I'm not a UFC-interested person.
	I never have been.
	Mm-hmm.
	But there's a lot of Chicago politics that's actually intertwined with people and countries that are doing UFC things.
	And if you're not into fight sports, A lot of this stuff absolutely affects you, and you should be interested in at least keeping abreast of what's going on.
	There's a lot of money and a lot of power moving around in these seemingly frivolous, from the outside, like, oh, it's UFC, whatever.
	UFC partnered with Ares Tech, the necklace that Russell is selling.
	Yep.
	So, this is not a surprise to me.
	It's interesting to hear the conversation, but it's certainly not a surprise to me.
	No.
	There's a lot of money floating around.
	Also, that these, like, people are not, like, the fighters are not getting, which is, like, I mean, hello, Motown.
	The oldest trick in the book.
	But, I mean, because the...
	I know, because I've been an independent contractor.
	That was kind of my only...
	Listen, I'm no stranger to a 1099, okay?
	I've been an independent contractor for real, and I've been an independent contractor in name only for...
	of my career because it's not just the law's fault.
	The IRS does not enforce these regulations in a way that is meaningful or the violation has to be egregious.
	And you can thank gig work, basically, this whole move towards gig work.
	So you can thank Uber and Lyft and even like...
	Oh, yeah.
	That's why all of these qualifications for independent contractor versus employee, that is a massive difference for individuals.
	And I don't think people understand unless you've been in it.
	And why would you?
	You wouldn't have the occasion to understand the pressure it puts on you as an individual.
	And especially when it makes you so...
	You are a sitting duck for any and all kind of exploitation if you aren't actually an independent contractor.
	You're an employee, but you have to file your taxes, basically.
	You're considered an independent contractor.
	It's weird that I learned all this stuff a long time ago because as a tattooer, you're like, oh, you're not, but we can say you are.
	There's a very distinct difference.
	It's the most exploitable...
	It's not the most exploitable.
	Slavery is the most exploitable.
	It's a very precarious position and you're usually only on the hook for the bad stuff.
	And you get very little of all the good stuff.
	You know, that you do in your job.
	If you do, it's because you're lucky enough to have a good boss.
	And that can change on a dime for any of us.
	I think I'm sure that there's people listening that are like, yep, and I'm sorry I triggered your memories.
	But we're in this, you know, like we're in this and we're talking about it.
	This is also why you need to pay attention to these, like the political angle.
	And it's also really interesting, but it's like this...
	So I don't think it's difficult to engage with.
	I think it's really...
	I mean, it's hard to remember everybody's name if you're not a big fan, certainly, of the sport.
	But as far as the lobbying efforts, they go very...
	The lobbying efforts go deep and are very entrenched.
	And there's a lot of cross-pollination with a lot of different lobbies.
	You wouldn't think that even Airbnb...
	Is invested in basically how...
	What's the word?
	It's not a gig, but it's gig adjacent, right?
	It's to be like a gig landlord, essentially, or a gig hotelier.
	All of these kind of regulations being torn down by the gig economy, like There are real, lasting, serious problems that have been caused because of, like, and it's connected to, like, Herbalife and MLMs and pyramid schemes in the 80s and 90s.
	Like, that's how all this stuff kind of started getting chipped away at workers' rights.
	That's why we have so little worker protection in any meaningful sense in America.
	So, like, this is also part of it.
	And the gig economy is one thing that is fucking people over here as well.
	Oh, my God, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	We have much better worker protections over here, but that's one thing that has been frighteningly effective at just tearing into workers' rights in the UK. Yeah, we say Grubhub, you all say Deliveroo, but it's the same kind of like...
	Same bullshit, yep.
	Erosion of worker protection.
	It's really insidious.
	And watching it all like, spending my adult life watching the steamroller just slowly crush all the worker protections in front of my eyes, like has been, oh, you think I just dissociate for the election?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	I'm well versed in the...
	Slow motion who framed Roger Rabbit, you know?
	It's like, oh, okay, yep, let's just watch this happen.
	I mean, yeah, I guess that's kind of...
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much.
	Oh, dear.
	Okay, right.
	So...
	Very naturally, when talking about the UFC, we come to the subject of Joe Rogan.
	And Dana White would like to tell us all about where we can go to learn the truth!
	Joe Rogan is one of the defining figures.
	I want to know how you knew, or did you know, that this guy was the right person to be the avatar and figurehead of the public broadcast aspect of UFC, and what his rise tells us about the shift in landscape in media, where you knew that UFC was a success because of Fox or its international equivalents, and now those very media organisations are, if not being...
	Dwarfed by a figure like Rogan are certainly being challenged.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	The mainstream media, the media as far as I'm concerned, is dead.
	It doesn't exist anymore.
	You have subscribers.
	Fox has subscribers that want to hear what Fox has to tell them and CNN and MSNBC and all of them have subscribers who want to hear what they have to tell them.
	Nobody's telling the truth anymore.
	If you want to hear the truth, Or as close to the truth, podcasting is where it's at now, where you sit down one-on-one and you have, you know, these intimate conversations with somebody who doesn't have an agenda, who isn't trying to hit you with that gotcha moment, and then cut it up and edit it and make it look like somebody said something else.
	You know, you have the media now will use your podcast to Chop it up 50 million ways and use it however they want to use it to say what they want to say, not what you said.
	Mm-hmm.
	I will say one of the many reasons our show comes down on the lengthier side of things is I do want to give these people a fair shake and hear them out and make sure they're fairly represented when we cover them on here, right?
	And what you all just heard was this grown man telling us that the legacy media is dead and that we should all go to podcasters like Joe Rogan if we want the truth.
	See, I didn't have to edit any of that together.
	I didn't need to.
	Dana White is able to tell us he's a dipshit without my having to do a goddamn thing.
	Wow.
	Yep!
	It's almost like the cutting it up and editing doesn't necessarily injure, like, if you're getting headlines and you're making sense of it, yeah, we're proof that, listen, you can say the whole thing in context and it just is more damning.
	It's usually worse.
	So maybe there's a reason that, like, mainstream news just cuts it down and says something because they're representing the whole.
	Accurately.
	And this is a great, this is just, ooh, chef's kiss.
	Reason why all of these, like, commentator, grifter dudes from, I mean, Joe Rogan's making a product.
	The grift, I think, is maybe a little more...
	Whatever.
	I don't know.
	I mean, am I going to say the Today Show is a grift?
	Sometimes.
	Whatever.
	But the amount, like, the volume of content...
	Basically defending the volume of content and saying that, oh, well, you're more honest...
	If you talk for three hours on your podcast minimum, instead of, okay, well, can we summarize what you said in 10 minutes?
	And it's the same thing that you said in three hours?
	It's that cover of like, oh, well, you took me out of context.
	And not everyone has time to listen to the three-hour Joe Rogan meandering conversation.
	And then when they do find it, it takes so long for people to get to it, they're like, oh, the summary was right.
	Yes!
	And now my brain has melted.
	Yeah, what do you do?
	Or you're engaging on their terms, and we know and have proven over and over all the obfuscation that goes into...
	Muddying the waters of context.
	That's cover.
	It came out of his mouth.
	There we go.
	Yeah, Fox and MSNBC and Joe Rogan, yes, they all have subscriber counts.
	Yeah, I guess you can view it that way.
	But there's a big distinction in that Fox and MSNBC have, you know, editorial boards and, like, legal teams and things to, and don't get me wrong, Fox fall down on the more fucking egregious side of this, of bullshit, more often than not.
	But still, there are limits on the things that they are allowed to, like, say and broadcast as news, as actual, you know, there's a tiny amount of regulation around it in the U.S. They can be sued for libel and slander.
	Yeah!
	Compared to Joe Rogan, who can pretty much just say whatever the bullshit he feels like in the moment, you know?
	I'm like, that's quantitatively, that's different.
	That's qualitatively different.
	So, yeah.
	Oh dear.
	Okay, so now we get to supposedly why Kamala Harris didn't go on Joe Rogan's show.
	And bear in mind, the title of this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand is This is the Real Reason Kamala Didn't Do Rogan.
	That's the title of it, right?
	There it is.
	Here's the big reveal, everybody.
	And Joe Rogan is definitely leading the charge.
	I'm in that world right now.
	And it's one of the beautiful things about Joe.
	I mean, even with the Trump thing, he invited Trump and Kamala to both come on his show, not showing favoritism toward either one of them.
	And even recently when they put all the demands on her, the reason that Kamala won't do his show.
	It's because Kamala Harris cannot speak without a teleprompter.
	And that's a bad environment for her.
	Anytime you put her in front of a camera, it's a bad environment.
	So I knew she wouldn't take The offer to do the show.
	But I actually think she's crazy not to.
	Because Joe Rogan isn't one of those guys that's going to come out and attack her and try to make her look bad.
	Really?
	She can do that on her own.
	Okay.
	Well, there you go.
	Joe Rogan wouldn't, but she'll definitely look bad on her own on his show.
	Which he would have no control over!
	Why would you?
	No, I'm saying that's the excuse.
	That's the either way the election was rigged.
	Like, either way, she's bad for not going on the show, but if she goes on the show, oh, Joe Rogan would never make her look bad.
	She'll do that herself, so that's why.
	That's the excuse.
	Preset excuse for why it wouldn't go well is her fault, not his.
	Yeah, she would look bad on Joe Rogan, but it would have nothing to do with Joe Rogan himself in any of that.
	It would be, oh, she's done it.
	Right.
	So the big reveal here, basically, the real reason Kamala didn't do Rogan is, oh, she needs a teleprompter, supposedly, and can't cope without one.
	I mean, one, bullshit.
	I'm pretty sure Kamala Harris in a one-on-one situation across three hours could be pretty chill.
	I'm pretty sure she'd be fine.
	But even if that were true, right, say I took him at face value here, like, the ability to have a chill conversation opposite Joe Rogan is not exactly top of my list of requirements to govern a fucking country.
	Absolutely not.
	I know.
	I've been screaming that in my brain or out loud for weeks at this point.
	Yeah.
	You could tell me that she has to have every conversation she ever has written down first, and my question would be, okay, but is she doing a shitty job?
	And particularly, is she doing a better or worse job than the other guy?
	It has nothing to do with her ability to govern.
	A conversation with Joe Rogan, the UFC guy, has nothing to do with politics.
	They're telling on themselves by insisting that she needs to come into their arena that is supposed to not be political.
	Directly, oh, he's not a political guy or whatever.
	I don't know what excuse he makes now, but it's not politics.
	So why is it a requirement that you would have to participate in the first place?
	Yeah, I don't know if Joe Rogan can make that claim anymore.
	He has just endorsed Trump several hours ago.
	Well, no, actually, I tell a lie.
	He endorsed Elon Musk, is specifically what he did.
	And Trump kind of by proxy.
	It's much like Russell endorsing RFK Jr. and Trump, you know, in the same kind of way.
	And I'm like, I think Musk is in a way worse.
	I don't know.
	That's a difficult one in my head.
	I'm like, oh, that's not good either.
	I'm so sorry y'all are listening to this on Thursday and I have no idea.
	I'm just stopping myself.
	I'm like, what I say about the election or who's there or whatever means nothing right now.
	Well, yeah, this is like, but when you're listening, y'all are going to know.
	I'm like, well, yeah.
	Yeah.
	But anyway, so clearly, like, the mathematics was done, and the decision was made that, in fact, going on Rogan would not have benefited Kamala Harris or her campaign for president.
	And you can fucking see why!
	Like, Rogan has been a massive trumper for years now, and all of his fans follow suit.
	The overwhelming percentage of Rogan's guests are right-wing white men, and there is a reason for that.
	And further, like, this is one of the reasons I was interested in covering Dana White in the first place.
	See, back in the day when UFC was smaller, unlike more popular sports that we, you know, chatted about on TV or on radio or whatever, MMA fans and fighters had to get their information through online message boards or, you know, like-minded people in the wild, but mostly the message boards thing.
	And despite the UFC's entry into the mainstream over the past decade, a significant portion of that community remain rooted in online spaces, many of which are known for peddling conspiracy theories and alt-right talking points.
	A 2018 study by Vox found that a significant portion of the users who frequented the QAnon subreddit also posted in forums dedicated to MMA, fitness, and Joe Rogan.
	Um, so, like, is it terribly surprising that the Harris campaign were like, yeah, nah, we won't be changing any hearts by trying to appeal to this specific group of people.
	They already believe Hillary Clinton is drinking children's blood.
	I don't think there's much point in trying to get these people on side.
	You know?
	Well, that and then...
	Here's the thing.
	Here's what's a challenge is like, you never really know.
	So there's...
	You never really know about kind of like inner workings of a political campaign or negotiations or whatever.
	But I remember hearing basically that like the...
	The time slot negotiations for...
	Rogan's like, I want three hours, and they're like, we're not going to do that.
	She's a sitting vice president running for president.
	World leaders don't get three hours with Kamala Harris.
	Well, I mean, we're not going to kick back in a lazy boy and light up a dube and talk about life, the universe, and everything.
	No.
	If it's not...
	What's crazy is that Joe Rogan wouldn't negotiate, to me, and if that's the situation, which, like, I heard, you know, the thing is, is these are just rumors.
	You know, it's, you know, even credible, you know, from a campaign, we don't really know.
	But what's crazy to me is that, and I think deliberately disrespectful, or at least, I don't know, tangentially, either way, if you aren't going to You don't necessarily have to capitulate, but negotiate the time that you want from the vice president, and you're too important, and you need all of your...
	You can't fill the rest of the time?
	Really?
	Joe Rogan?
	Yeah.
	Or just put out a shorter show, because he does that from time to time as well.
	You don't have to put out a shorter show.
	You just have the portion that is with Kamala.
	And then you can talk shit because that's what you're going to do anyway.
	You can spend the rest of the time talking shit on everything that she did and picking it apart.
	Except it's going to be her fault that she doesn't look good.
	There's logistic negotiations that have nothing to do with even political affiliation.
	You aren't entitled to three hours of the vice president's time.
	Mm-hmm.
	Full stop.
	Okay.
	So then where do we go from there?
	And I don't know if he was demanding all three hours.
	I don't remember exactly what it was.
	And also, again, this is very frustrating because we have no way of knowing at this time because also there's a lot going on.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, that's kind of...
	That's what I heard, so it's not just necessarily even the spirit of the thing.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Logan was being stubborn.
	Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
	The logistics seemed like a real pain in the dick as well, you know.
	And you can see why Trump would, A, just have more time, and B, feel more inclined to go there in the first place.
	He's speaking to his people.
	The cost-benefit.
	Yeah, the cost-benefit of three hours of time on Rogan versus the, like, backlash and fallout or benefit.
	Yeah, it behooves Trump far more than Harris.
	And it's...
	He's...
	What do you think those fucking rallies are?
	The man has nothing but time.
	Yeah, exactly.
	He does little dances.
	He does little DJ sets.
	Like...
	He is a man without a thing to do except for run for president, which is also what he did while he was president and would do again somehow.
	Yeah, and also it would be much more beneficial to Joe Rogan than it would Kamala Harris.
	Oh yeah!
	Yeah, which is within the calculation of the cost-benefit analysis that the Harris campaign would have to make.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Like, do you want to elevate Joe Rogan to that level?
	Yeah.
	I don't think anyone should.
	Yeah.
	I did see some people suggesting Tim Walz should have gone on, which I thought would be interesting, because, like, straight white man, I'm like, yeah, you're gonna have a tougher time.
	I love that, too.
	Yeah, also, incredibly affable person.
	Yes, exactly.
	And they could talk about hunting.
	Yeah, sports, hunting, all this other shit.
	Like, yeah, Walls could probably have nailed it.
	But they'd just find another way to spin the bullshit is the problem.
	Okay, so next up we have another advertiser of Russell's to look at.
	And while it's not quite trying to sell you crypto mining through buying NFTs, the whole thing does seem somewhat questionable.
	We can't make this content without the support of our partners.
	Here's a message from them now.
	Hey, have you heard of Calshi?
	Calshi is a company that allows you to legally bet on a bunch of things, including the outcome of this election.
	Now, I don't gamble because I don't agree with gambling, as a matter of fact, for a variety of reasons.
	But if you're a person who likes gambling and can gamble, Calshi allows you to gamble on election outcomes.
	God, it'd be weird if you could influence that and then bet on it.
	Crazy.
	No, we can put our money where our mouths are, and we can bet on not only the outcome of the election, but how Senate's going to roll out, and what the proportions are going to be in Congress.
	Anyway, you could vote for either Kamala or Trump in this election.
	So if you are a person that does gamble, gamble with Calci.
	I don't gamble.
	Gambling's not for me, but I'm also not a totalitarian despot, so I believe you should do what you want to do.
	So, you could go to couchery.com forward slash brand, and the first 500 traders who deposit $100 will get a $20 credit.
	Okay, so firstly, I want to point out that Russell Brand, famously in recovery from addiction, Russell Brand, the Russell Brand who has a book called Recovery and whose material is used in 12-step programs around the world, that Russell Brand is currently advertising for gambling, which is one of the most notoriously addictive activities on the planet.
	This is equivalent to if Russell suddenly started advertising for alcohol brands or weed, you know, and if If I were in recovery of any kind, I'd be really pissed about this.
	It's really quite fucked up.
	Now, outrage at that aside, let me give you the outline on what the fuck Kalshi is.
	Because it's gambling, but with a nice ambiguous grey area in the middle.
	In the words of Kalshi's CEO Tarek Mansoor, when asked how is this different from gambling, he said, quote, The first big difference is that we're a free market, not a book.
	We don't set the odds, we open a market and let people trade on it, and where the market settles is what the odds are.
	This is important because it means we're not profiting off of people from VIG. In fact, we've waived all fees on election markets.
	Second, the market's opinion is really accurate.
	It's useful to the public to have a gauge of what the chances of a particular event happening are, particularly with massive consequential events like elections.
	Sportsbooks are a business, but we're a business and a public good, unquote.
	And, yeah, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit saying that.
	So...
	This bit about having a gauge of chances is quite important, because it's effectively a polling of Kalshi's user base.
	That's what we're looking at, but with money on the line.
	Like, the eagle-eyed among our audience will have noticed in the middle of that ad on Kalshi that there was a Buy Trump stock that was at 63%, while Buy Harris stock was at 37%.
	This is very obviously because Kalshi's user base is overwhelmingly full of Trumpers who believe their god-king is going to win the election.
	Um, and what sucks for them is they may be placing these bets or buying shares, technically is what they're doing, um, with the belief that Donald Trump has a 63% chance of winning this election because that's how Calci are presenting it, as though their base and their market is representative of the US as a whole, um, and so they make it look like fucking polling data, which it just is not.
	Um, you know, and there is a reason you only see Calci being advertised in right-wing spaces.
	Um, And to show how fucking cooked this is, right, on October 29th, Kamala Harris' stock hit a low of 35.7%, and then shot up to 50.1% over the next five days.
	Harris' stock is, at this time of writing, 45%, which looks, to me, like a pump-and-dump scam, because you can sell these shares again, right?
	It's not like a bet where that's it, you've placed your bet, all done, no takesies backsies.
	So someone bought at 35.7%, got the percentage up to 50, and fucking sold.
	Bam, immediate profit in five days.
	The prices of these things, they equate to cents, by the way.
	So that'll be a profit of like 14 cents per share, or about a 40% profit on however much cash these people put into the thing.
	So if they've invested thousands of dollars into it, they get 40% back within five days through this little scam.
	The fun part, like for me, and it's something I'll be keeping an eye on, is that Calci stipulates that the market for this bet closes when the outcome occurs.
	When the outcome occurs is their own phrasing.
	And the outcome of this election could be months away right now, potentially.
	Yeah.
	January 20th?
	Right, exactly.
	I will be taking note of when they stop taking people's money, at the least.
	But also, if Trump loses, which is somehow just as possible as him winning, if that happens, Kalshi had better get ready for a lot of pissed-off Trumpers complaining about how actually Trump won and the election was stolen and they should all get their money back.
	And how come his odds were at 63%?
	How did that happen?
	You know, if he's gonna lose...
	Oh...
	By checking agree on the terms and conditions, I'm positive that they will not have a leg to stand on at all.
	Yeah, Robinhood is doing this too.
	This is not just Calci.
	Like, Robinhood, the app, the stock app, has also been taking bets.
	I mean, it kind of speaks to the more normal base of users of Robin Hood, because it was like 48 Harris, like 52 Trump or something.
	I mean, these things are going to change all the time.
	So, okay.
	All right.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And here's the thing, like, we have election betting in the UK. Like, that is a thing that is actually run through, like, actual betting shops and all of that, right?
	But it's like...
	It's fucking illegal here!
	It's fucking illegal here!
	This is illegal in America!
	It is illegal to bet on elections in America!
	Yeah.
	End of thought!
	And yet.
	Oh, it's not betting, it's trading!
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Okay, well, here's the thing, though.
	Especially with, like, first of all, Russell's saying that he doesn't agree with or sign off on or believe in gambling, but he's not an authoritarian.
	No, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	That just means that he's not going to tell you what to do with your life, and he's not going to benefit from it personally.
	Oh, wait, is he?
	Yeah, this is, it's called an endorsement.
	It's called a sponsorship.
	He is benefiting, but he does not believe in it, and he just said it to our, playing in our fucking faces, claiming that he doesn't believe in it, but he will take the money.
	That means that you believe in it, and you're fine with it.
	That's like, make no mistake.
	Yep.
	He's about it.
	He's about whatever is going to put money in his pocket.
	That's exactly what he just said in no uncertain terms to all of us.
	Yep.
	And I will say if we were a little more honest collectively in America about the election being a popularity contest that's floating like a leaf in the wind.
	Yeah.
	to a degree that is completely absurd.
	If we were a little more honest about it, we wouldn't be so surprised.
	We would also be taken by these kind of percentages and we wouldn't be sucked into the gambling nature of it if we were more aware of the popularity contest about it.
	I don't blame people.
	It's been gamified for people to play around in.
	So I don't necessarily blame people for wanting to get in on the action because honestly, we all thought about it at least once.
	Like, oh man, if I hadn't known about that.
	Yeah, I could have made a quick couple hundy.
	Dang.
	Well, yeah, but also...
	Yeah.
	Never mind.
	And also, if the stock market weren't so nakedly basically a gambling operation, then we would have more of a leg to stand on.
	But because of the nature of like, sorry, that's just the facts.
	That's what it is.
	This is like stock markets basically gambling on companies.
	So like and I'm sure that you can tell me all the things.
	Like, listen, I'm sure there's a bunch of different explanations, and definitely the FTC and the IRS and a lot of government bodies are like, no, no, no, it isn't at all.
	No, it's definitely not.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I don't think our government has a fucking leg to stand on to...
	Criticize this business practice.
	No.
	No.
	Well, this is it.
	If there is any kind of regulation that tries to come down on this, I'm like, oh, so the stock market's next, yeah?
	The New York Stock Exchange is what's coming next, right?
	That's what we're doing, yes?
	You know?
	No, they just want to throw Martha Stewart in jail to teach everybody a lesson.
	That's what they want to do.
	Right.
	Hot damn.
	Alright, anyway, let's get back to the main content.
	And it turns out Dana White specifically really pushed for Trump to go on Rogan.
	But you're a person that seems to have had a relationship with Trump in particular for a long time, and whilst Trump is continually accused, particularly by his detractors of being dishonest and being a liar and that, I get the sense that he has the same type of authenticity that's formed the backbone of our conversation for this first 20 minutes.
	What's your analysis of why the phenomena of Trump is so powerful, how the Trump of 2016 succeeded, and why you believe, as I assume you do, that the Trump of 2024 will succeed?
	What, in particular, is it about him?
	Yeah, no, listen, Trump's one of the most authentic human beings you'll ever meet, and I've been friends with this guy for a long time, and I tell everybody that I come in contact with, and And interviews.
	He's the best.
	I love this guy.
	He's a great human being.
	And he is authentic enough to go on Joe Rogan's show for three and a half hours, unscripted, and talk about anything that popped up.
	Talk to Joe or anybody else, you know?
	And I pushed hard for him to do that interview because that's the setting that he needs to be in.
	Every time he does an interview with the mainstream media, it's all the same bullshit.
	And I knew that he and Rogan would sit down.
	More importantly, I knew he and Rogan would like each other.
	I needed to get those two together because I knew they would end up liking each other once they sat in a room together.
	Yeah, it's not hard to see that Rogan would like Trump.
	He spent the last several years riding the dude's dick.
	But what is important about this is the power that Dana White has in this situation.
	And obviously the power to put Trump in a situation where he's going to get fuck-all pushback from Rogan for three and a half hours.
	Unlike in any of the legacy media interviews that Trump would do.
	Some!
	Not even all!
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, we've dealt with Steve Bannon before as the malicious political arm of Trump, you know, the Emperor Palpatine of the peace.
	But to me, Dana White is the Vince McMahon of Trump.
	He's the P.T. Barnum of the Trump circus.
	To the extent that I think it could very genuinely be argued that without Dana White, Trump would have far, far less power and reach than he does now, and may not have ever become president in the first place.
	It was Dana White that got Trump in front of UFC audiences in 2016, who were already getting into QAnon, and of course Joe Rogan.
	And, you know, whether he realizes it or not, Dana got all the players together at just the right circus and made Donald Trump the ringmaster.
	And that particular brand of toxic masculine conspiracy theorist has only grown ever since, you know?
	Trump doesn't need a Vince McMahon of anything.
	He already has Vince McMahon.
	That's very true.
	Linda McMahon was in his cabinet.
	His cabinet.
	Yes, that's very true.
	Yeah.
	Former United States Administrator of the Small Business Association.
	She was in Trump's cabinet.
	Yes, she was.
	He just gets to have more of them.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Which is awful.
	There are new allegations coming out about Linda and Vince McMahon currently on basically abusing ring boys for lack of a better term.
	It's in the headlines.
	Sorry.
	It's a weird word, but that's true.
	Similar probably, I'd assume, to Jerry Falwell Jr.
	and what he was up to with his life and I don't know.
	Yeah, they're garbage.
	They're awful.
	I mean, they are garbage, but at the same time, man, they are the American dream.
	They are so good at working the grift, and they don't...
	They are unaffected by morals or ethics or anyone else that they injure.
	And yeah, if that to me is the American dream, I think it's disgusting.
	I've been alienated from it for most of my adult life, if not completely.
	I'm looking at it.
	I can't even tell them apart.
	Like, these white guys gotta, I don't know.
	But like, if you told me, if I just squint from far away and tell Dana White apart from, I'm surprised what it looks like every time, because I just, he looks exactly like Joe Rogan.
	He's less pink right now.
	just need to paint some nail polish on like you know like if you get turtles as a pet you paint one with like a red nail polish on their back and then one with like blue and you can tell them apart they just did that on their fucking bald heads it'd be easier for me if they were color coded it would really help me out um yeah yeah but still like The thing is, all the stuff they're saying, yeah, that's not wrong.
	Yeah, they are the same type of authentic.
	Yes, they would get along.
	- Oh, yeah. - And yeah, it's also interesting that Russell said how Trump succeeded in 2020 is a great way to say that he won without saying that he won.
	He succeeded in 20, his campaign was successful, as in popular in 2020, but he doesn't have to come out and say, Trump actually won the election, because I don't think that Russell is taking that stance or hasn't.
	Explicitly or even really implicitly.
	He's like, oh, it doesn't matter to me.
	He just gets to bow out.
	Pretty much.
	He got in on the ground after all of the election-stealing kind of thing.
	Stay Free came along after all that, so he's never really had to properly sign on to it.
	He entertains the ideas as he did with Rudy Giuliani.
	He's like, oh, interesting!
	But that's as far as he'll go.
	He doesn't have to be consistent either.
	I would also caution everyone listening.
	That someone getting along on a podcast does not mean they like each other.
	That means they're goddamn professionals.
	That's true.
	For, like, that selling point, like, y'all have no idea.
	Listen, I show up and I do my job that I'm supposed to do.
	I could be...
	Al and I could...
	We could...
	Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin loathe each other, but show up and do the goddamn job like a goddamn professional.
	I would hope that they would be cordial to each other in front of you, please.
	That's another galling, I'd want to have a beer with them thing.
	It's not that I don't want Kamala Harris and Joe Rogan to get along.
	Sure.
	That's a nice thing for people to be.
	That doesn't mean they like each other.
	Please do not misapprehend that reality is not reflected in a podcast presentation, regardless of how authentic it sounds. - Yeah. - That's, guys.
	Yeah.
	It's a product.
	Yeah, of course they're going to be nice.
	They're running for president, you know?
	That's the whole job.
	It's part of the job.
	Yes, yes.
	Except for Trump doesn't have to be nice.
	Trump gets to act like Trump because it has worked for Trump, kind of.
	That's true.
	Enough.
	Yeah.
	Oh, dear.
	Don't get it twisted, everybody.
	Yes.
	Don't get it twisted.
	Yes.
	Check those parasocial relationships.
	Okay, so now we get to a familiar, very stupid talking point from the alt-right.
	The scary part about, this is what's always fascinating to me, and how this is even real life right now is absolutely fucking mind-boggling to me.
	Now, they have determined after the last debate that Biden is unfit to run, right?
	Right.
	He's the president of the United States.
	What do you mean he's unfit to run?
	He's the president of the United States.
	And she's coming in and she's talking about all the change and all the things she's going to do.
	She is the sitting vice president of the United States.
	The last four years is her administration.
	No, it isn't.
	It's so not!
	What is this?
	Where is it even coming from?
	Oh my god!
	It would be called the Harris administration, not the Biden administration.
	Or are we just ignoring history now?
	Can we call 27 to 2021 the Pence administration years?
	Is that what he's trying to argue?
	Because I don't fucking think he is.
	You know?
	I don't know if this is intentional or they just didn't want to change their talking points from Biden to Harris.
	Like, obviously they were ready and willing to trounce Biden who was weak.
	It was not particularly democratic, but there were also legal kind of limitations as far as, yeah, we didn't have a primary that really did this the right way.
	That'll come up in a minute.
	Well, I'd rather have this than the Biden option.
	That would go worse.
	So we are in a number between several rocks and hard places as American voters.
	It sucks.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And while Biden is certainly not fit to last another four years as president, he is, I would say, just about fit to do the job now with help and a good long nap and a very short workday.
	Okay.
	It's not ideal.
	I'm going to concede that to Dana White.
	It's not great.
	But...
	Yeah, valid question.
	We're all asking and not getting an answer.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's fair.
	It's fair.
	But, of course, Dana White isn't quite done with this line of thinking.
	And the fact that anybody can even consider Voting for her and this administration is unbelievable.
	And the scarier part is, who's running the country right now?
	Who is actually running the country?
	And the brilliant thing that I think is absolutely amazing, whoever it is, and whatever's going on right now, they have figured out a way to slide Kamala Harris in here, right?
	Without one person voting for her, because if they put her up to vote, There'd be another Democrat in there.
	She would have never even come close to getting this far, right?
	And if they can pull this off, whoever is really running the country right now will still be in power for another four years.
	And the fact that this is even real life is absolutely fucking insane.
	Aha!
	Okay.
	If his claim that a vice president has this much power, like, you can't have it both ways.
	If you're claiming that a vice president has this much power, because, yeah, if you voted for Biden-Harris in the primary, you still voted for Harris to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
	So if what they're claiming is true, that vice presidents have this much power that they are claiming that they do, then you are undermining your own argument by people voting in the primary for a Biden-Harris run.
	He's undermining two of his own arguments here, which I think is remarkable.
	So there's a shady cabal of people running things from behind the scenes, right?
	Perhaps it's that infamous deep state I keep hearing about, or maybe it's the globalists, So maybe it's the globalists running the deep state.
	It's a very convenient boogeyman to have in the back pocket.
	Because obviously, if Joe Biden was as completely fucked as these people like to make out, the country would in fact be in shambles, or Kamala Harris would have taken over as president.
	So it's either, well, maybe Joe Biden isn't that unwell, or there's a shady cabal running the government and pulling the strings.
	Um, and, uh, second option is way more fun to play around in.
	Or, the reality of the situation is you vote for an administration, not a mascot!
	Because if we were voting on a mascot, our president would be gritty!
	That's the fucking truth!
	And genuinely, that'd be a more honest fucking election to me, because- Like, get it, like, everybody get it through your fucking thick skulls.
	Oh my god, I'm sorry I'm talking on Tuesday and Thursday.
	It's not even gonna matter.
	But, like, you are voting for, by voting for Trump, you are voting for Elon Musk to be in the government.
	You are voting for RFK Jr.
	to be in the government.
	Just like with Bush, you were voting for Cheney and Rove to have access to the levers of power.
	It is baffling to me.
	Listen, it wouldn't be in shambles.
	We have had comatose presidents before.
	That's a real thing.
	And nothing really went down about it from a very smart first lady who got some shit done.
	We have had very sick presidents before.
	And no, the country hasn't fallen apart.
	And that is because the system has checks and balances and it's not a dictatorship.
	If it were a dictatorship, that would be a much bigger problem, which if I were a Trump voter, I would consider the health of my own president for the four years that he'd have to still function because he...
	Well, he's not that much in charge.
	Okay.
	So if he was the dictator they wanted, then that would be an issue.
	But he loves golf.
	No.
	So like...
	The reason that the country isn't in shambles even though Biden probably doesn't have a whole lot of bandwidth to do much because being the president is hard, especially if you're over 80!
	Yeah.
	And maybe that we shouldn't be in a gerontocracy to fucking begin with.
	The reality of the situation is there's a whole ass administration that is running the government and it's not one guy.
	So wanting to have beer with one guy or one guy to talk to one other fucking guy, that's not how you should decide who to fucking vote for.
	It's policy.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	There are rules!
	That's why!
	Yeah.
	And I will say, we can't truly know what would have happened had there been a primary race, and I would have liked there to be a very quick one.
	But I think it's fair to say that the sitting vice president would have been in with a good shot at the nomination either way, right?
	An outsize advantage, yes.
	This idea that Harris would have just been demolished by her competition is fucking laughable.
	Yeah, citation needed, Dana.
	Yeah.
	And also, I would bet a good amount of money they wouldn't be saying this shit if she was a man.
	This argument would not be coming up.
	Who fucking knows?
	No.
	Because the thing is, they're making all the arguments.
	It doesn't matter if Dana White- Because we're listening to him contradict himself over and over right now.
	They're going to say whatever sticks to the wall.
	They're throwing spaghetti at the wall and whatever sticks, sticks.
	So they might package the argument differently, but I don't think they're going to say whatever they're going to say.
	Because it doesn't matter, because no one's going to hold them to the hypocrisy.
	So then it doesn't hurt them to say contradictory things.
	That's fair.
	That is fair.
	They know that!
	They know that first!
	They knew that before we figured it out!
	Yeah.
	So now Dana White wants to tell us how much of a good guy Donald Trump is.
	When we first bought the UFC, the stigma that was attached to this thing was so bad that venues didn't even want us.
	We had a hard time getting into venues.
	And Trump literally reached out and said, you know, think about it.
	Trump brand at that time, UFC brand down here.
	And I said, love to have you at the Trump Taj Mahal.
	We ended up working out a deal, went down there.
	We did two events.
	He showed up for the first fight of the night and stayed to the last fight.
	And then after that, everything that ever happened to me in my career, Donald Trump would reach out and say, congratulations.
	Donald Trump is a good guy.
	It's crazy when you look at another thing that's...
	Absolutely insane to me.
	Everybody's talking about, oh my God, if he becomes the President of the United States, he's going to take away these people's rights.
	He was already the President of the United States.
	What are you talking about?
	He's already been proven that he was a good President of the United States.
	What do you mean it's the end of the world if he gets in there?
	Another crazy narrative that they're able to sell to really stupid people.
	Aw, cute.
	He just called me stupid while genuinely asking the question, how is it even possible that someone could do a good thing one time and a bad thing another time?
	I just don't get it!
	Um, yeah.
	So, obviously, the first Trump presidency was, in fact, a fucking horror show.
	Um, and the reason it would be worse this time is Trump has completely altered not only the judicial system but also the systems of the people surrounding him.
	There are no longer guardrails, and quite the opposite, there are legions of dedicated followers wanting to do the bidding of their god-king and those who prop the god-king up.
	Namely, you know, the authors of that little document called Project 2025 for a start.
	The first Trump presidency was marked by incompetence as much as malice, and the version we're looking at now has a far more competent team of willing lackeys around him.
	The raptors have learned how to open the cage this time around, right?
	That's what we're looking at.
	Yeah, he distilled his administration to who he could definitely...
	He doesn't want to do it.
	He's just letting other people...
	He wants to make money, so he's letting other people do whatever they need to do.
	Genuinely, he didn't want Roe vs.
	Wade to be overturned because he knew it would be a bad look that he'd have to fight against.
	Yeah.
	So that's why this whole states' rights argument, which should have been...
	It's not even...
	Post-Reconstruction, sorry.
	State rights don't...
	Nope.
	That's not a thing anymore.
	That's not a thing.
	Sorry.
	Well, right.
	But we're not honest about how our country runs.
	So why would we start now?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that genuinely...
	The fact that Dana White is saying, oh, he came and stayed at the whole fight at his own casino.
	Wow, shocking.
	So yeah, Trump loves attention, sycophants, and watching people get hurt.
	Yeah, stop the presses.
	I will say with that event as well, like, obviously it was televised and everything else, and Trump got a lot of camera time, and his name was plastered all over that venue on the inside and everywhere.
	He got a lot out of hosting that event at the Trump Taj Mahal.
	I'd stay the whole time too.
	Yeah!
	Yeah, they keep panning the camera to me.
	You know, like, yeah, I'm gonna stick around.
	You usually stay at your own party the whole time.
	I wouldn't brag about that.
	I think that's just kind of what you should expect.
	And if you don't expect that, well, that's the other party maker's fault.
	Then you should take that as an insult and don't work with them in the future, Dana.
	Yeah, no shit.
	Yeah, right.
	And, like, Donald Trump being nice to you, another rich white guy who benefits him in both business and politics, does not, in fact, mean that he's a good guy.
	It means you are useful to him, Dana.
	Like, that's what that is.
	He might not be able to tell you apart either.
	He might think you're Joe Rogan.
	I had a three-hour conversation with Dana White the other day.
	Yeah, without nail polish on your head or a fucking name tag, God only knows who he's talking to.
	Do you genuinely think that Trump knows who he's talking to all the time?
	I don't.
	Come on.
	Like, really?
	Yeah, he's certainly proven he doesn't know which black person he's talking to a lot of the time.
	That's been shown.
	And coming off of this, the next clip takes a turn to being borderline sad.
	But anyway, Trump has always been a good guy.
	He's a good person, comes from a good family.
	His kids are all good people.
	It's just when the machine starts to attack, man, I don't care how big you are, how much money you have, how long you've been around, they come guns a blazing, man.
	And let me tell you what.
	You realize in life, I always say this, when the shit hits the fan, you realize who's who.
	And a lot of the people scatter.
	And I didn't.
	He was always a good guy to me.
	When he asked me to speak for him, I said I'd be honored to.
	And now, I mean, Trump is literally a very, very good friend of mine.
	We are very close.
	Yeah, I cut a bunch of it out because it was so frequent.
	But Dana White very genuinely spends a lot of this interview reiterating how close he and Trump are and how they're good friends and how they're very close.
	And girl, it doesn't matter how many times you say it if he never says it back, you know?
	I'm just putting that out there, Dana.
	Oh no, I think it's true.
	I've seen it too many times.
	I mean, I think it's true.
	And also in a lot of Kareem's, like, it's baffling.
	Like, in a lot of Kareem's coverage, like, that's what he talked...
	He's like, these people are getting...
	And with the McMahons, yeah, they're all...
	They're all, like, terrifyingly effective scammy grifter psychopaths.
	Of fucking course they get along.
	Listeners, hey, everybody who can hear my voice right now, if that kind of thing...
	If you can hear that kind of thing from a white guy with power...
	And that makes you trust someone?
	Stop.
	Don't.
	Please don't.
	He's always been nice to me.
	That can be someone's reality in and of itself, and that's where that stops.
	And it's not anyone's fault.
	They're not lying.
	They're not misrepresenting their experience.
	I'm sure that Dana...
	I mean, Dana White, I think, is overestimating Trump's ability to...
	Have friends.
	Let's define friend.
	Can we define the word friend?
	Because the thing is, I think even trusted associate, I buy that.
	Friendship, I think we need to define what that means.
	Dana, Trump, everybody.
	Oh, we're not going to because it's not convenient.
	Okay, great.
	So if you hear someone say, oh, he's always been nice to me, follow up.
	What if he wasn't?
	Actually, did you see him interact with other people?
	How did that go?
	Did you speak up?
	Did it bother you?
	Do you have a little tinge?
	Are you also a fucking monster?
	Then you like them?
	Great.
	Okay.
	Or that person...
	The thing is, if you are moving through the world the way that Dana White, Russell Brand, and Donald Trump are for their own gain, demonstrably the way that they present in the world is manipulative by its very nature.
	Yeah.
	And to a degree, we all show up how we want to in the world, right?
	But they have a lot of power, so the stakes are a lot higher.
	Yeah.
	And if you hear someone say, like, oh, man, he's always been nice to me, great for you.
	That's where that thought stops.
	Mm-hmm.
	if you reply with, well, I saw, I saw him smother a bunch of puppies the other day.
	So where's the middle here?
	That's when you, that's when you push back on with your own little, you, you, you unfurl your own dossier and compare notes.
	And if that person isn't even willing to compare notes with you, that's all you need to know.
	That's all you need to know.
	Because that person isn't going to listen.
	Doesn't matter how much you fucking talk.
	Unless that person has a change of heart inside themselves, they are not going to listen to you.
	And it doesn't matter because, oh, well, I had this experience.
	I'm special.
	I'm different.
	That's a pick-me boy.
	He's being a real pick-me potato right now.
	Yeah, there is a bit of that.
	Also, I nearly rolled out my fucking chair when I heard this guy say that Trump is from a good family.
	Why?
	Why?
	Trump's dad was a racist old piece of shit land baron slash parasite, you know?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	He was rich and legitimately held a place of prominence for decades in New York.
	Why is that surprising?
	Like, that's just...
	It's a point of view these people have.
	We have to engage with the reality that that is a point of view these people have, and that's where they're coming from.
	So the things that they say sound way less crazy if you already know where they're coming from.
	Like, I just...
	I'm the most upset and least surprised almost all the time because, like, is it galling?
	Is it, like, still surprising even though you know?
	It's like, wow, hearing it come out of their mouth, still getting hit in the face with a fish.
	But, like, we should, like, that's...
	The stuff that Trump has been saying recently that people are really upset about coming out, like...
	Yeah, he's a eugenicist.
	He thinks that your genes determine everything in your life.
	So he's...
	All the things that he's saying...
	Robert Evans had our back.
	Also, like, dirty money on Netflix in, like, what, 20-fucking-17 or something?
	Like, that...
	My dad using Trump as an example of how to explain how bankruptcies work in America.
	We've known this.
	We've known this.
	It's shocking to hear.
	It's shocking that it works, but it shouldn't be surprising because this is entirely within especially his belief structure.
	Oh yeah, I know why he's saying it.
	By Trump's belief structure.
	Yeah, yeah, and Dana White's perspective as well, you know, is, I mean, in order to be from a good family, all that actually has to mean is wealthy and powerful family, and that, to them, that is the same thing.
	And nice to him.
	Yes, right.
	I'm sure they're very nice.
	Important qualifier, yes.
	Yes.
	Yeah!
	You know how easy it is to be nice when you're spoiled fucking babies in like a box at a UFC? If you're the most important man at a UFC fight that is, that people, the rebel had to pay 50 fucking bucks a TV to watch?
	Yeah!
	I'd be real fucking nice too!
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Okay, so we're going to move on a little bit and now we learn what Dana White's response was during the pandemic.
	How did you handle the position of being, I guess, to some degree, responsible of what was a near-mandated medical matter?
	Yeah, at that time, you know, I was looking down the barrel of, I have 650 employees, and, you know, you have to start making hard decisions, you know, laying people off and making these cuts.
	Some of these people that have been with me have been with me for 20 years.
	So, the UFC was this rocket ship of success for many years, and, you know, All these people that worked for me, you know, we never really faced real adversity after we got through the early days.
	And the first time the shit hits the fan, I'm going to go out and lay off 38% of my staff.
	There's no way that was going to happen.
	You know, I'm one of these guys that this is America.
	We don't roll over and we don't quit.
	And if this thing's as bad as they're saying it is, we're all dead anyway.
	I mean, I'm going to go out fighting.
	I'm not going to go hide in my house.
	Until the government tells me it's time to come out.
	So that was never my position.
	The whole COVID thing never made sense to me.
	And even when I caught COVID, let me tell you what I did.
	I was getting in my steam room, right?
	And I sprayed some eucalyptus in there.
	I didn't smell anything.
	I said, oh shit.
	I opened the eucalyptus thing and sniffed it.
	Nothing.
	I said, I got COVID. I got out of the steam room.
	I didn't call my doctor.
	I didn't call the hospital.
	I called Joe Rogan.
	I literally called Joe Rogan.
	I said, I think I got COVID. And he said, get some monoclonal antibodies, take some ivermectin and get an NAD drip.
	I literally did that stuff that day.
	The next morning when I woke up, I had my smell and taste back.
	And I never got sick from COVID. Never even came remotely close to getting sick when I got COVID. So I was never believing any of the bullshit that the government was telling me anyway.
	Wow.
	One, not true.
	That's a lie.
	He lied.
	There's no way that's true.
	If you go from not being able to smell or taste anything, also has agreed before.
	Two.
	Right.
	Would you like me to tell you a story like Dana White?
	Hey, guys.
	Gather round.
	Get a load of this.
	How fucking stupid I am.
	I'm about to tell you a story of how dumb I am and how bad my decision-making processes typically are.
	In this one instance, I called Joe Rogan instead of a doctor, even though I could have just gotten Tamivu or whatever.
	Like...
	And I get that that's usually what, like, white guys on podcasts, to be fair, is they, most of them should just be named like, hey, listen, what a fucking idiot I am for about an hour and 20 minutes.
	The podcast.
	But that would be too confusing, so they need to name them different stuff.
	I get that.
	Nevertheless.
	Yeah, that was...
	Not a point to brag about.
	No, no, if that is true, how cooked do you need to be to, like, to get into what is at that time a medical emergency and your first thought was, ah, I'm gonna call Joe Rogan and ask his advice on this medical situation.
	For a lot of us, we didn't call the doctor.
	We knew we had COVID and we're like, gotta ride it out.
	We called the couch.
	We didn't call a doctor because we didn't necessarily have that option.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You just had to hunker down and get through it.
	Yeah.
	With tax livid is great.
	Don't do that anymore, please.
	Because people are still getting...
	There's a round...
	Everybody's getting COVID again right now, at least in America, right?
	It's coming.
	Yeah.
	Paxlovid works great.
	Please call a doctor and get Paxlovid.
	It makes a difference.
	Do it, do it, do it.
	Also, masks and vaccines.
	We still need to be doing these things, right?
	All the good stuff.
	I've stocked up on tests over here as well.
	Yeah, but before all that, I did also love the perspective of like...
	This is America.
	I'm not going to hide in my house from some invisible virus that's killing people.
	I'm going to go down fighting.
	I'm going to get my gun on Eagle and I'm going to go and punch that virus right in the mouth because this is America.
	Okay.
	That didn't work out very well for a lot of America, but okay.
	Okay.
	You also know that what we did during the influenza epidemic in 1913 is people realized this was not the good choice, but...
	When people realized that wearing masks significantly reduced the body count of the influenza epidemic, they were celebrating.
	They had a parade.
	Bad idea.
	Super spreader event.
	Don't do that.
	So Americans are still dumb, but it was a completely different atmosphere.
	People were desperate for anything, and when they found something that worked, they were so excited That there were ticker tape parades all over the country.
	Like, it's, again...
	But you had a solution, and Americans were thrilled.
	Like, this is...
	Pick which America you want to make great again.
	When was again?
	When was again for you?
	Oh, was it when we were...
	Like, when Jonas Salt saved children and everyone was really excited about, like, modern medicine?
	No?
	Okay.
	All right.
	Whatever.
	Well, speaking of all this, let's hear Russell's take on how the vaccine rollout and everything should have been handled.
	And what I start to think on the macro level, Dana, when looking, say, at the archetypal energy underneath these things, and this was also visible, I think, during that period, is there's an attack on not only sort of masculinity, although clearly there is, and also femininity, although clearly there is.
	There's a sort of...
	An attack on, like, the spirit of people.
	Like, we don't want spirited people that are going to go, there is adversity now, but that means we're going to have to fight.
	That means we're going to have to oppose it, we're going to have to come together, we're going to have to make some difficult decisions.
	They want a population of people that are like, what's happening?
	Okay, should we do that?
	Alright then.
	And a lot of people are exposed curiously, because I always think in your country, America in particular, people don't like being told what to do.
	I don't like being told what to do.
	The only reason I've not had that shot is not because I'm a scientist.
	It's because if someone tells me to do something, I don't like that.
	I'll do things to help people, but I don't like being told to do stuff.
	It bothers me.
	It's always bothered me.
	So I don't trust people.
	In fact, if they'd really wanted me to take that vaccine, they should have just put a pack of them somewhere in my house and told me not to touch it under any circumstances.
	I'd have gone there and I took them up and down my arm.
	But as soon as I knew, they were telling me to do it.
	I'm like, hmm, I don't know about that.
	Russell once again confirming he's in fact a fucking child, permanently working from a position of oppositional defiance.
	But like, for real, don't make the argument of reverse psychology on the whole country.
	I don't think that would have worked.
	I genuinely don't.
	That's not a good argument.
	That's silly.
	Yes, it's completely ludicrous.
	And what blew my mind about that was actually the little bit at the start.
	After the faintly coded anti-trans shit, he was saying that there's an attack on the spirit of people.
	And the government or globalists or whoever don't want people to come together and unify through adversity and make difficult decisions.
	And motherfucker, that's what the rest of us were doing!
	The difficult decision was staying in our homes.
	It was wearing a mask.
	It was distancing.
	It was being considerate of the lives of others.
	But that's not the position that Russell is coming from.
	The difficult decision he wants made is how many people are we collectively happy to let die for the sake of our personal freedoms?
	How many elderly?
	How many vulnerable?
	How many with health conditions?
	Because I want to be able to waltz about the place and do whatever the fuck I want.
	So who gives a shit about anyone else if it doesn't affect me and it's only a small percentage?
	Fuck them.
	That's where he's coming from.
	And I realize, to the uninitiated, it may sound like I'm putting words in his mouth, but I promise you, he talks about the shit every single week, and it's the same goddamn story.
	He wants to do what he wants to do, fuck everyone else.
	Yeah, shocking how a rich white guy that hangs out with other rich white guys doesn't feel compelled to help people.
	Because when COVID happened, and I noticed like, well, I mean, again, I'm like plugged into news and it's a privilege to be plugged into the news that was actually giving me information I could use.
	But yeah, starting in March, I started contacting mutual aid groups in my area because there was not enough masks to go around.
	So I started sewing masks.
	That's actually what, that's like the good part of America or any community, but definitely like Americans, if like they're not being fed a steady stream of like absolutely absurd disinformation with no really great resources to remedy that problem, then like what they do is organize to help.
	That's like, that is the thing that we should have been like, you know, that's a legacy that we should still have that we should be proud of.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because I saw that happen and it was awesome.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	But Russell doesn't consider any of this stuff to be helping people.
	Because he just said, oh, I'll do stuff to help people.
	But apparently none of this stuff.
	Yeah, she goes to a different school.
	You don't know her.
	Yeah, exactly right.
	He did it.
	You just don't know about it.
	He'll pay other people to do it.
	So now we learn who else Dana White likes to take medical advice from.
	So, like, a lot was revealed by that authoritarian position.
	Now, given that during that pandemic period, also people weren't being told to eat healthy, weren't being told to exercise, do you think there's, like, an attack from, say, big food, big agriculture, big pharma, and the media in general, to stop people being, like, healthy and embodied and strong?
	Like, they kind of want people to be weak and without leaders.
	It's almost like human strength itself that they're against.
	Yeah, I mean, that's going deep into the rabbit hole.
	But yeah, I don't disagree.
	Listen, at the end of the day, when you talk about, you know, you were talking about, or I was saying, you know, the New York Times coming after me saying I care more about money and instead of human life and all that, all that crap.
	Let me tell you what.
	Big Pharma is very powerful.
	And, you know, they have a lot of control over what goes on in this country.
	And if you don't think that that is why the Democrats started attacking Robert Kennedy Jr., I mean, there's no doubt about it.
	I have said many times, I met a guy named Gary Brecka three years ago.
	Changed my whole life, you know.
	And...
	He got me off all the medicine that I was on.
	I was on high blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, thyroid medicine.
	Now all I take is supplements and all of my stuff.
	And my doctor that I had for years, when I first got on my high blood pressure medicine, I said to him, isn't there, could I diet?
	Could I do this and that?
	And my doctor looked at me and said, you can eat cardboard.
	It's not going to matter.
	It doesn't make a difference.
	It's hereditary.
	And you're never going to change this.
	And when you really think about these doctors that go to school these days, they practice medicine.
	That's what they practice.
	They don't figure out how to fix things or make you healthy.
	For whatever is wrong with you, they have a pill that's going to take care of it.
	That is what's going on right now in this country.
	Okay.
	Who wants to start the heart attack pool?
	Right, well, this is it.
	So, you have all these serious medical conditions, including what sounds like a serious hereditary condition, where your doctor is like, yeah, it doesn't matter what you do elsewhere in your life, only medication is going to be able to help this situation.
	And then this other guy, Gary Brecker, who claims to be a biohacker, tells you to come off all medicine, and you do it!
	And I just can't help but feeling that Dana White might not be long for this world, you know?
	I'm like, this seems ill-advised.
	Yeah.
	Why are you trying to get off like with a hereditary kind of like predisposition?
	You're like, I don't take my statin anymore.
	Do you think if you stop taking your statin for your high blood pressure that you're going to die tomorrow?
	That's not how it works.
	And grifters like supplement fucking grifters know that.
	100% they do.
	And for Gary Brecker, it's like, for the unaware, Gary Brecker is a pseudoscientific fitfluencer guru guy, right?
	You know, another wellness health person telling the people the evils of, well, every single food on the planet, essentially.
	And I'm going to read a few selections from a piece by Derek Berers of the Conspirituality Podcast, because they've covered Brecker.
	Quote, My problem is Brecker's playbook,
	which mimics most conspiracy playbooks, identify a problem that may or may not be a problem, and instead of offering actual solutions, sell something.
	Brecker sells a lot.
	10x health system products include a $133,000 light bed, oxygen machine, and red light mat kit.
	Okay.
	You can just get the mat with the light panels for $18,000 or splurge on just the light bed for $119,000.
	And there's also plenty of supplements and electrolytes which the company will sell you after its $600 genetic test has been done.
	So, Brecker is listed as Tenex's co-founder, chief human biologist, and life coach.
	He claims expertise on serum blood and genetic biomarkers, which is suspect without the appropriate degrees, but makes sense if you're selling blood and genetic tests, which are inevitably followed by supplements and red light therapy.
	Unquote.
	So, yeah.
	Is he a phlebotomist?
	Right!
	Because if not...
	I got a bone to pick with his qualifications.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So the long and short of it is this dude's a bullshit artist and snake oil salesman who managed to successfully con Dana White out of taking his probably very necessary medicines for what sound like fairly serious medical conditions.
	Yeah, man.
	Like, oh no.
	That's okay.
	So that's the thing.
	Like, as a person who has gone to the doctor and be like, why is my blood pressure?
	Like, my diet does not reflect, like, basically, like, going through all, like, why is your, why is X, Y, and Z this?
	Like, oh, say, what do you eat?
	Do you exercise?
	Blah, blah, blah.
	Like, oh, okay.
	Well, then it's genetic.
	It's like a genetic issue.
	And you take a pill that could save your life.
	But it doesn't save your life today.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	So this is an excellent example of how the wellness industry can take advantage.
	Because what are you going to do?
	Instead, you just take all these supplements.
	And then when you do have a cardiac event, make sure you keep all your receipts so you demand your money back when this guy told you to take all this stuff.
	And also genuinely, maybe you are paying more attention to what you eat and exercise.
	Yeah, well, Dana White has gone keto as well around the same time, but it's hard to say whether that's a purely Gary Brecker recommendation or not.
	That's not heart healthy.
	No, I didn't think that.
	I was like, that doesn't seem like the right diet for you.
	Well, we're back to the heart attack pool, everybody.
	Yeah.
	Nobody scare him.
	From earlier in the clip, the thing about the New York Times saying that he valued money more than life is that the UFC continued operating throughout the entire of COVID is what happened.
	They kept hosting fights and things.
	They fucked off over to the Middle East.
	They did some on an island.
	Fight an island, yeah.
	That's a whole That's a whole thing.
	That's a whole thing.
	Yeah, and also, yeah, the Democrats came for RFK Jr.
	because Big Pharma.
	That's what happened there.
	It's not because he's full of shit or anything, but to be fair- He's actively dangerous, personally and systemically.
	Like, he's dangerous on every possible level.
	Given what I just read out, I'm thinking perhaps Dana isn't the best person to be making this assessment, you know?
	That's where I've landed.
	I'd stop at the, hey guys, listen to how dumb I am story.
	I think that maybe...
	Like, live your life, man.
	But don't tell me that you get to make decisions for other people.
	Sorry, that's not...
	In fact, you get to make decisions for a lot of other people.
	I don't need a further explanation about prioritizing money over human life.
	COVID or not, look at where your money comes from.
	But we know that he doesn't have to look where his money comes from because of the sponsor that was just on this episode previously, that there is no connection for these people to be accountable for where their money comes from.
	Let alone what they do with it!
	Let alone what they do with the money and the power once they have it.
	Speaking of sponsors, we have a second ad, and this one was surprisingly instructive.
	There's an election coming!
	Did you know?
	Did you not watch the news?
	It's on November the 5th.
	Did you know that 30% of registered voters don't turn out to vote?
	And 23% of people under 30 voted in the last election.
	That means what?
	77% didn't vote!
	That's crazy!
	This website Sendthevote.org forward slash brand makes registering to vote easy.
	It's non-partisan.
	That means they don't care who you vote for.
	Obviously, you can tell from the platform that this is being advertised on that these people care, but this is open to anyone.
	Go to sendthevote.org forward slash brand and register to vote at this crucial, important, forthcoming election.
	Mm-hmm.
	Tell me what this really is, please.
	Yeah, so if I go to sendthevote.org and scroll down, right, first thing I see is a tagline that says, make men matter, send your vote to show them, which feels weird.
	I didn't know that was an issue!
	It didn't be resolved!
	It was to me!
	Underneath that, you enter your address, email, and mobile number, right?
	And Russell's specific URL, if you go to his one, it's a more generic, you send it, we secure it, with the same boxes underneath.
	It basically seems to be a recurring text messaging program that sends alerts and voting updates, because, you know, you in the States don't get enough of those.
	You need more to sign up to.
	The Make Men Matter thing obviously struck me a little weird, so I found their Twitter account, and other than also finding this same thing being sold by Theo Vaughn, I found a post saying, quote, Make Men Matter!
	Men's rights are on the ballot this year!
	Send your vote and share with your friends!
	Unquote.
	And I'll be damned if that doesn't feel like a very specific lens, huh?
	So, back to the Send the Vote website.
	At the bottom, it says, powered by VotePro.
	And so, I clicked on that, wondering what the fuck VotePro is.
	And here is a press release from the Republican National Committee.
	Quote, VotePro is a one-stop shop made by Republicans for Republicans, where any voter in America can register to vote, check voter registration status, request a mail ballot, etc., etc.
	VotePro is a fee-free tool which is available for all Republican organizations and groups to use in GOTV campaigns, whether it is supporting efforts for a campaign, state party, committee, or PAC. All websites are customizable, no coding required.
	Voters can get assistance casting their ballot directly and securely through custom sites due to best-in-class technology.
	VotePro will stay up-to-date in all 50 states and D.C., providing Republican campaigns with unprecedented flexibility and freedom to get out the vote." So Send the Vote is powered by a Republican-only voting assistance tool paid for and built for Republicans, meaning Send the Vote itself is exclusive to Republicans.
	And while, audience, we all know that Russell is right-wing, we've known that a long time, but hot damn, it does feel good to have something concrete to point to that isn't just the words tumbling out of his mouth every week.
	Everyone can say words.
	Everyone can say words.
	Not everyone is getting paid by the Republican Party to get Republican voters out to polls, but Russell appears to be.
	And so is Theovan.
	Yeah.
	He could also just make the excuse that sendthevote.org is not affiliated.
	He didn't know.
	It's a show game.
	Yeah.
	He said he hates gambling and doesn't believe in it, but he's taking money.
	But he also pitched a gambling app to gamble illegally on our election.
	Yeah, he doesn't need to give a shit.
	I'm not saying it's right.
	I'm saying the lie is effective enough because he's like, send the vote.org sounds like a great.
	You can be any kind of thing you want to be if you want to sign up through their website.
	It's a really useful tool.
	It doesn't say you have to be a Republican now.
	Everything is that you want you to be a Republican.
	And again, like, what do we see?
	Right.
	Like they're just this is data mining for a constituency that they are.
	There has to be some kind of money and sending all these fucking text messages because I've been getting 15 a day for two goddamn months.
	Somebody's got to be putting money somewhere.
	And this is another example of packaging, packaging and making more complicated services that are already free and readily available or very cheap and readily available to the public.
	So that's what he's selling.
	He's selling a middleman for something you can already get for free that's already from the government and convincing people that it's not.
	So it's actively harmful, just like the tax debt relief whatever people.
	It's inserting a middleman where there does not need to be one or if you need help There's usually free, cheap or free help available to citizens that is far less complex and far less difficult to manage.
	But this is where we're centering on a very specific portion of the population, which is a bummer.
	Yep.
	So from here, when we discuss horseshoe theory in general, a lot of people talk about the crunchy to alt-right pipeline, right?
	So, you know, the hippie wellness new age types becoming increasingly right-wing before going full batshit.
	And I think what has been discussed more recently is that it's sometimes a two-way street, you know, and that's what Dana White was kind of discussing with Gary Brecker is going from the alt-right to more of the crunchy side of things.
	And you get that with RFK Jr.
	as well, I think.
	We've got a little bit more of that in this clip here.
	You can see now why that was a perfect storm, that pandemic period, and in particular when Joe Rogan gave not only advice to you about what you should be doing to respond to COVID, but, you know, to hundreds of millions of people, why they had to work pretty hard to try and take that guy down.
	And the fact that the media were willing to participate in that shows you again the lack of authenticity and the type of dark integrity that they have between them.
	Well, what's fascinating is, I mean, you saw the attack on ivermectin, right?
	They started attacking ivermectin.
	The problem with ivermectin is it's really cheap and it did work.
	The other thing was monoclonal antibodies.
	So after I did the thing with Rogan, I started talking publicly about the monoclonal antibodies.
	And you could call like an IV company and they could give you monoclonal antibodies.
	Then I noticed immediately...
	Those started getting harder to get.
	They started shutting that down.
	Anything...
	Shutting down or running out, Dana!
	The greatest thing that's ever happened to me was the pandemic, okay?
	It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I would have never known had it not happened.
	I always believed in modern medicine and this holistic shit I used to call hippie shit.
	Like the Gary Brekka stuff, I'm like, yeah, they're a bunch of nutty hippies and, you know...
	Then once I tried it, met him, it completely changed my whole life.
	And the whole COVID thing, all of that opened my eyes to the government, health, what's real, what's not real.
	I'm not falling for any bullshit anymore after we've been through that.
	The only thing I could think of when he said he's not falling for any bullshit was, I wonder if he's got one of Gary Brecker's light healing beds in his house.
	And I bet money that he does.
	If I was Gary, I'd fucking send him one.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Duh.
	Why not?
	Does he use it?
	But it's there.
	Anyway, Dana White's brain got pretty broken during the pandemic, much like a lot of other people's, I think.
	There were signs before.
	Also, the monoclonal antibodies thing he was talking about, those are a real thing that are sometimes used by actual doctors to treat actual things, including some COVID effects.
	But so far as I can tell, the entire point is they have to be specifically tailored to whatever it is they're fighting.
	Like, you can't just get a syringe full of antibodies, shove it in yourself in a combo with ivermectin, and be like, well, now I'm fine!
	And, yeah, I bet it did get harder to find them after you started talking about them on Joe Rogan's fucking podcast, you complete moron!
	It's amazing to say they stopped it.
	They were running out.
	Actions have consequences and demand doesn't always have supply, right?
	You know?
	Like, you spoke about these very specific medical things on the biggest podcast in the world and were mystified when suddenly they were harder to come by.
	And this was during a time when we had supply chain issues over fucking toilet paper.
	And this guy is like, well, why can't I get a hold of my monoclonal antibodies all of a sudden?
	It must be a conspiracy.
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry that you had to learn about the supply chain then.
	It's a stressful time.
	But yeah, that's like...
	Correlation does not equal causation, my guy.
	No, it does not.
	Okay, so I do have...
	And this is not my unique feeling, necessarily.
	And it's not.
	I've heard other...
	Other folks talking about this, but I definitely agree that I don't think that horseshoe theory is what we think it is.
	I don't think that it necessarily applies.
	I don't think that it was a brain-breaking as a heel turn.
	I don't think this was necessarily unpredictable or it's unprecedented throughout history.
	I have a ton of examples that counter that.
	Yeah.
	Just in my mind right now.
	I don't think it's unprecedented either.
	Well, the thing is about horseshoe theory is the notion is that you're going from left to right, but then they go in the middle or it's a circle.
	If you are coming from a place of authoritarian thinking, if you want a strong man, if you follow a guru, That is an authoritarian, top-down, hierarchical structure.
	And crunchy granola types, I think we're not nearly as aware of.
	Genuinely, I think that they were packaged authoritarian structures in a way that did not seem that way and had really, really good marketing around it.
	But if you are led by a guru or if you trust one person implicitly because of...
	Reasons that are unrelated to the subject at hand.
	If it's a cult of personality, it's a cult of personality.
	And it kind of doesn't matter what your beliefs are because any popularity contest can be exploited for this exact reason.
	So yeah, that's what it means to decolonize your mind and to kill the cop in your head is to dismantle the authoritarian thinking around...
	Politics and society.
	Instead, using multiple sources of information and trusting a panel of doctors or a series of specialists and experts in their field.
	There's a lot of...
	Basically, marketing and retail that went into the problems with COVID that looks like horseshoe theory.
	And I think we could have done a lot before we got there to fix the problem.
	And I don't like that it is simplified in this way on either side.
	I think it's really dangerous because there are still things that everyone could do.
	To point out authoritarian control where it is.
	And just because somebody's got white dreadlocks and a lot of caftan doesn't mean they're not just as authoritarian as a MAGA guy.
	Oh, for sure.
	Do not misapprehend me.
	You can be the same.
	So putting one on top of the other...
	Those pieces fit together a lot more comfortably than I think people are willing to engage with.
	Everybody's just a fucking human being.
	You can be a monster, but you're a monster that's still mortal that can be wrong.
	So thinking that, well, that person's right because I like them.
	Don't think that.
	That's a bad thought.
	That's a bad thought.
	Yeah.
	It's not going to work out.
	Those can be two separate – like, I like them.
	They're right.
	Those are two separate thoughts, and that's fine.
	But they are not – that one does not cause the other.
	Yeah.
	You got to separate that shit out.
	That's not how shit works, man.
	That's not it.
	And they're not going to help you.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Also, with the ivermectin and the monoclonal antibodies and everything else these people are taking, like, I'm just like, how is this better than a vaccine?
	Oh, of course!
	Oh, of course!
	At this point, you're making up your own ineffective magic version of it, you know, by putting all this other shit in yourself.
	It's the expensive pee!
	It's the expensive pee initiative as...
	As organized by the billions of dollars wellness industry is at best what they do.
	Yeah, they make sure that the stuff isn't going to hurt you too bad and then gives you the feel good around it.
	And then it's like, well, it's homeopathy.
	Yeah, yeah, but it's alright.
	But it's very composition.
	It's not going to do anything.
	It's not going to make it worse.
	Not falling for any of the bullshit, everybody.
	It's all good.
	Okay.
	Now we come across a surprising key difference between Dana and Russell here.
	So, do you have actual spiritual principles that underwrite your behaviour?
	Simply put, Dana, do you believe in God?
	Do you believe in Jesus?
	Well, where are you coming from when it comes to God?
	Because when we're talking about authenticity, integrity, and having principles, it's, in a sense, what I believe the government wants to do is replace God.
	And that's very easy to do if people don't have God.
	I just wonder where you stand on that.
	There's no doubt.
	They're trying to attack values, is what I think.
	They're trying to attack people's values.
	I do not believe in God.
	I wouldn't say...
	Yeah, I'm probably an atheist, I would guess, but I definitely don't know.
	Nobody knows.
	We won't know until it's over, but I believe that Death is the most final thing ever, and we don't go anywhere.
	And I actually believe that this is heaven.
	I believe that this is heaven right here.
	This is as good as it gets, and you should live the best life that you could possibly live here.
	But I don't have to believe in God or anything else to treat people right and be a good person.
	And I don't I believe that whatever gets you through this life and whatever it is you need, go for it.
	God or Allah or whatever your deal is to get you through life, Dana, you know I'm going to stop praying for you.
	Okay.
	Weird threatening phrasing of that, but okay.
	Obviously, this is one of the big kind of- It's not a threat because prayers don't do anything.
	Again, he's selling something that doesn't, it's homeopathy.
	He's selling something that isn't going to do anything, so the threat is moot.
	Yeah.
	Fortunately for Dana White.
	Yeah.
	So this is kind of one of the main distinctions between Russell and Dana as Rich Whiteman.
	And another reason that he's something of an outlier on Stay Free is that he's an atheist and pretty open about it, which in the US is still something of a big deal, amazingly enough.
	And I do agree with some of the points he made there.
	Definitely don't agree with this is heaven right here, however.
	I'm sorry.
	Like, I feel like for those of us with a net worth still firmly in the thousands, that argument is a tough sell.
	You know what I mean?
	I bet it's heaven for him.
	Yeah, sure.
	Right, but here's the thing, though.
	Like, even with a net worth of over a billion dollars, the only way you could look at this world in its totality and suggest that it is heaven is to live...
	Because you're a sociopath.
	Right, you're a sociopath and you live so far inside your rich white bubble that you have no idea what reality looks like for people in your own country, let alone the rest of the world.
	You know?
	That's...
	Yeah, that speaks to who he is as a person.
	I wouldn't say that if it were me.
	Now, I mean, the thing is always like the notion is like, you know, gather you rosebuds while you may.
	Like, the only heaven on earth is the heaven that we make for ourselves.
	That is certainly – like, that's a tenet of atheism as far as – A lack of belief can have a tenet.
	Maybe more secular humanism, because that's actually a belief structure, not just not believing in God.
	That's not a belief structure in and of itself.
	But as far as making the world good, yeah, if this is all we've got, then we should make it as good as we possibly can.
	I guess some people think that, and some people think, well, I got mine, go fuck yourself, this is heaven, is what Dana White would like to let us know.
	Sounds like white guys on a podcast, so okay.
	This is a whole lot of, like, huh, this could be any two white guys on any podcast.
	This is the most generic, simlish-ass fucking, like, content.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Me, me, me, me, me.
	Yes, yes, exactly.
	I hope the nail polish doesn't wear off.
	I'm not going to.
	I got nothing.
	If it does.
	We're going to be in trouble.
	Okay.
	Now, as Dana White was there and gave a speech at the same event, we hear his take on Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage.
	At Madison Square Gardens, do you think that was going to be a significant and pivotal moment in this election?
	And what was it like to speak there?
	Did you think that what Tony Hinchcliffe said was super relevant?
	And how do you contrast it with um what joe biden just said about trump supporters being garbage and importantly as jd vance pointed out that politico censored that bit of information when reporting on what biden said so was the madison square garden moment significant for trump was is it significant that it was in new york is it significant that it sort of seems to suggest that there is a different type of mega movement in 2024 than there was in 2016 As a person that participated in it, what did it feel like?
	For example, I heard MSNBC say, I think it was Micah, that it was a festival of hatred or something like that.
	So I just wonder what it was like to speak there.
	Yeah, I mean, that narrative is so ridiculous.
	There is literally, when you go to one of these Trump things, there's no hatred.
	There's no hatred there.
	It's the complete opposite.
	And the Tony Hitchcliffe thing.
	This is what I believe.
	I believe that if you're offended by a comedian, you're probably a puss, and you weren't voting for Trump anyway.
	So, thank God for comedians.
	Oh, well, fuck you, I guess.
	If you're offended by it, fuck you.
	You're a puss and you weren't going to vote for Trump anyway.
	Solid take from Dana White there.
	Did we not think he was going to say that exact thing?
	Right, yeah.
	Well, what has been interesting is that the guy who never apologizes, and the Trump campaign more broadly, have been scrambling to backtrack and distance themselves from that comment by Tony Hinchcliffe.
	With Trump releasing that very silly song on his Twitter, trying to get Puerto Ricans to vote for him.
	Dude.
	Yeah, very, very interesting.
	Also, yeah, Russell mentioned Biden calling Trump supporters garbage there.
	And I am going to mention it because Russell has had a field day with it.
	It was a gaffe, pretty plainly.
	Even Joe Biden isn't dumb enough or senile enough to call all Trump supporters garbage.
	What he said was, quote, the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American, unquote.
	And there is an apostrophe on supporters.
	So Biden was criticizing Tony Hinchcliffe there specifically.
	His supporters' demonization of Latinos is unconscionable was what he was trying to get at.
	And you can practically, if you watch it, you can practically hear the dots connecting as he says the words.
	But he's also very old, man.
	And struggles to properly verbalize thoughts, so it came out wrong, and the dude has a stutter.
	Yeah, he wasn't just like, yeah, every Trump supporter is garbage.
	That's not the thing that actually happened.
	But right-wing media are having a great time pretending that it is.
	I love that they're acting like garbage and being like, they call this garbage!
	Yes!
	How dare you!
	There's so much misinformation around this particular quote.
	It's honestly incredible.
	First of all, it's not half the fucking country.
	It's a loud portion of the country.
	Maybe a manishingly small percentage.
	Trump claimed it was 250 million, so...
	Well, but even, yeah, but even, like, the way that the news anchors on Fox are saying, like, calling half the country garbage.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Are you looking in a mirror?
	Are you talking to yourself?
	Shut up.
	And yeah, don't act like garbage and no one's going to fucking call you garbage.
	Guess what isn't an island of garbage?
	Puerto Rico.
	Guess what is racist, bigoted behavior?
	Garbage.
	If the garbage bag fits, fucking don't cry me a river about it.
	Act better.
	Yep.
	And in that regard, Dana, you and I, we're both in the suck it up camp.
	Yes.
	Maybe your feelings are a little...
	Maybe you're being a bit of a fucking little baby snowflake and you need to suck it up.
	Because the amount...
	Like, that is genuinely incredible is to listen to how...
	profoundly upset, just like thoroughly in the marrow of their bones.
	They're so upset that someone they hate who they literally made a phrase to say, fuck you.
	Let's go.
	Brandon is fuck you, Joe Biden.
	And they had to make a cute little saying out of it, but they are so wrapped up with this guy, not actually calling them garbage.
	And in fact, he got calling a supporter with it, with it, with what, um, uh, a possessive right?
	Like, it's the supporters.
	Yes.
	Apostrophe in different place, but also if you don't teach people how to read in public school, then it's really easy to manipulate them.
	It's perfect as an example of why you need to learn about punctuation.
	It's really, really important.
	And not just use context clues, which is...
	Anyway, sold a story.
	Listen to it.
	Oh my god, it's a whole thing.
	But yeah, that...
	It's just...
	If it weren't so consequential, it'd be magnificent to see these people piss and moan and bitch and cry about getting called a name that they will then slap on a t-shirt and sell for money.
	How many of them?
	Dressing up as garbage bags.
	Bitch, you love it.
	You love it.
	You love it.
	If you didn't, you wouldn't dress up like it.
	Yeah.
	Come on.
	Stupid.
	The rest of us are snowflakes.
	So now Russell gets to asking whether Dana White has any concerns about the election outcome.
	I've kind of heard that people are anticipating a lot of disruption and a lot of disturbances.
	I wonder what you feel about that.
	I wonder if what you feel is, you know, I'm not talking about even the result.
	I'm talking about what's likely to surround it and what you sense in your country and whether you sense your country is going to be able to use this process to demonstrate the efficacy of a democratic republic and electoral democracy.
	Or do you sense that there are sort of Plates shifting larger here.
	Do you have concerns about how this election might be undertaken and what the results of it might be and how people may respond to it?
	Yeah, I mean, that's definitely going to be an issue either way.
	You know, I went through this whole thing, this last election when Trump lost.
	It's like, I even have cousins with, you know, when Biden won, Biden is not my president.
	He's not my president.
	I got some bad news for you.
	He's president for the next four years.
	You know, You know what's gonna happen after the election?
	I'm gonna get up the next day and go to work and do the same shit that I always do.
	But there's no doubt that things need to be fixed.
	How about this?
	Think about this.
	It's basically 2025, right?
	And we are still taking a fucking pencil and filling in circles and putting it in an envelope and putting it in a fucking mailbox, okay?
	With all the technology that we have right now, And when you think about what the rules are, and they're always trying to bend the rules and do this, and ballot harvesting and all this other bullshit, how about, you know, listen, anywhere you go right now anyway, facial recognition is, you know, they're doing it on the airlines, they're doing it everywhere else.
	One vote, one person, you know it's legal.
	Why is the technology for voting not caught up with the rest of the world, right?
	We're still filling in a fucking circle on a piece of paper.
	It's ridiculous, right?
	I've got to say, this was a take I didn't particularly expect from this conversation.
	This kind of took a little bit of a left turn.
	Because, like, Trump and RFK Jr.
	are pretty obsessed with everything being on paper ballots and counted by hand, right?
	Despite the fact that...
	No, they're not, though.
	They're...
	Whatever works for them in the minute!
	Like, that's...
	Yeah!
	That has been one of their big claims, anyway.
	Um...
	Despite the fact that roughly 93% of ballots in the last election had a paper record.
	And they also like to pretend that no election fraud ever happened prior to the invention of the computer, which is utterly ludicrous.
	But Dana White here is coming from the opposite direction and saying that we should have facial recognition technology and presumably every vote should be done via...
	A computer?
	Blinking?
	I don't know.
	He doesn't specify too much.
	Definitely wants facial recognition, though.
	And seems to want, like...
	Well, he's making the point that we have facial recognition technology, so then we should be able to...
	He's comparing the two technological advancements.
	Because, yeah, if he actually...
	The thing is, is, like, genuinely, I hate this.
	I hate that I have to say this.
	Mm-hmm.
	Joe Rogan might at least push back.
	Well, we want paper ballots so we can count them.
	You can have both.
	The obvious next step in Dana White's little argument and thinking is like, yeah, but it's harder to forge.
	It's harder to fuck with a piece of paper than it is with just digital records.
	That's just a fucking fact.
	There's a reason that we still have paper is so we can count it.
	There's a reason that we have both.
	Yes.
	Well, yeah, exactly.
	Exactly.
	It's an interesting thought.
	I think with the proper precautions in place, I wouldn't be entirely against it in principle.
	At least the machines part anyway, less so the facial recognition part.
	Apologies if you can hear...
	Oh, that'd be terrible.
	Oh my god.
	If you can hear fireworks kicking off, it's because it's the 5th of November.
	Guy Fawkes night, right?
	That's what's going on.
	Everyone's remember, remember.
	Remembering!
	Everyone's remember remembering, indeed.
	Happy Holidays, everybody.
	Yes.
	Happy Fireworks Day.
	Yes.
	But, like, so, Bloomberg, they recently did a piece with Chip Trowbridge, who is the Chief Technology Officer at Clear Ballot Group Incorporated, who are their rival to Dominion voting machines, right?
	Because I do think this does bear reiterating as well around this whole conversation.
	Here are the steps that would need to take place to tamper with any of their voting machines in this election.
	They are the ones operating in conjunction with paper ballots, right?
	Quote, Any tampering would have to take place on-site because the clear car systems are not connected to the internet.
	Most arrive at county voting precincts in fastened containers or locked cages.
	There's one 120-volt plug out the back and that's it.
	No Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no Ethernet, no nothing, Trowbridge says.
	Republican and Democratic officials are supposed to set them up together by tearing security seals with identifying serial numbers and entering unique passwords after booting them up.
	Data is stored on three redundant drives, including two locked-in USB sticks, and any poll worker inputs on the devices, such as removing one of those sticks, are logged by the equivalent of an airplane's black box within the machine.
	And then there's the paper trail.
	On election day, voters feed their hand-marked ballots into the scanner, which is the size of a cash register and has a thick screen on top.
	It tabulates blackened ovals and captures a digital image of the entire slip for backup.
	Then spits the ballot down into a bolted cabinet so it can be audited by hand if needed.
	The scanners are tested with sample votes beforehand and often afterwards to ensure there are no discrepancies between digital counts and physical entries.
	And as Trowbridge entertains and ultimately shoots down increasingly absurd but what about this scenarios such as counterfeit ballots or malware-laced thumb drives he stops short with a frank reminder we're already in crazy territory if any of this is happening.
	Unquote.
	Um...
	Well, yeah, basically.
	I think that does help as a reminder of, like, all of this conversation around elections being stolen and all of this.
	You're like, oh, even with the machines, like, it's way harder than anyone ever makes this out to be.
	Like, to try and fuck with one of those machines sounds insanely impossible.
	It sounds ludicrous.
	Well, it's just, it's...
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I mean, what have I been saying?
	Right.
	Volunteer for polls one volunteer worth of polls once and you will see the piece of paper where you write down all the serial numbers, all the checks and balances.
	Everybody has to initial shit.
	There is not like I mean, you could, I guess.
	But on it like that's I mean, all of the claims are so absurd.
	It is really challenging to engage with any of the voter fraud claims in any kind of real way.
	Because who's actually setting...
	I mean, we don't know who's setting...
	Who set ballot boxes on fire.
	But I know in the last election, in 2020, the people that were actually vote tampering were fucking Republicans.
	Who were setting up fake ballot boxes.
	Who were setting up like...
	And tampering with actual paper ballots.
	That's...
	Republicans.
	Sorry.
	Yeah.
	But...
	So the machine side of things, like, I'm probably, like, more on board than a lot of people would be.
	However, where he definitely fucking loses me is, like, the facial recognition side of things.
	Because, like...
	He was using that as an example.
	I don't think that that was what he wanted to vote with.
	That's not what I got from what he said.
	He said, we have it.
	It's like saying we could put a man on the moon.
	That's what I heard.
	Yes, I think there is a degree of wanting to use that as almost like an extrapolation of voter ID, basically.
	It's like, oh, we know this person because we have this facial recognition and we know it's definitely them that's doing the voting.
	That's, I think, the argument that is being advanced here.
	I know.
	Okay.
	I also think that if you mentioned facial recognition as a bad thing in a different context, he would totally agree with you.
	I think that he understands in some contexts if it's presented and like, hey, this is actually really dangerous because facial recognition is also notoriously unreliable.
	So even using that as an example is a bad example, but like...
	He understands it.
	It's just something like he just doesn't want to fuck with it because he's a fucking rich white guy and he wants to be able to blink twice for Trump and then be done with it and not talk about it anymore.
	A lot of people just don't want to talk about this anymore.
	And I'm sorry, that's a problem too.
	And that smacks of privilege is to not want to think about elections.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, him saying at the start there, like, oh, you know what's going to happen after election day is I'm going to get up and go to work and everything will be the same for me.
	I'm like, well, yeah, it's going to be the same for you, rich white man.
	Yes, of course it is.
	Like, fuck me.
	Well, we'll all have to do it anyway, regardless of whether our, like, our fates are sealed by the results.
	Yeah, we're going to all have to go live our lives anyway.
	Yeah.
	But he's unaffected.
	And I don't know that that's necessarily damning for him to say in the moment, but it is indicative of his situation.
	Even if he's probably not, I don't know.
	Oh man, I can't remember the gal's name.
	Oh no, I don't want to take her bit without citing her.
	I don't know.
	There's been a lot of really interesting, really good conversations coming from unexpected places for me or on this particular election.
	People are so well-informed.
	I would like to have more bandwidth to be excited about that.
	But just because you're 20th on the list, there's still a list.
	We're all on the list together of who's going to be next on the chopping block.
	They'll get to number 20 eventually.
	You have to understand that...
	The bell will toll for thee, eventually, in an authoritarian, controlling state.
	And I think that, like, it just, it blows my mind.
	Well, it blows my mind less, considering that I know who Dana White hangs out with, and big fans of facial recognition software.
	So, sure.
	But I think that even Joe Rogan would push back.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It's like, even Joe Rogan would be like, facial recognition?
	Ah!
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	There would be, like, you know, an alarm bell of, like, totalitarianism.
	Like, hey, that doesn't sound cool.
	If there weren't class action settlements every single day about data breaches from every major company that are...
	Highly consequential, yeah, I'd be a little more into it.
	I'd be a little more okay with it, but I'm not because just like nuclear power, humans have not exhibited a responsibility that is airtight, so we still need a piece of paper at the end of the day to be able to count because humans are not to be trusted with this power and responsibility.
	We can't handle it, and it's not a question of the technology.
	It's a question of what we do with it.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	Okay, so next up, Dana airs some of his grievances about protests.
	And, you know, you're going to have people losing their minds and going crazy.
	If Trump wins, there's going to be protesting and all this other bullshit that we're going to have to deal with because I am not a fan of protesting.
	Protesting drives me absolutely insane.
	Because you're an asshole, You can go down, you know, on Fifth Avenue in New York and block up the entire street and ruin everybody else's day.
	I think that protesting is absolutely ridiculous.
	And it turns people against your cause.
	It doesn't help it.
	Turns you against them.
	And you've got to be an absolute fucking maniac to be standing out in the street because you're upset about anything or gluing yourself to the ground or any of that stupid bullshit that goes on during protesting.
	But unfortunately, It's something that we're all going to have to deal with.
	Yeah, so one would think, based off of what he just said, he would have some strong feelings about what happened at January 6th.
	And if Trump loses, then Dana White would be first in line to tell the alt-right protesters and potential coup attempters to sit the fuck down and shut up, right?
	That should be what we're looking at.
	Curiously, he's been weirdly silent about Jan 6th this entire time.
	Or sorry, is it only annoying when it's people you disagree with who are protesting?
	Is that the problem we're actually getting at?
	Yeah, oh, the Canadian trucker convoy?
	I bet they give you a fair amount of money, if I'm going to be honest about what, like, or if I'm going to listen to the reporting of demographic interest and overlap.
	Do you want to, do you think that that was also, do you feel the same way about the Canadian trucker?
	Mm, yeah.
	Trucker protest?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I would love to be able to dig deeper.
	Either way, if Trump loses, keep an eye on Dana White's response.
	You know, I'll be curious to see him really laying into anyone protesting if Trump loses.
	But, you know, we come right back to that authenticity question at the start of the show, you know?
	Oh, he's authentically an asshole.
	He's authentically a fucking piece of shit.
	Genuinely, me and this person, we'd probably get along.
	I mean, again, this is not what friendship means.
	We'd probably get along because we'd both be like, yeah, you're a fucking asshole.
	Yeah, you're a fucking asshole.
	Are we going to play this fucking pinball?
	Are you going to take your turn on this pinball game or what?
	I bet we'd get along great.
	Because if he's...
	I mean, we wouldn't.
	We know me.
	I'm not going to...
	If I didn't have any convictions that I needed to make very clear, then we would get along just fine.
	But in a vacuum, if we had to unload a plane in a crisis and we were both in the emergency exit aisle, we'd probably get along like a house on fire until it was done.
	Because he is being totally...
	Let him be completely honest about his position.
	Yeah.
	No one made him say that.
	Those are reprehensible, antisocial views to hold.
	On their face, obviously.
	There is no debunking here.
	You just let him say the shit that no one made him say.
	These are his thoughts.
	He obviously doesn't give a fuck about anybody's safety or health except for his and potentially his family if it's inconvenient for him in the moment.
	Unless he likes you personally and even then your chances probably aren't great, he doesn't give a fuck.
	Yeah.
	cool is being late to whatever you're doing really gonna like ruin like is it gonna ruin your day is it gonna ruin 20 minutes right calm down right like it's so sensitive and like and again authoritarian What you say goes, okay.
	That's how this person is.
	Let him say exactly what he thinks.
	We all get to judge him for that.
	That's the right thing to do.
	It does completely track with his cozying up to and befriending dictators across the world.
	You're like, oh, well, yeah, I know where this thinking is coming from.
	Okay, yeah.
	Oh, this is how you have to construct your brain to be able to hang out with and benefit from bloodthirsty dictators.
	And accept the blood money and spend it.
	Yes, yes.
	So from here, Dana drives his point home.
	But my point here is...
	Somebody needs to get in.
	And I don't know how it could even be worked out between the Democrats and the Republicans where technology catches up to voting and, you know, all this bullshit would go away.
	Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary that that's one area where all of this surveillance and control and citizen management and have you had a vaccine and where are you going and what time are you in bed?
	It's the one area where there's no sort of real conversation about deploying those means of authenticating.
	Dana, thanks so much for making time.
	And then Dana White leaves the show.
	Russell just kind of managed to turn the fact that paper balance is still a thing into a conspiracy theory.
	Like, aha, well, if all these globalists and governments are asking about whether I'm vaccinated and where I'm going and what time I'm going to bed, apparently, then why aren't they turning that same technology towards voting?
	Hmm.
	Like, okay.
	They did!
	They have!
	Seriously, the thing that is so impressive to me, like, because, yeah...
	Votes were burned by someone.
	Someone found a ballot box, or found a ballot accumulator box, not the ballot box that you stand in the cubicle to vote.
	But boxes full of paper ballots were set on fire and burned and gone.
	But they weren't gone.
	In fact, immediately, there was already a contingency plan in place for votes getting lost, stolen, or in some other way, injured so as to not be registered.
	So the counties and the state already had a plan in place for anyone whose vote may have been or probably was destroyed.
	So you had an option.
	Have you heard anything about the ballot boxes getting burned over there?
	Has that made it into the news cycle at all?
	Not that I've seen.
	No.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Well, that fucking happened here already.
	And it's probably going to happen some more in the next day or two, which sucks.
	But like, it's probably happening right now somewhere.
	I'm just crazy.
	Because the state has a contingency plan.
	Like, the Chicago Board of Election has been emailing me like, turn in your fucking ballot.
	Get on this.
	They were mad at me a week ago, and that's fine.
	They were right.
	They track all of the ballots.
	The technology is there that if your ballot gets destroyed, they give you a phone number that you can call or you can text.
	There was a number you could just text and have a dialogue.
	There were so many options for you to make sure that your vote counts.
	There's websites and virtually...
	I mean, it's going to be different everywhere, again, because we live in a patchwork, but there are options to track your vote that you don't have to go through Russell's little link.
	They're government-subsidized programs that are open to the public that you can find what has happened to your ballot, just like you can find where the post office is tracking your package.
	And yeah, it's not perfect.
	Think about the post office tracking your package.
	But magically, it fucking works really well a lot of the time.
	You can't speak to that?
	And we have a...
	Like, that's one thing that we're doing pretty good is mail.
	It's, like, maybe the only thing?
	I don't know.
	And so that, like, the notion that, like, technology is not being implemented in elections is...
	Rock stupid!
	It is, at best, misinformed, but if you know, like, it's rock stupid.
	Or you don't have to worry about it, so you just don't know, and you think you fucking know everything because you're a white guy talking into a goddamn microphone!
	Yeah, maybe a little column A, a little column B. And worse as well is that he seems to think that this imaginary version he's got of it where technology catches up to voting, that that is going to completely put an end to any questioning the outcome of an election.
	And to me that sounds fucking optimistic.
	It's just not true.
	It hasn't happened yet.
	Why would it start now?
	Right, and firstly, if Trump managed to win in a landslide, people will and should absolutely still protest, so it wouldn't do away with protesting, for instance, like he wants, but it definitely, definitely would not do away with election conspiracy theories, like...
	No technology is completely foolproof for a start.
	No technology in the world doesn't have at least one error lurking around in its coding somewhere, and so something will go wrong.
	And even if it's immediately then fixed, there will be conspiracy theories based off of it perpetrated across the internet.
	And failing that, as we saw with Rudy Giuliani when I spent all that fucking time going into his claims, like, if there's nothing real, they'll just make it up!
	You know?
	That's the point.
	Yeah, it's still gonna happen.
	What?
	The most imperfect machine of all, the human brain, is still involved, and therefore, that is the failsafe that is bound to fail.
	Murphy's Law, you're not going to get it.
	Come on!
	If any of this was about reality, sure, Dana, that'd be a great point to make, but it's not.
	This is all about misinformation.
	Liz on Truanon said something really good the other day in an episode that, like, The internet in general needs heavy regulation.
	Not in the version necessarily that we are dealing with or have been dealing with thus far, but we need to regulate this information economy.
	And I think that we are going to look back as...
	If there is eyes to look back upon...
	This period of history, we are going to look at like, no wonder everybody was so insane.
	It's because the way that information technology has just like...
	It is, yeah, it's been the fucking market.
	It's been marketized.
	That's like part of the fucking danger is that it shouldn't, like there shouldn't be a monetary incentive to manipulate information full stop.
	If there is, there's already going to be a problem.
	So I'm not even, I ain't even a reform, I'm abolition about a lot of things.
	And one of them is like, you know, abolition of money in politics, abolition of money and like that and being honest about what politics really is, which is so much more pervasive than it's ever been before.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So I just to just the idea that I mean, just go work the polls one time.
	It is genuinely like it is incredible to see how competent the state is.
	It's almost frustrating to know that like the state is like, you guys can do this really well.
	You can get something right.
	What's your fucking excuse for the other shit?
	Yeah, right.
	Why am I looking up?
	Why are potholes destroying people's fucking cars?
	Like, get your goddamn shit together.
	I know you can because you do it here.
	And our precinct was run by like a freshman in college.
	Right.
	And- To say that this lovely young woman was competent would be a stretch, but it got done, and it got done just fucking fine.
	Because the system is built in a way that there are so many redundancies.
	Yeah.
	You gotta have redundancies in place, and that's why we still have paper ballots.
	Dana, sorry you don't understand redundancies.
	You don't understand safety, so you wouldn't know that a removal of redundancies is why the fucking challenger blew up.
	Keep your shit together, okay?
	That's like, listen.
	You remove redundancies and you blow up the Challenger.
	That's what happens.
	You almost blow up Big Bird.
	That's what happens.
	I genuinely firmly believe that I could probably even have a conversation that's totally fine, but that with Dana White, after we do our job inflating the slide to escape from the airplane...
	But then he'd probably be like, oh yeah, no, good point.
	And then because he has the benefit of being a rich, privileged white guy, all of the stuff I could say that make perfectly valid points will disintegrate from his mind immediately.
	Or he probably just wants to get along because it's nice to get along and it's polite.
	Maybe that's my issue with politeness in general.
	Yeah.
	I don't value niceness nearly as much as honesty.
	But what are we even doing here?
	So much of this issue that we are facing in a social issue that is currently hitting the political fan.
	And I'm sure it's hitting the fan right now.
	I'm sure what we're dealing with news-wise today is...
	I don't know what it is, but I bet it's not.
	I bet it's not cool.
	I bet it fucking sucks.
	And we're all in this together.
	Yeah.
	Even the people we don't like, we are actually in fact in this together.
	So doing stuff that works is what we should prioritize.
	And that includes fixing how information is disseminated and protecting people that are vulnerable.
	Caring about your fellow man is kind of important.
	Don't be like Dana White.
	Give a shit.
	Don't go to Joe Rogan for your medical information.
	Guys, I'm so stupid!
	I ate dog poop today!
	Like, come on, man.
	For so many reasons.
	Don't be like Dana White, everybody.
	Alright, that's our show.
	If you want to support us in what we do, head to patreon.com slash onbrand.
	We would love to have you.
	If you want to get in touch, drop us an email.
	It's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
	If you're on Facebook, there's a Facebook group called On Brand Awakening Wonders, and there's some lovely people having fun conversations over there.
	If you prefer more anonymous browsing, head over to Reddit.
	There's a subreddit called On Brand underscore pod, and there's people doing fun stuff over there too.
	If you want to find us on socials, we are the On Brand pod everywhere except for where we're not.
	Look for the logo.
	And personal socials, I'm at alworthofficial, and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b And if you click the old link in the description, you can purchase a Magnetta with actual real live gold leaf around it.
	Upside down today.
	With actual gold handmade by Lauren.
	And take a little nosy around the store as well.
	Yeah, the link has all the stuff.
	Yes, yes.
	And if you...
	If you volunteered for this election or if you were in any way involved, thank you so much.
	That's really fucking cool of you to do.
	And I like you more than everybody else for doing it right now.
	Absolutely.
	And understand that it's not going to be over for a while.
	And I know that sucks.
	But don't keep your head up.
	Yeah, this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
	So, you know, let's all keep our electrolytes up and all that good shit.
	And keep kindness in your mind first.
	That's genuinely, like, a lot of people that even might sound very incendiary and be triggering justifiably to you, like, they're coming from a place of fear or pain or discomfort in some way.
	And we still have to all be in a country together.
	Absolutely right.
	Oh yeah, and everyone go and watch Nye, by the way, as well.
	That link is also in the description now, because that's super cool.
	Alright, take care of yourselves and each other, especially this week.
	Keep your heads on a swivel, everybody.
	And we'll hopefully see you all Sunday for the live stream.
	That'll be really, really cool.
	And yeah, thank you very much.
	We love you.
	Bye-bye!
	Bye.
	Henry Kissinger is still dead.
	Bye.
	That's not win-win-win.

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