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Dec. 26, 2024 - On Brand

02:08:52

OB #91 - Steven Crowder w/Louder Than Crowder

We are joined by Byron, Dennis and Jared of Louder Than Crowder to discuss the picture of fragile masculinity that is Steven Crowder, in our first time travel episode. Follow Louder Than Crowder! Support us on Patreon! Buy a magnet handmade by Lauren B!

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	This is Propaganda Live.
	I only suggest how to think and how to vote.
	Extraordinary cultural moment.
	Already iconic.
	Already iconic.
	We love you.
	You're welcome here.
	Where did this guy come from?
	It's like he's been doing it for ages.
	He's very confident.
	Plainly, and this is a matter now of fact and record, I'm right wing.
	I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
	Is this misinformation or is Vivek Ramaswamy in the lavatory?
	That's a sort of like a poet.
	Is this Eminem?
	Man, if we didn't come together in that stream, I'd say it was just the key.
	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. It's me, I'm Lauren B, and I am the host that has no idea what we're getting into in one of these given days.
	It's usually bad.
	It's almost invariably bad, which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing, or rather we normally do the good thing before the bad thing, but you know what?
	We've got a few good things waiting in the wings for us right now, so we're going to get straight to it.
	However, 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 will be hugely appreciated and goes to great lengths in helping us continue.
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	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, I'll add a little dive into why Wales has a big red dragon on our flag, the history of the flag itself, and the oppression of the Welsh people in general over the course of the last 800 years or so, as well as the systemic oppression happening in Wales right now.
	It's more fun than it sounds, I promise.
	We did have a good time.
	There was a story time and everything!
	It was fun!
	Yeah!
	Yay!
	Yeah, Welsh mythology, all this good stuff.
	Dragons are into pigs, get hammered on wine.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	Verifiable.
	So head to patreon.com slash onbrand to check that recording out and the many, many hours of other content up there.
	And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version, anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube, or if you're listening to Spotify app, the video will come up there too.
	Now then, we have a very special show to deal with today.
	Firstly, because this is our first ever time travel episode, where we'll be going back to March 2023, a mere few months before this show ever came to fruition.
	And what we'll be looking at is Russell's first ever conversation with one alt-right shithead Stephen Crowder, the host of the eponymous Louder with Crowder.
	I've always wanted to use that word eponymous.
	I never get to use that word.
	I'm thrilled I got to use that word.
	Hooray!
	It's Christmas for elk!
	It is.
	I told Christmas is different, but no less weird.
	Oh, good lord.
	One thing to note about this is that barring a 10-minute conversation during the 2024 election livestream that we covered that frankly felt contractually obligated, these two have not sat down and had a conversation since this show we're about to watch.
	To me, that feels weird and interesting.
	I wouldn't.
	Well, yes, I wouldn't, but Russell talks to a lot of people I wouldn't talk to, you know.
	The second reason this show is special is that we are utterly blessed to be joined by Byron, Dennis, and Jared of Louder Than Crowder, the podcast that talks about the podcast Louder with Crowder.
	I'm hoping I got that correct.
	Gentlemen, welcome!
	Welcome!
	Al, Lauren, so happy to be the good thing before the bad thing.
	I appreciate that.
	And also five stars to both of you.
	Wonderful show.
	Love what you do.
	I'll give you six stars.
	I'm going to hack into the systems and raise the number of stars I can get.
	You'll be the only ones with six star reviews.
	Keep it up.
	This is an auction now.
	Do I hear eight?
	Seven stars.
	Thanks for having us.
	Really happy to talk about this sit down with our shithead.
	Yes, yes, with your alt-right shithead.
	Yes, we have ours.
	You have yours.
	Actually, I should just check that I called you all gentlemen there.
	I should check that you are all in fact gentlemen.
	So quick pronoun check, because we're a couple of theys over here.
	Just a handful of he-hims.
	Yes, a handful of he-hims.
	He-he-him, him, him.
	Thanks for checking.
	I'm a lackadaisical, she, they, to be fair.
	Sort of.
	Hey, you, works.
	That's all good.
	Yes, yes, hello, yes.
	A snap.
	If we're in a hurry.
	Yeah, right.
	Yeah, I do, I should say, I do kind of like doing stuff like pronoun checks up top.
	Not only because it's generally good practice when talking to new people, but because I know you guys have the same problem that we do, where audience of the people you're covering keep accidentally finding your show.
	And when alt-right asshats find this show, I know if we do like pronoun checks or up top, it'll turn most of them away, you know?
	I want to keep them on the line for like 10-15 minutes to really confuse them.
	Because you never know, something might worm its way in their head.
	I don't know.
	Maybe some media where you're just like, what is this?
	Do I like this?
	Do I not like this?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I'm like, hmm, not sure.
	I don't know.
	Whereas in the back of my mind, there's a continual thought of like, how can I make this gayer?
	What are the options, you know?
	Always appreciate it.
	Just a really signal up top.
	I will say, I stumble into it constantly.
	As we saw in our...
	Whenever we did the election livestream, I was like, I just need to tip this.
	I need to tip this gal when she starts her drag career.
	I was like, I think that you think this man's attractive.
	I'm like, I want to see his show.
	I want to tip her at a bar.
	I know the ones I'm bringing.
	I guess I should publicly thank you, too, for making that night a little bit more bearable when both of you came.
	During our election livestream of the century livestream.
	Oh, it was a pleasure.
	That night was one of the darkest nights of my entire life, I think.
	I look back on that night.
	I spent $96 on Cheesecake Factory, and I streamed with you guys for a while, and someone started to break into my room.
	It was a dark day.
	You had a moment.
	That is like some of our new favorite horror movies, like the movie Host.
	You did the movie Host, kind of.
	What?
	And yeah, you were like, someone's trying to break into my room, and I'm like, am I going to witness a murder?
	And then I never returned.
	That was my last thing on the live stream.
	I was vanished.
	For a moment, I was like, wait, did we cause it to be the worst night of you?
	What happened?
	What did we do?
	You were the best part of that experience, but I was very angry watching the results of the election roll in, and then fate shoveled it on me.
	Really, really did.
	Wow.
	You do kind of take the cake for the worst.
	That was like, I thought I was afraid I might see violence.
	And I was like, I don't know.
	In the background of all of that was my wife just trying to read her book.
	And I'm just like...
	It was a home away from home invasion.
	Yeah, it was a home away from home invasion.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, because you were in Japan, right?
	I was on my way.
	I was in Seattle at the time.
	I was on my way.
	Yes, yeah, yeah.
	That's right.
	Ah, good lord.
	What a night.
	What an eventful night, yeah.
	Well, I'm glad, Byron, that you said something because I felt really guilty about trying to curb your very reasonable negativity.
	I was like, guys, keep it positive.
	I'm not going to allow this.
	And I was like, oh, cool.
	I guess I'm going to eat my hat for breakfast.
	Great.
	It was fine.
	It was a storm cloud kind of coming over my shoulder.
	And I was trying my best to not look at the results as we just enjoyed our company.
	And I thought that was great.
	Once every hour, it just gets a little darker.
	Yeah.
	And we start laughing a little harder.
	Yeah, yeah.
	For me, it was when Jordan came in and went, huh, she's really going to lose this thing, isn't she?
	And I was like, oh, fuck, no, no, no.
	I've been trying to keep reality away, Jordan.
	What have you done?
	Oh, no, it was great cope.
	It was fantastic cope.
	Yeah, it really helped.
	It definitely helped.
	The chat showed up.
	Very funny.
	It was great.
	Good times.
	Good times.
	Oh, dear.
	So, normally I do, like, a rundown or a bio on some of the guests that we cover on this show, but obviously, you know, you guys are sort of the resident experts in Steven Crowder, and you've been at this, you know, as long as we have, and I did actually have a question in that regard.
	So, like, obviously...
	We cover Russell Brand, but when we explain our show to people, most people know who Russell Brand is to some degree already, right?
	You know, he's fucking Hollywood famous, married to Katy Perry, forgetting Sarah Marshall, credibly accused serial rapist, all that stuff.
	Whereas, I imagine when you guys describe the show you do, you are required to explain to a lot of people what the fuck a Steven Crowder is.
	So, my question to you is, how would you describe who Steven is and where he's from in a nutshell?
	Of course.
	I mean, he's just Alan the Brain Powers from the show Arthur.
	You guys don't know him from that?
	I thought he was the clenched fist being actually himself.
	Kind of his thing.
	Which is true.
	I do want to say, yeah, that is him.
	But that was 12-year-old Steven.
	You're a change-my-mind guy, right?
	Change-my-mind, yeah.
	Change-my-mind guy.
	That's usually Denisol.
	That's, I think, the thing, yeah.
	Yeah, that's usually how I describe it.
	Do you guys know the Change My Meme guy?
	Or Change My Mind meme?
	But the funny part is when I talk about Steven Crowder and explain our podcast to people, I have to be mindful of if someone overhears me saying, have you heard of Steven Crowder?
	I love that guy.
	Because I feel like people are going to be like, who the fuck is this guy?
	It's like if I was being like, have you ever heard of Andrew Tate?
	So I have to be careful to be like, I hate him, but have you heard of Steven Crowder?
	Yeah.
	I mean, yeah, that's the easiest way to explain Steven.
	Yeah, I mean, we obviously introduce him as the change my mind meme guy, but I usually tell people he's just like a super right wing commentator who's a real terrible person.
	I'll always throw in, you've seen that meme and they're like, no, yeah, I guess.
	I'm like, if they're not sure, I'll be like, he's like that 30 year old guy who debates children.
	Sure.
	That's easy.
	That won't work.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, that guy.
	Oh, Charlie Kirk does it too.
	It's like not.
	Charlie's stepping on Stephen's, on his toes a little bit.
	It is interesting.
	He's taken to that.
	He did that on our campus here not too long ago.
	Yeah, we got to.
	Which we somehow got press credentials to go attend.
	Yep.
	It was awesome.
	I don't know.
	Wow.
	Oh my gosh.
	I found my press pass in my wife's car yesterday.
	That's great.
	A Turning Point USA press pass.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Super fun.
	You go to see a giant face debate some children.
	It's really easy to see.
	Curb your enthusiasm episode, Dennis.
	There was somebody in the background who just had a picture of his face all shrunk down and just held it up quietly the whole time.
	Just quietly protesting.
	I'm entirely here for that.
	Some people may have seen Steven.
	He was a Fox News commentator for a little bit.
	Red Eye.
	2009. He did have appearances on Red Eye.
	He was just around for about four years before he lost his job after...
	I think he got punched in the face by that union leader.
	Yeah, that was the whole thing.
	Oh, it's really, really cool stuff.
	I put it on my mom's aura frame for Christmas.
	Sponsor it.
	We need a sponsor.
	I'm so glad you told me before Christmas.
	That's exactly what we're doing.
	Gotta play the game.
	Clearly.
	He publicly criticized Sean Hannity on Fox News after that and eventually...
	He cited contract negotiation breakdowns as well, which is kind of something he's used to arguing about.
	But yeah, and then he went independent and became very popular on YouTube with his Change My Mind stuff.
	It was a weekly show, then it became four days a week, Louder with Crowder.
	You may have seen him, even though he says he's shadow banned and unable to be searched.
	No one's able to find him, and yet, mysteriously, millions of views.
	I'm like, huh, interesting.
	It's fairly easy, but that's where we're at.
	Well, I feel like that's a pretty comprehensive review of the guy, and anything else we need to know, I'm sure we'll discover in the clips that we've got.
	Unfortunately.
	So, yeah.
	But before we get into this, there are a few things to take note of and be aware of during this interview.
	Firstly is how different the Russell brand of March 2023 is.
	Like, this is only a few months before we started covering him, and yet I was continuously staggered by how much more reasonable Russell is in this interview in general and just how many things have changed.
	Like, a few big points to note are that back then he was very much not openly Christian yet and was still hiding it, still kind of harboring those beliefs, but, like, hiding behind the wellness and crunchy side of things.
	He was still vegan, and, yeah, still, yeah, very much cashing in on the crunchy wellness aspect.
	And obviously this is prior to all of the allegations against him as well.
	Coming out, this is six months prior.
	Not conservative either, right?
	No, no, exactly.
	He was, he was much more, you could much more credibly describe him as being kind of of the left at that time.
	Yeah, quote unquote.
	Is this a month before, for our listeners, they'll definitely register.
	It's like, so a month before the Rainn Wilson interview.
	Yes, for the Rainn Wilson interview, and the very first episode that we covered was in April of that year as well.
	Was this 2023 you said?
	Yeah, March of 2023. I know, and yet.
	It's one of those things where I've been kind of considering how different it is, and I think because I just watch so much Russell all the time, the change in my mind has been gradual, but then I'm looking at this interview and I'm like, wow, that's a different man.
	You know, it's a strange experience.
	It's like boiling a frog.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, kind of.
	Comparatively, in Stephen's chronology, this conversation is happening prior to his incredibly messy and ugly divorce that featured him being very abusive to his then-pregnant wife.
	And this is around the time of some of the big career changes he was going through, which we'll get to in just a minute.
	Was this pre or post-Ring video?
	This is pre.
	Okay, it's pre-Ring video.
	This is about a month pre, I think.
	He was separated, though, to my knowledge.
	Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I think so.
	But I think things were announced in the April.
	So this will have been before everything kind of kicked off.
	Okay, so let's have a look at the first thing.
	What a time capsule!
	Genuinely?
	I'm stoked!
	Because old pattern recognizer over here, I've been very much looking forward to seeing, kind of going back and seeing how much more reasonable he was.
	Because we just got glimmers with like...
	We got glimmers of weird aggression and dominance competition with Rainn Wilson.
	I'm very interested and I think this is going to be quite fun.
	I'm so interested to see how these two men hate each other politely.
	There might be a degree of that.
	I'm just going to play just a little fraction of the first clip here so we can look at the thumbnail used for this video, which I think perfectly illustrates a few things for us.
	There we go.
	That's the thumbnail that we've got here.
	That glow.
	That glow is so amazing.
	So, for those listening, what we have, first of all- That's the Stephen I know.
	Yeah, right.
	It's a background of what I believe is one of the southern portions of Florida, as they're recording this conversation at Rumble Studios in Miami.
	So, picture Blue Water Islands and the like, right?
	Can we just record just roasting this for, like, oh my, I don't need anything else.
	I did genuinely think, I was like, I can do a whole show on this picture alone, genuinely.
	So yeah, islands and such.
	And then in front of that, you've...
	They're nailing it.
	I can't do a convincing Russell.
	I'm not like mine.
	I'm gonna switch that.
	It's a visual gag.
	We'll shoot this exact picture, just like we copied their cover exactly.
	We'll copy this eventually.
	I don't have a beaded necklace.
	I'm gonna have to figure that out.
	But yes...
	I've got ten!
	I'm giving you for Christmas!
	Lauren Canelo.
	In front of Florida, there's Russell looking very crunchy indeed, very guru-like, wearing a massive wooden bead necklace, very open white shirt, an Indian pattern-inspired scarf thing, and a black cardigan, hair down, staring pensively into the camera, with a weird pink glow surrounding him.
	He's definitely mewing, too, I just want to add.
	And next to that...
	That's a surprise, if I've ever seen one.
	Right.
	Next to that, we have a square picture of Stephen Crowder, also surrounded by pink glow.
	Square indeed!
	Pink glow, in which Stephen is taking a boxing pose with a big unlit cigar in his mouth, a fight-like-hell shirt on.
	And he's wearing a pistol holster with an actual pistol in it.
	Oh, and he's doing all of this stood next to the American flag, which has an eagle at the top of the stand as well.
	Small correction, two pistols.
	Oh, two pistols is it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	You can't see.
	It's obscured by his right arm.
	His bicep.
	Respect his bicep.
	Guns hiding guns.
	Is he recording in downtown Tombstone in the 1830s?
	Why does he need two guns?
	Well, he's got one on the desk, too.
	He's got three at all times.
	Yeah, he's locked and loaded.
	There's probably the laser-engraved AR down by his knees, too.
	I don't know if that sponsorship worked out.
	I don't think they got enough signatures in that giveaway.
	Did they have a certain number of entries in order to give away the gun?
	I just assumed that the company is going to be uninterested in picking one of 20 people who signed up to give you a free AR-15, but I don't know.
	Twente's generous.
	I know about the Times Square debacle.
	Oh, yeah.
	You guys should listen to their show.
	It's really fun if you don't.
	It's a fun bit.
	It's a fun running bit.
	It's really nice.
	So what I'm getting at is, like, the 2023 contrast between these two individuals is dramatic.
	Just putting them side by side, you're like, wow, these are opposite ends of the spectrum.
	These days might be a different story, but back then, whew!
	And yeah, also Russell's thumbnails have changed quite a bit because these days they consist of backgrounds with pictures of like riot police or viruses next to his least favorite politicians and are much more like fear-based now.
	Whereas this looks like a chill time in blue waters.
	Seems like a cruise review.
	Steel drums.
	There were lots of steel drums in this picture.
	He's getting all his info from Osmosis Jones.
	These guys are real baddies.
	Gareth Roy and Gerald in the back playing the steel drums.
	You know, I can see it.
	Both of those individuals were there, were present for this interview as well.
	Just in the back, which is...
	You photoshopped a conch shell so it looks like it has a Steven gun.
	Yeah.
	Assemble!
	We're never gonna get this done.
	Oh my god.
	And I'm fine.
	I'm having so much fun.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	Let's play the actual clip.
	I was gonna say, you know, Al, exactly how I feel, I would imagine.
	Being the one who always has a thick thing of notes like I do.
	Is there one of me?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's, you know, herding delightful cats, you know, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
	So let's play the actual clip, and our regular listeners will recognize a stark tonal shift compared to where we are with present-day Russell at the very least.
	Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand live at Rumble's headquarters for a very special announcement.
	As you by now know that Stephen Crowder is joining us on Rumble.
	Stephen, welcome.
	Thank you.
	I don't think they knew by now.
	I think they know just now.
	That was the announcement.
	Yeah, that was the announcement.
	That was the announcement.
	I'd like to announce something very special.
	Stephen Crowder is joining us on Rumble now.
	You just had a scoop and threw it away.
	Like my dad, he'll do that with like punchlines.
	I don't know if you have someone like this in your family who rather than just sitting on it, he'll just say something and he'll toss him like, Dad, that's the meanest, funniest thing I've ever heard.
	He's like, no, who cares?
	It's nice to dispose of those things.
	Yeah, exactly.
	He's Brian Callan-ing him.
	This is what he does to anyone who's funnier than him.
	He will immediately attack them in some way to assert dominance.
	It started immediately.
	I've seen him do this with Dave Lando.
	I've seen him do it with Brian Callan.
	I've seen him kind of do it with Nick DiPaolo, but not really.
	Anyone he's intimidated by, he will immediately neg them.
	I think it's pretty true he's not intimidated by Nick DiPaolo.
	There's a lot of negging and a lot of kind of talking over him and just kind of run on sentences.
	Yeah, so this was the show formally announcing that Stephen had signed a deal with Rumble, which is kind of a big deal.
	It should have a little bit of fanfare or whatever, to be fair.
	Only Russell seems to have not understood that he was making the announcement and it just kind of fell out of his mouth instead.
	Yeah.
	And also, the fact that Stephen equates meanness with how funny something is honestly tells me everything I ever needed to know about Stephen's quote-unquote comedy.
	What about his dad?
	What does it tell you about his dad?
	Pulls out a daddy issue real quick.
	My dad does this all the time.
	He's a dipshit.
	Well, I do have a little bit of...
	A little bit of content that makes sense.
	Like I said, Stephen was in the middle of the separation with his wife and had just had his two kids.
	And his dad, at this point in the show, had taken a really significant role, almost sitting third chair on every episode, as emotional support.
	Right.
	Steven, I mean, he puts on a really strong facade, which I don't know how much that comes through, but he tries really hard, and he was really falling apart personally, like falling apart during this period.
	His dad was with him at all times.
	Not that his dad wasn't with him.
	It couldn't happen to a better guy.
	I know, right?
	I just want to give a little bit of perspective, like psychological perspective about what's going on here.
	It's very likely that Steven's dad is in the same room with him as well.
	He's behind a fence just cheering.
	Yeah.
	Quietly.
	You're doing great.
	I don't think Dad has ever done that.
	He's never cheered him on.
	No.
	He said, you didn't fuck up today.
	What is that in your back pocket, Stephen?
	Oh, no.
	So, yeah.
	It's interesting.
	Interesting.
	This is a time.
	I like this period of time in hindsight.
	This is really interesting, Stephen.
	Yeah, it's weird to go back, because again, it feels so recent, and yet.
	Also, yeah, this conversation was being live-streamed, obviously, so no takesies-backsies, and yeah, we're off to an awkward start.
	That was going to be my question, because the announcement part...
	Why is this here?
	Yep.
	Nope.
	Record an intro.
	Straight in.
	Nope.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I remember watching this.
	I watched this live in March and it was, well, this is also when Rumble wasn't working very well.
	Not that it works much better, but yeah.
	And I think if I recall right, they talk a little bit about that here in a second too.
	So maybe not a second, maybe in a while.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So let's get to the first topic of conversation that Russell wants to discuss.
	In particular, for you and I, there's obvious areas where we wouldn't agree explicitly, overtly, but what we both agree with is our right to have public conversations about our beliefs, both political and spiritual, and perhaps through dialogue and conversation, reach areas of common ground and certainly to conduct these conversations in a spirit of mutual respect.
	Most people have known that you've been in a period of transition because it's been a big online story It's been a saga, Stephen.
	So will you just talk us through how you've come to be on Rumble right now and why, in particular, you're joining Rumble?
	Well, I take exception with period of transition because we know how they're going to take that.
	So I'm still me.
	But I do understand.
	Yeah, when I started watching this, I wondered how long it would take Steven to make a joke at the expense of the trans community, and so I set a timer, and it took 1 minute 24 seconds for him to make a joke.
	Great job, Steven.
	Better than most times.
	It's definitely a record for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	I don't know if it's a record for Louder with Crowder.
	I feel like that's something that he would happily just come out the gate with, you know, just second the mic is hot.
	He would start it with a song.
	Yeah, parody.
	He would start with a parody song done very poorly.
	I got thinly veiled very insecure about his divorce.
	That's what I picked up.
	Yeah, for him.
	Well, remember, I don't know if it had been publicly disclosed at this point.
	No, it was still a month before.
	I'm looking at a mad guy that's a raw nerve.
	That's what I'm looking at right now.
	Yeah.
	So this was the Stop Big Con era in Stephen's life.
	Correct.
	Are we going to get into that?
	I don't want to jump into this conversation.
	I've got a little Rolling Stone piece, a short little bit here, that I quite liked as a reminder to have a little look at.
	So yeah, like...
	for a few months around this time.
	You know, he left The Blaze, which was Glenn Beck's outlet, back in December 22.
	And yeah, this is a little piece from Nicky McCann Ramirez from The Rolling Stone, right?
	Quote, Far-right YouTuber Stephen Crowder has kicked off a public feud with The Daily Wire after the right-wing news outlet approached him with a measly four-year contract offer worth a pitiful $50 million and some fiduciary obligations on his part.
	On Tuesday, Crowder launched the Stop Big Con initiative and accused conservative media giants of being no better than big tech and putting profit over the honest defense of conservative values.
	In a video posted to his YouTube channel, Crowder described a period of free agency following his departure from The Blaze in December.
	The host lambasted proposed contracts he received from parties he refused to publicly name, which would require him to actually make content and drive revenue for the company.
	At no point did Crowder specify the monetary value that had been offered to him, but it didn't take long for fans to analyze context clues and redactions from screenshots that Crowder had displayed and deduced that the contract Crowder was torching had been offered by the Daily Wire.
	Crowder, who had previously lambasted NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for comparing the league's contracts to slavery, complained that the proposals floated to him like the one from the Daily Wire were essentially slave contracts.
	Will Sommer of The Daily Beast pointed out that in November, around two months after The Daily Wire offered Crowder $50 million, the host publicly supported Kanye West's claims that Jewish talent executives controlled the entertainment industry through exploitative contracts.
	Ben Shapiro, the founder and editor of The Daily Wire, is Jewish.
	Crowder particularly took issue with provisions in the offer that would penalize his compensation if the show faced advertiser boycotts or a loss of revenue that the company could not replace within a period of 90 days.
	If this show had to be advertiser-friendly on YouTube, well, those guidelines pretty much read, don't say anything offensive ever, said Crowder, who has been demonetized on YouTube.
	Unquote.
	Yeah.
	No notes from me.
	I mean, yeah.
	That was, I think, the biggest sticking point for him, the situation that rubbed in the wrongs.
	Was this, if he got demonetized from any of the streaming platforms, like the big one is of course YouTube, but then anywhere else, you know, Twitter, Instagram, any of those platforms, they were going to take some of that $50 million back.
	And he had a problem with that because he felt censored and I guess leashed by that.
	I remember when all of this was happening and it was clear that Stephen didn't understand that media relies on advertising and has for forever.
	And so he recently had that rant about a bunch of advertisers pulling off of X for some reason.
	It's clear that he doesn't understand that advertising is where that money is.
	It's where it will always be.
	Sure.
	I mean, we almost started the show at this point in Steven's career, because Dennis and I, maybe a year and a half before we actually did this, we had been discussing launching the show.
	And when this was breaking down, we were doing a little bit of deeper digging into...
	You know, when the Stop Big Con website was even created, which was before the manufacturer drama that he brought when he came back from break.
	I think it was even created in October.
	He made this weird allusion to his contract running out from the Blaze in December.
	The website had already existed at this point.
	And then when he came back in January, mid-January, he launched his attack on, you know, Big Con in general, like knowing that the Daily Wire would probably figure out Not expecting that Jeremy Boring would come back with a 50-minute video breaking down his contract line by line, which was wonderful.
	I mean, the only time I'm going to praise Jeremy Boring, the creator of...
	Well, that and also his chocolate brand.
	You were really into that, too.
	The one for boys with nuts and girls.
	I'm a big fan of the Razors, personally.
	Oh, what was the Jeremy's Razors?
	Jeremy's Razors, of course.
	Yeah.
	She's not a sponsor.
	Definitely not.
	Definitely not a sponsor.
	Not Harry's.
	Never was.
	How dare you?
	So, I mean, he...
	I don't know how, well, I'm not going to judge his audience.
	I try to stay away from that.
	But this is just such a transparent, strategic attack, a way to throw all of alternative media under the bus in an attempt to take a power grab.
	And it's embarrassing.
	It didn't work.
	I think a lot of this is just how Steven professionally plays the victim all the time.
	Uh-huh.
	And, you know, the fact that he registered Stop Big Con a long time ago and then kind of like brought it back just for this particular thing.
	It's just what he does.
	If Steven is not a victim in some capacity, he's not going to be a successful person because he needs people to be angry for him.
	It's going to be a great four years.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's also – that's why we're sitting on woke YouTube because just wait.
	Just wait until we need to sell that domain.
	Okay.
	50 million.
	Make sure you get 50 million.
	Thank God.
	Yeah, I think that's enough context that explains this weirdness with what...
	I mean, he didn't get the deals that he wanted.
	I don't know if he even had a reasonable deal in mind.
	Maybe he would have taken money.
	I know that there's people like Timcast right now is supposedly maybe being purchased by the Daily Wire.
	And I've also heard rumors that the Daily Wire might actually be being acquired by Fox News, which is Stephen's former home.
	So I don't know.
	He's going to be kind of shit out of luck here in a second.
	But I mean, he's always got rumble.
	He's always got rumble, which we're going to talk about.
	Yeah, the apparatus left it behind.
	You know, and I think the problem as well with, like, with having it written into the contract that, like, oh, if you get suspended from YouTube or whatever, you know, we're going to take away some of your money, is that, like, getting suspended from YouTube is part of his business model, you know?
	He needs to be controversial and, like, needs to do it.
	So he's like, now I have to get suspended, guys.
	What are you trying to tell me here?
	Well, it's strategic.
	In the past, he's done it in a way that as soon as his...
	Because YouTube has a three-strike system, and he likes to have consistently two strikes.
	And whenever he's at risk of the third strike, he will play it safe and also at the same time pretend to be a victim who's being controlled ahead of an election or ahead of something else.
	The fourth show of the week.
	He has to have more content.
	He needs something to talk about.
	Oh, we're getting persecuted again.
	As soon as the second strike lapses, he will intentionally get another strike.
	Steven treats his YouTube strikes the way I used to treat my absences when I worked a 9-to-5 job.
	That's exactly what I was thinking about.
	Yeah, when we find that he's on vacation somewhere, he's like, keep an eye on his Instagram, and if he's in Puerto Vallarta, we know exactly what happened.
	I'm taking one to be here today.
	One of my points rolled off, I'm taking a day off.
	Ours is going to like a 365 rollover thing so it's like these are the glory days right now for me.
	I appreciate that.
	Yeah, but Steven works for himself, though.
	He's not getting away with anything.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry.
	I was going to move along, but if you've got more, by all means.
	I've got nothing.
	Just making jokes.
	Go ahead.
	Okay, so importantly, right, here's how Stephen responds to the question and describes his period of transition.
	No, I will say this.
	We've been in this period of transition, actually, and there have been some issues that we can discuss that we can't discuss contractually, but a lot of suitors who came forward, and Rumble was really just the only place that gets it.
	They understand the idea of free speech.
	I've heard people complain and say, oh, Rumble's too right-wing.
	I go...
	Hold on a second.
	You think Russell Brand is right-wing?
	Now, of course, if you allow all free speech, you're naturally going to have the people who've been ostracized, the people who've been censored, migrate there first.
	Hopefully, long-term, Rumble will be, you know, an alternative to a place like YouTube where people can actually speak freely.
	But, you know, we've been working with Rumble for a long time as sort of a mirror channel to YouTube because we were the reason for, you know, the new borderline content guidelines on YouTube.
	Sorry about that.
	They call that the Crowder Rule, where they said, well, you didn't violate community guidelines.
	I said, you're not advertiser-friendly anyways.
	I was like, well, just demonetize us.
	I said, well, we need to hit you with some strikes, so now we'll create borderline content guidelines.
	And that's this sort of cabal of people who create these new rules that you can't know.
	There's no transparency.
	You don't know who sets them, and you don't know how to not violate them.
	So Rumble became a safety at that point, as they were kind of coming up.
	And we just always told people, look, if you don't see us on YouTube, go to Rumble.
	I mean, one thing people...
	Don't necessarily know.
	You can't find us in browse or search on YouTube.
	So if you type in Steven Crowder and the name, the title of the episode, you'll get something from PBS from nine years ago.
	Something about the burrowing owl or some shit.
	So we knew that we had to start building an alternative platform for ourselves.
	And more importantly is every single view that we get on YouTube is from people bookmarking and checking every day.
	That's where the traffic comes from.
	It's in a single digit as far as browse and search.
	I don't care, your mouth is too wet!
	Steven, take a drink of water!
	I thought I was crazy.
	It's right in front of him.
	It's right in front of him.
	You see that?
	I have no idea what he said.
	I have no clue.
	That was intense.
	Take just the top layer of the clicking smack out of it.
	I do tend to routinely apply a click remover for Russell, so I might just...
	I'll try and make sure that it's easier.
	Can you eliminate the whole punchline of this joke in post?
	We all freak out about sound no one hears.
	Like, what are they talking about in this place?
	No shit, right?
	Please don't fix it this one time.
	Yeah, see, I'll make sure.
	So obviously what he's saying there is blatantly untrue.
	Not only is it untrue now, but I used the Wayback Machine to go back to February and April 2023 to see what the results would be, like what would come up if I searched Steven Crowder on YouTube, and both his channel and his shitty videos were what came up.
	If his channel traffic is in the single digits for browse and search, that's a him problem, not a YouTube problem.
	And what he's actually talking about and trying to claim credit for is YouTube keeping track of and trying to avoid promotion of borderline content, meaning content that comes close to infringing upon YouTube's community guidelines, which often includes nonsensical and harmful conspiracy theories and misinformation.
	But supposedly that's called the Crowder rule now.
	They don't care that much about him.
	I promise they don't care about him.
	He wants to be the victim so bad here.
	He thinks that at the time Susan Wojcicki, rest in peace of course, was like sitting there worrying about Steven all the time.
	It was not a consideration.
	I liked Russell's face when he said the Crowder rule.
	It looked very like, what the fuck are you talking about?
	See, this is the fun part.
	Seeing how much they fucking hate each other.
	It's gonna be...
	I think it's electric.
	I gotta tell you, I think their chemistry's electric.
	There's something happening.
	So apparently, like, the only thing you're supposed to be able to find on YouTube if you search for Steven Crowder is a PBS video about Steven doing a song where he said all burrowing slash ground owls should be killed.
	He said I want you wiped out and gone for good.
	As well as multiple mug club segments about the evils of ground owls.
	And apparently, supposedly, some of his audience started kicking ground owls as a result.
	I couldn't...
	There was a lot of information I couldn't find about this, but that's the claim that's made in this show anyway.
	None of that sounds true.
	Admittedly, I haven't done many deep dives on Steven, so that was added to the top of my list at this point.
	Yeah, yeah, I tried pulling at that thread and just kept running into walls.
	I was like, I don't know how much of this is true.
	I know he made the videos, I know that's for sure.
	But yeah, just...
	Great all around.
	Another point of difference between here and present day.
	The argument, yeah, at this point could much more credibly be made that Russell wasn't right-wing back in March 2023. Like, at this point he would still push back on some of the anti-trans nonsense.
	You know, he's stopped doing that lately, which is concerning.
	And, you know, nowadays also, like, he's very obviously a steak-eating, Bible-thumping, truck-driving conservative Christian.
	He's so bad at it.
	He's so terrible at it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I'm like, what are you doing?
	And fairly recently he used the Bible as reasoning that the LGBTQ plus community could be considered immoral as well.
	I'm like, oh good, we're going down a fun road.
	That's what I was going to say, he finally figured out how he can agree with his compatriots on the right.
	Agreeing that trans people are bad, because Christians have got that down pat.
	Listen, they've already handled it, and he's hung out in Florida for a while.
	So yeah, he's figured it out.
	Yeah, he's like, I have a book I can hide behind.
	Here we go.
	Let's do this.
	Well, because he was even pushing back at, what, Candace Owens?
	Not that long ago?
	About trans people.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, not long after he was already Christian.
	Oh, she says lots of terrible things.
	He's been learning about American Christianity and how thoroughly hateful it is, and he didn't really get it until he came over here also.
	Probably got COVID. Stephen and Candace don't like each other at all.
	I think it was her who came...
	She came forward first implying that he was getting divorced ahead of the announcement and the ring video.
	Yeah, but that's the kind of messiness I'm here for.
	I also feel like that's a pretty easy thing to guess.
	Well, she also said that he tried to come on to her during a New Year's stream, even though she's married.
	Probably.
	He's gross.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think that's a perfect summary just in general of Steven.
	It's a gross guy.
	Yeah, I try to stay away from personal attacks, but I feel like that's been about 25% of what I've talked about with Steven is the drama and the rumors surrounding him, so I apologize.
	But it's stating fact!
	You were talking about the person's character.
	This is Steven.
	This is who Steven is.
	And truly a cautionary tale to...
	Men and anyone who also don't feel like they can talk about their feelings, you don't not talk about them.
	You just think you're hiding it and everyone can see that you are this pulsing raw nerve of emotions that are totally out of control.
	You are fooling exactly zero people.
	Maybe yourself, if you're lucky, and kind of drunk.
	Like, that's it.
	Maybe try therapy.
	Get a dog!
	I don't know!
	And be nice to it!
	He has dogs.
	The dog was part of the whole ring scenario.
	You put on those gloves, you touch that dog's anus.
	Well, without context.
	Let's just leave it, honestly.
	Yeah, I'm just gonna leave that there.
	Yeah, Google it, good luck!
	It does make total sense, though, that Steven and Candace would hate each other, even just as personalities, because they're both spiteful, hateful little shits, and they both want to be the alpha at all moments possible, so I'm like, oh yeah, that's gonna be fireworks every time.
	I think you could make an ad-lib and just say, Stephen and Blank hate each other.
	All these people do.
	Person's name.
	But they're competing for the same market share, and they're also all competing to be the victim and the strong man at the same time, which is an impossible...
	Like, it's impossible to sustain, like, emotionally as a person.
	And so they're all so uncomfortable and mad and crazy.
	And so, yeah, let them...
	If it was just like a Thunderdome situation and we could put money on it, that'd be tight, but they're also ruining the country.
	Yeah.
	Polymarket odds.
	Polymarket betting on victimhood on the far right.
	They'd take your money.
	They would take your money.
	Yeah, they would.
	I do have a...
	Like, actually, is there anyone in this sphere that Steven actually likes?
	Like, obviously, he's worked with Alex Jones a fair bit, but, like...
	But he was, like, dogging on Alex Jones, even.
	Yeah, I mean, he kind of implies that Alex Jones is not, like, kind of dumb.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, every time that, like, when we first started doing this show and they would have Alex Jones come on and put him on, like, a webcam, it seemed like they would, like, retrograde his, like, his connection to make it look like he's, like, incompetent and, like, flickering around, like, in the screen and stuff.
	And it's like, that's not how it is on his show, but they're, like, essentially the same studio.
	I mean, they're, like, the same setup for the most part.
	Yeah.
	At the time, at least.
	That's so shit.
	That's what I think he was doing.
	I mean, he does that same kind of negging technique with Alex Jones as well, but he's also come to bat several times on things like Piers Morgan to defend Alex.
	But in a way, it's almost like...
	That'd be a strategy.
	Could be strategy, you know, if there's someone else fucking up more than you, like, it's better to be on their side than against them.
	I think that Stephen doesn't genuinely like anybody, really.
	No.
	That was going to be my contention, yeah.
	I think he treats it, honestly, like the way that Trump treats people, where it's like, if someone is beneficial at that time, he'll treat them kindly, and otherwise he just, you know, forgets about them.
	Yeah, I was running through the list of the guests that he had during the election livestream, and Patrick Bet-David, Dan Bongino, Tim Pool, all of them.
	He was kind of belittling a little bit.
	I think he made fun of all of their connections and said nothing really good about this.
	This isn't who I'm trying to talk to.
	I was trying to talk to my good friend Jared's uncle's friend, Dan Bongino.
	So, yeah, I don't think he has friends.
	I think that's about right.
	And I think, you know, the friends he has are his 10 employees and they live in their little compound outside Dallas.
	And that's kind of, that's his social life.
	I mean, he's not your friends if you have to buy them.
	If you can't put your dick on someone's shoulder, can you call him a friend?
	Think about that.
	Another thing that people just need to look up, I guess.
	Yes.
	No, he has no friends.
	Yeah, what are real friends?
	What are fake friends?
	What I'm hearing is a lot of kind of very narcissistic behaviors.
	To me, that's what I'm hearing.
	Sat opposite Russell, you're like, oh yeah, no, two narcissists trying to have a conversation?
	Yeah, an art fight.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	I'd watch that.
	Is there a pay-per-view for you?
	That's what I'm saying!
	We put them in the Thunderdome!
	And we let them fight it out.
	We get...
	Get one of those steel balls in two motorcycles and see what happens.
	You want to know something cool?
	My grandpa used to be one of those guys.
	That's the coolest thing!
	End of show!
	Holy shit!
	That's dope.
	Does Steven do any martial arts or anything?
	I don't think he can find any partners.
	Tumbles on his own.
	Yeah, well, I mean, we've seen him work out a little bit.
	He likes to pretend like he gets up at 4 a.m.
	to work out, and then he just kind of does resistance training, from what I've seen.
	I mean, he obviously does work out.
	I mean, he's a big dude, but he probably listens to five-finger death punch and just curls.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I'm putting the new skillet record on, and I'm showing Gerald how we get down in the football gridiron.
	So I'll just glide my muscles as well, you know.
	I don't think, I mean, I'm sure he's familiar with martial arts.
	I don't think he actively participates, no.
	It's like, Russell does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so in my head I'm like, maybe Russell could take him, you know?
	Like, maybe?
	I could see it.
	These ChocoFucks have made the most exhausting life for themselves!
	Why would you do this?
	No favors, yeah.
	God!
	I mean, the schadenfreude, frankly, mwah, chef kiss.
	But, Jesus.
	It's just, that's okay.
	So, to paraphrase RuPaul, right?
	Like, if you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love anybody else?
	Well, these guys fucking hate.
	I don't think that Russell hates himself.
	I think Russell loves himself.
	Stephen obviously hates himself.
	You can't hate yourself unless you hate everybody.
	Yeah, he doesn't like him.
	And his dad has made him this way in some form or fashion.
	This is just perpetuating this intense toxic masculinity.
	I mean, you said a big thing.
	This is all the result of his dad.
	And we will get to the bottom of that at some point.
	I think so.
	Well, it takes a dad village.
	Can we bring out his dad now?
	Mr. Crowder!
	Don't threaten me with a good time.
	We'll get Russell's dad, Ron, in, you know, and we'll have the full dad off.
	Can you give me a quick couple sentences on Ron?
	I know that we're, Al, you're experiencing what I call clip three panic, which is where you're an hour deep in a show and no one stops talking and you're looking at your list of clips and you're like, we're fucked.
	We're officially fucked.
	I do have a heart out at three.
	I'm gonna leave in six minutes.
	No, but like, what is Russell's dad like?
	Does he have like a...
	Oh, he's a creep!
	He is a grade A gross, like classic 80s creep.
	He's a cretin, is who Ron is, very simply.
	He was a photographer, he was wealthy, and then he lost all his money.
	When Russell was a small boy, his parents split, basically, and whenever Ron would look after him, he would put Russell in front of the television watching either Elvis Presley movies or porn, while Ron went into the next room to fuck women.
	Yeah, it's bad.
	So that was part of it.
	And then when Russell was 17, Ron took him to Southeast Asia to lose his virginity, and they went on a sex tour of Southeast Asia, sharing a twin room, by the way.
	So, yeah.
	Ron's an interesting cat.
	There is a contrast that Russell genuinely grew up poor, in a bad situation with, for lack of a better term, broken home.
	And dad was as bad as a present but very toxic father could be in a way that is using women as objects.
	Consistently and pervisively.
	Semi-present, I would say.
	Yeah, when he pops in.
	Thank you for clarifying that.
	When he shows up, he's like, hey, trauma!
	Bye!
	Here you go, mom.
	Chronically ill mom, tough.
	Yes, mom had cancer a lot.
	Early addiction kind of stuff.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It was a genuinely rough childhood for Russell.
	But yeah, Ron's a piece of shit.
	Can we talk a little bit about the irony of how Stephen so often talks about how the lack of father figures is a problem with black Americans?
	I think he's telling something here.
	Yeah, I think there's too many father figures around here.
	I think you'll need to pop the brakes a little bit.
	Or yours are broken.
	Throw it back and get another one.
	It sounds like these guys just don't quite know what a good father figure is.
	That's all.
	Yeah, do you know, I started, on a related note, I started watching Mr. McMahon, you know, the Netflix documentary.
	It's crazy.
	Yeah, as far as I'm aware the critiques are, there could be more detail in terms of how much of a piece of shit Vince is, but I was fascinated by his relationship with his dad, where his dad clearly just didn't give a shit, didn't like him very much, and Vince was like, he was great, he was really nice to me.
	Like, Dude.
	Oh, no.
	It's like, no, man.
	You don't know what dad is.
	Oh, no.
	Okay, I've said this on the show before, and I think this contention still stands, is that there are two kinds of people in the world.
	There are people that have realized that their dad's kind of an asshole and people that haven't realized it yet.
	And I'm not saying that in a bad way.
	I'm kind of an asshole.
	My partner's kind of an asshole.
	I think we're all a little bit of an asshole, but if you don't realize that your dad's, like, kind of a prick sometimes, and, like, you are living in this world of delusion that makes you into a Steven or a Russell.
	They're both...
	Different kinds of bad dads.
	Right!
	I think they're closer than you'd think, though.
	Both seemingly unwilling to accept their sons for who they were in the moment.
	If my son did cartoon voiceovers for a living, I'd be disappointed, too.
	For PBS? What are they paying you?
	Nothing?
	This is bogus.
	Yeah, unless he paid your mortgage and then you were like, what else would you like?
	What else would you like my child to do?
	Giving you room and gourd on Sesame Street.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Is that trash can available?
	There's a couple worms in there.
	Back to the interview.
	So Russell is at this point pretty curious about the community that Stephen is cultivating, as well as his relationship with the people he regularly attacks, which leads to Stephen discussing one of the reasons he's been demonetized from YouTube.
	Okay.
	So you have, like, created a pretty powerful community there with your mug club.
	Yeah.
	And some of the shows of yours that I've thought have really given me pause for four, even though, as we've already mentioned and will be clear to anybody that's familiar with our work, there are points of...
	Disagreement, but as the cultural landscape continues to shift, as censorship continues to, broadly speaking, become exacerbated, it's clear that new forms of alliance and conviviality are going to be necessary.
	And I feel like the areas where we agree is generally personal autonomy, the ability to run your own community.
	Obviously and evidently, we should make clear on this platform the right to speak freely and disagree.
	One of the things I've always enjoyed is the sense of community that you bring to Mug Club.
	And do you feel like even in some of your targets, comedically, that there's a sort of a sense of warmth and engagement?
	How much anger do you feel there is?
	Well, you know, if you were to hear the left, they would say that we're bullies because they say you should only punch up.
	But what I say is, well, when you silence people, for example, if we can't speak out against children transitioning, wherever someone lines up, children on puberty blockers.
	And so we do jokes about that.
	You know, one of the episodes we got suspended was there was a sexual assault that took place in a prison, an all-female prison.
	And it was a formerly male, I would argue, currently male prisoner who did the assaulting.
	So we did a sketch where Alex Jones visited this woman as the angel Gabriel.
	And he said, you know, you shall, she said, I'll have a son.
	I don't remember what it was.
	We were suspended.
	And he said, no, your cellmate's going to rape you.
	Repeatedly.
	And that was a joke, dressed up as an angel.
	They suspended us for that, even though it was a true case, right?
	But what happens is I don't see that as punching down.
	I see that as punching at the powers that be.
	Oh yeah, yes, definitely what that is.
	So back in 2021, Stephen and his crew did a segment alleging that a transgender person in a woman's prison sexually assaulted and impregnated a fellow inmate in California.
	In January that year, a state law known as SB 132 that allows transgender people to be placed in an incarceration facility that is consistent with their gender identity went into effect.
	However, no one in California's women's prisons had become pregnant while in custody, according to a CDCR spokesperson.
	It's anti-trans bullshit being propagated by the Women's Liberation Front, who are an anti-trans hate group.
	Stephen then made a hateful sketch based on bullshit featuring Alex Jones, and so violated YouTube's policies on both hate speech and or featuring creators who have been banned from YouTube already.
	But caught in controversy, and one might say deliberately getting banned from YouTube, is a part of Stephen's business model to make him seem edgy and controversial, right?
	Exactly.
	We had a strike expire.
	This is what happened.
	I remember watching this.
	It's not a good skit.
	It's not.
	Obviously.
	It's not a good actor.
	The thing that struck me was that they played it on the show and then no one in his studio was laughing at it.
	And I was like, Oh, that's how you know it's better.
	You know, if none of you are still amused by this...
	That means payday is late.
	That's usually what that means.
	It blows my mind that in this clip here, Russell's talking about how Mug Club is such a warm community.
	Get the fuck out of here.
	I love it when I see the monthly volunteering at food banks that Mug Club does and, you know, building homes for people who can't afford them.
	Mug Club for humanity, yeah, totally.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I see them all over the place.
	I forgot.
	All they do is F-slur.
	Is that what he means?
	F-slur community.
	Yeah, if you check, take a peek at their comment section during the live show.
	Yeah, it's so warm.
	We're going down to Mexico to use the F-slur at local...
	Well, what we're still saying is run your own community.
	Like, that means your own website.
	If you want your own community, oh, you can make it and whatever rules you want.
	Oh, but you don't want to do that.
	So you just lie.
	You're playing in all of our faces right now is what you're doing because you don't want to follow the guideline, the terms and conditions that you sign whenever you sign up.
	That's it.
	Yeah, and the important context for this is that this conversation is coming from a place of Russell being really interested in the Mug Club income stream.
	Because at this point, Russell's Locals channel had only been up about six months, and it wasn't up to much.
	It was very convoluted and confused and didn't have that many subscribers, and so Russell was like, hey, how are you making all this money?
	Because that sounds pretty tight.
	And, you know, there's always potential to turn it into a cult later on.
	Whereas like nowadays, Russell is raking in a rough amount of about half a million dollars a year from the Locals channel, vaguely.
	Is that publicly displayed?
	We're close to that, right?
	Yeah, we're getting there.
	Because I always have a lot of trouble determining exactly how much money Mug Club is actually making.
	I know that we've had some listeners send us statistics of active membership, but it doesn't seem like a figure that we could publicly make a guess.
	Yeah, so he put up a figure of how many members that they have with a goal of hitting 10,000 subscribers, and they're currently at just shy of 8,000, I think.
	And then it was doing the maths of what's going to be the minimum amount that...
	Each of those are paying, you know, per year in that kind of situation.
	But it's, yeah, around a half a million figure.
	That's where we're at.
	Well, and so, Jen, I don't know if we're going to talk about this at all, but so Mug Club, which is Steven's thing, kind of got folded into Rumble Premium recently?
	Yeah.
	Guess what you wouldn't do if you were making a fair amount of money with Mug Club?
	You don't fold into something, no.
	Fuck no.
	No.
	Rumble's going to ask me.
	Not the other way around.
	So obviously, there is something to be said for, like, Russell has, like, genuine engagement.
	There are women who listen to Russell.
	I guess my co-host formerly listened to Russell before COVID, which is so funny because I have all this audio of her being like, I love this new Russell.
	Oh no.
	And I do keep it in a folder.
	It's like someone naming their daughter Khaleesi before the show was over.
	Oh no!
	Right, but that's the thing.
	There is a...
	And I think that we don't know as much as we would like to know, I think.
	But as far as the Benny Johnson, Tim Pool funding situation, I think that in America, at least as of right now or maybe in recent history or not so recent history, that there is money coming from somewhere...
	Even for, you know, Daily Wire and Blaze, all that, like, who the fuck is actually supporting all this stuff?
	And, like, I don't know how much of it is AstroTurf, whereas Russell doesn't really have that same...
	Like, Russell has, like, real market share.
	Like, they had a real, like, that community event.
	Like, they were exploiting the wellness industry really effectively for a while.
	Yeah.
	And so I don't see that as a parallel with Steven Crowder necessarily.
	No, I mean, easy example is the Times Square billboard that he did a couple months back.
	I think about it all the time.
	It's super funny.
	Invested so much money on this advertisement in Times Square and then did a call to action for his listeners to go take selfies in front of it.
	And there was two people took selfies in it.
	And that's wildly telling to me.
	It's washing.
	It's really wild.
	And that probably speaks to, like, Russell's pre-celebrity, of course, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Movies.
	But Stephen doesn't have that, so.
	Arthur.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Well, Arthur's pissed.
	Yeah.
	Which is a really popular meme.
	He's got two of them out there.
	That's actually kind of impressive.
	Most people have zero.
	That is true.
	I will say with Russell's content, some of it has been folded into Rumble Premium.
	Some of it you can access through Rumble Premium.
	Not all of it, but if you go onto his Rumble page, you can see some of it.
	It's like, oh, if you get Rumble Premium, you can look at this too.
	And it's stuff from his locals channel.
	So there's an aspect that's been folded in.
	But it's hard to tell without knowing their contracts and everything, because they've signed these deals with Rumble.
	And I'm like, God, I would love to read that.
	I would love to know what's in that.
	Well, and Russell's like on Luminary, like was on Luminary.
	Was working with Luminary.
	Yeah, and like Amazon subsidiary.
	Yeah, so like there was kind of more of a higher sort of market share, like exposure, right, to a wider audience and also just appeal than Stephen.
	Yeah, yeah, that's true.
	What do you mean everyone loves the guy who yelled at his wife?
	People love to tune into that show.
	Blowing a cigar smoke in her pregnant face.
	Oh my god.
	Oh man.
	Then again, we can hardly talk.
	We did a whole episode on Russell's crime, so we can hardly talk.
	Or it's the show.
	It's actually the show.
	That's kind of all we're talking about.
	I don't think it's necessarily talking shit.
	I don't know.
	I think that it's really indicative.
	If you can see and kind of put these sort of behavior patterns together, I think it's really instructive.
	Because we don't have a lot of upfront information, so we have to kind of fill in the gaps.
	I'm not saying anything definitive at all.
	I can't read anybody's mind, whatever.
	But just understanding, okay, the money's got to come from somewhere.
	Where is that?
	It's not even a value judgment.
	It's just source identification.
	Yeah.
	I also think that a large part of the audience here is that they have to portray the success.
	It's the same way that we have the influencers, like the one I was talking about earlier in our text group who was like, I have three days in one day and I'm manipulating time.
	It's the illusion of success that is appealing to some of these viewers because you're not going to watch a loser to these people, right?
	They're like, I'm not going to watch these losers and pay attention to these losers.
	So he has to portray that he's so successful.
	It just seems like these guys are fighting over a pretty small market.
	And Russell, I think it's really stupid that Russell is deciding to eat meat and drive trucks and get COVID in Florida.
	Become generic.
	Yeah.
	This is a bad idea financially as opposed to – Steven and Matt Walsh and Alex Jones, you're all fighting over this – not Tiny market share, but it's a limited kind of like corralled market share.
	It's the Andrew Tate, right?
	That kind of, that like there's only so many hours in the day for like horrible incels.
	Like you can't really, there's only so many ways you can go.
	Whereas like Russell kind of had way more access.
	Yeah.
	Through the wellness industry, the billions of dollars in wellness industry that he's kind of giving up?
	Pretty much left behind a lot.
	But it's just interesting to see how these guys are playing off of each other and how unsuccessful this industry is.
	I'm also curious as to the staying power of some of these groups.
	I think that's one of the appeal also is like the people that Steven and Russell have now are probably people who are more likely to stick with them because they're kind of stuck in their ways and they're just going to dig in their feet and they're going to keep listening to these things that are going to confirm their biases.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's again, I can turn this into a cult, you know, and these people will stay with me no matter what.
	Yeah.
	Well, but influencers basically need the MLM model, right?
	Like, where you have a tub, and like, the faucet's going, so you have people showing up all the time, but the drain is wide open.
	So you constantly need an influx to be able to, like, make a lot of money.
	Yeah.
	And so that's kind of like, I think it's interesting to see how it affects Russell versus how it affects like just a straight like a right wing grifter American guy, because it doesn't seem like it seems like the faucet that is dumping into the tub.
	It's not just organic engagement in a way that I think There's an excuse.
	Like, Russell was in movies.
	Russell was on TV. You know, like, regular-ass BBC radio for, what, a decade, probably?
	Like, there's a lot of market share.
	Yeah, roughly.
	Yeah, and also international, right?
	So that's, I guess, I think that's, Byron, I completely share your frustration that I fucking want to see that contract so badly.
	I want to see the numbers.
	Mm-hmm.
	Because there's really no way to know.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, and then you throw Peter Thiel into the mix and all this other stuff.
	No, we're not.
	That's too much.
	Exactly.
	Great new online doc about Red Scare and Peter Thiel to the podcast, too.
	I'll send it to you.
	Yes, please.
	Interesting.
	So, on the subject of money, we now get to the topic of the bank bailouts of 2008. I don't know if you remember, but the Tea Party, when it came about, everyone was accusing them of being racist.
	Rick Santelli's rant was against the bailouts.
	It was the right wing who said, we shouldn't be bailing out big banks.
	You know, the West Indian Trading Company, I believe, was like a fifth of population earth, right, at one point.
	No company is too big to fail.
	So the right wing view, the conservative view, has always been no bailouts for anybody.
	But then Occupy Wall Street came out, and they had the same problems, but they believe that the Tea Party folks were racist, because that's how the media labeled them.
	But both of them were against bailing out big banks.
	And by the way, you see this identity politics on the right.
	Have you ever heard that song?
	Well, they're living it up on Wall Street.
	They're shutting Detroit down.
	That's just identity politics for some guy with a truck.
	They should shut Wall Street down and shut Detroit down.
	You don't deserve a bailout if you're Goldman Sachs any more than you create a shitty car that nobody wants to buy.
	I don't care.
	I'm not the party of big business or small business.
	We all need to be, as Americans, the party of good business.
	When you remove government from the equation, picking winners and losers, when they're picking winners in banks, when they're picking winners in auto manufacturing, picking winners in insurance companies, picking winners in universities, airlines, you lose.
	These are industries that are the most heavily regulated in the country.
	And now big tech, right?
	Big tech, it's really a tripopoly.
	Three companies that largely run it.
	Those companies that everyone – you guys satisfied with the customer service at airlines?
	You think American cars have been better lately?
	You try and get a car with a chip set on the lot?
	How about insurance companies?
	Did Obamacare work out?
	How about banks?
	Are they being honest by you?
	What kind of interest are you getting on your CD? These are all the most regulated industries that exist, and they're the ones that people hate the most, and they think the solution is more regulation.
	If the media hadn't done the tarring and feathering and labeled all conservatives and the tea partiers who are largely good people, the people who probably not only support me now but probably by and large tune into your show, good hardworking American people, if they hadn't been labeled racist and they could effectively do that back then because there wasn't really the alternative podcast sphere or alternative media, you would have had a much – Much stronger coalition of them and the Occupy Wall Street people.
	The problem is the endgame because the Occupy Wall Street people, a lot of them wanted to nationalize the banks.
	And of course, that's where I get off the train.
	But they both had a problem with bailouts.
	And so it's never been a right-wing position to bail out big banks.
	Yes.
	And of course, famously, this bailout took place under a neoliberal establishment administration.
	And that's notable, evident, and obvious.
	Both Bush and Obama.
	They were very similar in a lot of ways.
	They weren't all that different.
	Welcome to the Crowder cadence, by the way, Al.
	This is super fun.
	Impossible.
	He runs his sentences together in a unique way that I imagine Russell does.
	Similarly, but differently.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, different styles of Gish Gallop, you know, just let's keep it all rolling.
	So Russell still didn't know the correct definition of neoliberalism back in 2023, which tracks us.
	He definitely doesn't know it now.
	When we eventually read through his 2014 book, Revolution, I will be trying to figure out if he's ever actually understood it.
	So the definition of neoliberalism is basically the desire for privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, all paid for with cuts to public spending.
	Stephen and Russell are using the definition of neoliberalism more commonly used among the alt-right, which just means modern liberals to them.
	Neoliberal, right?
	And because Bush wanted to bail out the banks as well, that makes him a modern liberal.
	Because bank bailouts is not a right-wing idea, apparently.
	And all the while, Stephen is very much claiming, without realizing, that neoliberalism would have been what saved America had the pesky legacy media not labeled the Tea Party, which was vehemently neoliberal in its mission, as racist.
	Had that not happened, the Tea Party and the Occupy movements would have been best buds!
	That's what would have happened, and then we would have solved it all.
	Also, it was the East India Company, not the West Indian Trading Company.
	That was wild.
	Just for the record.
	Off the bat, I was like, you're dumb.
	Nope.
	I mean, but he was like, oh, you're so close.
	Like, there's so many things that he said.
	And this is what frustrates me with Russell, too, is like, there's, oh, you're set up.
	Yes, there are problems with all of those different arenas of society.
	Oh, you fumbled.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Yeah, Sarah Palin would have been the one to lead Occupy Wall Street for sure.
	Yeah.
	She can see it from her house, it's fine.
	Yeah, true, true.
	I think she would have had a luxury tent, I'll put it that way.
	She would have had a camper at least, you know, something.
	Glamping.
	Glamping on Wall Street.
	Me and Tom Morello.
	Singing a protest song?
	Oh, good lord.
	Yeah, yeah, this machine kills fascists.
	Welcome back to my first recent episode of Glampin' with the Machine!
	Here we go!
	Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they would have all gotten along really well had no one been called racist.
	If only alt-right media had existed back then!
	Damn it!
	Oh, dear.
	So, now we get a real glimpse into Stephen's depth of thought.
	And by the way, this is the issue with big tech that I think we can agree with.
	It really is like this tech oligarchy, right?
	They're benefiting from Section 230 where they don't have the liability, right?
	They're basically benefiting as being a public utility, but they are a platform if they're censoring content.
	So they want to have it both ways.
	And God, no one on the right is going in and really doing anything to fight that.
	Think about it.
	You'd think you are.
	I am.
	We talk about it.
	But what about the elected officials out there?
	What about a lot of these companies who have billionaire investors?
	Why aren't they doing anything about that?
	Why does it take me who started with a blue bed sheet and a mug club and doing some sketches out there where I have to take these bullets and people, you're going to take some too.
	I'm warning you.
	You're going to get a lot of those.
	Unfortunately, you're going to be butting up against big tech, this new Mohan, whatever the hell his name is.
	And you don't see anyone else going out there fighting for you.
	This is where you and I agree.
	I sit there.
	I have traveled this country, right?
	When I do a show, it could be anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people.
	I'm really grateful now that we can do this and not have to be beholden to clubs.
	I've never met one fan of Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell.
	Not one.
	But these people are always elected?
	Where's the fan club?
	Right?
	I talk with these people.
	I know who they like.
	I know what they want.
	I know the kind of content they want.
	When they vote with their dollar, when you look at the consumer behavior, it's very clear.
	Not one.
	No one says, gee, you know what?
	I really like what that Paul Ryan's up to.
	But they always get the spots.
	That's where the right gets it wrong.
	You're in Rumble's studio!
	Rumble invited your silly asses.
	You're sitting on Rumble's chairs.
	Don't tell me about your stupid little sheet.
	No.
	No!
	And a standard mug club.
	Everyone's got one of those.
	Yeah, right?
	I just had a little subscription service.
	Podcast USB mic.
	Yeah, right.
	So, the thing I admire most about this clip is the logic.
	So, because he's never personally met anyone in his audience at any of his shows who are into Lindsey Graham or Paul Ryan, there must be nobody at all who is into Lindsey Graham or Paul Ryan.
	Obviously, their respective electorates may disagree, but the important thing about both Lindsey Graham and Paul Ryan is regardless of the size of their fan clubs, they were fucking effective at being shitheads and advancing some of the worst far-right ideologies on the country, which is why they're there.
	Yeah, just like, oh, yeah, there can't be any fans of these people.
	It's a mystery as to how these guys get into power.
	They must just be installed.
	I'm like, yeah, okay, sure.
	And just a small correction.
	I don't know.
	From personal experience, I have seen Steven Crowder live do stand-up comedy, and he does not, at least in the situation I was in, did not perform in front of 3,000 people, but did perform in front of 150 people in Spokane, Washington.
	That sounds more accurate.
	Yeah, okay.
	Just saying.
	Did you do a poll of the audience to see if there were any Lindsey Graham fans in Washington?
	I did actually ask.
	One person was really stoked on those pictures of Paul Ryan doing weightlifting.
	Yeah.
	That was during his Rage Against Machine era too.
	Just a little...
	Small corrections.
	It's fun as well, by the way, to yet again have one of these guys being like...
	These tech companies have too much power, with Stephen even describing Google and YouTube as basically public utilities there.
	But apparently regulation is not the answer.
	That's the cause of problems.
	And instead, like Rumble, funded by Peter Thiel, is more of the answer.
	That seems closer to it.
	Like, oh, okay.
	Well, also, if you let their lines of logic continue for any amount of time, they get to regulation, but they don't want to call it that.
	Constantly.
	Like, oh, somebody should do something.
	I mean, not regulate, but somebody should do something.
	Why is it my...
	I mean, Lindsey Graham, oh, I guess he's in the government, should do something.
	Okay, then what is it if it's not regulation?
	Super genius?
	Yeah.
	Come on!
	How do you fix this problem?
	The market needs to be fixed by having less regulation and then, I don't know, maybe they can fight to the death in an arena.
	Maybe that's how we do it.
	I don't know.
	That's my plan.
	Don't take that from me.
	How dare you?
	Hey, if it's corporate billionaires fighting to the death in the arena, I'm going to watch it.
	That's...
	I'll call Dick Durbin.
	I don't know, man.
	He's been misunderstood.
	Two days of programming now.
	It's like raw and whatever.
	Yeah, smack.
	Well, we got the third show now.
	Saturday's main event.
	Fantastic.
	Oh my god, I would watch so much of this.
	Okay, we're going to skip ahead a little bit and discuss some Christianity before Stephen pivots to a terrible family story.
	What I feel, Stephen, what about spiritually?
	I understand, are you Christian, mate?
	Yeah.
	From the perspective of a comedian, I guess we require targets.
	And I, by the way, don't accept who gets to determine the punching down stuff.
	What I feel like is...
	With me, generally speaking, and you have to make mistakes as a comedian, how do you know where their line is unless you cross it?
	Broadly speaking, where I'm coming from, though, is a sense that I believe that I'm optimistic about human beings.
	That part of my determination to not yield to centralised authority, be it corporate or state, is a sense that people will be alright.
	We will look after one another.
	People will find ways of organizing for their personal and mutual benefit.
	For me, that requires a certain openness.
	Is there anything in what you disagree with?
	We put the fundamental disagreement, but it's not what you think it is.
	I believe that human beings are inherently sinful.
	I have twins.
	They're 17 months.
	And I probably shouldn't say this because people think I'm a horrible dad.
	But I don't know that I've ever laughed harder than this.
	So one's a boy, one's a girl.
	And what happened is she was stealing his pacifier.
	She would steal his pacifier all the time.
	And so then he went back up to her.
	They were about 14 months.
	And he took her pacifier out of her mouth as revenge.
	And she started crying.
	And she looked at us.
	And so then my son...
	Went like this to put the pacifier back in her mouth.
	So she opened it and he backhanded her.
	And I just said, like, that is the most vindictive.
	I mean, he kept his pimp hands strong.
	And of course, we had to punish him and say, you can't do that.
	No, you know, it's really hard to punish kids because they're so dumb.
	They don't understand anything.
	It's so dumb.
	What was that?
	What was that entire clip?
	That's about faith, Dennis.
	Russell was just speaking words.
	He'd be like, speak two words and reset and speak two words and reset.
	And then Stephen's like, oh yeah, my kids beat each other and it's great.
	What is this?
	It's a biblical parable.
	The parable of the pacifiers and how kids are awful and I hate my fucking kids.
	I think it's the point of what Stephen was saying.
	Do you like his dated racism, too?
	The pimp hand thing?
	He likes to do that.
	Yes!
	That's old!
	Super flying.
	Whoa!
	All of that, whoa.
	Yeah, yeah, 100%.
	He's clearly still amused at this story of his son backhanding his daughter after apparently pretending to give the pacifier back.
	Again, meanness is comedy to this guy, right?
	But, you know, also he is talking to Russell who also kind of hates his kids, so I will say he's telling the story in the right forum.
	He's got the right place for it.
	You know, I'm surprised Russell didn't hit back with, yeah, I fucking hate my kids too!
	You know, Byron's a twin, and I think I actually witnessed him slap his sister.
	I'm just kidding.
	Come on, man.
	If anything, my sister assaulted me as a child.
	I was kind of...
	She was a college athlete.
	She's very...
	Vindictive?
	No, she's wonderful.
	She's wonderful.
	I love her.
	Yeah, she's great.
	I'm just saying that I was always a very meek boy.
	I actually heard that you all were quadruplets, but you both ate your other siblings.
	Important question, Byron.
	Now there's a raging war in you.
	There's a raging war in you.
	An important question is, how often did your dad watch your sister assault you and laugh?
	This is the question.
	That's not fair.
	He had friends over and they were throwing money down doing bets.
	That's called Instagram reels.
	I'm sorry.
	It's more that not understanding that children are...
	This just isn't a story that you tell that communicates anything except for like, oh, I hate my fucking kids.
	Do you think he came in with being like, I wonder what a good time to sneak in the kids beating each other.
	I'm afraid he did.
	I mean, it's just kind of a cold open.
	I think, if anything, he probably heard Russell talk and he's like, I don't know what the fuck this guy's talking about, so I'm just going to give him this.
	Yeah.
	It's a canned bit that he has ready.
	Let's try this.
	I think this is funny.
	Firstborn or whatever.
	Maybe he was trying to relate to that.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, the Christianity was the permission he needed.
	He'd be like, oh yeah, kids beating each other.
	That sounds reasonable.
	They're doing that all the time in the Bible.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And Russell is like, well, you know, in comedy, how do you know where the line is until you cross it, you know?
	Yeah, what is that strategy?
	Or what's that, like, line of thought?
	In music production, I'm the type of person that will, like, go all the way off and then all the way on to see, like, how much the effect affects it.
	Totally.
	I gotta know the zero and I need to know the 100. Russell just starts each set with a reading of profanity, and when people go, ugh, he's like, alright, that's it.
	There it goes.
	Found it!
	Found it!
	Yeah, just like saying bigoted shit just from a book, like, right, let's establish where the line is here by, you know...
	I mean, the thing is that he is someone who was kind of known for edgy comedy for a while.
	So it tracks that that's his perspective, but also it's definitely bullshit.
	There are plenty of ways to figure out where a line is before you cross it.
	Talking to other people is usually a quick way to do it.
	Yeah, and both of these guys, they don't judge their success based on anything but reaction.
	Reaction is the success measure.
	So if people are reacting negatively, they're still reacting.
	So they're like, oh, that was a hit.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, entirely, entirely, you know.
	Well, I think Russell differently, in a way.
	Like, he still needs people to support him, I think, in a way that I don't...
	I mean, if Stephen thrives on positive reinforcement, well, that's news to me.
	Though, with Russell, I mean, you know, he has always continuously failed upwards.
	You look at Saxgate, you know, where he called up, you know, the 80-something-year-old Manuel from Fawlty Towers, beloved British actor...
	You know, with Jonathan Ross on the radio, on Radio 2, and said, you know, he fucked your granddaughter, or whatever.
	That whole thing then got him fired, because this was like, what, 2008 or something like that, around there.
	And like, he's only ever benefited from crossing that line, ever.
	You know, it's just...
	You know, immediately afterwards, his show ratings went up, he won comedy awards, like, Jonathan Ross had the same thing happen to him, you know?
	Like, his ratings went up and won more awards, and I'm like, ah, fuck you guys then.
	Well, being edgy and controversial, I think, is different than just, like, being just offensive and, like, also charmless, which I think that Stephen just, like...
	Yeah.
	He operates on fear and anger in a way that Russell...
	Like I said, if Russell's going to start, bad idea.
	Don't do that.
	People still like you because they don't know any better.
	They don't have to engage with you a lot.
	I mean, but this is also, Dennis, I think you picked up on a trend that I run into probably at least once a show with any of the interviewers.
	It's like, oh, these are just men talking at each other, and these are disconnected sentences.
	Totally.
	Yeah.
	It's like, I'll take a couple minutes to tell my story, and then you can take a couple minutes to tell yours, but let's just not connect them.
	Yeah.
	Who cares?
	We're in a room together.
	Yeah, it's awesome.
	Let's just do it so that way the editor can cut them together in a way that makes sense, maybe?
	I don't know.
	Just stacking points and whoever gets the most is the non-debate winner, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Exactly.
	I am genuinely tempted to cut all of Russell's bits and all of Stephen's bits, separate them out, and then watch them separately and try and figure out how much they actually line up in any way, because I'm willing to bet it won't be much.
	They won't!
	Done!
	They don't!
	We're watching it!
	You should do a minigame.
	A minigame on the website where you put what Russell said and then what Steven said and try and connect when they happened.
	Let's see if it makes sense.
	Some long pieces of string.
	Yeah, this is the A to B. Find the mech!
	Yeah, they're making episodes of C-Lab 2024 at Olen and Barbera cartoons is basically what's happening.
	I wish.
	Yeah, right.
	Anyway, here we get to what Stephen is calling the fundamental disagreement between Stephen and Russell, which is that Russell believes humanity will come together in peaceful communities if left to their own devices, while Stephen believes humanity is fundamentally sinful, which he elaborates on here in this next clip.
	But I realize human beings are, as Christians, we believe human beings are inherently sinful, and that's the reason that...
	Kind of you said you believe that we'll be okay.
	I believe that if you centralize power to any individuals, right, you give that up, human beings are sinful.
	And I don't think there's anything more corrosive to the human soul than success and power except for unearned success and unearned power.
	And so when I believe that human beings are inherently sinful, and as a Christian, I believe we can all be redeemed through Christ, right?
	Otherwise, there would be no reason for him.
	I believe that you want to mitigate that centralized power.
	Right?
	The role of the government, I've always said this as the Canadian in me, is like a hockey referee.
	And it's very different from other sports.
	I don't know how much you follow hockey, but hockey for the longest time was the only sport where they'll let two guys fight.
	You know, it's part of the rules.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's the bit that people don't follow hockey like.
	Yeah, well, here's the thing.
	It's actually a form of self-governance.
	Right?
	When you're doing it in baseball, everyone jumps up on the pitcher's mound and they start slap fighting each other.
	In hockey, what happens is you have these guys on the bench, at least you're used to, they've changed the sport quite a bit, and they're known as enforcers.
	And these guys only sit on the bench to make sure that you don't cheap shot their player.
	So this guy doesn't score a goal all season, but if you cheap shot, let's say, Paul Correa or Steve Iserman, you're going to have a Stu Grimson, you're going to have a Bob Probert come out, and all he's going to do is drop the gloves and beat your ass, and the ref lets it go.
	The rough lets it go because of a system of self-accountability.
	Now, here's the thing.
	A hockey referee, unlike in other sports, he keeps the pace of the game, meaning the rules, right, that affect everybody.
	Make sure that people are playing by the rules and make sure that no one is hurt.
	Make sure the players are safe, meaning protect us from inside and outside threats, be that domestically or, of course, we need some kind of a national defense because we do live on a globe with other countries, some of whom want to cause us harm.
	In hockey, unless there's a direct penalty that involves the puck in play, or someone's being hurt, he keeps his whistle in his pocket, including when two guys fight.
	You let them fight it out over here if it's mutually agreed upon combat.
	That's the role of the government.
	That's what I want to see the government do.
	Hockey refs don't want to get their nose broken.
	Yeah.
	Pulling the shirt over the guy's head and just laying into him.
	That's what I want Mitch McConnell to be doing to Paul Ryan, damn it!
	Paul Ryan's a bit of a goon.
	Yeah, goon squad out.
	Crazy.
	Crazy.
	So the role of government should be like a hockey referee where, except in issues of national security, the government should let people beat the shit out of each other in mutually agreed-upon combat.
	And that will combat humanity being inherently sinful.
	It's a form of self-governance, you see?
	Aha!
	Okay.
	This is just the Canadian in me, but I think that we should put all of our government ideas behind the movie Slapshot, and then let the Hanson brothers deal with the fallout of that, basically.
	I think even just the Hanson brothers.
	I feel like there's a lot of Slapshot that we can kind of...
	Yeah, we'll just take them.
	We'll put them in there.
	The relationship thing?
	Boo.
	Hanson brothers only.
	For real.
	We need to stop listing things that I want to watch, because I'm going to start getting upset at this point that they don't exist, you know?
	This is my Thunderdome idea.
	I'm going to request you don't air this, and we just start a production company and a network at this point.
	We've got at least three to five days worth of programming.
	Oh, with all our extra time and energy?
	Really?
	We'll figure it out.
	2025, we're doing the CEO hours now.
	I think the bum fight guy is still in jail, right?
	I think he is in jail.
	I hope so.
	The opposite of, yeah, billionaire fights, you know, government fights.
	Totally different.
	I'm into it.
	Jared, it was so good to see you.
	Bye, Jared.
	Oh my gosh, Jared.
	I haven't seen you in a long time.
	Oh, I went to the wrong camera.
	Hey, bye, Jared.
	Bye, Jared.
	So now that Jared has unceremoniously left us to be with family and stuff.
	Unhappy holidays to that guy.
	How dare he?
	We'll move on, and we'll move on to a bit of, well, a bit more of Stephen's deep insight and analysis, because I know we're all chomping at the bit for some of that.
	I think human beings are inherently sinful if left to their own devices, which is why I don't want them to centralize that power.
	And by the way, it's why I don't want to see it on the right-wing media sphere either, right?
	You don't want two companies.
	Same thing with big tech.
	You don't want three people controlling 95% of the information.
	That's the problem, right?
	We're talking about big tech.
	How does this happen?
	Talk about like a late night thing.
	I remember sitting there and at one point in time it was, gosh, I'm trying to remember.
	You had Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, and I'm going through this list.
	You had Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel.
	Okay, all of them.
	Larry Wilmore was on at that point.
	And I said, hold on a second.
	Every single late night host, every single one and all the correspondents, all endorsed Hillary Clinton?
	How does that happenstance at a certain point?
	How is there no organic fracturing of different points of view?
	It's by design in the entertainment industry.
	And you say the same – you go, wait, hold on a second.
	99% of political donations from Google, from YouTube, from Alphabet, from Facebook, right – Went to Democrats?
	Went to leftists?
	And by the way, by and large with big banks and big insurance companies as well, you go, how is there just no natural organic divergence in points of view?
	And then you realize it's by design.
	And so I don't want a design that centralizes power to people who can just give in to their own sinful desires of the flesh, whether it be more money.
	You know, Harvey Weinstein jerking off into a ficus plant.
	Thanks for that, Steven.
	Whoa.
	Yeah, that took a hard left turn.
	Yeah, Jesus.
	Does Steven not realize that when there are two core options, most people will pick one of those two options?
	Does he think that it should be like...
	One or the other, yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And he's comparing a bunch of like-minded individuals to supporting the same idea.
	I don't...
	Yeah, that also didn't check out to me.
	Right.
	So, the big thought from Stephen is that because all late-night hosts supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016, it must have been some conspiracy by design, rather than it being down to what are a bunch of liberal coastal elites voting for the Democratic female candidate instead of the racist orange sex criminal.
	Occam's razor tells me it's no big mystery, you know?
	It's like, I can see why that happened.
	It's by design, Al, I think is what you meant.
	It's intelligent design.
	If you're left with two fucking choices, then yes, technically it's by design.
	If it's a choice of two, then yes, technically it is by design.
	Seeing this on Peter take my ball and go home teals rumble is just outrageous to me.
	Four guys fund everything you all do.
	Really?
	I think what really blows my mind about a lot of this stuff is that Steven, he talks about how he's so anti-conglomeration of things, but he's also so anti-regulation about those things.
	And if you don't have those regulations, every company, all these tech companies are going to form into one huge one eventually if you don't actually regulate that.
	And he's very anti that.
	There's only like four anyway!
	Yeah, that's a problem and you fix it with regulation!
	Yeah, like the only way to get rid of monopolies or tripopolis or whatever he's taking fucking issue with is regulation.
	That's the only way to fucking do it.
	Yeah, no one's going to be like, should we just start competing with each other?
	It's a good idea.
	I'd like to make less money for the opposite of my legal imperative as a CEO. I'd like to make less money to encourage competition.
	I think I'm going to buy a fire extinguisher and start a fire in my home.
	There's only one way to make sure it works.
	Exactly.
	I believe in fair fight for the fire.
	But also, Steven combining with Mug Club Premium and Rumble Premium or whatever, I think he's okay with conglomeration.
	It seems like.
	Right.
	Consolidating power.
	Certainly happy taking their money at the very least.
	And for the record, I mean, obviously this was in 2023. So the banks in 2020 donated pretty evenly, but went about 5% more to Donald Trump, whereas it was much more drastically to Trump in the 2024 election.
	The banks were all like, yeah, this guy.
	Alphabet and Meta have more liberal groundings in general.
	So yeah, their money went to Democrats.
	If you want to be like, oh, big tech are all just 99% Democrats.
	Okay, sure thing.
	So yeah.
	Sounds like someone's pulling the string.
	Sounds like George Soros is working for big tech.
	Heard it here first.
	That guy loves it.
	Have you read his tweets?
	No.
	Hilarious.
	I mean, his skies or whatever.
	I'll be honest.
	I've never heard of George Soros outside of right-winger folks talking about him.
	Yeah, because why would you?
	Yeah, because he didn't pay for your college, unlike Ron DeSantis.
	Yeah.
	He paid me to protest once, but that's all.
	Well, then where the fuck is my check?
	I was going to say, hook us up.
	Hook us up.
	Can you call somebody?
	I'll take some fucking service.
	They're not hiring.
	I mean, not how dare you.
	What a great person.
	Do you have a contact email?
	A routing number.
	Yeah.
	So now we get to the state of the right-wing media landscape at this time, and to Tucker Carlson and how he's not doing that great, actually.
	Remember, this is prior to Tucker leaving Fox News as well.
	You need all different kinds of people and different kinds of skill sets.
	The problem is, you do have people in positions of power who say, no, no, there's one way to do it.
	There's one way to do it.
	And I don't think that what we do is niche.
	That's the thing.
	People talk about Fox News.
	And I know you were just on Tucker Carlson's show.
	And I've only spent a very small amount of time with him.
	Nothing but good things to say about him.
	Okay.
	But here's the thing.
	People say, man, it's the number one show out there in the conservative sphere.
	It's 2 point something million.
	Maybe 3 point something million on a really good night.
	Median viewership is in the 70s, right?
	Okay.
	Breaking Bad, the season finale, had about 12 or 14 million people who tuned in.
	Here's the thing.
	They ran some focus groups.
	And I don't know if I could even still find this.
	It was a huge majority.
	I want to say 80%.
	Let's say it was 60%.
	We're registered Republicans.
	So all of those people are out there, and they're tuning into Breaking Bad, or they feel like they have to go against their principles and subscribe to Disney +, even though they're supporting an agenda that they don't want to be on board with.
	And those people, not even a fourth of them, are tuning into the largest conservative network.
	How badly have we failed them?
	And you know what?
	Maybe some of those people, like what Tucker Carlson has to say, that show is not their flavor.
	The problem is when you have a movement that says everyone has to be the same in Cookie Cutter.
	So for some reason...
	I think the problem is that people want an escape from life, man.
	It's a television show.
	Yeah, they want to watch some entertainment instead of Tucker yelling about how guys need to stop tanning their taints or whatever he was yelling about then.
	Yes.
	So for some reason, to bolster his point, Stephen had to bring up a show that ended in 2013. Yeah, I was going to say, there's absolutely no way that people are watching it on Disney+.
	That wasn't coherent.
	Can someone tell me what you just said?
	Because I'm not following his point.
	Yeah, so it is also...
	It's kind of funny that he said, I don't know if I can find this anymore because, yeah, I couldn't find this focus group that he was talking about.
	What?
	Showing that 60-80% of the 10.3 million strong audience for Breaking Bad finale were actually registered Republicans.
	But though, I will say, here's the thing.
	I don't think that's true.
	But even if they were, say 60% of the audience who sat down on the night and watched the Breaking Bad finale were registered Republicans...
	Who gives a shit?
	And how would you know?
	Yes, you have to do a lot of focus groups.
	But, like, who gives it?
	Like, maybe that is true.
	Maybe they were the only ones sat there watching, like, the terrestrial fucking network television and then, like, all of the fucking liberals or whatever were streaming it on Netflix or were watching it another way, which is very possible.
	I definitely had friends who definitely stole it at the time.
	Yeah.
	Who gives a fuck?
	The whole point of him trying to bring this up is to try and make Tucker Carlson look weak, or at least like Tucker Carlson isn't as big as he seems, because aha, he's only able to garner a quarter of the audience that Breaking Bad is able to.
	And so the world needs Steven Crowder to get some of the audience that Tucker doesn't appeal to.
	That maybe Steven will appeal to.
	But obviously, Tucker Carlson's show, like, this comparison is dumb.
	Tucker Carlson's show is a nightly show.
	It was a nightly show every night.
	The Breaking Bad finale was at the end of an entire legendary television show.
	Like, you cannot compare the two on any metric.
	Nonetheless, at the time of this interview, Tucker would have been getting ratings of circa 4 million viewers a night.
	And while I really don't like that fact, the reality is that Tucker Carlson was a big deal.
	And there's a reason Alex Jones drunkenly described him as the most important man in the world, right?
	Or the universe, I can't remember which it was.
	I think it was the world, but I wouldn't be surprised if Alex Jones was focusing on the universe or even, yeah, the...
	He likes to get metaphysical, doesn't he?
	He likes to, you know...
	I mean, first of all, I mean, Stephen's saying that he's like just an...
	I think earlier in this conversation he called himself a basic bitch pumpkin spice conservative.
	Yes, he does say that.
	Yes, he does.
	He's not.
	No, he's not at all.
	He also likes to think his audience is mid-twenties men, which it is most certainly not.
	It's men and women who use Facebook and are 45 to 55. Yep, absolutely.
	But he likes to pretend that he has the influence.
	He has the youth.
	Yeah, which is also interesting.
	I found a YouGov survey about Breaking Bad and the demographics, and it appears that 26% are Democrats.
	Surprisingly, 23% are Independents.
	Most certainly, they determined it was male Democrats from the West Coast are people who watched Breaking Bad, which is interesting.
	But nothing definitive, of course.
	Not like this massive equal spread of conservatives like he's discussing here.
	I can't find that.
	Also, I do want to share that this is just a funny little thing that Steven always does.
	He will never make a modern reference to anything.
	Oh, no.
	This is probably his latest reference he's ever made.
	Normally, he's referring to mid-90s movies, taking back Sunday albums when they first came out.
	Yeah, Dashboard Confessionals.
	Yeah, yeah.
	He definitely loves to live in the happiest moments of his life that are in the past.
	Before his dad.
	Just so people know, Steven was an emo kid for a little bit.
	His dad caught him one time with a bandana in his back pocket and called him a slur and shamed him to the point where now he's the person he is.
	Dad, how do you know about the hanky code?
	That's interesting.
	That's a great point.
	That's a question.
	See, I don't need to try.
	Gay content.
	I'm here.
	There we go.
	There is a side benefit as well to using old references in that they're usually a lot harder to check up on or people are less likely to bother kind of looking into that shit.
	So like, yeah, I'll use a fucking throwaway thing and pretend this thing happened in the 90s.
	Why not?
	Who's going to be able to fucking check, you know?
	It's like, oh, right.
	Let's see if I can find this MySpace page.
	I did find it.
	Okay.
	Nice.
	We'll talk about that another time.
	Yes.
	Oh boy.
	Oh boy, that deserves its own show.
	Okay, so a bit of context for the next clip.
	When hosting the MTV VMAs in 2008, Russell described George Bush as, quote, that retarded cowboy fella, back in a time when it was still semi-acceptable to use the R-word, and said that the UK wouldn't have trusted Bush with a pair of scissors, which, accurate.
	And that's what, look, here's the truth.
	If it worked, people wouldn't be so excited about you.
	People are excited about you because you're someone who has made a cultural impact, right?
	You've been in the entertainment industry, so you have street cred, and you have more influence than people who came up hitting the right-wing talking points because there's a pretty low ceiling.
	And this is why you'll see people on the right clamor for celebrities, right?
	Because they don't have a whole lot of them.
	Like, you know, they have, like, G. Gordon Liddy or, like, you're on, like, you know, Fox News.
	Like, I'm Bill Devane, whatever it is.
	If you were to be selling self-lubricating pocket catheters, they wouldn't be able to keep them in stock.
	So people are excited because they realize there's a cultural influence from someone like you who, even though you don't agree on everything, your eyes have been open to some issues they've been espousing for a long time, which tells me they don't believe it's the only way.
	I would disagree that this is kind of a personal epiphany, that anti-establishmentism is something that's very much inborn in me just because of the circumstances of my background, the fact that I'm a recovering addict, that I'm a comedian, that I believe in free speech.
	And when I was making jokes about George Bush, he was the president now.
	Now, that was in an MTV space, and by your analysis, and it's not an analysis that I would dispute, that's, broadly speaking, a democratic, liberal space.
	But at that point, for me, that was the joke to make.
	I feel that what people want now, Stephen, this is my guess, I'm not from your country, I'm not from this country, excuse me.
	Yep, I've got to get a little reminder in there that Stephen is Canadian, not American, despite standing next to the US flag quite a bit.
	Well, I mean, that actually has been pointed out by some of our listeners as well, that it does appear he was born in the United States, moved to Canada, and came back.
	But his mom is Canadian.
	It's a Kool-Aid flavor, I feel.
	That is a technicality.
	I mean, he's Canadian when he wants to be.
	Right.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, Russell seems to have picked a side.
	And it was around here I started to feel a little bit more concrete kind of divergence between the two.
	It's like, Russell is clearly just taking some offense at the notion that he's only recently been awakened.
	And has to say, well, look, I've always been anti-establishment.
	Look at how I made fun of George Bush!
	Now, according to Russell, like, that was a form of speaking truth to power, rather than what I would more describe as low-hanging fruit at the tail end of Bush's presidency.
	You know, mocking him was pretty de rigueur.
	I mean, you guys remember, he was the only comedian making jokes about George Bush at that time.
	Nobody ever knows.
	Well, he's really brave.
	He's so brave!
	Well, supposedly, according to Russell, he got death threats about it.
	Supposedly.
	But I've not been able to verify that information.
	I mean, probably.
	And he probably loved it.
	Who cares?
	One thing that stands out to me about this particular clip is that so much of this space is that...
	If you're hated for something, it's definitely not because of you.
	It's definitely not because of the things that...
	It's like people will be like, I'm hated because society hates me.
	And it's never like, I'm an asshole.
	And you can monetize it too.
	And people do it all the time in this space.
	It's like...
	Oh, cool.
	You're a nasal spray that got banned by the FDA because you claim that you cured COVID and you're just saline on your nose or whatever?
	A little tease to the next episode that's coming out.
	Like, is that really?
	And then they'll latch on to it and be like, okay, cool.
	Yeah, you're definitely hated not because of you being dumb.
	It's because of society.
	Come join us.
	Yeah, not because you like blinded five kids or whatever.
	Yeah.
	Like, oh no, the FDA is oppressing me.
	No, it's the deep state.
	It's the deep state.
	It's definitely the deep state.
	Yeah.
	No hate.
	All deep state.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the call's coming from inside the toxic masculinity.
	Hello.
	And yeah, the right wing are excited about Russell because he's famous.
	No fucking shit.
	They're star fuckers because they don't have any stars.
	Like, yeah, absolutely.
	Well, well, ow, come on.
	Don't...
	Rob Schneider.
	They have Kid Rock.
	Yep, exactly.
	They've got Kid Rock.
	Don't, boy!
	Come on!
	You're right, you're right.
	I'm not giving them enough credit.
	You're absolutely right.
	That's why they're doing 90s references.
	That's where their celebs come from.
	Oh, and Kevin Sorbo.
	K-Sorbs.
	Can't forget about him.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Remind me to tell you guys later about Kevin Sorbo.
	Dennis has a personal relationship.
	Making a note.
	Interesting.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So now Russell says some things he believes people want and makes some claims about Stephen that don't sound true to me before Stephen kind of tries to reframe his point.
	What I believe people want is the opportunity for open dialogue not to be spoken down to, not to be judged and condemned and to look at new ways of organizing their lives with dignity and to recognize that we can't cut ourselves off from one another because there are some areas where we disagree with each other.
	That doesn't seem to me like a sensible way forward as power is coalescing quite significantly around some very, very deep, potent interests.
	If there aren't new forms of alliance, and certainly if there aren't new kinds of conversation, it's very difficult to imagine how we can move forward together.
	So I feel like the principles of democracy and open-heartedness and open-mindedness and, broadly speaking, good faith conversations with people, there are areas where we disagree, but I believe that you love your children.
	I believe that you're a man of principle, that you care about what you're saying, that you're on your journey.
	And I don't think that I know enough about the world to foreclose on your right to say stuff.
	What I'm saying is you wouldn't be able to be you if, for example, you were coming up in more so the right-wing echo chamber, which is something I fight against a lot.
	it.
	Oh, yeah.
	Steven's a warrior against that right-wing echo chamber, isn't he?
	He definitely is.
	Steven is very anti-echo chamber.
	This came up recently on your show.
	Is he just oblivious to the fact that he's a concrete pillar of the alt-right echo chamber, or does he know he's full of shit?
	I realize it's maybe difficult to tell, but...
	Yeah.
	He pretends for money!
	Obviously!
	Yep.
	And it's the most effective way to lie is to lie to yourself first.
	That's how he's going to pass a lie detector test.
	And he absolutely would.
	It's narcissistic grandiosity.
	That's all there is to it.
	Yeah.
	I truly think he's deep in his own personal delusion at this point.
	And monetizing it.
	There's a lot of people who claim to be, like, centrist bros who are super right-wing, and they just don't understand the actual scale of everything.
	Talking about Joe Rogan like that, haven't we?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	We're hoping we'll get on the show at some point.
	Yeah, someday, someday, Joe, please, please.
	But one thing I want to call out here is that, for one, it sounds like Russell's talking about he wants a safe space to be able to stay shit.
	But here's the thing.
	I think that we should have a society where you can speak your mind, of course, just like Russell says, but you should be judged for it.
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	Like, you can be judged for the things that you say, and people can say, oh, that's a shitty idea that you're making a bad take on this.
	Like, the judgment is part of society, so you should understand that you'll be judged if you say stuff.
	There are consequences.
	Yeah.
	Get judged.
	Only God can judge me?
	No, anybody can judge me.
	Judge me, please.
	Yeah, literally everybody can.
	Especially the platform, you know, on whose thing you're putting your content, you know?
	Because that's the context of Russell saying, I want to be able to say shit, is that he kept getting strikes on YouTube for saying anti-vax and anti-COVID stuff.
	Sure.
	That's the context for that.
	That's also why Russell went to Rumble and not like Gaia TV, which like, it's just a different market share.
	It's kind of good programming.
	Really good stuff over there.
	Learned a lot about myself and the universe.
	I mean, honestly, I just said that.
	I'm like, I don't know why he didn't go to Gaia TV. It's not that different.
	The branding is kind of the only thing.
	Well, if he knew the allegations were coming down the pike, then that may have been a conscious decision.
	That doesn't stop Gaia TV at all.
	I don't think they care.
	No.
	I have a list of documentaries to suggest.
	It's a different plane of existence that they live on.
	But, I mean, yeah, we did just talk a lot about...
	Same crimes, somehow.
	Yeah.
	It's true.
	I mean, we did just get done talking on our other show a lot about Blue Sky and how he's upset that this echo chamber is like, they're trying to leave this platform.
	He should be supporting something like Blue Sky.
	Like, from what he's saying here, he's like trying to break up these tech monopolies.
	Yeah, he's all about Blue Sky.
	And for some reason, his stance is that he's upset that it exists and that liberals are no longer available for him and his listeners to yell at.
	All my victims left my school.
	It's really strange.
	Where's my conflict?
	Yeah.
	Because when...
	I mean, because, yeah, he tries to go to Blue Sky and spew anti-LGBTQ, anti-vax and election conspiracies and found that it's unacceptable there.
	Well, Elon Musk doesn't own this one?
	What do you mean?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it doesn't...
	I mean, a lot has changed, but not much has changed as well.
	Yep, yep, yep.
	And so now we learn why Stephen signed to Rumble in the first place.
	This is the first time that I've signed a contract, I will say this.
	I'm really excited.
	Really excited because every single conversation that we had...
	With Rumble was how to make it better for the user.
	How to make it better for the viewer.
	And that for me is true north.
	Is not how do I better serve the sponsor, though you need to do that well.
	Not how do I better serve the overlords.
	Not how do I make sure that I play ball with big tech is, okay, got millions of people who tune in every day.
	Hundreds of thousands who are willing to part with their hard-earned dollar.
	How do I best serve them?
	And that's not how most media companies operate and it is how we operate and Rumble is willing to back us up.
	I can't say how excited I am.
	Chris is cute as a button too.
	Yeah, isn't he cute?
	He really is.
	I think we can certainly agree on that point as well.
	But Chris Pawlowski, the CEO of Rumble, is as cute as a button.
	Stephen, thank you so much for this conversation.
	I've really enjoyed talking with you.
	If I had access to amphetamines now, I'd carry on for a little longer.
	But I've got a- You've had a long day.
	You're there across the state.
	You flew in.
	Yeah, isn't it just, people don't realize sometimes, it must be nice to just talk for a living.
	It's like, oh, if you only knew how much crap goes on behind the scenes, that sucks.
	Stuff that we're dragging out of ourselves.
	Forgive me, everyone.
	Yeah, I'm not sure I have a violin small enough to hear about how hard their lives are.
	Steven Russell's net worth is apparently around the same of roughly $20 million each, which puts both of these men in the top 0.01% wealthiest people on the planet.
	And Steven wants to tell us how hard he's got it.
	Okay.
	Yeah, and so Rumble asking the question, oh, there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to part with their money.
	How do we serve them?
	Sounds a lot to me like corporate-speak version of how do I get more of that money?
	But maybe it's a matter of perspective.
	And I'm pretty sure that's the question a lot of these media companies are asking.
	I don't think a lot of them are just like, well, fuck those guys.
	Fuck the people actually watching.
	You know, because that seems like a bad business model, you know?
	Yeah, if anything, I think that it's telling to me that Steven, he acts like the agreement with the Daily Wire that fell apart because he wanted to be forever immune from losing money.
	Well, he's greedy too.
	Well, it's because he doesn't understand that the goal is the end user there as well.
	They want the end user to not be like subject to like all of these crazy ideas that just get you banned.
	And honestly, I think it's more suspicious that Rumble's CEO seems less concerned about advertising money.
	Because where's that money coming from?
	Anything to get us viewers.
	No, I just...
	I mean, I don't know.
	They don't have viewers, so...
	Like, where's the money coming from?
	And I'm surprised knowing, after having this conversation with Martin earlier, that Rumble is publicly traded.
	And Rumble just got a huge boost in their stock price.
	I checked it before we got on.
	Huge boost on Friday when a company called Tether invested, and then a cryptocurrency company invested...
	Like, almost a billion dollars.
	Like, 775 million invested into Rumble.
	So, yeah, there's...
	I mean, where is this money coming from?
	Where is it, you know?
	Peter as well as JD Vance.
	JD Vance invested in Rumble in 2021 as well.
	Really?
	Wow.
	Yeah, there's only four guys!
	There's only four guys!
	And Tether is one...
	I just...
	God, I want to know where this money is coming from so bad!
	And, like...
	I think there are simple explanations, and I don't think that even our legacy media is doing a great job talking about it, because just saying Russia, like, okay, Nancy Pelosi, how about I actually get information from you that is tangible?
	And even just Peter Thiel, or even just J.D. Vance, like, yeah, but where is all this fucking money coming from?
	Bolstering these fucking, just pack of nitwits that also obviously don't listen to each other's show, comically so.
	Like, none of them do.
	The way that Russell was describing, like, Stephen's content is like...
	Never heard it.
	No!
	You can tell he kind of got given...
	You aren't the same species!
	He was definitely given, like, a crib sheet from Gareth beforehand, you know, just like, okay, here's who this guy is, right?
	No, he was just making stuff up for fun.
	He has this thing called a mug club, you know, Like, oh, that sounds fun.
	It's not, but okay.
	I mean, he was riffing.
	That's the thing that he can do, is he can make it sound good.
	He can say a lot of words.
	I highly recommend it if you guys want to do your Russell voice.
	If you haven't been working on it, I'd be like...
	No, I can't.
	Yeah, I wasn't planning for that at all.
	That's fair.
	That is entirely fair.
	It's hard for British people to really nail an Essex accent, to be fair, so I don't blame you.
	I will say, just accent related, Stephen did a really good Alex Jones when he did an Alex Jones impression.
	Stephen, he does a pretty good ox jump.
	And his jump isn't half bad either.
	It's not bad.
	I watched his Bill Burr and I wasn't a fan of that.
	It was related to the ground owl situation.
	He did an impression of Bill Burr riffing on ground owls.
	I don't know.
	For our listeners and watchers, if you're not familiar with what Stephen does, Parodies, like parody songs and skits and sketches and dresses.
	Oh, man.
	A lot.
	I think those might be the most offensive thing he does.
	Yes, that's absolutely true.
	This is how you're spending your time.
	And you aren't as good at it as I think you should be.
	You've just convinced me.
	There's a great, maybe a month ago, Stephen put out a four-part series, which to me was, it looked like he was trying to sell his company.
	Wait, was that four parts?
	I only saw it first.
	I know, I kept them from you.
	Oh, man.
	Oh, man.
	They're these little 10-minute segments, a day in the life of Steven Crowder, which show him from getting up, practicing racist accents in his car, getting to the gym, and interviews with the employees of Louder with Crowder.
	And I think we should probably cover that and show a little bit of what his mornings are like.
	All of the employees, they were talking about him like he was the president.
	It was intense.
	I can't believe that.
	The one part you sent to me, Byron, I went frame by frame to try and catch screenshots of things.
	If they had their Slack up and they didn't censor it or anything, I was like, can I find some juice in here?
	I mean, there might be something there, but to me, it seemed like they were trying to sell their show.
	It felt like they were trying to sell something or they were trying to recruit employees.
	That sounds...
	I love that you guys monitor his job openings.
	Of course.
	I think that's probably kind of We're going to get on the inside.
	We're going to self-destruct around Trojan horses.
	If Stephen's listening, we might already be on the inside.
	We might already have someone working.
	I mean, if either of you are interested in moving to Florida, Russell's got some gigs going.
	If you're curious.
	He's recently been advertising.
	He was advertising in the UK for a little bit as well.
	I did think about sneaking over there, applying for one of his video editor gigs or whatever.
	I was like, ah!
	It's tricky.
	I've been close.
	So is he an undocumented immigrant trying to hire citizens?
	It's like a flip-flop of what they're all accusing him of?
	I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah, I suppose.
	Well, he's independent contracting for Rumble.
	Yeah, maybe that's what I'm doing.
	We don't know about his visa.
	It's true.
	It's true.
	But it does only last for so long.
	So he could be an illegal alien at some point if he doesn't take care of it.
	But his lawyers are also like the lawyers of the royal family.
	Are they really?
	Wow.
	Yes.
	It's a bummer.
	Same lawyers as Prince Andrew.
	Yeah.
	That makes sense.
	That's wild.
	Are we groping around to find a takeaway?
	Are those all the clips?
	No, no, no.
	Is that what we're doing right now?
	I do have one more now.
	We're just chatting.
	I feel like there are so many threads that are all very interesting, but getting us off topic.
	There's too much.
	I forgot to say before on the topic of Stephen's performance ability, he said earlier that unearned success and power are the most corrupting things to him.
	And I'm like...
	Aren't you kind of a little bit of a Nepo baby who kind of used your mum's comedy contacts and stuff to get ahead?
	Wasn't that a thing?
	Like, your mum was in the entertainment industry.
	Not to my knowledge.
	Was she?
	Yeah, he said his mum was in the comedy side of things in this interview.
	And I'm like, oh, surely!
	Surely!
	Regardless, if Stephen is the one who's defining what earn means and what hard work means, I don't think there's just really much to say about that.
	Obviously, I don't make as much money as he does, but his living just comes down to just talking shit.
	That's what he does for a living.
	If you want to call it hard work, I guess.
	He lifts a lot.
	He does a lot of curls in the morning, I guess.
	Well, only when he's on camera.
	Yeah, only on camera.
	On camera curls.
	Okay, so we've got the final clip, and we're going to leave on what feels to me like a bit of a sour note.
	Stephen, thank you, mate.
	I wish you every success with this endeavor.
	I'm glad to hear you so enthusiastic and see you looking so well.
	Thanks, all of you, for watching the show.
	And I'm sure you'll be joining Stephen for his show and continuing to join us on Stay Free.
	And obviously, we're going to have opportunities to continue this conversation, maybe get into the detail, maybe turn up on a camera.
	Maybe get you in a sketch or a parody.
	Change each other's minds.
	We can try that.
	I don't think you'll be changing my mind, but I'll be willing to.
	Well, I've seen you challenge people.
	Can we get you in a sketch?
	Can I get you to commit to being a sketch?
	I didn't realize that you love contracts.
	This guy lives for contracts now.
	No, no.
	I'll do it for shits and giggles.
	Let's do a life change your mind.
	We'll do it for lupus.
	We'll do it for cherry.
	I don't know why you don't care about people with lupus.
	I care about people.
	I care about all conceivable conditions.
	That's what makes me a damn decent...
	What about moderate to severe plex?
	All of it.
	All of it.
	And owls.
	I would never kick an owl.
	Thank you for joining us on Rumble.
	Stay free.
	They hate each other!
	Oh, that was delightful.
	Holy shit.
	That was an amazing end.
	Just digging at each other.
	That's the narc fight I wanted.
	Yes.
	I don't know.
	I don't have a lot of respect for Russell Brand, but it is offensive for Steven Crowder to assume that this famous actor would want to be in a parody on his weird web show.
	That's the grandiosity.
	Yeah, honestly, I respect Russell for having none of it.
	For being like, oh, you're trying to banter me into doing a comedy sketch?
	Get fucked.
	Like, no.
	Stephen, I've been in movies.
	Like, no.
	Have you heard Rise of Gru?
	Yes.
	That was pretty good.
	I'm Dr. Nefario.
	Fuck off!
	I got you.
	See, it's fine.
	Insane.
	Insane.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Yeah, and I suspect this moment of tension here may have something to do with why these two haven't had a full conversation since March 2023. You know, like, yeah, I can see this.
	This was going down a bad road by the end here.
	I mean, there's been moments in Steven Crowder's show where he's talked poorly about Russell Brand before this transition as well.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Earlier on, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Which makes sense.
	I mean, that's justified, and I think they probably could have hashed that out during this hour, but I don't know.
	This was delightful.
	Nope, they really did.
	You have to talk to each other and then listen.
	Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work.
	It actually sounds a lot easier and nicer.
	This looks like way more work as to just, like, have a weird pissing contest with a near stranger.
	Yeah, and yet, here we all are.
	Good lord.
	I mean, like, Stephen did leap to Russell's defense after the allegations.
	Mm.
	Well, anytime a guy sexually assaults potentially someone, Stephen tends to jump to their defense.
	Yeah, that does seem to keep happening.
	Yeah, it's funny how that's a unifying moment.
	Yeah, yeah, Russell keeps doing that too, huh?
	Yeah, maybe just make a little note on a post-it every time you see people do that.
	How about that?
	How about that's something that we should all pay a lot of attention to?
	Well, we do document it.
	We all tend to document that, so that's good.
	Right.
	A little mental note.
	Oh, boy.
	All right.
	So, obviously, people can find your show if they search Louder Than Crowder in any podcast.
	But where else can people find you guys?
	What is that?
	Louder than Crowder dot com.
	Louder with Crowder dot net.
	Louder with Crowder dot net.
	Woke YouTube.
	Of course.
	Shrug dot club.
	Shrug dot club.
	What else do we have?
	That's probably all.
	Yep.
	We'll have more later.
	Patreon as well.
	You're up on there as well.
	Yeah, that's shrug.club.
	All the additional content that we have there is free.
	If you do like what we are doing, make sure to follow us there and consider donating.
	But yeah, everything's going to remain free, including the over five hour election night live stream that we did with y'all.
	If you want to relive that really fun day and watch a bunch of folks just kind of melt down together, that's available for you to check out.
	Yeah, yeah.
	At like 3 a.m.
	my time.
	So, you know, there was melting in a lot of different ways.
	But yeah, I mean, also social media.
	Yeah, at Dan Crowder on Blue Sky and Twitter.
	I think that covers all of them.
	Do we have an Instagram?
	No, we don't.
	We should have one.
	No, I don't think so.
	That is fair.
	Well, thank you so much for coming on.
	It's been an absolute pleasure.
	And thank you to Absent Jared as well.
	Much appreciated.
	There he is, the empty mic spot.
	Y'all are absolute treasures.
	First of all, yeah, I so appreciate the opportunity to talk to y'all in longer formats like this, and I cannot wait for you to come on our show and do the same.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Absolutely.
	I'm looking forward to the eventual conversation that these guys finally have again, where they actually sit down, because it's got to happen eventually.
	It would be fucking weird if it didn't, you know?
	I'm going to pull something together that you guys will absolutely hate, and we will get through it together.
	Oh, sounds perfect.
	Yay!
	It'll be a lot of fun.
	I can't wait.
	That's the kind of stuff we love.
	All right, thank you guys.
	And that's our show, everybody.
	If anyone wants 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.
	We will get back to you at some point.
	If you're on Facebook, there's a Facebook group of On Brand Awakening Wonders.
	Come and enjoy the lovely conversations happening there.
	And if you prefer more anonymous internet existence, head over to Reddit.
	There's a subreddit, onbrand underscore pod.
	And there are some wonderful human beings there as well.
	If you want to find us on socials, we're the onbrandpod everywhere except for where we're not.
	Look for the logo, everybody.
	And personal socials, I'm at alworthofficial, and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b.
	And if you click the old link in the description, you can purchase a magneto!
	Surrounded by real-life actual gold leaf.
	Handmade by Lauren.
	And zero-carbon footprint.
	And made out of recycled stuff.
	It's all very ethical and responsible.
	And it looks awesome.
	So go and get yourself one of those.
	Otherwise, patrons will see you Sunday for some off-brand goodness.
	But for everyone else, we will see you in the new year!
	In 2025. Which...
	Woo, it's coming!
	And, yeah, very excited to see you all then.
	In the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other.
	Thank you very much.
	We love you.
	Bye!
	And, ooh, I get to decide who's dead this week.
	I'll tell you what, we've done Thatcher.
	I'm not sure we've done Reagan, so Ronald Reagan, everybody, still fucking dead.
	Hey!
	Merry, happy, happy holidays!
	That's not win, win, win.
	That's lie, [...

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