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Feb. 27, 2025 - On Brand

02:23:54

Sellouts & Suckers w/Will Weldon

Comedian Will Weldon joins me to tackle Russell's live broadcast from Mar-a-Lago and we discuss terrible comedy, the Ukraine conflict, and Russell's desperate defense of imperialism. Listen to Will's show I Hate Bill Maher - https://pod.link/1746469734Support On Brand on Patreon! - https://patreon.com/OnBrand

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	This is propaganda live.
	I only suggest how to think and how to vote.
	An extraordinary cultural moment, already iconic, already iconic.
	We love you, you're welcome here.
	I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's a bit late now.
	They don't want to have a conversation in the debate, but they're lying.
	And this is a matter now of fact and record.
	Trump is like Hitler.
	Let me count the ways.
	I'm a Nazi, actually.
	I'm an arse, actually, and I've kept it now till now, but this is my chance.
	God is propaganda.
	Did you guess it?
	Did you guess it?
	I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
	Bastards, aren't they?
	I mean, you can't watch them after this without realising they're absolute bastards.
	Let's go full screen on Russell.
	This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one, Russell Brand.
	I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's show with a guest.
	This week I am thrilled to be joined by comedian, actor, and host of the podcast, I Hate Bill Maher, the exceptional Will Weldon.
	We will be discussing the Ukraine conflict, Russell's desperate and confused defences of imperialism, and of course, comedians getting captured by the alt-right.
	But before we get into that, allow me to thank a couple of New Awakening Wonders here.
	So, Deborah L. Mills, you are now an Awakening Wonder.
	You are indeed an Awakening Wonder.
	Thank you so much, Deborah.
	And Joseph Beutel?
	I'm not sure.
	Please feel free to correct me on the pronunciation.
	Either way, Joseph, thank you very much.
	You are now an Awakening Wonder.
	You are indeed an Awakening Wonder.
	Thank you so much.
	And if anyone wants to support the show financially by becoming an Awakening Wonder, joining the Invisible Hand or donating on an elevated tier, head to patreon.com slash onbrand and sign up and you will have my eternal gratitude.
	For those wondering about my progress with the Creator Accountability Network, training has concluded and I should have more to discuss properly next week.
	In the meantime, let's get straight into a terrific chat with Will Weldon.
	Well, thank you so much for joining me today.
	Oh, oh yeah, sorry.
	Yes, thanks for having me.
	I will try that again.
	So, I have the most cursed first name of all time.
	I thought you said, well, thank you for joining me.
	And I was like, oh, Al is speaking to the fans, the listeners right now.
	I will edit in like bumpers and stuff later.
	No, that's fine.
	People need to know, don't name your child Will.
	I've been complaining about this my whole life.
	It is like a noun.
	It's a verb.
	It's, I think, an adverb as well.
	The word will is being said once every 15 to 30 seconds anywhere I am in public.
	And it's just like, I just don't respond to it anymore.
	I just assume people are not talking to me when they say will.
	Because statistically speaking, they're not.
	And I make the right choice more often than not if I just don't go, oh yeah?
	Because somebody's being like, what will you do?
	Oh, well...
	Like, it's constant.
	It's unending.
	Not enough people are giving...
	Well done.
	Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
	It's fucking horrible.
	It is the worst name.
	It's like...
	I was gonna say, like, not enough people are giving credit to, like, the plight of Wills in general, but especially, yeah, Will, well done.
	I mean, you know, well done.
	Yeah.
	Like, the...
	Every teacher I ever had, I stopped doing good in school so I would stop having to see Hey Will Well Done on tests and shit after I got them back.
	Just purposefully like, no, I'm going to tank it.
	I can't stand it.
	I'm going to tank it.
	Well, welcome to the show, anyway.
	You and your cursed name.
	Thank you so much for having me.
	Very happy to have you here.
	Yeah, so before we get into some of Russell's nonsense, let's spend a minute getting to know you.
	Let's start with an easy one.
	My pronouns are they them.
	What are yours?
	He, him.
	Hey, we did it.
	Yes, right.
	Yes, yes.
	Those are the right ones, right?
	Hey, you know, it's an important question to ask yourself every now and then, you know?
	It's good to check.
	You know?
	So, you're a comedian person.
	That is a thing you do.
	How long have you been doing stand-up comedy?
	Oh my god.
	What are you doing to me, Al?
	You're killing me.
	Sorry.
	Honest to god, I mean, I've been doing comedy in some form or another for, without hyperbole, probably 25 years.
	Wow.
	Shit.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I started doing improv.
	I lied about my age and joined a theater company when I was like 14 years old.
	25 years ago.
	I'm going to be honest.
	I've never been treated so rudely by a host on a podcast in my life.
	To make me have the experience.
	I turned 40 in like a month and a week.
	And to just be sitting here and having this moment I'm having now.
	I'm like, oh, I didn't know I was going on here to be ambushed.
	Having to confront your aging and mortality all at once up front.
	Yeah, I apologize for that.
	But since you're 14, I mean, that's pretty crazy.
	It's too young.
	You don't have a lot to say when you start doing comedy at 14, I'll be honest.
	I think doing comedy, it's widely accepted that to be good at it, you need a point of view.
	And you just don't really have much of a point of view when you're 14 years old.
	Yeah, that's fair.
	So, what made you, like, obviously you were doing comedy from a very young age in that case, and doing improv from a very young age.
	Well, what kind of, what made you make the leap into the full, like, entertainment industry, into being like, yeah, I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna do this, because that's a big fucking scary leap to take.
	I, in all sincerity, my mother kind of made me do it.
	Because I had...
	I had flamed out of every sport, every pursuit.
	I boxed for six months.
	She just wanted me out of the house doing things so that I wasn't just reading and playing video games all day.
	And the reading, she was okay with.
	The video games was her real point of problems with me.
	And so then I got into drama stuff and I started doing improv.
	And so she looked into...
	I'm from Calgary, Alberta, which is...
	For Canada, it's kind of like the equivalent of Atlanta, Georgia here, where it has a lot of tax credits, so it gets a fair amount of productions that show up there.
	So there's some acting work, and she got me an agent who was pretty good, and I'd already been performing for a while, so I knew how to do it.
	And then, you know, she was like, well, why don't you, like, move to Toronto and go to this comedy school so many of your friends are going to?
	So the Humber College postgraduate degree comedy writing performance, the postgraduate program?
	Everyone who went there is embarrassed.
	Some of the most acclaimed people and accomplished people have done that program, and they will never, ever say it publicly.
	Nathan Fielder went there after I did.
	Deborah DiGiovanni is a really big comic here.
	She went there.
	A guy who wrote for Conan for a while, who I have personal issues with, he went there.
	My ex-wife, who was a big TV writer, she went there.
	A lot of really accomplished people have come out of this program.
	But to say...
	Yes, I have a postgraduate degree in comedy writing and performance is so humiliating.
	No one ever brings it up.
	Ever.
	I don't even have it on my resume.
	Like, I just don't.
	I don't want to talk about it.
	Because if somebody looks at that and they're like, you're auditioning and they're like, oh, a comedy performance and writing postgraduate degree, huh?
	And then you're like, well, I'm not getting this because I can see the look in their eyes where they're like, this guy's embarrassing things on his resume.
	Let's not do this.
	You're the host of the show, I Hate Bill Maher.
	What made you decide to start a podcast covering Bill Maher specifically?
	Like, was it pure spite?
	Yeah.
	Sorry.
	Just, like, bile coming up out of me as I start talking about him.
	It's, uh...
	Yeah, I mean, look.
	I fucking hate him.
	I really do.
	I hate his guts.
	I've hated him for a long time.
	And there is a certain type of...
	Because I always ask any of the guests on the show, I ask them their history with Bill Maher.
	And there is a lot of the white men on the show that were like, I was at one point a fan.
	And I'm in the same category.
	But it gets to a point where...
	He's been getting worse for so long.
	And I used to make fun of him.
	I would go on stage and I would close a set screaming about how much I hated him.
	And then I would sort of describe this hypothetical scenario in which I would beat him to death with a hammer.
	And it was like a great closer.
	Big cheer at the end.
	The lockdown happened.
	I didn't do shows for a while.
	And then I'd always kind of had this idea.
	I was like, maybe I'll do a one-man show about it.
	And then I was like, maybe a podcast.
	I'm like, this is stupid.
	This is the dumbest idea.
	And then I met this comic I like a lot, Francesca Fiorentini, and I mentioned it to her.
	And she's like, you should just do it.
	It'd be so easy to do.
	Just do it.
	And then a week later...
	There was a story about how he fired his agents because they didn't invite him to their Oscar party.
	And I was like, well, I'd love to be able to talk about this.
	This is the warning, essentially.
	Like, if you don't start this show now, think about all the other incredible shit you're not going to be able to talk about because it'll be too late.
	So then I started doing it, and it's...
	I assume the fan base would just be like 200 other white guys like myself, but I have learned that a lot of queer women also hate him because he is essentially like, you know, he is like, they're his biggest victim.
	Like, they're the ones he speaks the worst about in terms of his rhetoric.
	Them and, you know, I guess Muslims as well in that slot.
	But like...
	So there is kind of this nice community of aggrieved Bill Maher haters.
	And there's no...
	People will make fun of him sometimes, but there's no...
	He's terrible, first of all.
	He's awful at his job.
	His show is so bad now.
	And it's just like...
	I get obsessed with rules and fairness sometimes.
	And watching him, I'm like, it makes no sense.
	It makes no sense that this is just allowed to continue on when it's bad.
	It's gross.
	He's stupid.
	He's wrong.
	He doesn't know what he's talking about ever anymore.
	And yet it just exists because it has always existed.
	And, you know, he hangs out courtside with David Zaslav at Lakers games.
	Like, that's why the show is still on the air.
	Which some people would say, if you're friends with the most powerful people in the country, that maybe impairs your ability to do a show where you should theoretically be criticizing those people.
	Who am I to judge?
	Who am I to judge that kind of thing?
	I don't know.
	Yeah, what does accountability even mean, anyway?
	Yeah, I took a little look down the Wikipedia page of the seasons of Bill Maher, and the ratings over the last season have been plummeting.
	It's been really interesting.
	And it's the podcast...
	I don't know the numbers on the actual audio, but you can go to the YouTube page for Club Random and look.
	And they don't do what they used to do.
	The numbers are going down.
	They've at least plateaued or they're continuing to go down.
	You know, if he's Jordan Peterson on or Ben Shapiro, their fans come and watch.
	But otherwise, the numbers are so much worse than they used to be.
	And then it's like, well, whatever.
	Anybody can have a podcast.
	I still have the American mindset of like, listen, everybody's got the right to have whatever dumb shit they want on a platform.
	But the TV show, it was actually Francesca who made the point.
	It's not that I want his TV show.
	It's that I want someone good to have his TV show.
	Also for anybody good to have his show instead of him.
	And then it would not bother me.
	But it's like...
	A theoretically good format where you could have a lot of interesting conversations and maybe do some good comedy.
	And he's like 0 for 10 on anything you might want from a show like that.
	Just an absolute F-minus failing grade.
	Yeah.
	I will say it has been fascinating because obviously you started at the beginning of real time, which is back to the early 2000s.
	Yeah, and it's fascinating.
	Everyone, I think, in this kind of space is aware that, yeah, Bill Maher's fallen off a fucking cliff in the last few years.
	And I think what's been really interesting for me listening to the older episodes is like, oh, actually a lot of these red flags were there really early on.
	A lot of it you can track.
	Yeah, he hates women.
	It's crazy what he thinks and says.
	It's crazy what he says.
	I do feel like he goes way above and beyond in the way he talks about them.
	It's quite bad.
	I was worried.
	This show was pointless.
	I was kind of like, what am I gonna, like, what even is there to say?
	And then at the end of the real-time pilot, Sarah Silverman did stand-up, and he outros her by going, Sarah Silverman, everybody, can you believe she sucks Jimmy Kimmel's cock with that mouth?
	And I was like, okay, well, I think there's always gonna be something to talk about.
	Every single week.
	Yep, yep.
	There's something to say.
	Yeah.
	I don't think he's gonna let me down here.
	No, you know what?
	I'll say that for him.
	He's consistent.
	He shows up and says shitty things into a microphone.
	He can, in his own way, count on him to deliver the goods.
	If the goods are rotten and moldy and weren't good to begin with, he will deliver them for sure.
	We can count on Bill.
	We can count on Bill.
	What do you make of his stand-up?
	What do you mean?
	What do I mean?
	What do you think?
	How do you feel?
	What do you think?
	Not great!
	Not great!
	It's gonna be my guess.
	I do remember watching some several years ago, like, I don't know, like 2015-16 or something like that.
	And I remember watching it, because I'd seen real time.
	I remember watching some of his stand-up and being like...
	Oh, this isn't great, huh?
	You know?
	He doesn't work at...
	Anytime he has a guest on Club Random who does comedy, if comedy clubs come up, Bill Maher would be like, why would anyone ever go and perform at a comedy club?
	So he's just insulated himself with his fans and his audience who...
	I mean, even they, his last special, they were like, this sucked.
	This was quite bad.
	But he's completely out of touch.
	He doesn't know anything about what's going on.
	He flies private everywhere.
	He's private chefs.
	There was an article where it was like, Bill Maher's favorite spots in LA. And it's like, okay, he likes Venice Beach.
	And then two insanely rich guy bars and or restaurants are his two hangout spots.
	He's a man who could live the exact same life almost anywhere.
	That has weather like this.
	He's completely removed from everything, doesn't know anything about the world.
	You cannot do stand-up comedy like that.
	It's impossible to be good at comedy because, like, you just have nothing to say.
	William Friedkin, I think it was him, he said that once a director learns how to play tennis, he'll never make a good movie again.
	And it's like, yeah, you're just so disconnected that, like...
	Tennis is not the same here, I think, as it is over there and in Canada.
	Like, here, if I met an American who was like, my dream is to go to Wimbledon, people would be like, that's a weird dream, man.
	Whereas I feel like in Canada, a lot of people dreamed about it.
	But it's bad, and his favorite kind of comedy is a very old-fashioned kind of comedy that has grown since then.
	Like a Johnny Carson, that style of you go on stage and you do your jokes.
	It's grown since then.
	Also...
	He reads his jokes out of a fucking binder on a music stand now.
	Like, that's how he does stand-up.
	He's a binder filled with jokes that he, like, flips through and then he'll walk away and do those jokes and go back.
	And, like, I just don't think that's very engaging.
	Yeah, no, no.
	I've seen comics when they're trying to perfect their set or whatnot.
	Some of the big ones have come through my town, actually.
	I've seen stacks of paper and that kind of thing on stage of his material I have that I'm road testing.
	But for that to be the final product, that's a problem.
	I mean, he doesn't do that in his specials.
	He does that on every single show up to his specials.
	At which point, I have to imagine...
	He is an earpiece or cue cards or a teleprompter because he genuinely he's and look if he had only recently started doing it if you're like look my memory is going fine fair enough but he said he's been doing this for like 15 years because he just doesn't like having to remember all his bits I don't know I don't know Like, it's bad.
	It's unprofessional.
	So I'm still slightly navigating how to transition from interview to Russell's nonsense, right?
	So, hey, Will, you know who else has done stand-up comedy?
	Russell Brand.
	Have you ever seen any of Russell's comedy specials out of interest?
	I haven't seen any of the specials.
	I saw him perform at...
	It might have been called Comedy Death Ray at the time.
	I saw him perform at a show here and do like 15 minutes.
	You saw him live?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	It was kind of when he first got here, when he was sort of first doing like movies and stuff.
	And he was just...
	I think he would kind of perform anywhere.
	Yeah, he'd perform anywhere there was like a real audience.
	And that was a pretty acclaimed like alt show.
	I do...
	I have to ask.
	I'm sorry if this is offensive.
	I feel like you've probably addressed this in the past.
	Does Russell Brand sound normal in England?
	Um, not really, is my answer there.
	He has a very pronounced Essex kind of accent, basically.
	So there is like a region where his kind of dialect is more common, I would say, but he does seem to take it to extremes a lot of the time.
	So people weren't walking around saying shit like...
	I've just got a new bookie wook, I think you would fancy.
	Like, that was not a common way of speaking, the way he talked?
	No, no, no, no, it was not.
	No, no, it was not.
	Though I should elaborate that that was based off of the made-up language in A Clockwork Orange.
	That's why he named it that.
	It's supposed to be my book, but in that language.
	Yeah, everyone's...
	Gonna immediately get that and not think it's a stupid twee kind of name for your book.
	There's also My Bookie Walk 2 as well.
	He wrote two of those.
	Yeah, everything needs a sequel.
	It's very high energy.
	It's a style of comedy that comes out of the UK that I don't love a lot.
	But they used to play Just for Laughs as this huge comedy festival that I believe has returned.
	And they would play galas from Just for Laughs.
	It's in Montreal.
	They would play galas on the CBC. And there was a type of UK comic where huge venue, huge stage.
	And boy, they would make the most of that space.
	You know, they would be running back and forth the whole time, jumping, making a lot of noises.
	Yeah, Lee Evans kind of styles.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	A lot of Irish guys, if I recall correctly, did...
	I think the...
	I believe I saw the dad from Dairy Girls did a gala.
	Really?
	Yeah, I think that's right.
	I love Stuart Lee, and I don't love a guy who is running around the whole time yelling, telling stories about his childhood.
	And then they're like, oh, they get really quiet.
	Well, it's supposed to be kind of like an emotional moment.
	And they get really quiet.
	I watch it and I'm like, I don't enjoy a one-man show.
	You know, it's very rare I enjoy a one-man show.
	And that shit screams one-man show to me.
	Yeah, I think arena comedy in general, when you start hitting a certain capacity, it has to change in tone by its nature.
	It becomes a different animal.
	And Russell did reach those heights.
	He performed at the O2, which is like 20,000 people.
	Back in one of his specials was filmed there.
	He's huge, right?
	He was an enormous comedian.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely huge.
	I was bought one of his DVDs when I was younger.
	You know what?
	I will, to my grave, defend Dane Cook's first album.
	I still think it's funny.
	So, you know, even guys who are so mocked now, it's like, yeah, but there was like a reason.
	It is the thing you have to admit about a guy like that is like, I'm sure there is a reason.
	Like, I have no problems believing that there's a period of time where Russell Brand was quite funny.
	And if not quite funny, he was at least extremely compelling in his persona and, like, delivery and stuff.
	Because I know, you know, I know he does not have a normal life story about how he grew up.
	And that is, like, an interesting thing right there.
	Good lord, no.
	No.
	The story's written in those bookie books, I'm gonna tell you.
	There's a lot.
	But yeah, no, he was like, you know, he was of his time, is the way I'll put it.
	The books could have also been called My Confessy Wession or something like that?
	In many cases, or just like, here are things about my childhood I thought were funny and everyone else thinks is traumatic.
	And that's the books.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, it's a fascinating.
	Also, Dane Cook, like, I don't know if this is just me, but, like, Dane Cook I don't think crossed over that much internationally.
	No, no, no.
	Yeah, there was never, like, a, like, I learned about Dane Cook, like, in the, like...
	20 teens, kind of, you know?
	Yeah.
	Even in Canada, he never really reached close to the highs that he reached here.
	I mean, he was the biggest comic in the country.
	He was doing these enormous stadiums.
	There's a venue here, it's like circular.
	The performer's in the middle of the venue and the crowd is all around them.
	And I think Carlin did an album there, so there is a type of comedian who's obsessed.
	It's like their dream to one day also perform in that venue.
	And it's like, why?
	That is the worst possible setup for stand-up comedy.
	Yeah, Russell's a big fan of Colin as well, actually.
	Sure, sure.
	Of course he is.
	Yeah, Colin and Bill Hicks.
	Absolutely loves them.
	Oh, the deepest of dives.
	Wow.
	What a well he's dug for himself of American comedians to probe and get into.
	Great.
	Yeah.
	What was your first experience of Russell Brand then?
	Was it seeing him live or had you seen a movie or anything like that?
	Like your first interaction with his existence?
	I mean, it was just kind of like hearing about him and being like, yeah, there's this big comic and I don't know, apparently he dressed up like Osama Bin Laden or something.
	And then I think I remember hearing Stuart Lee make fun of him and I was like, it's the same way I was first exposed to Jeremy Clarkson through Stuart Lee making fun of Jeremy Clarkson.
	Fair enough.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It was like, this is kind of the same thing with Russell Brand.
	And then when I saw, I remember watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall and being like, oh, he's like, I was like, oh, this guy's like a really funny comic actor.
	And then, you know, and then they gave him nine incredibly misguided movies to star in and that kind of faded away.
	And then I like sort of stopped thinking like, yeah, we'll remake Arthur.
	Let's remake Arthur.
	With Russell Brand.
	It's like, oh yeah, that's a movie with a lot of current day name recognition over here, Arthur.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It definitely needs a remake, that film.
	It's not like they nailed it the first time around.
	No, no, no.
	Yeah, and then they gave him, like, FX is a cable station here, and they gave him a talk show, like a late night talk show.
	Oh yeah, I'm very familiar.
	Oh yeah, Brand X. Do you know the show, they had two shows in development, and the other one that went to pilot was...
	Starring one of the hosts of Doughboys.
	It was this guy, Mike Mitchell.
	The show is called What's Up, Mike Mitchell?
	And Mitch is a very endearing person.
	And the way the show was, he was hosting a talk show.
	He didn't know anything that was going to happen.
	So he'd just come out and read the cue cards.
	And then they would sometimes take him off stage for a bit and stuff.
	And it tested really well.
	But FX was like, we're going to go with Brand X because we really think this could be like...
	Huge.
	And it just, it flops so hard.
	So I've always kind of been, as well, I have a thing for comedians who are like right there and then it goes bad and they get brought back down to like, look, the guy will always be able to sell out a theater, but he's not ever going to be that big again.
	I don't know if you could swing that these days.
	Oh, sure, yeah.
	I did not see this coming.
	Yeah, it's been interesting.
	It's been interesting because he did a stand-up special that he finally released in 2023 called Brandemic.
	Oh, God.
	Yeah.
	And that was performed to like...
	200 people or something like that.
	It was a small audience.
	And the last kind of stand-up bits that he's been doing in the UK that he's made available to people on his Locals channel have been in front of less than 50 people.
	And I'm like, wow.
	And that's including giving out free tickets to the members of the Locals channel as well.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if I'm jumping ahead or not.
	I am curious.
	It feels like, especially watching these clips, and I've listened to some episodes of the show.
	It's a big back catalog.
	Sure, sure.
	I do listen to it, and back when I had free time and wasn't spending 12 hours editing fucking Bill Maher clips every single day.
	But every time I hear him or see him, it really feels like he is...
	Almost entirely geared towards an American audience.
	Like, does this kind of shit resonate in the UK the way it seems to here?
	Or is it so sort of aggressively, outlandishly, for lack of a better term, insane, that a place like the UK is kind of like, it's a bit much for us, mate.
	You know, you're laying it on a bit thick right now.
	Yeah, what you're picking up on is the fact that roughly 80-something percent of his audience are in America, and he knows that, and so he's gearing it in that direction.
	Yeah, he does not give two shits about the British audience, and so, like, one of the...
	Like, we'll be getting into a little bit of British politics later on, but, like, one of the kind of stark things for me this year was, or this last year, sorry, was covering the UK general election, right?
	You know, obviously, big deal in the UK, you know, and Russell was at that time still living here, I believe.
	And he's now in Florida.
	Of course.
	Oh, I knew he was either in Florida...
	Maybe Arizona.
	Maybe he was in Arizona.
	Like, maybe he's in Sedona or something.
	But 98%, I'm like, that's a man who lives in Florida now.
	Florida, yeah.
	But obviously, general election, big deal, and we have laws where the general election in the UK can only be carried out across six weeks.
	That's the finite amount of campaign time, right?
	Perfect.
	It's all just crap.
	It's great.
	We're all so jealous.
	I know.
	I know.
	I'm sorry.
	We're not jealous of a lot.
	Like, certainly not jealous of, like, your media, your political media ecosystem over there.
	But the six-week election cycle, oh boy.
	We'd kill to have that here.
	That and campaign finance laws.
	There's a legal amount you're allowed to spend.
	So, yeah.
	So, anyway, it all takes place within that six-week period.
	Russell only actually covered the UK general election once it was over.
	He then was just like, well, we've got a new prime minister.
	What the fuck?
	He spent the whole time talking about Trump and Trump's campaign and all of that shit and Biden and all of this stuff.
	I'm like, dude, what about the place you live in?
	There's a whole thing happening, you know?
	I have to say, I hate this guy so much.
	I already did.
	I already did.
	But I watched the clips in advance and I'm just like...
	I was telling my wife as she was desperately trying to, like, get away from me this morning that, like, the thing about watching a guy like this who was not a part of this ecosystem until he realized he needed to embrace it.
	And it was interesting, which is, like, the UK, he was never a huge comic here.
	Like, he was never anywhere close to his heights as a stand-up comedian here as he was.
	In the UK. So I think he's killed his ability to draw as a comedian.
	One, by being a serial sexual predator.
	Does have an impact on that kind of thing.
	Accused.
	Doesn't help.
	But because he has de-embraced the UK where most of his stand-up fans are and embraced audiences here, he's just not going to draw because he wasn't ever a huge...
	I remember he hosted the MTV Video Awards and conservatives were mad at him because he was making fun of the Jonas Brothers and their chastity rings and shit.
	Because he was not a part of this world until he embraced it out of necessity, I think he's quite bad at doing this.
	And it made me think about how...
	Bill O'Reilly, really bad guy.
	Really, really bad guy.
	But there is a thing about Bill O'Reilly that is fundamentally compelling in this space.
	He is a, politics removed, a very good broadcaster in this sphere.
	And he's been doing it forever and he believes it.
	And you watch Russell Brand and you just go, this is just like a new coat of paint on the same old dumb guy who didn't know anything.
	And so you watch it and you're like, well, I could find...
	A hundred guys who do this exact thing that are so much better at it and so much more compelling.
	And they're not so red.
	Like, he's so red in these clips.
	It's the most UK guy move to Florida complexion I've ever seen.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I'm going to be generous and say it's a lighting thing.
	But with that, let's have the reveal.
	There's the red man himself.
	Yeah, that red, he's tanning too much but is still immediately turning red the second he starts to sweat.
	So it's just a very strange color he's giving off.
	I do think it doesn't help.
	It's clearly very hot in the room.
	He does start sweating.
	Well, you know, what we've got today is a little bit of a special episode.
	So we're tackling February 18th, right, when Russell was broadcasting live from Mar-a-Lago about seven or eight hours ahead of being given the Global Defender of Freedom Award by Donald Trump.
	That's why Russell was there.
	Broadcasting from Mar-a-Lago.
	Whoa, what a difficult ticket to get to Mar-a-Lago.
	Only the most acclaimed used boat salesmen are ever allowed to go to Mar-a-Lago.
	Absolutely.
	This is so chintzy.
	This is the chintziest era in American history.
	It's so pathetic.
	It's so pathetic how cheap all this shit is.
	How, like, it's just, like, made out of tin that has been hammered into this shape.
	It may, oh, God, you know?
	Yeah, and then coated with a gold veneer, you know?
	Yeah, just spray-painted yellow, not even gold.
	They're like, yeah, yellow, that's gold.
	Close enough.
	So, yeah.
	Russell was being given the Global Defender of Freedom Award from Donald Trump.
	And this was, of course, at an event celebrating American exceptionalism.
	So, Russell being English, he was the only one receiving the Global Defender of Freedom Award.
	Other recipients, including Mike Tyson and Ted Nugent, simply got the regular Defender of Freedom Award.
	No global for them.
	It is a murderer's row of sex pests, basically, that were all receiving awards from Donald Trump, is what happened.
	You're like, okay.
	With varying levels of brain damage.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Yes.
	You can see the stages, you know?
	I'd say Ted Nugent further gone than Mike Tyson, I would say, would be my assessment.
	Yeah, this is going to be like a CTE. This is going to be in a CTE study within the next 15 years, this entire event.
	Right.
	So let's get into the first clip of the show, and Russell will set the scene for us as to what it's like at Mar-a-Lago.
	Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
	Thanks so much for joining us today on what seems like, for me at least, an extraordinary and unusual situation.
	Out that window, is that Mar or Largo?
	That's Mar out there, isn't it?
	That's Mar right there.
	Over there is Largo.
	Wherever you are watching us, you might be watching us on X, you might be watching us on YouTube, or maybe our great home, Rumble.
	And if you don't have Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now because then you get access to our additional...
	And you never know what additional content we'll be making here today live from Mar-a-Lago, which is, I've got to say, it's like being in Disney World.
	It's extraordinary.
	It's overstimulating.
	There's Secret Service everywhere.
	Obviously, for understandable reasons, two attempts.
	On the president's life, a kind of ongoing global antagonism, the sense that we could be on the precipice of something extraordinary and important.
	I'm told at the moment he's out playing golf.
	He stops mid-golf and has lunch mid-golf, then he continues, then he returns.
	I mean, it's just so astonishing to be here.
	It does sound astonishing.
	He sounds like a guy vamping because the teleprompter broke.
	Like, when he's like, of course we've got on one side, we've got Marr, and on the other side, Lago.
	And of course, the president's out golfing.
	Of course, when you golf, you golf for a little while, maybe you stop and have lunch, you know?
	And then when you're done with lunch, you start golfing again.
	It's like, what?
	How could you not be enticed into signing up for Rumble Premium if you're going to get even more of this wonderful, insightful content?
	But also, Will, we are on the precipice of something extraordinary and important, so, you know, there is that, you know?
	Can't argue.
	This, to me, is the theme of all these clips, where I'm like, could you give me one specific of what you're talking about?
	Give me one example of what you're referring to right now.
	Astonishing and extraordinary and important, right?
	Yeah, it's like, these are like, those are like the adjectives that describe like X-Men and Spider-Man comics over the years.
	Like, what are we to be getting out of this experience?
	I would like more pow and kaboom in this presentation.
	Also, only one attempt on the president's life.
	The second one was false.
	The sheriff, that was the sheriff of Riverside County and he was lying.
	There was no attempt on the president's life in that situation.
	It was just a guy with a gun.
	Let's be honest, it feels like nobody's tried particularly hard.
	No.
	Also, there's tons of...
	When you think of Disneyland, you think of the Secret Service.
	It's just like Disneyland.
	There's Secret Service agents everywhere.
	That's the same.
	I was going to ask, I've never been to Disney World.
	Have you been to Disney World, Will?
	Yes.
	Because I'm in California, I've spent a lot more time at Disneyland, but I did go to Disney World once.
	Visiting my in-laws in Florida.
	A few of them live there, but we were all there.
	And the last day we were there, we just dropped into Disney World.
	Cool.
	It's nothing like Mar-a-Lago.
	I was going to ask.
	I've never been to Mar-a-Lago.
	I don't need to go to Mar-a-Lago.
	I'm saying right now.
	It is nothing like Disney World.
	Disney World is huge.
	There's like nine worlds.
	Like, is there an Avatar ride at Mar-a-Lago?
	No.
	Then it can't be like Disney World.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Disney World.
	Look, there's problems with Disney, but the place itself sounds pretty rad.
	I'm not going to lie.
	It's a remarkable thing that they've done.
	It's gotten a little bit worse, but, you know.
	As obscenely expensive as it is, they for a long time really did try to give you the experience you would expect from those kinds of prices.
	I'm a big...
	I'm a Disneyland guy, you know?
	I'm SoCal.
	I gotta defend.
	I gotta prefer Disney.
	It's more doable.
	Disney World genuinely is so big, you need like a full week to do the whole thing.
	And I just don't think that's true of Mar-a-Lago.
	Well...
	For this event, I think the tickets were around the five grand mark.
	And, you know, for that, you could possibly sit near Mel Gibson, who I think was in attendance, if I remember correctly.
	So, you know, how could you compare the two, really?
	Well, you know, that's true now that the Star Wars Hotel has closed.
	But when the Star Wars Hotel at Disney World was opened, that was roughly what it cost for the two-night stay at the Star Wars Hotel.
	Oof, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's an imperfect system.
	Oh, and as for Rumble Premium, the draw there is that you could sign up to that and you get extra content from your new deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino.
	Oh my god, I just saw that today.
	I can't fucking believe that.
	That's, like...
	It's absurd is what it is.
	It's entirely absurd.
	We are living in cartoon times.
	I don't want anyone to ever defend the American institutions to me ever again, because look at what they let happen.
	It's all got me curious as to what's going to happen to his Rumble show.
	He's doing like three hours a day at this point.
	I'm like, well, surely you can't do that and be deputy director of the FBI. Why not?
	It's possible.
	He might just keep doing it.
	Some people argue you can't do what Trump does and be president of the United States of America.
	And yet here we are.
	You can watch Kickboxer on repeat, you know, 12 hours a day and still be president of the United States, it turns out.
	It's a pretty good movie.
	It's the old new world we're living in.
	Okay, so I'm glad that you're here specifically and that you're a comedian because we're about to watch David Tennant tell a joke at the BAFTAs.
	Sure, yeah.
	British equivalent of the Academy Awards, basically.
	And Russell has said on his Twitter account that he felt confident weighing in on this clip as a comedian.
	So I would like your take specifically.
	Especially as, you know, the BAFTAs is a scripted show and the joke was very obviously written by a team of writers like you are used to dealing with and that kind of thing, especially on Bill Maher's show.
	Yeah.
	So let's take a look.
	Let's watch this together and see what we think.
	And let me know what you think about that kind of general Hollywood elite condemnation of populist politicians who can make, I think, a legitimate claim to be more efficiently represented in the interests of ordinary people than the kind of globalists who mask themselves in the lacquer of woke.
	Let's make some noise for the sublime, the brutalist.
	I've heard it's good.
	A film about incredible architecture.
	In fact, it's the boldest architecture in film this year, apart from Donald Trump's hair and The Apprentice.
	Donald Trump, of course, he says he hasn't seen The Apprentice.
	Pretty weak.
	Pretty weak joke, pretty weak, because, like, oh, man, you know, I had that slap, didn't I, with Donald Trump years ago, because I was making a documentary with Oliver Stone, the brilliant filmmaker, and...
	Donald Trump had let Oliver Stone use all of these buildings to make, I think, Wall Street 2. Anyway, I made a bunch of jokes about Donald Trump.
	You know, those kind of jokes.
	You know, hair.
	Lame, frankly, jokes.
	Not good enough.
	Anyway, that was like 10 years ago.
	That was 15 years ago, and they were lame then.
	That's not a good enough joke.
	You're going to have to, because all it is, I would call it a satisfatic and...
	Impersonative humor.
	So it's satisfatic and impersonative humor.
	And I wish I had any clue what he meant by that.
	I watch a lot of Russell and can usually decipher him pretty well, but I'm at a loss here.
	What are those words?
	I'm not familiar with either of those words.
	Listen, he's right that the joke sucks, but he's wrong that it's not good enough because it's, what is it, the BAFTAs?
	Yeah.
	This is not David Tennant recording his...
	This isn't a special.
	Yeah, his new hour is out.
	It's the Baptists, man.
	He's an actor.
	And it's also so funny to be like, look, man, I was doing those jokes 10, 15 years ago.
	It's like, yeah, man, we've been doing those jokes for 40 years in this country.
	Yes.
	They're not new.
	Like, Donald Trump's hair continues to be absolutely insane, and therefore continues to be a point of ridicule, even if it is stale.
	But, like, yeah, secondly, like, that wasn't even David Tennant pointing out the hair of Donald Trump himself.
	He was pointing out the representation of Donald Trump's hair in the movie The Apprentice, where the hair job is fucking insane and it looks like the solid hair of a Lego man is how it looks.
	And just framing it like, of course, the woke elite at the BAFTAs are taking down the populist hairstyle of Donald Trump.
	What does populism have to do with the guy's hair?
	Also, this is a good example of what I'm talking about, about how bad he is at this kind of character he's attempting to do.
	When he says globalists, guys who are good at it...
	You know what they mean.
	There are some guys, they say globalists, and you know they mean Jews.
	And there are other guys, they say globalists, and you know they mean Jews, but they don't want you to be able to insist that that's who they mean.
	When he says it, I'm like, who's he talking about here?
	I don't even, I'm not fully sure.
	I believe that he knows that this is supposed to be an anti-Semitic dog whistle.
	I think he might just be saying it because he's like, well, this is what we do here, right?
	Although he will be anti-Semitic later, so it is possible I'm wrong.
	Right.
	So it is like, oh, these are the people, you know, globalists are who we dislike.
	You know, they're the boogeyman.
	He has before couched, you know, when he said it, he has couched that and like, I don't mean this in an anti-Semitic way.
	I mean, as in, you know, whenever talking about particular...
	There's no other way to mean it.
	There's no other way to mean it.
	That's what it is.
	It's an anti-Semitic dog whistle.
	It 100% is.
	And, like, what I found troubling about the clip is the idea that apparently populists have more of a claim to represent the people than the globalists who mask themselves with the lacquer of woke.
	Like, so Russell hates the likes of Macron and Trudeau and Keir Starmer and whatnot, but, like...
	Democracy is democracy.
	Who has a claim to represent the people is decided at the ballot box.
	And right now, that's the likes of Keir Starmer and, unfortunately, Donald Trump.
	One claim is not more valid than the other in terms of votes cast, right?
	These are not contestable kind of elections.
	What I would say is that...
	Keir Starmer does initially come from a working-class background.
	Like, in the general election, he went through great lengths to repeatedly tell everyone that his father was a toolmaker.
	It became a meme for that six weeks.
	Donald Trump, however, was a child raised in privilege and was then handed a whole bunch of inherited wealth.
	You know, he's been among the richest people on the planet since birth and was raised in a mansion.
	And yet, according to Russell, the rich boy has more of a right to represent the voice of the people in this.
	Yeah, I just don't think, you know, I'm pretty left-wing, and I will, like, it's like Keir Starmer did run, essentially, he and Macron had the same strategy of both, I think, running as, like, anti-populists, as the sort of, like, down-the-road, like, we're the common-sense liberals.
	Trudeau, I think, had more of a populist bent, at least.
	When he got elected.
	And it is this, it's like, I mean, to say Donald Trump even ran as a populist this time, he did, like, it's in 2016, he kind of did.
	But in 2024, like, what did Donald Trump run on?
	He ran on sort of these aggrieved anti-trans policies, but even then he himself barely ran on them.
	There are clips of him going of him being like, oh, and we're going to we're going to stop.
	We're going to stop, you know, boys from playing sports with girls.
	Not that I've heard, you know, that that's a problem really from anybody, but we're going to stop it from happening.
	He he essentially did not run on anything, really, this camp, this campaign.
	And the Democrats ran on.
	We're going to keep doing what Biden did.
	And he.
	But we're going to embrace, we're going to work across the aisle.
	And I swear to God, living here, it was like watching two people try to lose a presidential election.
	It was the most uninspiring.
	And later, Russell Brand is going to refer to Donald Trump's mandate.
	It's like, if you get 49% of the vote, you do not have a mandate.
	That's not what a mandate is.
	Below half the population voted for you.
	And you're like, what a mandate I've got.
	He, like...
	Also, it wasn't exactly a landslide, you know?
	Dude, it was so close.
	And again, going back to the globalist thing, man, you are from the UK and you live in the United States.
	You are an international figure.
	Like, if you're using globalist in this vague way, how does a man who has traveled the globe and now lives on an entirely different continent across an ocean, that guy...
	To me, counts as this sort of vague notion of, like, a globalist as well.
	Like, this is so non-specific.
	Especially for someone who traffics in, like, anti-migrant rhetoric on a weekly basis.
	You're like, you are the migrant!
	You fuck!
	Like, just because you're wealthy doesn't mean that you're excluded from that.
	Yeah, like...
	The...
	It's...
	And I even think...
	I don't even mind the idea of, like, a rich guy...
	I think can run as a populist if he is willing to explicitly go, I am a class trader and I will do class trader business to the people I grew up with.
	In the same way somebody who grew up working class, once they become wealthy, if they are sticking with those class interests, that also makes sense to me.
	That doesn't seem so crazy to me because it's like, well, they're rich now.
	And that's like people tend to protect their own interests.
	I cannot stress this enough.
	I lived through the whole election.
	There was no populism going on.
	And people will point to the trans stuff, but that's not popular.
	If that were actually popular, it would have won in 2022. And it failed so hard in 2022. All those insane school boards filled with moms defending liberty or whatever, they got annihilated, those people.
	The Republicans barely took Congress, running almost exclusively on that issue.
	This time, the populist issue was inflation.
	And even then, it just wasn't anything.
	People just went, well, this isn't working.
	Let's switch to the other side.
	That's it.
	That's all that happened.
	Yeah.
	And I'm so pissed off about this because this is largely the same shit Bill Maher says.
	And just like with Bill Maher, it's like, okay.
	Prove it.
	Show me.
	Show me.
	And I don't expect it from Russell Brand, obviously.
	I don't expect anybody who's like, sign up for Rumble Premium.
	Yeah.
	But like, show me.
	Give me any evidence that this is true.
	And it wasn't just people being like, well, everything is kind of shit right now.
	Let's try the other guy.
	That's it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, among, you know, whipping the racists up into a frenzy and everything else.
	Like, yeah, yeah, completely.
	And, you know, the other side desperately trying to lose and be like, yeah, genocide's kind of okay.
	Genocide's okay.
	Dude, running with Liz Cheney, a woman who lost her election.
	She lost.
	And they're like, this is who we're gonna...
	This is the one.
	You know what people in America love?
	Losers.
	They find that really inspiring here.
	Yeah, right.
	Absolute lunacy, that strategy.
	Russell continues the BAFTA coverage here, and in doing so, we see David Tennant tell a joke about the actual Donald Trump, and Russell takes a pretty serious issue with it.
	And also, David Tennant's hair don't look great in that either, does it?
	It looks sort of too much like a loaf.
	Some sort of slick loaf.
	He hasn't seen The Apprentice.
	Because it's a 15. It's not on Nickelodeon.
	That's not good enough.
	That's not good enough.
	Like, Donald Trump watches Nickelodeon.
	That's not good enough.
	Also, by the way, at this point when you're insulting Donald Trump, you're insulting...
	You're insulting the United States of America because he is the President of the United States of America, brought to power under an extraordinarily popular mandate.
	The electoral vote, the college vote, the Senate, Congress.
	I mean, this is a person that...
	And also, if you spend time in America, and obviously I'm here right now, like the people that love Donald Trump, they're not all...
	It's not all sundown town.
	It's not all racists.
	It's like good...
	Decent American people.
	You go to a cheesecake factory anywhere in America, these people love Donald Trump.
	So what you're saying is I hate working class people.
	And because people can't say I hate working class people, and I'm not claiming that David Tennant didn't grow up working class or whatever, maybe he did.
	I feel like his dad was maybe a minister of some kind.
	I'm not saying that.
	I'm saying culturally, ways of condemning ordinary people have become sort of very insidious and very...
	Deft.
	It happened in my country around Brexit.
	All those racists are not racist in Northern.
	They're not racist.
	They're working class.
	They're not racist.
	They're concerned about what's happening to their country.
	Okay?
	They're not racist, they're northern!
	They're working class.
	I can hear my northern British audience getting offended at being lumped in with the bullshit, and rightly so.
	That is correct.
	When it comes to Brexit, that was the result of people in the UK being lied to by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and more openly bigoted shitheads like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson.
	It turns out it can be really quite easy to whip up people into a frenzy if you just lie to them and tell them that everything that's wrong in their lives is the fault of brown people.
	And the Polish, let's be fair, they also blame the Polish people.
	And the Poles, yes, and that pesky, undemocratic EU and everything else, right?
	In a broader sense, what Russell is trying to assert here is that in insulting Donald Trump, at any point, you are also insulting the entire USA and the entire working class of the USA. Now, this is some boot-licking bullshit on its face.
	This weepy garbage.
	Yes.
	Particularly as only roughly 32% of those able to vote actually voted for Donald Trump.
	But the whole point is inciting Russell's audience to get personally offended whenever anyone insults Donald Trump.
	It's cultish and instructs people to associate Donald Trump's reputation with their core beliefs.
	So an attack on one is an attack on the other.
	And so people get offended on a deeper level.
	And honestly, it's a game that's been quietly going on for quite some time, but Russell's just kind of saying it out loud here.
	You know, it's very much like, if you insult king, you insult country kind of thing.
	And I'm sure that has absolutely zero historical precedent that's ended very, very badly.
	Not once.
	What I find fascinating about this is what must be like...
	Some incredible cognitive dissonance because it's Russell Brand saying you're not allowed to speak truth to power or even make jokes about those in power when he spent the last more than a decade claiming to speak truth to power and has even claimed that it was his speaking truth to power that led to the allegations against him being reported on.
	Whereas now, well, speaking truth to power is insulting to the entire US of A and you shouldn't do it, you know?
	And again, it's an award show.
	Who gives a shit?
	Like, it's some monologue jokes at the BAFTAs.
	Who, I cannot stress this enough, gives a rat's ass.
	And this kind of, I called it, it's like weepy garbage.
	This was the same thing when, in 2016, after the election, when people were really critical of Hillary Clinton and her campaign and her...
	Biggest supporters would defend her by being like, when you attack Hillary Clinton, you attack every woman who voted for her.
	And it is like, I'm sorry, most people do not vote because they are particularly enamored with a candidate.
	They vote because they go, I guess this is the best choice I have.
	And I'm somebody who tends to vote like the idea that everyone who voted for Donald Trump is a fan of Donald Trump is such a brazen.
	Open lie that is so ignorant of electoral politics everywhere.
	People who vote for Donald Trump talk shit about Donald Trump.
	People who voted for.
	Look, I know people who voted for Kamala Harris talked a lot of shit about Kamala Harris.
	I did like it's really.
	And again, it's like in the 2020 primaries, I was talking to a friend and she was like, oh, I just like I hate.
	So many of the people I know who support Bernie Sanders so much, it's hard to get behind him.
	And I was like, well, think about it like this.
	If he wins, you get to watch them have to criticize him or be hypocrites.
	That's the thing about electoral politics.
	To do it well and honestly.
	Even if you love the guy you support, they will do something you don't like.
	And criticizing them is how politics is meant to be.
	Like, the public are meant to have an input as well.
	Donald Trump is stupid.
	Who gives a shit?
	Oh, he's stupid.
	Yeah, we've been making the same joke forever.
	And it just is like, to be like, they didn't even call him that dumb.
	They just said he watches Nickelodeon.
	It's the most mild joke you could make about Donald Trump.
	This, like, you know, when you say these things, you insult all of America.
	First of all, good.
	Please, for God's sake, insult us every opportunity you get.
	I'm a little bothered when the English do it because you guys have your own problems.
	But, like, generally worldwide, I'm fine with it.
	And it's like, I couldn't imagine being so pathetic that I listen to this and I go, he's right.
	They are.
	They're attacking me when they attack my president.
	That's...
	That's the most embarrassing attitude I could imagine a person having.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Cult of personality shit.
	By the way, for reference, I'm Welsh, so I have an out when it comes to the English.
	Oh, great.
	Oh, perfect.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Great then.
	100%.
	Yeah, yeah.
	We can both criticize that entirely.
	Oh, an island of inbred pedophiles.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Who needs that?
	Who needs that?
	Not me.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, speaking truth to power is a big problem these days.
	And it is curious as well that his tone has changed since the mid-2000s when, yeah, he described George W. Bush as an arsler little cowboy fellow who couldn't be trusted with scissors in the UK. You know, and you're like, yeah.
	You know, slurs aside, accurate assessment.
	Oh, I didn't even know what the slur was in there.
	I didn't even pick it up.
	Yeah, yeah, the R would.
	Oh, okay, okay.
	But, yeah, like, that's, that was, why is he okay with it back then?
	You know, what's changed where it was, you know, and he spent a lot of time insulting Joe Biden, you know, and, like, has spent a lot of time insulting Joe Biden.
	That's been half his coverage the entire time that I've been dealing with him has been making fun of Joe Biden.
	I'm like, What's changed?
	What's changed?
	Is it that you're being given an award by this guy?
	Does that help?
	You know?
	Has that changed things slightly for you?
	I think truth to power, and that's why I'm accepting an award from maybe the most powerful person in the world.
	Yes, exactly.
	That's how you do it.
	You get the award, you say thank you, and say, right, here's what I fucking think of you.
	Right?
	That's how it goes.
	I hate this fucking shit.
	It, like, pushes me over an edge.
	And it's not as if this behavior is new, as if people have not always behaved like this.
	But every time I see it, I can't...
	It's like...
	I don't know if it is evidence that I'm not actually neurodivergent, my doctor is wrong, or if it is playing into that.
	Because I'm like, this doesn't make sense.
	No, no.
	You're breaking the rules by doing this.
	You can't say that thing and then say the opposite later.
	And it always gets to me.
	In my 40 years on this earth, it still gets to me when people act like this.
	I'm as big a sucker as the people who like Russell Brand because I cannot help but be absolutely outraged by this horse shit.
	It's, like, really embarrassing for me.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, that's entirely fair.
	That's it.
	And here's the difference.
	Firstly, you know, as someone recently with a preliminary diagnosis of autism, I will say the sense of justice is usually a giveaway.
	It's often a thing.
	But...
	I demand order.
	Like, there must be order.
	There must...
	There must be something.
	There must be something at the center of this that will make it make sense.
	Well, the other difference is that you feel shame.
	Right, right.
	And that's a really important factor to not have when you're in Russell's sphere of things.
	We're reacting the same way we would if we saw someone masturbating on a bus.
	We're just like, how can you do that?
	It makes no sense that somebody can be okay doing that.
	There they are.
	They love it.
	Yeah, he's going to town.
	Russell is going to town here.
	So from here we move to a clip of Lindsey Graham talking about Trump and Ukraine.
	And given Russell's previous anti-imperialist stance, he should take issue with this.
	Nonetheless, let's see what he says.
	Right, let's have a look at what if you want to know about war.
	Talk to a warmonger.
	Here's Lindsey Graham's take on this.
	I think the main thing for me is that Ukraine has value.
	Literally has value.
	So you can talk about democracy, and people love talking about democracy here, which is great to talk about democracy, but where were you in 2014 when they actually needed you?
	So Trump now sees Ukraine.
	Differently.
	Because the rare earth stuff.
	Oh, my God.
	I said, playing golf, these people are sitting on literally a gold mine.
	What did he say?
	What do you mean?
	I showed him a map.
	Yeah.
	Look.
	You know, everybody says Putin wants to reconstruct the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.
	You showed up a map of the rare earth on the golf course?
	Not on the golf course.
	Oh, okay.
	But later.
	Later, yeah.
	He's seen this.
	Look.
	This stuff is...
	That's one of the reasons the guys wanting to go into Ukraine is take their stuff.
	I mean, there's trillions of dollars of very valuable...
	That's what I mean by no bullshit politics.
	Do you remember when it was like Kamala Harris and Biden?
	This is humanitarian.
	Putin's a war criminal.
	Won't somebody please, please think of the Ukrainian children?
	Trump, there's minerals over there.
	If we're going to continue our aid, we're going to secure it against those minerals, and we're going to start using their ports, and we're going to use it as a bulwark against Russia.
	That's how we're going to negotiate.
	They were doing that anyway while lying about it.
	What they do, when I say they, I mean sort of like what you might call neoliberal, centralist, globalist, the political class, is say, oh, have you seen this image of some rubble in Kiev?
	Doesn't it break your heart?
	And also, couldn't we make some money out of that and pretend to be helping people?
	It's no bullshit politics.
	Yeah.
	What is he talking about?
	Yeah, so this is Russell trying to wrap his mind around and justify what he's just seen in that clip.
	So, like, does Russell have any evidence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were strong-arming Ukraine out of resources and then lying about it?
	No, no, he does not, nor does he present any.
	But this false idea is enough to apparently justify Trump coming in and being like, hey, I'm gonna take all your stuff now, and if you don't accept it, well, here's Putin.
	That's how he's trying to rationalize it in the moment.
	So he thinks this is good?
	Yes.
	This is him providing as much cover as he can, and at the very least saying, well, this is no bullshit politics, you know?
	Why shouldn't he do this?
	And it's something that Russell should, on its face, take issue with.
	He should have a problem with it if he were in any way consistent.
	Especially the notion that Trump was apparently only ever convinced by financial gain.
	That is something that he has previously decried in the likes of George W. Bush.
	But when Trump does it, that's no bullshit politics.
	That's what it is.
	I... I... I cannot believe that that was him defending something.
	When I watched this clip, I was like, why did Al send me this clip?
	I don't understand, like, literally why.
	I don't understand what I'm meant to take from this, like, what he's saying.
	Yeah, yeah, that's, I think...
	That's part of, like, the backflips of him trying to attempt this in the moment.
	You know, that's part of trying to track, like, where the fuck his thought pattern is going.
	This is him doing a bad job again, because these guys, you can't go soft on Ukraine.
	You cannot go soft on Ukraine.
	If he wants to be in this space and be as successful as I'm sure he wants, this is the kind of shit they will rake you over the coals for.
	Hate Ukraine in MAGA. It doesn't change.
	It's not going to change with Donald Trump or anybody else.
	That's like one of their core set things.
	The same way Trump has had to walk back being the guy who created the vaccines.
	This is one of those things that like the meat and potatoes fans of this stuff go crazy over.
	They hate Ukraine.
	Like they hate it so much.
	And yeah, like.
	As you say, it's just being like, no, look, it's better if it's imperialism plus one.
	Like, it isn't just protecting an ally from, like, the kind of thing that is like, you know, being in sort of like left-wing spaces, I will see people.
	Kind of be like, OK, but Ukraine does have like a like a neo-Nazi problem.
	It's like, oh, yeah, Russia, surely never any issues with the Jewish people there ever.
	Like it's the most false reasoning for this for invading Ukraine.
	It is so clearly just an imperialist war.
	and for him to not only defend that imperialism, but by defend it by going, no, no, it's OK, because this administration is being as imperialist as possible.
	It isn't just about protecting the members of the American empire.
	It is also about securing their mineral rights and ports.
	It's no bullshit politics, Will.
	That's what it is, right?
	And, like, it is fascinating to, like...
	Watch him squirm with this question in the moment, because it is completely at odds with everything that he's claimed to stand for for the last decade.
	And so in the moment he has to be like, well, but Biden was worse.
	And I'm like, that's the best you've got?
	Also with no evidence?
	Yeah.
	Cool, cool.
	Like, why is it better if somebody lies to you before they smear dog shit in your face than if they go, I'm going to smear dog shit in your face, and then they smear dog shit in your face?
	I don't really care what the sentence presents.
	Yeah, the harmful action is still the problem at the end of it.
	And again, I don't think sending aid to Ukraine is smearing dog shit in my face.
	It's not like a thing that I'm on my face opposed to.
	It's just kind of keeping with the way he would view it.
	No, this would be the stealing of the minerals.
	That would be the smearing of the dog shit situation that he's alleging that Biden and Harris were doing.
	Which is like, show me a document, Russell, and I will read it.
	But yeah, he doesn't have to.
	He just has to say things and then move along.
	And he likes to, you may have noticed a trend, he likes to kind of bring in the thoughts of other people and other Rumble creators specifically.
	And so from here he brings in the thoughts of fellow Rumble creator Glenn Greenwald.
	Is Glenn Greenwald reacting to this?
	Holy Toledo!
	Yeah, there's that guy!
	American support for Ukraine has plummeted.
	Holy Toledo!
	I'm going to start saying that.
	The history of American war since World War II, says Greenwald, almost without exception, is that the population gets manipulated to support the...
	Well, that does seem like a pretty reasonable appraisal of war.
	Don't you need precisely a president that's going to see it as a...
	Deal.
	What's the best possible outcome for everyone?
	And even if you hate Donald Trump on account of his hair, his orangeness, or whatever's been projected at you from the media, you have to recognize that that is a favorable trajectory of the peculiar globalist pursuit of a military victory over Russia.
	Russia!
	Napoleon, defeated.
	Hitler, defeated.
	The West, potentially defeated.
	Get a grip.
	Do a deal.
	So Russia defeated Napoleon and Hitler and potentially the West, so hey, you better get a grip and do a deal!
	Again, it's bootlicking the strongman shit.
	And it is important to remind everyone that Russell has been doing this the entire time.
	He's been trafficking in Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories since day one of the Ukraine war.
	From Ukrainian bio-labs to troops of Ukrainian Nazis and...
	Ukrainian bio-labs?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a whole thing for a while on the, yeah, the accusation that Ukraine were developing bioweapons in labs.
	That was a whole thing.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and also, like, given...
	Given payouts from Russian oligarchs to other members of the alt-right media sphere, like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, there is more than a little bit of speculation around whether Russell is also a recipient of any Russian funding.
	Because he was on it from the jump.
	Whether there's money involved or not, he is very firmly on the side of Russia and has been the whole time.
	Also, I think a key factor in the defeat of both the Nazis Yeah.
	Yeah, historically not a good idea.
	Yeah.
	And it also, like, in World War II, it also made it easier to send wave after wave of bodies to the forefront of the war when they're in, say, Stalingrad, as opposed to when they're in, I can't remember the name of the Ukrainian territory.
	Like, to draw a comparison between those two, yeah, those two events and what's going on right now.
	It's like, buddy, we're not the ones being ahistorical here.
	The West has not invaded Russia.
	Yes.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	Exactly.
	But anyway, doing a deal, doing a deal, that's the best outcome.
	Like, that's famously what Donald Trump's deals are about.
	And they have nothing to do with screwing anyone over.
	It's all about the best outcome for anyone.
	It's not like he explicitly said you should screw other people over in the art of the deal or anything.
	It's not like he wrote that in a fucking book.
	Okay.
	And the closest he ever came to making it seem like he might actually create or pull some sort of historical quote-unquote deal is when he briefly got North and South Korea very briefly on perhaps a path to some normalization between the two.
	And then, you know...
	Rosie O'Donnell or somebody insulted him.
	He completely forgot about it.
	And then South Korea got their new insanely right-wing prime minister and that was all over.
	Like, it lasted for maybe three minutes.
	Also, he's criticizing David Tennant.
	David Tennant, I feel like...
	Would have at least made sure he had like a glass of water or something to clear all the phlegm out of his throat before he started broadcasting.
	Something dear Russell has not done before his rumble stream here, because there is the craziest wad of phlegm rattling around in his throat as he is speaking.
	It sounds like a guy is trying to escape from his body out of his mouth.
	In like a locomotive or something.
	Don't even get me started on Russell's professionalism.
	The number of times I've heard this man burp into a microphone and then continue a sentence is unbelievable.
	It is so jarringly frequent.
	He has no breath control as well.
	He is constantly like...
	Yeah, it's because he's shouting everything, and so he's constantly just gulping for air.
	It felt like that's what his act was like, though.
	And I don't remember him accidentally inhaling the microphone, taking these crazy inhales.
	But here, it sounds awful.
	Well, he's like 50 now, so it gets harder.
	He's got a strange diet that I'm sure doesn't help.
	Well, no, he's back to just eating meat now.
	He recanted on the veganism.
	I don't think that helps with your breath control, a purely red meat diet.
	Yeah, you know what's going to help?
	Cholesterol.
	I'm just going to stuff it in there.
	I do also want to point out the game that's been played with Greenwald's quote here, because if you look at the idea out of context that people are manipulated into supporting war and then later come to regret it, that feels vaguely true of the recent past, particularly in the USA. It's a reasonable presentation in isolation.
	And it's how people like Greenwald can come off as being reasonable in isolation.
	But then you tally this idea with the fact that not supporting Ukraine means allowing Russia to take over sovereign territory just because they're bigger and have more bombs, and it paints quite the different picture.
	Greenwald knows this, and so does Russell, and what they're actually doing is sanitizing imperialism.
	But tricking people along the way.
	You know, Glenn Greenwald really broke my heart because he, you know, he had like real substantive, substantive criticisms of US imperialism and a lot of things I had issues with in regards to foreign policy.
	He was a tough one to see go.
	And it's even like if you want to make the case that the war is now at a point where it is at a standstill and it is just both sides just sending men to die.
	You know, at a point where nothing is changing.
	They're just at a standstill, at an impasse, and they should negotiate a ceasefire at this point.
	Fine.
	Make that case to me then, if that's the case you want to make.
	But these guys are just like, yeah, just do the thing where they're like, well, it's bad.
	This imperialism that the United States is doing by shipping all these weapons to Ukraine.
	Is bad.
	It's like, okay, well, what are we to do?
	And they can't just say, so we should just stop.
	Well, some of them have no problem saying that, but there's no...
	They say half of the sentence, and then they...
	Just stop talking in the hopes that they're like, and hopefully nobody succeeds in filling in the blanks on what the rest of this thought is.
	Someone will figure it out somewhere.
	Vague gestures.
	Okay, okay.
	So now, as Keir Starmer has committed to the idea of sending British troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, as part of a peacekeeping effort specifically, well...
	Russell gets really mad about it and then accidentally steps on a rake.
	Britain braces for a $12 billion tax raid to fund defense spending.
	£12 billion is going to cost you.
	People of the UK. Are you all happy that your taxes go towards that?
	Are you happy that your taxes go towards funding the BBC? That's the licence fee that lied to you.
	That your taxes go towards funding an unwinnable war and now it's going to cost the lives of brave and brilliant British people who value duty and sacrifice to the point that if you thought about it, it would make you cry, man.
	It would make you cry.
	Tony Benn, the great left wing.
	A British politician said if there's enough money to kill people, there's enough money to save people.
	Like you in your country, where do you want to see your tax dollars going?
	To support people that are aggrieved and bereft because of disasters, hurricanes, fires?
	Pick your disaster.
	Or do you want to continue to fund unwinnable corporate misadventure around the world?
	Let me know in the comments and chat.
	The people of the UK are the same.
	You've got to assume the people of Russia are the same.
	The people of Ukraine are the same.
	None of us want these wars.
	Wars should be an absolute last resort, probably against physical external aggressors that are actually invading.
	And you might say, well, that describes Putin exactly.
	But that means you've not heard of Jeffrey Sachs or Professor Mearsheimer.
	And you've not heard about NATO's expansionism.
	And you've not heard about the globalist attempts to occupy Ukraine via NATO. Let me know if you think about that in the comments and chat.
	That's certainly how I see it.
	So you might think that Putin is a physical aggressor actually invading a country, but you'd be wrong because you don't know anything about NATO expansionism or Jeffrey Sachs.
	So there.
	Yeah, I'm pretty sure he mentioned two guys who are both Jewish while talking about globalists.
	So that kind of flies in the face of maybe his past defenses.
	Yeah, it doesn't help.
	Doesn't help.
	So...
	For the record, NATO have only ever protected the borders of the countries which are a part of NATO, which amounts to shockingly little of Russia's border.
	It was roughly 10% until Finland joined, and it's now roughly 20%.
	So essentially...
	Around 80% of Russia's border does not share a border with NATO countries.
	And specifically, the only things from NATO that have ever been on the Russian border is anti-missile air defense weaponry, which does not have offensive capabilities.
	It's purely defensive.
	Which makes sense, because NATO themselves are an organization that exists as a defensive pact.
	It's the concept of, like, if you attack one of us, you attack all of us, right?
	And one might think it real weird that Putin is protesting so strongly at his neighboring countries joining NATO, when all it truly means is them having allies if they're attacked by a foreign aggressor.
	So, it's some bullshit.
	And here's the thing.
	Also, even if someone was pointing missiles at Russia, which they weren't, that would still not be an excuse to just up and invade a sovereign nation.
	Like, that's still not okay.
	Yeah, it really...
	You know, there have been points in time where...
	You could look at NATO and go, do we really need this thing anymore?
	Like, it seems like this is a thing that exists.
	This is left over from the Cold War.
	But I just think it's harder to make that case while they're currently, you know, doing an expansionist war in another country.
	This kind of feels like a, you know, if you're a big, if you care about NATO above everything else, you probably on some level were like, I can see an upside to the war that has begun.
	Yes, it makes us necessary.
	Also to say, oh, what would you rather your tax dollars go to, killing people or helping people?
	It's like, well, what policies have you heard God Emperor Donald Trump propose to help people?
	I'm very curious what stances the Republicans are currently taking to use tax dollars to help people because...
	There are literally none.
	Yeah, yeah, and like, as a British taxpayer, I will say, like, Keir Starmer will only be sending British troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal on a peacekeeping mission.
	It's not the UK going to war with Russia, that's not what's happening.
	And like, am I thrilled about paying taxes to the military to go to Ukraine?
	Not especially, but if Putin could just fuck off back to his own country, that would solve the issue quite quickly, you know?
	So I'm like, well...
	Yeah.
	It's like peacekeeping missions used to be like a normal thing that countries did, you know, that often did not keep a lot of peace.
	But the intent was sometimes there.
	It's, you know...
	Usually protected a lot of white people.
	So, you know, you did that.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you know, as like a Canadian, you grow up learning about the genocide in Rwanda because one of our most like sort of prominent national heroes was leading that mission.
	Right.
	And, you know, that didn't keep a lot of peace there.
	But this is so many of these clips.
	It just boils down to, like, you watch him and you're like, what are you talking about?
	Like, it makes me want to sit down with him.
	And he says something like that.
	And I just want to be like, no, elaborate.
	You have to.
	I've locked the doors.
	You now have to elaborate on what you're saying.
	And if you can't, I will slap you in the face.
	And I will continue to slap you until you manage to elaborate on any statement you are trying to make here.
	I've got to say, I would watch that show, Will.
	I would watch that show.
	I'd break my hand off.
	Him just shouting NATO expansionism and Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Mearsheimer is not especially convincing.
	Jeffrey Sachs, he's a literal Russian asset with strong ties to the Russian government, and he insists that Ukraine wanting to hold onto their own territory and their own country is maximalist demands.
	So forgive me if I'm unconvinced by him.
	Um, when it comes to Professor John Mearsheimer, he's asserted for a long time that the Ukraine conflict is the fault of the West and supposed NATO expansionism.
	He's been making the claim for so long that some academics believe that the Russian government have actually taken some of their propagandizing cues from his work.
	Um, so again, I remain unconvinced.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I thought maybe those guys were, like, foreign influence.
	In Russia.
	I didn't know that they were just two guys who were saying this is not Russia's fault.
	Yeah, it's two guys who are like vehemently pro-Russia and also seem to potentially be getting a lot of money from Russia.
	I can find two guys who will tell you anything.
	Like, you can find two guys who believe literally anything.
	There is an entire organization dedicated to normalizing, like, grown man and child sexual relationships.
	Just a few guys who believe something is not a credible case being made.
	Good lord.
	This is like when I argue with my uncles about climate change or something.
	It's like, okay, so you've got a guy.
	I have a whole apparatus of, like, organizations.
	Yeah, but I like this guy.
	I like this guy, and he's nice to me, and he's charismatic.
	Let me ask you, did those organizations do their own research?
	Because me and this guy have, so.
	Exactly, right?
	Right.
	So, from here, Russell plays a clip of Keir Starmer, and then again gets really mad about it, and confidently steps on another larger rake.
	This is a once-in-a-generation moment for the collective security of our continent.
	Only a lasting peace in Ukraine that safeguards its sovereignty will deter Putin from further aggression in the future.
	What's that based on?
	What's that based on?
	Did you see when Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin, like, did you get the idea that he is going to go on a colonial rampage, that he has some sort of supreme vision of Mother Russia that's going to expand?
	When has Russia ever actually done that?
	Like, under the Soviet Union, of course, there was a sort of spread in many, you know, what we regard as the Eastern Bloc.
	Yes, exactly then.
	The very recent past nailed it in one.
	When has Russia ever done that?
	Oh, then, yep, yep, yep.
	Didn't Russia invade Georgia like ten years ago as well?
	Yeah, that was a thing.
	Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
	Again, that's a big rake.
	That's a real big rake to Nazi coming.
	Putin was in the KGB, was he not?
	He was a part of, like...
	The Soviet, like, state apparatus.
	Yeah, yeah, and I have to say, like, I'm curious, Will, did you see Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin at all?
	I think I heard a few, I either heard or saw a few clips on, you know, whatever podcasts or YouTube shows.
	Right, yeah.
	So I had to cover Russell's coverage of it, which, like...
	Oh, great.
	Oh, cool.
	It got to the point where Russell was just playing clips and then talking about something else because it went that badly.
	Yeah, I heard it did not go well.
	Yeah, it didn't go well for Tucker.
	No, I believe at the time I described it as an interview with a lion and Tucker Carlson was a juicy idiot steak.
	It did not go down particularly well for him.
	And one of the things made abundantly clear in that interview to those paying any attention is that Putin rattled off the history of Ukraine to a great length with a specific lens of how Ukraine used to be Russia.
	He spent at least a third of that interview making the argument very plain and clear that he believes Ukraine is Russian territory.
	And that he wants it back.
	Ironically, in asking what is that based on to assertions of Putin's expansionism, Russell brought up Putin himself basically being like, yep, Ukraine is Russia, so I'm gonna take it.
	Yeah, like...
	A guy who has, like, restored, like, monuments to Joseph Stalin across the country and, like, really tried to rehabilitate the reputation of, like, the most imperialist Soviet head of maybe all of them, I guess, towards the end, you know, there's Afghanistan.
	But, like, it...
	This is just not a case you can make.
	No, it really isn't.
	Based on literally any knowledge of events at all.
	And I think that might be where Russell falls down.
	I think that might be part of the problem.
	Also, Keir Starmer just looks...
	Starmer looks so much like a...
	A UK Prime Minister who is in a movie about a global conflict for one minute.
	Like, they show one minute.
	It's like, now we cut to the Prime Minister, they just always cast a guy who looks like that.
	Yeah, yeah, it's true.
	He's just the most fucking milquetoast-looking guy, you know, just like, right, give me...
	Give me beige personified in a human being, and there we go.
	There is Keir Starmer.
	Welcome.
	All right, so I cut him off halfway, so I'll let Russell finish his thought here.
	But the US imperialist and UK imperialist forces participated in that, in the carving up of the nation after the defeat of the Nazis, where the Russians and the Americans and the British fought together to liberate Europe, to end the horrors of the Holocaust.
	Now, I reckon there are deeper, ulterior narratives to investigate.
	Yeah, because I'm not a naive person anymore.
	I've had the shit kicked out of me by life enough times now to not trust them on anything.
	And I don't trust them on this.
	Do you seriously believe that this is a once-in-a-generation moment where the UK and France have to part ways from the United States of America to support Ukraine in a war against Russia?
	I hope at some point in this speech, in a minute, and we've got a plan.
	We've got a plan in the event that Putin uses nuclear weapons, particularly now that Putin and Trump are directly involved, it seems, in their own discourse and might come up with some deal.
	And they might go, yeah, do what you want in Britain.
	Them guys are rude.
	Yes, as famously rude British people.
	So, basically, this is just more strongman talk about how impossible to defeat Russia, with an added bit of faux outrage that the UK and France could have a different diplomatic strategy to the USA, just for a little bit of spice.
	Again, this is falling in line with the thinking that if you disagree with Trump's, let's call it a strategy, if you disagree with that, then you're attacking the whole of the USA and it's insane to do so.
	you know like it would be the usa it would be the usa that would be breaking with britain and france Everyone else, yeah.
	They were all united on this.
	I insulted.
	I made fun of the fact that he had a frog in his throat.
	Now I'm losing my voice.
	I have to make a note on the thing he does where it's a classic stand-up comedian move where you're like, what I'm about to say is not funny.
	I don't need to hear them not laugh.
	I know it's not funny.
	So I'm going to laugh as I'm saying it in the hopes that that tricks people listening to this into thinking what I'm saying is funny.
	Because what does he say that it's a joke?
	Them, Britain, they're rude.
	There's no...
	But prior to that, he's like...
	Like wheezing as if he's like, I can't even get through what I'm about to say.
	It's going to be so funny.
	And then he makes the exact same kind of...
	Makes the same banal shit observation he's been making this entire time.
	Like, why did that tickle his funny bone so hard?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	There's nothing that's actually funny about any of it.
	It's just, like, the absurdity of taking on Russia.
	Ah, it's crazy.
	What if they use nuclear weapons?
	Blah!
	You know.
	I'm like...
	I'll be honest, like, this is just fucking sad, like, to watch this.
	Because, like, not only it's not that entertaining, and also, like, this guy, Russell Brand, has spent the last decade claiming to be an anti-establishment thinker.
	Like, a real renegade.
	And here he is just doing the dirty work for Trump and Putin.
	Like, he's carrying so much fucking water for these guys that Alex Jones is about to be complaining how Russell wasn't used to fight the fires in LA. Like, that's how much water he is carrying.
	It's absurd.
	It's absurd.
	Oh, dear.
	So, from here, in quite the change of pace, Donald Trump has suggested something that I might potentially agree with.
	Heavy asterisks on that.
	Trump has made the audacious suggestion that China, Russia, and the US should cut their military budgets by 50%.
	Now, that's obviously going to be good for everybody.
	Isn't it?
	Let me know what you think about that in the comments and chat.
	Let's have a look at Donald Trump saying this, just so you know I'm not making this shit up.
	One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, and I want to say let's cut our military budget in half.
	And we can do that.
	And I think we'll be able to do it.
	This is no bullshit politics, I would call it.
	What we've been dealing with up to now is bullshit politics.
	Remember, we don't know how this nationalist populism is going to play out across the world, but we have to acknowledge that Trump 2025 is not Trump 2016. Now, if you're not a Rumble Premium subscriber yet, become one, and you will get additional content from me as well as Glenn Greenwald, who had this to say.
	Those who failed or refused to see this massive...
	The massive opportunities from this Trump-led realignment and instead enslaved themselves to the broken, ossified, unimaginative, status quo perpetuating Democratic Party are some of the dumbest people on the planet.
	Let me know in the comments and chat what you think about Greenwald's claim there.
	Trump proposes trilateral.
	Can I go back to that?
	Trump proposes trilateral agreement with China and Russia to mutually draw down military budget by 50%.
	What a...
	Sensible bit of stagecraft, you'd have to call that, wouldn't you?
	I don't know, man.
	Let me know.
	I mean, I'm probably more inclined to be positive towards Donald Trump because I'm literally sat in Mar-a-Lago right now, but...
	Yeah, that might skew your perspective a little bit when you're literally accepting an award from the guy that you're discussing in a matter of hours while also getting an all-expenses-paid trip to his beachfront golfing resort.
	Yeah.
	Might just point things in one direction for you.
	Nonetheless, like...
	The idea here is something that, like, on its face I agree with, right?
	Like, Trump has suggested a trilateral agreement with China and Russia to reduce defense spending by half, and has also suggested denuclearization as part of that trilateral agreement.
	And, like, these are things that I've talked about for years.
	Like, the USA has a higher military budget than the next nine countries combined, and US defense spending accounts for 40% of defense spending globally.
	Like, that is literally absurd.
	Yeah.
	shinier nuclear weapons, as though the old ones don't do quite a good enough job of mutually assured destruction should anyone ever decide to use one.
	The heavy asterisk comes in for me, where, like, as demonstrated earlier with Ukraine, Trump usually doesn't do anything unless he's somehow going to benefit from it personally.
	And not only that, but the US economy and a significant chunk of its workforce is tied into military spending and, you know, arms and that kind of thing.
	Like, how do you go about reducing that by half without destroying the entire US economy?
	I truly don't know the answer, but I'd love to find out.
	And then comes the question of, if there is a way to do it responsibly without initiating a Great Depression, would Trump bother to do so, or would he simply look after the billionaire class like he has done the rest of the time?
	You know what I mean?
	This thing of being like, hey, Trump said he's going to do this thing.
	And it's like, well, surely he's never said he was going to do something that he didn't do before.
	He's never...
	What's he done that he said he was going to do?
	Almost nothing.
	And this idea, this reputation he has somehow gotten as being, like, anti-imperialist.
	He ratcheted up drone strikes throughout his presidency.
	He did more drone strikes than Obama, who loved drone strikes.
	No, Trump is the anti-war president.
	Well...
	And he stopped reporting the deaths.
	Like, no longer did the United States publish...
	who was killed in drone strikes.
	It is this remarkable thing where up until up until Gaza, the Biden administration was like compared to previous presidents, pretty dovish.
	And now that's a big asterisk up until.
	But like this idea that he has any interest in cutting the military budget.
	And again, you were saying it's it's the military industrial complex.
	Like that's what this country does.
	It's like, okay, is he going to cut the spending and just turn it into tax breaks for First of all, he won't cut the spending.
	But I don't want that money to not be spent.
	I'm like, yeah, take that money out of the defense budget and just smear it around everybody everywhere else.
	The people counting on those manufacturing jobs, just pay them to do something else.
	It's no different.
	They're already in a make-work plan.
	Most of the shit we make, we either sell or just stack up in a warehouse somewhere.
	It's not like we're using it.
	We actively use this shit.
	Like, it's just a big fucking handout.
	So why not cut out the middleman and just have the government hand it out to people directly?
	But that's, of course, there's no follow-up from that from Russell Brand of where he'd like that money to go.
	He's just like, hey, Big Papa Trump is going to keep not doing war, just like he has in the past.
	Yep, yep, pretty much.
	And, like, yeah, if this was followed through on and that same amount of money was then, yeah, directed towards, I don't know, roads, healthcare, like, education, there are so many, so much of the fabric of American life really needs funding, like, really needs aggressive public funding, and it could be a wonderful thing, should it ever occur, which, again...
	I don't think that it will.
	But if it did, you know, like, what would happen?
	Like, it would be Trump pocketing a whole bunch of money, I think, is what would happen.
	Yeah.
	Like, there used to be arts funding in this country.
	You used to be able to get grants from the government for, like, the arts.
	What?
	That's crazy.
	Famously, a great way to stimulate the economy is to give money to poor people, because they'll immediately spend it.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, we're all fucking in debt, you know?
	It's just like, it's such sucker shit.
	It's such sucker shit.
	I mean, I say sucker shit, that's gonna, fucking suckers are gonna come up later.
	And what to me was the most shocking moment of all the clips you sent me.
	It's just, it's like, at a point, if you're gonna listen to this and accept it on its face and believe it, why even listen to the podcast at all?
	Why not just imagine, you can just sit.
	And just visualize all this stuff without even having to put on YouTube.
	All the things he's saying are so generic.
	You've heard them.
	You know them.
	Any fans of this show can just write and create this show in their mind at any given time.
	And whatever they come up with will be exactly what Russell Brand will.
	Because there's nothing surprising, nothing interesting.
	He doesn't have any crazy takes.
	He doesn't seem particularly interested in what he's saying.
	I can't imagine more low-effort garbage than this.
	And I watch Club Random.
	But hey, hey, he was married to Katy Perry, right?
	And he uses a lot of big words.
	Can everyone do that?
	I don't know.
	Who taught him lacquer?
	Like, why is he suddenly saying lacquer so much during these clips?
	It's so strange.
	Yeah, well, it's because he's overused the word veneer and cloak and other things.
	So he's working through the thesaurus in his head.
	That's what he's doing.
	Okay, he's got a literal list.
	Yes, yes, genuinely, genuinely.
	There is a thesaurus up there, for sure.
	I abuse phrases as much as anybody, but that's so funny.
	To just be like, oh, currently he's in his veneer phase.
	Yep, yep, yep, yep.
	There was shawl for a while as well.
	It was a shawl of wokeness for a little bit.
	Okay, so...
	So from here we move back to some of your more familiar territory of discussing comedians.
	And we get to a clip of Jon Stewart's podcast where he's chatting with Jen Psaki, at which point they have a bit of a disagreement regarding Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn.
	Ailes didn't do that either.
	It was the principle, the ideological principles, not the party.
	He and Murdoch the same way.
	They're promoting an ideological worldview, right?
	That they believe is correct.
	And Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan, I think, are different animals than any of this.
	Like, I wouldn't say they're...
	I don't think they're part of any machine.
	Don't you think they're the...
	But they are still in the right-wing ecosystem.
	Wouldn't you agree?
	No.
	I would consider them in a more...
	Probably libertarian comedic complex.
	More along the lines of, and if you watch or listen to their shows, A, a lot of times it's just pure goofing off.
	Has nothing to do with politics, and oftentimes.
	Almost entirely.
	But they are supportive of the Trump enterprise, is what I mean.
	So maybe I'm loosely putting them in that category.
	I think they are supportive, but not...
	They are not relentless in the Trump enterprise.
	They are not Charlie Kirk.
	They are not Ben Shapiro.
	They are very different animals.
	They are not invested in...
	Now, the shit that you get picked up and go to the headlines of media, yeah.
	But on balance, that's not what their shows are about.
	It's an interesting conversation, really, isn't it?
	There's no way you could claim that progressives weren't in alignment, say, for example, during the pandemic era.
	When the whole progressivist machine geared itself towards cajoling people, for example, taking vaccines.
	Yeah, he can't help himself but bring it back to the anti-vax bullshit somewhere.
	It's got to come back.
	Progressivist?
	What is up with these freaks in adding syllables to every single word?
	Just say progressive.
	Progressivist?
	Yes, yeah, yeah.
	Oh, way to go, Shakespeare!
	You really did it this time with your mate of fucking garbage?
	And yes, the progressivists, yeah, it's shocking that they were mostly in alignment about healthcare during a global plague.
	Fucking, who knew?
	So, like, I'm willing to hear Jon Stewart out on the notion that Rogan and Theo Vaughn aren't like Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch or Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro, right?
	Like, they're not specific activists themselves so much, and they're not, like, ideologues to the same degree.
	Fair enough.
	But that's not the role that they play in the alt-right media sphere.
	Rogan and Theo Vaughn's job is to launder the alt-right shitheads and their ideologies.
	That is the game...
	By platforming and making people like Alex Jones seem reasonable and sometimes even likable, it allows the audience to fall prey to the more bigoted ideologies that guest might have.
	It just gets soft-chewed in by talk of gay frogs and then, oh, Alex Jones was right, wasn't he?
	How crazy!
	And then suddenly his audience find themselves in a rabbit hole of John Birch society propaganda.
	Particularly as the likes of Joe Rogan especially is not actively...
	Like, do I give a shit about Bobby Lee's opinion on how San Francisco is being run?
	No, I do not.
	It's nothing to do with him, but I had to hear about it anyway because Rogan fucking brought it up.
	Like, and fundamentally for me, like...
	This is just where Jon Stewart has gotten this drastically wrong.
	Like, I wouldn't say that Rogan and Theo Vaughn are part of the alt-right media sphere.
	I'd say they're an essential cornerstone to it and have been for years, Rogan particularly.
	Like, without Rogan making these idiots likable, they'd be kind of screwed.
	And, like, make no mistake, Rogan's guest list is chock full of alt-right shitheads these days, many of which I've had the misfortune of covering.
	Yeah, I am.
	It's interesting.
	I mean, I don't and have never listened to either of their shows other than I've watched the Rogans that Bill Maher has been on.
	And it's interesting watching how Rogan changed in the like three or four years in between the first and second Bill Maher appearance.
	Hmm.
	Theo Vaughn, I get it for me.
	Theo Vaughn just strikes me so like Joe Rogan is both a dumb guy, like a classic internet dumb guy and also disingenuous where he will be like, Hey, I'm just asking questions.
	And it's like, your questions you're asking seem quite loaded, and you seem like those questions always take you to the same predetermined answer.
	Seems very activist in its nature, you know?
	Yeah, like, I think Jon Stewart is a lot more wrong about Joe Rogan.
	I think Theo Vaughn genuinely is...
	Like a dumb guy on the internet.
	Because you can also find a lot of guests he's had on who have been like, well, here are the problems with the things you say and some of these guests you've had on.
	And he's always like, oh, wow, man.
	That's a great point.
	And it's just more likely that people are going to glom on to the absolute sickos that you have on a show like that, where the host is willing to kind of go along with anything.
	But it also is, I also think, too, it's like, I'm not sure the context of what they're, what he and Jen Psaki are kind of disagreeing about, but it is like, those guys, I think he's right that it's different than someone like Rupert Murdoch in that those guys, it did happen organically, what they became and where they fit into the right wing media sphere.
	Like that happened organically because there was both a market for it and the right found a way to manipulate, I think, in particular, Joe Rogan.
	Also, Joe Rogan is just so rich now.
	Like he's so rich.
	Like, of course, of course, he's going to become certainly one of those guys in terms of like economics.
	But I think culturally.
	A guy like Theo Vaughn is open to a lot more new ideas in both ways that are positive and unbelievably negative.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like, for me, I look at Theo Vaughn and I see a younger Rogan in a lot of ways.
	You know, I see, you know, 2015-era kind of Rogan in Theo Vaughn's kind of performance of it.
	And, like, you can see the threads, except, like, Theo Vaughn's guests are more kind of actively fucking fringe right-wing compared to Rogan's back in, like, 2015. Yeah.
	Because those guys are just not fringe anymore, is a part of the problem.
	Right.
	Extremely bone-chilling to think about what is no longer fringe in terms of media appearances.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Anyone who's willing to sit and pal about with J.D. Vance is probably not great, is my assessment.
	Yeah, that's the stand-up comedian mind of just like, hey, whoever, you know, I'll perform for anybody.
	I'll, you know, whatever crowd wants to embrace me, I'm okay with that.
	And it's like, you gotta...
	You've got to have some standards here.
	Some values would be great.
	Values would be fantastic.
	Just some kind of guidelines to stick to at all would be great.
	But this sucker, I mean, we've got to talk about the lollipop, for God's sake.
	Holding a big red lollipop.
	And opening, leaving the clip by just like, just like really like reverse slapping it out of his mouth.
	Just a very pronounced sound effect.
	Yeah.
	I don't know if that's old school Russell Brand being like cheeky or if it's just a guy who has no standards for what he'll do anymore.
	But like that noise is disgusting.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	No.
	Yeah.
	And I apologize to our listeners who have misophonia.
	I appreciate that.
	May not have been a fun moment.
	You're not going to love my show if you don't like misophonia.
	There's a lot of lip snacking going on.
	Oh, come on.
	See, I do apply a click remover to try and, like, lessen some of it, because Russell can be pretty egregious.
	Like, I do think he just doesn't give a shit.
	And, like, also, most of the time he doesn't have monitors going on.
	He can't hear himself.
	And so, like, he's just doing whatever the fuck and doesn't give a shit.
	I think you can just put the range of your microphone way down and then just have...
	I guess it's confusing hearing it, but you can do...
	Hassan Piker does that, where he doesn't even have headphones anymore.
	He's just set the levels on his mic so they pick him up, but they're not in the range to pick up his computer speakers anymore.
	So he doesn't need any kind of...
	You've got to...
	Even if it's not all the time, just put in headphones once in a while just as like a check-in to be like, what's my mouth up to these days?
	Honestly, this is another point where I blame Joe Rogan because he kind of normalized the concept of just having the microphone right up to your face like this, you know, just sitting right on it.
	I'm like, dude, what the fuck are you doing?
	Like, why are you making out with the microphone?
	That is terrible mic technique.
	That is terrible.
	You can, like...
	Every once in a while, you can get in and be quiet to be, like, dramatic about something.
	But generally, it loses its impact if you're just always half-asleep with your face on the microphone.
	Always.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Like, if you're doing, like, fucking NPR coverage or whatever, then fair enough, you know, if you want to speak quietly and talk about...
	Like, yeah, sure.
	Sure.
	But that's not what these guys are doing.
	They're just...
	Yeah, making gross noises into a fucking microphone is what they're doing.
	I mean, that's the other thing, too, I'll say about Theo Vaughn versus Joe Rogan.
	Theo Vaughn, I mean, and I guess it's kind of more insidious.
	Theo Vaughn is still capable of, like, being funny with a guest.
	Joe Rogan.
	I have not heard Joe Rogan tell a joke in an absurdly long time.
	Like, he's not really a stand-up comedian at all anymore.
	And at least from the Bill Maher episodes, everything is just like...
	That's crazy, isn't it?
	Jamie, can you bring up that story about the moose attacking that guy?
	Like, they're not riffing, they're not joking around, they're not doing bits.
	He's just like, yeah, man, totally.
	Weirdly, Theo Vaughn is the more professional of the two shows.
	I've done a few shows with Theo Vaughn, and I would not have imagined he would end up in a more professional operation.
	Right.
	Right!
	Yeah, quite a fucking goof, man, when you meet him in real life.
	Yeah, no, I can believe that.
	Yeah, just really like, oh man, just open to things in the worst possible way, where you're like, no, you must steel yourself against some of these things.
	And look, I don't want to completely let him off the hook for everything.
	Obviously, lots of people who are very open to things will still be like, well, that guy, you know, People are publicly repulsed by that guy, so I shouldn't associate with him.
	But it's like, there's just a certain type of guy where you're like, no, man, you can't.
	This is not a way to be, to just see anything and be like, whoa, is that true?
	You have to look to the past and be like, well, all these times in the past I've been like, whoa, is that true?
	And it hasn't been and has been like, look, Joe Rogan retweeted, maybe like four or five years ago, retweeted a tweet about the white genocide of farmers in South Africa.
	And was like, hey, has anybody seen this?
	This is crazy.
	And I was like, yeah, we've seen it.
	We've been seeing it for 20 years, this fake racist story.
	How have you not come across this before?
	Yeah, yeah.
	There needs to be a thought process beyond, like, whoa!
	It needs to go further.
	There are extra steps after that point.
	Yeah, in the same way if a story is too good to be true, if a story is...
	Too interesting to be true?
	You should also interrogate that as well.
	Yeah, nah, Joe Rogan's just gonna keep having Graham Hancock on talking about ancient civilizations that were wiped out.
	You know?
	That have weirdly racist connotations where like, oh yeah, it was a super race of white people that existed, you know?
	That were all wiped out, you know, magically.
	You're like, alright.
	Alright.
	I'm like, okay.
	I'm so glad I've avoided Rogan.
	Yeah, it's a mess.
	It's a mess, dude.
	So now Russell wants to talk about whose fault it is that Rogan got so big in the alt-right media sphere anyway.
	And guess what?
	It's not his fault.
	And it was in that kind of period where we recognised there was a need for independent media.
	That's, in a sense, I would say, where Joe Rogan changed from successful podcaster.
	...into media leader of a movement, because he was one of the only people that was going, how about taking these vaccines?
	How about you try a bit of ivermectin?
	And that became, they politicized that.
	The progressivist establishment politicized that.
	That could have just been a lifestyle choice.
	You could have just seen that as wellness.
	It could have just been wellness.
	You made him political by sort of putting him yellow.
	You know, changing the green yellow.
	And it wasn't just news media.
	SNL. Look at SNL. You can see that very good comic, Pete Davidson, dressing up as Joe Rogan, painting himself yellow.
	They politicized it.
	And what Theo Vaughn are and Joe Rogan are, if you ask me, is just not captured.
	True.
	Famously not captured, that Joe Rogan.
	Real independent thinker.
	In other news, ivermectin could have just been a wellness movement, but the progressivist establishment politicized it.
	Progressivist establishment being Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, I guess?
	Like, Fauci?
	Like, who the fuck knows?
	Yeah, man, you know what was not political?
	The wellness movement.
	A famously apolitical movement.
	Yeah, very, very apolitical, yeah.
	This has been covered dozens of times elsewhere, but ivermectin itself is usually not a particularly harmful thing to take.
	It does its job as an anti-parasitic incredibly well.
	Its discoverers were awarded the Nobel Prize.
	but it doesn't do shit against COVID-19, and the problem was a whole bunch of people in Russell's corner claiming that I've, and Russell himself, claiming that ivermectin protected you from COVID-19, and therefore nobody needed to get the vaccine.
	In fact, people like Rogan are making that claim to this very day while also raking in tons from selling their own personal lines of ivermectin.
	But yeah, it was the progressivist establishment that politicized this one, and it had nothing to do with the anti-vax movement and bad faith actors with dollar signs in their eyes.
	Like, I don't want to defend the angry mob, but in the old days, an angry mob would have, at worst, chased somebody like that out of town.
	laughter There is something to be said for pitchforks and torches, you know?
	Like, lock the doors to his mansion and set it on fire.
	Like, what are people, like, what a pathetic country we've become.
	Snake oil salesmen used to be shot.
	They used to have to go from town to town so people didn't catch them and kill them.
	Now they build a huge compound in the center of the city and they're like, come and observe my snake oil empire.
	And people are like, oh, he's not political, mate.
	He's not political.
	Oh my god.
	This is humiliating for this country.
	Yeah, it's very upsetting.
	The idea of...
	And like I said, you want to make the case that Theo Vaughn is not political.
	He's just a guy who is susceptible to these views, whatever.
	Joe Rogan is explicitly political, and intentionally so, and saw that market and jumped on board of it.
	The idea of, oh, they forced him to be political.
	He embraced it wholeheartedly.
	His show...
	Everybody tells me there was a time when his show was entertaining because he'd have comedians on and they'd goof around and riff and make jokes.
	And his show is just politics now.
	I'm not sure what point he's trying to make about Saturday Night Live.
	Just that, oh, they made fun of Joe Rogan for taking ivermectin, you know?
	It's like, well, okay.
	They make fun of everyone.
	Like, that's the point of the show.
	Yeah, so wait, is he saying, but SNL is political?
	Or that was when they became political?
	So that was like, oh, it's not just the political establishment.
	I don't know if he's trying to paint SNL as being part of the progressivist establishment in this scenario.
	I'm not sure.
	Because that's like, Elon Musk did that, and Bill Maher will be like, you know, and good for Elon Musk for calling out SNL for being woke and out of touch.
	And it's just like, you are a 70-year-old man.
	What are you doing talking about a television show for children?
	Like, grow up.
	Right, right.
	And sorry, who are you in touch with, Bill?
	Oh, dear.
	So, now Russell moves to the subject of Jerry Seinfeld being very pro-Israel before, well, bickering with his crew a little bit.
	And also, that's why I'm not down with getting on Seinfeld for being pro-Israel, because Seinfeld's a comedian.
	That's what Seinfeld is.
	He's a comedian, and he's a New York Jew.
	He's not going to go, yeah, actually.
	He's going to have the views he has.
	His priority, as he's always explicitly said, is comedy.
	We're trying to collapse that category.
	That's where the culture wars and wokeness went madly, madly wrong, is it made enemies of everyone.
	It made enemies of everyone, unless you were sort of like...
	Running out an mRNA in strangers up the arse in exchange for a teddy bear.
	You're basically called a Nazi, even if you were Jewish.
	I mean, it's just so berserk and bizarre and out of control.
	And I don't think they can ever really reconcile that.
	Hey, I'm going to do some of those vaccine stories now.
	Why don't you run an ad and give us a second.
	You don't know how to.
	Just play one of the old ones.
	Give me a minute.
	Because I've already got Rumble Premium.
	It gives me something to do, doesn't it?
	What do you mean?
	But they exist, though.
	It's just buying time.
	Play it out again.
	What am I going to do?
	Just sit back and lean back in my Rilago?
	I'm not talking for a minute.
	There's no fucking break, man.
	I'm just fired.
	Well, a break from what?
	From sitting in front of a microphone and yelling.
	I don't know how obvious to you the difference in production values and professionalism are compared to real time with Bill Maher.
	But Russell is tired and needs a fucking break, so play an old ad, goddammit, while he sits back with his lollipop.
	That's what was there.
	I don't know how you do this.
	Like, it is like, real time does have variety and things change.
	And meanwhile, you just have to sit here and watch this asshole do the fucking...
	Same dumb shit over and over with these slight tweaks.
	That bit at the end, I had something I wanted to talk about and it erased it out of my mind.
	Just watching me be like, what am I supposed to just sit back here for a minute and not say anything?
	Yeah, why not?
	Would that be so much worse than what you've made up to this point?
	What you've already done?
	Yes.
	Maybe people need a break from hearing you talk, Russell.
	Maybe that would be good for everyone.
	Just a moment's silence would be welcomed.
	What was he saying at the start?
	I'm very sorry for losing my train of thought.
	So Jerry Seinfeld.
	Right, Seinfeld.
	Okay, I know what it was.
	When he is like, I mean, he's a New York Jew.
	They all think the same.
	There are like one million Jewish people in New York City.
	Very famously, a lot of different communities within, maybe it's just hundreds of thousands, but like, The idea of like, yeah, Jerry Seinfeld.
	He's just like, you know, someone who's orthodox living in New York City.
	Like, there is such a...
	It's not like you go to Minnesota and it's such a small community that it tends to just be that one community.
	It's of all the cities to pick to be like, they're all the same there.
	There is no greater variation in Jewish life anywhere in America than there is in New York City.
	And it's...
	And yeah, it's...
	It's just one of those things that makes me crazy because that's never the kind of – it's like if it comes from a guy like this who – I saw a tweet earlier of him being like, well, you know, you read about – you read the Old Testament.
	You see the history of the Jewish people in Israel.
	And, you know, it complicates things and makes it tough.
	Who's to agree?
	Who's to say what's okay with what they do there?
	And it's like that's all you got to do.
	That's all you got to say.
	And the ADL will never come after you.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Every Jewish person in New York City, exact same way of thinking.
	It's so racist.
	It's like when people talk about the black community, and I'm like, which one?
	Like, they're a fucking...
	It's insane.
	The craziest example of that in America is when people talk about Latinos or Hispanics.
	Because it's like, oh yeah, all those right-wing Catholic Cubans think the exact same as third-generation Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California.
	Those are two groups with a lot in common.
	They're brown and they speak roughly the same language.
	I mean, what's crazy is they kind of...
	As far as Spanish goes, they kind of don't because there are a lot of Cubans in Florida who explicitly didn't as a way of saying, fuck you to Castro.
	It's the variation in Hispanic life in America.
	The idea that they are lumped into, well, who's going to do a better job of getting the Latino vote?
	And it's like, can we stop this?
	Can we stop this already?
	Acting like this is some sort of monolithic culture that exists in this country.
	It's insane to act this way.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	Oh, dear.
	But yeah, Jerry Seinfeld's still a piece of shit.
	That's still happening.
	But he's not political, you know?
	He's not political.
	No, sure, sure.
	Because he's, you know, he's a Jew from New York, and biologically, he must think that way.
	He must hold his beliefs.
	That is it.
	You have to be Zionist if you're New York and you're Jewish.
	There we go.
	Jesus Christ.
	Yeah, and also wokeness made enemies of everyone, apparently.
	That was another thing.
	What Russell precisely would define as wokeness, I would love to know.
	I would love to hear him define it specifically, because usually he just brings up a list of things of, like, BLM and, you know, but apparently it's also wokeness to be against genocides these days.
	That's the fucking woke left!
	Or it's like, it's woke to insist it is political to, like...
	Go to settlements on the West Bank and post pictures from them and talk about what a great time you had on stolen land in the West Bank.
	What's political about that?
	Yeah!
	Nothing, I'm sure.
	So, as promised, Russell is in fact going to do a vaccine story.
	I will explain it up top so that Russell's response makes sense.
	In essence, there were four Twitter adverts published by Bradford Teaching Hospital's NHS Foundation Trust in June and July 2023, which were aiming to recruit children aged 12 and over for Moderna's updated mRNA vaccine for trials.
	The adverts, which were aimed at children rather than their parents, added...
	all our junior volunteers get a lovely certificate and a be part of the research teddy bear um under the medicines for human use uh clinical trials regulations it is prohibited for incentives or financial inducements to be given to children or their parents um pharmaceutical companies are also banned um from directly advertising to children in this country um essentially it was a big fuck up basically is what happened
	um where moderna apparently contracted these adverts out to a third party and seemingly didn't check them for legality before release um is basically what You're like, oh, yep, this was so very easily avoidable.
	But okay, cool.
	So let's see how Russell handles it, and I'm sure it'll be a measured response.
	A spokesperson said the tweets and articles in question published in August 23 were created and disseminated by third-party organisations who were not approved by Moderna.
	We've found a bureaucratic way to arm's length this bullshit off into the arms of an agency.
	And that's exactly what we're going to try and do.
	These are the kind of things that should bring down governments.
	These are the kind of things that should be unusual.
	Never trust those leaders again.
	Never trust the mainstream media again.
	Defy, disobey, and refuse to pay your taxes.
	Start renegging on your mortgages.
	Give them something to think about.
	Start disobeying peacefully, as always, on the streets.
	To prevent similar occurrences, say Moderna, the same people that enacted this chaos, we've reinforced our processes, oh, thanks, for oversight and communications with research sites and third parties.
	Moderna, here comes the bullshit, remains committed to maintaining the highest standards of transparency, quality, and compliance in all its activities, remains committed, Well, if that's what you were doing, and it led to adverts using teddy bears to recruit children to participate in clinical trials for drugs that not only were not effective in the way they claim, but might even get this because the trials ain't taken place yet, cause cancer, then people need to go to jail.
	You can't grant indemnity to pharmaceutical companies that behave like pirates and gangsters.
	Can you?
	Yes, you can.
	Under globalist imperialism.
	Um...
	What did the media do here?
	Why is this also the fault of the media?
	Because they're pro-vaccine and therefore you can't trust them.
	So from that, yeah, slightly fucked up but ultimately somewhat minor story that also highlights regulations doing their job because Moderna were ultimately caught and fined.
	From that, we got...
	This story should bring down governments.
	Like, yeah, you should no longer listen to the mainstream media.
	You should defy, disobey, refuse to pay taxes and renege on your mortgage.
	People need to go to jail and also COVID-19 vaccines might cause cancer because there's been no trial proving they don't cause cancer.
	And pharma companies are behaving like gangsters because of globalist imperialism.
	Uh-huh.
	And he's big against the globalist imperialism, you see.
	But not the globalist imperialism that allows Russia to take over Ukraine or Trump to take over Gaza, because Russell is fine with those kinds of globalist imperialism.
	He's made that very clear in the last couple of weeks.
	It's just the pharma company kind.
	Deporting Venezuelans to just completely unrelated Central and Southern American countries that they have nothing to do with.
	Because they come here seeking asylum?
	Here's the thing.
	In the UK, we don't have much of a leg to stand on because Rishi Sunak did have the infamous Rwanda plan to send any illegal immigrants to Rwanda.
	I just don't think you should look to Australia for your guidance on what to deal with immigrants.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	No, no.
	That seems to not work.
	As for the claim about COVID-19 vaccines maybe causing cancer, there's no evidence to support this at all.
	And asking someone to prove a negative is definitionally impossible.
	A recent example, like, we've seen this with, like, the anti-vax narrative in general, and particularly in dealing with RFK Jr. shithead Aaron Siri, who was a lawyer about this stuff.
	And a recent example I used was, like, there's no study proving that dragons don't roam the hills of Wales terrifying our citizens.
	But of course, that doesn't mean that dragons are real.
	And dragons being real is about as likely as COVID-19 vaccines causing cancer.
	Or at least there is the same amount of evidence for each thus far.
	Yeah.
	Also this thing where they'll go, well, the vaccines don't even really do what they said they did because you can still get COVID if you've been vaccinated.
	It's like, yeah, you can still get COVID if you're vaccinated and the people around you are not.
	Yes.
	It's Bill Maher has the same thing, too, of thinking, well, the vaccine is an individual thing one person takes.
	And it's like, no, no, no.
	It lowers the odds you'll get it.
	So that's why having as many people vaccinated is the best possible outcome, because then collectively the odds that anyone will get COVID are very low because everyone has the same very low chance.
	Of getting COVID. That's what a vaccine does.
	And that's how they work.
	And you want as many people to take them as possible because some people can't handle, their immune systems can't handle the immune system response you have to having, this cannot be stressed enough, a dead or fake version of the virus injected into you.
	It's very practical, the explanation for these things.
	And I understand lots of people having You know, historical negative associations with the medical industry.
	I understand why people are conspiratorial towards it.
	A guy like Russell Brand, a white guy who is rich and is cis, has no excuse for being skeptical of the medical industry because it has always...
	Always treated him better than anybody else.
	Like, of all the people who have a reason to doubt this shit, he falls into the group with the least excuse for it possible.
	Yeah, and like, it's very different coming from Russell's perspective as well, because like...
	He grew up with the NHS, you know?
	Like, his going to rehab was paid for by British taxes, you know?
	Like, he's gone through a very different experience of life compared to his audience and a very different experience of what the healthcare system is and how it works and everything like that.
	And yeah, it's very palpable with this man.
	Also...
	To my recollection, in the US, if you tell people not to pay their taxes and they actually do that and then say that it was because of you in court, you could end up in prison.
	And I don't think Russell is aware of that fact because he keeps telling his audience not to pay their taxes.
	He keeps doing this.
	I mean, Wesley Snipes went to jail for this kind of logic.
	Like, they will throw you in prison for this.
	It cannot be stressed enough if you don't pay your taxes.
	It's not a low chance they'll put you in jail for it.
	Especially if you've been the cause for other people to not pay taxes.
	The IRS is not going to look kindly upon that if you're telling, at this point, hundreds of thousands of people in his audience to not pay taxes.
	That's an issue.
	Does he have a chronic health issue or anything he's talked about?
	Um, no, he's got ADHD. Nothing else that I'm aware of.
	His son that was born, you know, within the last year has had very serious health issues.
	Like, had to undergo heart surgery at 12 weeks, you know, on the NHS as well, you know, and everything.
	And he somehow compartmentalizes that away into being a separate thing.
	We're like, well, these doctors, they're brilliant, they're geniuses, you know.
	You know, they're fantastic.
	The surgeon was amazing.
	All of these other people are amazing.
	And then you're like, okay.
	How does this fit?
	It's so upsetting to hear the phrase, the son he had within the last year or so.
	Like, oh no.
	Oh no.
	This poor kid, man.
	Oh dear.
	Well, that is the show.
	Will, how are you feeling about Stay Free with Russell Brand?
	I mean, honestly, the same as I came in.
	If you're on the internet enough for long enough and you hear Russell Brand has a show on Rumble, you know...
	Your expectations are low.
	Yeah.
	None of this was explicitly what I expected, but none of it was surprising to me.
	Although, I guess...
	A little bit surprising is he did like his sort of wishy-washiness on like imperialism was kind of surprising to me because these guys generally, especially somebody who seems fond of Tucker Carlson, I feel like Tucker Carlson is quite hard-lined on those kinds of things.
	I mean, maybe he's looking at Tucker Carlson and looking at how diminished his status is within this community.
	That was maybe a little surprising, but otherwise, like, yeah.
	Oh, what I was trying to say earlier, what I completely forgot.
	I think I forgot to finish the thought earlier about Bill.
	It's like Bill O'Reilly, that's a guy who was born in the dark.
	And Russell Brand is a guy who has merely adopted it.
	And he just doesn't have the juice the same way some of these true blue, career-long maniacs have.
	And a lot of those guys also stink.
	Like, any clips I've seen of Nick Fuentes, I'm like, people watch this shit?
	This is so boring.
	But Russell Brand, it's very much a guy.
	Like, you see it all coming.
	It's all very familiar.
	And he's a guy doing a thing he's seen in the past, and he's doing it because he doesn't have a lot of other options.
	Because, you know, sometimes to this country's credit, I think there is a limit on sexual assault accusations where...
	An overwhelming majority of people are just like, oh, gross.
	They hit a wall.
	And also, you weren't good enough to begin with.
	At the point it happened, you just weren't good enough to sustain a career doing comedy after that.
	You now have to do fucking right-wing wellness guy who is MAGA and loves Trump.
	I'm curious about the future.
	What?
	Yeah.
	When Trump is dead, a guy like this in particular, because he seems so wishy-washy, that I'm actually genuinely very, very curious about.
	In a sick way.
	In the same way you go to the bodies exhibit and you're like, I'm curious about which one of these exhibits were robbed from a grave, you know?
	I'm curious about which of these are stolen dead bodies.
	Yes.
	Yeah, it is going to be interesting.
	It is kind of wild, just the difference in Russell's positions and on-screen kind of persona from when starting the show compared to now.
	So yeah, I am very curious.
	Even before Trump...
	...
	whatever like even before that i'm curious to see how the trump years go because like what we're currently seeing is is russell you know like the anti-establishment guy kissing the ass of the establishment um that's what he's repeatedly doing and and he is having to try and reconcile that in his mind at the moment of and and try and kind of thread the needle and he's not managing it he's not doing a good job at all like he's
	...
	he's just he's getting stuck in all kinds of which ways and and twisting in the wind um and so like watching watching him try desperately to to justify and make sense of trump's actions in his own mind let alone justify them to the audience um is uh Very interesting.
	It's why the true believers are better at it because they genuinely are like, it doesn't matter what he does.
	He is fundamentally an anti-establishment figure.
	So whatever he does is by default an anti-establishment action.
	No matter how much it is the establishment behavior or opinion, he is outside of it and he is always draining the swamp.
	But like, Russell Brand doesn't have it.
	He doesn't.
	He does not.
	He cannot convey the conviction necessary.
	To get away with that.
	And so instead, he's twisting himself into these pretzels.
	And they're not good pretzels.
	They're three-day-old pretzels.
	Yeah, pretty stale.
	And what's worse is that he's giving up all of the things that make him unique as well.
	He's talked about how he's driving a...
	You're driving a big American truck these days, and he's eating steak now, you know, and, like, he's a Christian, and it's just, like, you're just becoming what is the norm.
	Like, you're removing all of your unique selling points here.
	Yeah, it's a saturated...
	What he's getting into is a saturated market.
	Genuinely...
	Oh, yeah, has been for decades.
	He would...
	It's, like, the spaces, even sort of being, like, being kind of, like, the low-rent, like...
	Black conservative, even that space is starting to get crowded.
	Genuinely, the open space of the future for someone with absolutely no principles who just wants to get rich is the LGBTQ right-wing influencer.
	That is the current area that is still open because there are a few of them.
	And they're not particularly good at it because it is so difficult.
	So difficult.
	That's a really tough needle to thread.
	That is true.
	You know, Dave, it's like you could say, oh, Dave Rubin is kind of fits that nominally.
	But the second like gay marriage or anything comes up, Dave Rubin suddenly finds himself under attack from guys who had previously liked him.
	So it's like.
	It's difficult.
	He has Ben Shapiro telling him to fuck off to his face, basically.
	What a fist fight that would be.
	Jesus.
	My money's on Ruben in that fight, personally.
	Definitely.
	Good luck finding anybody I'm not putting my money on over...
	I'm putting my money on Ben Shapiro's children over Ben Shapiro.
	I'd say what would be interesting is Russell versus Ben Shapiro.
	That would be interesting.
	Though, actually, Russell is 6'2".
	So he's wiry, but he's big.
	Yet another wonderful British export to America.
	Thank you so much.
	You're welcome.
	You're welcome.
	Yeah, him, Piers Morgan.
	James Corden came back recently.
	You can fucking have him back, though.
	I can't stand him.
	There are some people that really rubbed me the wrong way.
	James Corden is one of them.
	I know people who worked for him, and they weren't like, best experience of my life being on that show.
	Oh, I've heard he's a nightmare.
	Yeah, I've heard he's an absolute cretin to anyone who works for him.
	Oh, dear.
	Anyway, thank you so much for coming on, Will.
	It's been an absolute pleasure to have you.
	Oh, thanks so much for having me.
	You know, a little sneak preview.
	I'll see you tomorrow.
	Hey!
	Hey, what is this?
	A crossover episode?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's a crossover.
	I was about to say a backdoor pilot, but that's not true because both of our podcasts currently exist.
	So that doesn't work as a backdoor pilot.
	That is true.
	And that's the show, everybody.
	Please go and check out the podcast, I Hate Bill Maher.
	No spoilers, but you may be hearing a familiar voice over there very soon.
	And for real, Will's show is very funny.
	Of course, I will be putting links in the description, so go ahead and click them.
	For anyone who is a patron, you can also expect a few pieces of content that were left on the cutting room floor from this chat, because we do like a chat.
	And that will be up on the Patreon as soon as I get a second.
	Otherwise, on.
	Brand will be back next Thursday, but in the meantime, take care of yourselves and each other.
	Thank you very much.
	I love you.
	Bye!

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