I'm joined by comedian John Hastings to tackle Russell's response to the charges against him in the UK. It goes about as well as you might expect.Watch John's comedy specials! - https://youtube.com/@thejohnhastingsListen to The Wrestler Review! - https://pod.link/1082211819Go to John's website! - https://thejohnhastings.comSupport Al on Patreon! - https://patreon.com/OnBrand
I almost sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's a bit late now.
They don't want to have a competition 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 a Nazi, actually.
And I've kept it down till now, but this is my chance.
Oh, it's propaganda.
Did you get it?
Did you get it?
I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
Bastards, aren't they?
I mean, you can't watch too much of 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'm thrilled to be joined by award-winning comedian John Hastings, who you might have seen on the BBC, Comedy Central, the Australian Comedy Channel, or the Comedy Network, among other things.
We end up discussing Russell's Monday show this week, which focuses predominantly on the SA charges being brought against him in the UK and the state of the UK justice system.
But before we get into that, allow me to thank a couple of new Awakening wonders here.
You are indeed an awakening wonder.
Thank you very much, Robert.
And we have a new member of the Invisible Hand, Chuck Grape.
Fantastic name.
You are now the invisible hand.
Let me tell you that we love you.
There is a sort of an invisible hand guiding these events.
You are fundamentally beautiful.
Not others.
You. I believe you are fundamentally beautiful.
I'm right wing.
Now get me some shit fuck ice cream, you pig dick!
You big...
Sexy despot baby.
I'm right wing.
I only suggest how to think and how to vote.
Another big subject over here with us right wing fascists.
How do you feel about past you at this point?
I don't even recognise that idiot anymore.
I'm right wing.
Oh God, I just had a poo and a bit of my bum fell out.
God, it's propaganda.
Did you guess it?
Did you guess it?
I'm right wing.
Thank you very much, Chuck Grape.
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 and you will be able to access additional content and a completely ad-free version of the show.
Speaking of additional content, this coming Saturday, April 12th, the On Brand Monthly Book Club livestream will be taking place at 8pm GMT on YouTube and on Twitch.
We'll continue with my reading excerpts from Russell's first autobiography, My Bookie Wook, and the recording will be available exclusively to patrons after the fact.
In the meantime, let's get into a great conversation with John Hastings.
John Hastings, thank you so much for joining me today.
Oh, why, thank you.
So good to be here.
I'm on brand.
You are.
You are.
For the day.
And it's...
What a time!
What a time to join us.
Why, what's happened?
Is it vindicated?
Turned out Russell was right.
He was innocent all along!
Whee! There we go.
Yeah, but before we get into Russell, let's spend a minute getting to know you.
So let's start with an easy one.
My pronouns are they, them.
What are yours?
I would be he, him.
Yeah, yeah.
Cool, yeah, cool.
This is a wild thing.
I've never been asked my pronouns before.
It's so fun.
It does feel a letdown when it's he, him.
I always feel like when people go, what are your pronouns?
And you go, he, him.
Yeah, it's fine.
Fucking cis people.
You had a choice.
Give me some spice, you know?
Yeah, come on.
Give me a heave-ay.
Confuse me slightly, you know?
Let me, let me, ooh, ooh, okay.
There's some questioning going on, you know?
I do, I do love seeing a certain type of person trying to figure out what the fuck to do with a heave-ay.
Just a, uh, I'm, I don't, I don't know.
Yeah, just don't.
Yeah, yeah, and you know what?
That's okay.
Not everything needs to be figured out, buddy.
We're all questioning, and that's fine.
So you're a comedian person.
How long have you been doing that?
I've been doing it for 18 years.
19 years next month.
Holy butts.
Yeah, 19 years.
Damn, okay, you're rapidly approaching the big two-decade mark.
That's right, yeah.
Two decades of mid-level success.
If you do like my stand-up comedy, let me plug very quickly, I have eight specials that I put out in ten months on YouTube, all available for your dilatation and digestion.
Please like, rate.
And subscribe.
Yeah, share, subscribe, all that stuff.
I'll put links in the description and to John's website as well and everything else.
Not only was I a comedian, I've been a comedian for 18 hours, I was a comedian in the UK for six years and I was the alternate on a little show called Roast Battles UK when it was judged by a little shy retiring flower of the British media landscape,
one Russell Ulysses Brand.
Wait, hang on.
Is this the same incident with Catherine Ryan when she was there?
She was the judge, yeah.
You were the alternate for that episode.
I was the alternate for one of the episodes.
So there was a bunch of episodes taped.
Now, I was the second episode taped, and when we arrived, allegedly we may have been told, because I don't remember if I have signed anything, so allegedly, supposedly, we were told that, and again, this could have happened,
we were maybe told that one of the hosts...
renegotiated their contract between the first episode and the second episode so that no participants in the show could acknowledge one of the judges specifically and certain rumors that every person in the first episode made.
a huge amount of jokes about.
And so when we arrived on the second episode, one of the judges we were not allowed to acknowledge or speak to.
And then because one of those judges is maybe a sociopath who gets off on control, they made a point of really digging in and talking
Wow. Wow.
Holy shit.
Maybe. I mean, on a separate note, also, Russell is incredibly litigious and very protective of his reputation.
On a separate note, and happened to be at those episodes.
It's weird that a person I'm talking about and the person you're talking about, they might have been judges on the same show.
Isn't that crazy?
That is crazy.
Fucking wild that you were there for that, though.
That's, that's, that's, that's, that's a lot of people point to kind of Catherine Ryan talking about that as being like a big kind of a big breaking point of like, hey, we've been talking about this shit for years, you know?
Yeah, like it was, it was, it was wild.
It was, it was also very bizarre, because we may have been told that and then the person was suddenly around all of like, how those shows work is if you they're sort of All pigs look equal, but some pigs are more equal.
The judges are the stars, clearly.
Catherine Ryan, Jimmy Carr, Russell Brand at the time, very big celebrities.
The rest of us are scrubs.
I wasn't even more than likely making the edit and didn't make the edit because we were the alternate and all their roasts went well, so they just let us go out there.
It was not a fun experience.
It was just very weird.
Like literally it was everyone would roast and then maybe he would then like pontificate about what they did.
But it was not connected to anything Jimmy or Catherine said.
Yeah. Because Jimmy and Catherine would do the show and then Russell, you know, maybe if you had Marmalade.
And then it would move.
I was fucking, it was very weird.
The only time I interacted with him is he walked by us and he went, I'm off to meditate.
And I went, no, you don't really do that.
And then he looked at me like...
And I was like, I will fuck you up.
What a shock.
The fucking Scarveson, who's barefoot, doesn't have a sense of humor about himself.
And then another comedian who was there talked about, it was Jeff Ross, Jeff Ross, who produces Roast Battles, then turned to me and went, I met Donald Trump, he just wanted to know about Sarah Silverman's tits.
And then I just was like, this is the weirdest 30 seconds of my life.
This is fucking insane.
I'm stood next to a dumpster.
I'm smoking a cigarette.
The Roastmaster General just said that about the, at the time, first-term President of the United States.
And fucking, like, and then, and forget it.
And, you know, history's greatest monster from forgetting Sarah Marshall just didn't understand how funny it is he's going in to meditate to do a show called Roast Battle UK.
I need to go center my chi.
So that James Acaster can call Ed Gamble the C-word.
Are you out of your fucking tree?
Yeah, it's a wonder that he wasn't invited back, you know?
It's real strange.
Oh my god.
Fuck, to give the pun, but that sounds very on-brand.
It was just a wild thing to see, and then it was wild.
It was one of those things where as soon as...
I may have been told by a PA, and I'm totally honest, I was told this by a PA, so I don't know if it did come from him.
I allege I'm not standing by this.
Do not sue me.
I will fold.
Fuck you.
But what I was told was he handed back money.
So that we weren't allowed to acknowledge him, and nothing says I have something to hide more than that.
Now, I have no proof of that.
I allege that.
It was told to me by a PA who was told by a producer, so there's no chain of evidence.
And so it's just like, it is alleged.
But it's just like that.
That's one of those ones where I'm like, I feel like someone should give that evidence in front of a judge and be like, look, that's not evidence, but also...
I gotcha.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's at the very least pointing in a certain direction, isn't it?
I mean, if true, that's fascinating.
It'd be like, who drank four tins of beer, and then someone goes, wasn't me, Broseph?
And you're like, it was that guy.
I have no evidence that it was that guy, but if someone's using the word Broseph, that guy stole some beer.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, that person is four beers deep.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what's happening.
Jeez! So what do you make of Russell as a stand-up comedian?
You know, you're a professional.
I think Russell Brand is specifically someone, and I said, let's all put on our wank hats and get wanky and pretentious.
Russell Brand is the best version of the type of comedian you see, especially in times of boom periods for stand-up comedy, which is someone who is specifically there to be famous.
He is going to do things, and he is going to make sure that he gets in front of cameras and becomes a marketable and bankable version of what you need.
And you can see that so very clearly and early from all the stunts he's doing, which are clearly he's doing a British version of Tom Green.
He's doing a British version of Jackass.
he is doing shock things because at the time in British MTV and stuff like that that is a way to completely and totally hit the the like hit the news cycle and stuff like that it's not it's not bad that he's being constantly
brought up in Murdoch newspapers it's good that gives him more cache like the guy showed up like the whole thing of like he was on heroin showed up as Osama bin Laden the day after 9/11 I separate those
He might have done heroin, but that's a conscious, like, I know junkies.
Junkies aren't consciously doing shit like getting a costume together.
So it's two separate things.
He probably did a little heroin, but then he was like, I know what they'll hate.
Yeah, yeah.
According to him, he did heroin on the day in the bathroom of the TV studio and introduced his heroin dealer to Kylie Minogue because his heroin dealer was there with him.
With his seven-year-old son as well.
The heroin dealer's son as well.
It's a whole fun little story.
But yeah, there is a degree of premeditation.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah, there's a lot.
He's one of those guys where it's just like there's no...
Aside of all the other accusations, he's a person that just wanted fame.
For fame's sake.
And specifically in comedians, that does two fascinating things.
You get there.
You will get there.
In the same way of, you want to make a million dollars?
Make that your goal, and you will make a million dollars.
If your goal is to make money, you can get to that goal.
But look at Russell's career.
There's no there there in terms of his comedy.
There's no, like, what's your favorite Russell Brands?
Like, it's not sort of there.
And it's really just, it's just Noel Fielding.
For people that don't want anything that alternative.
Like, he just, he cynically took the real extreme, bizarre whimsy of late 90s, early 2000s comedy and did it in a way that your mum from South End-on-Sea would be, you know, there was a bisexual chap on television, actually,
and he noticed that sometimes cabbages are commonest.
And that was the sort, that's what he did.
But there's no...
It's not good.
You know what I mean?
It's like he did a Xerox of a Big Mac.
Like, there's no...
Yeah, yeah.
It's taking Noel Fielding and, like, Ross Noble and their kind of thing and extracting all the surreality out of it and then just, you know, flailing himself about a bit and there we go, you know?
Because he doesn't actually understand, like, this is going to sound really annoying, this is one of the problems at times with British comedies, it's so intellectual, but it's that thing of, like, he doesn't understand the reason why Noel Fielding is funny is part of it is, isn't it ridiculous?
A guy in this giant sweater is on stage in Camden doing this and thinking this is common.
comedy but if you're not connecting that you know what i'm saying that that's the yeah the step that you can you can tell someone is being derivative because they won't have that because you have to have taken that like you have to have thought it out to do that if you're just stealing someone's
vibe you're not going to have that so it's just going to be like fred west
Fred West!
I just always remember Russell Brand loves bringing up Fred and Rosemary West a lot.
Yeah, less so these days.
But yeah, like, there is, from that school of comedy, like, the kind of deep satirical stuff, like, that gets into the absurdist realms, like, yeah, if you don't understand where that's coming from, like, you're gonna find it fucking annoying to start with, and also, yeah, if you try and ape that without understanding it,
and without having that background, like, yeah, you're just not gonna be able to do it.
You're just not.
You know?
Yeah, and it's one of those things, you never really sort of heard about him And then he kind of popped back up a little bit during the Jeremy Paxman I'm not voting thing.
But I took that as, again, I'm just like, this is a guy searching for a crowd.
This is someone who's, it was so nakedly, my career in Hollywood has failed, so I now will be trying to find a new audience.
Yeah, I'm going to go for Revolution, Russell.
That's what I'm going to do and try and write about that.
And it didn't work because he didn't have any intellectual heft.
It's my favorite Jeremy Paxman moment ever because Jeremy Paxman is just so terribly English about the whole thing.
He's just like, well, no, that's incorrect.
There's no listening.
There's no both-side-ism.
It's just what you're saying is stupid and that is bad and you are bad.
Yes, yeah, yeah, because that's the thing.
I covered that interview ages and ages ago, and it was fascinating to see, firstly, a much more likable version of Russell, and secondly, you're there watching it, and you're like, okay, Russell is making some points that I agree with.
But he very clearly doesn't know much of anything about the points that he's making, you know?
He's passing references to academics and whatever else, but I'm like, have you read that?
Have you read that?
It's in the same way that Trump's actual very good skill is Trump's a brilliant marketer.
Russell Brand is a very good broadcaster.
He's very good.
If you give him a message, he will deliver that message.
You cannot question there's nothing behind it.
He's like a newsreader.
He's just telling you what he...
He's Ron Burgundy with the teleprompter.
Whatever you put in that, he will read.
That's it.
Go fuck yourself, San Diego, and away you go.
It's interesting that you should say that.
So how much of Russell's present day existence as an alt-right propagandist are you familiar with?
I mean, look, you know, I don't know how to say this, but my best friend died in 2022 and the only way I could cope was by deeply following far-right internet personalities.
Oh, so you've been down to well.
Oh, I've gone too far, you know what I mean?
I knew I needed to take a break when I almost told my wife who Tim Poole was, you know what I mean?
Yeah, she doesn't need to know.
She doesn't need to know.
Yeah, as soon as you're about to say the word, well, he's wearing a beanie.
He's like, alright, time to watch this.
He's got a skate park attached to his studio.
One day he's going to open that coffee shop.
I'll tell you this, in no way is he owned by the Daily Wire, and in no way can you prove that.
In no way.
Yeah, he says us all the time in a weird way, and they're suddenly using the same quality of cameras, they're probably sharing staff.
Don't ask about his staff, by the way, because all of them have the most terrifying backgrounds ever.
Oh, what does your lead producer do?
Oh, her, um...
Her father edits a racist newsletter and in no way does she share his views, although she probably does.
Yep. But yeah, no, I'm pretty deep.
I won't go on Rumble or any of those things just because I'm like, I don't want...
Russian bots getting my identity, but I am aware.
It's one of those things where I could have seen it coming a mile away.
It's one of those things where it's like, of course he's doing this.
Of course, a guy who is all about finding where he needs to stand so he can make money, I disagree.
People go very cynically and go, he did all of this to protect himself from the allegations.
I think he's enough of a sociopath that he thinks he got away with all of that, and he's just doing this for money.
I don't think he genuinely believes in God.
I think it's Russell Brand will be sad if he goes to jail because he is grieving the loss of the love he was feeling from that audience.
But he's not.
...feeling any culpability for his crimes.
That's what I think his mental makeup is.
I don't...
Interesting. Well, we can...
We've got some revelations in the clips today, I've gotta say.
Oh, God.
Because he has some thoughts.
Alright, let's get...
I can't wait for this.
I gotta tell you, I know he's gonna blame Keir Starmer for this somehow.
And if he connects it somehow to Keir Starmer being the Brexit secretary, I'm gonna be like, Russell...
That's too long.
Oh, we can but hope.
Yeah, let's get into some of Russell's bullshit.
And before we get into...
There he is.
Yeah, right.
Before we get into anything proper, I do have...
Can I just say, it's insanely influenced that every one of these guys has taken from Joe Rogan.
Like, if you just look, they all are doing a one thing that Joe Rogan would do.
Russell Brand has the wood background.
Like, it's all...
They will not deviate from the one guy that has broken through to mainstream because in the end that's really what they want.
Am I crazy?
Yeah, no, no, that's about right.
They all want the $100 million deal with Spotify.
That's what they're chasing.
Yeah, for sure.
Russell is currently...
I don't know if this will become his permanent studio, but since he's been living in Florida for like six months, more than that, he's been kind of borrowing the studio of another podcaster who does a show with a Navy SEAL.
A former Navy SEAL, I should say.
So he's no longer...
Broadcasting from that pub that that town hated that he bought?
Piss Hill.
No, no, no.
He left there in, what, July, August last year?
Something like that.
And yeah, has just left that behind, basically.
He sold his house in LA this last month, so I'm assuming he's probably looking at property around Florida.
He's currently staying near Destin, around there in the north of Florida.
And is he still with his family or has he left them as well?
He's taken his family out there as well.
I think both dogs are now out there too.
So one dog he acquired in America, but I think Bear, the big dog, has joined them, I think.
For anyone who was curious, I know we have some listeners that like to keep tabs on the innocent things in this situation.
I didn't even know he had...
I mean, it's also so funny where it's like, why is he in Florida?
Well, that's where the four or five billionaires that fund all these media guys are, so you want to be close to them so you can receive your orders.
Yeah, Rumble has a headquarters in Miami.
Is part of it.
He's friendly with Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis has been on the show.
So that's part of it.
Mar-a-Lago was just down the fucking road.
Russell went there and accepted the Global Defender of Freedom Award the other month from Donald Trump.
So, like, yeah.
Florida is the place.
That is the place for him.
Yeah. Okay, so yeah, before we get into anything proper, I do have something of an addition to one of last week's clips.
See, last week I played a clip of Russell discussing P. Diddy, with Russell coming out as being broadly supportive of Diddy.
What's interesting is that he had previously distanced himself from the whole affair, just being like, well, I went to one white party, that was it, right?
Here's the little clip, anyway.
Not a lot of people that are making comparisons to Puff Daddy nowadays, are they?
People are kind of distancing that.
I went to one white party that I saw nothing, man.
I smelled some baby oil, but I saw nothing.
Kanye, though, he's leaning in.
I like Diddy.
I mean, yeah, I like the questions that people ask like this.
How come Diddy's the one that they've selected?
That's Tate, isn't it, that said that?
He's like, why is it that's the person that's getting hit up on?
Yeah. No, I made the point that, you know, it's because of all the evidence.
It's the police.
The police don't just pick people at random.
They look at who the evidence points to.
Although I do love that argument.
Why has he been selected?
It's also such a dumb way to phrase it, which is like, why has he been selected?
Well, because of all the proof.
Yeah, all the proof.
Oh, yeah, that does make sense.
I have to tell you...
It's too on the nose to be with it.
I would tell him.
I'd be like, no, no, no.
You shouldn't.
Also, the idea that you're repping Andrew...
Andrew Tate has escaped to America and so quickly new accusations rose up right away.
When Ron DeSantis is like, you're not welcome in Florida, do you know how fucked you are?
When Ron DeSantis is like, no, this man is too far.
Wait, didn't you participate in waterboarding of people during the war on terror?
Yes. And this is Florida.
And even we have a line.
And the line somehow is lover boy model trapping people in a cam girl-like web of deceit and sex trafficking.
Yeah, somehow, I don't know why that's Ron DeSantis' line, but I'm like, alright, I'm happy you have one.
That's something.
A man needs an answer, you know what I mean?
No, these men are cowards, Donnie.
Now, I did think it was a bit weird that Russell was suddenly coming out as supporting Diddy where he's previously distanced himself.
But, you know, let's be honest, it's not overly out of character for Russell to be spinning conspiracy theories in defense of sexual predators.
You do know that Candace Owens is defending Harvey Weinstein currently in the greatest...
Is this really...
Do we really need to be this famous?
Candice. Candice, Candice, Candice.
Yeah, she...
I can't watch too much of her.
She gets to me.
She's one of the ones that just bypasses a lot of my rational thinking and sends me to rage.
It's so nakedly...
It's like, why are you doing this?
Oh, for the money!
Yeah, it's the smile with the malice that gets me usually.
It's the big grin.
I'm like, nah, I can't, I can't.
But anyway, I was looking at this clip, and then I was going through all of the news stories and everything about Russell over the last week, and I was just sat there reading through, and I'm like, ah, there's something about this.
My brain made a connection that wasn't there previously, basically.
Because, like...
Russell has a pending civil suit against him in New York, right, with some very serious essay allegations.
And at the beginning of this year, he changed his legal counsel in that suit.
He specifically changed counsel to a guy called Mark Cucciaro, who is partner at the law firm Cher Tremonti.
And I was sat there, I was like, Mark Cucciaro, I know that fucking name.
I know that name.
Where else have I seen that name?
John, would you like to take a guess as to who is also defending P. Diddy in New York?
Yeah! One Mark Cacciaro of Chattramonte!
I gotta tell you this about America, and this is what I like about America.
America is built by lawyers.
People don't understand, if you don't understand America, it is literally, the founding fathers were, like, it's all lawyers.
And it's also a nakedly capitalist society.
England pretends it has some post-war vestiges of a social democracy.
America is just capital.
So it's that weird thing of that guy's like, Well, I mean, P. Diddy's paying his bills, I found a new sideline, and everyone deserves an advocate, so let's fucking go.
That's it.
All of a sudden I'm like, yeah, I can see why Russell's supporting P. Diddy now, because he's hired a lawyer who is trying to make himself the Johnny Cochran of sexual predators.
I'm like, yeah, this makes sense.
And but you know what's so good?
You know who's on our side?
50 Cent.
Nothing will ever, ever, ever...
Ever be as good as just when P. Diddy was first arrested.
50 Cent, like a fucking crowing schoolgirl, I told you.
That was great.
I fucking hated him.
I don't know what, if there is a God, but God loves 50 Cent.
The guy that shot 50 Cent, ordered 50 Cent to be shot nine times in the face is in jail for the rest of his life, and 50 Cent Now is currently building a movie studio in Shreveport, Louisiana, and goes on New York radio to talk about how that guy ain't no shit.
I love 50 Cent.
That's so funny.
But again, what's so funny about all this is it's...
All these right-wing media things have entered in the putrescent shitification phase because it's so nakedly self-serving at this point.
COVID retention, the people that they have captured in a post-COVID world about the vaccine, that is as many as they're going to get.
The way that Trump is behaving and acting is caving in any sort of dinner party cover that...
Elon Musk and Joe Rogan built for these guys in the 2024 election.
We're in a shifting media landscape, and people need to understand, when a 20-year-old boy likes something, by the time they are 24 or 25, they hate that thing.
I was a Christian at 20, and I was finger-popping people and smoking cigarettes by 24. You do a lot of growing up.
In those four years.
And I think that these guys really realize it.
So they're now doing that controversial thing.
And you can see them nakedly gravitating towards people that they know demographically have a younger audience.
Which is why Andrew Tate is still...
None of these guys like Andrew Tate.
But they're upping his reference point because he's in the news and he's the only one of them that has a younger audience.
So they're needing to try and get that to keep their advertisers up.
Because in the end...
All these people are just the worst version of a podcast, and I hate it.
Yeah, the worst thing that happened to any of them was Trump winning.
From there, game over.
Fucking game over.
It's made all of their lives so much harder.
I guarantee Ben Shapiro voted for Kamala Harris.
There's no way that that guy in particular's business model can't work with Trump.
The tariffs have fucked all of them.
And what's even better is the tariffs have is having insularity problems of people like Dave Portnoy who are going out and trying to use it as encouragement for hustle culture, but people are like, wait, you just said you lost 10% of your value.
And that's only $20 million, and you've still got ad reads on four of your podcasts and a Patreon?
That's the interesting thing.
The law of unintended consequences is they're saying the weird, one of the many quiet things too loud in the way that Russell's like, Beat it, he is such a good guy.
Hello? Mark?
Yeah. Yep, yep.
Oh, dear.
Anyway, so it's been quite the week for Russell, obviously.
I would have.
Criminal charges have been brought against him.
Funnily enough, I don't know if you knew, in the UK for rape.
Get him to the Old Bailey!
Yeah, right.
For rape and sexual assault.
He might be held.
It might be done at the Old Bailey.
Eventually. Who knows?
He's due to appear in court in Westminster on May 2nd.
I remain dubious.
Question for you.
Yeah. Do you think he shows up?
I don't think he shows up.
This is it.
I remain dubious as to whether he's going to cooperate fully.
And it's kind of up in the air.
But yeah, in case anyone missed it, Russell put out a video on X responding to the charges where he does seem to be accepting of the idea of defending himself in court.
Let's take a look.
Hello. Firstly, thank you for these incredible and overwhelming messages of support.
Choice of outfit.
We're very fortunate in a way to live in a time where there's so little trust.
We're very fortunate I suppose that this is happening at a time where we know that the law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people, institutions and sometimes entire nations that will not accept and tolerate levels of corruption that are unprecedented.
I'm speaking particularly to those of you that are watching this in the UK.
How do you feel about your legal system?
Right now.
How do you feel about some of the high-profile cases that are not being pursued and prosecuted?
How do you feel that the Southport murders were handled?
How do you feel about the government?
Can you pause it for one second?
I've already watched this.
There's two things that I love so much.
The beach background.
Nothing says, like, you're not kidding me.
And two, as soon as I started it, I went, when does he bring up the riots?
Like, when does he...
Because it's the only cover he's gonna get.
Is if he turns this into, he blankets himself in the Reformed Civil War over Tommy fucking stupid Robinson.
And as soon as he said that, I went, alright, I'm on it.
I know what his game is.
And it's just like, bro, it is nuts that that was the leap.
It's nuts that they're keeping this shit going.
Like, it is a, it's such a wild tack to take.
Because it's also like, Keir Stalmer's been in power for a year?
Less than, yeah.
Everyone's just like, it's going crazy.
Bro, I lived under the Tories.
It was much worse.
What are you talking about?
It's just so fantastic.
And it's also like, I don't even think he believes it.
Also, I think he's taking stuff again because his eyes are wild.
Yeah, I don't know if that's just the camera, the slightly shitty quality or anything.
It does look like his eyes are just entirely pupils, basically, at this point.
I've seen no concrete evidence to the contrary.
He claims he's sober for 22 and a half years, and I've not seen anything that I'm willing to stand by and completely confirm that there's anything to the contrary, but you never know.
I mean, you know, he eats meat now, so who the fuck knows?
Let's finish the clip.
Now that's just sort of general context.
Me, I've always told you guys that when I was young and single, before I had my wife and family, which is about a shot over there, my beautiful children, I was a fool, man.
I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord.
I was a drug addict, a sex addict, and an imbecile, but what I never was was a rapist.
I've never engaged in non-consensual activity.
I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.
I want to thank all of you for your continuing support.
I want to let you know that our show will be on Rumble on Monday.
Thanks for your support there.
And of course, I'm now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court and I'm incredibly grateful for that.
In the meantime, you lot, stay free and we will be continuing to discuss this matter.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
He doesn't do the wondering wonders.
What the fuck did he...
What was his, like, welcome you Wondering Wonders?
Hello, my Wondering Wonders.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is that what he called them?
So Awakening Wonders is...
Awakening Wonders, pardon me.
Yeah, yeah.
And then if you subscribe and join his locals channel or Rumble Premium, you become an Awakened Wonder.
It's fine.
It's, you know, doesn't cost that much.
You know, it's seven or eight bucks a month and you can awaken.
There we go.
And do you know the vibe that his, like, wife has on this whole thing?
Because that's the other thing that is fascinating where it's like, Imagine being her, where it's like, oh.
Yeah, I'm in two minds.
On the one hand, like, yeah, she's being dragged along for a lot of it.
On the other hand, she owns half of his company.
And there is a degree of participation where I'm like, yeah, yeah, I mean, there are probably things that you could do, you know?
I'm like, eh, eh, eh, I don't know.
I'm unconvinced by Laura Brand at this point.
That's where I'm sitting.
Yeah, little Lady Macbeth vibes I have based off of no evidence whatsoever.
It was a fascinating, but it's a very interesting thing if you're looking at it from a media control broadcasting perspective.
What that response basically was was he went, I'm just like you.
If you're concerned about these specific issues, that's what's happening to me.
And then he pivots over.
It was that very clever thing of like, I'm just like you.
I'm just a regular guy.
I got a diamond coat.
And everyone's like, well, I don't have a diamond coat.
But he said he's just like me, so I guess we're on the same side.
It's just, it's good broadcasting.
Done for terrible, horrific purposes, and nothing looks more like I'm on the run from a bunch of accusations than that backdrop.
Yeah, that was a choice.
That was a choice.
Yeah, so like at this point, yeah, he says he's looking forward to being able to defend himself and insists that we'll be discussing this further, which, not to spoil anyone, is going to be the main subject of today's show, because we're going to cover Russell's Monday show.
You know, he had some thoughts on the whole situation.
One thing I will say is I'm not a fan of this idea of somehow being able to discern sexual predators by looking in their eyes.
Like, no, Russell, I am not able to assess your innocence by looking into your eyes.
That's the eye contact equivalent of trust me, bro.
I disagree with you.
That's how I know how all criminals do it.
I look in their eyes.
Did Jeffrey Dahmer do it?
Not in my book.
I looked in his eyes.
He was wearing glasses.
No one wearing glasses would do it.
You saw twinkling innocence.
That's what was happening.
So, let's skip to Monday's show.
That social media video we just watched was put out on the Thursday of last week, so a few days later on the Monday, Russell resumed his broadcast to an audience approximately a third larger than usual, I might point out.
So, you know, people are tuning in to see what's going on.
The Daily Beast has journalists, and they are going to fire off some snarky tweets.
Yeah, approximately 10,000.
I think he just laid it out.
Look, I did it.
I'm a bad guy.
Yes, it is.
I'm that guy.
Also, I'm staying here.
So we'll skip the first couple of minutes and get to him addressing what will be covered in the show.
We're going to be talking about Trump's tariffs and I'm going to address as best I can the charges of sexual assault and rape in the UK that have been made against me.
What I feel when looking at it with my heart as open as I can manage is that knowing that there are people that to whatever degree and for whatever reason willing to participate in a venture of this nature means that I recognize that I must I've in some ways caused harm.
In those Gideon hedonistic days, those ludicrous dark days, those days where I was part of a culture that then seemed to warmly applaud and celebrate Epicureanism, the relentless pursuit of pleasure, a kind of casual godlessness,
the kind of godlessness that leads to the erection, forgive the word, of false gods everywhere.
One minute this is your idol, the next minute this is your idol.
fall down, bow down and worship at their corporate and consumer altars.
When I was in that world, I must have been captured by a kind of darkness.
But remember, for 22 and a half years, I've been drug and alcohol free, and I have a pretty good memory of accounts.
And I also know that I am a person that very much respects the idea of consent.
And I pray that over the coming months, when I participate with
We'll get to see how the justice system operates in the United Kingdom.
He's doing a very clever thing, which is he is creating an alternative narrative.
Did you do this?
No, but...
And here is...
I am known for preaching consent.
Where? On my show?
Understand that there are media strategies to how to deal with this type of story, and this is exactly what he's doing.
He's throwing a bunch of things that are smoke.
I was a drug addict for 22 years, so...
Are you saying that you did do that and your excuse was you were intoxicated?
Well, no, absolutely not, because you know I always believe in consent.
He was saying he's been sober for 22 and a half years, so he has a great memory, right?
So his memory can't be faulty because he was sober the whole time.
Was the other person sober?
They were probably drunk there after me.
Because I'm a Christian!
I used to do those dark things.
We all know dark things that happen to dark people.
I don't do...
It's just like...
I live in the light of the Lord now, yeah.
I've got to admit, other than the providing cover for himself and the Christian zealotry and the bullshit...
There was a degree for me of like cautious optimism about this clip and the odds of like Russell facing his accusers, right?
Because he's admitting he must have at the very least caused harm, saying he'll participate in any legal inquiry with full volition and cooperation and apparently we'll see how the justice system operates in the UK, right?
I was like, huh, okay.
Didn't expect an admission of causing harm.
Here comes the twist, baby.
Well, I was cautiously optimistic that Russell was operating in as good a faith as we can expect from him until literally the very next sentence he comes out with.
We'll get to see what the relationships are between various organisations to list a few, the CPS, the Met, the Times, Channel 4. We'll see if there are any unusual relationships between some of those organisations.
It's difficult not to reflect that indeed the people participating in this are victims of a type, but not victims of me, because...
I've always been open.
You can go and watch my stand-up comedy.
You can read my book.
I couldn't have been more clear that I was out there having sex with anybody who wanted to.
And let me tell you, when you're a famous guy, people are up for it.
People are up for it.
I've got to be honest with you.
That was part of the reason I even bothered becoming famous in the first place, because I thought this will be a glorious opportunity for hedonistic adventure.
Surely then, my life will mean something.
Surely I can find some value in the comfort of...
Stranger. Surely I can lose myself in endless pleasure.
Well, you know, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I recognize that sex is a very, very powerful force.
In fact, it says in the Bible that sex should only be practiced within the confines of a loving marriage because the force is so, so powerful.
There's no question about that.
I've learned a lot.
And I'm grateful for the opportunity to tell the truth, to participate in a process of reconciliation and healing.
Let me know in the comments and chat if you think that the United Kingdom judicial system and media is capable of delivering that.
Okay, so he's grateful for the opportunity to tell the truth and participate in a process of reconciliation at Ealing.
Notice he didn't say justice.
But you've got to let him know if you think the UK judicial system and media is capable of delivering that.
What's also weird is I love a guy that preaches I'm all about my family and Christianity when his wife is given a variety of interviews that says she doesn't trust him to be alone with the kids.
It's one of those things where it's like, Yeah, okay.
Like, it's just, I'm just, I'm sorry.
But it's just, I've never, it's so by the numbers at this point.
This is the, I haven't watched him in years.
I'm realizing, I sort of dipped in a bit in COVID, but I just sort of, I'm aware of, but you know, there's more, bigger fish to fry in this landscape.
It's so just nakedly by the numbers.
I didn't do it, I'm just like you guys, but here's my built-in excuse that I can use, and rest in testimony, if they ask me about any of those things, I've, where have you discussed this?
On my show.
It's just like, it's so just.
Nakedly for cover.
Yeah, yeah, and it sounds like this whole bit sounds very suspiciously to me like casting a whole lot of doubt upon the entire justice system that he just said he'd be engaging with in full cooperation.
I totally believe the justice system is totally fair for other people that aren't me, though.
Like, it's like, wait, what?
Also, how much of this, where do you think Gareth Roy is?
Do you think he's, like, I'm trying to picture him.
I assume his eyeline is there.
I assume he sat to the side?
No, so Gareth is now in the UK.
Gareth is producing the show from the UK.
So Gareth is finding the information and sending voice notes to Russell, being like, right, and here's why this is interesting.
That's how it's going.
And Russell has another guy, a Jewish guy, Isaac, kind of running things in the studio now.
He likes to make anti-Semitic jokes out regularly.
And so do we know why Gareth didn't make the trek?
Because he really does seem like he's the cook and Russell's the cake.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the assessment was there, like whether there were visa issues or whether Gareth was like, well, I'm not Russell Brand, I don't have to move to fucking America, fuck you.
I'm going to stay here.
I'm going to stay here and then work for Nigel Farage when Nigel Farage inevitably gets kicked out of reform and we need to start a new podcast.
Very possible.
Very, very possible.
If Russell does end up in prison, who knows where Gareth Roy will end up.
Probably prison.
He's producing the prison.
Yeah, very possibly.
Tommy Robinson seems to keep doing podcasts from prison, which is confounding.
So did SBF.
That was the nuttiest one where SBF was just on a podcast and then his parents were complaining to the judge that the jail was angry, and I'm like, yeah, he's in jail.
You don't get to just give interviews from prison.
Yeah, that's not how that works.
You're not allowed to just have phones and shit in there, you know, and just give interviews for...
Yeah, just hang out.
Oh, dear.
So, yeah, and all of this is after him saying he intends to see if there are unusual relationships between the Crown Prosecution Service, the Metropolitan Police Force, the Times, and Channel 4. So all the people who've looked into him, right?
So he's like, well, I'm going to see if there are any unusual relationships between you!
And the victims involved in the criminal case against him are not actually his victims, but victims of a type, supposedly.
And this will come up again later on.
In any case, for someone looking forward to defending himself in court, he seems to already be coming at this from a position of less than good faith.
That's what we're looking at.
I mean, I feel like you'd expect more from people that aren't allowed to broadcast on YouTube.
Yeah, well, I mean, he's still broadcast on YouTube, but he's not allowed to make money out of it anymore.
That's the distinction.
Naughty boy.
Yes, right.
So continuing in this vein of less than good faith, Russell proceeds to tell us why these charges have been made against him.
Buddy105, don't worry, Russell, the modes in the UK are blatant, given the historical context.
It is pretty extraordinary the way that these events have worked out chronologically, isn't it?
It's pretty interesting, because most of the allegations, just so you know, the charges, in fact, relate to events between 1999...
And 2004.
You probably won't even have heard of me until, I don't know, 2005, 2006.
You know, so it's pretty, it means that when you heard of me, these things are already alleged to have taken place.
So all the time that I was married to Katy Perry, all the time that the Me Too movement was happening, all the time when...
Remember when I was talking openly about the coronavirus and the corruption during the coronavirus era and how the media lied to us and shamed us and tried to control us?
How companies like Pfizer and Moderna made record profits?
How the UK inquiry into COVID was tepid?
How people like Anthony Fauci ought be regarded as criminals?
How we have to have an open debate about the causes of war, whether they're the Middle Eastern wars or wars between Russia and Ukraine?
It's interesting to me that once I was on the radar of the deep state...
And many of their affiliates within media because the media and the government are not separate entities.
The media and the institutions of power are not separate entities.
We know that now.
So the insinuation he's presenting here is that he's been targeted with these charges because of all that speaking truth to power he's supposedly been doing.
He's convinced me.
It's brilliant audience manipulation because it's taking people that are still feeling the sting of...
Whatever happened to them in their individual experience around COVID or around believing in certain conspiracy theories to the Russian war and going, I'm just like you.
And there's a lot of people who are going to cynically go, no, this is bullshit.
But that's keeping his supporters and it's allowing them to go, see, they're going after him for what he believes in.
It's like, no.
No, it's just, we finally have gotten to a place where some of these people maybe will be held accountable for some of their behavior because he doesn't have the power to hide anymore from it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's all that, like, plus question mark equals rape allegations, apparently.
Like, that's how this happens.
If all of the things he rattled off there sounds like some truly lukewarm horse shit, it's because it is.
And one could argue that by this logic, literally the entire alt-right media sphere should have pending criminal cases against him right now.
That's a very funny way of looking at it.
Then why hasn't Jordan Peterson been charged?
But then again, Jordan Peterson's excuse would be, well, the reason why they talk about me having a debilitating pill problem is because I was against the COVID.
Conspiracy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
I will admit some of the people in that sphere do have some legal troubles right now, but not generally to the same scale as Russell.
Who else has legal troubles besides old Rusty?
Well, I mean, you've got the whole Russian oligarch thing happening with Dave Rubin and Tim Pool and all of that shit going down.
Different forms of legal problems.
Steven Crowder is continually in shit with his now ex-wife and that whole situation.
Yeah, well, he doesn't have any property.
It's all weirdly owned by that guy, Gerald.
That's the most insane scam I've ever seen in my entire...
I don't own anything.
Your CFO owns all your stuff?
Uh, no.
I would say it's not as good as Alex Jones just giving everything to his parents or to a shell company called AEJ Holdings.
You know, Alex Emmerich Jones Holdings.
Oh my god, yeah.
I don't sell those products anymore.
It's my dad.
Dr. Jones' Naturals?
Oh my god.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
Oh, and not to forget, the kicker of this whole clip is the insinuation that the charges being from events between 1999 and 2004, before Russell was properly Well, that's suspicious in of itself, because it's before he was even properly in the public eye.
I mean, he'd hosted Ferrum TV and had his own TV show already by that point, but sure.
But it's a very clever manipulation because the people in the US who mostly are watching this aren't aware that Russell's UK career was massive.
He was a massive host in the late 90s.
Like, when was...
Yeah, yeah, so he was...
He was hosting for, like, he was doing, like, an MTV music thing in, like, Ibiza in, like, the early 2000s.
He had his own Channel 4 show in, like, 2001, 2002, around there, which was, you know, just half an hour of, like, him pissing about, you know, doing whatever crazy antics he wanted to do that week, you know.
He was already a known quantity in these times.
It was 2004 that he got, like, properly big for doing Big Brother's Big Mouth.
Yeah, I was going to say, when was Big Brother's Big Mouth?
Has Jonathan Ross ever commented?
That's the weirdest part of that.
For those of you who don't know, I mean, anyone who listens to podcasts knows what we're talking about, but that Jonathan Ross was also there being like, yeah, take that.
Manuel. Yeah, yeah, I mean, Jonathan Ross was merrily involved in Saxgate.
Do you know what?
I've not looked up his thoughts on Russell now.
I would hope they're not good.
But, you know, who knows?
In this day and age.
Alright, so now we move to a piece of UK news, as retweeted by Joe Rogan, that will become relevant to the overall arc of this episode.
Individuals like me, they come, they go, hedonistic people that appear in movies and comedians that are a bit outspoken, disposable.
What's important is our ability to communicate openly and truthfully and to be able to rely on principles like authenticity, integrity and justice.
Can we rely on them in the UK right now?
Firstly, let's have a look at this woman.
What's her name?
Lucy Connolly that's been jailed.
Or a tweet.
This is a response to a Joe Rogan post.
After learning of the murder of three young British girls, Lucy Connolly wrote, Mass deportation now.
Set fire to all their effing hotels.
Full of the bastards for all I care.
While you're at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them.
I feel physically sick knowing.
Look, that's a pretty leery post that Lucy Connolly made there.
But let me know in the comments and chat whether you think that she deserves to be jailed for that.
During the time of the murder of those three girls, I think a lot of us that were parents felt like, whoa, what's going on in the UK?
I think many of us, when we learned about the rape gang crisis, felt, what's going on?
And now many of us that are from the UK feel like, what's happening?
In that country now, that people are being jailed for social media posts.
Who's making these decisions?
Who's making these choices?
And to what end?
If you're in the UK right now, do you feel that you're being represented with political integrity by the Keir Starmer government?
Let me know.
It's a fascinating twist.
I'm going to just guess that's not why she was jailed.
Well, it was, but there is more to the story, funnily enough.
So to answer Russell's question briefly there, my personal position is fuck Keir Starmer and his government, but that's more down to them slashing welfare for the poor and disabled in this country rather than bothering to tax the billionaires, like our last Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who don't pay their fair share in taxes,
as well as the corporations and whatever else, and the government's view on trans people.
Honestly, I've got a long fucking list of issues to deal with them, but this issue is not one of them.
So now, obviously, Russell is making some pretty strong insinuations, trying to discredit and undermine the UK justice system, asking, well, can we rely on justice and authenticity in the UK right now when people are being jailed for social media posts?
Who's making these decisions?
Who's making these choices?
And to what end?
And that one I can answer pretty quickly.
Our democratically elected lawmakers are the ones making those decisions because we elected them to the position of making laws.
We as a collective people chose those individuals to stand in Parliament and do that, for better or for worse.
As for this specific case of Lucy Connolly, the likes of Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and J.D. Vance love to use an example of someone getting prison time over a tweet as some grand example of how things are crazy in the UK and we're all basically living in 1984.
They all love this shit.
However... As Russell pointed out, that was a pretty leery tweet, eh?
It was specifically in response to the Southport stabbings, where three young girls were killed and many more injured, and the alt-right conspiracy theory parroted by the likes of Tommy Robinson at the time was that the perpetrator was a Muslim refugee, which turned out not to be true in any way.
Nonetheless, Lucy Connolly, this woman that's now been imprisoned, was on board with all of it, and again she said, quote, I'm like,
well... The bastards in hotels she's referring to are asylum seekers, refugees in the UK who have been temporarily housed in bare-bones hotels while their asylum claims are processed.
It's not a comfortable situation for them, as they are drastically lacking facilities and aren't able to work.
It's a tough position to be in.
This tweet of Lucy Connolly's was made not long before a bunch of white nationalist race rioters actually did set fire to a hotel that was housing refugees.
Like... She wasn't the only one calling for this, obviously, but when it comes to the matter of whether she deserves to be jailed for it, I actually have the legislation in front of me.
She was specifically found to be in contravention of the Online Safety Act of 2023, which states, quote, Section 181 OSA 2023 creates an either-way offense of sending threatening communications which carries a maximum penalty of up to five years imprisonment and or an unlimited fine.
The offense is committed if, A, the person sends a message.
Okay, that one's done.
B, the message conveys a threat of death or serious harm.
Okay, that one's done.
And C, at the time of sending it, the person, one, intended an individual encountering the message to fear that the threat would be carried out.
Or two, was reckless as to whether an individual encountering the message would fear that the threat would be carried out.
Unquote, right?
So by literally any reading of that legislation, Lucy Connelly hits all three of those and
So... What?
How? Listen, I don't love the UK freedom of speech laws.
I think it's one of those things where it's like you should have total ability to express yourself and one of the problems in the UK is it is one of those things where someone like this person will be held accountable for their tweet and someone with more power because the UK runs on that class system will not be held accountable for What they said in the same way.
That said, the law of the United Kingdom is clear.
You just read it.
She broke the law.
I disagree with the law and how it is interpreted.
I don't think that it should be a crime, but what I'm saying is the way to say it.
It is a law that was put in place by elected members of the United Kingdom.
Technically speaking, it was 2023.
These were put in by right-wing people, by the way.
It was put in by the conservative government, so not even a labor law.
And therefore, it's the law of the land where you live.
If you disagree with it, leave, legislate to change, all of that sort of stuff.
What Russell Brand is doing isn't going to help any of that.
He is just trying to gin up more hatred against asylum seekers so he can make some money.
Boom! And with a sneeze in the middle.
And that's what's so fucked about this whole thing is a woman who has been absolutely captured by the evils of social media and had her brain rotted is getting told what she thinks is vindication by a famous celebrity who's going, you're right, and all that's going
to do is next time she's not going to tweet, she's going to do something far worse.
it's just, it's horrific.
Potentially. I agree with you that the law is not handed out evenly in this country, to say the least.
But, like, she knew she fucked up.
She took the post down after, like, four to five hours, but it had already blown up by then, apparently having been read 310,000 times, if X's numbers are to be believed.
Supposedly, she sent a WhatsApp message on the 5th of August, joking that the tweet had bitten me on the ass.
Lol. She then also Ooh.
Ooh. Ooh.
Ooh. That's not great.
Mr. Valli added, she then goes on to say that if she were to get arrested, she would play the mental health card.
The court heard Connolly, who had no previous convictions, also sent another tweet commenting on a sword attack, which read:
"I bet my house it was one of those boat invaders." Another ex-post sent by Connolly commenting on a video post by far-right activist Tommy Robinson read:
"Somalian, I guess" and was accompanied by a vomiting emoji.
Unquote. So, yeah.
I gotta say this.
I love when a UK person goes down, because in America, it's always like, one, they hide shit, but the UK, it's always like, well, what else is the other evidence that she was filled with hate?
Well, there was this letter that said, to me, from me, I hate anyone who isn't white, not joking, love me.
And you're like, was this you?
And it's like, yeah, but you don't know the context.
That was my birthday.
Yeah, I'm allowed to say these things on my birthday.
Yeah, well, I mean, say what you want.
We commit to the bit, right?
Or... Or they use geography?
You don't get it, though.
I'm from the north.
That's one of the...
Only in the UK will they be like, I'm from Guilford.
What the fuck?
I'm from this place, so it's fine.
Oh, you've never been to Exeter?
Yeah, yeah.
We're allowed to use casual slurs around here, you know.
It's fine.
So, yeah.
Basically, Russell asked whether Lucy Connolly deserves to be imprisoned for all of this, and I'm looking at all of it, and I'm like, well...
She broke the law.
It's a resounding yes.
She fucked around, she broke the law, and now she has to find out.
You know, it really is that simple.
And to show, by the way, there isn't complete consensus, based on that tweet, I feel in my heart that isn't a jailable offense.
That said, when you put all the other context, all the other additional text messages that were basically like, yeah, I did that shit so they would set it on fire, and I'm like, we gotta do something.
Like, I don't know what we're supposed to do, but I don't like that.
Don't like it at all.
Yes, exactly.
You're like, well, we can't just let this continue, you know, as a society.
So it's like, well, yep, fair enough.
So next, Russell started covering some of the protests against Trump and Elon Musk that have been going on in the US.
Oh, the paid protests?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The paid protests?
Yeah, they're all like fucking false flag events or whatever else.
So yeah, Russell also seems to not really know what Doge is actually doing.
Others expressing outrage over Elon Musk's involvement in the federal government through the Department of Government Why are they so bothered about doge?
I thought it was a good thing to reduce government expenditure Doge isn't sort of primarily focused on reducing benefits of poor and vulnerable people that without the intervention
That's literally all they're doing.
That's what they're doing.
I thought it was more like government workers in ineptitude.
Is it that?
I might be sort of misunderstanding it.
And also, wasn't it really clear that that's what was going to happen?
And also, if you don't like Elon Musk, and I suppose that's one potential position to take, then what do you feel about George Soros and Bill Gates?
Now, I know that Elon Musk now has an explicit role within the American government, but that's kind of better than having old Bill Gates and George Soros sort of snooping about in the shadows, all pale and pasty, like onanists, all sort of...
Did he?
Did he go to Epstein Island?
I don't think anyone's ever made that claim.
I'm certainly not making that claim.
But like Bill Gates, he was Epstein up to the nines, wasn't he?
So if you don't like Elon Musk, surely you can't go, I don't like Elon Musk.
I do like Bill Gates.
I can promise you, Russell, I have the room in my heart to hate both of those people, but for entirely different reasons.
It's the funniest thing whenever, I always love the like, so I guess you love George Soros.
It's interesting, I've never actually thought about George Soros, and I continue not to think about George, and as for Bill Gates, Bill Gates is evil.
He's just not evil for the, like, Bill Gates has fucked over aid in Africa so many different ways.
I actually think he destroyed education in America.
Like, Bill Gates,...owns standardized testing as a disaster, and that is him.
He did that but because these conspiracy fucks fucking put the fill the zone with shit They're not accountable for it.
The Clintons get to skate on so much reprehensible stuff because it's like well the Clinton body count, right?
It's like no, they're just fuck you like it.
Yeah, like fuck fuck you like there are so many Legitimate reasons to be upset with these people and you're ignoring all of them in in famous
Yeah, like it's like there's so much actual evidence of sex crime on behalf of Bill Clinton.
And yet they're still like, but what about, it's like, what about all of these allegations of Epstein?
It's like, well, we can investigate all of the women that are like, well, two state troopers brought me to a room and then he just showed me his penis and then left, which you're just like, what the fuck is that, Bill?
Like, it's just like, bros.
Yeah. And then the George Soros thing is just so fucking bloody on the nose.
Like, it's just, what's so funny is Russell doesn't even under, like, I think I don't even think Russell at this point understands the dog whistle he is participating in that George Soros at one point represented until he morphed from somehow he was a dog whistle that meant Jews that went so far down the conspiracy rabbit hole he now means evil cagey billionaire that is Elon Musk but it's like George Soros even in terms of like open contributions and amount of money he's had pales in comparison to Harlan Crowe the
Koch brothers a bunch like The Koch brothers held a conference to decide which politicians they were going to back to keep a bunch of issues down, and we know that because they kept fucking minutes.
Am I losing my fucking mind?
No, no, no, no.
You're quite right.
I will give Bill Gates this.
He at least tries to pretend to do the classic billionaire philanthropy thing to try and cover for how much of a piece of shit he is.
I think he thinks he's helping.
Bill Gates is even the more evil thing where he's Yes, a thousand people died, but a million people lived, maybe.
Maybe, question mark?
All the COVID stuff, Bill Gates, they delayed getting the vaccine to the rest of the world because Bill Gates refused to let them release the patent on it so it could be a free vaccine.
They had to re-synthesize it.
Yeah. Bastard.
Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
But, like, with the, at least, like, pretending to be a billionaire philanthropist, like, that is the bare minimum I expect of a billionaire oligarch.
So, like, when one of them doesn't do that and then proceeds to Nazi salute repeatedly on stage while gutting the social safety net and basically the entire federal government of the United States...
I'm gonna take issue with it.
I feel like people are gonna have problems, you know?
It's like, you're not even playing the game anymore, motherfucker, you know?
I mean, can we just say what that real salute was?
And it's even more embarrassing.
He did that because Steve Bannon was organizing opposition against Elon Musk within stupid MAGA, and Elon Musk was trying to pop the crowd.
That's my pet theory, and that's what I think, which is why I call all this stupid fascism.
How did America go fashion?
Was it for the aid of corporations that gave too much power to one truly evil man who took his evil ideas to exactly where he said he was always going to do?
Kind of, but it's America, so it's much stupider.
A stupid man who loves McDonald's didn't want to go to jail, and as a result, every three days people use the word tariffs like we fucking know what those mean.
Yeah, yeah.
I hope everyone's feeling liberated this week, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
I would say, like, it's fascism, but stupider, and there's not enough meth to carry it forward like there was with the Nazis.
As always.
You need a booming drug trade to keep this shit going.
The fact that I do love where they were like, what were they working on?
Well, they invented methamphetamine and a bunch of precursors to LSD.
How'd that work out?
About as well as you thought.
By the end of the war, huge amounts of the soldiers were sure they were seeing werewolves.
Yeah. I guess you don't party.
Yeah, isn't it strange how a lot of Nazi soldiers reported seeing UFOs all the time?
Like, yeah, that's wonderful.
I wonder how that happened.
I also just, what does that say about Americans in the 40s?
That one side was on meth and the other side was just on patriotism.
And meth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't remember if, like, I feel like you could still get cocaine, like, in its kind of, you know, medicinal format back down in the 30s, I think.
I think it was, no, because it was the reason why, because they made them take cocaine out of Coca-Cola, and so they just jacked it full of sugar, but the, like, because Coca-Cola went, like, almost bankrupt in the war because they were just, like, Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
What were the Americans on?
What they're always on?
Sugar, baby!
Sugar and rage!
Let's go!
The thing that I found most striking about this is that it is genuinely impossible to know whether Russell is asking this question about Doge sincerely.
Like, on the one hand, it's crushingly obvious to us that Doge is lying to the American people about what it's up to, and it's pretty determined to leave the American people with no social safety net whatsoever.
That same information should But he spends his days benefiting massively from a willful ignorance.
Like, he is such a painfully uncurious individual when it comes to current events, it is genuinely believable that he doesn't know what Doge is up to.
But again, that only works to his benefit.
Like, not only does he get to do less work, because he's also painfully lazy, but it means he gets to defend Musk and Trump with a degree of sincerity, because a lot of the time he has no idea what shit they're up to at Evil Incorporated.
He's just like, I like them.
They seem fine.
What's everyone complaining about?
I mean, I'm much more cynical.
I think that he's absolutely aware, but he's also these things of like, if he's on Rumble, he's directly, because Peter Thiel owns Rumble, is that right?
Yeah, yeah, basically.
So he's literally, it's the guy, he's getting the quiet guy who is behind J.D. Vance I think
that it's...
You are giving him way too much benefit of the doubt if it is not a cynical...
The things I need to make it so that my wife makes enough money that she is on my side mean that I go, Doge, good.
Other people, bad.
Yeah, I think it varies.
There are definitely moments where I've seen Russell be confronted with the reality of some situations and you see him look inward and go, Oh, no.
There have been moments where he's been confronted by, you know, like...
Women who've been unable to access reproductive health care and stuff like that.
He's had to look at this stuff and go, oh, no, this is not good.
Is it this thing I'm supporting?
A recent example was the whole thing with Ashley St. Clair and Elon Musk and Russell actively saying like, oh, this hurts.
This doesn't make me feel good.
And I was like, good, you son of a bitch.
Good. See, I mean, for me, I think he's been told, someone went, you need to do something slightly different than what the other people are doing, so act like, oh, it's hard to talk about people's personal lives.
Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe.
Yeah, I've just, I've got to go with what's in front of me.
Much as I would love to know what's in his heart.
Blood. Yeah, probably.
Oh, and not to forget, there was also another instance here of Russell pointing out that Bill Gates went to Epstein Island, but not mentioning that Trump was best buds with Epstein.
It's a thing that keeps happening lately.
Went to Epstein Island many times, met his wife, met his wife at an Epstein party.
Major source of Trump's first White House was Jeffrey Epstein.
If Jeffrey Epstein was killed in a wild conspiracy theory, it's not against the power that the President of the United States at the time Yeah, exactly.
And so I'm like, Russell, at the very least, you should just stop bringing up Epstein.
Like, if that's gonna be your thing, just don't.
Just don't.
Because, yeah, all I think is the amount of, like, Jeffrey Epstein actually saying, like, yeah, I was Donald Trump's, like, closest friend.
You know?
You're like, well...
Well... Yeah, me and him, we sex-competed with each other.
Oh, that's not some information we want to get out there, Jeff.
What the fuck?
No, it is not.
So from here, we get what I can only describe as a stream of consciousness from Russell, because I don't think he's even attempting to keep this train on its tracks.
Just a warning, this one takes a little bit of a left turn and gets a bit dark about halfway through.
Well, I suppose one of the things we could have a conversation about is...
How is America going to accommodate these continually polarised and polarising perspectives?
The Democrats and the Republicans, I say, aren't bloody different enough.
Certainly when you see Stephen Colbert go into apoplexy about the NASDAQ, I feel like, man, you're a Catholic.
Shouldn't you be thinking about thy kingdom come, the potential that we could be awakening to the ever-present living God instead of all the NASDAQs in trouble?
I mean, is that what alternative perspectives sound like now?
Is that radical rhetoric?
Where is the acknowledgement that there are kingdoms of darkness and principalities of evil controlling the world?
Are you not sensing that?
Are you not getting that?
Are you not feeling that we are in a spiritual war right now and that there are limitations to what can be achieved by even by sort of brilliant, whether you like them or not, people like Donald Trump, who's like brilliantly robust and kind of peculiarly incapable
of personal collapse,'cause let me tell ya, even the personal pressure that I,
It ain't easy to have people in public saying, you're a rapist!
That is not an easy thing.
It ain't easy to tell, like, your children, hey, now sometimes people tell lies about daddy and you kids are going to have to toughen up, girls.
That ain't easy.
So whatever Trump is or ain't, he's not weak.
And then Elon Musk.
Man, look, if you're going to have a capitalist free market system, then you are ultimately, evidently, going to get an oligarch Yep,
yep, yep, yep.
First of all, I just want to say it goes against these tenets and understanding of Catholicism there, which is you are to pray alone.
You do not...
Evangelize in that way.
Your life is an example.
And to worry about people's pensions, which are heavily invested in the NASDAQ because of the pioneering restructuring of American capitalism under truly evil people like Jack Welsh, that is something that could be discussed.
Also, Stephen Colbert is not an alternative voice.
He is the host of a...
Highly rated mainstream late night show, so he's going to talk about the news, you fucking goon.
Yeah! But no, he's not allowed to be Catholic and think about the NASDAQ at the same time, you know?
You can't do both.
Gotta pick one.
What is very interesting is you can really see that people know that the audience that was drawn into all this shit by people like Nick Fuentes is floating.
You know what I'm talking about?
They're growing up a little bit and Nick Fuentes is a little bit too toxic.
He doesn't have the dinner party.
So he's throwing out the stuff.
Come over here to my channel.
You know what I'm saying?
He's also realizing Stephen Crowder ain't what he used to be.
Those numbers aren't what they used to be.
That audience is still there.
I can grab them before maybe they find someone who just goes...
I don't believe that.
Just believe in something normal, you fuck.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's constantly attempting audience capture.
That's for sure.
So let's have a little recap as to what we got in that unfiltered fashion there.
So we got, how is America going to accommodate polarized perspectives?
The Democrats and Republicans aren't different enough.
Stephen Colbert isn't Catholic enough.
Where is the acknowledgement of kingdoms of darkness and principalities of evil controlling the world?
We're in a spiritual war right now.
There are limitations even of Trump, who is, by the way, brilliantly robust and peculiarly incapable of personal collapse.
Fucking A-plus parenting there, by the way.
And beyond that, hey, Trump isn't weak, and as for Musk, well, if you're gonna have free market capitalism, you're gonna get oligarchs and end up with someone like Musk.
At least he's into free speech, so he's better than Gates and Soros, you know?
See, this is where I go, this is off of a sheet.
There is no way, that oligarch, because that thing is that they're having to spin it, because it's that thing of it's too naked now, where it's like, wait, what did we vote for?
If you look at all the numbers of all those podcasts, they're dropping, because A, there was a huge amount of money spent to elevate their views, and B, The job is done now.
Okay, they're in power.
They're going to go for it.
They know they have until the midterms in the States, and then it's going to be reckoning day, and they're going to abandon Trump.
But it's, again, like he said the thing inadvertently, the people we don't know.
Yeah, there's a bunch of billionaires out there that are hugely wanting to make sure that the American government's in disarray because there's a huge amount of profit to be made of a government perspective from simply doing things like, hey, Amazon, you have to have a union.
Well, I don't want to.
I know, but it's going to make everyone that isn't you more money, so fuck.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
It felt to me like a word association game of propaganda and trauma all, like, wrapped into one.
Just like, right, let's hop around a little bit, you know?
And it really, it also felt like it was sort of that thing of, like, I know where I need to end, so I gotta get there.
Like, okay, and that's why that it's important to remember that oligarchs are good.
Yes! Exactly, exactly.
It's... It is fascinating.
Particularly since I started doing this show.
We're getting close to two years ago now.
Looking at where I started to him now being like, well, this oligarch is great.
And also, the US government's fantastic.
I'm like...
This is not where I expected to land with anti-establishment Russell.
You know, this is not what I anticipated a couple of years ago.
Yeah, it's almost like his idea and notion of anti-establishment is and was bullshit.
Seemingly. So now we get back to the...
Judges against Russell because he's got something to say about the global establishment trying to take him down.
And we learn what the victims in his case are actually the victims of.
I, at the beginning of this show, talked about the fact that I don't like it that there are people hurt enough to participate in what appears to be a cooperative, organized, you know, Channel 4 participated in this thing with a company called Hard Cash.
That was the original documentary that led to a police investigation.
The Times newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch and News International, participated in that.
It don't look good, man, but I'm well aware of the fact that I'm sort of subatomic.
When it comes to real power, I'm a pipsqueak flea that can be squished under a thumb at any moment.
But the message is an important one.
Whether you are left...
Alright, whatever you believe in, the establishment, in particular the global establishment, that which transcends the institutions and instruments of national democracy, is a massive threat.
And anywhere where power and legislation takes place that you can't reach through the levers of power in your country with its explicit constitution, or in my case, Magna Carta, means you're in trouble, man.
This is an awakening.
This is a reckoning.
Really interesting parallels.
I don't understand what the That's an interesting connection.
Rupert Murdoch, bad guy.
Was it like Rupert Murdoch...
Oh, I guess Rupert Murdoch was pro-vaccine.
That's what it is.
He's always hated Rupert Murdoch.
Back when he was pretending to be a lefty and he was doing the trues and all of that stuff and was going through the papers every week, he fucking hated Rupert Murdoch.
Which... Again, is the correct assessment of Rupert Murdoch.
Like, he is evil.
But Russell has carried that over despite now agreeing with all of the institutions that Rupert Murdoch owns and supports.
So he's still like, Rupert Murdoch's evil!
Also, let me use all of his media institutions as sources for my show.
You're like, wait, hang on.
Rupert Murdoch is evil!
Unless I get a contributorship to Fox News.
That's the other thing.
Part of that's also Fox News isn't hiring, is moving away from personality-driven content because a personality costs them nearly a billion dollars.
Yeah, the personalities keep being problems in a variety of different ways.
So yeah, seems sensible.
Also, it seems that Russell still doesn't understand that the UK does in fact have a constitution.
it's just not codified like the US one so ours is made up of a few separate documents and constitutional conventions rather than one piece of text.
Like, the Magna Carta is an important part of the basis of the UK constitution but we have updated it quite a bit since
But that's because it won't appeal to an American audience because, once again, Russell is not actually speaking to anyone in Britain.
He is importing culture war topics from the UK.
...into the U.S. for their audience and stuff like that.
Because there's a bunch of context to things, particularly in the U.K. and discussions about trans people that people miss out in, that a lot of that dialogue was absolutely ginned up so that the conservatives didn't have to answer for the absolute dog-fucking that was the Brexit negotiations.
And they'll never acknowledge it.
They'll never be like, what are you...
Why did so many conservative MPs suddenly start giving long speeches about gender pronouns?
Well, it was either that or having to acknowledge that they backed a vote that did nothing but just rob their constituents of money and hope.
So they just went after a marginalized group because welcome to hell.
Yeah, I mean, it's much easier and it is de rigueur in this country and has been for a few years.
Thank you, Ricky Gervais.
Thank you, JK Rowling.
Yeah, yeah.
Also, Russell, honestly, genuinely, I've covered this before, he flat out is just unaware that we have a constitution in the UK.
He just doesn't understand the basis of our legal system.
What's in the same way that no one understands what it's like?
You're not voting for...
You vote for a party everywhere but America.
America's the only place that embodies both the head of state and the head of the government in the same person.
Everywhere else would separate those two jobs, which is why you have a president and a, for lack of a better term, prime minister.
In places like Ireland or France and stuff like that.
But it's just, you know, America does the worst, weirdest version of.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some bad choices were made early on and you continue to keep making them over there.
The trend continues.
Yes. Anyway, Russell is once more spinning a conspiracy theory about the charges made against him, describing it as cooperative and organized between Channel 4 and The Times, which is owned by Murdoch, and because they worked together on the investigation that then led to the police investigation, right,
the Times, the Sunday Times and Channel 4 all worked together, because that happened and it led to a police investigation, well, that all doesn't look good, apparently.
And then he takes it a step further by insinuating a global establishment and saying that You get it.
Yeah, the purpose of all of this, again, is to undermine the charges against him, but also to instill in the audience's mind that, like, hey, they're coming for you next.
And, you know, to get them personally invested in his fate as though it was their own.
Much like with the Lucy Conley thing, right?
Yeah, that's the vibe there.
It's fun.
It's fun.
I hate him.
I'm gonna say it.
Yeah, that's reasonable.
That is reasonable.
In case anyone was confused about what the whole hard cash thing was, by the way, hard cash are the company that produced the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary into Russell.
They've been around a while, since like 92 or something.
They're an award-winning current affairs production company that have won seven Emmys, three BAFTAs, the Pre-Italia, five Royal Television Society Awards, three Peabody's, and two Grierson's.
They ain't fucking around.
And he's exploiting people's lack of understanding of how It's clearly points to displicity to
be like, and they had a Production company.
And then the TV show was using cameras!
The bastards.
And they recorded everything and showed it to people.
How dare they.
Yes, exactly.
So, veering back into some news, Russell covers a clip of a high-up FDA official talking about leaving the FDA and appearing on CNN to discuss how RFK Jr. and Doge have gutted the place and how dangerous that is.
Why Russell is playing this clip is anyone's guess, because he doesn't elaborate beyond what I'm about to show you.
But my suspicion is that Russell hasn't seen the clip before playing it, and someone on his staff saw the words FDA vaccine chief and biowarfare, and in traditional alt-right fashion thought they could do some good old-fashioned scaremongering over it.
Only it backfires if you actually pay any attention to the content.
And it backfires in more ways than one.
This is former vaccine chief of the FDA, Peter Marks, issuing a bio-warfare warning before he leaves the FDA.
Oh, good news!
Now gutted, that was ready to respond to natural and man-made threats.
At any given time, there were many, many viruses that could come, things like Ebola and others that could be very dangerous to our country.
We had a group that was prepared to deal with those.
Additionally, This is sad,
huh? Fuck me.
For anyone listening, along the bottom there read, UK police have charged British comedian and actor Russell Brand with rape and other sexual offenses against four women while this guy was talking.
It's so interesting because the problem was the COVID era was a great time because there was so much bureaucratic fucking red tape that people did say stupid shit that you could exploit.
The problem is now with Doge is that they basically fired all the qualified people that were too busy working in that period so now they can give interviews.
So it's not like it's like a shit Maybe we did do it?
I know someone named George, maybe that's George Soros.
Now it's someone who's like, well no, if you don't have a tax force for...
Diseases that can cause a pandemic, you won't be able to monitor a pandemic, so it could get out of control.
Control, you see?
And it's just like...
Yes. No.
That was pretty sad.
If I ever needed...
I have plenty of evidence of this, but if I ever needed a concrete example that Russell doesn't watch any of the clips before doing the show, this is a pretty solid one.
Because, yeah, as to the subject matter of the clip, this is a guy, Dr. Peter Marks, saying, like, hey, thanks to RFK...
We're now super unprepared to respond to natural and man-made threats like Ebola and bioterrorism.
And enemies to this country now know that.
And Russell has to be like, yeah, they just want more power.
Whereas, like, actually, Dr. Peter Marks was forced to resign after trying to protect vaccine safety data from RFK Jr. and his team who were wanting to trawl through it for anything to justify their anti-vaccine rhetoric.
That's what they were looking for.
And he was like, nah, fuck this, I'm out.
The whole thing is fucked on so many different levels, and Russell just has to be like, oh, yeah, they're just wanting power, aren't they?
They're wanting to protect people against Ebola, the bastards.
Yeah. It's gotten to absurd levels at this point.
Wow. I just, I can't believe the guy who wrote my bookie book two turned out to be such a self-serving piece of shit.
Shocking. Truly shocking.
Okay, so now from here we're going to see how Russell lands this plane as he turns the conversation back to the charges against him, but through the lens of three things, right?
The Lucy Connolly case we looked at before, the Southport stabbing which led to the race riots in the UK, and the new Netflix show Adolescence that I covered in his content last week, which Russell still seems to think is about knife crime rather than incels.
Well, now Keir Starmer is the leader of the UK and it is not going well.
Whether it's the rape gangs crisis and their refusal to have an inquiry or whether it's the knife crimes and the sort of attempts to deflect the attention away from the social disruption that's likely brought on by unchecked and...
Poorly managed migration into the territory of the incels.
Let me know in the comments and chat what you think about that.
And the success of the TV show Adolescence is an indicator that the government agenda is to make it all about, oh, young men, they're all incels, they're listening to too much Andrew Tate and Jordan Petes, and then they're going out and doing a bunch of stabbings.
It's a convenient scapegoat, I would say, and I know something about scapegoatism when it comes to being a conduit for anti-establishment information.
In my case, it's probably around subjects like war and the pandemic and the handling of the pandemic, who benefited and who's culpable for the way that it was handled.
Those kind of things tend to get you in the crosshairs.
That's my feeling.
And we'll see more in the coming months about the legitimacy of that perspective.
Oh good, that's something to look forward to.
Guess we've got more conspiracy theories about the UK justice system on the way.
Who could have seen that coming?
So, Russell is apparently a scapegoat because of talking about the war and the pandemic.
Sure thing.
In other news, he's still claiming that the stabbings in the UK are being brought about because of quote-unquote unchecked and unmanaged migration, and he's still claiming that the show Adolescence is actually a show about knife crime, it's just that the government narrative is to make it about incels on the manosphere and the likes of Andrew Tate.
I want to correct one thing, because he's like, oh, all these people, they end up stabbing you.
Technically speaking, when an incel goes violent, statistically, they use a gun.
That's the only thing he got wrong.
I don't want to be a pedant here, you know what I'm saying?
It's just so clearly self-serving.
I don't think he has read anything.
He also clearly hasn't seen adolescence.
And what's also weird is it feels like he's like, I used to love Alex Jones.
I like losing Alex Jones because I liked conspiracies when it was a fun thing you'd look at at 11.30 at night and be like, holy shit, did someone actually believe that?
And I miss that Alex Jones because what's so funny is Russell is doing Alex Jones sort of like it's that 10, 12 years ago.
Now Alex Jones is like it's interdimensional demons and there's Human-animal hybrids.
He's so far gone.
It's very interesting to see Russell Brand is literally just doing mid-Obama years Alex Jones.
Yeah, well, he has cited Alex Jones as being a big influence on him.
He loves Alex Jones and David Icke.
He's had Alex Jones on the show.
He's been on InfoWars as well, Russell has.
You know, yeah.
He's had David Icke on the show.
That's shocking.
He hasn't had David Icke on yet.
I think it's coming.
It's coming down.
They're in a feud at the moment.
I was going to say, David Icke is too...
David Icke is fucked.
But David Icke is a...
He is so media savvy in this space because he's been doing it so long.
He never gets too close to people.
Like, if you'll notice, he's the only one that's super been against Elon Musk the whole time.
Yes. And I know it's because he's like, well, if they're all with him, I got to be against him because...
I need to get that audience too.
What are they feuding about?
It's mostly just David Icke taking giant heaping shits on Russell on X and then Russell being like, I like you David, don't do this!
And it's very good fun to watch.
Oh, David Icke.
He's such a villain, but such a like, just, he's like...
It's like that thing of like, he's been he has a legitimate anger because this is his grift.
You're all you all stole his grift.
Yeah. What he said is, I will come on your show, Russell, but when I'm good and ready.
Which is like, okay.
I'm going to prepare the popcorn for that eventuality.
I don't think he does it now with criminal charges.
David Icke is too smart.
People forget, David Icke has sold out the O2 in London routinely.
I think David Icke would go on, but it would be a purposefully combative interview.
I think David Icke would go on there to tear Russell a new one, I think is what would happen.
And Russell would be woeful.
I'm fully underprepared for that eventuality.
So it would be very similar to how David Icke treats Alex Jones, which Alex Jones is literally like, love this guy, he's a revolution, and David Icke just goes at him.
David Icke, in every instance, is like, fuck you!
You know?
No, not Elon.
Oh my god, David Icke's fascinating.
Just like the only guy who's ever, he really has styled out a mental breakdown into a career.
Oh, I thought it was Jesus, but actually I just thought I could make some money off of people that...
Oh, God.
Yeah, he's done well.
He has done well.
He really landed that one.
Yeah, I'll keep you appraised as to the David Icke situation.
and yeah finally the other thing that Russell is still claiming in this is that the UK government are refusing to lead an inquiry into rape gangs in the UK without acknowledging that we only just had one of those into child sexual abuse which took seven years
engaged with more than 7,000 victims and survivors, processed 2 million pages of evidence, and published 61 reports and publications.
That concluded in 2022, and to have another one would actually prevent many of the findings of that report from being carried out, which is what the Tories attempted to do back in January of this year.
They did their best to performatively block the vote.
And the Tories keep on harping on about this, despite not giving a shit while in power, and so the alt-right have also happily latched onto it as well, because the alt-right narrative is that, well, they're all Muslim migrants coming over here and raping our women, and that, hey, the lefties are
unwilling to look into it for fear of coming off as being culturally insensitive or racist, which is nonsense from top to bottom, and also ignores the reality that many, many of these gangs in the UK are white people doing this, but, you
know, this fits into their narrative better.
And also these same individuals seem weirdly unconcerned about the activities of the Catholic Church.
What's crazy is this issue keeps being brought up any time.
Tommy Robinson gets jailed.
It's like, where does this issue come from?
Oh, this is one fucking annoying loser from Luton.
I'm glad you're not shocked about that.
He's in jail right now and he has to distract from that because he wants to be able to afford a lot of expensive t-shirts when he gets out.
Yeah, well, you know, he's got to fund that 60-day fleeing from authorities situation.
Well, it's because he's a journalist.
Yes, exactly.
He makes documentaries.
That's what he does.
Also, yeah, fuck Keir Starmer, obviously, but as he was director of prosecutions for the Crown Prosecution Service, Keir Starmer has been talking about this issue for over 12 years, so it is kind of difficult to lay the blame for any of this at his feet specifically as well.
I'm like, yeah, of all people, it's tough to lay it at all.
Ah, dear.
So... Next, Russell reads a piece from the right-wing rank, The Telegraph, on the subject of Lucy Connolly.
See, I'm more of a spectator gal when it comes to...
Listen, I got a soft spot in my heart for Rory Sutherland just because I just like that the head of Ogilvy is just like, well, what if Captain Ogilvy was good though?
I just enjoyed the gloss and stupidity.
The spectator's really good because you feel like...
Every third blog or article or video or podcast they put out, someone on air or writing it has gravy on their body.
That's what it just feels like.
I once got into a heated debate with someone because he was trying to convince me that The Spectator was not right-wing.
And I was like, what?
I love it.
What? Well, The Spectator is not right-wing in that they're like...
When you believe in an absolute monarchy, you actually transcend politics.
Like, it's that thing of like...
They're so right-wing.
Yeah, it's not technically a right-wing issue that they think America should actually be the property of the British Empire again.
That's like a whole new thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, God.
Anyway, Russell's reading from the Telegraph, and he'll finish this little piece about Lucy Connolly, and then he makes his assessment as to why alt-right politics are just so ding-dang popular these days.
While social media can amplify content that inflames tensions, there is little or no evidence that a single post persuades law-abiding people to engage in violent protest.
And in a way, let me know in the comments and chat, do you believe the principle of free speech has to be measured against incitement to violence?
And aren't there already laws about the incitement of violence?
And do you not suspect that any attempt to increase legislation is ultimately just a method for creating more and more centralised authority and more and more ability of the government to assert control without it ever looking like
that legislation?
On the 30th of July, the day after Connolly's tweet...
Keir Starmer was jeered when he laid a wreath at the scene of the Southport attack and hastily scuttled away, earning him the nickname 19 seconds for the amount of time he'd given the distraught crowd.
No! No!
interest in native is politics and explicitly anti immigration politics in particular and border controls and ideas that sort of in the forties and fifties, which many people regard in spite of the wars and sort of economic decline.
What? The 40s and 50s?
That's such a good way to do that argument.
That's one of the greatest arguments I've ever heard.
I'll tell you why.
Are you accusing me of stealing $10?
I don't think you've ever read any Socrates, because if you had, you'd know that the Backstreet Boys really know Mark Wahlberg.
Wait, what?
How the fuck did you get there?
It is difficult to argue with, I've got to admit.
Yeah. Did you know that Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell...
I did not know that.
Wow. My mind is blown.
Maybe the rest is politics.
Yeah, right.
Fuck. Also, like, I mean...
What I do enjoy about that is as soon as he said Nigel Farage, I know Nigel Farage when this came out went, fuck.
Stop. Shut the fuck.
We are winning.
Shut the fuck up.
Please. We would have had this in the bag.
Shut up.
So, yeah, the 40s and 50s, while something of a golden era in America, because, you know, not too much of that war money was spent and not too many places were bombed.
In the UK, however, it was a miserable time of reconstruction, poverty, and rationing in post-war Britain.
Like, golden age miles.
Europe was closed.
Yes. There's a reason why everyone vacationed in Beirut and, like, you hear about, like, going to all these, like, Like the hippies, like, oh, you take trains through Africa, you go to India, all that sort of stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You couldn't travel to Europe.
It was closed.
Yes, it was all completely fucked.
There had been a very long, very vicious war.
Yeah. And plus...
It was a world...
It was a...
Some call it a world war.
Yeah, I have heard that before.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That sounds familiar.
Plus, back then, the British people still made ample racist fuss about the Chinese, South Asian, and Caribbean migrants that came over here during that period.
And like the Windrush generation, all of it, right?
Everyone was fucking up in arms.
And oh look, our culture benefited massively from every single one of those things happening.
By the way.
Nothing is better than just knowing the fact that When people are like, can you believe the Canadian Prime Minister did blackface?
It's horrific, but just know, it was on BBC One until a period of time that we were just like, it was the 90s?
And they were like, yeah.
And people did not like they took it off.
They still want it back.
Yeah. Yeah.
Good old Blighty.
I mean, the UK is fascinating in that people are very progressive.
Also, Jim Davidson sells tickets.
It's just like, wait, what?
He's like, yeah, he's got his own streaming service.
Wait, what?
Yeah, we're...
A country of contrasts is the way I'd like to put it.
Has Roy Chubby Brown been on Russell's show?
Because that, I would fucking die.
No, that is a conversation I would watch.
I mean, I watch all of his content anyway, but I would purposefully seek that one out.
I would be fascinated.
Oh my god.
At this point, no one would surprise me.
Steve Bannon's been on here, so who the fuck knows, right?
See, Steve Bannon's in the oeuvre, you know what I mean?
I want the off-piste guys.
Yeah. Yeah, I can see it.
I can see it.
We'll see.
We'll see.
Also, the balls of Russell saying that the conspiracy theories Nigel Farage was parenting about the Southport murders were true.
Farage was leaning into the idea that it was a Muslim refugee and asking if it was an organized terror attack, none of which was true.
It was a very unwell second-generation Rwandan migrant whose parents were evangelical Christians.
Fuck's sake.
And even Nigel Farage Backed up so quickly.
I remember in the summer where it was literally like, oh, too hot in the kitchen.
Time for Nigel to go into the yard.
It was just like, he disappeared when that shit...
When the riots started and there were cops everywhere.
Sidebar, by the way, did I stay in every hotel featured on the news coverage?
Certainly. I've been to every single...
Every time they put up a hotel, I was like, yeah, there's a gig down the road from there, and I stayed in that travel lodge.
And I was just like...
Know how to pick them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's it.
That's it.
God. The most alarming part of that clip for me is apparently if we put any more laws on the books in this country, then that's just the government asserting control.
The Online Safety Act of 2023 was updated to include various cybercrimes, including cyberflashing and inciting violence online, etc.
Because while we had laws against, for instance, someone like Lucy Connolly saying, set fire to the hotels with all the bastards in front of a crowd of 10,000, we didn't have any laws comprehensively Oh,
online audiences, and that was, you know, leading to some problems.
Some Tommy Robinson problems.
Some toblums.
That said, like, Russell is someone who nowadays engages in conspiracy theories and race baiting on his show, so perhaps he does have something of a vested interest in not legislating what can and can't be said online, you know?
I'm so paranoid on your part.
Now Russell has to bring this home.
He has to tie all of this together to the charges against him, which he attempts here, right?
This increasing authority that we're granted to various bureaucracies and agencies and institutions with government will be used however they want to use it.
Unless you have clear laws sanctioned by and agreed to by the population that they'll be subsequently applied to, they ultimately end up as weapons in the hands of the powerful, as is clearly the case in the Lucy Connolly matter.
Is it right that Lucy Connolly posted a sort of racist and incendiary tweet?
Of course it isn't.
It's insensitive and wrong.
Is it a criminal judicial issue?
I would say it isn't.
I would say it's a moral matter.
And it's an example of massive government overreach.
Let me know what you think, though, in the comments and chat with 30 people a day being arrested for social media posts.
Is the United Kingdom...
It seems that that is the position.
Why are Keir Starmer's government so unpopular?
Why was there no inquiry into the rape gang crisis?
What exactly is going on?
I mean, the most believable part of that whole clip there was the idea that Russell has no idea what's going on.
I'm like, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that seems perfectly possible.
Despite that, he is very clearly stating that there is government overreach in the UK, that people are being arrested for social media posts, and that the UK is turning into an authoritarian nation where laws are created so those in power can determine who to jail and shut down retrospectively,
all for things they've said online.
And the retrospective thing, of course, is referring to the fact that the charges against him are related to incidents between 1999 and 2004.
And so Russell is very clearly insinuating that those in power Yeah.
That cautious optimism.
That cautious optimism I had at the very beginning of the show.
Boy, don't I feel foolish.
I find it interesting he's chosen this tweet when it's like, couldn't he have actually made a better bed of actually aligning himself?
Like, this is what's happening to me.
This is what happened to Tommy Robinson would actually be a more linear...
Because the problem he has is this woman admitted guilt.
Like, she went, yeah, I did it and accepted her punishment.
And, like, There was a bunch of evidence of.
It's one of those things where it's a weird way to go about it.
I think it's one of those things where as long as he doesn't say that she pled guilty, it's fine.
Because none of his audience are going to look into it.
And also, even in that instance, he could be like, well, people are pressured into pleading guilty all the time, so who knows?
So he could get around it.
But he may very well go down the Tommy Robinson road a lot more in the future.
That's certainly a potential avenue over the coming months for him.
Would not shock me.
But yeah, like, in all of this, like, he said he'd cooperate and comply with the legal inquiries, and then in the same breath claiming that the entire judicial and legal system in the UK is corrupt.
So his cooperation is immediately in bad faith and does not mean much, and...
Regardless of how all this plays out, Russell will be able to use this victim narrative to his benefit.
Like, if he somehow gets off scot-free, it'll be a victory over the globalists.
If he gets prison time, then it's a justice system gone mad and proof that the UK is authoritarian.
The way he's playing it right now, he could very well decide not to engage with the legal inquiries at all and say, well, it's all corrupt and they just want me to be quiet, so what's the point?
And that would fit in the narrative he's spun.
In one sense or another, no matter what happens, Russell will benefit and eventually profit from this, the same way that Alex Jones has ultimately been able to do with the Sandy Hook cases.
You know, he's going to come out of it relatively unscathed, even if he does fucking prison time.
Like, he'll come out of it on top.
That's what's going to happen.
I asked you not to tell me that.
And I hate it.
And I hate you.
And I hate the show.
I hate Russell Brand.
I hate Gareth Roy.
That's very fair.
I've got one more clip here and it's Russell giving his final perspective on how the UK is looking.
Pretty extraordinary how this case appears to have got out of hand.
It's pretty extraordinary.
No wonder that Joe Rogan and Elon Musk have been posting about this matter as an example of a country well out of control of authoritarianism, almost looking for reasons to prosecute, persecute and control information
and control a population that's increasingly dissatisfied and with good reason, with the rape gang crisis, with the stabbing crisis, with people being jailed for stuff they said on social media.
It's pretty clear that the UK is becoming an island
Australia was the island penitentiary, and then a bunch of them were like, fuck this, we're gonna make a fucking society out of it.
And you know what?
Fair dinkum, they did it.
Anyway. I just, like, it's like he has a selection of words on the paper, and he goes, okay, I'm gonna use these words.
And then he just...
Puts them in a sentence and says it just fast enough that you hear what you would like to hear from that.
I will move!
Yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, very, very...
Yeah, it's traditional Gish Gallop, you know, but with Russell's flowery vocabulary thrown in there as well, you know.
So you really can pick and choose whatever you like.
Anyway, that's the capstone on Russell's show here, with him claiming that the UK is becoming an authoritarian island penitentiary that's almost looking for reasons to prosecute and persecute people.
It's getting so you can't do crime without the police trying to stop you from doing crime.
The bastards!
Yeah, like, this is the thing.
Like, I will say...
Even if someone did go looking to prosecute someone for things in their past, it would be really hard to do that without any evidence.
The legal standard in cases of rape and sexual assault especially is really quite high.
So my thinking would be like, well, don't do violent crimes and then there won't be anything they can imprison you for, you know?
And yeah, it's not like Russell can use the, well, they'll just make new laws to prosecute me argument because rape has been illegal in the UK for actual centuries.
So, yeah.
Better thing he's getting away lightly.
It used to be punishable by death until 1841.
So, yeah.
I mean, again, I have a feeling...
I still think he shows up, because I think your point is exactly...
He does nothing but profit from being involved in this legislation, and either way, he kind of wins.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And there is a degree, again, of that, of, you know, creating more of a media stir around him, you know, which it will.
There'll be fucking pictures of him on the court steps.
There'll be whatever else, right, you know?
He's going to profit from that.
It would not surprise me.
I cannot definitively say either way which direction he's going to take it, but what I can say is that he's definitely, definitely not operating in good faith so far.
Oh, no, no, no.
Or if he is, then he doesn't know what good faith means.
Very possible.
He seems also quite bad at being a Christian.
So, yeah, in multiple ways, does not get it.
Dear, oh dear.
Well, what an absolute horror show.
John, how are you feeling about Stay Free with Russell Brand after this?
I would like it to stay away from me.
That's how I feel.
But, yeah, I'm glad that he's not part of my...
He was too COVID-y when I was deep into the right-wing media sphere, and now he's sort of, it feels like he's really replacing Steven Crowder in sort of the, you know, the douche, I'm not really right-wing kind of guy,
like, I'm just in it for the lulz, kind of, you know what I mean?
Because Steven Crowder is now just clearly just a whack, like, it's like, even, like, you can look at, like, Crowder is, in terms of Media presence has disappeared and sort of been replaced with Russel Brund.
Yeah, yeah.
When I started this show, Russell had many fewer subscribers than Steven Crowder did on Rumble, whereas now Russell has eclipsed Crowder entirely.
And in general, it is very hard not to watch Crowder's content and just be like, these are just sad middle-aged men, just sat in a fucking studio with a bunch of guns for some reason.
As it turns out, you needed Glenn Beck's production elements, allegedly.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe. Fuck me.
Okay. Well.
Well. John.
Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me on this harrowing journey today.
It's been an absolute pleasure having you.
Thank you.
I'm going to go have a shower and a nap and a scream.
But not in that order.
All together at the same time.
Sleeping with water on my body while screaming in my sleep.
Sounds relaxing.
Sounds relaxing.
That's right.
yeah hopefully and that's the show everybody please go and check out john hastings on youtube for his comedy specials check out his podcast the wrestler review um especially if you're into wrestling or head to the john hastings.com
and if you're anywhere near escondido in california on may 3rd go and see john at the grand comedy club he's doing a couple sets there links to all of these things will be in the description and everybody don't forget we have the
This Saturday at April 12th at...
8pm GMT on both YouTube and Twitch.
I hope to see everyone there.
For the rest of you, 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! Alright.
I'm going to finish now because I'm hungry and I want to eat something.