Russell chats to Briahna Joy Gray - Host on The Hill, the Bad Faith Podcast and former Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign. Russell and Briahna talk about the phenomenon behind Donald Trump, how he galvanises working-class Americans and his understanding of the media landscape. Briahna also challenges bipartisan politics and the Democrat Party's shift towards a more populist message.Follow Briahna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/briebriejoyCheck out the Bad Faith Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/c/badfaithpodcast For a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here:https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
What glorious show is ahead of you if you stay with us.
Wherever you're watching, we only do the whole show in its entirety, unexpurgated on Rumble.
If you're watching us on YouTube, click over to there around the 20-minute mark, because that's when we start really kicking into some serious news and some heavy, heavy truths.
Trump arrest!
Trump arrest!
It's all part of the spectrum.
Tactical Trump arrest!
Trump arrest!
They've got justice by its testicles!
That's what's happening!
Is Trump's arrest just part of the meaningless distraction that prevents us from forever addressing systemic corruption?
Or is Trump a new martyr?
A new martyr that if allowed to rise, Phoenix-like would rescue us all?
Let us know in the chat what you think about that because we'll be responding to your questions, particularly from a member of our locals community.
We'll be chatting to you In there, we've got some fantastic guests coming on.
We've got Brianna Joy Gray, who was Bernie's former press secretary.
What I'm going to ask her about, Gareth, on-screen assistant, is I'm going to ask her, do you think that there was a sort of an emergent rise in populism around 2016?
We know when Bernie was running to be the Democrat leader, when Trump was on the rise, that the Democrat party decided to crush, within its own ranks, And to double down on centralised authoritarianism and that we could have a different type of politics.
Did you know this?
I didn't know this.
One in eight Bernie Sanders voters migrated to Trump.
Some of them just sat perfectly still.
They did nothing.
However shocked you think you are by Trump's impending arrest, you are not as shocked as Fox.
Look.
We have just gotten word former President Donald Trump has been indicted.
What was that gasp?
I thought I heard, and then I thought I heard the S-H-I-T word.
And then I thought I heard, hmmm.
A lot of reactions in the background.
That sounded almost, I would say, climactic, conjugal, coital reactions.
Of course, of course you thought that.
Oooh!
That was like, I don't even know what emotion that's conveying.
Let's have a look at how it was conveyed elsewhere on the mainstream media.
After all, part of our function on this show, as well as building a movement to meaningfully respond to systemic corruption, is to We're going to be talking about more than whether or not these charges are, you know, trumped up, whether or not it's a misdemeanor that's being turned into a felony.
We're going to be talking about more than whether the Steele dossier that was funded by legal fees by the Democrat Party or campaign funds, you know, for legal fees, Making it a highly comparable case.
We're going to be talking about more than just the minutiae.
We're going to be talking about the philosophical undergirding of this case and why it's happening in the first place.
With it being 2022 and all, how come the mainstream media and the Democrats can't get beyond Trump?
How come they're not yet willing to address the problems that led to Trump's rise?
We don't care here on Stay Free with Russell Brand, whether you love or loathe Trump.
We believe in your right to freedom.
We believe in decentralised power.
We believe in your right to live freely as who you are, whoever you are, wherever you are, and that Trump and his sort of immense juggernaut of power that he has generated is being resourced from somewhere.
We're going to be looking at some of his propaganda materials and much of the propaganda material
used to bring him down.
We're going to be citing Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky.
We're going to be having a hell of a time and still a little bit of time for winky jokes.
That's what we call them in our country, as well as looking at the rising inequality that
leads to these kind of political movements.
But before any of that, let's have a look at the mainstream media.
And if you're watching us on YouTube, remember to click over to Rumble eventually, because
we're going to do a story about, as usual, I mean, it's a bit of British reporting on
AstraZeneca that just makes you sigh.
It makes you sigh with the recognition that the whole time you were right and that what was revealed about power during that period of time is still playing out and it's still not being addressed.
But first let's have a look at the mainstream media reporting on this story.
Tonight, security in New York City is ramping up.
Less than 24 hours from now, Mr. Trump is expected to depart Mar-a-Lago, arriving at LaGuardia Airport before his historic and unprecedented court appearance in Lower Manhattan.
Really making it, what, grandiose?
Historic!
Unprecedented!
Unprecedented is a word you're hearing a lot at the moment.
They love it, the press, don't they?
What's not unprecedented is the use of the word unprecedented.
There's a strong precedent for that, they keep on saying it don't they?
This is what most people think I suppose, is when you know that it's ultimately or at least initially a misdemeanor to spend campaign funds in that way, it's like shady isn't it?
But they're trying to escalate it to a felony.
It also feels like this can't be.
The genuine energy behind this, can it?
It can't be.
Oh, what?
What's happened?
They spent campaign funds for hush money for Stormy Daniels.
Is it Stormy Daniels or Stormzy Daniels?
Stormzy, the UK grime artist.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
Divadogma.
Most of Congress don't know how to speak or interact with the ordinary Americans, aka voters' constituents who they're supposed to be representing, and they don't truly want to interact with them.
That's what the rise of populism is facilitated by, is this inability to engage in ordinary discourse, don't you think?
Do you agree with that, Gareth?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I am pretty feminine, says Little Renegade.
I think she's talking about herself, or it could be me.
Hey, we're only on Rumble now, but the full presentation will be available on Rumble after the show.
We came off to speak to our guest today, who we're going to be, sorry about that, who we're going to be asking a variety of questions.
It's Brianna Joy Gray, host of The Hill and former press secretary to Bernie, Bernie Sanders.
Hey Brianna, thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Do you think that this ongoing carnival that surrounds Trump is an emblem of the ongoing inability to address the systemic problems that created Trump in the first place?
And will you tie into that a little because of your personal experience and understanding of Bernie Sanders?
How essentialist and establishment politics, in particular, in this case, obviously, the Democrat Party, have a vested interest in crushing voices that resonate with ordinary people, whether or not you believe those voices to be legitimate and effective.
Look, I do believe there is a way to confront Trump, to say if you're someone who's invested in him not becoming president, to make sure that's a reality by occupying the space that he occupied so effectively in 2016.
The reason that Trump was able to be so effective was because there was in fact a void, a void of politicians who were willing to call out the corruption of both Our corporatized political parties in the United States of America, we only have two choices.
And although many on the left would say that Trump's critiques of corporate politics, of the swamp, et cetera, were made in bad faith and that his tenure in the White House proved that he didn't really have any real commitment to addressing some of the foundational policies he talked about on the campaign trail.
It is true that when he was campaigning in 2016, he was talking about things that were real vulnerabilities for Hillary Clinton.
Talking about things like trade deals that sent American jobs overseas.
Talking about how unseemly it was that Hillary Clinton had this close relationship with the banks.
And as a former colleague of mine, Nathan Robinson at current affairs magazine pointed out
in a really prescient article in early 2016, in some ways that was a perfect matchup.
Hillary Clinton's vulnerabilities against Donald Trump's strengths
and her also inability to hit him on his weaknesses because they were shared weaknesses.
And Bernie Sanders represented a version of Trump.
Somebody who, because he spent so many years as an independent operating outside of the Democratic Party,
critiquing the Democratic Party and its excesses.
Someone who ran, was the only candidate who was running without taking any corporate donations,
was really free to make the kind of arguments Trump was arguing and potentially actually land the punch
when he was in office.
And that was a real threat to the Democratic Party.
And so you saw similar maneuvers to rig that primary and keep Bernie out of a general election context, like the ones that you're seeing right now, I think.
It seems like your analysis and the comparisons that you made are a demonstration of the requirement for voices that are outside of the rigid and rigged centralist conventional political system.
If we discount the possibility that this case is really about upholding and protecting the law, and I imagine that most of us don't believe that this is really about What?
You use campaign funds to pay hush money?
Stop this guy now!
If we agree that it's not really about that, it's about stopping Trump, even though it risks amplifying and elevating Trump, I'm talking about this from a neoliberal, centrist, democrat perspective, then what is their strategy?
Is it that they would In fact, rather face Trump than DeSantis?
Is it that they thought that the Republican Party would implode?
Why would they take this course of action, even though we can discount amending their own policies to be truly representative of all near Americans?
That's not an option.
They represent the corporate elite.
We know that now.
But why this particular strategy?
Yeah, I think it's genuinely confusing because I don't think it's strategically viable.
For one, there is an anticipated, anticipated charges coming out of Georgia, which I think are a much stronger case, a much more substantive case that have to do, it's expected that they will have to do with a call Donald Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to change the election result.
I think it's a big mistake the Democratic Party has made to make so much of the focus of, you know, Stop the Steal in 2020 and 1-6 about the events that happened on 1-6 and the kind of optics and the kind of the visceral presentation of people, quote unquote, storming the Capitol, instead of what I think is more much more substantive crime, which was the President of the United States trying to call around and lean on state elected officials to come up with fabricated Fake undemocratic election results.
That being said, so that's the one issue.
Why not wait for the Georgia case, which is more substantive than the New York case?
One answer to that that I've heard some people put forward is that the Attorney General Bragg basically is getting it from all sides in New York.
Progressives are very unhappy with him because of some tough on crime policies that aren't really geared toward lowering the crime rate in the state, but are punitive and trying to You know, it seems as a political effort for him to posture and gain more favorability among conservative voters.
At the same time, conservative voters don't like him because it's perceived to be, you know, progressive.
It really is something in the middle.
And this is seen as a good political win for him because everybody in New York or so many people in New York hate Donald Trump.
So this could just be someone screwing the pooch on a local level for their local benefit, despite it having long term negative implications for the Democratic Party.
Because we know that the Democrat Party have, in the past, financially supported MAGA candidates in order to intoxicate the electoral pool and elevate them to the forefront of the voters' minds and, indeed, to make them the candidate going forward.
It's impossible for us to approach an issue like this in good faith.
In a sense, Brianna, don't you think this demonstrates how, I mean, it's literally Spectacular contemporary politics has become that we cannot take these events in good faith, that we have to examine them strategically from the perspective of, as you said, optics and propaganda.
Because ultimately, neither, in my view, political party can be relied upon to meaningfully represent the people they were elected to.
And they focus instead with their allies in media on creating more bifurcation and opposition Instead of genuinely focusing on improving the lives of ordinary Americans?
I think in some ways the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to make Americans believe that we live in a bifurcated country.
We have open conversations right now, the elected politicians talking about some great separation that's going to happen and people are drawing maps carving up the United States of America as though all of us don't have relatives You know, blue people don't have relatives that live in the red parts of the country and vice versa, as though we don't have pockets of blue in states that go blue because of how dense cities are, but have many, many red people, you know, consider leading people in more rural areas.
I find that to be really anti-democratic and really anti-American and a problem, especially because the reality is that when you look at what American voters' priorities are and how they feel about various policies that have been put forward to address those issue areas, there is wide agreement.
So you have seven out of 10 Americans supporting policies like Medicare for all.
You have 62% of Americans supporting a $15 minimum wage.
Florida, which went for Trump in 2020, had on its ballot a $15 minimum wage,
which passed with 60% of the vote in red Trump country, Florida.
83% of Americans want there to be negotiation over prescription drug prices to bring those costs down.
And six out of 10 Americans want there to be less Pentagon spending, and on and on down the line.
So there's obviously a path you can chart based on policy and meeting the needs of the American people for anybody who wanted to win.
And I think that Donald Trump gave a lot of lip service to those needs, unfortunately didn't bring those to fruition and instead focused on a tax break, 83% of which, the benefit of which went to the top 1% and other kinds of the same kind of crony capitalism that we're used to from establishment candidates.
But it is a lane that is very popular.
I think that's what happened with Bernie in 2016.
He simply ran in good faith on those policies, as someone who could run in good faith on those policies, because again, he was the only one not taking corporate cash, and I think that's so central to this.
Being free from that corporate influence allows you not to just run on these issues, but to stick the landing.
He was incredibly popular.
So when we hear so much about how divided the country is, and I think your Chomsky example was so important in the earlier segment, When we're asked to focus, when so much of the news cycle is on how people feel about something like a drag show or whether or not a certain book can be banned, people can have their different feelings about those kinds of things and choose to raise their families and move through the world the way that they want to.
But why is it that when Asked what your political priorities are.
None of that comes anywhere near the top.
Economic issues, as they always have been, are near the top.
And yet we get so little attention paid to those issues.
Well, it's because both corporate parties aren't willing to do anything about those issues if they will negatively impact their corporate donors.
I think you're absolutely right, Brianna, and I feel sometimes that we are continually agitated into a kind of primal state where we're not able to correctly assess reality.
I was recently publicly called far-right because I had conversations with people that operate in what you might call, once would have called, the conservative media space.
Explicitly what I was talking about in some of those conversations was I asked this question to a very conservative online broadcaster, namely Ben Shapiro, to not be opaque.
And I said, you are a very traditional, orthodox Jewish guy.
It's pretty clear what your views are on abortion and stuff like that.
Would you be willing to stand on a platform based around decentralization and maximization of local democracy alongside people that were passionately pro-trans?
Passionately pro, for example, the BLM movement.
He said, yes he would.
That he would be willing to form alliances of that nature.
Now, we can query whether or not that, you know, I tend to try to have good faith conversations with people, not out of my credulity, although I'm sure that is a component, but out of my hope that it is possible to change the world.
That it's going to require, as you said in your example, where there are pockets of blue and red and vice versa.
It's going to require new alliances otherwise we're going to continue to occupy this jammed channel of cultural conflict when new alliances are possible.
So I think that your contribution to the conversation in your last answer was important and how do you think we can continue to reframe arguments around the economic issues that are important to people and do you think it's possible for a new independent movement to be created?
Well, to take the last part first, I am at this point quite skeptical of efforts to change either party from within.
My focus is more on this idea.
Republican party from within, depending on your biases and alliances? Or do you think
you have to do all of those things simultaneously?
Well, to take the last part first, I am at this point quite skeptical of efforts to change
the either party from within. My focus is more on this idea as someone who works for
Bernie Sanders, obviously running as a Democrat, despite identifying as an independent. I think
in many ways he was the best possible candidate, the best possible moment to test whether or
not you really could change things from within the Democratic Party, whether you could really
And what you saw, not just in 2016, when Democratic Party insiders admitting, admitted to the primary being rigged, people like Donna Brazile and even Elizabeth Warren coming out and saying, admitting that the DNC in its own legal briefing admitted that it did not feel like it needed to be impartial in its own primary process, right?
And then in 2020, to have that confirmed when you saw a different strategy employed, wherein all of the other centrist candidates who were not able to singularly beat Bernie in terms of voter share dropped out in tandem so that there could be a centrist coalescing against him after he'd proven to be quite successful in the first three or four primary states.
So yes, I am very skeptical about that, and that is why I am really supportive of third-party efforts.
And the reason is this.
People focus in politics too much on whether someone is a good person or a bad person, a nice guy or a bad guy.
My critique of Trump, liberals will encourage you to critique Trump on the basis that he is crude or uncouth or, you know, mean and throwing toilet paper or paper towels at hurricane victims and, you know, those kinds of, you know, vibe based characteristics, you know, interpersonal characteristics.
And I'm supposed to like Joe Biden because Right.
And Joe Biden is supposed to be a nice guy who likes ice cream and loves his family and the Pope, and that's supposed to mean something to me.
None of it means anything at all to me.
What I look at when I am looking to support a candidate, to the extent that I'm still invested in electoral politics, is whether they take money from corporate interests.
It is not an accident that Joe Biden won when he took more money from the pharmaceutical companies than anybody else in the Democratic primary.
It's not an accident that Joe Biden won and then immediately appointed a, as a senior advisor, Steve Buscetti, a former pharmaceutical lobbyist, and appointed as a secretary of defense, a former head of Raytheon.
Like these are not accidents.
This is pay for play.
And Joe Biden, in a weirdly candid moment, potentially a senior moment, admitted as much at some point on the campaign trail that, you know, when you pay, Uh, you're going to go to the front of the line.
He said, it doesn't mean that I'm going to do whatever you want me to do, but of course you get access to the front of the line.
And that's what politics is.
And if we want to have any hope of getting all of the things addressed that Americans prioritize, whether it's healthcare or living wage, stronger labor protections, or just, uh, shrinking military budgets and less military interventionism, you have to have candidates that aren't taking money from those interest groups, point blank period.
Yeah, that's right.
In a way, it's the only question that matters, because if you can answer that question correctly, if you can get money out of politics, you will get meaningful systemic change.
Of course, both parties are ultimately sewn up by the same financial interest.
And of course, if you pay money, you do get to the front of the line, which is also the policy at Legoland, I happen to know, because once I was willing to pay it and I still feel guilty about it, as a matter of fact.
Brianna's podcast, Bad Faith, drops every Monday and Thursday.
Brianna, why don't you come to the United Kingdom that we live in, And do your podcast from the community festival that we do every year between July the 14th and July the 17th.
Do the podcast live from there and we'll do like talk about anti-corporate stuff.
I'd love to.
That's an invitation.
I'll look at flights.
We will pay for your flights because it's quite corrupt, but we will negotiate the class over the course of the coming weeks and months.
Brianna, thank you so much for joining us.
You can also see Brianna on the Hill every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
We'll be in touch about that booking.
Thank you so much.
It's been a real pleasure.
Joining us.
What a fantastic conversation with Brianna that was.
Hey, listen, everything is full of hyperbole.
There was a time when words you would seldom see them printed.
Think of the advent of the printing press, like Shakespeare's texts.
Sometimes they can't even find, you know, they assume he wrote more things and there's not a copy of them.
Now everywhere you see, deluged in empty language, words telling you the water's lovingly drawn or that supermarkets care for you.
Perhaps we should be more circumspect with our words and our language.
