We have some juicy topics today! The military member caught by the FBI for trying to be a hitman, super PACS of Trump and DeSantis go head to head, but look out for the chocolate fingers! Jon Stewart shows us his ability to cut through the BS as he questions the Defense Security and Branko Marcetic brings his brilliant hair and journalism to tell us how President Zelensky has been cracking down on dissent.The whole show is only available on RUMBLE, watch it here: https://rumble.com/c/russellbrand Follow Branko's terrific journalism, here: https://jacobin.com/author/branko-marceticFor 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/
Wherever you're watching us, the whole show will be exclusively available on Rumble.
You can roam the internet as much as you want looking for this show, but exclusively on Rumble.
First 15 minutes will be on YouTube, but then an action as seemingly as innocuous as this contravenes WHO guidelines.
We'll be telling you why this...
It's a dangerous act of radicalism.
Oh, you saucy little citrus!
A little bit later, we'll also be talking to Branko Marcicic about how the US government misled the public on the war in Ukraine and how the media, very much the Jewel Biden to the Joe Biden of the state, support the government in their ongoing lies.
Then we're in our item, here's the news, no, here's the effing news.
We'll be looking at how Military personnel are suffering poverty, suffering indignity, all the while the military-industrial complex is profiting massively.
Let me have another sniff of that.
Oh, I'm feeling a little bit better, but I won't tell you what condition it might be helping according to.
There's plenty of conditions it could be helping with you.
There's nothing wrong with me, mate.
There's nothing wrong with me.
The burping for a start.
What in the holy name of God's wrong with Putin's neck pipes?
There's something wrong with his neck, look.
There's strange marks on Vladimir Putin's neck.
Look at his neck.
That ain't right.
Here he is appearing at, I would call it, An orthodox ceremony for the festival of Easter in which our Lord Jesus comes back from death to show us that there are deeper tunes to be played when it comes to the Requiem of Consciousness.
Here is Putin.
Let's see if you think there's anything wrong with his neck.
And also, is that candle just a little bit too thin?
Have a look.
Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen! Christ is risen! I like his neck and I like that ceremony and I like that crown that they have
orthodox version of a bishop or a pope or whatever you have in Russia.
Let us know in the comments, in the chat, what you have over there in Russia.
I don't think those are the bits that the news want you to focus on.
This is the point of this, Ross, is they want you to think, oh, Putin, he's so ill.
He's a deranged madman.
Right.
No, and also, he's that as well, of course.
He's a deranged madman.
But he's so ill that we're going to win this war.
Putin, Putin, he's so ill, he'll be really easy to kill in our not-proxy war that we're not having, we're just supporting Ukraine in a huge humanitarian effort that's necessary and had nothing to do with NATO impeding on former Soviet Union territory and nothing to do with a coup in 2014.
No one can!
Nice.
Is the lyric.
I feel like it looked like aging to me.
That's just life having its way.
Trump versus DeSantis, the ongoing preliminary battle has reached propagandist levels.
The mainstream media, of course, enjoying this.
CNN and sort of, I suppose, the liberal half of the neoliberal corrupt establishment media are enjoying this super PAC spat.
First up, whose video are we going to see first?
I think it starts with Ron DeSantis is on Trump.
All right, let's see what Ron DeSantis is saying about Trump.
First of all, let's have a look.
It is April 2023.
Yes, April 2023, but an early... Excited about the date.
That's just the date.
What are we worried about that for?
Yep, that's right.
We know the date.
You can trust us on CNN.
I think his point is that these are coming early when the election is next year, but he is just a man reiterating the date.
And also, like, this is the thing.
With all of their bombast and banal pageantry, they're in no position to criticise the propaganda of anyone else.
Look at that, the way his name, John King, came thrusting onto the screen, an unwanted graphic priapic erection forced in from the side of the frame.
The point is they're doing this too early.
Just make a decision to not show it then.
You're doing the thing.
You're reporting on them doing it too early.
Yeah, you're getting involved.
You love it.
And wait till it gets to the free finger yogurt.
A proxy war is underway between the top two Republican 2024 contenders.
A super PAC aligned with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a new TV ad suggests Donald Trump has lost his way.
Trump's stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook.
Repeating lies about Social Security.
Trump should fight Democrats, not lie about Governor DeSantis.
What happened to Donald Trump?
I like that shot of Donald Trump looking sort of a bit destitute, wandering home from a nightclub with his bowtie undone.
That was good.
Let's see though, I think Trump's super PAC propaganda, not necessarily affiliated with the Trump campaign, which is a super PAC thing, is better.
Because what they've gone for is a garish, galling, gory, and awful image involving pudding.
Also, like, they're picking up on a weird detail about Ron DeSantis.
I didn't know that Ron DeSantis ate puddings with his fingers.
But that's, you know, like, have you ever been to India?
In India, people eat, like, surprising meals with their fingers, and I presume that's common across that region of the world.
Like, I was in India, and people ate, like, rice and curry with their fingers, and you just have to go, well, why not?
Maybe it's more weird to hold a little spoon or a fork.
What are we afraid of, man?
I'd still think even in India they wouldn't do a chocolate mousse.
They might, mate.
They might get their fingers right in there.
If you are watching this live from India now, eating a pudding with your fingers, then text us.
But, I mean, it's up to you.
Use your phone.
Maybe wipe the pudding off your fingers.
Or if you're on DeSantis and you're watching this in Florida with a great scoop of pud right there, cradled there in the nook of your third knuckle.
Suck that down, delicious, like Mother Nature surely intended when she granted us these crazy little hand wands, and let's know what's going on.
Now, that ad from a pro-DeSantis pack is responding to scathing ads from a pro-Trump group, including this, yes, stomach-churning dig at the Florida governor after a report that he ate pudding with his fingers.
Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong.
What I like is that De Santis has got a table and chair and all that's on it is that pudding.
Just for a pudding.
That's his pudding table.
I'm going to the pudding table now, Ma.
There's nothing else there.
It's not like a TV or a phone or any distractions.
Just a man and his pudding.
And also, it's a non-branded sort of look.
I don't feel like that's a good quality pudding.
You'd get lots of those for maybe a dollar.
You get in Walmart, I reckon you get 20 of them puddings for a very reasonable price.
And if you're fingering your way through them, right at knots.
That's what you want when you're sat alone at your good little jack corner, sticking your fingers at the table.
You want that replenished.
Get another one in.
Like he holds up his muddy little digits.
More mama!
More!
Keep them going!
If we have a conveyor belt, operated by an Oompa Loompa, like on a bicycle, just bring another pudding.
He's like a self-fulfilling wonka.
He's a one-man wonka.
He's running his own chocolate factory.
He's eating his own product.
That's the way to run a state, if you ask me.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
Joining us on the free internet here on Rumble.
You won't get this on YouTube.
Sniff me some citrus, baby.
My snout's getting stronger by the second.
I'm being joined now by friend of the show, Branko Marcicic, an investigative journalist for Jacobin, the author of Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden.
This is a really cool A quote from Branko to get you in the mood.
So sit yourself down in your chair wherever you are and listen to this.
It's going to get you hot and wet for Branko.
This is a Branko quote.
These Pentagon leaks, what's more corrosive to U.S.
democracy that the president secretly put U.S.
booties on the ground in an escalating war zone in Ukraine, breaking a promise and going against the wishes of the voting public?
Or that the public was finally told about it.
That's a bit of the brilliant journalism of Branko Marticic, except for I made the word... I said booties instead of boots.
I don't know why I did that now.
I don't know why I did it.
It was silly.
Branko, thanks for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Thank you for correcting the record there.
That's important.
We are like you independent journalists and we have a duty to take truth pretty bloody seriously.
I'll congratulate you firstly on your hair today and secondly we'll move on to my first question.
Gareth Roy is very excited to have you here.
He believes you to be a rising star of the independent journalism scene and he wants to frame you as one of our key voices on stay free media.
So just know that Branko before you even begin your answer that you are loved and believed in and adored.
Now, the US government misled the public on the war.
Why are the mainstream corporate media more interested in going on about that lad's nickname being OG?
Why are the New York Times involved in his capture and arrest like Scooby-Doo and the Gang or Lovejoy, if you're British?
Instead of focusing on the content of the leaks, please, Branko.
I mean, this is basically a pattern that happens every time there's a major leak that exposes something politically inconvenient or embarrassing or even scandalous, particularly from the US government.
I can give you a number of examples.
I mean, basically, some of the biggest leaks in US history, you think about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, you think about the various leaks that WikiLeaks put Uh, out under Julian Assange, the Snowden leaks, uh, uh, Chelsea Manning's, uh, uh, contributions to the Assange, uh, WikiLeaks stuff.
All of these people were, uh, rather than, well, alongside, you know, writing about the genuinely kind of scandalous and revelatory stuff that they revealed.
At the same time, there was this obsession among certain segments of the press on, you know, were these people, are they heroes or traitors?
Are they good people?
You know, let's talk about some of their misdeeds.
Sometimes, you know, misdeeds are completely imagined in the case of Snowden, you know, who's been accused of being a Russian and a Chinese spy and all this kind of stuff.
But, and then also sometimes, you know, very real misdeeds.
You know, I think Assange, the sexual assault allegations against Assange were credible.
Obviously, this guy, this latest leaker has, you know, this record of making, you know, offensive and racist comments and so on and so forth.
But, you know, the entire time that we're talking about Whether these people are good or bad and whether they are deserving of our respect or our valorization, we're not talking about the actual stuff that they revealed.
In the case of WikiLeaks, it was evidence of war crimes by US and coalition forces in Iraq and other places.
In this case, there's so much important that's come out of this leak.
I would say, number one, the fact that the Biden administration apparently does have boots on the ground despite saying it would not deploy troops.
There has, you know, dozens of special forces personnel in Ukraine, as does the whole of NATO.
I think it's saying like 97 people.
And on top of that, I mean, there's this major revelation about how easily this war could have already spiraled into into all out, you know, World War Three or nuclear catastrophe.
There was this incident last year where Russian and British pilots kind of go into a scrape of the Black Sea.
We heard about it.
There was a bit of alarm over it, but we didn't quite know the full details.
Now it turns out that actually the Russian jet, the Russian pilot misunderstanding instructions from, you know, radar operators fired the missile at the British jet.
And the missile malfunctioned and nothing happened.
But I mean, if that malfunction hadn't happened in the nick of time, this could have been a very different thing.
I mean, this could have been absolutely disastrous.
I mean, that's two things out of the many things that have come out.
But you know, these are very important topics to discuss in the context of this ever escalating war.
And we don't talk about them because we're focused on, is this person good or bad?
Why can't the US be honest about the extent of their involvement in this conflict, plainly admitting that there are American personnel within Ukraine?
And why can't the mainstream media hold them to account when these leaks are made?
Why does this consensus to maintain one narrative exist, Branko?
I mean, unfortunately, in the US especially, the press has long been kind of more eager for escalation and kind of a more aggressive military posture from the Biden administration.
I mean, if you, you know, whatever you think about the Biden administration's policy to Ukraine, they have been relatively restrained compared to what the press has been asking.
I mean, you know, from the earliest days of the war, there were White House press corps people who are saying, you know, basically, why won't you set up a no-fly zone?
Which, you know, would have basically been the declaration of World War Three.
Or, you know, saying, why aren't you constantly pushing the administration to send more advanced, more escalatory weaponry to Ukraine, and so on and so forth.
So I think for that segment of the media that kind of wants a more aggressive confrontational posture from the United States government, it doesn't pay to talk about the risks.
It doesn't pay to talk about the way that the U.S.
government has actually misled the public.
around it's already fairly deep involvement in this war.
And I mean, for the Biden administration, of course, it wants to maintain this idea that, oh, you
know, we're having a hands off approach.
This is not a proxy war. This is this is not a conflict between the US and Russia or between
in Russia or between NATO and Russia, we're merely providing support to Ukraine at once.
NATO and Russia. We're merely providing support to Ukraine that it wants. We're not ourselves
We're not ourselves actively belligerence in this war.
actively, you know, belligerence in this war, because I think for domestic consumption,
Because I think for domestic consumption, convinces people that, hey, the US elite,
convinces people that, hey, the US elite, you know, the US officials have not sort of blundered.
the US officials have not sort of blundered the country into yet another potentially catastrophic war.
And I think on the international stage, it has this benefit of making the United States
seem like a kind of honest broker in this war, rather than what Lula, the president of Brazil recently
said, which is that it's been sort of encouraging
the prolonging of the war that's been going on.
Why is Zelensky declaring war on dissent, centralizing nearly all of Ukraine's national TV networks?
Why, if the leadership of Ukraine are on the side of righteousness, why can they not accommodate dissent Debate and conversation.
And obviously, I would apply that to the ongoing march towards censorship in our countries, you know, Australia, England, America, all that.
Why is there an unwillingness to accommodate dissent and debate?
What does that indicate?
But start off by telling us what's going on specifically with Zelensky in Ukraine.
Sure.
I mean, to put it briefly, the sort of authoritarianism that existed in Ukrainian politics, which, you know, long predates the invasion.
Unfortunately, ever since the break of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been several different struggles
over the decades to kind of try and make it a more democratic, less corrupt country,
grassroots movements.
This has been a problem for a long time.
And that was a problem under Zelensky before the war.
But things really ramped up.
There's been both anecdotal and also if you look at the data,
the prosecution data, there's just been an explosion of prosecutions and detainments, all this stuff,
against anti-war dissidents or really just any dissidents of all kinds.
What does that mean?
I mean, it might mean that someone who criticized the Zelensky government within Ukraine
for helping to making decisions that helped sort of lead to war.
It might mean that you even support Russia.
There are definitely people in Ukraine who, you know, it's a small number, a small minority, but there are different people who support the war effort.
It might mean criticising the SNC government for some of its anti-democratic overreaches.
It can also mean, you know, things like just basically putting forward kind of left-wing ideology.
A lot of leftists have been kind of caught up in the repression over there.
The sum total of it is that basically there's been a crackdown on anything that deviates
from the official Ukrainian line, whether it's about the course of the war, the causes
of the war, the fitness of the Ukrainian government, all this stuff.
Whatever it is, if you're saying it and it's politically inconvenient to the government,
you might get a knock on the door from the SBU.
In terms of why this is happening, there's two explanations.
Number one, obviously, Ukraine's been invaded by a larger neighboring power.
Any country that comes under foreign attack and outside attack in wartime, you see a big
Typically, a centralization of government power, you see things like censorship policies being put into place.
You know, it happened under Lincoln during the Civil War.
I mean, it happened, just think about what happened with the United States after September 11, and how that kind of led to a centralization of a bunch of repressive powers.
And so it's not surprising that Ukraine being under attack has kind of resorted to this very classic method
of sort of control and unity during wartime.
However, that's not the full story because this was happening, like I said,
long before under multiple presidents, but ramped up under Zelensky too,
well before the war when his approval ratings had plummeted and he had actually faced some pretty bad outcomes
in municipal elections around the country, started to go after his opposition.
He sanctioned the kind of a leading opposition bloc and basically through that
got rid of a bunch of opposition media.
He started to look at banning parties and so on and so forth.
And then there were the mayor of Kiev, obviously now everyone's very much united, But before the war, the mayor of Kiev got a knock on the door from the SBU as well, the sort of, you know, security service of Ukraine, who, you know, went in and I think searched his apartment and it was at the time read as a form of political intimidation against someone who might be a future Zelensky rival.
So it's those two things combining that there was already a trend towards authoritarianism under Zelensky's rule.
But the war has, for multiple reasons, made that go to a far more extreme level than it was before.
Good analysis, Branko.
Thanks very much.
Some of it is legitimate and understandable.
When a nation is under attack, there is a requirement for authoritarianism, centralized control and a clear agenda that can be pursued without one might query or quibble about the idea of necessary dissent or necessary opposition.
But certainly that makes sense and is understandable.
But there is some politics, as usual, wiping out of opposition.
Furthermore, I wonder how it relates to the post-war plan to rebuild Ukraine in partnership with Black Rock, eliminating the potential for a Ukrainian trade union movement to be able to meaningfully oppose the kind of restrictions and conditions that Any centralised and financially underwritten project of that nature would likely impose.
Branko, thank you so much for joining us.
I'm glad you're a regular contributor to our show.
You're certainly a valued addition.
You can follow Branko's work on Jacobin and his book Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden is available to buy using money right now.
Thank you, Branko.
Cheers, I appreciate it.
Cheers, man.
See you soon.
We've got a great show coming up for you tomorrow.
We'll be asking and then answering this question.
Is Taiwan the new Ukraine?
You want a new, tell us in the comments and chat if you're up to speed, because we're going to tell you some interesting things.
Hey, why don't we have a look in the gallery, Dan, at all of the people that are doing their work?
I love seeing those.
Yes, guys.
I enjoy seeing it.
Have a look at the whole team now doing their work in there.
And then would you put it up on the screen so as I can see them as well?
It gives me some joy.
We've also got some damning off YouTube information about vaccines and vaccine injury to tell you about.
We've got Biyet Simkin.
There you go.
There's Lara.
She's doing social media.
There's Joe doing audio.
Look at this fantastic team of people toiling right now.
To bring you necessary truths, young Al.
They had a birthday only recently.
Sometimes Al doesn't post the entire show up when they're pre-recorded shows.
Do you, Al?
Do you?
Don't do you?
Can't be relied on to do that.
Remember that face?
He's the sort of fool who'd fill in a spoof assassination form without even knowing it was a parody.
We've also got some fantastic guests coming on the show tomorrow.
We've got Beate Simkin, my friend and breathwork teacher.
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I do weekly meditations bespoke and tailored to your needs.
Gareth, do you need guided meditation?
I need an orange, that's all I need.
My friend, take that and sniff it.
Sniff yourself well.
And should you need a puddin', I got one I want in.
No, I'm fine.
I'm fine.
If you need some puddin', no spoon required.
No spoons here, baby!
I understand.
Take that puddin' straight from the sauce!
Hey puddin'!
I get it.
Hey, we'll be doing some exclusive Q&As for our community, so press that red button that's somewhere on your screen now to join us deeper, deeper down the rabbit hole before we ultimately start communities.
See that join button?
You can press that.
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Remember, we do the Community Festival every year for three days.
We're going to be traveling around the world, building communities, building resistance, opposing this machine.
Trying to break out of the prison planet on a daily basis, bringing you the best possible contributors and alternative narratives that you simply will not get anywhere else.
Happy birthday, Leon.
Happy birthday, Al.
That's a full happy birthday to you, not just 60% of one.
See you tomorrow, not for more of the same.
We wouldn't serve you that dross, but for more of the different.
