Russell chats to investigative journalist, Lee Fang about working on the Twitter files and how "so-called journalist" Matt Taibbi has been threatened with JAIL. Plus, he shares an exclusive about Pfizer and the funding sources behind supposedly independent groups who have been pushing for vaccine mandates.WATCH the full show with Lee Fang: https://bit.ly/3Nd7TBiRead Lee's FULL article: https://leefang.substack.com/ 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/
Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
Let me turn off the audio on... Oh, that's what it's like being me.
I hear my own voice in my own mind.
There's always at least three tracks running.
For example, someone's got to give this dog a biscuit, haven't they?
Someone's got to do it.
Someone's got to organise... I thought I was meant to be the intern.
No, no, no, no.
I've given him a biscuit and he says it's malpractice.
Someone's got to bring together a set of disparate communities to bring about a global revolution.
Someone has got to ask you, our community, will Taiwan be the next Ukraine?
Someone's got to tell you, breaking news, Tucker's left Fox.
Tucker has left Fox.
Tucker's not going to do Fox anymore.
Let's call Tucker.
Call him?
You just left him a voice note.
I know, he's too keen now for Tucker.
Hold on, he's listened to the voice note.
Does it mean they've listened to it if it disappears?
I don't know, has it gone blue ticks?
We will get you Tucker by the end of this show, so help me God.
And also exclusively on Rumble, you know we're on YouTube right now, well we won't be in a minute because of the, you know, we love YouTube.
YouTube's where our 6.4 million wonders live and we love every single one of a million.
Every one of them million, six million, point four, we love them.
But we got to go on to Rumble to talk to Lee, Fangs for the memory.
Nice.
Fang about, and he's breaking a story on our show.
So this could be our most important show ever.
He's breaking a story, new Pfizer revelations about some Pfizer funding stuff that is going to knock your pants down around your ankles or possibly if you're in a comical mood, put them on top of your head.
No matter what the hygiene consequences of such an action should be.
We're talking about institutional corruption.
We're talking about nepotism.
Meaningful nepotism.
The kind of nepotism that leads a man, a certain little man called Joseph Jojo Biden, to possibly visit Ukraine to grease the wheels of his son's employment at Burisma Rhymes With Charisma Ukrainian gas company.
And this kind of nepotism exists throughout Congress because there's evidence of significant insider trading.
Allegedly.
Because just before that SVB, the Silicon Valley Bank, went down, guess whose kids were selling off their Silicon Valley Bank shares?
Or it's one of them other banks, actually.
Yes, you guessed it.
Elected, paid-for politicians that you pay for out of your taxi dollars.
Allegedly.
We'll be investigating that as well as getting Tucker on line one and feeding the dog.
A lot going on.
Okay, hey, look at the way that propaganda works.
This is brilliant, this is.
You'll see a story like this.
This is from the United Kingdom, which is where you get your language and where the Queen, God rest her soul, used to live until very recently.
This is, uh, Northern Railway asked passengers to stop watching porn on trains.
Now, you might think, perfectly reasonable request.
Yeah.
Don't watch pornography on a train.
Constantly look out the window.
Right.
Maybe make polite conversation.
Yes.
Although actually I prefer, I'd rather they did watch porn than talk to me.
Maybe read a bit of the mainstream news or something.
Have a look at some mainstream media.
But I don't like small talk on a train, do you?
No.
I'd rather that they were engaged in pornography and the likely behavioral activity that accompanies pornography.
You know, I'd rather that than talk to someone.
Yeah, although I think there's people in our, what would be Congress in the United States, who were doing that in Parliament.
I think that's probably a bit... We have people in our Parliament doing that, yeah.
A bit more disrespectful, isn't it?
Well, look, at least they're not in transit, I suppose.
They're static in a parliamentary building.
But what we want to point out, it's not the puerility.
Of this story.
But the fact is, the fact that they'll use something that all of us will agree on.
We don't think that people should be watching pornography and engaging in the accompanying onanistic activity.
To legitimize.
Look at the last bit of it.
They've advised customers to refrain from searching offensive topics and inappropriate jokes.
Ah, and stop them from searching explicit material in bad language on their Wi-Fi.
So what this will become about is censorship.
Now I know this is a frivolous story, but sometimes you can see in a fragment the whole.
You can see in a fractal the way that these patterns repeat themselves.
Let's have a look at the kind of broader corruption that sits at the top of American politics power pyramids in the form Of lovely old Joe Biden, who's expected any second now to announce that he's going to be running again, even though mild perambulation for him seems like a challenge.
Let's see how the mainstream media are reporting on Joe Biden right now.
His re-election campaign as soon as tomorrow.
So, if he wins, America's oldest president could stay in office until he's 86 years old, and that may not sit well for a lot of Americans.
According to a new NBC News poll that shows 70% of Americans do not think Mr. Biden should run again, including 51% of Democrats.
Now, half of those who say he should not enter the 2024 race cite his age as a major reason why.
Major, minor, not a reason.
Not a reason is my favourite category of all of those things.
Hi, so like, oh yeah, this is like a quote on corruption that might be useful to you.
Have a look at this.
Like this is the quote about, you know, the broader corruption in this story.
Isn't there a Biden corruption headline?
Biden campaign blink and orchestrated Intel letter to discredit Hunter Biden laptop story.
That's the former head of the CIA revealed that he was strong armed by the Biden administration.
Into providing the letter with 50 CIA signatories that was used to underwrite the invalidity of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Have a look at this quote about corruption.
Have a look at it.
And the so-called political processes of fraud, our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interest.
Now, this is where one story about a potentially corrupt President, I mean would you, let us know in the chat right now, if Joe Biden strong-armed the CIA into delegitimizing the Hunter Biden laptop story, would you call that corruption?
What about the stenographer that says that he heard Joe Biden and Hunter Biden chatting about the deal with Burisma and fracking and stuff?
Like we're starting now to accumulate a story of If not extraordinary corruption, it's appalling that it's not extraordinary.
It's the level of corruption that we accept within American politics, but politics in our country, the UK too.
It's an acceptance that really our political leaders are, broadly speaking, serving commercial interests because their personal interests align more with financial, commercial and corporate interests than with the interests of the electorate.
Let's have a look at the SVB story now and the number of Congress folk who sold shares around the time that that banking crisis took place.
So, have a look at this.
On March the 10th, Silicon Valley Bank collapses.
Also on March the 10th, children of Democratic representative Jared Moskowitz sell shares of Seacoast Banking Corporation worth $65,000 to $150,000 After Mr Moskowitz attended a bipartisan congressional briefing on the bank in Tumult.
Then the very next day... Three days later that is, yeah.
Pardon?
Three days later.
Seacoast banking shares fell by nearly 20%.
At least eight members of Congress or their close relatives sold shares of bank stocks in March.
Some members were buying bank shares during the volatility.
Talk us through this bit, Gareth.
Yeah so I mean this is the case so obviously what was going on at the time this example of Mr Moskowitz is after that congressional briefing obviously had insider knowledge I mean I guess it's allegedly but it seems pretty obvious.
You think that during the bipartisan congressional briefing.
You would imagine so.
They went listen we'll tell you something Seacoast Banking It's going to go down.
Those shares are going down.
Sell them!
Right.
But obviously it can work the other way as well.
So March 17th, Republican Representative Nicole Malliotakis buys shares of New York Community Bank Corp after private discussions with New York State Bank regulators.
Are you suggesting that that conversation with the New York State Bank regulators contained information that led Nicole Malliotakis to buy those shares?
Or could it just be a coincidence?
I mean, it could be a huge coincidence.
He has Chaps and bank regulators.
You know what that's put me in the mood for?
Acquisition of some chairs.
That's right, but everyone's selling those.
Oh yeah, you're right, it is probably a bit silly.
I'm gonna buy some though, on another hunch.
Right, another hunch.
So, two days later, New York Community Bancorp... There's more hunches in Congress than in Notre Dame Cathedral, baby!
Nice.
Thanks.
New York Community Bank Corp buys assets belonging to the failed Signature Bank, a deal that prompted its biggest share rally ever.
It never had a bigger one.
Yeah, so it doesn't matter whether they're buying or selling, they're making all the right choices over there in Congress.
Nepotism and corruption, systemic and institutional.
Well, how can we get it up For another four years of Octogenarian Joe knowing that it seems at least that he is corrupt.
Allegedly.
That he used deep state facilities to crush a story that could prevent him from winning an election against Donald Trump.
Allegedly.
And that also furthermore, what's more, That he's getting his son little deals over there in the Ukraine.
I mean, if it was Donald Trump, do you think the mainstream media, the NBCs, et cetera, will be reporting on this more?
Do you think they'll be saying, hold on a minute, Donald Trump took Don Jr., our friend over at Rumble, over to Ukraine, got him a gig with Burisma, and he's using the CIA to repress information that could be negative?
I mean, isn't...
Trump right now being hauled through the courts of New York City on the basis of a hush payment that came from potentially legal fees or campaign funding.
I know it's a sort of a complex legislative and bureaucratic case, but we all know that whatever they're saying really is to take Trump out of the race.
And what I'm saying to you is that whether it's Biden or Trump, As long as the systems and institutions remain as corrupt
as they are, and they sit on a bedrock of corruption, because look at that, it's normal.
During a three year period, nearly a fifth of federal lawmakers or their immediate family
bought or sold stocks or other securities that could have been affected by their legislative
work.
Essentially, insider trading.
People in Congress that have connections as a result of their job to certain stocks and
shares and corporations have been involved in sales on those very stocks and shares.
That means it's deep, deep in the institution, doesn't it, Gareth?
Yeah, it certainly does.
And obviously this is a situation at the moment where, especially with the Biden stuff that's
going on, is...
Things are coming out but there isn't transparency around it and this occurs at the same time as the Biden administration is poised to increase internet surveillance in response to those Pentagon papers that we have kind of talked about the last week or so and the restrict act that they're bringing.
There's all fun ways of censoring and shutting down discussions, shutting down truth when we're not able to glean any truth from the things that have been going on with it.
We're centralising authoritarianism at a time where we do not trust authority at all.
We believe in democracy here at Stay Free.
Of course we do.
Freedom's what we believe in above all else.
That's why we've been polling you like it's 19 bloody 99 with this question.
What needs to be stopped first?
Lobbyists trading money for government favours?
Members of Congress owning stocks and shares in the companies that they regulate and legislate?
Four, or against, government censorship on free speech.
Which of those three things, and I reckon in future we should put A, B, C, and make that look sort of nice and clear, you know, like sort of a clear thing, and look at the language a bit better.
A, B, C, sort of make it very clear.
Have we got some polling results on it right now that we can show?
Right now, 61% of you are concerned about free speech.
Well, that's good because we are on a free speech platform and we've got a free speech guest coming up.
Later, we're going to be talking to Lee Fang, one of the Twitterphile legends, I'm calling him.
Yeah.
Those brave, proud journalists.
Did you see Tim Robbins' tweet about this?
Tim Robbins, a proud, lifelong Democrat.
Such a Democrat.
Let's find that quote.
Such a proud Democrat that he was openly ridiculed in that film, Team America.
No, you know, No, because he was one of those ones that's always at the forefront, lobbying for campaign.
And his Rumble interview of us, if you've not seen it yet, you should have a look at the whole thing.
It's up on Rumble right now.
He did an extremely aggressive tweet.
We don't have it physically as a graphic.
Nice one.
Thank you very much.
Listen to what Tim Robbins said.
Recently independent journalists like Matt Taibbi, Shellenberger and Barry Weiss have all been exposed in a massive censorship operation by the US government to control content on social media and eliminate any dissenting voices.
Have you read their reporting or are you listening to the embarrassed compromised hacks from the media that are covering their tracks?
Nice one.
I'm Tim.
could be the most important story related to our personal freedoms in the US and it's being buried.
Mainstream media have not only ignored the story but now attack the journalists,
effectively serving as a thuggish censorship arm of the government.
Meanwhile, then a bunch of politicians threaten journalist Matt Taibbi with jail time.
What an embarrassing, shameful time for the Democrats and the "free" press.
You are losing any shred of credibility you had, you effing fools.
And by the way, free Assange.
So there you go, Tim Robbins.
I think what's happening now is that there's a real movement for independence in American politics.
Let me know in the chat right now if you agree with this.
There's new emergent voices, even within mainstream politics.
Someone like Rand Paul, like a little while ago, Bernie Sanders, people were saying, And people like, I don't know, Robert Kennedy stand for President.
Do you think we should have him on the show, by the way?
Because I think we could have him as a guest.
Let's get him on.
But people are like, oh no, he's anti-vax and all that kind of stuff.
He's a lot of other things as well.
He's very much anti-war.
He's anti-war, he's anti-corruption.
He's a Kennedy!
He's a voice that we need!
Isn't he?
Is he?
Well, I think we should talk to him.
Do you want him on?
People do.
Well, he is more than any of us.
Alex Overton, Overton Window.
Yes, says Ginny Phoenix, I think.
Of course, I'm not that... I've got not got good eyes.
Right there.
But another one of the voices that's taking people to task is Rand Paul.
Rand Paul.
In a minute, we're going to be talking about the pharmaceutical industry very seriously with Lee Fangs for the memory fang.
Right, well he's going to make a revelation about Pfizer and Pfizer's expenditure that's going to knock you on your bottom.
It's going to bend your bones, this one.
When you hear about what Pfizer have been doing with their money, it's fascinating.
We couldn't say it on YouTube, it's too controversial.
You want to get rid of that tattoo?
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you're going to be getting here.
Cover it up!
Get ready for that, getting pinged off your little old body as quick as an ex-wife.
I reckon that, yeah, you're going to love that story, but let's have a look at Rand Paul exposing, if that's the right word, some of the ludicrous expenditure that the pharmaceutical industry lays out on experiments that I don't think are worth undertaking.
Listen to this.
My most recent report uncovered $482 billion in government waste.
For example, NIH spent more than 1.1 million to get mice drunk.
How much do mice drink?
For God's sake, they can really handle their booze, the mice.
Apparently we're not aware of what happens when you drink too much.
2.3 million dollars to inject six-month-old beagle puppies with cocaine.
Apparently there's not enough evidence of what happens to humans on cocaine.
So the beagles, they could have sniffed that.
Right.
As well, because injecting it's not an effective, it is effective, I mean economically effective, don't do drugs, drugs are bad.
But I'm talking purely in the context of these scientific experimentations which are taking place that Rand Paul's talking about.
The beagles, if you put it on another beagle's bum, they would sniff that up.
Would that be your way of achieving it?
I've got to say, if you were a scientist, obviously we all know you are one.
In a way I am a scientist!
If I was down at the labs, living it up in Wuhan, where we're pretty lax in our lab in Wuhan, I'd go, pop a couple of G's on that beagle's body, because I got a hunch that some science is going to happen around here.
Aren't you being paid for that?
Several billion dollars.
I'm going to need taxpayer dollars for that, whether you like it or not.
You don't get to vote.
Mind your own business.
Fauci decide what happened with them dollar bills.
And let's see what the magical third is.
So we've got a drunk mice, coked up beagles.
Also, though, three million dollars to watch hamsters fight on steroids.
That's how much you'd be willing to pay to see it.
I mean, which one of those?
So we've got another poll for you.
We're running two polls simultaneously.
What do you want to see more of with your taxpayer dollars?
Mice getting drunk, drugs, drugged up beagles, even if they're being inefficiently administered intravenously when they could be administered nasally, which I think is how more people do cocaine.
I would endorse that.
Perk drugs are bad and I'm, as you know, drug free.
Or do you want to see some steroided up hamsters brawling?
A lot of people are saying roided hamster cage fighting.
That's what Rogue Nation is saying.
Yeah, I agree.
Almost as if it was well spent.
Some people say that's cruel to animals and not to do any of it.
That's an interesting perspective.
That's an interesting perspective.
Nearly, I would say, not a solid majority.
A lot of you are going for the hamsters.
A lot of you want to see the little drunk mice though, to see what they're like.
I don't know what they're like.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hey, listen, we're going to flip over now to being exclusively on Rumble because we've got Lee Fang coming up.
Now, Lee Fang is one of the Twitterphile legends that Tim Robbins vocally advocates for.
Lee Fang has been doing actual journalism, revealing the relationship between the Deep State and social media organizations.
Lee Fang, is investigating pharmaceutical companies.
Li Fang is doing what journalists are supposed to do, convey difficult, challenging, truthful information
to the rest of us so that we can make informed decisions for ourselves rather than being deluged in untruths,
censored to within an inch of our lives and surveilled all the way to Belmarsh.
So we're going to leave you now because there's a lot of stuff that Lee Fang's going to say and this is an exclusive conversation with Lee.
I believe he's about to simultaneously release the article on Substack in an exciting moment.
Very exciting on the day that Tucker resigns.
I'm going to call Tucker again.
Lots of exclusives today.
It's a very exclusive day.
Almost everything's excluded.
Nothing's in here.
So goodbye YouTube.
Goodbye.
We love you.
Rumble join us to join us here.
So please welcome to the show.
It's Lee Fang independent journalist who worked on Twitter files He now writes an investigative newsletter on substack and he's the author of the machine a field guide to the resurgent riot Thanks for joining us Lee.
It's great to see you, mate I'm humbled by the intro.
It's really good to be with you.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for your humility and your grace.
Mate, we want to start with the exclusive story.
As I understand it, Pfizer are attempting to sort of set up grassroots organizations that are lobbying for COVID vaccine mandates.
I'm sure I'm mangling that somewhat, but it sounds like Pfizer are spending money to create apparently authentic voices advocating for vaccine mandates.
Is that what's happening, Lee Fang?
Well, look, this story basically takes a look in 2021, when in the United States, we had multifaceted mandates, you know, mandates enacted by I live in California and San Francisco, there were very restrictive mandates here.
But you know, across the country, including the Biden administration, in September of 2021, enacted a very kind of strong mandate with no exemption for prior immunity, or, you know, kind of natural immunity or prior infection, natural immunity.
And, you know, Pfizer was not playing a kind of visible role here.
They didn't comment on any of the articles.
They weren't really talking to the press.
You saw consumer groups, civil rights groups, patient groups, doctor groups, you know, public health organizations all saying, you know, these mandates are necessary.
even though there wasn't a lot of scientific evidence to support the basis that, you know,
we needed these mandates, that, you know, they were sold to us with the claim
that they would stop transmission of the virus, you had this coalition of community groups
saying, "We need the mandate."
Well, I'm taking a look at new disclosures that show that many of those organizations, these third-party organizations with a lot more credibility than a pharmaceutical company with a lot of money to gain, were taking funds from Pfizer while lobbying for these controversial policies.
So I list them out.
I talked to a lot of experts.
Just a story I just published right before coming onto your show on my sub stack.
We're very excited to receive this exclusivity from you, Lee, and at the risk of diminishing your contribution, you're getting a lot of love in the chat.
Notably, Pride Folks, who says, simply, babe alert.
That's an objectifying comment, I believe, about your physical appearance, but we'll probably we'll get some more on that.
That's that's going to be coming up.
Exclusive.
Another exclusive.
Lee Fang is sexually attractive.
Let's have.
Yep.
No, there's more of it.
Oh, it's good.
No, it's getting quite rude now.
Stop that.
That's enough.
Oh, that's made me older!
Objective, yep, it's all happening.
So, can we have a look at this, some of the Pfizer lobbying stats?
We'll just talk you through this list, stuff that you'll obviously know.
Can you pull that for me?
Pfizer CEO Albert Baller is the treasurer of the Pharmaceutical Lobbying Group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Pharma spent a total of $140 million over that, in fact, on lobbying between 2019 and 2022.
As well as the pharmaceutical industry being the largest single advertiser on mainstream media, 75% of all their ad revenue comes from the pharmaceutical industry, Lee.
So we're talking about an almost immersive omnipotence.
They've got power in every direction, as well as it appears as a result of your exclusive there, to be investing in apparently organic and authentic voices that are, you know, pro-mandate or pro What chance do we have of real democracy?
What chance do we have of legitimate open conversations when an organisation can exert that much power over that much of the machinery of the state whether it's media or government itself?
Well, look, you know, the figures you just cited were the ones that have to be disclosed, you know, that's when they hire, you know, a former member of Congress or a staffer to go and wine and dine, you know, a policymaker or regulator, they have to disclose most of that funding, that spending, but So much they don't have to disclose.
How much they're spending on television, how much they're spending on TikTok ads, how much they're giving to these front groups or these doctors groups or these public health groups that kind of set the nature of the debate.
They kind of appear in the news media, they create events, and they create a discourse that looks authentic, that looks organic.
but it benefits the bottom line of their benefactors of companies like Pfizer and you know, the
vaccine debate is, um, you know, I think it's fraught.
It's interesting because this has shaped our lives in the last three years of the pandemic.
Um, but it's, you know, it's also not that unique in the sense that every major pharmaceutical
company in the United States, uh, engages in these practices.
They, they, uh, pressure regulators, they, um, spend so much money on direct to consumer
advertising, uh, and really they kind of just dominate the entire public policy debate.
So, you know, we can talk about a lot of other special interest groups, but pharma is unique
in just the raw amounts of money they spend to control the entire public sector, uh, on
regulatory on, on policy on, on really everything in terms of, of, of how it affects medicine
and as it has, as it's practiced in the United States.
Lee Fang, what specific groups did they fund, mate?
Do any of them stand out as, does it seem particularly manipulative or deceptive?
Any of the groups that have like legitimacy or authenticity that is surprising?
Let's just talk about a few of them.
You know, in Chicago, there was a very kind of controversial vaccine mandate.
There were also discussions about vaccine passports.
And, you know, a large percentage of the African-American, the Black community in that city was not vaccinated in 2021.
And one of the oldest African-American civil rights groups, the Urban League, Chicago Urban League, went out into the media and was asked, you know, would this mandate hurt the African-American community?
Would it kind of push them to the sidelines?
And she was very clear in lobbying and pushing back against that, saying, no, the mandate's worth it.
It's worth it for our community.
She never mentioned that just prior to that interview, a few months prior to the interview, she received a $100,000 check from Pfizer, not mentioned during the interview, not mentioned on the Urban League's website.
It's not disclosed until this morning, until right before appearing on your show.
The Consumers League of America, I mean, this is another consumer advocacy group that's kind of famous for standing up to corporate power, founded over 100 years ago, fighting against monopolies.
They're a group that kind of mysteriously endorsed the mandates in 2021.
Again, they received big money from Pfizer and even has a Pfizer lobbyist on its board.
You know, these are intricate relationships that aren't disclosed to the people reading these press releases who are getting pressured by these groups, and it's affecting the entire debate.
It's affecting how regulators see these issues, and it also affects how the public sees this.
when they see these third party groups that have some credibility, you know,
these are kind of famous organizations that are known for standing up for the
public interest when they're saying, Hey, these mandates are a good idea for the American public. It
seems genuine.
They're just not disclosing the Pfizer money, which I think, you know,
is a relevant factor here when you're talking about a policy that compels
Americans to take this product.
Yeah. I think that should be at the beginning of the endorsement of as I,
African American people should take these vaccines.
Also, earlier, a minute ago actually, I just got $100,000 from Pfizer who I think they do sell vaccines and they would potentially financially benefit.
If it can't be explicit, you can't have democracy.
I think what the danger we have now, Lee, is we've reached the point where there's such mass distrust in government, mass distrust and mistrust of media, and there seems to be no attempt to rectify that through authenticity and morality and principled action, but through the increase of censorship, through the increase of control.
With Matt Taibbi, your mate, your fellow Twitterphile journalist, he's being threatened with jail now, I understand, and I don't know how much traction that's got, and I pray that it isn't something that would happen.
Matt Taibbi's a friend of ours, we love him, the croaky-voiced, drum-kit-perched, cap-wearing, so-called journalist sweetheart that he is.
Do you worry yourself that we're reaching a point that free speech is actually something that you could be in prison for?
If you're Julian Assange, you're already in prison for it.
I mean, I've looked at, I've covered Congress for the last 15 years.
I've never seen anything like this.
And there are a lot of experts and people brought in to testify.
Uh, who mislead, who get the facts wrong, who, you know, they engage in all kinds of kind of scurrilous behavior.
And I've never seen behavior like this in terms of a member of Congress in response.
And Matt Taibbi, for the record, I don't know if your audience has seen this letter.
I exclusively obtained it and published it last week on my sub stack.
But after testifying on March 9th, Matt Taibbi had a back and forth
with one of the members of Congress, Democrat named Stacey Plaskett.
She's the one who called her, Taibbi and Schellenberger, a so-called journal.
You know, very aggressive kind of questioning.
But, you know, that's par for the course in politics.
You know, you can get aggressive with a witness.
What's unusual is this letter afterwards that took a quote from Matt Tybee saying that an arm of the Department of Homeland Security had worked with one of these disinfo NGOs that's, you know, partially backed by Stanford University as they were pressuring Twitter on content moderation policies.
Uh, that Twitter did not distinguish between the private sector and the public sector when they were receiving these censorship requests.
That was the entire quote.
Baskett is threatening prison for that quote.
That wasn't 100% accurate.
You know, I published more emails.
There's tons of comments.
Everyone who's been reporting and looking at these internal Twitter files sees it.
It's the FBI.
It's the arm of the DHS called CISA.
All these government agencies that are exerting incredible levels of pressure on social media firms, including today, although we don't have the same kind of purview, the same kind of visibility that we had under the Twitter files.
But it's certainly happening to other platforms as well, including Discord and Facebook and others.
Um, but yeah, I've never seen this letter taking a true quote, an accurate quote from Matt Taibbi and saying this was an example of perjury that you could face up to five years of imprisonment for, for telling the truth.
It's extraordinary.
It's also true, I understand, that Facebook have been censoring Seymour Hershey's reporting on the Nord Stream pipeline.
This value of free speech, according to our poll, let's have another look at that poll.
I think a lot of our audience are deeply concerned about free speech and it seems that the free speech argument is increasingly being connected, I think, through centralised media narratives with, you know, right-wing extremism.
And it seems that there's an attempt to, yeah here it is, like 60% of our audience that we're currently polling say that free speech is the issue that concerns the most out of a whole bunch of significant little issues there.
Do you think that we're reaching some kind of tipping point where credible, lifelong Pulitzer Prize winning journalists like Seymour Hersh are being sort of shut down and censored?
What do you think, how do you think, do you think there's like new alliances that we can make to ensure that we can continue to speak free Well, look, you know, I grew up in the Washington, D.C.
area, in the suburbs, Prince Rudy's County, and the war in Iraq kind of radicalized me and motivated me to get involved in media and politics, just seeing kind of the entire mainstream media basically in lockstep repeating the Bush administration's drive to go to war and their claims about weapons of mass destruction and a war on terror.
And I, you know, I had such Great hopes for the promise of the open internet as a corrective to government censorship, that with more voices, we'd have a better chance of getting to the truth, especially when it comes to these life and death foreign policy issues.
I mean, there's nothing bigger.
And the war in Ukraine is kind of an example of how I was wrong.
The internet is quickly becoming different.
We're getting organized into little walled gardens.
We're getting pushed into just a small number of platforms.
Those platforms are coordinating with government, and they're attempting to squelch the truth.
At the same time, we have Um, uh, you know, because of these big social media firms draining the advertising revenue from legacy newspapers, we just have less journalists too.
So it's, it's all bad.
Um, you know, I did a story last year looking at how, um, a whistleblower from the Department of Homeland Security basically told us that, um, the Department of Homeland Security, their next big agenda item is working with social media companies to correct quote unquote disinformation, uh, about the war in Ukraine, Russia.
You know, we see a lot of war propaganda.
We see a lot of claims about, you know, the readiness of Ukraine or, you know, what have you about Russia.
But there's not a lot of independent reporting.
There's not a lot of skeptical reporting.
We need more voices.
But how do you reach those voices if we're only on a few platforms and those platforms are coordinating with the government to squelch out voices of dissent?
Yeah, we've been talking a lot about the restrict act that appears to be being sort of caressed into the public debate.
What was that public news article we read, Gareth?
I want to say Leighton Baines, but I know he's a former Everton left back.
Leighton Woodhouse.
Leighton Woodhouse.
Yeah, Leighton Baines won't be writing about that.
He'll be focusing much more on coming out from the back, ball playing left back.
Brilliant player, actually.
But Leighton Woodhouse was talking about how in order to legitimise censorship, you have to create the problem of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation.
Because without it now, there are too many independent voices, too much capacity for investigation.
It's for one narrative to dominate in the way that it could have done sort of, you know, before the advent of these technologies.
So while there was sort of briefly this utopian possibility of free speech, open communication, thorough investigation, it's being, you can see now, it's being sort of legislated against.
There's smear campaigns against independent voices.
People are being threatened with prison.
It's unprecedented and extraordinary.
Do you think that this Restrict Act, which we had explained to us is like the Patriot Act after 9-11.
It's like using, for example, the recent Pentagon Papers to underwrite this censorial legislation.
Do you think this is the sort of thing that will go through, mate?
Well, just again to compare to the War on Terror and Bush administration, they used the claim that, you know, you were in league with terrorists, you know, you were a jihadi or whatever, to polarize the debate, to, you know, stigmatize any voices of dissent.
We see that again today.
You know, we just have a different vocabulary, a different kind of cultural moment.
You know, we say that someone is hateful, they're, you know, spreading hate speech, they're an extremist, or they're spreading disinformation or malinformation.
You know, obviously no one supports intentional misinformation or intentional hate, but these attempts to stigmatize whistleblowers or journalists with these kind of classifications to marginalize them, it's emotionally arresting.
You know, that's the kind of language you use to push someone to the side and say, don't listen to them and censor them.
That's what the government's doing.
That's what these government funded NGOs are doing.
There's a whole network.
of organizations that are part of this. Even for me, I launched my Substack, I went independent
for the first time in nine years, and with my first story out the gate, I had an MSNBC host
saying that I was just writing about the Department of Homeland Security, accusing me of being a
bigot or something. This is the strategy for marginalizing independent voices of dissent.
Lee, I'm really glad that you've moved to Substack.
We recommend that everyone who follows our work follows Lee Fang.
He's a fantastic journalist and if you were willing to introduce perhaps photographs of yourself with your top off or just some Bermuda shorts.
I think you might gain more followers.
That's just advice based on what are some of the things I'm seeing in the chat here from our locals community that people can join to essentially objectify our guests.
Lee, thank you for joining us and providing people that are sexually attracted to men with some free midday pornography.
Even though we did a story today about people masturbating on public transport from the perspective of it wasn't a good thing.
I wonder how they feel about masturbating to Lee's sub stack.
Let's do a poll on do you think it's acceptable to masturbate over Lee Fang's sub-stack imagery of him in his vacation wear, or do you think that's wrong?
We'll do a poll on that, Lee, and we'll send you the results, and perhaps you can do an article on that.
Well, you've got to be the top-level tier for that, but like and subscribe, you know.
You've got to paywall that shit, Lee!
Paywall that!
All right, Lee, thanks for joining us, mate.
It's fantastic to speak to you.
Thanks so much.
I appreciate it, Russell.
Fantastic guest.
Thank you so much, mate.
There you go.
Lee Fang there.
Finally, Lee Fang.
Wasn't he great?
Worth waiting for.
Thanks for the memories.
Was that the... Thanks for being so sexy.
Right.
That's what I say to Lee Fang.
They love him in there.
I'm not surprised.
He should be a regular contributor.
Agreed.
Why don't he take down his trousers and pants?
Did they say that?
I like a slappy little laugh.
This is you at this point, isn't it?
I want to kiss Lee Fang.
So what if I'm married to Laura Brand?
Hold on, that's weird.
That one didn't make sense.
Behave, said Alex Overton-Window.
Yep, look at that.
People, once your photos are online, we can do what we want with them.
Some people saying simply stop.
Some people are saying Gareth is sexier.
That's from Brooklyn M. Do we need a competition though?
A sex contest?
No we don't because that's not what we're about here as a matter of fact.
Don't get distracted.
We're trying to awaken people.
Don't even start up this.
A couple of guys with a dream to end up in a sex contest.
Or did we?
Maybe we did.
Maybe we did do that.
But before we move into the hot world of sex contests, That seems to be the end of the show now, I think.
Oh, I'm quite hungry.
Okay, it's the end of the show.
I've got to go get some dinner.
Alright, join us tomorrow on Rumble.
I'm going to get some dinner now.
Hope you're all alright.
Love you.
And yeah, post your questions for RFK.
We'll get him on.
We'll get him on.
And I'll see if Tucker's responded.
Oh no, what's this from Lee Fang?
Lee Fang, you very much!
See you tomorrow!
Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
