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May 16, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:11:54
Trump Was Right?! What The Durham Report REALLY Means! - #130 - Stay Free With Russell Brand
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In this video, I'm going to show you how to make a cool looking firework. This is a firework
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
Just to let you know that, um, what happened was, is Donald Trump, right, was collaborating with the Russians, and that's the only reason he won that election, is because, like, otherwise, how could Donald Trump win an election?
It's not like people are so disillusioned with democracy and career politicians and the obvious financial corruption that's rife in Washington that someone that used populist rhetoric and had charisma would overcome a plain-as-day career politician and out-and-out cynic like Hillary Clinton.
It must have been that the Russians were involved.
So finally we've got proof that it was because of Russian cyber hacking that Donald Trump even won the election so I guess he shouldn't have... Oh no, sorry, it's the opposite.
Russia weren't involved at all and the mainstream media and the Democrat Party and the FBI conspired to ensure that a theory, a story that never had legs from the get-go was spread everywhere.
Let us know in the chat and the comments right now how you feel about what you got called Deep state duplicity!
Real life conspiracy!
However you feel about Donald Trump, how do you feel about the systems that generate the possibility for new types of populist leaders to emerge?
I know a lot of you love Donald Trump and I know a lot of you don't like Donald Trump and we believe that it's the system itself that needs to change and that's the kind of conversation we want to have with you and guess what?
We can't have that conversation with you on YouTube because YouTube censors the kind of information that we'll be talking about on Rumble.
So there's a link in the description.
You click on that.
After our 15-20 minutes, we'll be available exclusively on Rumble.
And thank God we are, because I'll be talking to Matthew Colony, who's going to talk to us about how the Deep State has been running things for time.
That's how long it's been going on.
The Deep State are running things, whether it's the CIA... Allegedly.
...murdering JFK.
Allegedly.
That's what was alleged by RFK on this channel recently.
You've got to watch that interview.
It's up in full.
You can watch it.
He says that Lee Harvey Oswald was undoubtedly a CIA operative.
Allegedly!
You know, I don't think that.
Is that controversial still?
He said it.
He said it.
Yeah, he said it.
Allegedly!
So look, we're going to be talking about that.
We're going to be talking about the FBI running with this Steele dossier funded by the Clinton campaign.
Hillary Clinton personally signing that off.
We're going to be talking about how 1.3 million people have access to your most private data and the government spent $18 billion a year preventing you from seeing any of it.
So if you want to learn about that, Hate speech?
We call it hate speech?
Hate speech!
attacking the deep state and global corporatism and the total hollowing out of American democracy
in order to create a globalist new order where none but the most powerful
have any sway over process at all, where simple things like asking water companies
to stop polluting the water that they use, where things like making energy companies responsible
and ending their subsidies, where things like asking big tech
to stop bundling and selling your data, where getting the mainstream media to be honest with you,
where all of these things seem impossible now, where the impossibility of ordinary people
reaching out in love to one another is daily doubled down on
by a hate-generating mainstream media.
But if you wanna change all that stuff, join us.
That's what we're interested in doing.
But first, Elon Musk went out the other night.
Look, he ain't even had a shave.
Did you see that guy boogieing?
Have a look at that.
Have a look at him enjoying himself.
Look at him go.
Look at him go.
Have a look.
Put it.
Okay.
What are you saying?
No, I just.
We're going to go.
Well, first of all, that's exactly how I dance, and secondly, I'm amazed that there aren't loads of bodyguards.
It might be, they might be off.
What do you think those girls might be?
I dance more this style.
Oh, this is you dancing?
The poor Neil is dancing as well, so you can see that.
Let's see, play that VT, that's it, that's well done.
I would say...
It's the hands in the air moment.
Yeah, he's not losing himself there, is he, Elon?
No, he's not.
I would say that, would you estimate that Elon is on the level, you're speaking euphemistically, in terms of chemical enhanced states?
Who knows?
Who knows?
He's very relaxed.
He's not, like, sort of sweating, but he pays a price for it, because even though, like, he was keeping it together on the night itself, have a look at the next day when he's meeting Macron.
I don't, like, I don't know how at ease I would be meeting Macron.
Macron anyway, especially after a big night out.
Get all mashed up.
Well, I'm not the worst suggesting that Elon Musk was anything other than on the level, but, like, look at his face when he, like, when they sort of talk to him.
You can tell he's trying to hold it together.
Check it.
Hello everyone.
It's the swallow!
It's like someone going, hello everyone.
Right, right, Elon.
That's Mr Macron.
He's got to keep himself together for the next five minutes.
Amazing.
So the main news that we're talking about on the show today is the Durham report.
The whole Russiagate thing was just basically made up.
Now we can deal with that because we've been telling you for a long time, and you've been telling us, let us know in the comments and the chat if you were surprised by this stuff.
That the deep state and global corporations are involved in managing narratives, manipulating power.
So when stuff like this happens, it doesn't bother me.
Of course, naturally.
But how is it for people that are invested in the mainstream media, that believe that by voting for this party over that party, you're doing something meaningful?
It actually represents something to them.
Like Jake Tapper over on CNN.
Let's see him grappling with the facts, which is not something they often do on CNN.
Old horse-paced Central.
Let's check him out.
President Trump appeared so confident of what Durham would find, he openly pressured the special counsel to release his findings before the 2020 election.
Regardless, the report is now here, it has dropped, and it might not have produced everything of what some Republicans hoped for.
It is, regardless, devastating to the FBI, and to a degree it does exonerate Donald Trump.
...does exonerate Donald Trump and, like, of course over at CNN they're still in a sort of Uroboros of self-devouring fury about having had him on CNN.
He has been exonerated.
That's the only conclusion that can be drawn.
We're talking about this story in depth over the course of the coming days and some of the things that particularly struck me, my dear friend and on-screen assistant, was that Hillary personally signed it off from the get-go.
They knew that there was nothing in it, that it was funded via the Steele dossier by the Democratic Party.
Ultimately, the things that we continually tell you about the mainstream media appear in this instance to have been, as a result of this inquiry, completely verified.
Well, they tried to keep that quiet as well, didn't they?
About the funding of the Steele dossier.
That was one of the things that, you know, was like...
Similar to what was alleged about Donald Trump recently.
Some of the best quotes I've heard from this.
So Durham said in his report, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
This one's the best one though.
Durham knocked the FBI for failing to take steps before launching the Trump campaign investigations such as interviewing relevant witnesses, reviewing its own intelligence databases or using any of the standard atypical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating war intelligence.
So basically they did anything that they should have done.
Any of the things they could have done.
So let us know in the chat in the comments what you think and join us over on Locals.
Press the red button on your screen now to join our community.
You get access to Loads more content.
It seems that what this story always was, was confirmation bias.
A kind of deep faith that something must be wrong.
Something must be right.
It can't just be that people are so disillusioned and disenfranchised with the Democrat Party that they are voting for Trump in significant numbers.
That there has to be some foreign invasion.
There has to be some intervention from alien and easily condemned forces and resources.
Simply not true.
They knew it wasn't true and they pushed it.
Elsewhere in our investigation, we point out that the FBI go, they literally say something they're criminal of.
We're glad you've pointed this out, but we've already solved all those problems.
We'll never do anything like that again.
But since then, they've already done the Hunter Biden stuff.
You know how the CIA, I know it's a separate agency, but for the purposes of this, where we're talking about the deep state and the deep state's ability to manipulate political narratives and direct power and resources, I think is very relevant.
It's one of the things we were talking to Matthew Connolly, who's an expert in these matters, about later.
As well as the amount of money that's spent on keeping information from you and the astonishing number, I think it's 1.3 million people that have access to your most private data.
We told you earlier in the week that they are using the horror and the spectre of Mexican drug cartels to sustain legislation bought in after 9-11 in the Patriot Act.
The very stuff that Snowden revealed.
They're spying on you.
They're hoarding all of your data and then if they need it later they'll actually access it. That's what's still happening and that was about
to come up for review.
It was about to be shut down and they're saying, well we can't shut it down now, not
of all these Mexican drug cartels. Now obviously there's room for a variety of
views and opinions and one of the people that I respect who's the, I guess you lot
would say he's sort of on the left, but God don't you feel like a political
Don't you feel that there's no party that represents you in this system?
Don't you feel now more than ever that you need a different kind of affinity that's resourced from somewhere deeper, like a spiritual place?
Anyhow, Jon Stewart says in this flurry of tweets and sort of well-liked, well-regarded tweets... This is about the Trump-CNN town hall appearance.
I guess he is talking about that, but it's difficult not to... Well, I don't know, Gareth.
I mean, I see it as, in a sense, that...
My personal view on Trump is that he's a berserker that's gone into the system that's not able to be manipulated in the ordinary fashion of a career politician or even a sort of someone that's a legacy politician like George W. Bush, let alone career politicians like Biden, Clinton and presumably Obama, certainly from the way he behaved in office.
That Trump is a contentious yet popular figure because of the manner of his rhetoric and again I will reiterate that I don't see Donald Trump as the solution but let's have a look at this like flurry of tweets from Jon Stewart who I personally admire both as a comic and as a sort of a public figure.
The problem with the Trump Town Hall wasn't platforming or a fragile, siloed audience unable to be exposed to newsworthy opinions.
I would say that both audiences, whether he's referring to the presumably pro-Trump audience in the room or the ordinary regular CNN audience...
That's got to cut both ways.
The silos argument has to cut both ways.
Look at dear old Jake Tippy Tappy Tapper, trying to make his way through that information, trying to mitigate it.
Even though the Republicans didn't get everything they wanted, it does seem that Donald Trump has been exonerated.
An audience to be exposed to newsworthy opinions, antithetical to their own.
The problem was an event that was clearly negotiated to Trump's approval and owed to Axis.
But, as is being covered in succession, and you'll see our analysis of that show later this week.
It's really good.
I think you'll enjoy it.
It shows you that really, the news is a TV show.
The version of reality presented to us through the contrivances of the deep state and the global corporatist agenda is a kind of simulacrum, a spectacle of reality.
If it's necessary to have Trump on TV, even though you purport to loathe Trump, you're going to have Trump on TV.
Now, I know a lot of you guys like Trump, right?
You like him.
And we don't see either political party as the solution.
I'm always interested in hearing Jon Stewart's views.
I think the whole thing with Trump stuff as well.
First of all, you're absolutely right.
CNN got massive ratings.
So they got what they wanted.
It worked.
Of course, it was always going to work and it did work.
I think one of the points that I heard this week as well is, you know, CNN, because there's been a lot of apparently internal strife at CNN of people saying we shouldn't have had him on and was it right that we did that?
But the point is, you know, CNN saying, you know, Trump this, Trump that, I think even Anderson Cooper is still saying, I think he said on Monday, something about how he was doubling down still on, we know that Russia and Trump were involved together, even after this stuff has come out.
But you don't see on CNN them interviewing Marianne Williamson or RFK, do you?
No!
So they only, you know, if you're saying we need to represent everyone, that's why we got Trump on, that's the point of us being a news network, Well then represent the other side as well, represent these people.
Their power comes from limiting the size of the frame by prescribing what information that we are able to discuss and gain access to, presenting pejoratively any opinions antithetical to the state agenda.
So yeah, so that's the interesting stuff from him.
But on that note, RFK has been banned from Instagram.
That seems odd to ban a presidential candidate from a mainstream platform.
He's been banned for a a while. I think this is ongoing actually. I think this ban
has gone on for a while.
It's just like an interesting piece of perception about the fact that we've now got a presidential
candidate banned from one of the major platforms. We've had Marianne Williamson on the show,
we've had RF Kerr on the show.
His interview is up on Rumble right now and it's fantastic.
There are things that he said, in particular about Anthony Fauci.
There are things he said about who manufactured certain response medications that are staggering.
Join our local community right now.
There's a red button on your screen.
If you join us there, you can join these conversations live.
Excuse me, and put your questions to RFK, although I'll be honest.
When I was doing it it was very difficult to interrupt a man who was talking about like you know sort of spies from the KGB coming around his house and doing Cossack dancing while he's a kid.
The red bat phone to Khrushchev that his dad would sometimes use.
Not to mention these more significant revelations around the pandemic.
The assassination of his uncle and indeed his father.
It's an incredible conversation.
And for me, the issues raised and enshrined by RFK, as well as his willingness to talk about them publicly, is going to be significant in the time between now and the election.
This will prevent it being an anodyne, banal, Biden-style conversation around power.
Did you see?
I think Trump came out either today or yesterday saying that if he gets in, he'll release all the JFK files.
So it's interesting that you feel like RFK may even be affecting that side now as well
in some of the things that he's saying that he would do.
They want absolute control.
That's why there's new legislation being passed in all of the Five Eyes countries.
Those are the anglophonic nation who Edward Snowden revealed share the data of their partners
with one another to get round domestic spying laws.
You're not supposed to spy on your own domestic population.
As Snowden revealed, your government does spy on you and one of the techniques is stockpiling
that data and then like New Zealand will spy on the English people.
The English people will spy on the Australian people and it's like a little circle jerk
wife swap of espionage and it sickens me and it's got to stop.
And that's why I'm talking to Matthew Connolly later about deep state power.
But we can only do that exclusively on Rumble.
And because free speech is so important to us, why would we deny it to you?
If you're not with us on Locals already, join us there now.
There's a red button on your screen.
Do you want to join us on locals where we can see your questions. Look at
this Cypher 2000 saying temp needs to clean house, drain the swamp. Circle of mistrust
says Klawn, true chimera. I sort of like the dude. I think are you talking
about RFK? Who you guys talking about? Anyway, hit us up over there. Click on that
button. There's no charge at all. Although there is great content to be
accessed down the line if you get into it. Time now to celebrate your free speech in
an item that we call Now, the title sequence has been created by an intern here, although I do believe we pay Young Jack, don't we?
That doesn't seem like a good investment.
Legally, we have to.
We have to pay him because of the law.
If it was not the law, we simply wouldn't do it.
Let's have a look at what he's created.
So it's time for your comments and your views, your free speech, because this is a free speech platform, in an item we call Freech.
Let's see what he's done with it.
Have the word free and the word speech going together like this.
Free speech.
And then all the fireworks come off it.
Free-ch, free-ch, like that.
And then that's it.
Right, well what he's done, that's sarcastic isn't it?
It is sarcastic.
Because what he's done there is he's simply got, I described how to do it in a recent episode because in the last one, the last title sequence, I mean show the last title sequence.
That's actually very clever what he's done there because there's literally nothing you can say about it.
There is.
I can say that that was a starting point.
That was a starting point.
Now employ your expertise.
Pull up the previous thing that you had before.
Show us what you had last time.
Your comments.
Yeah, like when it was called your comments or whatever.
Free.
Also, look how offensive that font is that he's used there.
It's as basic as they come, isn't it?
It's blocky and awful.
Well, the first one is from Woollyhead, a member of our Locals community, that you can join.
There's a red button on your screen.
Click on that now.
Woollyhead says, leave Jack alone.
He has a big future, not in graphic design, but somewhere less creative.
Let's have a look at Jack, how he's responding to all this.
There he is now.
Oh, what a sweet lad trying his best.
And then, uh, Gareth's title should be Good Shirt Guy.
Okay, let's try that.
Could you create us a garish and awful graphic for that, Jack?
Watching the show while doing extreme sports.
This is Sakrin.
This episode was so funny I sprained my ankle while skateboarding.
I don't think you should be watching the show while skateboarding.
Skateboarding?
That seems dangerous.
Although, you can listen to it as a podcast.
Wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to this show.
Yeah, that seems more plausible and less lethal.
Let me see what else.
Thanks for bringing me the news.
I stopped watching the news in 2021.
It made me feel sick, said Izzy Bean.
Feech, baby.
Feech.
We could make such great merch out of the word feech.
It's such a Potentially fantastic asset some people pointing out that our item about this week in history showed in the photo We showed the first ever McDonald's advert and it showcased a man called Willard Scott who if you're American you care about There's some stuff here about
Pfizer vaccines and all sorts of stuff.
Allegedly!
As soon as I just say that name, even if I've not said anything.
Have a look at the art.
Before we leave the item for each, which is brilliant, and Gareth, please pick a few comments of your own.
Have a look at what Jack did previously that led me to give him the opportunity to create that meta-ironic and sarcastic piece of graphics that you've just seen.
It's the very sort of thing we've come to expect from Gen Z, but this is his previous effort.
Have a look.
Hit your comments!
Hit your comments!
You've got mail!
That's so bad, isn't it?
It's like offensively bad on sort of every single level because it's like the sort of like slightly folky jokey vocal, the terrible you've got mail.
I don't know what they're... I actually would like... Makes you angry, doesn't it?
Yeah.
I want to interview them and say, what do you think you're doing?
Right.
Like, I don't know.
I can see what you are doing.
Yeah.
Listen, in a minute, we're going to... Oh, do you have any bits of content you want to read?
No, well, Bexy Bex says, when's RFK coming back on the show?
Amazing interview.
So when are you ready for that?
We will get RFK back on because we have made this decision.
We are going to showcase and platform RFK because I think that he will alter the debate.
I'm sure that a democratic party that stymies and ultimately negates the popularity of Bernie Sanders through the internal party mechanics is going to give pretty short shrift to a guy that's saying he's going to disband the CIA, that JFK was a CIA asset that they then went on to...
I'm going to say what he said about the pandemic, Antony Fauci.
I'm going to say what he said about Antony Fauci.
They are going to shut that guy down hard.
But the fact is, with independent media, he is going to have a voice.
And because of the stuff he's talking about, it's the very things that we care about.
So he will be coming back soon.
I've got his number and I've been communicating with him.
We'll get Marianne Williamson.
Marianne believes that we always talk about the necessity for significant systemic change.
That's why later in the week when we talked to former MI5 operative Ami Mashon, I raised with her the possibility of disbanding MI5, FBI, CIA.
She of course will say that there's good people in those organizations such as there are great people in the police force teaching professors professions, national health or medical professions, but
they, within their institutions, it's difficult to succeed because the
institutions all become corralled either to minimizing expenditure or servicing the
needs of powerful establishment elites. Either that or they just don't
do the work as is the case with this Trump case. Yeah. Let's find out. Did you do
even the rudimentary checks? Not rudimentary ones, no.
We didn't do those.
We just went on and just promulgated this story throughout the mainstream media with our allies over at CNN, without checking if it was remotely true.
Willful negligence.
Also, from the mainstream media, we're going to be talking to our friend Charlie Langton, who you might remember from his... is it...
May the 4th or May 20th, the one where you're allowed to smoke marijuana and stuff in America.
He did a very amusing report for Fox News and sometimes we like to talk to mainstream reporters to see what sort of stuff they do and say hey listen we're going to leave if you're on YouTube remember in a minute we're going to be talking to Matthew Connolly about the Deep State, about the 1.3 million Americans who have access to your top-secret information.
They can spy on you, but they spend billions preventing you knowing what they're doing.
So click on the link, join us on Rumble and even on Locals if you want to by pressing the red button and becoming a member of a thriving and loving community over there.
Right, let's have a look at our item about mainstream media reports and see what the graphics team have come up with for this.
God bless them.
And why isn't Ron Burgundy animated?
So little effort.
Why that colour?
Why that graphic?
Why those colours?
He might be a genius.
Like, that's the only... Yeah.
You mean, after we're all dead, people might go, they'll be like, God, he's amazing.
Actually, these were good.
Yeah.
Okay, so in case you don't remember who Charlie Langton is, can we show this?
Yeah, because it's actually casual drug use in this, which also you can't show on YouTube, which is an odd thing, isn't it?
You can't show people just smoking weed.
Yeah, we got this video that we did last week, demonetised.
Demonetised!
Yeah, there they go.
What did you do?
Well, then we... Because I'm blaming you.
No, I mean, it's just, it wasn't showing this, it was just talking about marijuana and just like, you know, some of the legal stuff that's going on with marijuana at the moment.
They took Rachel Maddow saying you can get a vaccine, you won't spread it.
That's there.
That's still up.
Okay, good.
As long as it's fair.
All right, let's have a look at old Charlie Langton hanging out and smoking doobies.
Smoking on the news!
Smoke it, man!
Hit it, Charlie!
Hit it, man!
Hit it, Charlie!
That holiday, 4-20, April 20th, celebrating everything pot.
How are you celebrating it today?
Like this, you know what I'm saying?
Smoking weed, you know what I'm saying?
Charlie, are you there from Fox News?
Are you with us?
Have you joined us?
Yes, I am!
And I haven't had anything, I'm totally sober!
Are you?
Charlie, you were taking recreational drugs or medical drugs, depends on how you frame it.
What was the impact of that on you, mate?
Uh, nothing.
I'm good.
Me was good.
But the people on 420, the day that they, apparently they smoked marijuana out in the open, and we went to the west side of Detroit, which is kind of an area of Detroit that's a, you know, it's a little poverty area, that type of thing.
But people were celebrating.
They were having a great time.
It is legal in Michigan, and in particular Detroit, to smoke marijuana out in the open.
I think you have to be 21.
There may be a couple little things, a couple little rules, But pretty much that's it, and 420 is a day that really has been adopted by pretty much all over the United States.
Maybe not as much as the people I found, I admit, it may be a little extreme, but they were having fun.
It's kind of like the St.
Patrick's Day celebration, the drinking of the green beer, for those that like that, with pot, marijuana, joints, blunts, and they were having a great time, they really were.
Charlie, I get the sense from speaking with you that you've worked in the media for a long time.
How do you feel that the modern media landscape has become sort of cleaved into these various tributaries of opposition and hate?
What do you think about the revelation that the FBI pushed that story about Russiagate?
How do you feel about the sort of lack of trust in media organizations?
And if you can tie in the sort of payoff from your lot for the Dominion machines into this
and the sort of stuff that's going on into Tucker into just a broad sketch about how
the media mainstream media landscape has changed in the time you've been there and where we
find ourselves now, bringing in all those kinds of stories.
I'd love your perspective.
Well, so before I got into media, I'm a lawyer and I practiced law for 25 years before I
I did anything on television or radio.
So for me, I wanted to get into the media because I think there's an element of Of stories.
I know it sounds cliche, but you can tell a story.
And I mean, I can relate it to the pot thing about how we've changed.
The laws have changed and the attitude has changed.
I mean, smoking many, many years ago was totally acceptable.
Now it's not.
You know, they had to have a massive campaign to put your seatbelt on a car.
Now it's automatic.
So I think that the media can I think it reflects culture in a way that, if I did this, I could never do the pot story on the weed bus five years ago.
I probably couldn't do it three years ago.
I did it last year, but this year it evolves.
And I think I think mainstream media is entertainment.
In my view, it's got to be an element of entertainment.
50%, 60%, whatever the story is.
Obviously, on a triple murder on the east side of Detroit, it's not going to be as ha-ha entertaining.
But there still has to be an element of where we want people to relate to it.
So, you know, we can do a hate piece, and I do think sometimes media types tend to maybe over-serious the story.
It doesn't need to be.
Tell the story as if you know it, as if it can relate to anybody out there.
And what is the point of a story?
If we're looking for a barricaded gun or something, that's fine.
If it's pot, if it's just smoking and people having fun and don't judge at how we've evolved, then that's it.
Yes, no doubt news media has started to center not only on entertainment, but on getting views.
And I feel that Tucker was a particular, let's say, genius in that space.
Someone who spoke in exactly the manner that you described.
While being intelligent and not patronizing to an audience, he was able to convey information in a way that made it Relatable.
Now, I imagine being a lawyer and a Fox employee, there are numerous reasons why you can't answer that question with total transparency.
But again, to talk about how the media has become the focus of so much derision.
How do you think that contemporary news media will survive when there is so much derision and criticism and mistrust?
When there is so much partisanship with CNN and MSNBC saying Fox is the worst thing in the world.
With Fox saying that they're snowflakes and they're like, you know, full of crap and stuff.
How do you feel the media is going to have to evolve and adapt?
Do you think it will be by becoming more partisan?
How do you feel it relates to stories like the one that I mentioned, like with the, you know, the FBI and the mainstream media collaborating to create the Russiagate story and, you know, and also the media becoming part of the story as through the aforementioned Dominion thing?
But I think, I think with the Dominion, I think with Fox, I think that if I'm a conservative person and I love Donald Trump and I want to see him run again, I'm going to listen to Fox.
I'm going to watch Fox.
I'm going to, you know, I'm going to curse the day that they got rid of Tucker Carlson.
It's not going to change.
If I am, if I love Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, I'm going to watch MSNBC and I'm going to hate Fox.
And I think that we're often, we peg ourselves, if I want to be a good conservative, I'm going to watch and do everything that the Fox people say.
Listen, media's a smart people.
They know that there's an audience out there.
And they know that they can play to the audience.
Give me a... In the United States, where's one station that you would automatically say is neutral?
It's right down.
Or it's there for entertainment.
Maybe the cooking channel.
Okay, but other than if it's a news station, I think that we have evolved on a network side.
I think there's a bent, there's a slant.
And I think that the advertisers, they understand that.
They'll go and they'll advertise.
I don't know if strip clubs would advertise on certain channels.
Not that we can now anyway, but there's always a market out there.
I do local news.
Some of the stories like this one went national, but most of the time it's local.
And I think the local, Local's a little bit different.
We need traffic and weather is very important to us over here.
And you know, did our Tiger baseball team win or lose?
And how do we celebrate 420?
That's not really a partisan issue.
I do think, though, when we get into the network level, for the most part, there's going to be a slant.
I don't see that changing.
I think that's going to stay.
Yeah, it's interesting when you have a story like CNN giving Trump that town hall and then going into a sort of orgy of coruscation and self-exhoration.
After is an interesting litmus test for where the media finds itself.
It requires the views.
It needs to take a strong, apparently ethical stance, but those ethics don't often hold up to scrutiny
because the ultimate requirement is to get views.
I'm interested in local news, actually, Charlie, because I feel that the more power and information
are decentralized, the more a community feels that they are being spoken to peer to peer
rather than being spoken down to by didactic and condescending media.
I think that's a great improvement.
I think the creation of communities that share views while continuing to recognize we all have stuff in common with one another is important.
I think that's an interesting distinction you've drawn there about local news.
It feels like you are part of that community somewhat.
I think I can make an argument that, you know, Donald Trump, for example, whether you love him or hate him, he's great for viewing.
And I think that the fact that CNN is... And I watch CNN, I watch MSNBC, I watch Fox, I watch them all on the network.
But I think that when they're going to...
They're not going to end at Trump.
Trump is a lightning rod, and I think that a lot of the Democrats perceive that they want Trump to run because he's going to divide the party.
Locally, in Michigan, the Republican Party, some would argue because of Trump, has destroyed the Republican Party.
Now you have Republicans fighting each other Republicans.
Now I'm not saying that on our local level that we're going to be so partisan as the network, but I do think that there's going to be a lot of talk about Donald Trump, how it's, the CNN, the MSNBC, the more traditional liberal media, they're going to be talking and they're basically going to say, let's talk about Trump every single day because he's a divisive, he's divisive and it helps Democrats in the Long run.
Abortion.
We just went through a big abortion debate.
Our Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade.
Okay, Democrats, they harped on that.
They said, we're going to die to Roe vs. Wade.
Oh my God!
It's the end of the world!
Well, maybe it was.
People came out to the polls.
People tend to vote when they're mad, and they did.
And as a result, at least here in Michigan, Republicans lost every single race, all of the major statewide races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, etc.
So, I do think the media, though, Again, on the network level, I think that they're looking for things that are lightning rods, whether they get people to mad one way or another.
And I think the Republicans now have to take a little bit of a step back and say, what issue is really going to get our party, the conservative party, to really go out there and vote?
And I don't think it's happening so much on the local level, although Donald Trump's going to be in Michigan in about another month, I think it is, and oh wow, I mean, we will have I mean it's gonna be a circus and I hope I can cover that one.
You'll be all over that Charlie.
Take a couple of doobies.
Do what you do best.
Use your legal skills and your love of recreational and medical marijuana to get the best damn Donald Trump interview that the world has seen.
Charlie, thank you so much for giving us those insights and for sharing your time with us.
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
Thank you!
You can follow Charlie Langton over on Fox, particularly if you're in Michigan and Detroit and those kind of areas.
I'll be watching more of Charlie's stuff.
It makes sense that Charlie's a lawyer because he spoke with a lot of clarity.
Yes he did.
Yeah, Charlie knows what he's doing.
Listen, we've got a fantastic conversation coming up.
We're going to be speaking with Matthew Connolly about the influence and nefarious insidious power of the deep state, the way that they are able to assert and exert power and control in a manner that you may not have even speculated on before, unless you are a well-versed and well-read viewer of our channel.
Before that, we are... Oh, yeah, well, Putin has put his nuclear forces on high alert.
In other news, we're probably all going to be dead soon.
And what's the thing that we were pairing it with?
Oh yeah, like when CNN put Trump on there for that town hall and it became, once again, a culturally bifurcating issue, one area that struck us as significant here on Stay Free was Trump's refusal to, in a trite manner, say, oh, I support Ukraine or Russia, which sort of amount to... Who do you want to Who do you want to win?
Come on, mate.
Who do you think's the artist?
Like, it just comes down to a new form of patriotism, carrying the message, whatever.
And really, I can't help but think that Trump's point that what's required is a diplomatic and peaceful solution is one worth investigating.
We have done exactly that.
In our item, here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
Thank you for choosing Fox News.
Here's the news.
No, here's the fucking news.
Trump was on CNN!
Grrr!
For all his flaws, what's more important?
Trump or Putin putting nuclear weapons on high alert, meaning that stopping the war might be a good thing?
Or still, grrr, Trump?
Which one?
I don't know!
Trump being on CNN has been derided by some as platforming a dangerous lunatic, celebrated by others as a return to form by a brilliant orator.
Where do you stand?
Let me know in the chat and the comments.
But what are What I'd like to focus on, if I may, if it's okay with you guys, is the moment where he talks about the necessity for ending the conflict, ending the war.
And the person that was interrogating him or questioning Trump kept saying, yeah, but whose side are you on?
Whose side are you on?
Pick a team!
Pick a team!
Hundreds of thousands of people are dying.
Russian people, Ukrainian people, human beings, sons and daughters and people's relatives, people that are beloved are dying in a war.
To some degree it seems to me because it's financially beneficial to prolong it.
I don't know if I'm being incredibly 1960s counterculture, war is a bad thing here, that we should be ending wars and looking for peace because it's always better for everyone and it's where we'll arrive eventually.
I don't know if that's a Outmoded, outdated mentality.
It used to be popular in the countercultural movement.
So, let's have a look at a bit of that CNN town hall.
Let's talk about Putin saying that they are on nuclear high alert now, which is essentially saying we're getting ready for a nuclear war.
And let's assess, as individuals and as a culture, whether or not we want to continue The current administration has made it clear that we should continue to provide military equipment to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves.
any of that territory back if all it's going to lead to is more death and more violence.
How is that the liberal position?
Let's have a look at that town hall thing.
The current administration has made it clear that we should continue to provide military
equipment to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves.
Do you support this decision and how would you deal with the increasing threat posed
by Vladimir Putin?
First of all, thank you very much.
It's really nice.
And it's an important question.
So important.
Because we're giving away so much equipment.
We don't have ammunition for ourselves right now.
We don't have ammunition for ourselves.
We're giving away so much.
Absolutely.
Do you want Ukraine to win this war?
It's amazing, isn't it?
Because first of all, for all of their grandstanding critiquing and condemning of Donald Trump, when it comes to it, CNN will have Trump on for one reason and one reason only.
People will watch Donald Trump on the television.
And in a way, OK, if that's your position, but don't spend all of your time pretending that you really hate Donald Trump and then be caught in some weird kind of codependent tango with someone that you apparently loathe.
Really, it reveals this, that the aesthetics and inflections of left v. right are little more than a tribal livery that's used to attract the appropriate audience and utilize the appropriate market in spend.
They don't actually care at all.
I don't think in terms of winning and losing.
I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people and breaking down this country.
Even if you disagree with Trump, even if you have concerns around Donald Trump, surely that is correct, isn't it?
And if that's an incredibly reductive and simplistic opinion, then what was the whole anti-war movement of the 60s?
What was the anti-Vietnam movement?
What was the civil rights movement of the late 60s?
Oh, you're being naive!
Just leave things as they are!
Think that by any chance that perspective plays into the hands of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Electric.
You don't think they benefit from people going, this is just how it is, what would you do?
Leave Ukraine today?
And of course, no country on the earth is suffering more as a result of this prolonged conflict than Ukraine and its population.
None.
So at some point, diplomacy and peace have to be discussed.
And I'm not saying that Donald Trump is the answer.
I know a lot of you think Donald Trump is, and I know loads of you think Donald Trump definitely isn't.
But peace is the answer.
What do you... Can I just follow up on that?
You said you don't think in terms of winning and losing.
Mr. President, can I just follow up on that because that's a really important statement that you just made there.
Can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war?
I want everybody to stop dying.
In a way, that is a secondary point, isn't it?
Who do you want to win?
Russia or Ukraine?
Let's think about, like, the war between America and Japan.
Was it the right thing to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
Would you do that now?
If you were the person that had to press the button to kill the people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, would you feel 100% confident doing that?
Or the wars in Korea?
Or the war in Afghanistan?
Did America win?
Did Afghanistan win?
Winning is a reductive, jingoistic kind of perspective that in the old days, and when I say old days, I mean like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, like 10, 15 years ago, that would have been a right-wing position.
What the questioner is essentially saying is you better now say you support Ukraine because even though this isn't a proxy war, that's where US military might, through the military-industrial complex, is being expended.
And if you don't pay homage, then you are with the baddies.
Aren't we a little more sophisticated than that in this day and age?
Particularly if your critiques of Donald Trump are based on his lack of sophistication as a statesman and, you know, obviously the kind of moral issues that have come up.
They're dying.
Russians and Ukrainians.
I want them to stop dying.
And I'll have that done.
I'll have that done in 24 hours.
Old school Donald Trump puts a timescale on it.
That'll be done in a day.
24 hours, I'll have it done.
When it comes to what's happening there, when you were in office, you said that you respected President Putin.
Do you still respect him today?
He made a tremendous mistake.
He was a smart guy, you know?
I remember I said he was smart, she was smart.
Putin made a bad mistake, in my opinion.
What was his mistake?
His mistake was going in.
He would have never gone in if I was president.
Okay, so let's give this some financial context.
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new $1.2 billion weapons package for Ukraine that includes an additional 155mm artillery ammunition and air defence systems, while British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed on Thursday that London is providing Ukraine with longer range missiles, marking another escalation of NATO support for Kiev.
So however you see this funding, whether you see it as necessary for a humanitarian effort or whatever way you package that in your own mind, it is prolonging the conflict.
Estonian President Alar Karis this week said that Western leaders must prepare for the possibility of Russia delivering on its nuclear threats.
There are very few people who are close to Putin who actually know, but he's definitely not insane, at least in medical terms.
That means he knows exactly what he's doing, Karis said, about the Russian dictator's mentality.
If Russia is becoming very desperate, then, and I wouldn't say by accident, but even maybe deliberately, they might push a button.
This comes as Vladimir Putin has put his nuclear forces on high alert.
Russia is alleged to have begun large-scale nuke exercises, including activating its central command system, dubbed Monolith.
Ukrainian spies reported that Russia has begun exercises of its nukes, including all elements of the nuclear triad, submarines, missiles, and warplanes.
The nuclear forces are reportedly on the highest levels of combat readiness.
Me, as a person continually like you, deluged with media information, continually consuming crisis, my whole life really consumed by 9-11, economic crash, pandemic, this crisis mind that we've had inculcated over decades past.
Finds it almost impossible to take seriously that there is a nuclear arsenal seriously preparing for nuclear war.
I immediately think, well, this is just more propaganda.
This is Russian propaganda and no one really wants a nuclear war.
But just because something hasn't happened yet, that doesn't mean it's never going to happen, because otherwise nothing new would ever happen, would it?
So it seems to me that based on the current information, there is brinkmanship taking place that is China has rapidly increased its engagement around the world.
and continue fueling the war machine, which shows you how significant and how powerful
the war machine is, i.e. it's the zenith of the American economic model.
So, not only does America not want peace, they don't want anybody to want peace,
certainly not China.
They're troubled by China trying to start peace negotiations.
China has rapidly increased its engagement around the world.
This includes brokering, actually trying to broker troubling agreements between, uh, to reestablish
diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, offering to broker peace deals, uh, between Ukraine
and the Russian aggressors.
I sometimes feel that I'm privy to the baddies' private meetings.
Because if you just think about that for a moment, what if China were like, listen, we don't want Saudi Arabia and Iran constantly at loggerheads, even if it's for their own sort of selfish economic reasons or You know, we don't want Russia and Ukraine starting a worldwide nuclear conflict, even if it is for their own selfish economic reasons.
You know, we know that America's actions and our own country's actions are for selfish economic reasons.
So presumably that is part of the Chinese mindset.
But overall, not having a nuclear war is better than having a nuclear war, isn't it?
Let me know in the comments.
So these incidents, they highlight China's persistent presence and intention to exert its influence and match the U.S.
as a global power.
They're trying to match us as a global power.
Oh no, how are they doing that?
Well, you know those wars we keep trying to start?
Yeah, is it wrong we're doing that?
Yes, but they're trying to stop those wars that we need to be number one top dog of the world.
So we don't want that, do we?
Wait a minute, what happens to us if there's a nuclear war?
Don't think about that, you'll be so rich it won't matter.
So how can the U.S.
It's almost like they've realised, oh no, we can't dominate the global narrative on behalf of the military-industrial complex and transcendent financial interests that are not actually American the way that you are an American person, but are just simply housed within lax American financial and political systems that allow them to dominate the globe in this manner.
The only thing that can threaten this hegemony is another similarly large country that has a different agenda.
I think at that point, you have to put aside the flag and start thinking about the mushroom clouds.
I mean, at what point do you think, no man, never!
Never will I align with China!
What if it's China or death?
Talk me through death.
What happens?
Truth is, no one knows.
And can we expect to see more countries try to turn to China as a mediator?
Look at them sort of, like, trying to gerrymander their way through a conversation.
They're simply, we want to be in total control, and our control is predicated on threats and war and commerce, military-industrial complex, ignoring the domestic population that we've already subjugated and bludgeoned into compliance.
Nuclear war is not good for us.
I don't see anyone who benefits, literally, even them.
Don't you WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH- ...press those buttons, particularly.
A very credible Columbia University.
Inadvertently pressed a series of buttons.
You can see the rest of our presentation here is the news on Rumble in full straight after this.
Before that though, we have Matthew Connolly, Professor of International and Global History at Columbia and author Author of the declassification engine, Matthew, welcome to the show.
My apologies for inadvertently firing up a sting that's a terrifying AI orifice emulating human vocal sounds.
Okay, no worries.
Talk to you about the story that's broken today that the FBI didn't, it seems like, at least practice due diligence before promulgating the Russiagate allegations that dogged Trump throughout his presidency.
Tell me, how does this fit into your broader understanding of deep state espionage agencies such as the FBI and CIA, please?
Yeah, well, Russell, you know, if you were paying attention, you know, people who are tracking like FBI disclosures over the last few decades, you would find that time and again, they've had to admit agents, you know, at best misbehaving.
And making mistakes, as they like to call them, when it comes to the surveillance of US citizens.
I mean, you go back almost quarter a century ago, the FBI disclosed dozens and dozens of instances in which FBI agents had gathered more information that they were entitled to.
There was a study, another example, they found that FBI headquarters, when they ordered surveillance, more than half the time, Uh, they were exceeding the legal limits, right?
So this has happened over and over and over again.
And to me, like, the scandalous thing is what isn't illegal.
I mean, the fact that, you know, these kinds of things have happened continuously for decades now, and yet no one has held to account.
If this is an institutional problem, as you describe, and each time we learn of the FBI paying Twitter to censor information, or the CIA being involved in coups that ultimately lead to greater conflagration, Is there an argument, as Robert F. Kennedy suggests, for disbanding the CIA in particular?
Are these institutions salvageable or do they have, at essence, a kind of, I don't know, if not negligence, a kind of hypocrisy?
Is it impossible for them to function in order to protect a population?
Well, you know, it is hard to imagine a world, you know, without the FBI, without the CIA.
But I like to remind people that in the United States, these are relatively recent inventions.
You know, going back, you know, before World War One, there was no Central Intelligence Agency.
There was no Federal Bureau of Investigation.
You know, the U.S.
was really an outlier.
For the first 150 years of our history, we didn't have intelligence agencies.
The only time that the U.S., you know, after the first You know, period, the revolution in the early republic.
After that point, the only time the U.S.
employed, you know, large numbers of spies and intercepted communications was during wartime.
And after wars ended, they dismantled this apparatus.
So it's not impossible to imagine that in the future, we won't necessarily have to have 18 different intelligence agencies.
Like to me, that's the aberration, the way that this system has just grown completely out of control.
Matthew, since the Patriot Act, no American has any privacy.
It's possible for them to store your data and look at it at will.
One of the things that you cover in your book is the number of people that have access to information.
I think you said up to 1.3 million people.
I wonder if this kind of legislation and this kind of intrusion enforces the idea that the state That has a degree of authority that infantilizes a population.
As you've just said, that typically these are the kind of measures that would be deployed in a war then rescinded subsequently.
The fact that they are ubiquitously applied suggests that there is a permanent state of paternalism.
I'd like you to just explain to us a little more how since the Patriot Act the American population have been universally spied on and also about this how the recent attempts to review that legislation are being delayed under the auspices of protecting us from American drug cartels and stuff.
Yeah, well, you know, there are people who would say the reason why we have the Patriot Act, you know, the reason why we have 18 different intelligence agencies and so on, you know, it's because that's the only way we can protect American lives, right?
That it's our national security that's at stake.
You know, but when you look back, those moments, periods, long periods, you know, when the United States was at peace, you know, in fact, you know, for a time where the world's only superpower I'm talking about the 1990s.
Even then, these intelligence agencies, especially the National Security Agency, were pushing to expand their surveillance powers.
So it almost doesn't matter what kind of threats supposedly threatened the country.
It seems like no matter what is happening in that outside world, inside our government, there are people who are constantly pushing to expand their ability to spy on the American people.
I'll give you one example of this.
Back in 1984, The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, this is the part of the government that sets the rules for everyone else.
They're the ones at the OLC who get to decide what's legal and what isn't.
They wrote an opinion according to which American surveillance agencies like the NSA, they can intercept our communications when they go abroad, right?
So when American, you know, phone calls or emails or what have you, when they go through foreign data centers, all of that is fair game.
And that is a giant legal loophole that allows, at least in principle, the NSA and all these other agencies to systematically spy on American communications.
You know what's the funny part to me?
First of all, it's the fact that it was written in 1984.
That's one.
And the second thing is nobody outside of government has ever been allowed to see this ruling.
Even American senators have asked to see this and they have been told they're not allowed.
So we have this secret law that allows government agencies to spy on us in secret.
That is funny.
One of the other revelations of Snowden was the collaboration between what are known as
the Five Eyes countries, which I suppose suggests that ultimately this is a global problem.
Whilst there's no doubt that America has avowed enmity towards Russia and China and other
countries that might challenge them for unipolar hegemony, there is elsewhere a kind of what
appears to be the deep state apparatus that undergirds global corporatism.
With neither party being willing to meaningfully amend these institutions and the legislation
that we've even so far discussed, which allows intrusion and breach of privacy of an unprecedented
level, what is there to be hopeful for in the conventional political space?
How can they ever be stopped?
No one talks about releasing Julian Assange.
No one talks about releasing, to any serious degree, the files surrounding the murder of JFK.
And this is all presumably because if we had the type of transparency to which we are entitled,
we would conclude that these agencies primarily function in order to control the American
population rather than protect them.
So what is the political solution for a problem of the nature that's outlined in your writing?
Yeah, well, you know, the theory behind the five eyes, and I think there's a lot of evidence
to support it, is that what they're doing, basically, the British government, together
with the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, each one of them can act, you know,
outside their national boundaries in ways that they're not legally allowed to within
those boundaries and against their own citizens.
So the theory is that, you know, they could each spy on each other's citizens.
Now, I don't know.
I don't know for a fact, you know, that that's happening right now.
But the fact is, you know, every government, including the U.S.
government, does do these very operations when they're working abroad.
And there's almost no limit, right, to how much and in what ways they will spy on the citizens of other states.
So that means, you know, that no matter where you live, you're fair game, you know, for dozens of different intelligence agencies, many of them now equipped with the most powerful tools available from the private sector, right?
Like the Pegasus software allows them to break into your iPhones and even turn smartphones into surveillance devices, right?
So even like relatively small countries can now purchase this kind of technology off the shelf.
So what do we do?
I think the first thing people need to know is they need to be aware.
You know, of what's now possible and what in fact is likely.
Because one thing these surveillance programs want most of all, and they even use the word itself, they want us to be naive.
They thrive on our naivete.
So to the extent that people are blithely unaware of how governments conspire on them, this only is to their benefit and empowers them further.
How come so many people got access and security clearance?
You said like 1.3 million people.
Well, how come?
Yeah, well, because there's so much classified information that you couldn't run this government without giving over a million people access to top secret information.
So to give an example, back in 2012, the U.S.
government itself issued an estimate as to how many times government officials were classifying information secret so nobody would be allowed to see it for decades to come.
It came to 93 million times.
Three times every second, some government official is deciding something had to be classified secret, right?
So, just imagine how would you even run the American military?
These 18 different intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, the FBI, and all the rest of it.
If you didn't have lots and lots of employees who had access to this information.
And also all of their many consultants, right?
So many hundreds of thousands of these people are not actually government employees.
They're consultants working for the government, in some cases earning more than they used to back when they still work for government, when they got these clearances.
And so, yeah, it's 1.3 million.
And that includes people like Jack Teixeira, the airman first class, who is found to be sharing secrets with his friends on Discord.
So all kinds of people now have access to all kinds of information.
And yet billions are being spent to prevent ordinary people gaining access to this information.
So again, what kind of relationship does this suggest that actually exists between the state and the population that they govern?
If they have access to all of our information and our access to their information is significantly impaired, how can we begin to meaningfully change the world, have a fairer world without Meaningfully addressing and amending institutes that don't tend to be affected by the cycles of transition within ordinary electoral democracy.
Well, Russell, you know, every person who's run successfully for president of the United States has promised that they would bring a new day of transparency and accountability.
And that includes Donald Trump.
You know, Donald Trump, back in 2015, 2016, he promised he was going to release all the JFK files, but he didn't do it.
It tells you something.
It tells you something, the fact that these people, once they become president, If they didn't already, they fall in love with secrecy.
It's one of the few ways that presidents can be completely unaccountable.
Because Trump was right when he said basically presidents are sovereign over secrecy.
What they decide is national security information is information nobody else is legally entitled to see unless they have that so-called need to know.
So how do we change this?
Well, we have to stop believing presidential candidates.
When they tell us that as soon as they're in charge of their system, they're going to dismantle it.
It's just not going to happen.
The only parts of our government that could actually do something about this are Congress and the courts, right?
So that's the only way.
If you want to check on federal power, you've got to bring in the other two branches of government.
Oh wow, so you don't think that even a political figure like RFK, that is at least in terms
of his rhetoric, and we've spoke to him and he's a very sincere man who I think is extremely
well intentioned if I may say, that he says he would disband the CIA.
So you don't think that it's even within the office of the president to alter these systems
and that in a sense is perhaps the problem with the type of power that we have now, is
that once you're within the system, you're part of the system and it's impossible to
amend it and it suggests that the only solution that we have is to establish alternative means
of communication, alternative currency, alternative media, because the systems are self-sustaining
and don't appear to be able to significantly change.
Well, if the next president actually did, you know, get elected on that platform and really did manage to dismantle this vast secrecy complex, it would be like nothing that's ever happened before in American history.
It's just never happened.
And I'll give you a couple of examples.
Look at Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter, he was a born-again Christian, right?
He came out of Georgia.
And here's a man who so believed in transparency that he gave, when he gave an interview to Playboy magazine, he confessed that he sometimes felt lust in his heart and he felt guilty, you know, about having these feelings that weren't about his wife, Rosalind.
Okay, so this is the kind of man we're talking about.
He promised a totally new day, you know, he was going to reform all the secrecy and corruption of the Kissinger and Nixon years.
And what happens?
In the time that he was president, we can actually track this Now we can enumerate and count the number of classified documents.
There was even more secrecy than before.
And by the end of it, he was complaining, you know, about how so much information that was top secret and sensitive was available to far too many people.
They wanted to create their own presidential secrecy stamp.
You know what they were going to call it, Russell?
Royal.
Oh, yes.
Okay, we better stamp that with royal.
Just had a few more feelings that weren't about Rosalind.
Give that a stamp.
Oh, there's a new secretary starting.
Oh my god, that guy's gorgeous.
Give that the royal stamp.
Power corrupts people.
They are unable to fulfill their earnest and heartfelt impressions once they are within these institutions.
In a sense, it's an invitation to end the mudslinging and personal invective and condemnation of the individuals within that system.
And to recognise that it's institutional change that is required, that whether it's someone like Donald Trump or RFK or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, that ultimately, once they're within that system, they will behave like people within that system, almost like an environmental thing, like it was a river or a rainforest.
You might say, when I'm in the rainforest, I'm going to wear UGG boots and a heavy woolen shawl, but once you get in there, you're going to be trying to avoid the tree frogs and you're going to be there in a pair of swimming trunks.
You're damn right, Russell.
It is a straw.
Yeah, I like the analogy!
And you know, the founders are right about this.
You know, Jefferson and Adams, they'd write to each other.
As soon as someone's in power, all of a sudden they believe they can do no wrong, right?
No matter what they do, they're doing it for the right reasons.
The only way you can hold people in check is to pit power against power.
The only way you're going to bring a president to account and have them give up this sovereign control, this royal system of secrecy, is by getting the courts and Congress to start using their power.
Okay, well I don't know enough to argue with you about that, because you're a professor at Columbia, and I'm the bloke out for getting Sarah Marshall.
So you have the advantage, sir!
Plainly.
But like, what's going on over there at Columbia?
What are you teaching?
Well, I'm actually starting an exciting new job.
I'm going to be starting in July.
I'll be directing something called the Center for the Study of Existential Risk over at Cambridge.
And so I'm not giving up my Columbia job.
I'm still going to be an historian here.
But for the next, you know, who knows how long, as long as it takes, perhaps, I'll be defending the world against super volcanoes and killer asteroids and AI insurrections.
So you can rest easy.
Do rest easy at night.
Cambridge, Massachusetts or Cambridge, UK?
No, Cambridge in the UK!
All right!
Good!
Right, well, you come around here then.
Can I ask one question?
Yeah, hold on one second.
Oh no.
Sorry about that.
I was really interested in, obviously we mentioned Julian Assange and we were talking about RFK and his position is that he would pardon Assange and obviously that's a very popular opinion, but like the growing number of people, whistleblowers that have been charged under the Espionage Act, The way you talk about the bulk collection of data and the kind of surveillance and how it's just multiplying year upon year.
What do you see for the, you mentioned Jack Teixeira as well.
How do you see the kind of future of whistleblowing in the way in which the whistleblowers will be kind of shut down and the espionage act will be used against them?
Do you see the amount of people, I mean, I know Obama and Trump used it way more than had been used in the past.
Do you think that this is just going to keep growing exponentially until we have prisons full of whistleblowers?
Where is this going to lead to?
Yeah, you're right.
Under Obama, they prosecuted more people for leaking classified information under the Espionage Act than every administration combined up until that point.
And one reason why that's now possible is because using electronic record systems, they can track more easily that people had access to particular kinds of records.
So it's now like technologically possible, you know, to begin more systematically identifying the people who are leaking information for their own secret reasons in some cases.
So, you know, I'm worried about the Assange case.
Like, whatever you think of Julian Assange, in the last months of the Trump administration, they decided to add to this indictment, you know, account for having violated the Espionage Act merely for releasing those Classified documents online, okay?
So what's important about that is that this would be the first time that somebody has been prosecuted, you know, just for sharing what the government considers classified information.
Now, if Assange is eventually brought to trial and is convicted for that, that's going to be an incredibly important and potentially dangerous precedent.
Because there are a lot of people out there, including perhaps you and me, you know, who share information the government thinks is classified.
Could we also be prosecuted under the Espionage Act?
If you actually read the black letter text of that law, it seems like there are hundreds of millions of people who could be locked up in American jails.
You happy with that?
Yeah, wow, that's terrifying.
It seems like it is going to get worse, yeah.
And I guess that's why the Assange case is so important.
I expect that when Matthew comes to Cambridge, you'll probably be troubling him on the regular with questions like that, will you?
That's right.
I'll be there with my French horn.
In Cambridge.
Did you have something else to say, Matthew?
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I was just going to say that's one reason why it's exciting for me because, you know, what you learn over the years, decades, you know, studying government information and the secrets that governments keep, is a lot of times that information is truly dangerous.
Like it really could get people killed.
Maybe not every last human being on the planet, but as long as that's possible, people who care about the future of humanity, we have to care about government secrecy as well.
Why are you so cheerful?
Oh, well, it's like gallows humor, you know.
I tell my students on the first day, I teach a class at History of the End of the World, and I say, like, if you can't laugh at things like pandemics and nuclear war, then this may not be the right class for you.
And I say that in all sincerity, because the only way that I personally can study these horrible subjects like this is if I maintain a sense of humor.
It's a little bit like that classic film, you know, the Manchurian Kennedy.
Always with a sense of humor, comrade.
Always with a sense of humor.
Yeah, we have to do that as well, because once in a while we get told stuff that makes us upset.
Hey, someone on the chat called Girl says, Matthew, how do you recognize propaganda?
Ah, great question.
How do you recognize propaganda?
You know, I spent years...
Yeah, so I spent years studying this stuff because when I first started out as a historian, I wanted to understand how France carried out this murderous war in North Africa.
Anywhere from half a million to a million people in the end were killed in the course of Algeria's fight for independence.
I spent months looking at propaganda files in government.
And, you know, it's one of these things, it's a little bit like pornography, right, as the Supreme Court said, is you know it when you see it.
But, you know, having seen it from the inside, you can see how it is, you know, even 60 years ago, that's what I'm talking about now, 60 years ago governments were hiring like Madison Avenue firms to advise them on how they could carry out like counterinsurgency operations and make it appealing to the American public.
And so you can only imagine now what's possible now that they're using things like ChatGPT to create this information.
They're going to be able to do it now on an industrial scale.
They'll be able to populate infinite numbers of websites with infinite amounts of false content.
So yeah, it's just going to get worse.
Matthew.
Well, Matthew, it's been a fantastic conversation.
I've really enjoyed speaking with you.
Would you tell us a little bit about your book before we wrap up our conversation?
I'd be delighted.
And let me just say, first of all, it's a bargain, right?
It's very reasonably priced, attractively packaged, and it's called America's top.
It's the actual title.
It's a declassification engine.
What history tells us about America's top secrets published by Penguin Random House.
It's a labor of love.
I worked almost 10 years on it.
And in there, I try to show, you know, not just the things that I discovered, you know, by exploring like millions of these secret documents, but also like what you could now do with data science to turn the tables, like to use the technology of surveillance to begin to surveil our government.
So I'm hoping you like it, Russell.
I'll send you a copy.
Thank you so much, Joe.
I hope you do.
We're going to post a link to Matthew's book in the chat.
Matthew, thank you so much for your time.
Good luck in your new job in Cambridge.
We're looking forward to meeting you in person then, and thank you for sharing this complex information in such an accessible manner.
Thank you.
Thank you, Russell.
Remember that bit at the beginning where I pressed, by accident, this button?
That's a piece of AI that we sort of talk about and I became sort of fixated with because it's such a revolting, disgusting looking object.
Oh no, Matthew didn't hang up.
That's the last, first and last thing you will have seen.
That's so weird because in a way it undermines everything that happened between the... It's like that was the parenthesis of our whole conversation.
Yes it was.
Like it was a good, mature conversation with an Ivy League professor but at either end of it... He did say humour was important.
He would have liked that.
Hey, join us over on Locals.
We're going to come back in a minute.
Press the red button.
We're wrapping up this show, but we're going to be carrying on on Locals.
You can ask us some questions, muck about, have a laugh.
We're going to be talking a little bit more about the FBI, the CIA, showing you stuff that we like.
Maybe Gareth will play the French horn.
Do you remember when that was a thing?
Also, if you become a member of our Locals community, you get access to all sorts of exclusive information that we just simply couldn't share publicly.
It's too disgusting.
On tomorrow's show, we'll be speaking to the U.S.
medic and healthcare professional turned activist, Dr. Bob, talking about how the U.S.
healthcare corporations are expanding control of the federal-funded Medicare.
So join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
You lot, though, get over on local.
It might go quiet for a second, but then we'll be back on there talking about the most private, intimate, brilliant stuff.
Until then, stay free.
Man, switch it.
Switch on.
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