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June 13, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:10:13
[LIVE] Trump To JAIL AGAIN?! Countdown To Trial Begins - #145 - 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.
Okay, alright there, you Awakening Wonders.
Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
You're damn right!
If you're watching us on Rumble, why don't you press the red button now and join us on Locals?
Like, uh, AtGeld who says, A wizard always arrives on time.
Yeah, that's right, we're wizards.
Or, like Jim-EarthC137, who's using this image.
Lionel Richie, say you, stay free.
We've got to put that up!
I love this!
Say you, stay free.
Plus, why don't we recut that?
Get Jack, Bad Graphics Jack.
To cut, say you, stay free, and then we can use that as a little jingle, can't we, Gal?
It'd be lovely, that.
It's my on-screen assistant, Gareth Roy.
You still called that?
Yep.
No need for that anymore, is there?
Because we're paying the appropriate amount of tax and everything.
Why can't we just call you producer now?
Sure.
It's all dealt with.
Producer.
Right.
Co-writer.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter, does it?
No.
Not on arraignment day, baby!
It's arraignment day!
Yeah!
Yes!
Let's get a-raining!
I'm gonna make it a-rain!
Yeah!
A-raining men!
Hallelujah!
It's a-raining men!
So, uh, it's a-raining today.
We're gonna be watching how the mainstream media's covering it.
What are they gonna be doing?
Mostly they focus on vehicles, don't they?
Yeah, they love a vehicle.
Oh look, he's got an aeroplane, he's in a cab, he's in a golf buggy.
If you're watching us on YouTube, we're going to be covering live Trump moving about on different vehicles, talking about the legitimacy of the case, talking about what it tells us about democracy, partisanship, then We go over exclusively onto Rumble because freedom of speech matters to us because there is a censorship industrial complex that doesn't want us openly communicating and they'll say whatever they need to say to legitimize their censorship.
They'll claim that there's hate speech and of course there's hatred in the world and bigotry and prejudice.
But they don't care about that!
If they cared about that, Lockheed Martin wouldn't be sponsoring Gay Pride!
It doesn't make sense!
It doesn't make sense anymore!
And later on the show, to tell us exactly why it doesn't make sense, a so-called journalist, Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi, the scourge of congressional hearings, they are appearing live with me in an event I'm doing in London.
Did you know that, Gareth?
I did.
Are you going to come?
Of course I am.
Me, Matt Taibbi, Shellenberger, I'll be interviewing them about the censorship industrial complex, but why don't we first see how the mainstream media are covering Trump's arrest.
Trump is being arrested on federal charges, 37 federal charges, but if Kid Rock's to be believed...
They're not that bad.
It's been showing, like, I think it's worse that there are that many documents that have been censored.
Do you think you can handle the truth?
Let me know in the comments in the chat.
Why are they, why have they got these clandestine documents?
I can handle it.
Just tell me everything.
Julian Assange, he's in Belmarsh prison now for telling us information that we should have known in the first place.
Edward Snowden, he's holed up in Russia right now for giving us information that we should have had access to in the first place.
They're both being prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
And now, Donald Trump, is he being prosecuted under the Espionage Act?
That means them spies, baby!
Let's have a look at the mainstream media's reporting on this story.
The classified records strewn throughout Morolago in a public ballroom, a bathroom, and strewn.
Are they strewn?
They are strewn, actually.
Look at that one, it's spinning out.
That's the definition of strewn.
I reckon that's the one that he showed Kid Rock.
Like, look, Kid Rock.
Oh, man!
That's allegedly, by the way.
Well, let's say what it actually says.
Trump reportedly showed a classified map related to a military operation to someone who did not possess security clearance.
In a 2022 interview with Tucker on Fox, Kid Rock claimed the former president asked his advice and showed him what he believed to be secret information during a visit to the White House in 2017.
Did he have Kid Rock at the White House?
I mean, even that's a bit mad.
Looking at maps and shit.
And I'm like, am I supposed to be in on this shit, Rock says?
We're looking at maps and shit.
And I'm like, am I supposed to be in on this?
That doesn't matter.
You can have a look.
I trust you, Kid Rock.
You're one of the best rock rappers we've ever had.
I also really love the next bit of what Kid Rock says about Trump.
He says, Mr. Trump sought Kid Rock's input as he drafted a tweet about ISIS.
Which should I put about ISIS?
Do you like them?
Are they good guys?
Are they bad guys?
I don't know!
This is beyond Kid Rock's jurisdiction.
He said, if you ever, this was the tweet, if you ever join the Caliphate and try to do this, you're going to be dead.
And then he said to Kid Rock, what do you think about that?
And Kid Rock said it was awesome, encouraged him to post it.
Let's have a look at that.
We're looking at maps and ****.
I'm like, you know, I'm like, am I supposed to be like in on this?
I make dirty records sometimes.
I do it here.
You didn't think you'd have a hand in it.
What do you think we should do about North Korea?
I'm like, what?
I don't think I'm qualified to answer this.
That's amazing.
It's like Chappelle's fantastic bit of stand up about Ja Rule.
I don't think Ja Rule is a person that I'm going to turn to in 9-11.
I'm feeling, I'm terrified!
Let's have a look at how the mainstream are covering arraignment day.
We've already seen those strewn documents.
What else is going on?
Let's see.
Tossed on a storage room floor are among the nation's most closely held secrets.
Of the 31 charges for the willful retention of national defence information, 21 involve
top secret documents.
In though, do you see how the mainstream media confines us to particular topics?
Everywhere, and have you noticed this, we'll be talking about how outrageous and egregious it is that Trump's in possession of these documents.
On some platforms, you'll see people saying, well Joe Biden, he's just as bad.
1,800 boxes of documents from when he's a senator.
And then people say, yeah, but he was in Loudoun when he's a senator.
But then people say, he had 20, and they were in his garage.
And did you see where Trump went?
My documents were kept in beautiful conditions.
Biden, he had them on the floor of his garage.
They could get damp.
He was like talking about the literal conditions of them.
But the real problem is this.
Why have you nominated a patriarch elite class that allowed access to information that you're not?
Now I'm not suggesting that all of us on an individual basis want to be immersed in the bureaucracy of government.
But the category of classified should be abolished except in matters where it's strictly necessary.
Do you know, did you know that there are 1.3 million Americans that have access to those boxes?
Kid Rock probably already had those boxes in his own house.
I'm bored of them.
I've already been consulted on North Korea.
Are you?
If you're watching this show and you've got access to these documents, let us know, particularly if you're one of the FBI whistleblowers like our mate Stephen Friend, who every single one of his siblings has a stick figure of Ol' Russ tattooed, this is a fact, you can take this to the bank, Frank, of me, on their reproductive genital members.
That's fake news.
That's fake news, that's fake news.
That'll do, same thing, fake news, freedom, it's all the same.
Let's see how they're covering arraignment day over there.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton worked in the Trump White House.
This was a risk to national security beyond calculation.
Bolton told CBS News special handling suggests a special access program which can be so secret the government doesn't acknowledge its existence.
That is pretty secret.
Something so secret you won't even... Does it exist?
I don't... I won't acknowledge it.
That's ridiculous!
The classified code TK or Italian keyhole can refer to intelligence gathered from spy satellites.
Formerly restricted data can refer to nuclear weapons capabilities.
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio said there was no evidence the intelligence was compromised.
There's no allegation that he sold it to a foreign power or that it was trafficked.
You consider Kid Rock to be a threat.
Kid Rock is mounting on our borders.
Kid Rock.
We've got battleships in American waters.
Kid Rock is floating a weather balloon high in the sky.
Kid Rock and Donald Trump are frankly not the problem.
The problem is deep systemic abuse that we're living on a prison planet that we can't break out of this damn matrix unless we're willing to overcome cultural conflict and unite against establishment elites.
Join us on Locals if you agree.
Let's hear what you You've got to say, you beautiful, beautiful nonsense circle of nutters.
It is interesting, Russ, isn't it?
This situation, obviously, the fascination with Trump at the moment.
And look, having information and documents that maybe compromise national security, there will be opinions about.
Although I do think it's complex.
I mean, we know that when whistleblowers, there was the lad Teixeira recently, and obviously Julian Assange.
Buddy boy, Teixeira.
The media at that point do nothing about it.
You know Julian Sanchez is guilty for sharing those secrets.
Never been to court.
Right exactly and you know in the case of Donald Trump there isn't a consistency ultimately is there?
I think that's the thing is that you have to uh you have to be consistent.
You can't have consistency without morals and principles.
Tomorrow we're talking about we're talking to Marianne Williamson.
No Friday.
Friday we're talking to Marianne Williamson and we're talking to her about the ethics of politics.
We're talking to her about The need for new anti-establishment alliances.
We're talking to her about exactly why Joe Biden won't debate her.
What does that tell us about corruption within the Democratic Party?
We'll be talking to her about the influence of the military-industrial complex.
Elsewhere, we'll be talking about Rand Paul.
He's one of the few politicians who's willing to stand up against this constant clamour for endless and ongoing war.
Is Donald Trump the problem?
Or are there deeper systemic problems?
I know loads of you.
You think Donald Trump is the answer, don't you?
You know me.
I think that we need to reach a little further for solutions.
Let's have a look at this bit of mainstream claptrap for a bit longer.
But a 2019 incident suggests Mar-a-Lago has been a target.
This Chinese businesswoman was convicted of trespassing, lying to federal investigators, and deported.
Weird story.
That Chinese businesswoman.
What's she been doing?
Snooping around Mar-a-Lago?
Mar-a-Lago, yeah.
Around those streamed documents.
Like, she's been checking out the documents.
There's one strewn there, there's one strewn there.
Checking them out.
I just need to visit the bathroom.
Don't!
Not that bathroom!
Kid Rock's in there, having the time of his life.
Give me some advice.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy claims Trump's records were more secure than Biden's found in a garage.
Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that opens up all the time?
A bathroom door locks.
Yeah, that's a good argument.
The thing is, with a bathroom door, you just lock it.
You've got to be inside there, though.
That's true.
You can only lock it if you're in there with the document.
Just having the time of your life, maybe wiping your bum on one.
That's not right.
Right, that's disrespectful.
Not with our sacred documents.
Let's see what they're talking about on the mainstream media right now.
It's arraignment day.
37 federal charges.
But before we go onto mainstream media, Bad Graphics Jack has made some bad graphics.
I hope you've made Say You Stay Free by Lionel Richie.
I bet you've not even done that yet, have you, Bad Graphics Jack?
Let's have a look at him over in the gallery.
Look at them over there.
Floundering, just pressing buttons seemingly at random.
Let's hope that boy never breaks into some sort of federal military.
Right, well let's hope he doesn't get into Mar-a-Lago.
If he gets into Mar-a-Lago, Sticky Fingers Jack, that cack-handed sod, let's see what he's made for us then, in the holy name of graphics.
We watch live mainstream news, live!
It should have reminded me that we called it Plains, Trump and Automobiles.
I mean, it weren't bad.
Then they got Leon to do a voice, clearly, and Leon keeps saying, I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it, but he always does them, doesn't he?
Louis Leon, one of the producers, he loves it.
And then, you should have reminded me that it's called Plains, Trump and Automobiles, but let me know what you think of it in the chat.
This is, after all, unlike America or the United Kingdom, this is a real democracy.
If you want us to use it again, we will.
Otherwise, we will Banish it!
Let's see what they're doing over there on the mainstream media, how they're reporting on Trump's arraignment.
Where is he?
He faces 400 years in prison.
I always think it's a bit unnecessary to give people a prison sentence that cannot be fulfilled.
At that point, just say life, surely.
You're not going to live long enough to do it.
How long is it?
It's 400 years, but you're probably, you're 77.
Tomorrow is Trump's birthday, but let us know in the chat, do you think there's anything Trump would rather do than be arraigned on his birthday?
He's the sort of person who would like that, wouldn't he?
He's a pugnacious fighter of the establishment.
He's not one to recline on his birthday.
No.
Is he?
Although what they're saying is that this is, I mean, obviously, extremely serious.
I mean, we haven't heard from Trump or his new lawyer.
Breaking news, he's got a new lawyer.
Chris Kice.
Kice.
Kice.
Kid Rock.
He's going to be representing Donald Trump.
He's familiar with every facet of the case.
He'll be alright.
But it's looking like, you know, his own former allies are kind of turning on him saying that this is not looking good at all.
John Bolton was one of those ones that we just saw.
Bill Barr I think said the same thing about, you know, that this isn't looking good for Trump at all.
Yeah, well look, there's that Marjorie Taylor Greene or whatever she's called.
She's on the news.
She's defending him.
Turn her up!
Turn her up!
That's quite impressive thanks to the American taxpayer and thanks to the CDC director, Dr. Walensky.
Talking about the same girls.
They're talking about Trump being arranged in that corner.
Right.
And protesters are at the Miami courthouse and she's banging on about COVID and stuff.
Do you like Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Let us know in the comments.
She's pretty out there, isn't she?
Well, she's a big Trump fan, isn't she?
She loves Trump.
Yeah.
I see what she says.
Who said that vaccines were safe and effective.
I'd also like to talk to you on behalf of all the pregnant women, not people, as you call them.
You quoted, to quote... She's trying to conduct all of the arguments simultaneously.
COVID, love Trump, women, not people.
I'm going to do all these arguments.
Kid Rock's fantastic.
I'm going to show him my documents.
...on August 11th, 2021.
CDC encourages all pregnant people, it's women by the way, who are thinking about becoming pregnant.
How many times are you going to make that point?
You get sidetracked.
...those breastfeeding to get vaccinated to protect themselves from COVID-19.
This has also been ignored.
The amount of miscarriages and still... Oh, Marjorie, baby!
You went there!
She went there, girl!
I like to think that that's Marjorie Taylor Greene as a witness for Donald Trump.
Marjorie, can I just draw your attention to the primary subject at hand?
Yeah, she's going all over the gaff.
She went in hard.
She went in double, double hard there, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
We're still on YouTube, so we have to be careful about what we broadcast, but once we're on Rumble, we've got Matt Taibbi coming on.
We've got Shelley, Shelley, Shelley, Shelley Schellenberger coming on.
The amazing thing about this, you know with Nixon, obviously, he was pardoned by Gerald Ford, and you could get a situation here.
I don't know if this is actually true, but I thought about it earlier, that Trump wins the election and pardons himself.
He is the sort that would pardon himself, wouldn't he as well?
I bet he's pardoning himself, or pardoned.
He will be pardoning himself.
And also, this is doing nothing to diminish his popularity.
He's surging in the polls.
Ron DeSantis?
Is Ron DeSantis already yesterday's man?
Are you a Floridian?
Have you forgotten what he did for you there during Covid?
Well this presents something very tricky for the other Republican presidential candidates
because they can't say, you know, don't support Donald Trump.
They have to kind of galvanise around him because otherwise they know they will lose
all their Trump supporters.
But at the same time, they're kind of aiding his ascent or his kind of soaring poll numbers
So it's really difficult for any other... Everyone's trapped in the Trump paradox because we live in a world of corruption and hypocrisy where Trump, even if you believe him to be a gargoyle outlier of corruption, he still is like a one-man tornado, elevating CNN, getting executives sacked with his town hall wonder.
Let's have a look at him landing in Florida.
This is from earlier today.
Well, through the haze of a hot Miami afternoon, we see the plane of Donald Trump.
We know it's his, because his name is on the side.
Has touchdowns.
It's ridiculous, isn't it?
Wow, they're great, aren't they?
Well done.
Good deduction.
How do you do it out of there, CBS?
Wheels down.
In Miami.
He's wheels down, like you know a lot about airplanes.
Seatbelt signs still on.
Don't use your phone just yet.
Put the seat fully up.
Fully up, right?
No, that's not fully up, sir.
Table tray away, please.
Just that thing, flip that down.
No, your seat's still not quite up, sir.
Appearance in the Southern District of Florida.
Trump has referred to the 37 count indictment as a joke and over the weekend called the special counsel... Show like the interior of that plane because I'd love to look around that, wouldn't you?
If we interview Trump, I want to interview him on that plane.
There's going to be a bedroom area, isn't there?
Yeah.
It's going to be all areas.
It won't be rows of seats, will it?
No.
You can do what you want in there.
Right.
Oh, it'd be brilliant.
Documents strewn.
Step over those documents.
Can I use the bathroom?
Documents, full of documents in there.
Can I offer you soup, gin and tonic, and a document?
Oh, that's a nice little document.
Yeah, I reckon it's lovely in that thing.
He is expected to be in court for his arraignment around 3 p.m.
and officials there say that they are prepared to handle what could be large crowds gathered outside of the... Jay Batch over on Locals.
You can join us on Locals.
Press the red button that's on your screen now.
Trump really has done nothing wrong.
I wish you lot would brush up on your U.S.
constitutional law before you take on a story like this.
Don't worry, we're gonna get Bad Graphics Jack on that.
Bad Graphics Jack!
Constitutionally, has Trump done anything wrong?
Is there anything wrong with him being in possession of these documents?
He's done nothing wrong.
Has anyone else got... Can I have a classic... Geld, at Geld goes, can I have a classified napkin, please?
Well, the DOJ would disagree there.
He has done a lot wrong.
The DOJ says he's done a lot wrong.
Come on, mate.
I guess by the same token, if Biden's got classified documents, if Mike Pence has got classified documents, that is the argument that other people have done it.
And what about my more advanced argument which is that power and governance ought to be transparent except in matters of true national security.
I think that Kid Rock's improved since he's seen the documents and I think we should all have a look at them.
I think your point about the classified documents I think is really interesting.
You know, we're told that national security is at risk by people having access to these
classified documents in the case of, for example, Julian Assange.
But if what Julian Assange is revealing is in the interest of the American public, doesn't
that then diminish the authority of the classified documents?
You know, I think that is an important point.
It's not to say that it's right that Donald Trump has these or that Joe Biden has them.
LadyGrey312 says, the Q is, would anyone else be charged under the same things?
Do you think Donald Trump is being unfairly treated?
Do you think?
Let's name what this is.
Well, you lot think that Trump is being persecuted because he is a powerful political force, likely to succeed in his attempt to win the Republican nomination, and then likely to win a presidential election next year.
The Democratic Party are afraid of that.
They're unwilling to change course.
They're unwilling to govern on behalf of the people.
Even when we talked to Marianne Williamson, when we spoke to RFK.
Everyone within the Democrat Party knows the Democrat Party is corrupt.
Most people believe that the Republican Party is similarly corrupt because it's funded in the exact same way.
Look at the recent emergency bill to perpetuate forever wars.
It's only Rand Paul who we've got to get on the show.
How are we getting Rand Paul on the show?
We've got to get him on the show.
Let's tweet him.
Let's tweet him right now.
We've got to get Rand on.
Meanwhile, I'll tweet you so hard, Rand.
You think you're Rand.
I'm Brand.
Get Rand Paul on the show.
We're going to tweet him right now.
Let's see what CNN is saying about this story.
Because the corruption is across both parties.
The corruption is across the mainstream media.
You can only rely on us.
If you're watching us on YouTube, we're going to be exclusively on Rumble in a minute.
We're talking to Schellenberger and Taibi about this case.
Is this a witch hunt or is this justice live?
Let's see what they're saying on CNN.
Everybody's trying to see what Mitch McConnell is going to say.
He is no, you know, big fan of Donald Trump.
You know, so we'll see.
The allegations in here are so damning.
They're so easy to understand.
He was keeping, allegedly, military secrets, national secrets.
At Kevin McCarthy who says, oh, well, at least the bathroom locks.
Well, the bathroom locks from the inside, right?
It doesn't lock from the outside.
Are you like me?
Do you just carry the indictment?
I do.
I mean, this is necessary reading, I think, for all Americans.
It is.
In all seriousness, it is.
You really get to see what the allegations and all the folks who are saying, well, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Mike Pence also, you know, had incidents with classified documents.
Read this and you'll get a very different picture.
You know, what's interesting about the Republicans who are coming out, thus far you have Christie, Barr, H. Hutchinson, Lindsey Graham, they all have backgrounds in some way either as lawyers or prosecutors.
Graham and Asa Hutchinson back in 1999 were Bill Clinton impeachment managers.
Obviously Barr's background and Chris Christie's.
But now look, I'm not saying that every Republican Plenty of small differences, isn't it, ultimately?
I guess so.
Because when you look at it, Clinton deleted those 30,000 emails.
Well, she didn't.
She got a lawyer to say that he did.
And apparently Trump was talking about it.
One of the things that they've got is... Allegedly!
Oh yes, thank you.
Allegedly!
Allegedly!
Trump was really complimentary of Clinton's lawyer.
You know, he was like, lock her up, lock her up.
And then they've got recordings of him.
So very impressed with him and the way that he deleted those emails.
Of course.
It's the fact that he grants us access to the thoughts that they have in private that makes him an appealing speaker.
And I reckon the reason that so many of you continue to love and advocate for Donald Trump, we know that Joe Biden is ultimately corrupt.
Allegedly!
Well, there's still this allegation that he accepted $5 million while he was VP, that he facilitated Hunter Biden's business interests.
Allegedly.
With Burisma.
None of us really believe that there's any legitimacy to the integrity of other political figures.
And when it comes to the coverage of CNN right now, you can't watch it Imagine for a moment that they're going to come to any conclusion other than what Trump has done is worse than anyone else.
This should bar him for standing for presidency.
They're participating in a propagandist endeavour.
That's plain whether you like Trump or not.
Continue please.
...the argument by Trump, right, that he'd somehow declassified them.
At one stage, these were the crown jewels of America's secrets.
It cannot possibly be under any rational... Pause.
That's a weird thing to say.
Like, Trump, as he said himself, does have the authority to declassify them.
He says he could have declassified them himself.
But for this pundit to refer to them as the crown jewels of American secrets, look how entrenched the attitudes are.
That secrecy and information is still power, like the ability to enact violence is power.
The state is allowed to guard against your information, but it is also allowed to invade your privacy.
Hit the red button, join us on Locals, tell me how you feel about that.
They can retain information that pertains to your life.
They run the country using your money.
They fund violence against you using your money.
I think what most of us are feeling right now is we no longer want to participate in that kind of power dynamic.
What we truly want is democracy.
The ability to run our own communities.
This is an epochal time.
That's why on the left and right there are emergent anti-establishment figures.
Whether it's RFK, Who will be dismissed as an anti-vaxxer?
Marianne Williamson, who will be dismissed as, like, woo-woo and a spiritualist.
Cornel West, who they'll find some reason to discredit.
Donald Trump, who is a kind of berserker with his drain the swamp rhetoric.
Anybody who speaks out against establishment interests will be smeared and brought down, whether that's within the media or within politics.
What are you saying?
I really think you should consider supporting Trump, says JRS Matt.
He's obviously not corrupt if he's being crucified by the corrupt.
That is one of the things that makes me most sympathetic, I suppose, towards Trump, is the way that he is treated by the establishment.
I still think he had four years in power, guys, and what really changed?
Let's be honest, come on.
ABC are covering it now, but you can put it on with the volume down because Gareth's got a point.
Do you have a point, Gal?
Yeah.
No, it's interesting.
I think, you know, the reason why what we're seeing is like Trump's popularity go up at this time, and people, I think 80% of people saying that it doesn't make a difference to them, you know, whether he's still a nominee, obviously shows that this whole thing of classified documents isn't a narrative that is resonating with the public who Don't trust the establishment.
So we're talking about a set of establishment classified documentation belonging to a system and a government, a government system that people just don't trust anyway, you know.
And again, coming back to the point about Julian Assange and the recent revelations about the Ukraine war through that, um, Teixeira, Jack Teixeira, you know, when people are saying, seeing that classified documents are yielding information that they feel they should have access to, that is relevant to them, they think, well, classified documents, We should have access to anyway.
Why would you be on the side of their censorship?
Why would you be on the side of them censoring you while denying you access to that information?
I know there's a nuanced argument to be had about national security and military matters, but there isn't an argument to be had about A trustworthy, centralised authority and honouring protocols.
Here's an interesting point being made.
This person says Trump was against the jab.
Oh no, he was pro the jab.
So yeah, a lot of you, like some people here are not pro Trump.
A lot of you absolutely love him.
Let me know if this entire investigation makes you more likely to vote for Trump or less likely to vote for Trump.
Let's turn up the audio on ABC's coverage.
...and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa, as well as Galen Druk from ABC's FiveThirtyEight with more on this.
Asha, a magistrate judge will handle the arraignment today, but a Trump appointee, Judge Aileen Cannon, will preside over the actual case.
Now, she's the judge that appointed a special master to review the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago.
And some have accused her of handing Trump some favorable rulings during those proceedings.
So what's your take on that?
Well, I think that it creates a problem of partiality in the administration of justice.
And this is, you know, the most important criminal case in our history, really.
And her rulings before weren't just favorable to Trump.
She actually stated in her rulings that she believed that because he is a former president, he should be treated differently, that the normal rules don't apply to him.
She also demonstrated a pretty cavalier attitude towards classified information.
She did not want to return those documents to the government, and the government had to appeal that, and she was overruled on that point by the 11th Circuit.
So I think on both of these points, it creates a potential problem, not only because she's going to be overseeing a trial of a former president who she thinks should be treated differently, but she's going to have to navigate really tricky issues regarding classified information A lot of you saying it makes no difference to me, that's Rabfan, Trump or RFK for me so far.
So figures from across the political spectrum garnering support in a relatively unique way.
And what I think it indicates more than anything is that no one has the moral authority to adjudicate now.
When someone says it's illegal that Trump has these documents, the response from the wider public is, well, who says so?
By what decree?
Of course, if you're a person who already dislikes Trump, you see this as further evidence of Trump's corruption.
If you like Trump, you see this as further evidence of the persecution of Trump.
So what you have now is an entirely bifurcated political space and beyond that, I think an untenable American experiment.
I think that what's required is a new radical system of organisation that's not based on domination in the same way the last couple of hundred years have been.
Hey, listen, some people say this whole thing's just a distraction from the last few years.
I guess you're referring to the pandemic there.
I didn't say plandemic, I said prandemic.
Allegedly.
Clashes, clashes break out at Trump arraignment courthouse after a suspicious package sparks
police response.
That's probably just a box of documents that he's left there, maybe one that he's dropped
on the way, potentially.
Yeah, sure, yeah.
Should we stay with the mainstream media or what do you want to see, what do you want
us to do guys?
Do you want us to keep watching the mainstream media?
Or do you want to see this fantastic piece of journalism we've made about Tucker Carlson on Twitter?
Fox News are suing Twitter.
CNN are in serious crisis.
We believe Independent media is emerging with great force and Tucker Carlson is merely the figurehead of this movement now.
For a while it was Joe Rogan, now Tucker Carlson migrating from corporate media to independent media shows the new voices.
You lot are saying Tucker.
Let's have a look at Tucker Carlson.
Let's have a look at this brilliant piece of analysis into Tucker Carlson's rise and the attempts by Fox News to silence him.
Here's the news.
No.
Here's the effing news. After that we'll be here with Taibi and Schellenberger.
We'll be off YouTube by then. We can't stay on YouTube with them guys.
They're too crazy. So-called journalists. They're out of control.
I don't even know if Taibi and Schellenberger will make it to this country.
Join us over on Rumble right now. Get off YouTube. Click the link in the description.
If you're on Rumble, join us in Locals.
Let's have a look at Here's the News. Now here's the effing news.
Here's the news.
Now here's the fucking news.
CNN is dead.
Long live Tucker.
But will CNN have a new ally in Fox News who want to bring Tucker down?
Is this the end of the mainstream?
Like Tucker has done, who would have imagined that his first episode would have such inconceivably high viewing figures?
Who would imagine that an alliance between Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson would prove to be potentially fatal for networks like CNN?
Let's look in more detail.
Fox News Wednesday notified Tucker Carlson's lawyers that the former primetime anchor violated his contract with the network when he launched his own Twitter show on Tuesday.
A breach of contract claim sets Fox News up to explore potential legal action against Carlson, a move that would intensify the already thorny public battle between the two parties.
The first episode of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's new show on Twitter has had more than 100 million views in less than two days since its launch.
He has since released another episode.
So does Tucker's move signify the end of an epoch for cable news?
Certainly if CNN's apparent collapse is anything to go by, it does.
Certainly if Fox News' legal pursuit of Tucker is anything to go by, it does.
Certainly if your ongoing dissatisfaction and distrust of the mainstream media is anything to go by, it does.
Let me know in the chat and the comments what you think about this story and let's have a look at Tucker Carlson's first episode to see if he still has his finger on the pulse in spite of moving to a new platform.
So if you're wondering why our country seems so dysfunctional, this is a big part of the reason.
Nobody knows what's happening.
A small group of people control access to all relevant information, and the rest of us don't know.
We're allowed to yap all we want about racism, but go ahead and talk about something that really matters, and see what happens.
If you keep it up, they'll make you be quiet.
Trust us.
The U.S.
government has managed to classify more than a billion so-called public documents.
So at this point, we can't possibly know what our leaders are doing.
We're not allowed to know.
By definition, that is not a democracy.
Yet it's fine with the media.
Secrecy is a powerful tool of control.
Tucker's point about secrecy is important.
Who controls information necessarily has a great deal of power.
We've long believed that the movements and changes in this space are as a result of our shared ability to collaborate on creating new narratives.
You help us all the time with your posts in the comments, with the information you give us.
When we've made mistakes with our takes on stories, You've helped to correct us.
I would add to Tucker's comment on race that it's not enough to just dismiss those stories, but to recognize the significant truth that if we form new alliances, if we refuse to bait one another, if we refuse to row on the subjects of identity and culture, then their tools of control are diminished.
These ideas about the control of information and censorship and the newly emergent censorship industrial complex, which by the way I'll be talking about with Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi when they come to this country, we're gonna have a host of specials on Rumble talking about exactly this subject, are important.
For a long time it's been argued that the state has a monopoly on violence.
The state is able to be violent towards you, to incarcerate you, to control you.
I know many of you that have strong views around firearms are essentially reaching towards the idea that But why ought the state have the ability to inflict violence on you and you not have the right to defend yourself from the state?
We know those are complex arguments and people have a variety of views but this control of violence and this control of information could potentially break down if more and more independent voices start to dominate these type of spaces.
That's why we are seeing the emergence of the censorship industrial complex because the media, the state, Big business are working cooperatively to prevent these new power structures, which are much more diffuse, shared, and collaborative, from emerging.
Stop asking how we got so rich!
Here's another story about racism!
Go eat each other!
That's the program.
That's how most of us now live here in the United States.
Manipulated by lies, silenced by taboos.
It is unhealthy and it's dehumanizing, and we're tired of it.
As of today, we've come to Twitter, which we hope will be the shortwave radio under the blankets.
We're told there are no gatekeepers here.
If that turns out to be false, we'll leave.
But in the meantime, we are grateful to be here.
We'll be back with much more very soon.
So there you go.
Whether you agree with Tucker Carlson or not, it's plain from the viewing figures that he is a powerful voice and that he's contributing to radical change in the way that media is consumed.
It makes sense that Fox wants to curtail and even shut down that ability.
Shortly after Carlson posted the first episode of his news show on Twitter Tuesday evening, Fox's News General Counsel Bernard Guga sent a letter to Carlson's lawyers saying Carlson is in breach of his contract agreement.
The source told Axios that Carlson was told by a senior Fox executive that the network's goal is to keep him sidelined until 2025.
So Fox plainly understand that Tucker Carlson's voice is direct competition to their business and with cable news evidently in a great deal of trouble this conversation becomes vitally important and you can see why they're leveraging legal means because CNN are in a great deal of trouble not least because of their decision to grant Donald Trump a platform on the now infamous town hall meeting which garnered them their best viewing figures in a long time but Well, Chris Licht is officially out at CNN after a chaotic run as chairman and CEO.
The network announced this morning that Licht is leaving immediately.
He took over the job just about a year ago, but his time at CNN has been marked with a series of high-profile controversies and tanking ratings.
Let's learn a little bit about how cable news started and why it cannot cope with new emergent independent media voices without conspiring with the state to shut them down through censorship and smearing.
And by God, we know a little about that personally.
Yep, the cable news channel has seen ratings plummet, attracting fewer viewers than right-wing minnow Newsmax in May.
Its newsroom was in open rebellion and staff morale was at rock bottom.
The cable news era that Ted Turner launched is drawing to a close and while the cultural and political consequences of that fact consume public attention, this is also a story about the demise of one of media's great business models.
The most troubling feature of Lick's 13-month reign was not his decision to interview Trump in front of an audience of jeering supporters, it was that CNN's average primetime audience fell to just 535,000 in the first quarter, down from 1.7 million in 2020.
Shrinking audiences are not unique to CNN, nor to the US.
Pay TV audiences are getting smaller and older.
This has been true for a while, but in commercial terms, it barely mattered.
Through the magic of retransmission fees, in which distributors pay content owners to air their channels, revenues and profits held up.
CNN's annual revenues doubled to $2 billion in the decade to the 2020 US election, and it made roughly a billion dollars in profits every year of the Trump presidency, according to the New York Times.
That tide has turned, with revenues falling.
With annual profits still a reported $750 million last year, the business is not falling off a cliff.
But as CNN's parent company, Warner Brothers' Wile E. Coyote, could tell you, gravity exerts itself eventually.
News and sports channels were supposed to be the features that persuaded viewers to keep their cable subscriptions, giving their owners negotiating power with distributors.
But more subscriptions are being cancelled and media owners have failed to replicate that model online or on streaming platforms.
The old model has been so lucrative that cable news operators have had little incentive to establish themselves as big brands in digital news, allowing others from legacy newspapers to brash podcast hosts to take the lead.
It may be too late for them to catch up now.
When the first 24-hour channels launched, they filled a clear gap in the news market.
Whatever leaked successors do, they are unlikely to repeat that trick.
Journalistically, it's not the end of the world, but the end is in sight for a news media business model that will not be replaced by anything nearly as lucrative.
Power structures across the board are beginning to implode and collapse, whether they are democratic institutions or apparently democratic institutions like the American government or the British government.
You can feel that they are starting to quake under the weight of the ability to communicate immediately in nuanced ways and to house and frame a variety of voices because of the way that technology has changed.
The media is already feeling the pinch.
The inability to communicate nuanced information to a large audience because now, if you're watching CNN, you're a CNN person.
If you're watching Fox, you're a Fox person.
And both of those organisations are housed by business models that will not ultimately allow power to move in the direction it threatens to, i.e.
to become more decentralised and more diffuse.
Both of those business models are ultimately part of conglomerates that have traditional, conventional relationships with state and corporate power upstream.
Both of them are owned by organisations like Comcast or News International that have the type of affiliations and political partners that, whether they're on the blue side or the red side or the donkey side or the elephant side, will ultimately require the state to regulate and legislate in their favour to prevent new business models and new independent media voices emerging.
Tucker Carlson, as we actually predicted, is the first to demonstrate how radical the change has become.
Joe Rogan is the impreture, someone who emerged in this space and was able to withstand significant media attacks, notably around the horse paste scandal.
Do I have to sue CNN?
His ongoing willingness to house, in retrospect, valid voices during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tucker Carlson is from conventional news media.
Tucker Carlson is going on TV saying, I regret the way I reported the Iraq war.
The way that old school media is funded means it can never be balanced and nuanced.
Trust me, I know that these news channels are not reliable.
I believe, and this is because of you, that what we're going to see now is a war Between mainstream media, supported by the state, and independent voices, supported by you, that will mean that new alliances simply have to appear.
That's why the thing I agree with most from Tucker Carlson's episode one is we have to put aside the arguing around cultural issues.
Not that those issues aren't important.
All of us are affected one way or another around value systems that coalesce around traditionalism or progressivism.
But what we're going to need to find are new ideas around which to form alliances in order to support the emergent potential for conversations like this to continue in spite of the fact that the state and the censorship industrial complex would like to shut this down.
This is the space we exist in.
We welcome you, whatever your previous political affiliations were, whatever media channels you used to watch.
We want to ensure that your voice is heard, that you are part of the conversation.
We want to ensure that independent voices continue to be housed.
That means there will be new alliances.
That means there will be new conversations.
What's fascinating about this time is we're able to witness the establishment's attempts to maintain something that is dying.
Whether it's conventional democracy, isn't working anymore, is it?
Whoever wins the next election, the other side are going to say it was a corrupt election.
And in the media spaces, we're similarly going to see them desperately scrap to maintain their territory, even though their marketing and advertising models simply won't retain it.
That means they're going to resort to dirty tricks.
That means you're going to see Fox trying to shut down Tucker.
That means you're going to see CNN grasping and groping for new audience members.
But they can't win this fight fairly.
So what they're going to have to do is hobble and stymie the attempts of their opponents.
Algorithms are going to be adjusted to shut down independent news voices.
You're going to hear more talk of right-wing conspiracy theorists and smearing independent voices like this one.
I absolutely believe that if you're red or blue or Republican or Democrat, you're on the wrong side.
This is a time for new independent voices.
You can see that in the political space.
That's why there are candidates that a couple of years ago were a laughingstock, like RFK, getting serious traction and serious attention.
Because there is a partnership between independent political voices and independent media voices.
This is something we have to cultivate.
In order to do it significantly, we're going to have to get past the oppositionism that defines the culture war.
We're going to have to get beyond the agenda of the censorship industrial complex, which simply wants to shut down conversation in order to keep things exactly the same.
You can't trust this voice.
You can't trust that voice.
That's misinformation.
That's what they want to do.
They want to tar us all with that brush to prevent the change that's trying to happen from happening.
But that's just what I think.
Let me know what you think in the chat.
See you in a second!
Thank you for choosing Fox News.
The dude.
No, he's the fucking dude!
Where freedom and speech meet, you get...
...freech, I think.
That's what I was trying to say.
Have you got the graphic there?
Are you going to fire it in?
Bad graphics, Jack?
There it is.
Freech.
Where freedom and speech meet, you get free speech.
Where free speech meets, you get freech.
Get well, Ronnie Brand, says, at Miles Driver.
My dad, Ron Brand, still carrying an injury from West Ham's victory against Fiorentina.
He was injured in the line of duty, at Claude.
Also wishing him a speedery, a speedy recovery.
Can't wish him things that aren't real.
Guess who is real and not a so-called journalist?
It's Matt Taibbi and also Michael Shelley Schellenberger.
There ain't a story that they're afraid to break.
There ain't a truth that they're not afraid to speak.
There's not a congressional hearing that they won't sit there and pretend to be all normal.
Sit there all in suits.
acting like genuine journalists. They're here. Hello Michael. Hello Matt. Thanks for joining us.
Matt, I know you got here first, so I'll say hello to you first, Matt, because Michael
Schellenberger was doing something else, probably illegal, probably earning money from Twitter.
Thanks for joining us, mate. It's good to see you.
Good to see you. Good to see you.
Yeah, we're pretty good.
We're very happy.
We've just been sort of watching you guys on Zoom, the way you conduct yourself.
And frankly, it was very moving.
Michael, what took you so long?
What were you doing that was more important than bringing down the censorship industrial complex that you claim to care so much about?
Absolutely nothing is more important, but I think Matt, Taibi and I are happy to announce that we just broke maybe one of the biggest stories In recent memory, which is that we have on good information that the coronavirus did originate from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that the first three people who were sickened by it were the scientists working to modify coronaviruses as part of gain-of-function research.
So it's a pretty blockbuster story and we're happy to To be here and talk about why censorship was a problem in this case and in so many others.
Cool.
Don't boast.
Let's have a look about on their public on there.
It's on their substack.
There it is.
Look at that.
This is lovely.
Is that on our output?
Fantastic.
Well done.
There is the story being broken by the self-publicist Michael Schellenberger.
Narcissistic Woodward and Bernstein of our day, breaking these important stories.
So if the first people that got coronavirus were working in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, what conclusions might we draw from that, Matt?
Well, it's a major story for a couple of reasons, but first it completely obliterates the early official story that the explanation for coronavirus was that it was transmitted by an animal, maybe a bat or a pangolin, at the wet market in Wuhan.
This explanation more definitively ties it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and raises the question, was this story suppressed because there might have been involvement by the United States in funding the research that led to the development of what they call the fern cleavage site, which is the element of the virus that made it so transmissible.
So this is, you know, it's an explosive story and we should note that there are other journalists who are working on this and we're glad for that.
That's, you know, that's something different from the Twitter files and it's a good thing to see.
I can't believe that that's not a conspiracy theory.
I can't believe that that is legitimate journalism.
I can't believe that we're being forced to confront the truth that that virus began in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Is it possible that those scientists, they had been for lunch down the wet market.
They'd had a little bit of pangolin and a little bit of bat soup or whatever.
I'm not judging people for having a different culture.
I don't care what people eat.
And then they went back to work and by coincidence... Maybe they went via a bat cave?
You pop into a bat cave because, I don't know, your parents were murdered and you're looking for inspiration for what vigilante identity to adopt in your ongoing fight against crime.
Michael, I think as a journalist it's important that you cover every single aspect of this case.
Now both of you are two of my favourite journalists, that's why we are appearing together at an event named
the Censorship Industrial Complex Exposed in London on Thursday
the 22nd of June. We'll be covering a variety of topics then. Today though
we're talking somewhat about Donald Trump's indictment, impeachment, whatever it is he's going for, arraignment, a
variety of polysyllabic and perjurative terms.
Why shouldn't Donald Trump have those documents?
What is the classification of documents, the control of information by institutions that no longer have our trust?
Seems to be a more important issue than this one.
Michael, what do you think about the current case?
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that this case, like a lot of others, raises some serious questions around the abuse of power by government officials.
I don't know the specifics of it, but I think that when we look at sort of the cases that we've been following, whether it's the COVID origins, whether it's the Hunter Biden laptop, Russiagate, Many other issues we're seeing the institutions and we've seen now in Britain that they were that the UK government was engaged in similar censorship activities as the US government.
We've been also talking about the FBI whistleblowers.
I mean, we are seeing significant abuses of power.
Disinformation censorship coming from our governments around the world.
It's just time to we need reform.
I mean, we need to clean house.
These government institutions are being run by people who act like they own them, or that they have some special privilege, but we need to reassert our democratic rights.
Over these very powerful institutions because I think the evidence is growing that we've been lied to for many years and that the people that have been lying to us have also been trying to censor us.
You're both coming to the UK next week for the event that we've discussed that we'll be showing on Rumble in the days to come.
Clarenberg was interrogated for five hours when he was travelling.
Matt, you were threatened with arrest subsequent to your congressional appearance.
Are you not concerned that you'll be detained and what are your feelings about latex gloves and have you been acquainted with them previously?
Not recently, although thank you for planning that image in my mind.
Well, here's what I'll say.
Maybe three weeks or a month ago, I would, of course, not have been concerned about that at all.
I would have laughed at the mere possibility that this was even something to worry about.
But I am concerned now.
I mean, we have reason to be worried about it.
We had a ridiculous incident where the IRS visited my house.
I was investigated after one of the Twitter file stories.
And, you know, Kit Clarenberg is part of an organization that was on a list that we saw in the Twitter files was delivered to Twitter from the Ukrainian security agencies through the FBI.
So it's hard not to, you know, wonder, you know, are we next?
I mean, you can get on those lists for any number of reasons, and that's very concerning.
Fear sometimes makes me seek out alliances.
A lot of the people watching this now on Locals, you can join us on Locals by pressing the red button, feel that what's happening around Donald Trump, who gave you a name check the other day of course, Matt, is little more than a witch hunt.
Are you able to maintain your impartial perspective as journalist when it seems clear that when it comes to the censorship industrial complex, it's primarily an issue that seems to be undergirded and exacted by the Democrat Party?
That question for you first, Michael.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is part of the thing that we're worried about, which is that we're seeing potentially double standards being used along with this abuse of power.
So we're seeing, you know, here we are.
We now, I think there's pretty good evidence, or at least there is evidence that's been presented of potential criminal bribery involving President Biden when he was vice president.
The FBI withheld that document and that information from Congress for many weeks.
Congress had to threaten contempt of Congress against the FBI director, and so now we're seeing the prosecution of a former president.
I mean, some of those charges are very serious, so I don't want to suggest that there isn't something serious there, but all of us that have lived in other countries—you know, Matt spent a bunch of time in Russia, I've lived in Latin America and been in Asia, and you see former heads of state going to prison and a kind of Constant cycle of retribution, and I worry about that.
I worry that we're becoming a banana republic, both in the abuse of power by policymakers and politicians and unelected officials, but also in this kind of desire to persecute and prosecute your political enemies.
It seems that there's no legitimacy to the authority once wielded by these institutions.
I don't imagine that any of us suppose that whatever the outcome of next year's election, the side that loses will gracefully concede.
What's likely to ensue is a series of allegations of corruption or foreign involvement or meddling.
Is that Not an indication that the institution of democracy itself needs to be radically altered, that there needs to be significant change within the duopoly that currently endures?
What do you think about that, Matt?
What do you both think about that?
I think that's definitely true.
I first noticed that as a campaign trail reporter, probably two election cycles ago, I started to hear a lot of complaints from people, frankly, on both sides of the aisle, who were saying they were losing confidence in institutions like the Fed, Congress, absolutely. Then it became the FBI. Then
it was just the criminal justice system in general. Everybody was upset at the intelligence
agencies because of the Snowden revelations, the surveillance revelations. Now, with the
censorship stuff, in addition to the general distrust of government institutions, we have
almost total distrust in the liberalizing institution of media.
Nobody knows what to think anymore about anything because almost all the information that comes out now is politicized and not terribly reliable.
And that is a terrible situation for a country to be in because you can't trust anything.
I mean, you know, even the results of elections Forget about the 2020 general election.
I was there for the Iowa caucus in 2020, and I still don't know who won that election, you know?
I mean, it's impossible to know now, and that makes it very, very difficult in a democracy for people to know how to act if they're not informed.
Somehow this uncertainty appears to be beneficial to the centralised authority and the doubling down of authoritarianism, particularly with regard to the issue that is going to be uniting us on June the 22nd.
It seems to legitimise censorship somehow.
This constant talk of corruption, misinformation, fake news is legitimising publicly funded media organisations like the BBC in their endeavour to censor and adjudicate which information Take a figure like RFK, who's a radical outsider, one assumes, in spite of the surname.
When he came on our show, he said stuff about the pandemic, its funding and its aims and it's Execution that even for me, a hardened old conspiracy theorist of yore, to listen to.
Do you ever think of going... I mean, it's difficult to imagine how much further you could go, the pair of you.
I mean, I saw you... I basically agree with Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
She's a good woman.
She saw through the pair of you.
She called it as she saw it.
She did democracy a great service that day.
But are you willing to investigate even more seemingly outrageous claims?
Like, for example, some of the RFK ones.
You must be familiar with them, Michael.
Because I'm doing this in turns, but this is how I'm going to do it on the night.
See?
Fair.
One turn each.
You know?
Yeah, I mean, look, I was going to say, too, I think that, look, we have a really great system of government in the United States, but it does need to be periodically reformed and refreshed.
And we saw about 50 years ago, the church committee hearings, which basically demanded significant reform by FBI and CIA.
We also saw a flowering of journalism in that period.
We are not seeing that flowering of journalism coming from the big newspapers.
It's not coming from the Washington Post or New York Times.
In fact, they've been perpetuating misinformation, including around Hunter Biden's laptop, the COVID origins issue, the Russiagate.
But I think that you see a bunch of new players, Matt and I. I mean, the benefits of having been sort of attacked by Debbie Wasserman Schultz in early March, as Matt and I were, is that we've had a number of whistleblowers come forward and they don't trust the big newspapers.
They would rather work with Matt and me, who have proven that we will protect our whistleblowers and our sources and our witnesses.
We're very careful.
So I do think we have the potential to enter into a new age of journalism, a new golden age, but I don't think it'll be coming from the establishment.
I think it'll be coming from people at places like Substack and at Twitter.
I also think, though, that we still need a bipartisan sort of truth and reconciliation commission to get to the bottom of, you know, frankly, this terrible abuse of whistleblowers.
You know, we've seen basically it's not just that the people that are lying to you, that it's not just that these government officials are lying.
They're also trying to censor people and defame them.
And so just on the COVID origin story, they accused these very reputable scientists of spreading conspiracy theories by pointing out that actually many viruses in the past had escaped from labs and that they were conducting precisely the risky research In the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that was the research with the closest viruses to the coronavirus.
So, you know, I think there's a lot of bullying that's been going on.
It's been an abuse of power.
But I do think that's the role of journalists and also of reformers to clean up these institutions.
And the public wants to know, and I think they deserve to know.
Whistleblowers must be protected.
We've had several whistleblowers on this show, notably, uh, what's he called?
Grady O'Boyle and Stephen Friend.
We had those FBI whistleblowers, and they exclusively revealed that each of their siblings had stick figure tattoos of me on their genitals.
Am I right in saying that, Gareth?
No, that isn't accurate at all.
Something a bit like that, guys.
Now when we're doing our big conference on the censorship industrial complex in London,
7pm BST on Thursday, June the 22nd, which we will be covering on this show subsequently,
look at that lovely poster.
I'm in the middle there.
I'm sexy.
I'm very much the Mike Hutchence of that little trio.
And you know that Matt Taibbi's on drums.
God knows what Schellenberg is capable of.
An array of organs, I'd imagine he'd be tickling.
It just takes a glimpse to see that there's barely an instrument that he wouldn't be willing
to take his lips to.
I hope we're going to have some fun and it's not going to be all serious and political.
Matt, are you going to have a bit of a laugh?
Certainly, as long as it's not at my expense.
Will be.
Some of it.
But Michael's quite... I think Michael seems like he's a very teasable person to me.
Do I have to do the stick figure thing?
I would like you to honour me with a tattoo on your genitals if it's not too much trouble.
If you haven't already got a stick figure tattoo of me somewhere on your body, then you might want to consider that.
At least when you're being probed at Heathrow Customs and the blue latex glove, they say, ah, Russell Brand.
Welcome in.
Welcome in.
Since the Queen died, he's our natural Republican figurehead.
That was a great comeback, Russell.
That just brought it all together, the whole work.
I'm going to be doing that on the night.
I'm going to do it on the night.
Michael, I hope you're not going to be dour and sour.
I hope you're going to be very fruity and good fun for our conference.
I was told that I got to play the straight man, so I'm going to stick with that.
Well, good luck, Schellenberger.
Good luck playing that part, darling.
I've got some interesting and high-profile friends who want to come, and I'll name-drop them off-air.
Gareth, you're going to come, aren't you?
I don't think I'm one of those, am I?
No, you're not high-profile.
You'll be in trouble if that's the case.
Are you going to ask any questions, Gareth?
What, now?
Well, now I'm obligated to.
Well, yeah, because I've played the jingle.
Oh, bloody hell.
Don't do a long question.
I won't do a long question.
All right.
No, I was... Guy, I was... Obviously, we know so much from your revelations regarding, kind of, Covid.
It's already too long.
Over the Twitter files.
The list you mentioned, Matt, We've talked before about the FBI in kind of collusion with Ukraine's intelligence agency that included, I think, Kit Clamber and the Gryzor and also seemed to, I think, include Aaron Maté was on that list as well.
I just wondered your thoughts on where the kind of censorship is kind of permeating every area of discourse now.
Do you feel that there's kind of no end to where it's going to lead?
I think that's one of the major revelations of the Twitter files was the scale of what they were looking at was so enormous.
It was kind of a bait and switch because what happened was they started off Basically coming to the platforms like Twitter and saying, well, we have a problem with Russian interference and we just want to clean that up.
And that's how they got their foot in the door.
And next thing you know, they're getting their hands on all kinds of topics ranging from from COVID to election interference to the war in Ukraine.
And, you know, Essentially, what they did in the United States, I think, was very clever, because the United States has a legal tradition that doesn't allow intelligence agencies to meddle in the information environment domestically.
So they call all of this, you know, interdiction of foreign interference.
But what they're actually doing is they're looking at, in some cases, really small follower accounts of people who are just making political jokes online.
They look at everything.
And the problem is the new laws that are being proposed, you know, in Canada, the Digital Services Act, you know, there's a restrict act in America.
If these things pass, they'll be able to look at everything and censor everything with no problem at all.
I mean, Michael, do you agree with that?
Yeah, that's part of what we're concerned about is that the EU is trying to impose new censorship tools that they would then apply to Twitter and Facebook globally.
But we're seeing a crackdown on Free speech happening around the world at the same time.
It's very creepy.
It sends chills up your spine when you see countries basically demanding censorship for the same reasons everywhere.
It's hard not to think it's coordinated by governments, but it's everywhere.
I mean, it's Canada, United States, Britain, the EU.
Ireland is proposing a bill to go into people's homes and search their computers without warning.
Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, they're trying to get into people's private text messages.
That's also something they want to justify in Britain.
And they always come up, they just keep coming up with new justifications for it, and they make stuff up.
They say that there's an increase of hate.
There's no evidence for that.
Our societies are more tolerant of racial, religious, sexual minorities than they've ever been, and the evidence shows that.
So I find it very creepy because I think what's happening is the elites are losing legitimacy and they are constantly trying to find some new crisis, some new urgent thing as a justification for censorship and demonizing their political opponents.
And to see the BBC participate in this And putting forward somebody who is a completely inexperienced reporter as though they're going to be the expert on what's true and false in general.
It's the kind of stuff you would expect to see out of a George Orwell novel.
And, you know, it's sort of shocking because we've seen this in other countries.
I didn't think, I didn't ever expect to see it in the United States.
But I think the point of us getting together in London is that we wanted to bring people from around the world.
They're going to be coming from around the world.
Because we do feel like we got to go on the offensive and we need to be demanding more free speech rights around the world.
We shouldn't be defending what we have.
We should be expanding freedom and we need a global movement to do that in order to counter the censorship industrial complex.
I certainly agree with that.
And I want to add that there's just been, and this is a scoop of my own, there's a new UK law that would grant certain authorities the right to check at Heathrow Airport whether or not visiting journalists have stick figure tattoos of a much-loved British icon on their genitals.
And I think actually that law, that's actually quite sensible.
That's a good law, isn't it?
You do need some regulation, because you can't trust all journalists to have the necessary body markings.
No, it shows a level of commitment, I think, doesn't it?
I know I will say that if you two on the night start throwing to each other like going, oh Matt, do you want it?
Michael, do you want to pick up on that?
Oh yeah, I'll pick up on it.
Then what's the point of me showing up?
Because if you've brought me up just for ticket sales, I tell you just have a bit of glamour on the poster.
Let's bring out the poster again.
Who looks best?
Bring it up.
Me, isn't it?
It's me.
That's a very old photo, Grant.
That is recent.
I took that.
That was taken for me by me this very morning.
There I am.
Look at me.
All innocent, just like a Hussuit Michael Jackson.
Matt Taibbi looks like one of the free stooges.
Schellenbergers squinting at an imaginary sun.
I'm carrying all the glamour.
And I tell you what, if they start talking to each other directly on the night, Gareth, I will freak out.
I really will.
Do you promise you won't, Matt?
I promise, I'm sorry for that violation.
It was!
That's the sort of thing, that's what Wassim does.
This is my time!
This is my time!
My time!
That's what I'll be doing, alright?
If there's any of that bullshit, I will Wassim and Schultz you so hard.
I think to next week a lot of people in the comments are saying
lil peep 666666 said long question gareth barry john fox all right gareth stop milking it then
some people saying that you're sort of adorable and stuff but most of it was real harsh judgments
Thank you very much Matt and Michael for joining us.
That was already a fantastic conversation.
If you want to join us and the attempt by this couple of chuckling goons to start a global anti-censorship industrial complex movement In London, using me on a poster, then join us, join us in London, 22nd of June.
Matt and Michael will be back on the show, newly tattooed.
Get your tickets at censorshipindustrialcomplex.org.
We'll post that in the chat.
We're going to stay on, on locals.
I think Matt and Michael, who would blame them if they left us?
But we're going to stay.
We're going to talk more about Donald Trump.
We're going to talk more about censorship.
We're going to be taking your questions.
So join us on local, just press the red button.
That's all these questions that I'm reading.
That all comes from there.
Thank you, Michael.
Thanks, Matt, for joining us.
It's lovely to have your time.
Appreciate you guys.
See you soon.
Take care guys.
There they go, two of the bravest, finest journalist activists that we've ever met in our entire life.
I love those guys.
I love them as well, actually, a bit.
Do you think we're all mates?
Yeah, we're mates now, aren't we, mate?
Do you think afterwards we'll maybe go out for a little bite to eat?
I'm not going to be invited, surely, am I?
Of course you are!
You're vital!
I feel like at school I'm the one that goes, Let's have a couple of paces behind.
Excuse me, excuse me!
I've got a couple of conspiracy theories of my own, you know.
Oh, shut up.
Go and get us a packet of fags, will ya?
Alright, no worries.
Which ones do you want?
Here, nick them porno mags that your dad's got.
No worries, Mr Brand.
Hey, guess what we've got on the show tomorrow?
Krishnadas, talking about spiritual enlightenment.
Work harder, guys.
I think, are you going to ask him to get a tattoo?
Krishnadas, we all understand that the material world is emanating from pure consciousness.
Yes, that's right, Ralph, that's a good way of putting it.
Have you got a tattoo of me on your dick?
Sorry?
No, I was just saying, Bhagavad Gita's got stuff that's been in the Bible, so does that mean there's an archetypal intelligence?
Oh, yeah, that's what I thought you said.
So stay with us on Locals to join our exclusive extended tattooed dick.
That looks like he was getting a tattoo on his genitals at that time.
Hey, I didn't agree to this!
No, Krishna Das, he's enlightened, isn't he?
He's going to have a great time in here.
That might be the reason.
What if our guests watch this show?
Well, good luck.
They'll like it.
My dad will be watching it.
Get well soon.
That's what they say on there.
Anyway, so join us.
Listen, press the red button on your screen right now.
See that little red button?
Push it.
Push it inward like it's the nipple of a much-loved friend.
Push it till it's inverted.
Push it in the end till it's like a thimble.
Push it right in.
Right?
Yeah, we're good, yeah.
That's what you should do.
And then join us on Locals.
Me and Ian will carry on chatting for a while, won't we, Gail?
Of course.
Bad graphics, Jack.
Better have created something from that Lionel Richie thing.
Join us.
We're going to be with you in a couple of seconds.
Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow.
Not for more of the different, you know, you know what I'd normally say.
Stay free.
But stay with us on Locals.
Click the red button now.
It's going to be mad.
I'm going to really let go.
I'm feeling crazy, baby.
Stay free.
Man, switch it.
Switch on, switch off.
Man, switch it.
Switch on, switch off.
Switch on.
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