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June 26, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:13:27
“THEY KNEW!” Did The US Plan The Russian Coup?! - #154 - Stay Free With Russell Brand
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I'm a black man and I could never be a veteran on this trip to Washington, D.C. I brought
you a video of a man who was a veteran. In this video, you're going to see what I'm talking
In this video, you're going to see the future.
If you weren't an awakening wonder, you wouldn't even be here.
Hello!
Welcome to another week of news and information.
And when I say news, is it me on scene assistant Gareth Roy?
Or has the world gone all unusual?
It has.
When I was growing up, billionaires weren't having cage fights.
That wasn't what it was.
They weren't like billionaires having a cage fight.
They were like...
Or in balloons, hot air balloons.
The most extravagant one we had, had a very neatly trimmed beard and would go up in a balloon.
That's it, it's not like, I'll have you, other billionaires, I'll do you, see you mate, I'll nudge ya, I'll have ya.
Or the Branson vs Gates, now that would be a fight.
the The Submersive Titan.
And I will be offering you Jungian analysis about how it's an attempt to revive a relic at the bottom of the ocean.
Deep within ourselves there is information, there is a story that we want more from.
Also, it's a story of inequality because you wouldn't be getting in a submarine unless you could afford to.
It's extraordinary, this age of exploration.
Let me know in the chat and the comments if you feel grief for those lost or if you think it's a distraction from the hunter stuff.
Let me know.
I'm interested in you.
If you're watching this on Rumble right now, press the red button.
Do yourself a favour.
Join us in Locals.
It's part of a community.
We've got some exciting news coming for that community.
I can hardly wait to tell you.
We're going to start a whole new movement.
I'm not going to use the word cult because a lot of people don't like that.
In fact, it is a pejorative term for sure.
But we're starting a new movement and it's going to be really, really exciting.
Guess who's coming on?
Jeffrey Sachs.
Jeffrey Sachs is coming on the show.
If you don't know who Jeffrey Sachs is, he's one of the first people that explained that the war between Ukraine and Russia had been, if not caused, certainly agitated by NATO infringement of former Soviet Union territories.
He explained it.
He's a brilliant, brilliant thinker, a great teacher.
He's one of those people that it's really hard for the establishment to discredit because when you listen to him, you think, well, you're just a perfectly reasonable person.
It's like journalists like Tayibi and Schellenberger that I did that free speech event with last week which was, gratefully I acknowledge, was attended by Stella Assange.
You realise that there are so many credible people now that are unwilling to put up with this elite establishment corruption that it can't be that everyone's suddenly turned into some mad right-wing conspiracy theorist.
It can't be that.
But if you're watching us on YouTube, Join us on Rumble and you will learn there for yourself that free speech is not the free speech to hate one another.
That's not why we want free speech.
We want free speech to attack the establishment and we will have to stop broadcasting on YouTube or Twitter or Twitch or Gut Bucket or Tickle Pickle or all of the main sites, all of them.
We'll have to stop broadcasting on them because in a minute we're going to be talking about Chris Witte.
He's our version of Fauci, although he's not allowed to accept money from pharmaceutical companies.
Not that I'm suggesting that.
Royalties, Russ.
Royalties!
Royalties!
That was a royalty!
That's a royalty.
Because royalty, that's the best thing, isn't it?
You can't criticise a royalty.
How dare you!
That's my royalties!
Fair enough.
Chris Wee, he's like, he organised our Covid response and he said that he was pressu... I mean, I've got to be careful how I say this, but he was the scientist determining the response and he said he would not have called... Kind of.
He said scientists would not have called for lockdown.
Scientists, he said, like Einstein, all of those guys would not have called for a lockdown.
It's going to be interesting.
We can't even talk about it on YouTube, that's the truth, because of the W.H. money.
W.H.O. money.
Because of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
That's why we can't talk about it.
But first, if you thought billionaires couldn't be...
And we'll be talking about that coup as well a bit, won't we?
That coup.
Is it a coup or is it a distraction?
Join us over on Rumble.
Do you think this is a convenient coup?
Do you think this coup, and apparently they've been talking to...
What's his name again?
Pregotion.
Pregotion.
Oh, Pregotion.
Pregotion's a mercenary killer, I tell you.
Have you seen his face?
He's a warlord.
He's a warlord.
He's not like, oh, this guy Pregotian's come along.
Everything's going to be OK.
He's not like a friendly dude.
He's not Nelson Mandela.
No.
Is he?
He's like a Russian warlord.
He's a bully boy.
Let's get behind him.
I like him.
Anyway, we're going to be telling you about that coup.
Do you reckon, though, before I get into it, do you think this is a convenient distraction from the failing Ukrainian counter-offensive where a thousand Ukrainians a day are dying, which is a great stain, again, on this terrible, terrible ongoing conflict that many people believe?
And we'll be asking Jeffrey Sachs, who's an expert about this, Is this war being perpetuated simply because it's advantageous to imperialist interests, by which I mean the long-term state imperatives of the United States military-industrial complex, both politically and economically?
You tell me in the chat.
I don't know.
I'm just a sweet little guy.
But first, let's see what Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are doing.
They're agreeing, apparently, to fight in a cage.
Is that the world we're living in?
Is that a benefit to anybody?
Let's see how Fox News is talking about this issue, shall we?
For real, David?
Do you think it's for real?
I think it's... If they put an angle on it, like raising money, doing something good with it... It's a bit weird, billionaires having a fight to raise... And they've got so much money!
We've got to raise money!
I know!
Lemonade stand!
Outside the house!
Well, what about all these billions, baby?
Yeah, all Mark Zuckerberg has to do is wait for a couple of minutes.
Right, we've got to raise billions, wait!
There it is, we've raised it.
Right, there you go!
That's right!
We need a couple more!
Wait!
There they are!
A couple more billions!
All he has to do is nothing!
He's already done that!
He's already raised billions by out of his brain, him and them twins, played by Armie Hammer, and the other lad that was Spider-Man, come up with Facebook!
Did they get, was that a CIA investment?
Or is that Google?
I think it might be Google.
Another state knows all these lads in their garages have got a good idea ahead of time, innit?
There's a lad in his garage.
There's a little kid in his garage coming up with a hell of a scheme.
That's what DARPA's all about.
What?
DARPA.
DARPA!
Oh, we'll get into that another time.
No, not the bat caves.
Is this the bloody bat caves?
That's right, yeah.
There's something foul in Wuhan, baby!
Let's see what Fox News have got to say next.
Billionaires to help, you know, somebody.
My pick?
Musk.
And I'll tell you why.
Yes, 5-7 versus 6-1 all the height and...
They're talking about it like it was a proper fight.
Has the world gone mad?
I mean, it was all cool when Logan Paul and KSI have a brawl.
Yeah, that's cool.
And when Floyd Mayweather and our man Conor McGregor get together and have fisty cuffs, that's all cool.
But now it's actual billionaires having a...
I mean, what's that actually going to look like?
What's it actually going to look...
They're going to do facial expressions that are unusual, aren't they?
Like, they'll do things like this, like...
They're not used to fighting!
Like if someone goes like that, they'll twitch and stuff.
You want to see it though, don't you?
Yeah, that will be quite good actually.
I do want to see it.
They're analysing it though, strategically.
Well, Musk has got a superior reach.
What if Musk has like a rocket launcher like Iron Man up his fist?
And all that.
And there's a bit where this woman in a minute, when she's analysing it, says that Elon Musk could use his wisdom.
Yeah.
I can't use wisdom.
And Zuckerberg's been spying on Musk, as he spies on us all anyway, and been selling his data.
Wait a minute.
What's he doing now?
He's training.
What's that he's doing in his yard?
He's practicing with Joe Rogan.
I'll get you, you son of a gun.
They're taking ivermectin.
Well, that won't work on anything except various horse parasites, which I don't imagine they've got.
Weight difference, but it's an attitude when you're in the octagon.
When you look at guys like Frank Mir, Dana White, when you look at all these guys, Tyrus, when they get in that octagon, when they get into that ring as boxers or as fighters, it's all about the attitude.
You're going ready to do it.
And I don't think Zuckerberg, who's more of a soy boy, can keep up with Musk, who's an alpha.
Alpha maledom is contextual.
There are certain contexts where you go, well this is the dominant male in this situation, but not in other situations.
And Zuckerberg with Lex Friedman, he looked pretty good.
Shout out to Lex there, he makes a fantastic podcast as we all know.
But when they were rolling together, as you know, as you know Gal, I'm an experienced Brazilian Jiu Jitsu expert, so I'm one of the best ones.
I think that's why you're on this rant now.
Anger, jealousy?
Well, you're anchoring for an invite at some point.
Yeah, what, to brawl one of them?
Well, someone.
Problem is with me, Gal, is like, I sometimes bring the wrong mood to events.
Right.
Like, you know, remember when I'm at award ceremonies?
Yeah, I do.
And I'm in the wrong, like, type of mood?
That's right.
This is the MTV Video Music Awards, and I'm experiencing deep ennui.
And a sense of meaninglessness.
No, no!
Excitement!
Oh, sorry, sorry, yeah.
And now, nihilist Russell Brand.
Hey, nothing means anything, nothing at all, unless you find God deep within yourself, and you're not going to find him here.
Here's Jay-Z!
It's the wrong way to run the good ship MTV.
You're right, you won't be in the right mood.
Lost to talk you into it.
If I was fighting Zuckerberg, like, I do roll in, I do BJJ, and I have to, like, even then sometimes I'm not in the right mood.
I feel like, you know when you sort of feel like you've got a little bit of an upset stomach, I don't want someone to lean on me now and crack all the cartilage in my shoulder, or stop me breathing, or feel someone's stubble go all up my face, or have someone's, and I use this word politely, ball bag, like sort of down in my gullet.
Sometimes you don't need that.
Now Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are going to have to get comfortable with each other's nutsacks, baby.
Nutsack, baby!
Okay, do you want me to respond?
Yeah.
I did the first four UFCs where it's a 600-pounder, like we had a sumo wrestler, that was before there were rounds.
He had to be knocked out or choked out to do it, so you could go watch them online.
If I watched a 160-pound guy crush 250-pound guys, if you know jiu-jitsu, if Zuckerberg's really training and Elon Musk prides himself on not training at all, he'll last 45 seconds.
Yeah, but Elon has a move that he calls the walrus.
And so he just lies on top of his opponent and does nothing because he is larger in stature.
You know what?
I changed my vote then.
That sounds like... How do you beat that?
How do you beat that?
The whole world's become ironic.
Yes, I think it is that, isn't it?
That's not good.
Irony can't feed off of itself.
Now, I'm going to offer you a bit of a Marxist dialectic now.
Of course, the centralising of economic power to state authority, we know how that goes, and it ends up with Stalinism and Maoism and all of those things, so yeah.
But he said that we will enter into a time where everything becomes like irony and pastiche and parody, that everything will lose its sincerity.
And when you're seeing news stories about, we're going to dig up the Titanic now in a submarine, and billionaires are fighting one another, and like, But you can't have presidential debates.
Politics has become entertainment.
Entertainment is politics.
Like, you know, look at sport.
People, you care about the political opinions of sporting stars.
And there's all sorts of political messaging held within sport.
That's always been the case because a lot of sport derives from war.
They say sport is sanitized war.
And I'm not saying that if it's wrong to promote LGBTQ plus stuff, then maybe you shouldn't have national emblems around poppies and things like that.
Maybe you have to look at all of it.
It's like there's a reversal of the charge of our culture.
That which is entertainment has become very pious.
Like, look at movies.
Look at someone like The Critical Drinker, the analysis he will give you on how movies have been affected by cultural trends.
Then, actual economics, you have billionaires brawling each other.
You have entertainers becoming politicians.
You have RFK doing push-ups for reasons I simply cannot even begin to understand.
But what I will tell you is RFK, he's shredded, baby!
He hinched!
We've had RFK on here.
He's Rumble's new favorite son.
He's a Kennedy.
Let's have a look at RFK doing push-ups and let's... Why don't we objectify RFK?
Yeah, why not?
Let's objectify his body.
In a minute we're going to be looking at the, we're going to look at the Titanic submarine thing.
We're also going to be looking at this coup.
What do you think about the coup?
Is it a distraction?
Are NATO involved in talking to, what's he called, Rogocian?
Uh, Progocian.
Progocian.
Progocian.
Yeah, because one of the things he said indicates that he sort of gave NATO a shout out.
I'm doing this because for NATO!
It's like a weird thing to mention NATO.
Anyway, let's look at RFK doing these push-ups.
baby. Okay let's go.
Grunty Grunty
You're nodding.
You're nodding at the pecs, pal.
It's a good set of pecs.
Come on, I'd love those.
He could be in the... I mean, on myself.
You'd love those.
You don't want him... I just want him in front of me.
You don't want a motorboat in.
Do you think he should be in the expendables?
Yes.
He could be in the expendables, couldn't he?
Certainly could.
I'm not saying he's expendable.
I'm not saying he's very necessary for the discourse right now, because we need to have some radical views brought to the centre, and LRFK is trying to do that.
Many people are discrediting him.
Many people refuse to debate him.
That debate, oh, wouldn't that be great to have that on Rumble?
Maybe this is now the only way you get some media coverage.
He's got to have a fight.
You've got to have a fight, and you've got to look stacked.
I will fight Dr. Peter Hortense, the flying bow tie!
It's the only way the media are going to cover him and not centre him.
Okay, he's willing to fight that guy.
What's he called?
What's he called?
Hortes or Horex?
Yeah, Hortes.
Yeah, Peter Hortes.
Will he fight Hortes?
Hortes.
Well, I don't have to fight anybody.
I'm a scientist.
I don't need to put my dicky-bow around my nutbag and fight RFK.
Because you think with Zuckerberg, you know, there was that recent fine, wasn't there?
Because we were all talking about the Dominion law case and how much that Fox got fined.
750 million dollars?
I think Facebook's was more than that.
And so I'm not suggesting that this is a distraction from that kind of stuff, but it could be, arguably.
Tell me in the chat, is it a distraction?
Well, that's because of privacy issues that, you know.
Is it a distraction from your privates?
Right, we've had a look at a lot of it.
Don't be distracted from your privates.
That's what I say. They're down there.
The Titan Submersible.
Why was its implosion not announced sooner?
Some people are saying it's a distraction.
I'll tell you who's rinsing it.
James Cameron.
James Cameron.
This is Cameron's Christmas, isn't it?
Any Titanic event for Cameron, he's come right out of his shell.
James Cameron, obviously, no one can denounce the auteur of Terminator.
Terminator 2.
And of course, notably, Titanic.
The question I want to put to you, and really tell me if you're watching us on YouTube right now, join us on Rumble, because in a minute, we're going to be talking about the pandemic response in the UK.
We're going to be talking to Jeffrey Sachs about matters in Russia and whether or not this coup is part of a
distraction to distract us Specifically from the Ukrainian counteroffensive which by
all accounts ain't going bad And there's a NATO conference coming up where they're not
going to want to sit around going Oh, no, our ideas are terrible. It'd be much better to
discuss. Oh, look, there's a destabilized Russia Putin's facing public dissent. Is it a distraction?
Tell us jump over there press the red button if you're watching us on rumble
But I want to offer you this bit of analysis We're not here just to give you anti-establishment information.
That is one of our primary goals.
We're also here to let you know that as a man who believes in God, I believe that there are deep ulterior forces that are present in everyday life, sometimes in ways that are inexplicable to us, difficult to understand, What is our ongoing fascination with the story of the Titanic, a vessel that was constructed at a similarly hubristic time, where titans of industry defined their age as the titans of the current day do now, where the Titanic was literally named the unsinkable before its consummation with that iceberg?
What lays down there now, those jewels scattered, those broken mirrors, What is our ongoing fascination with a vessel that we know, mostly from the film, had super rich people that got better access to the lifeboats and a poorer class of people who, if the film's to be believed, were having a fantastic time down there, dancing away in steerage with Leonardo DiCaprio?
When the culture has a fascination with something, it means that I believe that there's information and energy in it.
The Titanic tells us something.
It tells us something about hubris.
It tells us something about inequality.
And I would offer you this main point.
When the Titanic went down, that was 1912, human beings were almost boundless in their pursuit of power.
And what was just around the corner?
World War I. Unprecedented death.
Unprecedented destruction.
Then World War Two.
Could we similarly be at a point of global conflagration?
Could the advent of emergent AI be this precipitating event that we're being confronted with and confronted by?
Does the Titanic hold this fascination for us?
Because we know deep, deep down in our belly, deep, deep down in our bones, deep, deep down is where the secrets are, where the mystery is.
And why is it that this place is only accessible to elites?
What are the stories we're being told?
Why is it only Jeff Bezos can go to space?
Elon Musk can go to space?
Billionaires can explore the depth?
The depths.
What does that tell us about our species?
What does it tell us about our time?
Shall we have a look at what James Cameron's got to say?
Because he's the man who knows.
He's talking about this like he invented the Titanic and forgotten that the Titanic actually wasn't a very good boat after all, because it just fell apart the first sign of a bloody iceberg.
Well, I've been down there many times.
I know the wreck site very well, as does my friend Bob Ballard.
I've made 33 dives.
I actually calculated that I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did.
Actually know more about the Titanic than the people that designed the Titanic.
Actually, if I'd been driving it, it wouldn't have sank.
I look at the numbers for Titanic.
Biggest film of all time.
Titanic II, coming out soon.
Back in the day.
Um, and of course, uh, you know, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, three times deeper than Titanic.
You know, he's actually almost laughing in their face.
I actually regularly go to the ocean floor and I've never found, I've never imploded.
I feel better than ever.
So I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols.
They should have come to me. Should have come to me. I would have told them I had to build them a better submarine.
I'm only mucking about with James Cameron of course, you know, and all of that.
But, uh, sort of weird approach to the interview.
Yeah, I mean, the whole thing with this at the moment is crazy.
Isn't it like, obviously the media coverage, you can understand why people are saying this is a distraction
because the media coverage is everywhere.
In the same way the media coverage is everywhere when, for example, Jeff Bezos goes to space.
It's the same thing, it's wall to wall.
They're very obviously incredibly supportive of billionaires and these explorations where at a time when the wealth transfer goes on you can understand why there's a kind of public outcry and anger of billionaires hoovering up all our money and then using it to go off on these explorations.
Because what it suggests is that billionaires are intrepid and better than us, and they're doing all these expeditions into previously unforeseen economic territories and geographical territories.
They deserve their wealth, is the underlying information.
Look at Jeff Bezos.
He's going to space on a car kraken.
When was the last time you designed a car, Crockett?
What, out of blue tack sat around on your butt with scotch tape doing nothing much?
Like it's, uh, yes, like built in is the idea of meritocracy, that there is indeed a superior set of beings.
Never any mention of the favorable tax breaks that made the way that Amazon had five billion dollars in tax breaks just recently.
You know, they've got time and money to go exploring the depths, haven't they?
A lot of people in the... Hattie Hope says, Entitlement.
Bezos' penis couldn't go in water, says Rational Anarchy.
I think you mean his rocket, don't you?
Not his actual winky, which I mean, that would be a hell of a disorder.
We're still on YouTube.
I mean, I don't want to get a YouTube strike for talking about Jeff Bezos' winky wooge.
No.
Jeff Bezos' wasname.
Everything about Jeff Bezos, himself, his rocket and presumably his penis is somewhat evocative
of the male reproductive organ.
Let me know in the chat if you agree with that little piece of analysis. Now we're going to move
away from the submarine now having offered you analysis from every conceivable angle.
Reports say US intelligence knew Prygoshin was planning mutiny in Russia. Let's have a look at
the mainstream media report on this coup. In Russia tonight state television is not showing
these stunning images.
Russians cheering for the leader of this weekend's aborted rebellion.
Unlike us, we, on our mainstream news, show you both sides of the story.
This is from NBC, is it, saying that?
How do they have the stones, the minerals, the balls to come out and criticise state media in Russia?
Of course Russia has a propagandist media, of course they do.
But, as your man Trump used to say, would you think we're any better?
And his soldiers, as they leave the city of Rostov-on-Don.
Their mutiny bringing the country to the brink of chaos less than 24 hours ago, when Yevgeny Pugoshin, the leader of the Wagner Group, led a march to Moscow.
are a privately funded army that are currently in dispute of Putin because he
believed they should be corralled into the main Russian war effort. What we're
interested in and let me know if you share our interest in the chat in the
comments if you're watching us on YouTube join us over on Rumble now if
you're on Rumble press the red button and join us on locals because I want to
know do you believe that NATO communicated with and collaborated with
our man over there Pregorshinov or whatever he's called sorry for being
disrespectful about people with non-western sounding, normal sounding, by my rubric, names.
Do you think that? And do you think that the media are reporting on this in a biased manner?
And do you think it's important that there's a NATO conference coming up that would otherwise
have been dominated by the failure of the Ukrainian counter offensive, where now they
can focus on the lack of stability within Russia? I've got an on-screen expert who can
answer some of those questions. Definitely not an expert.
Oh no, you're an assistant, I'm gonna change your credit.
If only we had someone here that worked on the team that could whip up graphics in an instant, reliably.
Like, good old bad graphics jack.
You should be called something like on-screen amanuensis.
I mean, you're a producer is what you are, really, and a writer.
Let me write that down.
With this, I think the thing with this is obviously what the media in the US is saying is that, you know, this isn't being covered responsibly in Russia.
But this feels, from everything that we're kind of reading about this today, like in a sense it's a kind of self-contained matter.
Putin and Prigozhin are two sides of the same coin.
They're both kind of warlords to an extent, committing illegal things.
Prigozhin is a billionaire.
He's another billionaire!
And there was lots of disputes that the funding was going to be cut for the Wagner group, that he was refusing to accept Putin's demand that Wagner be placed under the control of the army leadership.
So there was disputes going on for a long time and what has kind of been surmised is this coup was in order to pre-empt actions against him.
So I guess you could argue this was kind of a self-contained situation that doesn't necessarily pertain to the wider context of this war.
Oh, I see.
It's its own separate narrative.
It says in some content that we will be bringing you in more detail later in the week.
For decades, Prigozhin and Putin were close allies until recently the Wagner Group, which originated within the Russian military intelligence GRU, enjoyed the evident patronage of Putin and other powerful forces within the state apparatus.
Prygogin, a fascistic warlord, billionaire and convicted criminal, represents a substantial
faction of the Russian oligarchy that opposes the war solely because Putin's effort to protect
the capitalist classes and the state's privileged access to the country's vast resources has
cost them dearly.
So if you see this story framed in a way that's favourable just because it happens to be an
anti-Putin narrative, then you should know that Prygogin ain't no hero.
He seems like a member of the same class, ultimately.
What is interesting, I believe, is the fact that he gave NATO that shout out before doing it, that that NATO conference is coming up, that the Ukraine encounter offensive doesn't appear to be going well.
These are all questions we'll be following up with Jeffrey Sachs in a moment.
You remember Jeffrey Sachs, don't you?
He's a man who was spitting truths and got given the old heave-ho.
Before we leave YouTube, let's have a look at that moment where Jeffrey Sachs made his bones, where we knew that Jeffrey Sachs was a truth teller because he was getting shut down by the mainstream media for spitting truths.
Let's have a look at the expression that he famously gave in gif form, or the other one.
Let's have a look.
Here is Jeffrey Sachs.
Jeff, we've got to stop there.
That's quite a statement as well.
Who can't love Jeffrey Sachs when you see him doing that expression?
I'm going to get him to do that face. There he goes.
We'll be getting him doing that face a little bit later.
We can only assume that Jeffrey has got some powerful suction available to him there.
If you're going to objectify RFK, why not?
We're objectifying men in their 60s for no reason other than we feel like it, really.
Is he wearing a wig, says Davros200.
No, that's his own hair.
Good question, Davros.
Yeah, while we're objectifying him, I'm going to give him a good tug.
I'm going to tug him on the bonce.
OK, listen, we've got to leave YouTube, and I'll tell you why.
The British equivalent of Fauci.
I don't mean a person who accepted royalties from pharmaceutical companies, nor was he involved in previous pandemics in ways that were less than favourable, baby!
But a man who, nevertheless, Chris Whitty, who's doing his level best to organise the response in this country to the pandemic, says that there was... Look, these are my words, not his, and this is allegedly... Allegedly!
Political meddling that led to lockdown and it wasn't scientifically arrived at.
That therefore means it was a political decision and it was always, always defined as scientific.
This while simultaneously elsewhere is being claimed that some of the distancing laws were arbitrary.
Is it fair to say that?
Is it fair to say that?
Yeah, it is.
That was Scott Godley at the end of 2021 who said that.
These are the kind of stories we can bring you on Rumble, but we can't bring you in a space that the WHO have got their sticky little fingers in.
So if you are watching us on YouTube, take this opportunity right now to join us by clicking the link in the description.
Get over to Rumble.
It's the home of free speech.
It's the home of RFK now.
It's going to be your home soon because you are most welcome there.
See you soon.
Thanks for joining us.
Stay free.
See you over on Rumble.
Now, those of you that are with us on Rumble already, firstly, I remember when Chris Whitty, like, because what's weird about our celebrity age, and this is a bit like the Zuckerberg and Musk fight, see if you can find the footage of this, guys.
During the pandemic, like, some lads, like British lads, saw him in a park and they gave him such a dreadful jostling.
Like, as you can see from Chris Whitty now, look at him as a PHA.
He's not a person who's going to respond well to a jostling.
He's a career scientist.
Like, even if you disagree with people, and I'm sure, given, you know, it's pretty obvious where I stand on the pandemic, I'm, when it comes to regulation, I like to be in charge of what I do myself, generally speaking, regulate myself, trust my own connection to God, to be the arbiter of my moral and ethic conduct, and please God, I won't fall short.
I don't like being told what to do, basically.
Do you like being told what to do?
Let me know in the chat.
Dear old Chris Whitty, he's an expert, right?
So call it what it is.
Where he became a celebrity during lockdown, because they're always cropping up on the telly in front of a flag behind a podium telling us when we go out the house and wear a mask and all that stuff.
Some boys, like, recognised him in a park and they treated him like he was off American Gladiator or like off of a Kellogg's commercial.
They jostled him about something chronic.
It was a bit like when Gaddafi got thrown about in the back of that van.
See if you can find the footage of that.
But Gareth, meanwhile...
Looking back now, unfairly, due to the fact that what we're understanding through this COVID inquiry that's going on at the moment is that it was the politicians that were stepping in and making the decisions.
And one of the points that Chris Whitty is suggesting here is that scientists wouldn't have suggested lockdowns, that there wasn't a real precedent for it.
I think there's this one place where he talks, yeah, lockdown would not have worked against many previous outbreaks or pandemics such as HIV, swine flu, plague and cholera but
was adopted around the world as countries struggled to stop COVID. So what he was
saying is that there kind of wasn't precedent for this. This was something that
I think China did initially and scientists wouldn't have suggested this to
politicians and he says that the only way this could have come about is
politicians stepping in.
So it was a political decision? That means it was not based on science.
How many times did you hear, follow the science, trust the experts?
That's what undergirded it.
And the people that had questions and inquiries and doubts, let me know if you were one of the people that during the pandemic you felt like, hang on a minute, this doesn't seem right to me.
Why are we being locked down?
Why are we being encouraged to take certain medications?
What the hell's going on?
You know what the rebuttal was.
You saw it on the mainstream media.
They told you.
They told you again and again.
Follow the signs.
Well, you a doctor?
Are you a doctor, are you?
That was the narrative the whole way along.
Well Chris Witty has just revealed these decisions were political decisions, which means it's
about power and the management and manipulation of power.
And that means there's an agenda.
And when there's an agenda, it is legitimate to speculate on what that agenda might be.
That's not conspiracy theory.
That's called being awake.
That's called being discerning.
That's called not being easily led and not allowing the wall to be pulled over your eyes.
Let's see what it's saying.
Hey, once again, it was about power and control.
Getting a lot of amends.
Miles Driver, I drove truck in the pandemic, so I apparently have super immunity.
No one even hinted that I should stay home.
Yeah, nice one, Miles Driver.
You are a hero and I hope you're still regarded as one, even when that's not happening.
It reeked of corruption and power.
Melissa Sky, I didn't believe any of it for a second.
Interesting stuff.
Follow the signs.
Yeah, nice one, WK.
I'm reading the comments that are on the locals page there.
If you press the red button, you can join us over there.
There's a lovely, supportive, kind, generous community of people chatting away.
Some people appear to be hardwired for obedience, says J Gwynn Wild.
Nice one.
Excellent points, all of you.
Remember a minute ago, I was just joking about when Chris Wheatley got jostled about by some lads in a, like, I don't know, out and about somewhere in London, I presume.
I feel these lads actually got prosecuted for it and maybe got convicted, so I'm certainly not making light of criminal activity, but actually it is quite...
No.
Funny?
Wrong.
I mean, look, I think this is a guy who was obviously under the thumb of Boris Johnson and the government at the time who were making all the decisions.
He shouldn't have got a jostling.
Personally, it's not something that I think is the right thing to do.
Let's have a look at him being jostled and see.
We'll decide together.
You tell me if this is good.
Bonnie Boo, I really want to see the jostling now.
Now, I should offer you a warning.
You're about to see some jostling.
Are you ready to see jostling?
Tell me in the chat, can you handle jostling?
Because I don't want to show you jostling and then use a lot of bullshit and go, oh, we shouldn't have seen that jostling.
Why didn't you censor it, Russell?
Why didn't you surveil us and censor it?
Yeah, they're ready for jostling.
Let's jostle, baby!
You're a liar.
You're a liar.
My name is a liar.
Right, it's that one.
I thought they jostled him about.
Where's the jostling?
You're a liar!
No, not this one.
Jostling in a park.
He's a liar!
You're a liar!
Anywhere in this clip are there people physically being around him like football energy.
Like, woo!
Like that.
Not like confrontation about his values.
Much more that.
Yes or no, guys?
No, it's not that clip, right?
So find a... Not that.
Find it where they... That's not jostling.
That's it.
That's jostling.
That's it.
I know the sound of jostle.
Show us this.
Because that happens to me, things like that.
Well, that's the thing.
It shouldn't happen to anyone.
I mean, it doesn't seem politically motivated when they're doing it.
They just think it's the guy off the telly.
I see you, mate!
Chris Whitty!
Oh, Chris Whitty!
I'm Chris Wee!
What I like about it is not that they're being mean to him.
I don't enjoy meanness.
I don't enjoy bullying.
I enjoy the nihilism.
They've extracted the meaning from it.
That everyone can be regarded the same as if he was a footballer or a UFC fighter, but he's a serious person.
Excuse me, would you mind?
I'm trying to get to work.
That's what I got off on.
I guess the issue with this now is that we're looking back amidst all the revelations of how negative lockdowns were.
It's not that we're looking back and going, politicians did this despite what the scientists were telling them and everything worked out great.
That's the problem.
Well, check this out.
Here's the actual story.
Sir Chris Witty there, who we've just seen being jostled to within an inch of his life,
said lockdowns were a leap of imagination and also claimed that a lack of radical thinking
had hindered the country, that's our country, the UK's planning for the pandemic.
And how do you guys think it went in US under the stewardship of Fauci there, under Bill
Gates cropping up all the time?
Are these the people you want in charge of your political decisions?
Because I tell you now that Bill Gates has, or at least the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
has, considerable influence to assert over the WHO as the second largest donor after
the nation of Germany.
He became the latest senior figure, the latest to admit that the UK had a long-standing bias in favour of influenza when it came to pandemic planning and admitted there should be a separate plan for other types of viruses.
What were the criteria that led us to that situation?
Because I suppose Conspiracy theorists, let's just accept that term.
Conspiracy theorists say, oh, they made decisions every step of the way that were advantageous to elite interests.
The ability to regulate, legislate, and lock down.
The ability to censor and surveil.
The ability to profit were always prioritized over rational, humanitarian, community-oriented thinking.
In every single instance, that is the thread that you can follow through.
Did that decision Benefit, powerful interest.
The answer is always, always, always, always yes.
It's never no.
It's never no.
They are looking to regulate.
They are looking to legislate.
I'm not even saying that individuals, certainly not dear sweet Chris Whitty, who we've just seen jostled.
We're not saying that these are nefarious individuals and even forget Forget the individuals within them.
Forget Joe Biden.
Forget Boris Johnson.
Forget whoever you think is the nefarious individual at the heart of the system.
It's the system.
It's the machine itself.
It's the set of relationships and alliances that are problematic.
I don't believe in some sort of occultist interest, although, you know, we'll investigate it one day.
What I believe in is the idea that there is a convergence of economic and political interests that creates a kind of irresistible Magnetism in a particular direction.
Let me know what you think, guys, because I know you've got some wonderful opinions.
Listen, there's no point listening to the pontifications of a gadfly and a dilettante, when on the line now, we have got renowned economist and professor at Columbia University, a man whose facial expressions are straight out of Kabuki, it's Jeffrey Sachs!
Jeffrey, it's so lovely to see you!
There you go.
Good to be with you, Russell.
It's lovely to hear you in that great echoing chamber.
Where are you?
You're in a pyramid.
I'm in the Vatican, so you were hearing the real echo.
You're really helping with those conspiracy theories.
Live from the Vatican, it's the Da Vinci Code with Jeffrey Sachs.
But Russell, I have to tell you, before we get to Purgosian, you know, the other thing to think about with the pandemic is there is really serious, legitimate reason to think this came out of a lab funded by the US government.
That's no joke.
That's actually completely substantive, and that's what I would like to know.
And that's what they're not telling us at all about.
And they know a lot more about that than they have told us.
And I know a lot about it, enough to know how much they've lied.
So that's pretty interesting also, because we spent the last three years in an epidemic that may well have been caused by deliberate manipulation of a SARS-like virus on NIH contracts.
So it's pretty annoying.
Yeah, that is annoying, Geoffrey.
That's one way of describing it.
Certainly a lot of people in our chat over on Locals, press the red button if you want to join us there now, completely agree with your analysis, which I know is an analysis arrived at over a long period of time.
Just quickly, Geoffrey, before we move on to Purgosian and whether or not this is a false flag event, this brief coup over in Russia in order to distract people from the Ukrainian counter-offensive and its potential failure, can we just determine that If it is established that this was a lab leak that was brought about due to a lack of due diligence and perhaps because of irresponsible gain-of-function research that involved American financial interests, how does that change our response to the events of the last three years?
What specifically does it mean we should be pursuing that would be impossible if a natural origin theory were accepted?
Well, the starting point is that it would mean we have a U.S.
government that is absolutely reckless, out of control, lying at every turn, and dangerous to the world.
So that would be my starting point.
I think that is a plausible case.
It's not proven, but it's plausible.
And if it happened, we sure better know, because the U.S.
is continuing to do lots of research Probably all over the world of a very dangerous kind, and it would be nice if someone would tell the truth and someone would look at some actual documents and facts.
Just a couple days ago, the intelligence agencies released another report.
It's a joke.
They released no data.
They released no background.
They Give us a few paragraphs.
It's bull, and it's disgusting, after all this time.
Given all the lies that they have said, it's absolutely disgusting.
So, I really would like to know, because if the US recklessly not only endangered the world, but led to a virus that killed 20 million people, And has lied about it, denied it, and most likely is continuing this kind of research, I sure would like to know.
Well, Geoffrey, if your line of inquiry is correct, then you should be canonised yourself.
But if it's incorrect, I think you should go straight to a confessional and get yourself cleansed, perhaps by the Holy Father himself, given that you're live from the Vatican.
Now, thank you for giving us such conclusive and explosive analysis on the events of the last three years and the implications of it being indeed a lab leak origin scenario.
Can you tell us how we, sorry Geoffrey, we've got your mic muted while you're hollering in the Vatican.
Would you tell us about how we should understand the recent news of the failed mutiny of Prigoshin over there in Russia and how it's being reported on by the mainstream media?
Is this a self-contained issue and do you think this is a false flag event to distract us from the failing Ukrainian counter-offensive?
How does this sit into the whole Russia-Ukraine narrative, sir?
Look, I think the one thing we know is how it's being used by the U.S.
and the U.K., and it's being used to prolong and expand the war.
Because we have a war machine in the United States.
I don't really know which generals are running the show right now.
I don't think it's Biden, but we have a war machine that wants an expanded war with Russia.
So whatever is the actual story here, and we don't know about multiple possible outcomes, what the media are reporting is no questions, Other than saying you see Putin is at the end and now we can basically the implication is just we continue and we destroy Russia.
So you see it in every mainstream Newspaper in the UK and the US.
Not a question asked.
No puzzlement.
No puzzlement over the fact that the CIA says, oh, we knew for weeks.
Well, it raises a lot of questions, doesn't it?
Nobody asks questions anymore.
We have a narrative.
The narrative comes from the U.S. intelligence community.
It comes from the U.S. military.
It gets adopted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, in the
U.K., every paper, whether it's—I'm just looking at The Financial Times—reckless
as usual.
Gideon Rockman, the Putin system is crumbling.
Does he know?
Chris Donnelly, the president's hand has been fatally weakened.
How the hell do they know?
They don't know, they don't ask anything.
But this is a storyline.
Why this storyline?
Because we have pushed into an incredibly disastrous war, first and foremost disastrous for Ukraine, because the Ukrainians that are dying, We provoked the war.
We refused to negotiate over the core issues, mainly NATO enlargement.
And we have a media that is so driven for more war.
And utterly without the idea of asking a single question, just like the questions you're asking.
They're not even raised in our newspapers.
But this has been like this all along.
They want more war.
That's all.
So whether this is a godsend that now we can say we should have more war because we're about to defeat Russia, whether this is actually CIA played a role in this?
Not impossible.
Anything's possible, given that they say, we knew for weeks.
Well, how the hell did they know?
Somebody should actually explain some of these things.
Whatever it is, what they want is war.
The point you make, by the way, is an extremely important one, which is the so-called Ukrainian counteroffensive is killing Thousands and thousands of Ukrainian young men who have been pulled off the streets, put in front of Russian helicopter gunships, put in front of Russian artillery, are dying by the hundreds or thousands per day.
But we don't count any of that.
We don't care at all.
The whole thing is a U.S.
effort to overthrow the Russian government.
Which I think is fanciful.
Reckless, endangering the world.
But that's how our generals have thought for a long time, how our CIA has thought for a long time.
That's what they'd like to do.
The Ukrainians are in the meat grinder, as they say, and they are dying massively.
No one counts that.
No one cares.
It's just a big, big success story.
That's how our media is reporting it.
And it's unbelievable.
You can't get A single thought, a single idea in the New York Times anymore that says, hmm, maybe what the government's telling us isn't exactly a hundred thousand percent the truth.
They don't ask anymore.
Nothing.
Not a word.
So, I'm not a happy guy today on our media question, because today it's just exactly what they're doing.
More war, more war, more war.
That's all they want.
And in the U.S.
there's not, by the way, not a word of opposition except Bobby Kennedy Jr.
Thanks God for him.
Because he's the only politician talking about a different way.
Negotiating.
Like his uncle did.
Like his father led.
And that's the real point, actually.
Yes.
I think, Geoffrey, after we finish our conversation, you should have a look at the dome of St Peter's.
I think you want to have a little glance at the Sistine Chapel ceiling and take in a couple of Caravaggios to unwind, because it seems like you need it.
Now, we live in a bewildering and beguiling media space.
We live in a landscape where we're offered cage fights between prominent billionaires like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
A sense of mad, demented carnival descends.
As you say, Legitimate legacy media spaces seem incapable or unwilling to ask the pertinent and necessary questions when we find ourselves on the advent of a potential crisis of previously unseen proportions.
An ambition to carve up Russia is a bold one indeed.
To embark on a secondary campaign agitating for war with China seems Outrageous!
To have a political sphere devoid and divorced from debate, open conversation, where reasonable, rational figures like RFK that offer anti-establishment perspectives and diplomatic solutions...
...are regarded by the mainstream as hysterical pariahs who cannot be engaged with, with the liminal space in which discourse can take place ever shrinking.
These people are too far to the right.
These people are conspiracy theories.
The role of independent media is clear, that it's necessary and important that we ask these questions, that we have to behave responsibly, that we have to have one eye on what's beyond simply reporting and move towards Activism and campaigning and participating in this conversation in perhaps more political ways.
When you see us move from a state of crisis around the pandemic, around which it seems that we were lied to extensively, into a geopolitical crisis like the current one where we are continuing to be lied, where it seems evident and obvious that behind these events are sets of interests that can be observed, diagnosed and tracked.
At what point does this begin to coalesce around a political movement?
And do you feel that, given that the systems we live within, electoral, political and financial, delivered us into this state, how likely is it, even with the candidacy of a figure like RFK, who's joined us here on Rumble, both as a guest and now as a contributor, how likely is it that this system will allow him to make a reasonable impact?
How hopeful are you, Geoffrey?
Look, you know, what's interesting is we don't have discourse anymore in the mainstream.
We just have a narrative.
We have a line.
The line, because I know a lot, I've been in the inside, the line's bullshit most of the time these days.
Makes no sense.
Doesn't tell the truth.
Tries to create amnesiacs of all of us.
You're not allowed to talk about history.
You're not allowed to talk about an event the day before yesterday.
You're not allowed to ask questions.
But what's interesting, Russell, to me, nobody believes any of this.
So if you ask, do you believe what we're being told, no one believes it.
No one believes, you know, the vast majority of Americans.
...believe that the virus came out of a lab.
Well, damn well they should, but they've been told exactly the opposite by all of the government officials.
No one believes what the government says.
And so, what does the narrative do?
What the narrative does is allow the truth to just be...
Ignored rather than confronted.
So the idea of the narrative is not to make people believe.
The idea of the narrative is to have something to say so that you don't actually have to talk about real things.
So we're living morning till night with political bullshit.
We're not talking about anything real.
Where did this war come from?
I'll give another example.
Pretty obvious.
Two examples, very quickly.
In December 2021, Putin put on the table a draft agreement Security agreement.
U.S.-Russia draft security agreement.
We could have negotiated with no war.
I called the White House.
They said, no, non-negotiable NATO enlargement.
I had that call for an hour.
Never discussed in our media the fact that there was a draft agreement put on the table.
Then, in March 2022, we know it now because of an interesting point, There was nearly a signed agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the war, and the United States stopped it.
And Naftali Bennett, who was Prime Minister of Israel and an informal mediator then, when You know, he has a long interview where he describes at the last moment the United States came in and stopped it.
And why did they stop it?
Bennett says, because they wanted to look tough to China.
It wasn't even about Ukraine, it was about that it would look soft to China.
Okay, but my point is something else.
Nobody in the mainstream media has raised the point that there was nearly a negotiated end to the war.
In March 2022 that the United States stopped.
It's it's too little a fact for the New York Times to show any interest.
It has nothing to do with with what the Washington Post might report or anybody else.
So it's not mentioned at all.
And if you Mention it.
You're crazy.
You know, you can't negotiate with that guy.
But he did negotiate.
No, you're crazy.
You can't negotiate with that guy.
It's whatever they want to say.
Not to make us believe it because what they say is so damn preposterous.
Six people in a sailboat blew up the pipeline.
They say whatever they want so that they don't have to say Something real.
They don't have to show us a document.
Remember, everything's secret.
Everything's confidential.
Nothing is for public anymore.
So we have... It's not even right to call it a narrow discourse.
There's no discourse, because I think this discourse means that it's a two-way line.
Maybe I'm wrong about that.
There's no discussion.
There is a narrative, and for some reason, all of the papers I grew up with went dead.
They're unreadable.
Every day I want to cancel my New York Times subscription, but if I could cancel a hundred of them, I would.
It's just so painful to see the stupidity of it right now.
It's exciting to be able to speak to somebody with you with such evident integrity.
It was exciting to spend time recently with Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi at an event designed to address the emergence of the censorship industrial complex and the need to confront it and organize a movement around it.
I'm always astonished when I speak to Michael and Matt that journalists that you know literally in the case of Matt did work for the Rolling Stone and certainly a few years ago These would have been the kind of legacy media journalists that were prized in the sort of Woodward-Bernstein tradition.
Investigative journalists that care about facts, that are voracious, that offer you information and allow you to reach your own conclusions, that see it as their job to interrogate power.
And now we're both pariahs.
You can make the same point about Chris Hedges, you can make the same point about Glenn Greenwald, that journalists with integrity are a problem now that have to be smeared, extracted and destroyed.
And only journalists that, as you say, convey unequivocal propaganda without inquiry are safe to be housed within mainstream media outlets.
When it comes to the matter of the war, it's plain that they only platform pundits, not Not only, but frequently, platform pundits with ties to the military-industrial complex.
In the case, for example, of CNN, they are ultimately owned by Comcast, that have interests in weapons manufacture through General Electric.
And even when it's not so palpably true, there is the kind of Compliance that comes when interests converge at such magnitude.
That's why I'm always grateful to hear from you, Jeffrey, and to bask in the rigor of your intellect.
So thank you once again.
And Jeffrey, what the hell are you doing in the Vatican?
I better stare at the ceiling.
I think that was good advice.
I'm going to go do that.
Go stare at that ceiling, because otherwise, I don't know, we're going to get Dan Brown onto you.
Well, there he is, Jeffrey Sachs.
Thank you so much, Jeffrey.
Thanks for your fantastic contribution once again.
Great to be with you.
You can find out more about Jeffrey's extensive work and his books at jeffsachs.org.
That's J-E-F-F-S-A-C-H-S dot org.
That's where you'll find his fantastic work and you'll learn that you have legitimate, authentic voices that are anti-establishment and plainly undergirded with a great deal of knowledge and experience.
This is not Rumble, home of the crackpot and the nutcase, in spite of my physical appearance and sometimes even Gareth's baleful demeanour.
As he looks off into the middle distance.
You enjoy Geoffrey, don't you?
Yeah, he's wonderful, isn't he?
And you're absolutely right.
The complete opposite of a crackpot.
And I think the point there, and we spoke about it last week with regard to China, I think it was Jens Stoltenberg of NATO literally said last week, Uh, the Russia have to lose to send a message for us to send a message to China.
So this is not about Ukraine anymore.
I mean, it's so explicit, you know, like this counter offensive was meant to be the end game for Ukraine.
It hasn't turned out that way.
They can explicitly write these things in the mainstream media, but never seem to follow up and go, uh, but what does that mean?
Yeah, then why is that?
What is this total lack of inquiry?
A lot of people here loved Geoffrey.
MaxMatitis though, 444, what are your thoughts on the forthcoming Mel Gibson doggie series?
Yeah, we're going to have to educate ourselves on that.
Rumoured.
Rumoured, I think.
Rumoured.
I look like Randy the Macho Man Savage, says someone on there.
Yeah, I do look like Randy, the macho man, and also those two words, or terms at least, describe me perfectly.
I'm both Randy and a macho man.
I think that we should show our deep presentation on Obama's tax loophole, that's not a euphemism, elsewhere.
I think that we should do, uh, we should appear... Do you lot want to join us on Locals for a bit longer?
Do you know what?
Do you know what?
We're going to do a bit extra.
We're going to do some freedom of speech over on local.
So you guys that have already clicked that red button on the bottom, we're going to do 15 minutes extra just for you because we love you.
We'll put our presentation up on Obama's tax loophole.
He is taking advantage of a tax law that during office he claimed that he was trying to get rid of.
That's basically the truth, isn't it?
We're going to put that presentation up for you later, but we're going to go now and do locals with our item free speech.
But God, have we got some fantastic things coming up for you over the course of the week.
Why?
For example, is there anything on the teleprompter?
We'll get to that then.
That's what I'm bloody well doing, you nitwit.
So, hey, later on in the week we've got Jack Dorsey.
He's coming on the show.
Imagine that, Jack Dorsey.
What are we going to ask him about?
Tell us, will you?
Join us over on Locals.
Tell us what to ask Jack Dorsey.
Aaron Maté is coming on.
You can get some home truths about the war from him.
We will be naked fighting Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in a paddling pool full of jam.
That's a little bit later.
That's on Tuesday.
So listen, if you're watching this now on Rumble, click that red button.
Join us on Locals.
We're going to do another 15 minutes where we do freedom of speech.
We're going to spend 15 minutes answering your questions and your inquiries.
And if that's not the truth, my name's not Randy the Metro Man Savage.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
Until then, stay free.
Press the red button.
Join us on Locals.
We're going to do your questions.
See you in a second!
Many switch it, switch on, switch off.
Many switch it, switch on, switch off.
Just watch your back.
Many switch it, switch on, switch off.
Many switch it, switch on, switch off.
When Barack Obama was president of the United States, he was fantastic, wasn't he so fantastic and great?
he tried to ban a legal tax evasion strategy.
Now he's not president, he's using that exact legal tax evading strategy.
So is Barack Obama a great president or is Barack Obama the same as everyone else?
Just corrupt.
Barack Obama was seen as a great hope for many people, someone that could genuinely change the political conversation, that was a brilliant speaker and a charismatic man.
Of course the 2008 bank bailout smeared that reputation somewhat, as did the droning of Syrian children.
But now that he's not present, now that he's an elder statesman advocating for Joe Biden, That guy, let me know in the comments what you think of him.
It's disappointing, isn't it, to learn that a legal tax evading strategy that he railed against while president is being exploited now, probably because he's actually so poor and he's, oh no, he's a multimillionaire, isn't he?
Let's have a look at this.
As Americans, we don't mind paying our fair share of taxes as long as everybody else does too.
Do we?
Yeah, we do.
But for far too long.
Lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing.
Hi, Congressman.
He won't be saying that in a couple of years when he's not president.
And indeed, he's not saying that in a couple of years.
They've riddled it with giveaways that the super-rich don't need, while denying a break to middle-class families who do.
Joe Biden there, just thinking, soon it'll be my turn, and possibly earning a few quid on the side.
Who's to say?
What happened when he was vice president?
Let me know in the comments.
Let's close loopholes, so we stop rewarding... Oh, Joe Biden, no!
Not the loopholes, you idiot!
Hunter!
Companies that keep profits abroad and reward those that invest here in America.
Everyone knows what to say, don't they?
Everyone knows the things that you're supposed to say, but no one actually does them.
Yeah!
Yes!
Let's all clap this!
We're not really shutting those loopholes, though, are we?
Of course we're not!
He's not gonna be president in a couple of years.
He'll be using those loopholes!
Oh.
Let's use those savings to rebuild our infrastructure and to make it more attractive for companies to bring jobs home.
Yeah, this is all such great stuff.
It's not just bullshit though, is it?
Let's simplify the system and let a small business owner file based on her actual bank statement.
Oh, her.
Oh, this is good.
You're not going to in a few years just be exploiting those loopholes.
Not after you said her.
I saw some of these weathered guys.
Come on!
I saw Reagan say that.
I saw Nixon say that.
I saw Jimmy Carter say that.
Nobody actually does it.
We can use that money to help more families pay for childcare and send their kids to college.
We need a tax code that truly helps working Americans trying to get a leg up in the new economy.
I mean, everything he's saying, that's all sort of fantastic, but it might as well be theatre.
When you look at it, actually, it is theatre, isn't it?
People standing up and clapping the flag, hanging up their career politicians just sat around.
Everyone's saying the stuff that they know they're supposed to say.
Everyone knowing that they're not going to actually do anything about it.
It's become more and more meta, because in that one, Barack Obama's actually defining the situation.
I mean, you know, I'm sick and tired of, like, presidents saying this stuff, and then when they retire from office, going on to exploit those loopholes and give speeches where they earn millions of dollars.
Because of the way the world is now, you sort of can see it all happen in real time.
I sometimes think that the reason we've got this mad old Joe Biden version of the president now is that no one can be bothered to even emotionally invest in, oh, there's a woman one, oh, there's one that's a different colour, oh, it's like...
Just give us an old white one that's totally full of shit and just bring out another one in four years.
And we can achieve that together.
Do we clap yet or already?
We're still not shutting the loop also.
No!
No!
Helping hard-working families make ends meet.
That's what we're trying to do.
That's what we're trying to do.
Us, Raytheon, Wall Street, Lockheed Martin, quantitative easing bill, all of it.
Just the old hard work.
What do you want me to say again?
Is it hard working?
What?
Just sing a song.
Giving them the tools they need for good paying jobs in this new economy.
Maintaining the conditions of growth.
Oh, shut up.
I can't listen to any more of this.
OK, this is from Lee Fang's Substack.
Barack Obama campaigned extensively during his presidency to eliminate the carried interest loophole, a tax strategy that allows billionaire investors to evade ordinary income taxes.
Yeah, he was.
He was giving a brilliant speech about it.
American families, hard working, common decency.
You've heard it all before.
Hedge funds and other private fund managers use this tax treatment to pay long-term capital gains of 20%, a rate that is almost half of what many working Americans pay.
Obama, while in office, said this loophole leads to folks who are doing very well paying lower rates than their secretaries.
However, since leaving the presidency, Obama has employed a similar tax strategy to potentially only pay capital gains tax for the services he's provided to private business interests.
One example of this is Obama's strategic partnership with NBA Africa, which was announced in 2021 as part of an expansion of Africa's largest men's basketball league.
The deal is structured as a profit interest share.
Now, what this is, is ordinary business practice.
What this exposes is that the rhetoric while in office is absolutely empty and hollow.
It's not particularly egregious that Barack Obama is doing this.
It's standard.
It's normal.
Everybody does it.
What's egregious is that in office they say that and out of office they do this.
Because everything that takes place in office is a kind of spectacle.
It's theatre.
It's just something that people are saying.
If you were able to have said to young Barack Obama that, look, are you sure about this?
Because when you leave you're going to be like a businessman.
You're going to actually need this stuff.
He's like, well, I don't think I need to worry because this stuff will never actually happen.
So what you are left with is the incontrovertible conclusion That politics is a media spectacle.
It's not actually going to do anything.
And that is the main message we're trying to transmit to you.
That is not the way to improve your life.
Participating in it, by voting on it, talking about it, preferring one of them over another one, hoping that this one will do better than that one.
Look, you can see behind that one, talking then, is the one that you've got now.
He'll be doing his version of this.
He's so bloody old he's not really going to have time to cash in, is he, afterwards?
Maybe his kids will.
Now, we have to find ourselves not using profitable tax loopholes because we just can't afford the accountants.
So, we've decided to accept this commercial from these partners of ours and make it funny.
If you like this product, why not use it?
There's a link offering you a discount, I bet, in the description.
Is it me, or does the future feel more insecure and uncertain?
Wars, pandemics, lies, trickery, my cats keep having kittens, the last one's personal.
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The favorable tax treatment of money earned through a profit interest arrangement resembles
the carried interest loophole which hedge funds and private equity executives used to pay a capital
gains tax rate on multi-million dollar compensation packages that is often
lower than the rate paid by middle class workers earning salaries.
How outrageous that people can be persuaded to spend their time criticising and condemning other people in the same economic class as them in favour of lobbying for, ideologically at least, the interests of elites on either party who ultimately, as we have now seen, will do nothing, nothing, nothing, because I don't think Trump did anything about this, either close the loopholes that they benefit from when their allegiance to their economic class is resumed after their brief theatrical turn as president.
Obama pushed multiple times during his presidency to eliminate the carried interest loophole, which he condemned as a giveaway to the super-rich.
But did he really?
Or was it just some performance?
Closing the carried interest loophole so that fund managers' earnings would be taxed as ordinary income was a prominent feature in Obama's budget request to Congress, as well as during public speeches and his re-election campaign.
I think that's what's significant, is rhetorically, it's effective.
He didn't make it, did he?
It didn't get done, did it?
Was it ever meant to get done?
In 2012, Obama even ran television advertisements criticizing Mitt Romney for his use of the carried interest tax provision during Romney's career as a private equity executive.
In the ad, the narrator claimed Romney used every trick in the book.
Tax havens, offshore accounts, carried interest.
Mitt Romney has used every trick in the book.
In a way as well though, like, I don't want to pay tax to you.
Do you trust the government?
Do you like the government?
Do you want to give them your money so they can go bomb some foreign land or do deals with medical healthcare providers that'll rip you off or weapons manufacturers?
The morality around tax for me is out the window.
I would like to pay tax directly to the community that I live in, to elective concerns and interests that you, through consensus, determine and vote on and allocate your taxes to.
I don't trust them to decide it anymore.
This is what happens when your government is completely bereft of all authority.
Say in our country, oh, well, what about nurses?
They're not paying nurses enough.
What about teachers?
They're not paying teachers enough.
What about railroad workers?
Anyone who's doing anything?
Anyone that you'll trot out during a pandemic to say, hey, come Man, these people are heroes.
When it comes to it, when it comes to paying them, you'd rather use the money to buy up your private data, to funnel into Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, to funnel into Big Pharma, to give themselves bonuses.
You know how this stuff operates now, so there's no morality around taxes anymore.
Asked whether the business arrangement violated the principles Obama professed to support as president, a spokesperson for Obama's office declined to comment.
Because there's nothing you can say.
Because the answer is, yes, of course it does.
But those principles were meaningless because it was just a performance.
Over the last seven years, the Obamas have accumulated a vast fortune through glitzy content production deals with Spotify, Netflix and Amazon.
Book sales and speaking fees to banks and trade groups have also generated millions of dollars.
Obama's newfound personal fortune has vaulted him into the upper echelons of American wealth.
The Obama family is reportedly building several houses on a plot of beachfront Hawaiian property purchased by close friend Marty Nesbitt, the chief executive of Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private equity firm.
Then, can you spend any time engaging in the discourse about the differences between the various figures that occupy these apparent political movements?
It's simply sort of a theatre troupe just casting, really.
Oh, this one's good.
He's charismatic.
Stick him out there for a while.
He'll do all right.
Then afterwards, he'll do what they always do.
No one has got the tenacity, the personal moral fortitude to sort of step outside of it and operate with any conviction.
And I feel that the system itself doesn't really afford it.
That people are being filtered out, that relationships are being formed, people are getting funded by such nefarious individuals and such terrible institutions, that by the end of it, as you know, the phrase that Trump used, the swamp, the swamp has engulfed everybody.
And indeed, the draining of the swamp is precisely what's been required, or just leave the swamp and go somewhere else.
When he first ran for presidency, Obama struck a populist tone, promising to close the revolving door in Washington of special interests and lobbyists and end unfair trade practices with China and hold business leaders accountable.
The usual.
Obama's presidency turned out to be a disappointment to many progressives who were frustrated by, among other things, his support for expanded international free trade deals after campaigning on renegotiating them.
A bit like when Joe Biden said, make Saudi Arabia a pariah and then...
And make them in fact the pariah that they are.
And make them in fact the pariah that they are.
And his administration's refusal to criminally prosecute major banks responsible for the
2008 crisis.
Since leaving office, Obama has largely stopped populist economic arguments altogether.
He's apparently more interested in the issue of alleged disinformation disseminated on social media.
That's interesting, isn't it?
Because there's a clear and obvious relationship between this new censorship industrial complex and the interests of the powerful.
As long as they can maintain control over independent media, as long as they can ensure that mainstream media carries messaging that is beneficial to their agenda, they don't ever have to alter the unequal, unfair, corrupt systems that they build, participate in and exploit, even when rhetorically pretending that they oppose them.
So when you have independent media like us Where we're willing to talk about these problems, convey this information, query whether or not former presidents should be operating in that way, and what it reveals when they are, can be shut down!
And the participants in projects such as these are smeared.
That was the topic of Obama's speech at Stanford University in 2022.
I want to speak about disinformation, because that's the only thing I can speak about now, because I'm so rich that anything else I mention is gonna seem like hypocrisy.
As well as the focus of the Obama Foundation's inaugural Democracy Forum summit last November, Obama made no mention of the carried interest loophole or any tax justice issues during either public address.
So, when he was in a position where he could've but didn't do anything about it, he spoke about it, now he's in a position to exploit it, he doesn't mention it.
So, I don't know, is that less hypocritical or...?
The carried interest loophole has remained vexing for multiple administrations.
On at least one occasion, former President Donald Trump rallied against the loophole on the campaign trail, but he never invested significant energy in eliminating it.
Huh!
Sparing it in his far-reaching tax cut legislation in 2017 and creating a new path for high-income earners to avoid top income tax rates.
President Joe Biden similarly promised to end the special tax treatment, but failed after fierce lobbying from the investment fund industry.
Last year, as congressional negotiators hashed out the final stages of the Inflation Reduction Act, the loophole's closure appeared imminent.
But last minute lobbying blitz from the American Investment Council, which represents leading private equity and hedge funds, along with the pressure from the real estate industry, convinced Senator Kristen Sinema of Arizona, an independent who identified as a Democrat at the time, to kill the measure.
I'm a Democrat.
I'm an independent.
What do I need to do to be paid?
Just shut down this bill.
Then I'm that.
In the end, Biden signed the legislation without any change to the carried interest tax rule.
Here is another story that shows us the necessity of remaining mentally frugal, objective, ...and clear-headed when it comes to dealing with political disinformation.
Barack Obama, while in office, publicly spoke about this issue all the time, campaigned on that basis, passionately received standing ovations, while wowing the American nation on the topic.
But Barack Obama now, as of today, uses that legal tax loophole in order to profit while talking about, curiously, disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, which I believe are new categories that have been created to shut down dissent and to prevent Issues like this one being publicly discussed so that the whole system can continue to maintain itself because the system's not going to destroy itself from within itself.
It will be destroyed from outside it.
That is why these new legislative barriers are being, even before our very eyes, formulated with the assistance of hypocrite Barack Obama.
But that's just what I think.
Let me know what you think in the chat.
See you in a second.
Many switches, switch on, switch off.
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