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July 4, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:11:05
[EXCLUSIVE] Russell, RFK & Cheryl Hines | Censorship & Power - #160 - Stay Free With Russell Brand
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I'm going to kill you.
Every last day could not understand that I'm a black man And I could never be a better man on this planet.
Brought to you by Pfizer.
So I'm looking for the CEO.
Looking for the CEO.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there you awakening wonders and happy Independence Day not only to all of you in America but to all of you across the world because what kind of independence is it if it isn't independence for every individual, every community, every nation.
Independent media, independent politics, independent mind.
This is a special show We will only be on YouTube for the first 15 minutes before appearing exclusively on Rumble to have our special Independence Day conversation with Robert Kennedy Jr., presidential candidate.
So tell us, why'd you decide to run for president?
I felt like my country was being taken away from me.
What are you gonna do?
It's a very difficult issue, but it's ultimately the most important one.
I think what we're talking about is, will your campaign end up being funded by the very interests that are ultimately perpetuating these problems?
In terms of fixing the system, Russell, it's hard.
You have a Supreme Court decision that equates, you know, monetary contributions with speech.
And this is a special show.
We will only be on YouTube for the first 15 minutes before appearing exclusively on Rumble to have our special independent day conversation with Robert Kennedy Jr.
And today he's going to be joined for the first time by his wife Cheryl Hines.
We're very excited.
Bobby, Cheryl, thanks for joining us.
Decades of experience in that, but in a funny way.
So now this is a different, this is a different fishbowl, shall we say?
Stay free with Russell Brand See it first on Rumble.
Happy to be here, Russell.
Really kind of you.
I've deliberately adorned myself in this outrageous fashion because I knew you were participating, Cheryl, and I thought it would be wise to make an impression.
Because, man, you are on fire.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for making that observation.
Cheryl, it must be interesting for you to find yourself suddenly at the centre of this controversial global conversation as the on-screen accomplice of a stubborn and difficult partner who gets himself into all sorts of scrapes with his unwillingness to not take up unnecessarily I have a little, a few decades of experience in that, but in a funny way.
So now this is a different fishbowl, shall we say?
All right for you, both of you.
I just imagine that it must be extraordinary for a marriage that I imagine has some pressure on it anyway to find yourself in this position.
Are you doing all right?
We're doing all right.
Yeah.
So far.
This is the first time I've actually seen Cheryl since the announcement.
That's not true.
She's been in the Bahamas drinking margaritas with Xanax.
Well, I hope that this can provide a therapeutic function as well as a conversational one.
Because the truth is, Bobby, I believe that you're having a profound impact.
That's evident from the kind of coverage you're getting, both positive and negative. Obviously the polling information is
encouraging and exciting and I personally believe that we're at a pivotal moment in the global
conversation. I'll tell you why I feel this.
The EU are looking to pass regulations that mean it will be possible to find social media platforms
that don't censor according to their edicts.
The Five Eyes countries, that's a term that we've all become familiar with since Edward Snowden's revelations, are all pushing for censorship legislation.
You yourself have been subject already to a great deal of censorship and that's the side of the conversation I'm going to be pushing a lot Further, when we are exclusively on YouTube.
But while we have Cheryl here, I'd like to focus for a while on how you're dealing with this situation.
And also, have you sort of managed your answers for how you're going to deal with stuff like, do you agree with Bobby on controversial issues like ending the war, certain medical matters that I won't mention while we're on YouTube?
How are you, how are you dealing with it, Cheryl?
Well, I like to just take it as it comes.
I like to be honest about my feelings and my thoughts, and we really do align on everything.
The way the information gets out sometimes is not how I would do it.
So that's where it gets a little, you know, I have to take a moment and Take it minute by minute, day by day.
Ask her if it's easier being married to me or Larry David.
Which one of these two curmudgeons is easier to manage?
Oh boy, I'm not going to answer that.
That's apples and oranges.
Sitting next to oranges, yes.
Is it true that Bobby said that he would understand if it would be easier to end the marriage now that he was entering into the foray of politics or is that a sort of a misquotation?
Oh, well, I don't know if he said it would be easier to end the marriage.
I think I think I'm going to speak for him, even though he's sitting next to me.
I think he feels sometimes the scrutiny that I get just from being married to him.
So which is odd, you know, but so sometimes he'll say, what if I we You know, take a step back from each other so people don't come at you, meaning me.
But that's not the answer.
But it's sort of a sweet thought.
In answer to your question, I would not be running if Cheryl didn't green light it.
You know, it wouldn't work for me, and it wouldn't work for my family.
And I think I'm going to be much better at what I do.
And ultimately, when people get to know Cheryl, I think that will actually boost my campaign a lot.
I think people want to have a very funny First Lady.
I get the sense that you have perhaps taken on board a different understanding of spiritual practices, perhaps due to your relationship with Cheryl.
This is just something that I intuitively believe because I'm the kind of man who wears open kimonos to deal with serious political figures.
Am I right, Cheryl, that spirituality is a significant part of your life and has it become a significant part of your marriage?
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
Because a lot of it, all of it, you can't control, right?
We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
And the idea of being peaceful, if you can, with the unknown, I do think it's a practice.
I do think you have to wake up every day and say, I don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be okay.
We're going to figure it out.
We're going to live in the moment and be truthful and go to the next moment.
I think this is a hugely important time for not just American politics but potentially global politics precisely because, as I've just mentioned, it seems that there is a march towards greater authoritarianism at a time where there is a lot of divisiveness, where America in particular needs healing, where we're confronted with Ecological, cultural, economical crisis.
Kind of a poly-crisis culture.
A time almost of despair where the apocalypse is almost being built into our cultural myth.
There's a kind of real lack of optimism.
That's why I'm very keen that this conversation becomes, if not an interrogation, at least a serious conversation about some of the commitments to make meaningful changes In the areas of reviewing how Big Pharma functions, how the military-industrial complex functions, how the media functions, and perhaps most importantly of all, how politics is funded in particular, and specifically getting money out of politics, the practice of people in Congress, regulating corporations that they own shares in, taking donations from companies that are already able to assert too much influence over the political process.
But I have already to a degree Committed to help raise funds for your campaign Bobby through a pull-up challenge which is seeming increasingly ill-advised because I've now seen you with your top off doing push-ups and you you look hench, you look stacked, you look jacked,
I can't believe you've not done that without some kind of pharmaceutical support.
There's some incredible upper body strength there.
But nevertheless, a pull-up challenge has been agreed to.
I'll just may as well reveal now that the process We're well underway.
I think that it's going to be a significant battle.
Cheryl, are you going to be donating?
Because I think what we've said is we've got to raise $100,000 in order for this campaign to go ahead.
Now, after this, this conversation is not going to be frivolous anymore.
He said with his top off, it's going to be a serious conversation about politics, more than you would ever get on CNN or Fox or MSNBC or any other mainstream outlet.
Are you personally going to be donating to this campaign, or are spouses not allowed to?
I hope she's already maxed out.
Well, I want to see how many pull-ups you guys do first.
I mean, maybe I'll say, what, $100 of how many pull-ups can you do before?
Listen, I'm not willing to reveal that kind of data prior to the competition, but I'm telling you now that I'm training to win and I'm willing to juice to get there.
I'm willing to take hormone replacement therapy.
I've been eating oestrogen all morning long.
I don't know what I'm going to do about these guys.
I've been breastfeeding all morning.
So, yeah, I'm taking it pretty seriously.
Does oestrogen actually help you do pull-ups?
I don't know.
I feel quite tearful, and my children are confused.
Well, I mean, I can tell you this.
I can tell you this, Russell.
This is what you have to deal with, because he really works out every day.
He hikes.
He goes to the gym.
I mean, his self-discipline is off the charts, and it looks like yours Is two.
So I don't know if you can in one day, you know, if you beef up on your estrogen, if that's going to help you or not, because this has been decades of preparation, but I wish you the best.
But I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Roswell.
I'm going to spot you 10 pull-ups.
Oh!
Spot me then!
What do you mean by that?
That you're going to give me a ten pull-up sort of grace?
But you and I should do like a side bet where you have to come over here and come to three of my campaign stops if you lose.
And if I lose I'll come over there because you asked me one time to come to speak on an environmental thing.
If I lose I'll come over and talk at your thing.
All right.
You come over and go on a little tour across New Hampshire with me and maybe Iowa.
I'll do those.
I'll do those flyover states.
Damn it.
I'm joking.
I love all of America.
I respect all of America, particularly non coastal America.
The true America!
Kerouac's America!
Like so I'll um, absolutely. So the challenge is we can raise a hundred thousand
If we can raise a hundred thousand dollars worth of donations for Bobby's campaign
Then we'll do this pull-up challenge and if I lose, you could say when I lose, I'll
I'll appear at some of Bobby's events, campaigning events, in order to support him further.
To donate, go to kennedy24.com forward slash pull up.
There's a link in the description.
We've got to get to $100,000.
I was talking to Jack Dorsey, formerly of Twitter.
he's willing to Bitcoin us up to the hilt.
So please get your donations flooding in for Bobby's campaign.
And in order to ensure this is responsibly handled, I'm already taking estrogen.
I've got, I've got my nipples, they're in agony.
I've had so much estrogen this morning.
I'm unstoppable, believe me.
Oh God, I feel emotional.
Like, in order to make sure that this whole thing is legitimate,
I want to make sure that the rest of our conversation interrogates the subjects I've mentioned already.
Censorship, the control of big pharma, money in politics, the forever war economy, ensuring that great oratory and anti-establishment rhetoric is mapped onto the way that Bobby Kennedy ultimately administrates, i.e.
how do we get money out of politics in a landscape where a billionaire donor class is understood to fund most political candidature.
I have to tell our viewers on YouTube we are going to be exclusively live now on Rumble where Bobby's answer Will not be censored.
On YouTube, you know that Bobby's videos have been regularly taken down.
He's had a video with Jordan Peterson taken down.
There's been other videos.
I think with Iron Mike Tyson, the video's been taken down.
Do you think that's in order to protect you, or do you think that's in order to control you?
Let me know in the comments, but more importantly, click the link in the description.
Join us over on Rumble, where you can find much more of Bobby's content.
Cheryl, thank you.
No, please, Bobby.
Let me just say one thing.
Because, you know, I posted that video because it was fun, and it was kind of a funny comment that I put on about preparing for my debate with Vine.
It was, I'd say, an ironic comment.
Your push-ups on the asphalt?
Yeah.
Okay.
In the prison yard.
You know, it's a serious issue because We need to start taking care of our own health and stop relying on the pharmaceutical paradigm.
My uncle When he was president, one of the first things he did was launch a physical fitness program.
He challenged every American to do a 50 mile walk.
We were in a lot better shape back then as a country than we are today.
And it's important that we start taking control of our own health, not only for our own personal quality of life, but also For the good of our country, we're now spending $4.3 trillion annually in health care and 80% of that is because of chronic disease.
We have a higher chronic disease burden than any country in the world.
One of the reasons we had the highest COVID death rate, we had 16% of the COVID deaths, we only have 4.2% of the global population.
One of the reasons for that is because we have the highest chronic disease rate in the world.
And according to the CDC, the people who died from COVID on average had 3.8 potentially fatal chronic diseases.
So people were not really dying from COVID, they were dying from chronic disease, and it was the COVID that was pushing them over the edge.
And we may, you know, my uncle famously said, ask not for what you can do for your country, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Well, the answer to both of those questions right now is to get yourself in shape, start exercising, stop eating processed foods, stop, for God's sake, eating Corn syrup, you know, and that stuff that is giving us an obesity epidemic in this country and is making us much more vulnerable.
To chronic disease in this country.
So we all need to start taking responsibility and stop, you know, stop listening to the pharmaceutical companies.
Stop looking at those pharmaceutical ads on TV and start taking care of ourselves.
We need to do that for ourselves.
We need to do it for our country.
I don't need the conversation down.
I know what I can do for your country, and that is a series of pull-ups.
Especially as I'm pumped to the brim on oestrogen, baby!
🎵 Cheryl, like you've said, of course, that there are some
issues that you plainly disagree with Bobby on.
It can't be that big food and big pharma are in lockstep to continually benefit from an unhealthy America.
What are the areas that you do agree with Bobby on?
And if you are happy to say, I ask ask you with all respect, are there any areas that you find
more challenging?
Because the truth is, within most marriages, like me and my wife find it
difficult to agree for more than 15 minutes on any given subject. So where
are the areas where the two of you are in plain alignment?
And are there any subjects that you are comfortable sharing that you are not
in alignment?
Well, you know, if I'm being candid, where we differ is, Bobby is very
focused on facts and numbers and, and I, Understand feelings and people, I think, in a different way.
So even during the pandemic, I understand people being afraid.
I understand people on both sides being afraid of getting the vaccine, of not getting the vaccine.
People were terrified that they weren't going to be able to say goodbye to their Mother or father that was passing away, there were so many feelings overwhelmingly just filling the air and people's relationships and everyone was disagreeing on a lot of things and a lot of it was coming from just feelings that we were all having.
So I think that's sometimes where we I don't want to say get off track, but... I don't have feelings.
You're a cold lawyer!
You're a brutal, heartless lawyer who thinks only in terms of the law.
You don't care about people's emotions, like Cheryl, who frankly should be president.
Also, the biggest disagreement is about the dogs and whether they should go on the couch or not.
Or the bed.
Yeah, well, dirty dogs shouldn't be on a bed, but that's beside the point.
Yeah, I think it's, I understand, sometimes I think that feelings should be addressed first, and maybe science second.
So I don't know if that makes sense or if that is understandable but that's how I feel.
It's interesting isn't it because I suppose culturally we live in a space where science has to some degree replaced, has become the prevailing orthodoxy and this is often without acknowledging that some science is a subset of certain interests And I think the point that you are making about feelings, all of us know in our individual and familial lives that what we're dealing with are our emotional reactions to our own lives, the relationships we have, to the way our experiences are either inhibited or encouraged.
Those kind of conversations, though, I suppose, Cheryl, the risk is that people are able to be dismissive because Because of subjectivity, because of the very thing that makes it special, i.e.
our individual experience as conscious entities is private, divine, perhaps connected to the prima materia of reality, consciousness itself, the crucible of all reality, God, God Self, held within each of us individually, enshrining all of us collectively.
It's a difficult thing when politics is primarily about who gets what, where, when, how, you know, when it becomes about very The instantiation of power, the manifestation of power, the organisation of resources.
In a sense, I suppose, within any marriage, being complementary to one another is different from being the same as one another, I suppose.
So perhaps having a feeling intuitive person as well as a cold, unfeeling brute that cares only for legislation seems like a recipe for a successful marriage.
Well, I agree with what you're saying.
It is, you know, Oftentimes, perception is reality to people.
So you have people that have read one article, and they truly believe that article that they read.
And then we have another group of people that have read a different article, and it says something completely different.
But that is also their reality.
So it turns people against us and against each other.
And like you're saying, we are all one.
We're all one.
We all want the same thing.
We all want our children to be healthy.
We want each other to be healthy and happy.
And the only way to do that is to stop, to listen to each other, and to have a conversation, and to try to understand the other person instead of the finger waving and saying, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong.
I just think that we need to just On that note, I think it's important and I think that we are on the precipice of spirituality being included more sensibly in the discourse perhaps.
Loosened from some of the language of a traditionalist new age language, I want to say.
It feels like we're on there, we're beginning to talk about spirituality in terms of mental health, spirituality in terms of connection to one another and the environment.
And spirituality is a kind of native and original condition that is a requirement for our mutual advancement and individual In the spirit of this invitation towards unity, Bobby, I was interested to hear your welcoming of, if not the endorsement of Trump, but at least welcoming the fact that Trump likes you.
Bobby, I know that a lot of people here admire Donald Trump for the easy manner with which he engages with people.
Even when Trump says something like, we'll just take that oil from Venezuela, that seems like, to some people, refreshingly open when you have Biden making a Freudian slip and saying Iraq when he means Ukraine.
Perhaps because when he reaches inside himself words like exploitative war based on resources that is profitable and not undergirded by verifiable facts.
is the sort of contextual complication that he uncovers there.
So can you tell me what you consider to be the distinction between a political figure
like Trump, what you regard as his appeal and how it highlights some of the problems
that career politicians like Joe Biden appear to have?
Well, you know, I've been very critical of President Trump, but I try to keep my critiques
on a policy level because I think that that's a healthy thing for our country.
And, you know, one of the things that I'm trying to do with my campaign is to end this toxic polarization that is, I think, more dangerous for our country than at any time since the American Civil War.
And, you know, everybody, like if you talk to any Democrat, left wing, right wing, left wing, moderate, whatever, They'll all say that polarization is one of the worst things that's happening to our country.
But then, if you ask them, well, how are we going to solve that?
There's not really an answer.
And people criticize me for not putting hate on Donald Trump.
But I think that's where it's got to start.
I talk to anybody.
And I don't compromise my own values.
My values are the values of the Democratic Party that I grew up with.
They've never changed.
The values of my father, the values of my uncle, that has never changed.
But, you know, my uncles, all of them, and my dad were willing to talk to people and debate with people that they didn't agree with.
My uncle, Edward Kennedy, has his name on more pieces of legislation than any senator in the history of the United States.
And the way that he did that was by reaching across the aisle.
So he would come home on weekends to the Cape where, you know, our whole family was gathered and everybody in our family is a Democrat.
And he would bring home Orrin Hatch or, you know, or Congressman Kasich or Harry Byrd.
And people that we thought were, you know, threats to our country and our society and, you know, the moral authority of America, etc.
But these were his closest friends.
And he found something in common with them that was beyond politics, that they were all chosen this very difficult life of, you know, being in public service.
And he found things to talk about, and they loved each other, you know, they wrote poems to each other, they painted paintings for each other and gave them to each other as gifts.
Oh, he was able to, he never compromised his own values, and he was happy about that, but he could get through those personal relationships.
He made Orrin Hatch his partner in addressing the AIDS crisis at a time when most Republicans were very punitive towards people who had AIDS, and yet Orrin Hatch stepped away from that and said, this is something that we have to address as a nation, and we have to address with compassion.
And they were able to find that in each other, and I think we have to look for You know, as Cheryl just said, we all want the same thing.
We all want healthy children.
There's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children.
We all want the best for our children and we want to stop the school shootings.
Nobody wants that.
How do we focus on the values that we share in common rather than, you know, spiraling off?
And hatred and division around the issues that are holding us apart.
And I, you know, I think Donald Trump, I'm not a fan of Donald Trump's.
I've known him for many, many years.
I've sued him twice, both times successfully.
But, you know, the one thing I think that he's done is that he's talking to Americans who otherwise feel utterly forgotten.
And he's talking in their language, and he's putting his finger on something that I think all of us need, that the people who support Donald Trump feel that they're regarded by the elites as deplorable people, and that, you know, they're not part of our country.
And I think Donald Trump made them feel like they were part of our country, that they're being listened to.
He's willing to break things, and there's so many people in this country now who are so frustrated with the political system and with, you know, political leadership.
They feel like that leadership is serving the needs of this oligarchy, this corporate kleptocracy, and that they've been completely forgotten, and they want to break things.
They want, you know, and a lot of them, like I, you know, Represent a thousand families in Columbiana County, Ohio.
And you know, they have Trump signs on all like sprout like mushrooms on all the yards down there.
And the people are living in a kind of poverty that is so desperate, so dire.
Um, that I never thought I'd see anything like that in our country.
And they don't, if you talk to them, I was with a group of men, a diner, and I said, you know, what, what do you think Donald Trump's going to do with you?
And they said, we don't care.
As long as he breaks things on the other side.
And I think that, you know, that at this point, they don't believe any politician is going to actually help them, but they just want to be heard.
And he seems to be able to, you know, to connect with them on that basis.
And I think, you know, my father, He used to look at Latin America and he saw the same thing there that is now happening in our country, where you have these huge aggregations of wealth above, you have these feudal oligarchies, and then below you have widespread poverty.
And my father said there's going to be a revolution in those countries.
And right, you know, up until my uncle's election, the U.S.
policy was to fortify those oligarchies because they were anti-communist and to give weapons to the You know, the juntas and the military strongmen that were, you know, that were tied in with those oligarchies and because they were anti-communist, but they were keeping down the poor.
My father and my uncle said, America needs to be on the side of the poor.
They need to be, you know, in those countries.
And so they started the Alliance for Progress so that they could end run the oligarchies and give money directly to the poor.
They started USAID, they started the Kennedy Milk Program, they started Peace Corps so that they could put America on the side of the fort.
My uncle!
Made two trips abroad that were his favorite during his presidency.
One was to Ireland, which was one of his last trips right before he died, where he told them, you know, I'll be back in the springtime.
And then the other was to Colombia in Latin America.
And there were two and a half million people who came out on the street in Bogota to greet him.
And he was there with The, you know, the left-wing leader, Jaires Carmargo.
And the people were, the emotional level of, well, you know, when they saw my uncle, the people were absolutely, you know, they were crying and they were cheering.
And Jaires Carmargo said to my uncle, do you know why they love you?
And my uncle said, no.
And he said, because you put America on the side of the poor.
And you know, and my father said, there's going to be a revolution.
And either the communists are going to own it, or we're going to own it.
And we need to put ourselves on the side of the poor so that we can, you know, so that we can harness those revolutionary energies.
Or on the side of idealism and democracy, all the same things happening in our country today.
You know, there's going to be a revolution, and it's either going to be Donald Trump's revolution, or it's going to be a revolution that sort of restores America the idealism and the democratic values that, you know, I think my uncle and father represented.
Bobby, will you, Bobby Kennedy, get money out of politics by changing the practice of allowing donations to essentially, ostensibly, essentially run these political movements and bypass the process of democracy?
and i'm gonna we're gonna let cheryl now go back to uh do the rest of my side effects then
um okay i'm gonna let you guys finish this conversation um We've gone to the trouble of loading those into a deck, so I had to press those buttons.
If you win the presidency, don't you get so trigger-happy pressing buttons just to see what they can do?
That's the last thing we do after we narrowly avoided that Cuban Missile Crisis.
We don't want you bullsying up your legacy on that one.
We're going to replace Helen the Chief with that girl.
First of all, it's been great talking to you.
I'm going to let you guys finish this very serious conversation and I'm glad you're having it.
Cheryl, thank you.
I'm looking forward to meeting you when I'm out there having presumably lost a pull-up competition.
I'm going to be counting.
I mean, I hope I get to be the counter of the pull-ups when this goes on.
I'm going to be, you know, shouting one, two.
I don't know how many you can do, Russell.
I hope more than two, but... That smacks of corruption.
Having the wife of one of the competitors counting.
Oh, no.
Next, you'll be suggesting Dominion voting machines, which verifiably work, by the way.
Verifiably work.
Okay, bye!
Cheryl!
That's a good out.
She knows how to do an exit.
That's a professional actor right there.
So, Bobby, thank you for allowing us to participate in your relationship with Cheryl.
That was very kind and generous of both of you.
Thanks very much.
So what do you think about, like, you know, I covered a lot there, but I know you're a man who gives a long answer and I can identify.
So I wanted to talk about the censorship stuff, the stuff that's been taken down off YouTube.
But significantly, because we know that when he was talking to our friend over there, Crystal, over at Breaking Points, that she pushed on the stuff about donations.
And as I say, I'm excited by the Kennedy name and that your family have done great things.
But some people will think, well, this is just ultimately another establishment Politician and what about also mate like, you know Trump prior to like I know a lot of people watching this will love Donald Trump But it's my personal belief that in office Trump didn't drain the swamp Trump granted tax breaks to the richest people So what specifically around this like, you know censorship we can cover but also I'd love you to cover What are you gonna do to get money out of politics through donations through lobbying?
700 lobbyists from the military-industrial complex more than one for each person in Congress or What are you going to do about this important and defining issue, please, Bobby?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very difficult issue, but it's ultimately the most important one.
And if I can just go back, you know, we actually did lose our democracy at one point in American history during what we call the Gilded Age, which was in the 1880s and 1890s, in the time, the years after the Civil War, when really corruption overtook the idealism of the American experiment with self-governance.
And at that time, There were no direct election of senators, so senators were chosen by the legislatures in our country, and the legislatures were on lock and stock and barrel by the trusts, the big, the sugar trusts, the rail trusts, the oil trusts, the coal trusts.
And those trusts were themselves controlled by interlocking boards of these big families, these oligarchical families of the American aristocracy, the Rockefellers, the Whitneys, the Fricks, the Morgans, the Carnegies.
And they were not only, so the senators were being, it was said at that time of the Pennsylvania State Legislature, There was nobody in that legislature who was for sale, because John D. Rockefeller already owned them all, and he would not sell any.
And that really was the case in all the major legislatures in this country.
They were owned by these big social titans, these robber barons.
At that time, there was no income tax in our country.
So the amount of money, you know, Rockefeller was much richer than Bill Gates or Elon Musk is comparatively today.
He controlled, I think, 80% of the oil in the world.
And so you had this tremendous wealth.
There was no income tax.
There was no protection of workers.
There was no, you know, there was no child labor laws.
And they really suppressed American democracy because the legislatures then were involved and they controlled the party so they could choose the President of the United States, which they did time after time.
And then a group of things happened.
One, there was social movements, broad grassroots social movements.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the populist movement, which is in the countryside, the progressive movement, which was in the cities, the reform movement, which was Republican, the populist movement was Democrat, but they got together.
And then you had muckraking journalists who played a critical role in Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and many, many others.
McClure's Magazine, which was, you know, this font of exposes about corruption in government that played a cue that everybody in the country read back then.
And then you had one figure, Teddy Roosevelt, who was, who came out of the aristocracy himself, but was unintimidated by it and was willing to stand up to it and add, you know, these notions about bringing them under control.
And he got into office over the next few years.
They passed child labor laws, a 40-hour work week.
They gave women the vote.
They made direct elections of senators.
They passed a corporate income tax.
They passed antitrust legislation.
And for the first time, they broke out the Standard Oil Company, which is the biggest company in the world.
But the most important law they passed, which was in 1908, was a law that made it illegal for corporations to make direct contributions to federal elective candidates.
That was in 2008, exactly 100 years later, and it restored democracy.
And then we had the New Deal after that that created this robust middle class.
The 50 years following World War II, the great prosperity, when we grew the middle class into the greatest economic engine in history, we owned half the wealth on the face of the earth, and the institutions of our democracy were essentially, well, tiny bits corrupt, but essentially incorruptible.
Everybody believed them.
People believed the press.
During my uncle's presidency, 80% of the country said they believed anything that the U.S.
government told them, the same level of trust for the American press.
The courts were pretty much incorruptible, and the regulatory agencies were functioning.
So we had really a model democracy for the rest of the world, and the rest of the world imitated it, and 190 nations became democracies.
It pays pretty much on the U.S.
model.
Now, in exactly 100 years after we passed that law that really gave us back our democracy, the Supreme Court issued in 2008, I think it was 2008, the Citizens United case.
And that Citizens United did something very unusual and I think very troubling and dangerous.
Which is, the Supreme Court said that speech, that donations, that monetary donations to a political candidate are the equivalent of speech.
And so they cannot be regulated.
They're protected under the First Amendment, under freedom of expression.
So you're, and there's no other country that says that.
You know, all the Western democracies in Europe allow very stringent regulation of campaign donations.
We had this very conservative Supreme Court that gave this revolutionary holding that opened up a tsunami of wealth that began pouring into the political process.
And here's the problem now is that, you know, prior to that time, presidential elections cost less than a billion dollars today for all sides.
Today, You know, this coming presidential election will probably go up to $3 or $4 billion.
And if a candidate, for example, in New York State or California or Florida, a candidate needs to raise $40 or $50 billion or even $100 million to run for elective office and to get into the Senate, well, if you have to raise that money, it means that you have to make several, maybe 1,000 calls a week To people who are going to give you $10,000 donations.
When those people are giving you that money, most of them are not giving it out of a patriotic impulse.
They're giving it because they have an expectation that there's going to be a return on that investment.
And, you know, it may be a small return, meaning that you will return their phone call if they call you sometime in the future and give them your year for 10 minutes at least, or 20 minutes.
That's what they can get for that 10 grand.
But they all have that expectation.
And so if you have, you know, 3 or 4,000, 5,000 people have given you $10,000 apiece, and these are the top rungs of our society, and you have to answer all their phone calls every day, you're not going to have much time to listen to the little guy who calls you and never gave you anything.
And, you know, and for a politician, Everything they do is about raising money for the next election.
And they have an advisor whispering in their ear all the time, that guy's going to give me money, that guy isn't.
And so we now have arrived at a situation in our country where it, which is the exact situation that we, we had a revolution to get away from, which is a rule by the oligarchy, a rule by the aristocracy, because the only person, people who have the ear of Congress is this aristocracy.
And if you look, you know, recently at all the Democratic Party, the legacy media outlets, that are attacking me in this very, very vicious way, you know, ad hominem attacks that, you know, are very kind of personal and, you know, not policy related, but personal to silence me.
They all have become part of this system where they're, you know, they're They're protecting the interests of the elites.
And, you know, a couple days ago, I talked with David Remick, and I was pointing that out to him.
He said, well, you're part of the elites.
You know, you are an elite.
You were born into the elite.
And this is true.
But I've spent my lifetime challenging the rule of the elites.
Somebody the other day, I went to a dinner in Las Vegas and I made a little bit of a statement about my campaign and a guy next to me And then the people in this room were the highest level people in our government, you know, including the former head of the CIA, the head of the State Department, you know, two State Department Secretaries of State at that table.
And I said something that made everybody at the table angry, and the guy next to me He turned to me and he whispered to me, they consider you a traitor to their class.
And I think that's true.
I think that's how the press views me in our country.
And I think that's how, you know, a lot of the DNC views me in our country too, that I'm a, I'm a traitor to this, you know, this, this system that is, that has us being governed, not by democracy, by the, the inverse of democracy by, you know, by its government, by a new aristocracy.
Of people who don't see themselves that way but that's who they are.
I think Bobby that you're right and in my obviously and evidently more minor way I've had a comparable experience.
Once you move from the economic class that I was born in which is like an ordinary blue-collar background if you subsequently become successful it's almost an obligation that you remain in a state of gratitude and And indulge yourself in the idea that you as an individual have been granted this and you are an example of meritocracy and the system working.
And if you continue to sort of talk about corruption and the impossibility of most people achieving that and that the system is set up in order to keep many people down and to prevent the right kind of questions or some of the right questions being asked, you are regarded as a kind of traitor.
But Bobby I wonder if you are willing to and able to and if there is any value in because I would say there is to say like it seems that what you are that what I can infer from what you are saying is that you would not accept donations from corporations whilst I acknowledge it's likely I mean I was I've been speaking to Jack Dorsey, who I know is donating to your campaign, and in a sense it would be self-effacing and self-destructive not to accept money from well-intentioned wealthy individuals.
I think what we're talking about is, will your campaign end up being funded by the very interests that are ultimately perpetuating these problems?
The kind of people that are... I mean, it's unlikely that Big Pharma are going to be donating, but are you...
Other than conversationally and by virtue of your history, your personal history, I'm talking about as a lawyer, your cases against Monsanto, your campaigning against corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, are you saying that as president you would be pushing legislation to, for example, Demonopolize big tech to break up censorship.
Ban the political parties from receiving these type of donations in the manner you have described from that famous legislation a hundred years ago.
Would you nationalize and break up big pharma and perhaps make the health, you know, the health industry, which seems like a sort of, in a sense, even referring to health as an industry seems wrong.
What, you know, what kind of commitment To get money out of politics, to control Big Pharma meaningfully, and to break up censorship, break down this censorship complex, particularly as we have the EU passing regulations that will mean they'll be able to fine platforms up to 6% of their turnover that do not obey their censorship edicts, the Five Eyes countries all passing similar, curiously simultaneous bills to perform a similar function, which I believe actually, Bobby, are to prevent figures like you having the traction and ability to campaign
Without passing through mainstream media gatekeepers.
It seems to me that you have a unique opportunity to say, I will govern differently and I will address exactly these issues.
I will not be accepting military industrial complex money.
I will control Big Pharma.
How close to that are you willing to go, Bob?
Given some of the mad crazy shit you've already said publicly, seems you might as well go the whole hog.
Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be getting a lot of corporate money.
I think I've alienated, you know, most of the donors from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
And, you know, my campaign is Essentially crowd sourced, um, we've raised over the past three days a million dollars a day, um, from, uh, you know, from just from $10, $20 donations, people giving them to us.
Um, and, uh, and I, you know, so I, that's, I think that that's probably how we're going to end up funding the campaign.
I, um, In terms of fixing the system, Russell, it's hard because you have a Supreme Court decision that equates monetary contributions with speech.
To me, I've been campaigning against Citizens United case Uh, since it was passed.
I forget it was 2006 or 2008, but I think it may have been 2006.
I may have been spoke earlier, but I, you know, I think it's one of the worst things that one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history, because I think it's really changed the nature of politics in our country.
And, you know, I'm going to figure out every way I can to work around it.
And that may be through publicly financed campaigns.
But, you know, that is a major preoccupation with me.
In terms of... What was your other question?
In terms of... Censorship and how to ensure... So I'm very alarmed with what the European countries are doing right now, because it's completely anti-democratic.
And now you're going to have the country censoring dissent about government policies, which is not a function of democracy.
That is clearly a characteristic of totalitarian regimes.
There's never been a time in history when the people who were censoring free speech and books and burning books were good guys.
They're always the bad guys.
And if you give the government the power to do that, that power will be 100% of cases that power is going to be abused.
And I think, you know, there's all these excuses to do it now, because things are being blamed on this, you know, the tsunami of misinformation that's out there, but the The remedy for bad information is not censorship, it's more information, as you said.
It is a vibrant, fierce debate about information with no holds bars, with no restrictions.
And we have to do that.
In our country, I think we're blessed to have Elon Musk here, and also Jack Torcey.
Who are willing to take a multi-billion dollar hit, and also just the hatred and vitriol from people who should love them, in order to maintain Twitter as an oasis of free speech in this growing ocean of censorship.
So I, you know, hopefully we'll continue to do that.
As soon as I get in office, I'm going to issue a series of executive orders and national security orders ordering government agencies and government officials, any federal government employee, to refrain from any kind of participation in any form of censorship.
I'm going to restore the Smith-Mundt Act, which was the act that made it illegal for intelligence agencies or military agencies to propagandize American people.
I'm going to bring the big tech titans, the big CEOs into a meeting in the White House.
And I'm going to have a, you know, all day or two day or three day seminar if we have to figure out how we can do, you know, how we can, how they're going to continue.
To run their sites and to make sure that things that are not protected speech, like pedophilia and incitement of violence, those are not protected speech under the First Amendment.
Those legally you can censor, or fraud you can censor, without it being incursions on the First Amendment or for free speech rights.
I'm going to ask them, how do we do this?
And the backstop is, if they can't do it, then I would consider making them common carriers, where it's illegal to censor.
I don't want to do that.
I think it's much better for them to stay as private companies.
But they need to recognize the fact that they are now the public square.
That is just the reality of our time.
If you want to talk to large groups of Americans, you've got to do it.
Those are the only places you can do it.
And that will encourage the growth of more of those, more alternative sites if the government has to start its own.
Under some way, under some rubric that is guaranteed to be free of censorship, then I will do that.
But I'm going to figure out a way that Americans can live in this country, even as Europe plunges into the darkness of censorship.
And then ultimately, it's going to be totalitarian rule, because once you start censoring, you're on a pathway that is, you're on a trajectory.
Where all the other rights are going to be circumscribed.
You know, in this country, as soon as they figured out they could censor us at the beginning of the COVID epidemic, what did they do next?
They closed the churches.
They ended freedom of worship.
They made social distancing regulations that abolished our rights to assemble and petition.
They got rid of the 7th Amendment right to jury trials.
You can't sue a pharmaceutical company that injures you, no matter how negligent they were, Revisit your injury.
They got rid of property rights.
They closed 3.3 million businesses without due process, without just compensation.
All of that was allowed because they got rid of freedom of speech.
If a nation, if a government, And silence its opponents.
It has license now for any atrocity and it will commit those atrocities ultimately.
And so we have to assume that Europe is going in a really ugly direction right now and once they start censoring these platforms and I will do, you know, everything I can to pressure the European brethren and brothers and sisters to lift those censorship rules against US and other companies.
And I'm going to definitely do it and make the United States an example of a censorship-free nation.
If you're watching this on Rumble, press the red button on your screen now to join us on Locals.
You can post questions like Maltanz who asked, the FDA needs to be regulated and revised.
RFK is obviously an expert on this.
And what do you make of other regulatory bodies that are similarly undemocratic, often relying on funding from the organizations that they're supposed to be regulating?
How would you break up that kind of, what appears from the outside to be at least, corruption?
Well, I'm going to end the financial entanglements between the regulatory agencies and the industries they're supposed to regulate.
FDA now.
Is that a beer that you're drinking, Russell?
Just out of curiosity.
Kombucha.
It's kombucha.
I'm 20 years in recovery.
20 years clean and sober.
One day at a time.
Thought I'd push you over the edge.
Not yet.
Maybe the push-up, the pull-up competition could be the final nail in my sobriety.
But for now, I'm still on a level, Bobby.
You know, that kombucha does have a little alcohol in it.
I've seen it push people, you know, over the edge before.
I don't know if you know that.
Bullshit!
Bullshit!
I'll take you down!
I'll take you down, I'm fine!
I can take it or leave it!
This happens to have no impact on me!
What's that?
You want me to drink more of you?
We're talking about the FDA, but also like the NCIH and like the royalties stuff that Fauci was getting.
You know, I guess we're talking about these, the financial entanglement.
Yeah, the financials of 50% or almost 50% about a little between 45 and 50% of FDA's budget
comes from the pharmaceutical companies who are purchasing fast-track approvals of their drugs.
And that now, you know, that has become the tail that wags the FDA dog.
So the regulatory function has been subsumed by the mercantile ambitions of these companies that are, you know, pouring money in and they're the real bosses now.
The the N.I.A.
and C.D.C.
had similar entanglements.
C.D.C.
spends 40 percent of its budget purchasing vaccines and sweetheart deals with four companies and then has all kinds of secrecy about how those companies are compensated, how the prices are set, and then it mandates those products.
For American children.
So if you're at a CDC, you do not get a bonus and you do not get a promotion or a good work assessment by finding problems with vaccines or other pharmaceutical drugs.
You get promoted there to the head of the department, etc., by promoting vaccine uptake.
And so there's a huge incentive for people to overlook any kind of problems and to get these new products out into the marketplace and get into the arms of as many children as possible.
And that's not a good public health strategy.
And then NIH is the worst because NIH itself is allowed to take royalties under the Bullet by Dole Act.
It was passed in, I think, 83.
The agency itself can collect royalties on drugs that it helped develop, and it has become a major incubator, the single largest incubator of pharmaceutical products in the world.
It develops, it finds the molecules that kill certain viruses or diseases, and then it markets those to the universities.
The university then does phase one, phase two trials, and they then take a cut of the patent and the future royalties.
And then if it gets by the phase two trial, they give it to the pharmaceutical companies, which as a phase three trial takes about 50% of the royalties.
NIH keeps that, you know, for example, on the Moderna vaccine, NIH owns 50% of the vaccine, every vaccine sold, they're making money.
So they'll make billions and billions and billions of dollars.
Not only that, individuals who work on those products in the agency, Also get to collect a lifetime, well actually forever royalties, forever.
There's four or six people that work at NIH, high-level deputies of Anthony Fauci, who now are collecting $150,000 a year Forever.
Their children will get it, their children's children, as long as that product's on the market.
So they're paying for their boats, their cars, their houses, their children's education from those loyalties.
So they don't have a big incentive to find problems with that product.
They have an incentive to get those products to market as much as fast as possible.
NIH used to be the gold standard.
Scientific agency of the world, scientific research.
It doesn't do that anymore, largely.
It now has become just an incubator for pharmaceutical products.
Thank you, Bobby.
So, Bobby, it sounds like with you we have a potentially unique opportunity.
Just speaking to you and listening to you today, I recognize that there is deep systemic and institutional, if not corruption, then Then problems that seem somewhat entrenched when you talk about the banning donations is akin to banning freedom of speech.
You've already said that you would revise radically social media by holding a summit with the current owners and if they were not willing to commit to a censorship ban then you would create essentially a nationalized social You've over the course of our conversation said you recognize that Donald Trump has reached people on an emotional level and allowed people to be heard.
It's clear to me that you've been motivated to enter this race, to put yourself forward,
precisely because you understand that we stand at the turning point, that we are witnessing
the movement towards further authoritarianism, further centralisation, that currently platforms
that are prioritising for free speech like Twitter under Elon Musk, although he has said
of course that if the EU passed laws that will enable them to censor, he will obey the
law.
I suppose what else could he say?
I would be remiss as a Rumble content creator, Warren, not to mention that Rumble has made
a real commitment to freedom of speech and we're very grateful to have you on this platform
grateful to have you on this platform where you know that you absolutely will
where you know that you absolutely will not be censored, that freedom of speech does not
not be censored, that freedom of speech does not equate to hate speech and to
equate to hate speech and to conflate those two things is the very kind of trickery that
conflate those two things is the very kind of trickery that the neoliberal
establishment has come to rely on. Thank you Bobby for laying this all out
because it's no doubt a gargantuan task. When I was speaking to Jack Dorsey
earlier, when I was speaking to Jack Dorsey he said that part of his mission
of atonement is to create where possible decentralized open platforms where
people can communicate when no one is in a position where they are given the
authority to regulate and censor and control in the way that you know that
doubtlessly happened under his tenure at Twitter with the Hunter Biden stuff, the
banning of Donald Trump, the censoring of true information that Zuckerberg has
admitted to.
It seems like we're at a kind of point of crisis but also a point of possibility where the technology and institutions and goodwill and as well as a sort of perhaps more subtly an appetite for real change is being discerned and filmed and while corporate profits in the US may have reached an all-time record of two trillion dollars in 2022 I feel like there is a genuine opportunity for a kind of new populism, where people that find Donald Trump appealing, people that, you know, as Republicans, as Libertarians, as anti-establishment, as anti-establishment right-wing people, however they identify, can find new alliances from you, as you say, an avowed Democrat, schooled in their traditions and their principles.
So I feel a good deal of I feel a good deal of optimism, Bobby, and a lot of it is from listening to the breadth of awareness and experience you have, so I thank you very much.
Is there anything that you want to say, mate, in rounding up?
Oh, thank you very much, Ross.
Yeah, I mean, thanks for your enormous brain and for thinking about this stuff and, you know, also for We're doing it in a way that keeps everybody with a good sense of humor and kindness and generosity toward each other.
You have a wonderful You have a wonderful energy, let me put it that way.
Thank you, a great deal of energy.
And I think you may regret accepting, you might regret not taking those billionaire and corporate donations, because if your fund is going to be, if your campaign is going to be funded solely by my pull-ups, You might find that you're a bit short, but in order to donate to me and Bobby's pull-up challenge, you can go to kennedy24.com forward slash pull-up to make your donation.
And indeed, if I do end up losing, I will be very happy, honoured even, to join you on the campaign trail.
Thanks, Bobby, for giving us access once more to your thoughts.
Thanks for introducing us to Cheryl.
Thank you for your bravery, mate, and I look forward to supporting you further.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Russell.
Cheers, mate.
You're a good man.
Thank you, sir.
Joining us tomorrow, we've got Lee Fang on the show, another very bold journalist.
And also this week, on Thursday, we've got Jack Dorsey.
We're going to be talking about RFK.
We're going to be talking about his regrets during his time in Twitter and his journey of atonement.
This Friday, we have Tucker Carlson on the show.
In the room.
If you have questions for Tucker, send them now.
Press the red button and join us on Locals.
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Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same.
We would never insult you with that, but for more of the different.
Until then, stay free.
See you first on Rumble.
Jack Dorsey tweeting out his statement saying it's official.
He resigned as CEO.
We've got such an exciting guest coming up, I wish I could tell you.
See if you can guess who it's gonna be.
No, don't guess, because then you'll give it away.
I'll give it away.
I'll give it away.
I'm so excited about this guest, I won't text him.
Oh, them!
Oh, he's done it!
I knew it!
Look at it!
He cut off himself!
Uniquely, primarily and extra specially on Stay Free with Russell Brand live in studio, Tucker Carlson!
It's Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News.
They're afraid.
They've given up persuasion.
They're resorting to force.
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