All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 11, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:20:20
“MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR BRIBES” | Vivek Ramaswamy on Ukraine War & Biden Corruption! - Stay Free #188
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So, I'm going to go ahead and get this guy.
In this video, I'm going to be playing with a new friend.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!
Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
Wherever you're watching this, the show in its entirety will only be available on Rumble, and today it is a fantastic show because we've got Vivek Ramaswamy, presidential candidate in the Republican primaries, joining us live to talk about his policies, how he'd run the Republican Party, and indeed, the United States of America.
Also later in the show, in our item Here's The News, we'll be asking, who's the biggest threat to democracy?
Donald Trump or the FBI.
We've got an amazing story for you that's going to knock your knickers down and blow your socks straight out the window, because the FBI have been involved in conspiracies that you would not believe.
You're not going to want to miss that.
But let's get straight into our conversation.
Remember, if you're watching us on YouTube, we're only going to do the first 15 minutes there, then you're going to have to click the link in the description Join us in the other place, the home of free speech itself.
This is why we're on Stay Free, so we can have open conversations with people whose voices and opinions matter.
If you're watching us on Rumble, remember, press the red button on your screen now and join us in Locals.
You can join these conversations when they happen live.
On occasion, we have to have these conversations not live, just to ensure we get the best guests and the guests we want to hear from, like Dean NJ, Purple Revolution, They're all with us now and they're having a wonderful conversation and they'll have their opportunity to pose their questions to Vivek.
Without any more skullduggery, nonsense or tomfoolery, please help me to welcome Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek, thank you for joining us.
It's good to be here, man.
I understand this is a very special day.
It's quite literally your birthday.
It is literally my birthday.
You know, I got a lot of criticism now.
I was too young.
So now I'm not 37 anymore.
I'm 38.
Happy birthday to you.
These are British snacks.
Happy birthday to you.
This is Britain.
This is what it means to Britain.
You're one third the age of Joe Biden.
Happy birthday to you.
We'll eat these in your honour, Vivek.
Thank you for joining us on this special day.
I really appreciate that, guys.
That's very nice.
It's been a good day so far, and it just got better.
So thank you.
For the first 15 minutes of the conversation while we're on YouTube, we can keep things relatively light.
Of course, over the course of our conversation, I'd love to talk to you about your views on Donald Trump and what he does to your candidacy, and indeed anyone who would seek the nomination of the Republican Party.
But let's start a little bit with some of the broader points for our audience who are not yet familiar with you.
What exactly do you think you can bring to this race?
What do you think you can bring to this candidacy?
What do you think it's lacking?
So, look, I think that the thing that was missing in the field, the thing that pulled me in, is that I see a Republican Party that for a long time has been running from something.
I am leading us to start running to something.
To our vision of what it means to be an American.
To the ideals of the American Revolution that define what this country is all about.
And yes, the left is very good at filling the vacuum of purpose and meaning in young people with race, gender, sexuality, climate.
I want us talking more about what we actually stand for.
The individual, the family, the nation, God.
This is, I think, actually much more valuable than just criticizing and playing whack-a-mole with everything the other side gives us.
And I bring some unique attributes to this.
I'm not a politician.
I'm a businessman.
I have lived the American dream.
My parents came to this country with no money.
I have gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies.
I did it while getting married to my wife, Apoorva, raising two sons.
That's the American dream.
It's not a politician's story.
And I think it might just take somebody of a different generation to get this job done and actually reaching young Americans, bringing them along, reminding them why we have to be proud of this country, all the reasons we have to be proud of this nation we call home.
And you know what?
That's a unique combination.
Somebody who both comes from the business world but understands the Constitution deeply.
Somebody who cares about this country but who has also succeeded in living the American dream and who is young and a member of my generation.
That's what I'm bringing to this that I think nobody else is.
It is what gave me the duty to, I think, it called me into this race, and we will see what God's plan is for us, but for now, we're gonna keep doing what I believe is my part, and my heart says we're gonna be successful.
Jay says on Locals, now we need more senile octogenarians in power.
I think that's some tacit support right there.
Now you're currently third in the polls.
We had Ron DeSantis, the governor, on our show recently and I get the sense that it must be difficult to find yourself in this position When the conversation is continually dominated by Donald Trump, his easy, oratical brilliance, his status as the perennial outsider, although I recognize that you have a comparable background in enterprise and business, how do you tackle the challenges that Donald Trump's candidacy continues to represent?
In a second, once we leave YouTube, which is just in a couple of minutes, I'm going to ask you outright.
Do you believe that Donald Trump legitimately lost that last election in 2020 or fraudulently lost it?
But for now, what does he do to you ideologically?
What is the challenge of dealing with a man like Trump for a Republican candidate, Vivek?
Well, first thing is, isn't it a shame that we have to parse the conversation in this way?
It just says a lot about where we are as a country and a culture right now.
I'll share with you my perspective.
I do think you only get to be an outsider once.
Donald Trump was that outsider in 2015, and I think that his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the single most important political event of my lifetime.
I'm grateful to him for it.
It stopped the inevitable quasi-Marxist march through our government and through our other institutions, and I think he was a great president in many ways.
I'm looking to build on that foundation and take the America First agenda to the next level.
And I'm not blaming him for this, I think it's just a fact.
That about 30% of this country, probably 30% of the developed world, becomes psychiatrically ill when he is in the White House.
And I can't explain it to you, because I think a lot of what he did makes total sense to me.
In fact, I'm saying many of the same things.
In some cases, I'm going far further than he ever did.
I've said I would use the military on our southern border.
I've said I would shut down departments like the U.S.
Department of Education, where he appointed figureheads to try to reform them.
So in some ways it's funny that I'm going further than he is, in some cases saying the exact same things.
But for whatever reason, maybe it's my age, maybe it's my background, maybe it's the way I say them, I'm not having that effect on people.
And that will allow me to go further than Trump did, while also, I think, having the last best chance we have of uniting this country.
And you know what?
That gives me a sense of enthusiasm and excitement.
A lot of people want me to sit here and bash Trump.
I'm not going to do that.
I respect him.
I think he was a great president.
I just want to build on that foundation to go further.
And I'm pretty happy.
I think other candidates might be frustrated.
For me, I'm in a different seat.
I was at not 0%.
I was at 0.0% in March, which is not that long ago when I got into this race.
I'm now polling a third in the Republican primary.
We haven't even had the first debate yet.
So I'm actually pretty happy with how things are going.
I'm on the same trajectory that Trump was in 2015.
And in many ways, I'm more similar to Trump in 2015 than Trump today is to Trump in 2015.
And I think that's exactly why we're going to win this election, probably in a landslide.
And I think that's going to be the single most uniting event for this country.
Vivek Ramaswamy claims that he is more Trump than Trump.
Trumper than Trump.
Trumping Trump on Trumpness.
Before we leave you on YouTube, I'm going to position and frame this question, but Vivek will answer it over on Rumble.
Why?
Because it's the home of free speech.
It's the only place where we can be assured that we won't be censored and shut down, and free speech is just one of the issues Vivek and I will be discussing a little later.
But the question is this, Vivek.
Would you, do you believe that Donald Trump lost 2020 fairly or fraudulently?
And the second part of that question is, if elected president, would you pardon Donald Trump in the event that he was indicted and found guilty of the many charges that confront him?
But Vivek's not going to answer that question here on YouTube.
The answer could have too many consequences for us as a platform and a channel.
So click the link in the description.
Join us over on Rumble to hear Vivek's answer.
Over to you now, Vivek.
Would Was it fraudulent, or was it fair, and would you pardon him in office?
The election was not fair because it was stolen by big tech.
And it's funny, this is exactly, literally Russell, it's almost like a concrete poem we just demonstrated through our actions.
We had to switch over to this platform, Rumble, which by the way I was a proud early investor in when Rumble was a private company, because I believe in this mission.
This is a demonstration of everything that's wrong with our culture.
And so, yes, you know who stole the election from Donald Trump, above all?
Big Tech did.
They suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story on the eve of an election.
There is hard data.
I'm driven by data and evidence.
There is hard polling data, which demonstrates that that changed the outcome of the election, because many people said, independents, they would have changed their vote had they known that the son of the US president was compromised financially by our adversaries in China, and also being paid multi-billion dollar bribes from Ukraine, which, as it turns out, They were right to wonder about because we're now paying hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer money to that same nation.
So that definitively, I believe, changed the outcome of the 2020 election.
Combine that with Google search algorithm suppression, soft censorship.
This is big tech interference.
The largest form of election interference in human history was big tech in the 2020 U.S.
presidential election, and we still haven't admitted it.
And so that's the truth of the matter.
As it relates to the indictments, and by the way, I don't believe skirting around questions.
I'm not a politician.
I'm just going to tell you straight what I think, and if people don't like it, then they don't have to vote for me.
I will pardon Donald Trump because I believe that these are politicized persecutions through prosecution.
I'm in a unique position to do that because Donald Trump, if you believe years of case law in this country, can't pardon himself.
So I would need to be in that office to get that job done, not just for Trump.
But for Ross Ulbricht, for Julian Assange, for Douglas Mackey, for countless peaceful protesters on January 6th, anytime there's been two standards of justice where somebody was prosecuted because of their political orientation or because of political circumstances, they will be the subject of a presidential pardon.
And for me, that's not an exception for Donald Trump.
That's just me following my principle that Donald Trump is on that list.
He is being prosecuted under circumstances that an ordinary person would not have been prosecuted for if it was under a different political vantage point.
So hopefully, you know, I can keep going into depth, but I believe in giving you direct answers.
Those are my direct answers.
Good direct answer.
And embedded within that are a few points I'd love to pick up on.
That you say you'd be better for America than Trump, you're Trumpier than Trump, and you'd even be better for Trump than Trump because Trump couldn't pardon himself.
Even Donald Trump wins if you win this election.
Now obviously you're setting yourself up in opposition to the Espionage Act by saying that you would pardon Snowden, Assange, who is currently in our country in Belmarsh prison in the UK without trial, waiting extradition to your company, facing some pretty terrifying charges.
How do these figures intersect with the principle of free speech?
Where do you think free speech stands in your country, Vivek, at the moment?
And what would you do to address this issue?
Well, in 1776 and in principle, free speech is the most important bedrock principle of the United States.
The idea that whoever you are, whatever your views are, whatever your opinions are, you get to express them as long as I get to express mine in return.
That was the bargain of the American Revolution.
This is a radical idea.
For most of human history, in Old World Europe and in England, it was done the other way.
They said that, no, no, the people cannot be trusted to speak their minds.
In fact, we, the government, cannot trust the people with the truth.
We have to tell them noble lies.
And if they criticize us for us, they must be suppressed, because that's what's required to preserve order and structure in a society.
In the United States of America in 1776, we fought a revolution to say it's done the other way.
I am sad to say, Russell, that that's not the America that I live in today.
The America that I live in today is one where the government deputizes private companies to do through the back door what the government could not do through the front door under the Constitution.
Indeed, that is why we are unable right now to have this conversation on YouTube.
That is pathetic.
That is shameful.
That is a hollowed-out husk of the country that I grew up in.
If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were walking the streets of this country today, they would not be proud.
They would be appalled at seeing a country that looks more like the kingdom they declared independence from than the country they actually set into motion.
And you know what my job is?
When I leave office in January 2033, I'll be 47, 48 years old.
Twice the age Thomas Jefferson was, by the way, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
People forget that.
My son will be just entering high school.
Young Americans will once again be proud of those radical ideals we used to set this country into motion, rather than being ashamed of them.
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington will once again rest in peace.
But the only way we're going to get there, the first step we're going to have to take to get there, is to restore the First Amendment itself, and it's in the First Amendment for a reason.
We have absolute free speech in this country.
There's no opinion that you should not be able to express.
That's what absolute free speech means.
Does it mean you can fraudulently lie to somebody and sell them a product for private gain?
Does it mean that you can threaten somebody and then follow through on that threat?
No, no, no.
Those aren't opinions.
But free speech above all, if it means one thing, it means that all opinions are fair game, and any criticism of the government is also fair game.
And yet that's exactly what the government is clamping down on today, and that's exactly what I will restore as the next president.
How do you believe you could transfer those ideals into office when you have agencies like the FBI that have undue, immersive, and ubiquitous power?
I'd like to draw to your attention, if I may, Vivek, the case of the Newburgh Four, who
recently had their convictions overturned, or at least were granted compassionate release,
after it was revealed, if not publicly proven, that their convictions were based on FBI meddling.
That essentially the FBI built a conspiracy, cast them in that conspiracy, in this instance
an act of terror bombings against synagogues, solely that they could arrest these men for
that crime.
Now they've subsequently been released.
When we turn our attention to the events of January 6th, where we know that the FBI had
operatives and agents within that crowd, how can we be certain that the FBI were not participating
in exaggerating, amplifying and encouraging the events that are now subject to so much
scrutiny and controversy to this day?
And indeed, does this not indicate that along with big tech, Agencies like the FBI and the CIA who deeply penetrated big tech organizations and participated in the manipulation that you earlier described will still have power.
What would you do to limit the power of the FBI and the CIA and deep state agencies elsewhere and bureaucratic bodies that throughout the COVID pandemic period behaved atrociously?
What would you do to limit that power?
And if you have time to comment on the particular case of the Newburgh 4, I'd be interested
in what you think about that and how it pertains to January 6.
Was January 6 an insurrection or was January 6 an FBI construction?
So listen, I think you just scratched the surface.
This is just part of a broader pattern.
I'm going to answer your question.
Before I do, I want people to know this is not a partisan answer.
And the reason I'll tell you it's not a partisan answer is the examples you gave, Russell, are solid examples grounded in appropriate skepticism and fact.
But they will say, no, no, that's just conservative grievance.
So let me just give you even further back.
The same FBI that will not tell us how many field agents, likely hundreds, if I have to guess, were on the ground on January 6th, is the same FBI that lied to us, directly to the face of the people, about what happened on 9-11.
This is third-rail stuff.
Probably YouTube wouldn't allow this either.
But this is hard fact.
Look at quietly declassified documents in 2021.
The FBI and the 9-11 Commission said that the 42-year-old graduate student from Saudi Arabia, who suspiciously welcomed at the airport two of the hijackers and terrorists, who claimed that he just met them randomly at the airport, The most ridiculous story on earth.
The FBI 9-11 Commission said, no, no, no, that's actual fact.
Quietly declassified documents a year and two years ago now say, well, actually, that guy was a Saudi intelligence agent.
20 years later, they systematically lie.
Same FBI that went back and incorrectly collected illicit tapes about Martin Luther King Jr.
...threatened him to commit suicide on the back of releasing those tapes.
So why do I bring up those examples?
Because those used to be so-called left-wing conspiracy theories that we now know to be true.
What you raised today are so-called right-wing conspiracy theories.
But this goes beyond partisanship.
It is still the J. Edgar Hoover building of the FBI that people walk into it.
I don't spout off on stuff just because I read it on the internet, okay?
I'd encourage everybody to read a book that my wife and I are reading now.
GMAN.
Stands for Government Man.
It's a Pulitzer Prize winning book about the history of this institution.
About the history of J. Edgar Hoover.
This is a corrupt institution.
This is an institution that creates the very sources of crime that they combat or claim to want to combat.
So here's what I'll do.
There are other people in this race, you've talked to some of them, I gather, who will make sort of false promises of, we'll reform it, I'll fire Christopher Wray.
They don't think they're making a false promise.
They're good people, they're patriots, they mean well.
They want incremental reform.
You cannot Incrementally reform these agencies.
So you want to know what the right answer is?
You have to shut them down.
And I will absolutely, on day one in the office, shut down the FBI.
We don't need it.
I've also offered unprecedented detail of exactly how we will shut down that FBI.
I've offered unprecedented detail on the legal authority that who would have ever thought the President of the United States, who runs the executive branch of the government, can actually run the executive branch of the government.
Radical idea.
Turns out it's grounded in the law and the Constitution.
I've also laid out the exact plan.
I don't want people to suffer for risk of drugs or child trafficking.
There's 35,000 employees in the FBI.
20,000 of them are not on the front lines.
They sit in the J. Edgar Hoover building at the FBI.
That's where the political rot begins.
Those people will have to go home and find honest work in the private sector.
The 15,000 or so agents who are on the front lines, we will redeploy them at the U.S.
Marshals, a separate agency that has not yet been corrupted.
They've been very good at child sex trafficking cases in bringing those much more effectively than the FBI has.
Put them there.
Put them in the Drug Enforcement Agency, which has been much more effective in fighting the fentanyl spread in this country.
Put them in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, tackling complex white-collar crime and theft.
So this is deeply practical, actually.
The FBI, part of the point is it was redundant when it was created.
It is redundant today.
And when you have redundant bureaucracies, that's actually the formula for systematic corruption, which is exactly what we see.
And Russell, I think that gets to the heart of the choice in this GOP primary.
There is absolutely a choice that voters will have to make.
Do they want incremental reform?
Or do they want revolution?
I stand on the side of revolution.
The American Revolution.
If you want incremental reform, go with somebody else.
If you want a quantum leap to revolution, that's what I'm actually bringing.
Not violent revolution, but a revival of the ideals of the American Revolution.
Yes, radical ideals that in 1776 gave birth to this nation.
I stand for the radicalism of the American Revolution.
And that's very different than the other candidates in this race.
Vivek, I can't tell you how much support you're getting here in our locals community.
This is exactly the kind of language and the kind of ideas and the kind of authenticity that I think the American political space is craving.
When it comes to addressing the challenges of the deep state and their insidious reach across democratic institutions and their ability to nullify the will of ordinary American people, To hear you say that you would on day one disband the FBI is incredibly encouraging.
But another part of that totalitarian cuboid nightmare is the relationship between corporations, lobbying, donations, and many measures that are able to bypass democracy.
Now, of the fortunes that you have made, my understanding is that some of that fortune at least is through biotech and from organizations that are somewhat adjacent to pharma.
and the pharmaceutical industry. Now I know that many people in our audience are deeply cynical
about the behavior of the pharmaceutical industry, not least because of fentanyl that you've already
mentioned, although I'm sure you're alluding to the relationship between Mexico and America
rather than the sort of fentanyl manufactured, distributed illegally, or at least criminally,
ethically, if not judiciously, throughout the United States of America.
I'd love to ask what you would do about Big Pharma's hold.
How Big Pharma would be punished for their role during the pandemic, if you believe there's any corruption there, and during the opioid crisis.
How can you, I wonder, are you willing, Vivek, to apply the same kind of definitive discourse
and punitive measures to the pharmaceutical industry as you would to deep state corruption
within the FBI, particularly given your relationships within pharma?
Well, it's just an extension of the deep state.
I just want to say something, Russell.
Actually, this is a good chance to address it, because many people, and I understand where they're coming from, because if I didn't know better, I'd be saying the same thing.
Oh, did this guy make his money off a biotech company, and is that tied to big pharma?
That is about... My relationship to Big Pharma is like the equivalent of saying Rumble's relationship to Big Tech, okay?
I started a company that challenged Big Pharma on the terms of its own corruption.
This is why most people in Big Pharma despise me.
I mean, that's just a hard fact.
I called a lot of their bluffs and used it to also develop medicines that they claim deserve not to be developed, which are actually helping thousands of people today that they systematically didn't develop.
And by the way, it's also why I like to back businesses like Rumble.
So I just wanted to address that out of the gate.
It is good when someone like Chris starts Rumble to stand up to YouTube.
It is good when people like me at least set out to start biotech companies to challenge the way Big Pharma behaves.
They don't love me very much, but a big part of the problem is the tie-in with government.
And there's no way I was going to address that by being one biotech startup, even though that's a bigger company now.
It's tiny compared to Big Pharma.
There's no way it's going to be addressed without extricating the linkage with government itself.
That's really where the problem rests.
And so, a big part of that corruption starts at the FDA.
And I'll get to the vaccine point in a minute, where I think, absolutely, was there corruption?
Yes, there was.
Was there systematic lying?
Absolutely, there was.
But you've got to understand it deeply.
So just think about this on its own terms.
Nobody can argue with the point I'm about to make.
I don't believe so.
Not even people who claim to disagree with us.
The same FDA That made it take boatloads of money for me to develop the medicines that are approved now.
I can tell you right now, those medicines could have been developed for a tiny fraction of the price, which means they could cost a tiny fraction of the price.
That FDA says, it has to take 10 years and a billion dollars to develop any medicine, and we won't even let you try it.
That you or I, in a fully informed way, after it's gone through thousands of patients.
No, it has to be tens of thousands.
We can't even have the right to try it.
Unless it's been through that process because it can't be deemed to be safe or effective enough.
Now, I actually take issue with that.
I'm a strong libertarian when it comes to this.
If I want to take it, I'm going to take it.
I don't want you getting in the way, especially if I have a life-threatening disease, God forbid.
There are people who are left to die rather than to be able to take that risk for themselves.
And by the way, I believe the same thing when it comes to veterans who suffer from PTSD, who turn to fentanyl, who could be going to ayahuasca or ketamine or other psychedelics that are far better options than fentanyl.
This is something that, again, the FDA and the DEA and the federal government step in and say, no, no, no.
You don't even have the right to actually make the choice.
That's the same FDA that said, now we have in the same federal government with the FDA that says, we're going to shepherd in and push vaccines for COVID in less than one year.
And to top it off, it's not that you only get the choice to take it, which I have no problem with, but that you have a mandate to take it, which I do have a problem with.
I also have a problem with the lies they told in that approval.
So those two things, you can't believe those at the same time, right?
The same agency that stops you from even having the right to try medicine, say you have no right but not to take it in the case of a vaccine that's part of a favored political class, that's part of the lobbying industrial complex.
And so, you know, I see it in this election as well.
I'm the only candidate in this race, save for Donald Trump, but the rest of the candidates.
Same thing happened in 2015.
Who's not a super PAC puppet?
Millions of dollars flowing into super PACs propping up the other candidates.
I don't even have TV ads up in most of the country.
There are TV ads being paid for for every other candidate.
If you look at the per percentage point in the polls, how much is somebody spending?
For Jeb Bush, Scott Walker last time, for every one of the other candidates this time, millions of dollars being spent on TV ads per percentage point in the polls.
For Donald Trump in 2015, for me this time, tens of thousands of dollars, right?
That's organic.
So I would make a deal with anybody in this race to say, I'll do this deal with Joe Biden in the general election.
If you agree to turn down Super PAC dollars, I will do the same.
You know, it's not technically you turn it down, but you shun them.
Okay?
You don't participate in their fundraisers.
You say you don't want their ads on TV, then they won't put them up.
I will make that deal publicly with Joe Biden in the general election.
It probably won't be Joe Biden, actually.
I doubt they're going to let him run against me.
It'll be whoever, whichever other puppet they put up.
But I will make that same deal in this Republican primary.
If the rest of this Republican primary field agrees to say that we will shun Super PAC money, I will do the same thing.
Because I think it's a corrupting influence.
And the largest lobbying organization in human history is none other than Big Pharma.
And I think that we need to extricate capitalism from democracy.
Okay, I have no problem with innovators.
Not only I have no problem, I'm proud to be one of them.
Innovators who take risks, develop medicines, are honest about it.
Say when they work.
Admit when they don't work.
I've had instances of both.
Be honest about it.
But when the ones that do work, work, let it not be the product of government corruption.
Just tell the people, here's the value proposition, it's your choice whether you take it or not, rather than applying mandates, as opposed to the backdoor mechanism of hiding myocarditis risks, pushing something through, And saying that we're not confident enough being able to convince the public to take it on their own value proposition, so we need you, the government, that shepherded this uniquely through, to also be the one that mandates it while we get paid in the process.
That is corrupt.
And yes, I will put an end to it.
And one specific thing I can tell you on day one that's doable is roll back the special liability protection.
That was enshrined in law for vaccine manufacturers during the COVID-19 pandemic to say that they can't be sued for product liability.
It's like the equivalent of Section 230 for big tech.
It's crony capitalism.
It's corruption.
You don't need special forms of liability.
Everyone should play by the same set of rules.
That just gives you a sense for where I'm at on this.
That's great.
So you would end crony capitalism in the instance of Big Pharma, in particular, by revoking the avoidance of liability that was sanctioned and enshrined in the measures taken around the beginning of the pandemic.
Similarly, you would end the crony capitalism around big tech.
Of course, the other abiding industry that dominates American culture, perhaps like none other, is the military-industrial complex, with the undue influence that they're able to assert on American policy, American life, right up to and including the behavior of the American military, one of the few institutions that remains popular in a country and a culture where people are cynical about government, cynical about media, cynical about the deep state.
The military remains loved, and yet All of us know that the Pentagon are incapable of passing an audit.
All of us know that a considerable amount of money, over half of all budgetary expenditure, ends up in the hands of companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.
Are you saying that in the same way that you would stymie and end Big Pharma's ability to influence through corporate capitalism, you would introduce measures, policies and legislation that would end the ongoing power of the military-industrial complex?
And if you will permit me, sir, how would you apply that mentality to the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia and its ongoing rolling funding?
Well, I think the Ukraine-Russia conflict is a direct consequence of corruption in our own government.
There's a lot of corruption in Ukraine, where they're siphoning off our money to enrich a lot of people over there.
But it's actually easy to point the finger at somebody else's corruption.
It's a lot harder to take a long, hard look in the mirror as a nation and identify that corruption at home.
So, big tech, government collusion, done.
Big pharma, government collusion, done.
Military, private, industrial, military, with government, done.
That's the short answer.
We have an anti-competitive arena.
I think that anybody who has Worked in the government should have a 10-year hiatus at minimum to work in an industry that they've been responsible for contracting with or regulating.
That's just basic table stakes.
I mean, the lobbying is really where a lot of this begins, and I have a lot more solutions beyond this.
I personally believe that if I, as the next US president, can't work for the taxpayer and collect a paycheck from them for more than eight years, which I think is a good thing, Then neither should pretty much any of those federal bureaucrats reporting into me either.
Somebody shouldn't be able to work for the federal government for more than eight years continuously.
That's when the corruption and the rot and the entitlement and the ossification of bureaucracy begins.
And so, if we can continue, I could give you a list of policy prescriptions, shutting down agencies, legal authority to do it.
I've done this elsewhere.
But this is not incremental reform.
This is revolution when it comes to that deep state.
Now, as it relates to Ukraine, we now see just one of the symptoms of how this corruption manifests itself.
One symptom is the fentanyl crisis across this country.
One symptom is hiding from the public the truth about the origin of COVID-19.
The truth about what's known about myocarditis risks from the vaccine.
The truth about how vaccine mandates came to be.
The truth about special liability protection.
Now we're just moving to another symptom of that corruption, right?
Another symptom is suppressing a story, right, on the eve of a presidential election by big tech that changed the outcome of the election.
Another symptom is systematically lying to the public about what we know about UFOs, which they now call UAPs, which is the polite way you're supposed to say it.
What they've said about the Jeffrey Epstein client list, the truth about the Nashville shooter manifesto, the list just goes on.
But yes, one example of this Is what's really going on behind the U.S.
government's support of Ukraine.
So if I told you this is a ridiculous set of facts, but it's not a set of facts, it's just actual history, and then I give you one additional fact that makes it all make sense, what I'm about to tell you probably would be uncouth, maybe intolerable on YouTube as well.
The establishment Republicans are furious at me for even intimating this the other day in a speech in Iowa, but I'm just gonna lay out some facts, okay?
The USSR does not exist anymore.
That's fact number one.
Sometimes people need to be reminded of that.
It fell back in 1990.
Now, NATO was created to deter the USSR and to contain the USSR.
NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it ever did during the existence of the USSR.
Yes, we have a 1994 Budapest Memorandum that said in order for nuclear disarmament in Ukraine, the US and the UK, along with Russia, will help protect their boundaries.
to a certain extent, and we have more than lived out the commitments of the Budapest Memorandum,
but we also had a 1990 commitment that James Baker made to Gorbachev, which said that we
would expand NATO not one inch, that was the exact language he used, not one inch past East Germany.
So against this backdrop, we now have a little bit of a conflict in Ukraine, where this is
following Angela Merkel saying that the Minsk agreement was really just a matter of biding time.
We've been arming Ukraine to the teeth for years under Republican and Democrat administrations alike.
Putin asked for a hard commitment that NATO would not admit Ukraine.
We didn't give it to them.
And then Putin invades.
It is after Victoria Nuland and others in the U.S.
have openly been caught admitting that we meddled with elections, talking about election interference, in the 2014 situation in Ukraine, the Euromaidan protests and everything else.
Against that backdrop, yes, we have a struggle with a really complicated history where Russia has made the decision to invade Russian-speaking and Russian-heritage-oriented parts, separatist parts of Ukraine.
The U.S.
has no national interest here.
There's no national interest at issue.
We have an invasion across our own southern border, and I don't use that word lightly.
There are literally armed cartel gunmen crossing, invading our own southern border, and yet we're doing nothing there, sending hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, in military equipment, to protect this random invasion across somebody else's border in a disputed territory in the first place.
Why?
This doesn't make sense.
A lot of U.S.
taxpayers don't know this.
U.S.
taxpayer dollars, literally today, are being used to pay the paychecks of not just the U.S.
deep state, but the Ukrainian deep state.
Literally, the Ukrainian government bureaucrats, their payroll is being processed by money that U.S.
taxpayers are sending to Ukraine.
Why?
Answer the question.
Nobody has given me a good answer.
Has given the American people, more importantly, a good answer on what national interest we're advancing by using hundreds of billions of dollars of our own money to pay and protect the random disputed border of this random Eastern European nation.
That's not some model of democracy.
He's banned 11 opposition parties.
He's consolidated state media.
You know, he's got issues of his own, targeting the church in his own, targeting and persecuting religious minorities in his own country.
So why?
Now I tell you, against the backdrop of that otherwise inexplicable set of facts, that that same country, a state-affiliated company in that country, He paid multi-million dollar bribes to the son of that U.S.
President, Joe Biden, that's sending over that aid.
Just process that for a second.
Under any other circumstances, even just imagine this was Donald Trump.
The same thing, except substitute Donald Trump for Joe Biden and Ivanka Trump for Hunter Biden.
There is no doubt that everybody in the world, including in the U.S.
media and the British media along with it, would be drawing that link, that this is a repayment for that bribe.
But today, if I'm saying that in a speech in Iowa, it's beyond the pale.
And MSNBC can trot out Chris Christie to pretend to be bipartisan.
You know, guy who comes out every four years like a bear from hibernation to, you know, growl and complain about, you know, whatever MSNBC tells him to complain about, to talk about me.
They won't have me on air.
But it is exactly, and that's just in the last week, an example of how the establishment recoiled at my saying so.
This is the most parsimonious explanation of what's actually happening.
It's Occam's razor.
Use the most parsimonious explanation you can to otherwise explain an inexplicable set of facts.
That is absolutely what's going on.
And yet, we have a neocon establishment in both parties.
Sometimes in this Republican primary, I feel like I might as well be running against Joe Biden and Liz Cheney, because the rest of the field, even though as much as they'll pay lip service to criticizing Joe Biden, is really just saying the same thing.
That's really what's going on.
And it is just another symptom, Russell, of that deeper corruption.
And so I don't like it when other Republicans, you know, talk a big game and then when push comes to shove, you know, will tell, you know, maybe Tucker Carlson what he wants to hear when Tucker still had his show, but when their donors pat them on the back say, well, you know, I didn't really mean what I said about Ukraine.
We just need people who have a spine.
And I think we've lacked that for a very long time, and I appreciate that about people like you, or Tucker, or otherwise, in the world you're in.
Even though the media has had its own backlash against you, you guys continue to speak.
In the political world, that doesn't exist, actually.
Everybody else just lines up like pawns, like supplicating lapdogs, when the moment calls and the super PAC class says you've gone too far.
And I'm not dependent on that super PAC class.
I'm not a super PAC puppet.
I'm a patriot who speaks the truth.
And that's the choice we actually face.
And what you represent, or what Tucker Carlson represents, which is essential, or even Jordan Peterson represents in the world of media, that is vital.
That does not exist even in the Republican Party today, let alone in the political establishment.
And that is what gives me my sense of duty to see this through.
Excellent.
What that suggests to me is that you indeed, in order to deliver on just the content of our conversation today on your birthday, Vivek, would have to stand on a manifesto of revolution rather than reform.
Now, how can we be confident given many of the conversations that have taken place since 2020?
That a candidate with such an egregiously anti-establishment offering would be granted a judicial and fair electoral process.
Are you confident that in the event that you were running saying that you're going to shut down the FBI, you're going to punish Big Pharma, you're going to close down military-industrial complex's ability to have favourable wars as business as usual for America, That the Democrat establishment and the deep state establishment and the media establishment would allow and enable a fair election?
Are you confident that the 2024 elections will be fair, not fraudulent?
That a candidate such as yourself would be allowed to win?
Are you confident there would be no electoral meddling?
Can you safely say that were you to gain sufficient votes, you would be the candidate that ascends
on the dawn of this new revolutionary era that you describe?
Or do you imagine that these institutions and machines would do whatever's in their
power and we know what's being discussed at the moment, you know what would be subjudicial
even to discuss in the case of Donald Trump, that perhaps what he's doing is a bit of a
Do I have confidence?
The answer is no.
not making that claim because I like to protect myself legally at all times where possible.
So do you believe that if elected you would be, that the votes would be counted and justice
would be issued, electoral justice at least? No. Do I have confidence? The answer is no.
But that is why this answer also is important. We have to deliver a landslide election.
This cannot be a 50.1 margin.
It's probably the most important reason it has to be me and not Trump as the nominee.
Because...
Donald Trump, I actually do believe, unlike many Republicans, I believe he can beat Joe Biden.
I think most Republicans in this race can beat Joe Biden.
I think if I'm the nominee, they won't let Biden run.
They will put up some other puppet.
But whichever puppet they put up, I think I'm the only candidate in this race that can actually deliver a landslide election, a Reagan 1980-style landslide.
And that's what it's going to take.
A 50.1 election where the following Monday after the Tuesday when votes are cast, when MSNBC trots out who the likely election winner is?
No, this can't work that way.
That's the stuff of national divorce.
We do not want to get there.
This has to be a moral mandate, a landslide election.
That is what I am in a position to deliver.
And where do you have the facts?
I'm not making this up, right?
I had no political donors.
I had no donor lists.
I was at 0.0% in March.
The threshold for making the Republican debate stage, which others like Vice President Pence just barely skirted past, was 40,000 unique donors.
We have over 70,000 already.
But 40,000 of them, our first time, excuse me, 40% of them, it's about 40, you know, 40% of the donors I have, our first time ever, ever in their life history, donors to the Republican Party.
Normally, that number is 2% for a normal Republican.
For me, it's 40%.
So what does that say?
We're already bringing people along, especially young people, who would have never thought of themselves voting for a Republican, because my ideas aren't really Republican ideas.
They're pro-American ideas.
I think most people in the Republican Party act like a bunch of partisan hacks.
I often say, stop criticizing Joe Biden.
It's boring.
We have to offer an affirmative vision of our own.
That's why the Republicans did so poorly in the 2022 election, as it was all about criticizing the radical Biden agenda.
Nobody wants to hear that.
That's not inspiring.
It doesn't mean anything, especially to young people.
We have to say, this is what we're running to.
This is what we actually stand for.
Republicans haven't done that in a long time.
And by the way, it also misses the plot because Joe Biden isn't running the country.
Neither is Kamala Harris.
They're puppets.
It is the managerial class in the deep state that's actually running the show, and so we have to explain to the public why you can't just reform that deep state.
We have to shut it down.
How shutting it down will revive the economy, will make your life better, put more dollars in your pocket, more importantly, restore accountability in government, restore a three-branch constitutional republic that we fought a revolution for, that our founding fathers fought for.
Explain that, and we win this election in a landslide.
It's not about Republicans and Democrats and about the radical Biden agenda.
That's so boring.
It's super lame.
And that's exactly the way Republicans talk and behave.
And so I think it's going to have to take an outsider.
And you brought up the Democrat establishment, the media establishment, the big pharma and the corruption establishment.
There's the Republican establishment, too.
You're almost too charitable in leaving them out on your list.
But do I believe that every part of that establishment is gonna let me through and roll out a red carpet for me?
No.
They're gonna try to build the wall to keep me out.
They already are.
But I think it's going to take, we the people, get to decide who runs this country.
We live in a moment where that has to be decided by a landslide margin.
And I'm the only candidate, by far, who has even a chance at delivering it.
And then once I do, here's how we'll fix voting in this country.
I laid this out yesterday.
Yesterday was election day.
I voted in my home state in Ohio yesterday.
And when I came out, I just felt it was simple.
It was a paper ballot.
It was government-issued ID that I brought with me.
Here's the thing that we need.
Okay, if the left really believes the reason we can't have this conversation on YouTube is that supposedly even talking about the subject of election integrity is a threat to our democracy, as you'll hear on a given day of the week.
Funniest expression you'll hear, and there's so much wrong with it.
We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
Our democracy.
Whose democracy, exactly?
But that's what you'll hear.
It's a threat to our democracy to even have this conversation.
Well, here's a truce in terms of how we move forward.
I don't want a national divorce.
I want a national revival.
Here's what I'll say when I'm president.
Here's how we'll do it.
Paper ballots.
Single-day voting on Election Day.
People have work, they say.
Fine, make Election Day a national holiday so everyone has an equal opportunity to do it.
And government-issued ID to match the voter file.
That's it.
If we reach that achievement, you have my pledge.
The people of this country have my pledge.
That I will lead all Americans, including all Republicans, to move on to stop complaining about ballot fraud or election interference.
We're done with it.
I will keep that promise.
I will say we're done with it.
We will not be victims.
We refuse to wallow in our own victimhood.
But just fix the basics here.
If it's really that much of a threat to our democracy, this should be a very practical solution to deliver.
Paper ballots, single-day voting, on election day, which I'm open to make a national holiday, And government issued ID to match the voter file.
With that, we're done.
We move forward as a country.
And the fact that that is controversial smokes out what's really going on here.
And I think that it takes a candidate who is willing to actually engage, not in grievance, but on principle, to move this nation forward.
And that's why I'm in the race.
That's good stuff, mate.
That's good stuff.
So inherently, an inability or an unwillingness to hold, let's call them analog elections that are trackable and observable, suggests that there is the potential and has been the potential for electoral corruption digitally undertaken.
It's really interesting.
I'm going to read some of the comments from our community here on Locals.
And if you're watching us on Rubble right now, remember, press the red button.
You can join us on Locals where we prioritise your questions.
It's easier to read them here and stuff for me.
This is from Sheila Dean.
What about the global or international agreements and the other tethers and strings from abroad on our economy, Vivek?
Like the WHO, CDC and BRICS health data exchanges on genetic data.
Could you comment on that for us, mate?
Yeah, I also love this person for including the CDC as an international organization because it is technically a U.S.
organization, but it actually is a great question.
That person probably really knows what they're talking about because it is basically an extension arm of the WHO.
I think we need to stop funding organizations that are hostile to the sovereignty of the U.S.
That includes the WHO.
That may very well include the U.N.
I am perfectly open to re-evaluating the U.S.' 's continued involvement in the U.N.
itself.
If the U.N.
Security Council is staffed by the likes of Venezuela and North Korea, it is a joke.
And we have to call out that farce for what it is.
I've already said I would shut down the CDC.
That's on my list of three-letter agencies that I would shut down here in the United States, here at home.
In my general view, this is, I'm only saying half-jokingly here, but If it comes in an acronym, chances are we should be skeptical of it.
FBI, ATF, IRS, CDC, WHO, ESG, CBDC, UN.
It's funny, I say that in a joking spirit, but...
The truth to it is that if it's designed to be boring, if it's designed to sound technocratic and put you to sleep, they want to bore you into submission for a reason.
And so my general rule of thumb is the more boring it sounds, the more attention we actually have to pay to it to preserve our liberty.
And the international institutions, WHO, all the way up to and including the UN, are absolutely on that list for me.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Death by bureaucracy appears to be one of the mantras of our day.
Hetty Hope says simply, I'd vote for him.
We've got lots of questions and inquiries that I hope you guys think that we've covered.
Vivek and myself, I mean by this, HeyNavigator talked about your big pharma connections.
We talked about that at some length and talked about Vivek as a disruptor in that space rather than compliant,
and his willingness and happiness to shut down the kind of easy relationships that have existed
between Big Pharma and stuff.
As Rumble is to big tech, and we need more competition is the answer.
So we covered that there, hey, Navigator.
Liam asks about electoral integrity, which we've covered.
Blessed Old Bird wants to talk more of a personal question, and then I've got one more of my own.
Blessed Old Bird wants to understand your business background and where you made your money
and how you made your money.
Is that something you're happy to talk about, mate?
Yeah, happy to talk about everything.
So I made most of my money through building a biotech company that I built from scratch.
Oversaw the development of drugs that Big Pharma had literally, and Big Pharma behaves in a coordinated way.
They decide that they all want to fail in the same ways or succeed in the same ways so that no one stands out from the pack.
It's almost a form of, it's like a cartel.
It's coordinated behavior and it's a regulated industry.
That created opportunity for me to say, there are drugs in areas that Big Pharma has abandoned.
I'm going to call their bluff and develop them.
And there are some individual good people who inside those companies were sounding the alarm, we actually brought with us.
All of whom actually had the chance to work on those drugs under my umbrella.
Five of those are FDA-approved products today.
We spent far more money and time than we had to because of a cumbersome FDA, but we got through the process.
One's a life-saving therapy in kids, 20 of whom die of a genetic disease every year if they're not treated, one of which is for prostate cancer, a bunch for women's health conditions, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, one for psoriasis, And that's a $9 billion public company today.
That's how I made most of my money.
I also founded a company called Strive.
It's an asset management firm that competes with the likes of BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard by offering an alternative set of index funds.
The index funds offered by the big guys, they all push these companies to advance ESG values, environmental and social left-wing agendas in corporate America's boardrooms through their votes.
The index funds that I launched, or that Strive launched, that's the company I co-founded, tell these companies, no, knock it off with the politics, just focus on value.
Make products and services, maximize value, that's it.
That's been thankfully a success as well.
The first fund launched last August.
Strives close to crossing a billion dollars in assets under management.
JP Morgan took two years to reach that same milestone when they got into the same line of business.
And so I believe in taking on bureaucracies.
I believe in succeeding.
I believe in winning.
That's been my formula for building multiple successful companies.
And that's how I live the American dream.
What do you think about people in Congress trading in stocks and shares that they regulate, or even the sort of, if not nepotistic, somewhat uneasy expenditure of, for example, the Pelosi's.
Not that I'm alleging that anything corrupt happens between Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi, but his ongoing investment and success in big tech companies when she has the regulatory capacity that she does within Congress around those institutions.
Would you do anything to prevent people in Congress buying and selling stocks in companies that they're involved in the regulation of?
Yes, I don't think it's right.
I actually talked about this in my second book, Nation of Victims.
I just think it doesn't make any sense.
And this is why, even though it's not legally required, you know, even before I started this presidential campaign, I put my personal investment portfolio, I put a third person in charge of it, who trades that portfolio, because why?
Why?
It's not like most of these people, by the way, I'm almost giving them helpful advice.
They'll probably do better.
If they actually leave those decisions to a third party.
I know these people.
I know most of these congressmen.
These are not people who should be trying to tinker around in the stock market.
The only way they're going to make money is if it was based on information that they have that's asymmetric.
Otherwise, they're going to do worse than a monkey throwing darts at a target.
Okay, so that's a monkey would be better picking their stocks than they would be unless it was for corrupt reasons.
And so why even foster the appearance of that corruption?
That's part of what public service is about.
I'm open to a conversation to say that, OK, well, should their pay increases keep up with inflation?
You know, I don't love that, but that's a small, tiny fraction of the federal budget.
And if that's a trade for actually keeping out the corruption that otherwise finds itself in for people to say, well, I need to make money through the back door instead.
That's going to be a good thing for the country.
And I practice what I preach.
I believe in total transparency, even though it hasn't been legally required.
This is unprecedented.
In the early weeks of this campaign, I published 20 years of my own tax returns.
I just want to set the example that I want to see of other people in government.
You know, I'm proud that people can see the investments that I've held.
I've invested millions of dollars in companies like Rumble at an early stage with their private companies.
That's great.
That is how I've made my money.
I've built Roivent.
I've built Strive.
And I'm proud of that.
But I think that people deserve to see it transparently.
And I think that in Congress, I just don't think that the culture of hiding is good for building public trust.
And I'll tell you something else that's quite good, is that I didn't know that about you.
I didn't know you'd invested in Rumble, and, like, as far as I know, no one's gone to ask, Get Vivek on!
He's an investor!
You know, like, this is the first I've heard of it.
You know, like, Chris... I'm in contact with Chris Pavlovsky, who's the CEO.
It's the first I've heard that you've invested, so, uh, congratulations and thank you.
Lady Gray 312 says monopolies are the root of all evil and this is from Make It Pop.
In response to your defunding of organizations extraneous to the US, I expect, would you include Israel in this defunding tenure that you discussed with regard to the WHO?
If you would end the war between Ukraine and Russia or at least stop funding it, what would you do about America's ongoing funding of Israel?
To be clear, I would end the war in Ukraine and Russia.
It's not that I would just stop defunding it.
I would negotiate a deal, and I just want to quickly hit this because it's probably the most important point that we haven't touched.
The deal I would negotiate is freeze the current lines of control, make a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO, But in return, pull Russia out of its military alliance with China.
Okay?
That's actually the top threat that we would face as a Russia-China alliance, and we're driving Russia further into China's arms.
That's also how we deter China from going after Taiwan without going to war over it.
Because China's bet right now is if Russia's in its camp, the U.S.
will be in a tough position.
If Russia's not in China's camp, Xi Jinping has to think twice before going after Taiwan.
So a lot there.
I can dive deeper on that if others are interested, but it is a super important plank of my foreign policy vision, which is based on a modern Monroe Doctrine, which is to say that where we spend our money is you don't mess with the United States of America on our own soil with Chinese spy balloons or spy bases in Cuba or pumping intentionally, you know, violence into our country across our southern border.
No, you don't mess with us.
Now, as it relates to Israel, my view is, I ask the question, there's no North Star commitment to any one country other than the United States of America.
So what advances American interests?
I actually do think our relationship with Israel has advanced American interests.
I come out on the side of that.
Here's what I want to see happen, though.
I want to negotiate.
I'm a dealmaker, OK?
I want to negotiate now Abraham Accords 2.0.
Get Saudi, Oman, Qatar, Indonesia in there.
Get Israel on its own two feet.
And I believe in standing by commitments that we've already made.
So our commitments have, I think, $38 billion in aid, military support, et cetera, going in through 2028.
I want to get Israel to the place where it is negotiated back into the infrastructure of the rest of the Middle East.
We should not be worried about holding one nation or one region hostage over one particular question relating to Palestine.
Go to Abraham Accords 2.0.
That's good for Israel.
It's good for the rest of the Middle East.
It's good for us, such that come 2028, that additional aid won't be necessary in order to still have the kind of stability that we'd actually have in the Middle East by having Israel more integrated in with its partners.
And I think that the Trump administration took a first step getting Bahrain and some other countries.
I think we need Saudi.
I think we need Oman, Qatar, Indonesia and others in there.
And then I think that puts us in a position, it's everybody's position to say we don't have to meddle.
Fantastic.
Hey, one final inquiry, Vivek.
The revolutionary agenda that you espouse, in particular with regard to destabilizing, disbanding the deep state, a reckoning around Big Pharma, redressing the forever wars of your great nation, these all seem radical policies and ideas, and all ideas that I agree with.
I wonder though, when you talk about The void that perhaps woke politics is filling, like a need for purpose and meaning.
Many of the ideas that you have conversationally referenced are traditional ideas.
I don't mean that in a derisory way.
Traditions are very, very, very valuable.
Where would we be without them?
But in terms of a forward-looking vision for America, aside from reverence for the great ancestors and for parents of your nation, What in particular do you regard as being new about American civic life and cultural life that you would offer?
Something for American people to walk towards?
Yes, so I think there's a few basic principles.
Meritocracy.
Put merit back in America.
That you get ahead and get however far you want to, not in the color of your skin, but in the content of your character and your contributions.
Do not apologize for your success.
The unapologetic pursuit of excellence.
Let that, once again, be part of what it means to be an American.
Whether it's a kid in a classroom who's at the top of his class, or somebody who succeeds through the system of free market capitalism.
No, you don't have to hide your success.
You don't need to wear a hair shirt and flog yourself.
You don't need to make up an apology for the carbon emissions you created along the way.
Success and excellence is unifying.
That is something we're running to.
But at the same time, that individualist, rugged individual being free to achieve, unshackled by whatever the government tells you to do, that's one part of the American identity that I want to revive, create, run to.
That'll lead to economic growth.
It'll lead to prosperity.
It'll lead to greater self-confidence.
Something that we lack in our country, something that our youth badly lacks is actually that sense of self-confidence.
That's half the story.
The other half of the story is actually what helps us do it.
Which is also the revival of civic duty.
That we can each be individualists or capitalists to the fullest extent we want, but in our separate capacity, we're also citizens.
With civic duties to a nation.
Citizenship isn't just about inheriting a bunch of rights, it comes with duties attached to those privileges as well.
I think every high school student in this country should be able to pass the same civics test that an immigrant has to pass, is today required to pass, in order to become a citizen of our nation.
I think that that should be tied even to earning the civic privileges up to and including the right to vote.
I think that it is important for people to know something about a country.
And if they don't know that country, then at least serve that country in some minimal way, whatever that is.
But that's civic knowledge.
Young people don't value a country that they just inherit. They only value a country where we
actually have a stake in that country, where we know something about that nation. And so I think
that, you know, the Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence, both of them were
actually written in Funny enough, both of those, individualism and unity, capitalism and democracy, both of those are America's parents.
And I think we're going to need to run to both of those values once again, in some ways actually by separating one from the other.
Right?
Sometimes when two parents get into a struggle, a little tussle, they run roughshod over each other.
Sometimes you need to keep them apart.
And so I think the right answer is not to force capitalism and democracy to share the same bed.
What we actually need is maybe a clean divorce, maybe some social distancing between the two.
But that's the vision I'm running to, a revival of both rugged individualism, unbridled pursuit of excellence.
Yes, capitalism and free market capitalism is a part of that, but also reviving the civic duties we have as citizens and our capacity as citizens in a constitutional republic.
Both of those are what it actually means to be an American.
And I know that's a little philosophical, but it just gives you a sense for where my headspace is.
We have all kinds of practical ways to make that real.
But, you know, I think you're asking me to go a little deeper there, and that's where my head is.
That's a fantastic way to conclude our conversation and what a wonderful way to end our week on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
Thank you so much all of you that were watching on Locals and if you want to join us on Locals, why don't you click the red button so you get first and exclusive early access to conversations like this one with Vivek Ramaswamy explaining a clear vision for a new America and answering, I think, some fantastic questions with great clarity and openness.
Let me know in the chat What you believe and what you feel.
Next week I'm going to be joined by Dr. Peter Attia.
Join our locals community for access to content like this.
To follow up on one of the parts of our conversation, we've taken an incredibly deep scrutinizing look at one particular case where the FBI have been proven to have generated a conspiracy before arresting its participants.
When you apply the mentality that created the Newburgh 4 scandal to the January 6 events, you are left with some pretty incredible questions.
You are not going to want to miss this.
Here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
Thanks for accusing Fox News.
No, here's the fucking news.
Here's the fucking news.
Donald Trump is accused of inciting violence on January the 6th.
We know that the FBI had agents there posing as insurrectionists.
That's no problem, as long as we know that the FBI have never in their history manipulated people into seeming like criminals.
The FBI, as many of you will already be aware, have a history of instigating and creating scenarios, then arresting the people involved.
So, look!
These people are terrorists!
These people are criminals!
Well, how did they become criminals?
Well, I don't know.
We suggested that they become criminals.
We gave them the arms.
Yeah, I'm being reductive, but things like that have happened.
So, today we're going to be talking about the Neuberg We're asking you the question, and I want you to answer in the comments, who's a bigger threat to democracy?
and conviction was somewhat dubious because of FBI tactics.
And we'll be talking about how Donald Trump's accusation might be a little murky and difficult to prove
as long as we know that the FBI were there that day and involved.
We're asking you the question, and I want you to answer in the comments,
who's a bigger threat to democracy, Donald Trump or the FBI?
A victory in court for three men convicted in a terrorism sting more than a decade ago.
Police arrested the men last night as they were allegedly planting what they thought were real bombs outside a Jewish temple.
A federal judge ordering the release of Anta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payne, three of the men known as the Newburgh Four, arrested for a plot to blow up synagogues in New York City and shoot down National Guard planes in upstate New York.
Obviously, when we see something like that on the news, we think, what?
Terrible people putting bombs outside of synagogues.
They're plainly criminals.
They should be in prison.
And yet they've just been released.
Why is that?
How did they find themselves in the position of planting bombs outside synagogues?
Obviously, an egregious and criminal act.
You'd want to know, of course, that those people were entirely guilty, came up with the idea themselves.
And you'd certainly want to be assured that the FBI weren't involved in the instigation Implication planning and executing of that crime.
Particularly when much of the information around January the 6th is dependent on FBI information and us having deep faith and trust in deep state operations.
Why were there so many FBI agents there and what was their role in January the 6th?
Were they observing?
Are they deep cover operatives ensuring safety and investigating and bringing new crimes to light?
Or are they essentially creating and manipulating the conditions, causing the crimes that they then solve?
The suspects allegedly conducted surveillance and took photos of possible targets.
In a scathing decision, U.S.
District Judge Colleen McMahon accusing FBI agents of trying to arrest petty criminals by radicalizing the men to participate in a plot she called an FBI-orchestrated conspiracy.
An FBI orchestrated conspiracy.
So these four men were petty criminals, and criminality is criminality.
But if indeed, as appears to be the case, based on the release of these men, the FBI orchestrated the plot, then what you have is an egregious crime created by the FBI, then solved by the FBI.
If the FBI did that, you can never say, the FBI would never do anything like that.
That's ridiculous.
That's a conspiracy theory.
Can you?
Can you?
You can't say that anymore.
You can't say that January the 6th was some spontaneous rioters and insurrectionists and they had a deliberate plan to take over and usurp democracy and Donald Trump caused it.
You have to, even if all those things are true, you have to say, what was the role of the FBI?
What were they doing there?
Were they encouraging that violence?
Hey, there's no proof they were encouraging that violence.
Cool.
And have they never done anything like that before?
Oh, well, we did have to release a bunch of guys after 10 years incarceration because it's now been, if not publicly proven, it's plainly true that they're in prison because of a crime that wouldn't have happened without the FBI's involvement.
I think we're all aware that since 9-11, agencies have behaved in more interventionist, more insidious and manipulative ways.
It was a catastrophe.
It required change.
But we also know that since 9-11, the Deep State have taken advantage of that situation through surveillance, through censorship, and through operations such as the Newburgh 4 operation, which has now been proven to be potentially criminal.
McMahon adding quote the real lead conspirator was the United States.
Imagine that mentality and those words being applied to a variety of situations.
When that Newburgh 4 event went down we'd have all watched the news and gone oh those terrible guys trying to blow up a synagogue.
Now look at what it is.
The lead conspirator was the United States.
Now January 6th is a much But how many times do you need to go through this?
How many times do you need to see the building blocks laid out of how these things work?
Obviously to say that January 6th was a confection and construction of the FBI would be a very irresponsible thing to say, certainly without evidence.
But you can't take it off the table when you know that the FBI do things like this as a matter of course.
Consider too, that when the whistleblowers from the FBI, Garrett O'Boyle and Stephen Friend came forward, do you remember?
We spoke to them on our show.
The FBI and the media didn't say, well done, you're very brave.
We know that the FBI do stuff like this, because they've got a long history of committing these kind of atrocities.
Tell us more, because we want to make sure the FBI never does stuff like that.
Because after all, we're in this pursuit of justice, as you can see.
That's why Donald Trump's so bad, because of his injustice, his hypocrisy, his corruption.
We've got to stop that.
No, they were shut down.
They were dismissed.
They were vilified, ignored, made homeless in the So consider the mentality of the media and the state when it comes to how whistleblowers are treated in cases like this.
So now we know the FBI have done it before, some whistleblowers from the FBI have come forward and they were of course listened to and they're oh they were ignored and shut down.
So now you've just got to ask yourself the question are we going to investigate that in the same way that Donald Trump is being investigated?
Are we not going to apply the same judicial lens of scrutiny to all of the potential factors in creating the events of January 6th?
That sounds like strong language, but it's just a pure description of the facts of this case.
The judge also accusing the FBI of using a quote, villain of an informant to prey on the poor, then manipulate the men to commit a fake crime in exchange for cash, materials, and even groceries.
That's manipulation!
The United States are not alone in operations of this nature.
Our country, the United Kingdom, are famed for doing stuff like that with Irish civilians in the 1970s, creating scenarios and situations where it was easy to make necessary arrests, where there was an appetite to arrest people, there was a requirement to arrest people, so they created the conditions where those arrests were possible.
It's not just America that does this, it's the deep state that does this.
Now when we're talking about globalism, what we're essentially saying is that there are powerful or pervasive corporate interests and cooperating deep state interests.
I give you but one example, the Five Eyes nations cooperate with exchanges of data.
So there's a pervasive, prevailing, deep state mentality that operates as the true government, the true power behind the irrelevant switcheroos of democratic process.
Every step of the way was all the FBI.
These guys couldn't, they had no driver's licenses.
They couldn't find Google Maps of where these targets are that the FBI informant told them to use.
I mean, they came up with not one single part of this plot.
It was all the FBI.
All that really proves is that under certain conditions, we would be capable of immoral and criminal conduct.
And why are we doing this again?
I've always liked Jewish people.
Groceries?
Oh, yeah, groceries.
Groceries.
As for the Williamses and Payne, their 25-year sentence is pulled back to 90 days, giving lawyers and officials time to prepare for their release, according to the judge, their attorney hoping for more compassionate releases in the future.
I think that the FBI is still doing and has been doing a lot of these unfair sting cases where they prey on mentally ill young men Unfair stings on mentally ill people.
It's bad enough that in this case those four men will never get those ten years of their life back and who can conceive of the trauma they would have experienced in jail?
But perhaps more significant and yet more terrifying is that the mentality that created those conditions, that committed that atrocity, are still operating So when you apply this to the January 6th situation, you have to at least be open to the possibility that there's more to it than meets the eye.
forward to going, we're never going to do stuff like that again, I don't know what happened,
we got carried away, that was absolutely crazy, I'm so sorry. Because they can't say that,
because that is the way that they operate. So when you apply this to the January 6th
situation, you have to at least be open to the possibility that there's more to it than
meets the eye. And certainly, there is no reason for us to automatically trust a government
that we know lies to us, a media that we know are dishonest, and deep state agencies that
are demonstrably and obviously corrupt.
We've reached out to the FBI and Department of Justice, but have not heard back.
Alison Barber, NBC News.
Let's have a look at some additional details about January the 6th and the Newburgh 4 case and see what other patterns and connections we can spot and what other questions that leads us to.
Dozens of undercover agents and confidential human informants from multiple law enforcement agencies were present.
Interesting.
Court documents indicate that there were FBI informants in two of the groups that organised the riot, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
We'll never know for sure what the role of those informants was, will we?
We'll never know for sure unless there's a whistleblower who comes forward and says, well, within the Proud Boys, this guy was really keen.
Hey, why don't we do an insurrection?
Surrection?
What's that whistling noise?
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
At best, the riot was a massive security failure.
At worst, informants may have encouraged rioters to enter the Capitol.
A lot of people have said that that was the case.
It's not been proven, and we're certainly not saying that it's true.
But we are now going to talk about the case of the Newburgh 4, in which the FBI, the same FBI, do not cover themselves in glory.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the compassionate release of three Hudson Valley men who were part of a group known as the Newburgh Four.
It's not really a compassionate release, is it?
They were unjustly imprisoned after being manipulated by the deep state.
Out of compassion!
I'm Christ-like!
Often, when people have been put in prison for no reason, come unto me!
You are released!
It's not compassion, is it?
It's a modicum of justice after hideous corruption.
That's what it should be called.
All of the language around this stuff keeps us in a position of subjugation and bafflement.
After finding that FBI agents used an unscrupulous operative to persuade them to join a plot to blow up synagogues and bring down military planes more than a decade ago.
I mean, how is that helpful?
You're funding all this, by the way.
That's taxpayer dollars funding bizarre, wacky, sting operations that are costly, unjust, inefficient, pointless, ridiculous, cause social tension.
Does any of this sound like stuff that might go on around, I don't know, early January?
The decision by Judge Colleen McMahon of the United States District Court in Manhattan was scathing in its description of the methods used by the FBI in its pursuit of the free.
On to Williams, Laguerre-Payenne and David Williams.
Calling the plot in which they were convicted of participating in 2010 an FBI orchestrated conspiracy.
So we know then that the FBI do orchestrate plots.
Huh.
Just as a side note, when you're looking at the behaviour of pharmaceutical companies during the last three years, do you think it's relevant that they participated in the opioid crisis in the way that they did?
Do you think it's relevant that they've had to make out-of-court settlements to the tune of billions previously?
Do you want to just ignore that information now that it's not convenient?
Because the mainstream media want you to ignore that information.
And in the same way, they want you to ignore this information now.
Why on Morning Joe and CNN and all those shows and channels are they not saying, listen, even though we have reason to believe that Donald Trump behaved inappropriately or not in a traditional or conventional way, we have to also let you know, because we're journalists and we care about truth, that there were FBI operatives there and you know that the FBI have been involved in immoral things before.
So we're just going to investigate that as well, while simultaneously saying that we don't agree with the way that Donald Trump behaved.
The fact that they can't say that Does not engender trust, does it?
A person reading the crimes of conviction in this case would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international terrorists committed to jihad against the United States.
Very curious, very evocative, very, very wrong.
Is it true though?
However, they were in actual reality hapless, easily manipulated and penurious, petty criminals.
That's interesting, isn't it?
So they took four guys who were poor and desperate and manipulated them into participating in a plot that just would not have happened without the FBI's involvement.
So listen, this is the Newberg 4 now, not January 6, this is the Newberg 4.
Swap the number 6 for the number 4 and the word January for the word Newberg.
But the FBI, they stay the same.
The FBI invented the conspiracy, identified the targets, and manufactured the ordinance, Judge McMahon wrote.
Adding that officials had federalized the charges, ensuring long prison sentences by driving several of the men across state lines into Connecticut to view the bombs.
This is an unusual route to the synagogue!
We gotta pick up the bombs first!
Why are we doing these unnecessary stops around the tour?
Who are you, Jack Kerouac?
What is this, Thelma and Louise?
Why are we driving to all these places?
That's right!
Stay angry!
You're very angry, remember?
That's why you're doing this plot!
Oh yeah, yeah, I am angry.
Can I get those groceries?
There!
Here's your groceries!
There are more groceries in Connecticut!
The FBI had no comment on the decision.
Whoa!
Well, do you know what would reassure me?
Yeah, we got a comment on this.
This is disgusting.
We're never gonna do anything like that again.
Just remember that the FBI is meant to be there to protect and serve the American people
and protect them from terror, not create situations that look a bit like terrorism and indeed
are terrorism so we can arrest people to manage crime figures or operate on behalf of other
deep state interests to create scenarios that are beneficial to the maneuvering of power.
They can't say that because they're, I assume, still doing stuff like it.
Now has there been anything in the news lately where there could be a conspiracy?
While Judge McMahon conceded that the government had a legitimate interest in identifying and
capturing terrorists, she was unsparing in her criticism, saying that the defendants
could never have dreamed up such serious criminal acts on their own.
Presumably because they're starving hungry.
And it's a mad elaborate plan, isn't it?
We're gonna bomb these synagogues, but first, a trip to Connecticut!
Had the government not contrived its elaborate sting operation?
That's not what you want the government doing, is it?
Like, the government!
Think about what the government's meant to be doing.
Well, obviously, you need us to run your roads, your hospitals, keep the borders secure, keep the nation friendly, secure, and cordial.
Good, good.
Anything else?
Oh, yeah!
We're contriving elaborate sting operations to get the mentally ill banged up in jail and to create tensions all across America.
Can I get my tax back?
No.
Here's some groceries.
Now listen, have you ever seen that synagogue?
Yeah?
Good.
We're just going to take a trip to Connecticut.
Had the government not contrived its elaborate sting operation, it's highly likely that the defendants would have lived out their lives in Newburgh, quite possibly doing life on the instalment plan as they cycled in and out of jail for a string of petty offences, she wrote, but never committing a crime remotely like what they became involved in.
So in a sense there's some deeper social analysis that could be undertaken here about the kind of people that live lives where criminality and desperation necessarily intersect because society doesn't afford them proper opportunity and we can get into that another time.
What seems more significant to me is that there is definite proof that the FBI are an agency who do not see it as being beyond their remit to instruct and carry out sting operations that are contrived and elaborate Simply in order to meet their own ends.
Luckily though, we've got definitive proof that they've only ever done that once and would never do it again.
And it's not like there's been whistleblowers coming out of the FBI, specifically around the matter of January 6th, saying that the operations were conducted in a way that made them uneasy, unhappy, and were clearly politically motivated.
Oh yeah, there were, weren't they?
And the media shut them down.
So when we're talking about power, remember, the deep state, corporate interests, and media operate in conjunction to prevent true democratic process taking place, true conversation happening, and they prevent us from making the necessary links between the previous actions of, say, corporations or, say, the FBI, and what's happening right now.
But that's just what I think.
Until next time, stay free.
▲
Export Selection