Weightloss Drug OZEMPIC: What They’re NOT Telling You! With Lee Fang
Russell chats to Lee Fang, an independent journalist on Substack, who worked for Elon on the Twitter Files revelations, about a drugmaker appearing to push for profit over health with a new weightloss drug, Ozempic. with the obesity treatment market projected to reach $71 billion by 2032, Lee highlights the physicians, activists, and celebs quoted by media outlets touting the drug, without disclosing financial ties to the drugmaker!WATCH THE FULL SHOW ON RUMBLERead Lee's article on SubstackGuided-Meditation: Stay Awake with Russell Brand Stay Free Foundation: https://www.russellbrand.com/stay-free-foundation/
Thank you so much for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We've got some fantastic things to talk to you about.
One, the state versus rumble, and curiously, the power of big tech in alliance with globalist governments and how this is becoming the dynamic that's going to control information, data, surveillance, your ability to observe, imbibe, consume potentially dissenting voices or dissident views for the next few years, how there's a raft
of laws being proposed, being ushered through right now in my country, in your country
and across the world. They're going to make free speech and even opposition and free
thought basically impossible. It's an incredible story. You're going to love it. It's a good
companion piece to our conversation with Dr. Robert Epstein, where he talked about how he's
observed and demonstrated the degree of corruption that is demonstrable and the impact it's
having on everything from elections to actually perception itself. Also, Lee Fang's coming on the
show. Now, in order for us to house these voices, we need your support. If it's possible
for you to support us by following us on Rumble, please do that. And if you can become an awakened
wonder and support us directly, That would be incredibly appreciated now more than ever.
Fang's going to be talking about stuff like a Zimpik and revelations around that obesity drug that's going to stagger you, profits from Lockheed Martin and how they benefit from the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, and indeed free speech itself.
Remember, join us on Rumble if you can and become a member of our community by clicking the red button on your screen now.
Do you know what I think we need at the moment more than anything?
A portrait of Hillary Clinton.
That is what the world requires.
If I could just look at Hillary Clinton rendered in oils, not oil that was gleaned after the Gulf War conflict, paint oils, I think that would really soothe me at a time like this.
Oh, someone's doing one.
Great.
Let me start by thanking Secretary Blinken.
I am incredibly grateful to you for your leadership, the tremendous job you're doing.
If we had been in this room in its former much gloomier kind of look... A portrait of Hillary Clinton is guaranteed to lift the ambience of any room unless it's a room sort of somewhere in Syria or anywhere frankly where she's backed illegal wars.
Anthony Blinken said of this, the walk to the secretary's office on the seventh floor is a little bit awe-inspiring.
down the wood-panelled mahogany row surrounded by portraits of our predecessors,
all of them white men, Blinken said before the unveiling.
A couple of years ago, and talked about an invasion of Ukraine that, instead of driving
a stake between us and our allies, brought us closer together in order to support the
right of the Ukrainian people to defend their liberty and freedom and democracy.
People might have doubted that.
It's funny that Hillary Clinton refers to the dark times as the before-war times, and when she talks about allies and friendships, it's not the Care Bears, it's a bunch of people coming together to get involved in a profitable war.
What are we going to do now, a picnic?
Yeah, a picnic's fine, we'll do that after the war though.
Okay, we'll do a war then, a picnic?
There's not going to be a picnic.
It's not going to be a picnic for the American people.
They're paying for it.
Because we had burned so many bridges.
I'd actually tried to blow up one in Crimea.
That didn't go well either.
With our allies and our friends, so reinstating a foreign policy that plays to the best of American values.
What are the American values that benefit in here?
Profiteering, sustaining an unwinnable war, lying to people, using taxpayer dollars to sustain a war that can't be won, instead of supporting the people of Hawaii in their evident need and suffering.
Are these the American values that you voted for?
That puts our Interests and security front and center, but does it in a way that actually brings people to us, not pushes them away, would have been thought to be extremely difficult.
And indeed it was, but it was accomplished.
And we have seen the continuation of a lot of the values and priorities that we worked on into the Biden administration and In looking across the globe, defending democracy in Ukraine, expanding NATO.
Democracy where there are going to be no elections.
Just as an aside, too bad Vladimir.
You brought it on yourself.
Or we brought it on you by expanding NATO.
This could not be a happier occasion and thank you so much for hosting us.
Yeah, it's like we're exchanging a spectacle for reality and any alternative vision is likely to
be shut down according to legislation that's being ushered through.
Extraordinary that this is what state's personship looks like now, offering war instead of peace, celebrating alliances that are ultimately dedicated to bringing about death and profit, And presenting it as if it's just a congenial celebratory affair.
What an extraordinary demonstration of how far from the values of ordinary Americans the values of elites have become.
What are we talking about?
We're talking about independent journalism.
We're talking about the necessity for dissenting voices.
And on that note, we are introducing a significant voice in the independent media world.
It's Lee Fang, who you know from Substack.
You probably know about his work on Twitter Files.
Join us now.
We can't carry on YouTube.
We're going to be on Rumble.
See you over there.
You guys, we have Lee Fang, who, for a variety of reasons, is much beloved on this platform.
If it isn't his natural route lift, it's his investigative journalism that has made him adored across the spectrum.
Lee, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Mate, I know that the thing you want to talk about most of all is Azempic.
We've talked about it before on this channel.
We've talked about it with Calimeans.
We've talked about it as an emergent new drug that's going to conquer, that's conquering new markets, that's extraordinarily profitable, and that has been presented perhaps in ways that are, if not disingenuous, just dishonest.
Can you tell me what the story you've just broke on Azempic is, please?
Well, look, first, just to introduce it, you know, these are a new class of drugs.
These GLP-1 drugs, they kind of imitate a hormone, the GLP hormone that regulates insulin levels in the body.
They were first approved for diabetes.
And look, there are many benefits for people struggling with diabetes.
And this is one of the number one killers.
Around the world and in America.
But the issue here is that drug makers, Novo Nordisk, is the first big company to come out with a class of these drugs.
Many other big pharma companies are rushing to bring products to market.
In addition to regulating insulin and helping diabetics, patients have found that you rapidly lose weight on these drugs.
So Ozempic, also known as Wigovi, There are others that are coming.
They have blown up as a weight loss silver bullet.
And the companies that produce these drugs see a gigantic financial windfall.
The drugs not as a diabetes drug, that's part of the story, but the big part of the market is treating obesity.
44% of adult Americans are overweight, something like 100 million people.
It costs over $10,000 a year to take these injections, these drugs.
So to seize this financial opportunity to get Americans using Ozempic or Wegovy, what have you, There's a coordinated campaign by Novo Nordisk and other big pharma companies to reshape the public discourse, to plant dozens if not hundreds of media stories talking about, hey, if you're struggling with obesity, if you're struggling with body image issues, you're struggling with obesity stigma issues, if you're concerned about the racial disparities in obesity, you should consider this class of drugs.
don't feel concerned about asking your doctor for these drugs.
And in a lot of areas of medicine and in public policy, there are disclosure requirements.
If you publish a scientific paper, if you air a television advertisement,
at least in the United States, you have to disclose that,
hey, this was paid for by a drug company.
But those types of disclosure requirements don't exist for the media.
So for the biggest newspapers in the country, for the Washington Post, USA Today,
for the biggest broadcasters, for CBS News, NBC, and even for small local television outlets
and local news outlets, we're seeing a flurry of news articles
quoting physicians, experts, patient advocacy groups, celebrities, community activists, civil rights groups.
I mean, the list goes on of groups that are encouraging the use of these drugs for weight loss, where I think there are still questions to be answered if this is an effective treatment for most people struggling with obesity.
But there is this kind of coordinated campaign to get Americans on these drugs for obesity, And there's a lack of disclosure that these experts being quoted that are going to the media, shaping the public discourse around how we see these drugs, how Americans view whether they should take them, whether our insurance companies should provide them, should the government change the law, and should the government be paying for these drugs?
That's the big push right now.
There's no disclosure that these experts are being paid for by Novo Nordisk and other drug companies that stand to gain from the explosion of this market.
It's extraordinary how reality could be so carefully cultivated that a story like this, a narrative like this, can be constructed around a product which is plainly being engineered, I don't mean pharmacologically engineered, but I mean as a phenomenon and as a commodity in order to be highly marketable.
My understanding is that Azempic and the class of drugs require lifelong usage once you embark on them and it seems to me that you're saying that they are known to be effective for diabetes, that there is evidence that they are effective for weight loss but perhaps not sufficient evidence when it comes to potential side effects of long-term usage.
And in any event, the way that we are being sold the idea of this class of drugs is not objective.
There are undeclared interests and undeclared financial ties.
Can you give us some examples of those financial ties, Lee?
Yeah, just to give you a few examples.
There are many doctors that are being quoted almost on a daily basis.
There's a doctor in Texas named Deborah Horn.
Who's appeared in many different media outlets.
You can Google her name, look at Google News or what have you.
I highlight her quotes in a recent CBS News article.
She discusses the need for insurance companies to start paying for Ozempic and Wigovi.
She's pretty much the only physician quoted by this news article.
What's not disclosed is that she has received about a quarter million dollars from Novo Nordisk On the last few years.
And those are old numbers.
We don't have the latest disclosures.
It's probably much more.
That same news article talks to a think tank, the Urban Institute, and that basically, that the study looks and says, hey, we don't have enough states paying for Ozontic and Wygovia.
Only a few states do.
Well, who financed the study?
Again, Novo Nordisk.
I mean, this is almost like an entire marketing release from Novo Nordisk, but with no But it's framed as news.
It's only positive about the company, but there are no fingerprints showing that everyone quoted in the story was funded by the company.
It's extraordinary to note how frequently we find these days that news media is nothing of the sort.
It's merely the broadcast arm of corporate interests that are in many cases evident, traceable and observable if you're willing to undertake the research or watch for the relevant and ongoing It's not surprising to learn that such a potentially profitable drug is marketed not in a direct, plain way in terms of its utility and efficacy, but through various rather more insidious means i.e.
It's presented academically and scientifically as beneficial.
Apparently independent think tanks are offered as giving objective information, which is
of course paid for information.
And beyond even this already egregious example of what appears to be a form of legal corruption
is the idea that science or science as it's commonly understood has itself become warped.
What I mean by that, Lee, is we're looking at information that is apparently objective,
but actually the momentum behind this product is not a desire to treat people's diabetes
or obesity.
It's a...
Profit driven motive that just has to pull into its vacuum any necessary information in order to meet those ends.
It's unlikely that people are going to do studies on long-term impact of a Zempik or what happens if you suddenly stop taking it and don't want to take it anymore because the findings of such clinical trials would potentially be Unprofitable.
So even, and I feel like we saw some of this in the pandemic period, information that's presented as science is actually a very carefully curated and managed reality that often is sort of the opposite of science, i.e.
not objective.
No, that's right.
I mean, even the internal studies from Novo Nordisk, these are the company's own studies, show that almost immediately, if patients get off these drugs, the GLP drugs, It's almost instantaneous.
Just to put this in perspective, Pfizer had one of the most profitable pharmaceutical products of all time in 2021.
You know, releasing their vaccine, that was something like $80 billion in one-year revenue just from this one product.
Well, recently, bankers, JP Morgan and other investment banks, put out some estimates for the GLP market for Wegovy, Zempik, and then, you know, there's many other competitors coming out very soon.
Within the decade, on an annual basis, these drugs will bring in about 70 to 80 billion
dollars annually.
And it's very different from a vaccine.
A vaccine is somewhat of a one-time event.
I mean, with the, you know, obviously there are boosters and, you know, other dynamics
around this.
But generally speaking, vaccines are a one-time event.
These drugs, as you mentioned, you're not supposed to get off of.
And while there are great benefits for diabetics to avoid dialysis and to extend their life
by taking these drugs.
For weight loss, you know, I think the benefits are not clear.
I mean, we're seeing very serious side effects.
I mean, very common side effects are the nausea and vomiting and other issues, but very serious, less common side effects are stomach paralysis, people who can't digest their food.
The food just kind of sits there in their digestive system, not moving.
There's thyroid cancer.
There are other effects that, you know, you look at this drug and you say, this is not a panacea for weight loss.
I mean, there are so many other interventions that many patients need, but for many policy makers,
for the drug companies and others, this looks like an easy, quick fix
to just throw money at a problem, to make enormous amounts of profit
for a small number of companies, and not look at the bigger picture.
You know, the issues around our food system, the issues around our agricultural policy,
the issues around the American culture and way of dining and eating, you know,
These are much more complicated, less lucrative issues to solve, right?
So it kind of, it does get back to profit.
Novo Nordisk is one of the most valuable drug companies, one of the most valuable companies in the world right now, just on the back of this one product, which is still taking off.
I mean, if they win this campaign right now, they're lobbying furiously.
to allow Medicare, the main kind of health insurance public program for older people in the United States, to cover
this drug.
That's over $10,000 a year. That's a lot of potential profit.
It's probably downstream.
It gets the private insurers to cover this as well.
This is going to mint many new billionaires if it's successful, this lobbying campaign.
And that's the main thing.
It makes you identify how we have to recognize and analyze unconscious assumptions that, or in any sensible world, remain relatively unconscious.
What I mean, Lee, is the idea that the motivation behind the pharmacological industry is
to find solutions to health problems.
That would seem like a sensible assumption, but under even a little analysis it becomes clear
that the function of the pharmacological industry is to make a profit. And that's a very different
ideological goal. And it sometimes seems to me that if there are any benefits to their products,
sometimes seems to me that if there are any benefits to their products, it's almost an
it's almost an inadvertent consequence rather than the raison d'etre of the industry.
inadvertent consequence rather than the raison d'etre of the industry. When a commodity
When a commodity like a Zempik or other brand names a sort of a very different ideological goal. And almost it
like a Zempik or other brand names available becomes hot like this, it's plain that the
mentality and the mindset, the relationships between the state, the insurance companies and the pharmacological
companies is not, oh wow, how are we going to help as many people as possible?
We simply have to resolve this.
Because if that were the mindset, as you have just said, there would be a soup to nuts,
forgive the analogy, analysis of the food industry, the way that big food lobbies, the
type of foods that we eat, the unconsciousness around diet.
It's far more convenient to have one arm of the corporate state machine fill you food of processed, carcinogenic, diabetes-inducing food than another arm strap you up and lash on a machine that injects you with
drugs to reduce the fat for as long as you take it forever. What's behind even an enormous
story like this is almost more alarmingly the idea that the system itself is guided by malign
principles. I'm fearful of using language like profiteering or some kind of zombie
capitalism or a monstrous undemocratic, anti-American, anti-human ideology but it seems like the
only way to describe it, this kind of cart before the horse mentality.
It exists throughout cultural, social and even geopolitical life because I know elsewhere we have companies such as and specifically Lockheed Martin able to offer a positive outlook for the future of their investors and shareholders based on an assumption that the Ukraine-Russia war will continue.
Now of course this is another situation that's presented as Humanitarian intervention because there's a criminal war and it has to be resolved.
The narratives around it are highly censored and edited.
Conversation around it is shut down.
Can you tell us a little more about Lockheed Martin's relationship to the potential for an ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict?
Well, I took a look at some of the recent investor reports and there was a conference hosted by the investment bank Morgan Stanley here in California earlier this month.
It was a kind of a opportunity for the big companies to make presentations.
I reviewed those presentations.
They were fascinating because many of the big defense contractors
discussed the war in Ukraine.
And of course, I mean, the through thread here between Big Pharma
and Big Defense is that these are companies that legally have a fiduciary duty to their investors.
They don't serve necessarily national security or human health
or the public interest.
They serve their investors.
And so, for that very simple reason, at this investor conference in Southern California, recently Lockheed Martin and others discussed the business opportunities presented by the conflict in Ukraine.
Now, the US is escalating this war incrementally along with its NATO allies in terms of the types of weaponry they are providing.
Just last week, the Biden administration announced that they're releasing a long range missiles
produced by Lockheed Martin that are going to carry cluster munitions
and providing those to Ukrainian forces.
We've had the steady increase in the types of weaponry that we've provided to Ukraine
now that we're training F-16 pilots in Arizona and preparing for NATO allies to provide those planes
to Ukraine, a very major escalation.
But just looking at the munitions, I mean, this investor conference,
I clipped part of the video and posted it on my sub stack, but you have the executives at Lockheed Martin
basically saying, look, we've given so many munitions, air defense missiles, long range missiles,
various forms of rockets, anti-tank rockets like the Javelin.
Um, We've given so many that we now have these incredible resupply contracts with the U.S.
military.
We've got to restock the U.S.
stockpile and provide new contract deliveries to Ukraine, and given the escalation, we're seeing more business opportunities.
I'm paraphrasing here, but they use incredibly explicit language, and I think that this is important to see that there are Many different interest groups shaping public policy and the dynamics around this very complicated conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
And these businesses have a lot of say in Washington.
These companies underwrite the politicians.
They underwrite the biggest think tanks.
They also have a lot of influence in the media.
So they're shaping the contours of how we discuss this debate in a very subtle way.
You know, it's not like the Ozempic issue where you have all these talking head doctors and, you know, obesity activists appearing in the media without disclosing their ties.
It's not quite as overt as that.
But if you look at the largest think tanks, the largest kind of institutes that advise on national security priorities, that help write As well as the policy being directed, as you say, by lobbying, donations, shared financial interest, there's also the perception of this war.
funded by the defense lobby, particularly companies that stand to benefit like Lockheed
Martin.
As well as the policy being directed, as you say, by lobbying donations, shared financial
interest, there's also the perception of this war.
I was struck, Lee, when you said that in very plain language, you can hear in the discourse
between Lockheed Martin and their investors, the projections, requirements, and agenda
of that particular financial entity or corporation that, as you say, has only a fiduciary duty
to its investors rather than any moral obligations.
The moral obligations are supposed to belong to the government and the media.
And those moral obligations are fulfilled not through integrity, authenticity and rigorous self-examination and transparency, but instead by a kind of propagandist endeavor that prevents you from ever being able to regard the war as anything other than unprovoked and unjust attack.
And of course, you know, every time I mention this, so as not to be guilty of lacking nuance myself, I always I don't want to mention that it appears to be a criminal invasion and I'm not like a Putin apologist.
I'm simply a person trying as best as I can to understand the dynamics behind this war and why it is being sold to us in such a reductive simplistic and unhelpful manner and why people are not talking about peace.
The media, the dominant mainstream media, the legacy media, call it what you will, appear to be Heavily committed to presenting this conflict in a very simplistic way.
Photo opportunities that lead to bizarre incidents like a Nazi being applauded in Canadian Parliament.
The simplification of the history between Ukraine and Russia and some of the factions fighting in the Ukrainian army.
How do you suppose it is When you say it's not so simple or blunt as the Azempic example, talking heads with clear financial ties, giving you a narrative that's plainly beneficial to their own financial interests.
How is it that it's so difficult to present alternative stories or even to aggressively inquire as to the origins of this conflict and the potential malign reasons for its perpetuation?
I mean, that's an extended conversation, but if you look just kind of broadly speaking, you know, almost for any complicated policy issue, you need kind of an interest group. You need, for lack of a better term, a
lobby. I use that term broadly, whether that's organized citizens or organized business
groups or what have you, to represent a perspective and to go argue for that perspective to the
media and to policy makers and make a case.
In the case of Ukraine-Russia, there's no real interest group that's lobbying for peace, right?
There's no one that gains financially, really, from peace.
I mean, perhaps, you know, there are, you know, interrupted grain and trade ties with the war in Ukraine.
But generally speaking, there's a lot more people making money than there are losing money, especially in the United States.
These folks are not organized.
And then you not only have the defense contractor lobby that's very influential, But you have kind of the permanent Washington blob of, you know, the military, the intelligence agencies that go on the Sunday talk shows and are quoted headline news talking about the, you know, kind of glorious victories that Ukraine will have in their counter offensive every day in the media.
This is kind of more of a imperial mindset in the American media that just sees a very black and white, almost Cold War era, conflict with Russia and an opportunity to bleed.
I mean, this is in their terms and what people like Senator Lindsey Graham
and others have said, an opportunity to bleed Russia,
to kill Russian soldiers, to diminish and destroy Russian military assets.
And they have the biggest platform.
You know, and just looking at this as an interest group story,
the blob in DC, the defense lobby has the biggest platform.
The peace lobby, for lack of a better term, does not.
And so you really have one side that's taking up all the oxygen, and we don't have a sober-minded discussion of what are the ramifications of escalation?
What's the endgame?
What does peace look like?
What are the incentives for negotiation?
Who's pushing these leaders to do that?
At the end of the day, Ukraine is heavily relying on the United States.
I would love a situation where Ukrainians have full agency and can negotiate on their own, but for many reasons, the United States is in the driving seat right now.
Ukraine is militarily and financially dependent on the United States.
The United States has a role in setting any kind of peace negotiations, but we're not seeing that.
We're not seeing anyone really push for that, and we've seen the few voices on Capitol Hill.
There was that small effort last year by a number of progressive House Democrats to just write a letter saying Pending to the Biden administration saying, hey, can we please have peace negotiations as an option, not saying we need this or we're going to cut off aid or anything kind of, you know, dramatic.
And just by drafting that letter, someone leaked the draft.
You know, people went apoplectic and the lawmakers who are even drafting that letter apologized for even considering that as an option.
So, you know, we just have a very one sided debate right now in Washington.
Yeah, it's terrifying and becoming more terrifying.
I'd forgotten about that letter.
And I recently saw a bit of propaganda, Republicans for war in Ukraine, where they sort of tried to eliminate.
Yeah, yeah, that.
Yeah.
Like even the possibility that it could be discussed or that there could be an opposing argument anywhere in Congress or the Senate was sort of closed down.
We should get on board with this war.
Also watching Hillary Clinton with Jen Psaki able to Sort of blithely reiterate points about Putin's election interference, Putin as a authoritarian dictator, their imperialist goals and you could sort of just watch live facts being denied, lies being told, simplification being offered as news and they just sort of nodded together as if what was being reached was
A true consensus.
We're sort of living, it seems to me, perhaps at a pivotal moment because of some of the laws that are being passed like the online safety bill in the UK, but I know there are sort of comparable laws throughout the world that are going to grant governments the power to essentially shut down dissent as always under the auspices of safety and the kind of reasonable censure that most people would anticipate around hatred and pornography involving minors.
But Actually, it seems that with the vast power of Google now, we spoke to someone very interesting the other day, Dr Robert Epstein, who told us about the ability of Google to manipulate information and sway elections, and his studies were pretty, I would say, persuasive, and he's certainly someone who I'll be talking to more.
I wonder, What you feel with perhaps, I guess, one of the emblematic stories that demonstrates this ability of the media to manage, control and manipulate information is that remains the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The way that his role at Burisma has been reported on.
Can you tell us a little more about that, Lee, and what it says about media reporting in particular?
Well, you know, this story that I wrote recently, it's complicated because there are a couple dynamics here.
One is just the traditional way that the elites, powerful people in the media and in politics and business spin the press every day.
I mean, there's just a cottage industry of crisis PR firms and, you know, fancy consultants that help spin lies and make sure that
reporters never kind of get the truth when they're asking tough questions. And then there's this
kind of algorithmic, deep state, I suppose, censorship that we've seen also in this story
where, because of partisanship, because of power, you know, there's been efforts to push
the story out of public view and kind of falsely claim that it's an example of Russian disinformation.
I know this is something that you've covered a lot, especially the Hunter Biden New York
Post story in October 2020.
But you know, what's interesting to me for the Hunter Biden laptop...
You know, I took a look at the emails recently and I've been writing some stories around it.
I think this is true for both Republican and Democrat and other elites, but we just have this special portal, this window to see the kind of sausage making and the inside.
So I've been doing a couple of these stories, looking at the Biden laptop emails and looking at how Hunter Biden for 10 years managed his public image in ways that I think all the elites do.
We just have a special window into Hunter Biden.
So in fairness to him, I think this is true for many elites.
But he was hiring special consultants to airbrush his Wikipedia, to airbrush the Wikipedias of his foreign business partners in Ukraine.
and these are very expensive, $4,000, $5,000 a month firms that they use fake accounts,
a whole network of fake accounts that go in and edit the negative stories out and add all
Hunter Biden's charity work and all the awards into those pieces.
And, you know, also working with these consultants when he was dealing with stories, with questions from the press, when the New York Times, when Time Magazine, you know, the biggest outlets, Wall Street Journal, were asking questions when he was hired to this Ukrainian company, you know, this Ukrainian company that was under investigation that was kind of notoriously corrupt.
Had hired him in 2014 at a time when the US was working with Ukraine and promising anti-corruption reforms, when Joe Biden was the liaison from the Biden administration to work with Ukraine to institute ethics reform.
His son was hired by one of the most notorious oligarchs.
I mean, this was a kind of obvious story.
I even wrote about it at the time.
I was writing at smaller outlets.
I've had my own personal blog writing about Hunter Biden.
It was refreshing to see my own stories being circulated in his emails back in 2014, because I was looking at these conflicts of interest.
A lot of people were asking these questions, and even back then, you can see the emails where Hunter Biden was spinning these reporters saying, you know, this is, and he was using his spokesperson, you know, he was saying, you know, these, this board thought, you know, the compensation level is completely normal.
It's what every company kind of provides a typical board member.
That wasn't true.
You know, he was being paid about a million dollars a year for perspective, you know, Fortune 500 companies,
some of the biggest companies in the world only pay about a hundred thousand per year.
You know, he was receiving 10X the normal compensation rate.
He claimed, oh, you know, I'm working on geothermal issues and corporate transparency and good governance.
You know, the emails show that plainly not true, that, you know, he was helping get the kind of Ukrainian
oligarchs that he was employed by a special visa.
They've been banned from the U.S.
because of their corruption issues, helping them kind of dislodge a prosecution in Ukraine and kind of work on various kind of lobby efforts to influence the U.S.
government.
And that brings me to the other thing, you know, a lot of Reporters very reasonably asked, are you lobbying?
Are you influencing the State Department?
Are you influencing your dad?
Are you meeting with, are you setting up meetings?
Are you hiring lobbyists?
And of course, the answer was no.
And that answer was reprinted in all the biggest media outlets in the US.
But the emails show that again, this was plainly not true.
They were setting up meetings with John Kerry, who at the time was heading the State Department.
John Kerry's staff, I should say, with his top deputies, you know, it's kind of ironic when you look at some of these email threads with Hunter Biden, you know, they're talking about how to respond to the New York Times.
And the New York Times said, you know, are you working with any lobbyists?
And the person who helped coordinate the response to the New York Times was one of the lobbyists they just hired the previous month.
And they said, of course, no, we're not.
So, you know, again, I don't want to Unfairly beat up on Hunter Biden, because I think this dynamic exists for the elites across the board, Democrats and Republicans.
But we have this window into his emails, and it just really shows the spin cycle, how reporters respond every day, how the elites shape both social media and mainstream media, and it's very difficult to get the truth.
Do you think that this is an issue that's sufficient to destabilize Biden's presidency?
And I ask that really only to demonstrate that we appear to be living in a deeply fragmented world.
It's been commonly said really since the advent of immersive social media that we live in silos and that there are numerous cultural fissures.
But now it appears that I can't envisage a 2024 election where whoever is victorious
is hailed by both sides as the noble and righteous winner.
I can't really see how this kind of sentiment of deep hatred now towards legacy media, towards
the government, this total lack of trust in almost every institution that people fund
through their tax dollars or pounds or whatever the relevant currency is.
I can't see now how this can be sustained, other than unless there is going to be an
attempt to centralise and control information to such a degree that to be a dissident becomes
I wonder what you feel about this fragmenting space?
I wonder what you feel about your own role as a journalist that, based on what I know of your work and you as a man, are committed to telling the truth when telling the truth is a difficult thing and allowing people the dignity and honour of determining for themselves what to do based on the facts that are available.
How do you feel that this space is going to evolve?
How difficult do you feel it's going to be to be an independent media voice in this evolving space?
Do you have any sense that we're approaching anything like an endgame based even just on the various rafts of legislation that are being globally passed?
I mean, I feel conflicted, to be honest with you, because I see multiple perspectives, and I have my own personal role as someone who works in independent media, but I'm also, you know, I'm a citizen, I'm an American, I want good things for the public interest, I want good laws passed, and shared prosperity, whatever, you know?
Because we can't just have a completely fractured dissident media.
We do need strong institutions.
We need high quality newspapers that shine a light on corruption and tell you what's going on on a day-to-day basis.
In addition to that, we do need an outside voice questioning the media and questioning power.
How do we maintain a balance is very difficult because if you look at the major mainstream institutions of the media, they've lost credibility.
They've shifted to a subscriber model desperate for revenue.
Because they've lost so much revenue to Facebook and Google that they're captured by their subscribers.
They don't have enough reporters and editors.
So when you're a powerful public relations firm or corporation or powerful government official, it's very easy to go to a newspaper that doesn't have a lot of fact-checkers and a lot of adversarial reporters and spoon-feed the media to give them a prepackaged news story And, you know, they're under budget and overworked and they say, OK, this looks like a scoop and they basically republish it.
Um, and they're under increasing pressure from government agencies to censor, to say that, hey, look, if you publish, you know, the wrong narrative or the wrong person, um, that's a form of disinformation or hate speech or what have you.
And, you know, that's going to lead to, you know, you being shadow banned on the social networks on Google and the internet platforms and Facebook, that means less advertising dollars and they're already being pinched.
Um, you know, that's not a great dynamic either, because how are you going to have an open society and public debate now for independent media?
I'm part of that.
I try to hold myself to a high standard, high journalistic standards.
If I make a mistake, I rush to issue a correction.
I call people.
I try to provide context.
I try to be fair to all sides in a debate.
But for a lot of independent media, some are less scrupulous.
You have a lot of bad faith independent media out there.
With lower standards.
While we need an independent press, a dissident media to constantly criticize and shape institutions and to provide more relevant news to our viewers and to our readers, that's not a sustainable business model either.
I wish I had the resources to provide all my news articles for free.
I have a paywall on most of my my content because I need to make a living and pay rent.
But it's, again, not a sustainable business model for just people like me or you to be an independent press.
We need kind of a broad public interest that informs everyone.
And how to shape that isn't clear, especially in the age of the internet.
No, man, you made me feel like it's a very complex issue, indeed, but also that your personal integrity
and the possibility that the support of integrity like you demonstrate could create new pathways,
could create accountability, and could amplify the voices that I believe desperately need amplifying.
Lee, thank you so much for joining us today.
It's always a great pleasure to speak to you and to see you.
Thanks.
Thanks once again.
Thanks so much for having me.
Good seeing you, Russell.
Good to see you, mate.
You can read Lee's investigative work on his substack by going to leefang.com, and I suggest you do that.
I'm serious when I say he's a journalist with genuine integrity.
Just listen to the way he speaks.
Listen to what he cares about.
Guess who's joining us on the show tomorrow?
Stella Assange.
Stella Assange is a lawyer.
Of course, she's married to Julian Assange, and she's an activist whose very life is consumed Well, actually she's a mother, so her whole life can't be consumed by it, but primarily she's trying to campaign for Julian Assange's freedom for publishing information that was unfavourable to the state, and you all know the condition that Julian is in now.
From our conversation with Glenn Greenwald, it seems that there's been some evolution, blessedly, in that story, and that the Australian government Mostly because of activism among their citizenry are demanding some justice for Julian Assange.
So we'll be talking about that in particular with Stella.
Now, if you want to support us and you know now how important it is, please become an Awakened Wonder if it's within your means.
If it's not, please stay with us and enjoy this content for free.
It's much more important that we have you than we have your resources.
But as this situation evolves and develops, surely we shall need both ultimately, because we are committed to building something here.
We are committed to going beyond independent media and into an independent movement for true freedom, for truth, integrity and freedom.
If you become a member you get guided meditations, reading, Q&As.
I'm sure the situation will evolve and we will certainly do our very best to provide you with as much as we can and I'd like to welcome Our new members Uncle Tony, BadMonkey61, LaLaKetchup, HumptyDumpty and JediFish, all now reveling in the glory of the Awakened Wonder movement.
Please join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, that'll be no good, not after a day like today, but for more of the different.
Until then, if you can, stay free.
Many Switching. Switch on, switch off. Many Switching.
