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Oct. 16, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:21:45
“THEY LIED TO YOU!” Matt Taibbi On Fauci, RFK Jr & New Censorship Laws - Stay Free #224
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So, I'm going to go ahead and start the video.
So, I'm going to start the video.
There you Awakening Wonders.
Thanks for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We've got a fantastic show for you today because we're talking about some complex, difficult issues with people that genuinely understand them.
Matt Taibbi is our guest today.
He's talking about the degree to which Fauci participated in the cover-up of the Wuhan lab leak story, which we've got an in-depth article on.
Also, Matt will be talking to us about Tragic events in the Middle East and his personal connection to Chrystia Freeland, the woman who sounds like a Tolkien-esque elf queen, but actually through her legislation, regulation and imposition of power in Canada is more akin to a modern-day neoliberal
Dictator.
We're going to be talking about that.
Let me know in the chat where you stand, in particular on this new pose of liberalism that kind of amounts to, I don't know, is it tyranny with a nice haircut?
Describe it how you want to.
Listen, if you haven't downloaded the Rumble app yet, download the Rumble app now because then you'll get notifications whenever we make content.
It's not like on YouTube where you turn on the notification bell and then they tell you if they choose to.
And then suddenly shut you down off the platform and demonetize you.
Oh no, you will get the notifications.
And if you can support us, if it's within your means to support our community at this time, and I'm aware that there are extremely serious things happening in the world at the moment, but I believe that independent media movements such as this one can contribute positively at a time of, hmm, Epochal challenges, how do you want to define the omnicrisis that we are living through?
And I say that with all due respect to those of you that are directly affected by this situation and we plan to remain obviously respectful to the suffering that many, many people are experiencing right now.
How can we contribute?
How can we be part of a solution?
How can we, in any small way at all, make this situation better?
Become a member of our community.
Press that Awaken button if you're in a position to help.
And certainly, the very least that any of us can do is not exploit this situation.
Have you noticed how whatever crisis beset the world, there are people that will exploit it?
In coronavirus, we saw exploitation.
In any geopolitical conflict you see exploitation and in this current conflict which I believe has to be handled with extreme caution, awareness and almost surrender unless you are involved in the situation.
Again, that's not something I feel qualified to talk about.
The idea that people in positions of power have been exploiting it for literal personal gain is astonishing to me.
We reported on the sheer volume of people in Congress that had bought stocks and shares in weapons manufacturers And now, Rand Paul, subsequent to both Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley calling for escalations, which I believe, well, have you looked for yourself, would make the bad situation that the people involved in that conflict are already experiencing a great deal worse.
Rand Paul has called for restraint citing potential lessons learned
from 9-11. I want you to let me know what you feel about Rand Paul's analysis. Have a look at him
saying that now. What would you do? You know I have nothing but sympathy for the Israeli people at
this point in time.
I think that the primary objective at this time has to be to get the people that attacked them.
They were in Gaza.
Before we think about spreading this to the rest of the world, maybe we ought to think about exactly what's going on on the ground there.
I do think that There is immediate reaction sometimes, so let's get everybody, let's get everybody who's responsible.
And without question, Iran had their hands in this.
But you remember after 9-11, there were people who wanted to attack Iraq.
They said Iraq caused 9-11, turned out Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9-11.
So let's see where the facts lie, let's investigate this, and let Israel need to do what they need to do, which is...
Tomorrow we'll be talking in depth about the military-industrial complex and how the United States brokers deals for the MIC across the world, including selling arms to at least 57% of the world's autocratic countries, leading to the possibility A claim that's already been made that Hamas used American-made weapons to conduct those attacks.
Certainly, it's clear that Taliban weapons have made their way into... Well, I mean, the Taliban aren't ideal people to be armed with.
Beyond the kind of ideological arguments here, one question that I think we could focus on together, and let me know if you agree with this, It's America's role in supplying arms to autocratic states and potential bad actors on a global stage and their economic model that requires the proliferation of weapons and how that is at odds with Joe Biden's claim that it's the role of the United States to bring about peace, a recent claim that he's made.
A person who you can rely on to certainly not use sophistry in their public speaking You know, Hezbollah's very smart.
They're all very smart.
The press doesn't like when they say I'm smart.
But Hezbollah, they're very smart.
And they said, gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack from the north.
Because that's the most vulnerable spot.
I said, wait a minute.
You know, Hezbollah's very smart.
They're all very smart.
The press doesn't like when they say it.
You know, I said that President Xi of China, 1.4 billion people, he controls it with an iron fist.
I said he's a very smart man.
They killed me the next day.
I said he was smart.
What am I gonna say?
But Hezbollah, they're very smart.
I suppose what Donald Trump is saying is that the people that are being morally condemned, quite rightly, are using tactics and strategies that are effective.
And he appears to be commenting on how his remarks might be used to escalate tensions, even while saying them.
Now let me know what you think about Trump's remarks and certainly let me know what you think about them compared to Joe Biden's comments and you will be in a very good position to scrutinize those comments after you've seen our content on America's role in arming the world and in particular Arming potential opponents and terrorists.
It's already understood, isn't it?
You know this guys, that Mexican drug cartels gained access to missiles that were intended for Ukraine.
You know that the Pentagon keep failing audits.
You know that the way that arms are being proliferated throughout the world is likely contributing to increased military activity.
I mean, it's kind of Obvious, actually.
And Trump's ability to say what other politicians won't say, I think, elicits more trust, certainly from people who are inclined to support him.
Let me know what you think about that in the chat.
Be interested to hear your take.
For example, just look at what Trump says here about electronic tanks.
And compare that to the causistry, the sophistry, the doublespeak that we've become accustomed to from ordinary, centralist, neocon politicians.
And that means, of course, politicians from both sides of the near-invisible aisle.
Have a look at this.
They want all electric army tanks now.
Think of this.
So they want to have an army tank that's electric.
You can't get it recharged.
It doesn't go far enough.
It doesn't go strong enough.
But they want to have electric.
So that we go into enemy territory, we will blast the shit out of everybody, but at least we will go in with environmentally nice equipment.
God, can you believe this?
Doesn't that seem like the kind of skewering rhetoric designed to point out the hypocrisy in legacy media-supported politicians who claim they have an agenda of creating safety and peace, while participating in the arms industry, while propagating ideas around climate change that are punitive to ordinary people, while not even addressing the problems that they claim are true, and even if these problems are true, Why is it that the measures undertaken always penalise ordinary people?
And are we beginning to see now that the rise of populism is precisely the result of the ability of politicians like Trump to say what's unsayable by other political figures?
Cast your mind back to the period when he was in office and he was, you know, at that point speaking, I think somewhat favorably and affectionately about vaccines while also talking about hydroxychloroquine.
Are you confident saying that word even yet?
I can just about say ivermectin if it's permissible on this WHO governed channel.
But hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, let me know in the chat, let me know in the chat.
But do you remember in particular the moment Where Fauci rolled his eyes.
In those days, Fauci was being presented as a kind of medical Willy Wonka.
A kind of, sort of, scientist Jesus who we could rely on.
A counterpoint to the corruption and hyperbole of Trump.
Well, as a result of the investigations of genuine, legitimate, while persecuted journalists like Matt Taibbi and our friend Michael Schellenberger, they're both our friends, we don't mean to separate them in that way, we now have a greater understanding of Fauci's role in censoring the cause of the last pandemic.
Also, and with everything that's going on in the world, the Omnicrisis that we are all experiencing, none so much as those directly involved, of course, but a sense that the world is in real crisis, in real trouble, that we can't trust any of our institutions anymore, that legacy media exists solely to normalize and amplify the intentions of the powerful.
Just think about it that way.
That we can't trust government?
That our institutions are falling?
That crisis is being induced everywhere we go at an almost insufferable, unendurable, unconscionable rate?
Is it possible that they are still conducting experiments that are even more dangerous than those that took place in Wuhan that were alleged to have started this pandemic?
Or it could have been a wet market.
Here's the news.
No.
Here's the effing news.
No, here's the fucking news!
I wish I could tell you in the midst of the current Omni crisis that at least scientists connected to the Wuhan lab leak aren't doing more dangerous experiments that could lead to another pandemic and that Anthony Fauci wasn't potentially involved in a massive cover-up in the last one.
But I can't!
Now you'll be astonished to learn, will you?
Are you astonished to learn?
Let me know in the chat that the scientists involved potentially in the Wuhan lab leak are still doing dangerous, contagious, unnecessary experiments that could lead to another pandemic.
And if the idea of another pandemic seems familiar to you and potentially real, that's because some significant global figures keep talking about the next pandemic, the next pandemic, like almost it's going to be war, pandemic, war, pandemic, war, pandemic.
It's not up to you.
We've already decided that you are staying in the house and shutting up.
What did we tell you?
We need to be prepared for the next pandemic.
When the next pandemic comes knocking and it will, if it knocks, just don't answer the door.
We must be ready to answer decisively.
We do need more money.
We don't just need more money for vaccines for children eventually.
We need more money to plan for the second pandemic.
There's going to be another pandemic.
Another pandemic?
You've only just stopped playing with the last one.
That's why we need the money.
We will be much better off.
Yeah, you will be.
The next pandemic.
I know, it's in the checks.
When it occurs.
Okay, so they all seem pretty confident there's going to be another pandemic, but also the scientists involved in the Wuhan lab leak are doing more experiments that are a bit like that, even though really the last time they did it, it probably caused this pandemic.
More and more of us accept that as the reality.
Now let me know on the chat if you're still entertaining the idea that it came from a wet market.
Disgusting though they may sound.
So let's get into this story with a little more detail.
Later, and you'll love this, we're talking about how Anthony Fauci, unbelievably, The fellow that was meant to be coordinating to a degree the global response to the pandemic was involved in covering up some pretty important facts.
Scientists linked to Wuhan bat researchers have been accused of performing dangerous experiments on a MERS-like virus that could spark a pandemic.
Well, they should certainly interrogate and investigate that Possibility to see if there's any truth in that.
A team from the University of North Carolina published a paper in Science Advances detailing how they'd synthesized a MERS-like bat virus and used it to infect human cells and humanized mice.
I never feel that good, do you, when I hear the phrase humanized mice?
I never think this research is in the right hands.
I'm gonna just start routinely now, outside laboratories, going, have you got mice in there?
We certainly do, what business is it of yours?
Are they humanized?
No, they're not humanized.
Could I get some cheese?
What was that?
Nothing, I sneezed.
I sneezed, I bet!
Let us out of here!
There's only eight of us!
How can this be a thorough clinical trial?
Listen, I've gotta go.
I've got normal mice to go and deal with in there.
They're not humanized!
MERS is one of the deadliest viruses, killing around 35% of people it infects.
35%?
That seems like a lot.
That's like, you really don't want to get that one.
I'll wear a mask for that one.
The team includes Professor Ralph Baric and Trevor Scobie, who worked with Professor Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic, creating chimeric viruses by inserting spike proteins from bat viruses Into the original SARS virus.
I don't sound like a Luddite and I know that so many important things have been achieved as a result of biochemical endeavour, biological ingenuity, chemistry, science more broadly.
What a wonderful discipline it is and you will know from my conversation with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford University that I admire, adore and revere A subset of at least genuine scientists.
And one of the conditions I would say for being considered a genuine scientist is related to funding.
When science becomes a subset of at least an endeavour to accrue profit rather than heal and help people, problems emerge.
And when there's an agenda that goes even beyond that, I think we're at even greater risk.
Let me know in the chat if you agree.
The new experiment used a reverse genetics technique to create a MERS-like bat virus called BtCoV422, which was collected by Shi Zhengli's team in China in 2019.
The scientists said they'd perform the latest study to test whether antivirals would work against the infection.
But experts warned the experiments were needlessly risky for little gain.
Needlessly risky.
My God, these risks!
You don't even need to take them!
What's the potential gain, though?
Very little.
So, what the hell are you doing?
Can I get my cheese now?
Listen, just would you get out of my lab?
Open some windows on the way out.
Anton van der Meer, Professor of Molecular Immunology at Oxford University, told The Telegraph, because coronaviruses evolve rapidly, these experiments carry the risk of generating variants which are better able to infect human cells, and therefore... Humans!
Oh, there's no precedent of that happening.
Oh, wait, yeah, no.
All of our lives, everyone in the world, regardless of where you were, as a result of this stuff.
You know what, though?
What if it was more dangerous, killing a third of everyone?
Depopulation!
Human and equipment error means that infection of those performing the experiment is a risk and the infected individual could then spread the infection outside the laboratory and initiate a pandemic.
Conspiracy theorists!
Conspiracy theorists!
How do you know there's no wet markets or damp coffee shops?
Or stinky fruit and veg stores around there?
Before you jump to racist conspiracy theories, like doing this type of research definitely causes pandemics, why don't you just look around and see how much moisture there is in all of the facilities nearby you?
Bloody conspiracy theorists.
The consequences would be potentially devastating and it's not clear to me what the benefits are.
Oh no, they're doing all this stuff for no real reason.
It's so mad.
It's gone out of control hasn't it?
We need radical re-evaluation of the very pillars of society.
The media tells lies.
The government represents against the interests of the people.
Science that's telling you that they're looking for cures for stuff are actually curing things that they're creating themselves that are worse than anything that's out there already.
It's gone mad and I don't really know, other than forming separate systems and advocating for radical change pretty fast, what else we're supposed to do.
There's no prospect of using such work to develop a vaccine or antiviral drugs since these can only be tested in humans during an actual pandemic.
It seems to me this experiment is simply not justified.
What's going on?
Professor Barrick developed the reverse genetics technique, which not only enables a virus to be brought to life from its genetic code, but allows scientists to mix and match parts from other viruses.
It's like they're, like, just trying to have fun, isn't it?
Like, okay, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
Mix and match and bringing genetic code to life.
It's not Mr. Potato Head, it's a deadly virus.
I know, but we've given this one a big nose!
No, that's pretty funny.
However, experts said that the same experiments could have been carried out by inserting the spike protein of BtCoV422 into a harmless pseudovirus.
Well, where's the fun in that?
Pseudovirus experiments should have been the first thing they did before making this live virus, said one scientist who chose to remain anonymous so that he could keep his job and keep his funding and not be called a heretic and flung out of the lucrative science world.
They went straight to testing a live virus in human cell culture.
And they performed experiments in everybody's favorite, humanized mice, which presents a higher risk of escape than just cell culture.
Man, I can't live here anymore.
Look, we're just mice.
What are we going to do?
Well, you see that cage?
I've been thinking about it.
If we could hang the water bottle up there and weigh it down with this grain and those weird little pellety things, we could be out of here in no time.
I mean, I'll try it.
You seem confident.
I am confident.
I'm humanized, baby.
You should probably stop smoking.
Ah, man, if the virus is going to kill me.
If I'd seen these sorts of results for a pseudovirus, I would have said that it should stop there.
The virus is a potential threat.
Don't proceed to using a live virus.
So this guy would have stopped it, nipped it in the bud.
They've already gone straight to the bit where they're clacking around, mixing and matching, living it up, having a great time there.
Experts also warned that the experiments were performed at a biosafety level, BSL-3 level, rather than the highest BSL-4 safety level.
There's mad, evil Knievel, radical Gadabout, nitwit scientists performing these experiments not even at the highest level of safety.
It's not like there's been a massive pandemic probably caused by lacklustre standards at a laboratory and it's leaked out because they were doing it at bio level 3 or 4.
Do it at a high level!
Hey man, I don't do my experiments according to your rules.
I'm out there, I've got one eye shut.
I'm smoking, I'm high, I'm mixing and matching.
I see my experiments like jazz.
That's not how this should be conducted.
Accidental releases from BSL-3 labs are unfortunately quite common, added Professor Vanderbilt.
Why don't we rename these safety levels?
Instead of BSL-3, which is meant to be the second most safe one, that should be called accidents are actually quite common level.
That's like, if you want a high likelihood of an accident, just do this.
That shouldn't be one of the levels unfortunately quite common, should it?
Scrap that level, innit?
Except for unless you're doing things like, you know, new colors of schedules we're working on here.
All right, we'll do that at BS3.
Worst thing that's going to happen, you get some dye on your hands or one of your humanized mice might get a bit of a sugar rush and run out and get run over by an electric scooter.
Anything that could kill anyone.
New levels of safety, shall we?
And here's a sentence that seems plainly obvious to anybody.
Experiments on potentially pandemic organisms should only be performed if there are clear benefits to humanity and should be performed at the very highest level of containment.
Yes!
Alright, so that's still happening on the planet you live on.
All those things that are so complicated and awful you don't even know how to talk about them.
You know, this we do know how to talk about, don't we?
Just stop bloody doing it, you absolute mad lunatics.
Now, let's have a look at whether or not Anthony Fauci actively repressed information that could have helped us to have understood the nature of the last pandemic a bit earlier, or he had some reason for keep saying it must have come out of a wet market, it must have come out of a wet market.
What's that reason?
Oh yeah, right.
If it was caused by poor standards in a lab that had connections to United States funding, then the very person who's in charge of the response is at least tangentially responsible for the whole fiasco.
Seems ridiculous that you'd even have to consider that.
More ridiculous yet that it's possibly true.
Starting in February of 2020, from the very beginning, Anthony Fauci knew he was involved with funding this lab, and he did everything possible.
It's throughout our government.
Eight different agencies in our government are covering up their support for this lab in Wuhan.
It's ongoing as we speak.
That is not a positive news broadcast right there is it?
I mean the Dow is going up but Gaza is on fire and Anthony Fauci appears to have been deceiving us throughout the pandemic and right from the offset of the pandemic possibly because he had a vested interest and of course Anthony Fauci doesn't do that job anymore.
Even though we've had Unanimous Congress declassified information.
I have unclassified information that's being withheld from me to this day.
But we have evidence, yes, that they were dishonest, that Anthony Fauci lied in hearings to me, which is a felony, punishable up to five years.
We now have emails that show him saying that he knew it was gain-of-function, that the virus looked manipulated, and that he was worried that this came from the Wuhan lab.
February 1st of 2020.
Then he spent the last three years saying, nothing to see here.
Just note that your first instinctive response is closer to the truth than what they were telling you.
Wuhan?
Have they got labs there where they're doing experiments?
Yeah.
How are they getting the funding for those labs?
Is America involved anyway?
Yeah.
Do you think that they're possibly covering that up so that they don't look culpable for this whole damn global disaster?
Yeah, right.
We're getting, finally, to what people were just saying in the first place.
Okay, good, right?
If you're still with me.
Now, just look at everything else that's going on.
What else can't you say?
What else can't you talk about?
What other voices that are dissenting are being shut down?
What other motivations do you think there are behind mainstream media narratives?
You're probably right.
Have a little guess.
You're probably right.
We also know that there was a safety committee that should have reviewed this, and we know that Anthony Fauci went around the safety committee.
The safety committee set up in place to make sure this wouldn't happen never saw the Wuhan funding because Anthony Fauci allowed the funding to go around the safety committee.
Oh man, that's not good, is it?
So it's not just...
Oh no!
I've accidentally been funding that!
He's like, oh that's dangerous, well we better fund it in a off-the-books type way.
Oh man!
Like, just pause for a moment to think about what the legacy media do with their resources.
Are they investigating this?
It's Rand Paul who's uncovering this.
You get Journalists like Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi and Barry White, you get like actual journalists, they all try and go, well, should we try and work out the truth here?
But people that work for the legacy media, they won't do that because they can't, because the function of the legacy media is to amplify the message of the powerful and normalise the agenda of the power.
They just normalise, OK, we're all in this together.
Yeah, Andy Fauci's a hero.
Woo!
Let's all lock ourselves in our houses.
Yeah, wear a mask.
It works.
And remember what you're saying then.
Hey, who are the biggest advertisers?
Where do they get their revenue from?
Hey, all of that stuff.
Totally true!
This is a bombshell revelation and this will eventually bring down Anthony Fauci.
Oh well, some good news.
Let's have a look at that in more detail.
The former director of the U.S.
National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the U.S.
government response to the coronavirus pandemic, visited CIA headquarters to influence its review of COVID-19 origins, the House Oversight Committee reported in September.
Last month, committee chair Brad Wenstrup made headlines when he revealed that seven CIA analysts with significant scientific expertise on the agency's COVID-19 discovery team, CDT, received performance bonuses after changing a report to downplay concerns about a possible lab origin of the virus.
It looks like maybe it came from a lab.
What if you were to say that it didn't come from a lab?
Oh, well, but maybe it does.
I know, but what if it didn't?
Okay, it didn't.
Have a bonus.
What's that?
That's right!
I mean, that's not good, is it?
It's not follow the science.
It's not I am science.
If you argue with me, you're arguing with science.
Have a look at my conversation with Jay Bhattacharya, who went through a month of absolute hell. Lied about, humiliated,
attacked from all angles.
We're choosing wrong people, we're vilifying people we should be listening to. We're maligning
and de-platforming people that are telling us the truth. We've got to make some changes, baby.
Now, a months-long investigation by Racket and Public, which included interviews with the CIA
whistleblower behind last month's revelations and others in a position to know, reveals that Fauci
not only visited the CIA but also pushed the...
They're right!
They were right!
Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2 paper published by Nature Medicine in meetings at the State
Department and the White House.
Those people that said this is like a massive cover-up, this is going to be one of those
stories that defines an age, it's worse than Watergate, it's worse than some of the other
conspiracy theories that increasingly look like they're bloody true.
They're right.
They were right.
You were right.
Previous reporting already showed that Fauci prompted the Proximal Origin paper according
Lead author Christian Anderson expressed grave doubts about the natural origin theory even months after Nature Medicine published a paper, and they described themselves as pressured by higher-ups referring to individuals in the White House and other government agencies.
The media normalized that idea.
They just bombarded you with wet market, wet market, natural origin, natural origin, to the point where something was plain and obvious.
Like, that Institute of Virology became sort of, eventually, it was just too obvious to be ignored, but it was ignored.
It was denied for a very long, even now, it's not like people are going, you know, of course, of course, is it?
You still sort of can't even say that.
That's because we don't live in reality.
We live in a curated psychological space, created by very powerful interests, amplified and normalized by the legacy media.
Only way to bypass that is through independent media channels like this one, which is why independent media channels like this one are demonetised.
And that's why we need your help.
Press the red button.
Join us.
Now, the new information from multiple sources, including a CIA whistleblower, senior government investigator and a senior official, suggests a broad effort by Fauci to go agency by agency from the White House to the State Department to the CIA in an effort to Steer government officials away from looking into the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a lab.
Follow the science.
Follow the science around every one of those agencies.
Follow the science around the talk shows that held sort of celebratory parties where Anthony Fauci was portrayed as a figurehead for that time of crisis.
Oh, Trump, that crackpot!
Thank God for Anthony Fauci rolling his eyes!
If it proves to be true that he went agency by agency suppressing the truth, if it proves to be true that he deliberately created a funnel for funding and masked that, that's where the mask was necessary, ironically, then what are you left with there?
You are left with a public space that is built on deception.
It's beyond propaganda.
It's worse than anything I think we've seen taken collectively.
Because now the power for these atrocities is amplified to saturation point.
And the only opposition that's likely is this type of opposition.
The great work of Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger and genuine legitimate journalists.
The great work of Jay Bhattacharya and other legitimate scientists.
Robert Malone.
People that from the beginning were like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
These people have paid a very, very high price.
I tell you now, the stakes are getting high.
We're in a really significant position.
Fauci's expert opinions were a significant consideration and were part of our classified
assessment said the CIA whistleblower, a decorated and long-serving CIA officer with expertise
in Asia. His opinions substantially altered the conclusions that were subsequently drawn.
Manipulate the data. Fauci had reasons to push scientists and intelligence analysts
to believe the virus had a zoonotic origin since his agency had issued a grant to fund
research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, WIV, in China.
Oh no, this is what people were saying all along and you were called conspiracy theorists weren't you?
That's what they said.
So, yeah, we've already discussed, yeah, where it is a badge of honour.
If they don't want you speaking, you must be doing something right.
If they're trying to shut you down, you must be doing something right.
You absolutely cannot trust them.
The Wenstrup press release noted that the whistleblower's information suggested Fauci was escorted in without record of entry.
Oh, that's always good.
Follow the science.
Can't follow the science.
Never admits he's been anywhere.
According to the CIA whistleblower, the CIA purposely did not badge Fauci in and out of the building so as to hide any record that he'd been there.
Fauci came to our building to promote the natural origin of the virus, the CIA whistleblower said.
He knew what was going on.
I mean, you see all the redacted documents that are coming out.
He was covering his ass, and he was trying to do it with the intel community.
I know he came multiple times and he was treated like a rock star by the Weapons and Counter-Proliferation Mission Centre.
And he pushed the Christian Anderson paper.
I don't like that he was treated like a rock star on any level at all, do you?
It sort of irritates me.
Grant records show that Anderson had a multi-million dollar NIH grant proposal pending while he wrote Proximal Origin.
Fouch's oversight of the power and the fact that he had an author's grant on his desk put him in a clear position of power over scientists' conclusions.
Oh no, he was able to influence it by suggestion, by holding grants and the offer of grants.
People tell you this is how it works all the time.
The amount of funding available to them means that that's That's not science, is it?
Because science would be, well, let's take funding out of it, let's just look at the available data.
This is the reality of it.
Science is a subset of a set of vested interests.
That's why only these clinical trials take place.
Only that information is released.
This information is bypassed.
That theory is promoted.
That theory is shut down.
That's no longer science.
That's just science as a tool of the agenda of the powerful, reported as objective science by a complicit legacy media who received their funding via advertising from pharmaceutical companies.
There you have it.
A convergence of interests.
But how could it be?
How could it not be true?
It's just crazy to think that the one person who was presented as the voice of reason, the reliable weather vane and bulwark of our sensible response to this terrible condition, could be actually part of the cause, part of the problem, concealing the truth.
Anti-science?
I mean, it's almost biblical.
In 2022, the CIA revisited its origins investigation, according to the whistleblower.
In one meeting that year, Fauci berated a CIA analyst who expressed the view that Covid came from a lab, according to a whistleblower.
Six out of seven analysts concluded that a lab leak was most likely.
It's only six-sevenths, and the seventh one had been berated.
But then, after the intervention of senior agency personnel, the CIA changed its assessment of COVID's origin from lab leak to unknown.
Said to us, we don't know where it came from.
Why don't we just guess or say that it's a wet market?
I read that somewhere.
Yeah, I wrote that.
It's astonishing that something that significant, influential, and impactful could have been conducted in this way.
And as I've said, and as we've discussed many, many times, the COVID pandemic was unique to some degree, but I would offer you this.
Regard it not as a unique and anomalous occasion, but as a lens, a window.
How do these institutions behave?
How do the agencies that are supposed to regulate pharmaceutical research actually behave?
Do they have financial ties?
How do figures that are meant to represent the health interests of an entire nation, and on an occasion such as that, the world, actually behave?
How does the media Actually behave.
How does the government actually behave?
The WHO?
The WF?
What it did is it revealed to us.
That's why it was such an extraordinary event.
That's why it was utilized to create authoritative measures and to shut down dissent and increase surveillance and surveillance measures like passports and different forms of ID and to increase censorship and shut down dissenting voices because Something happened that was literally global and so much was revealed as a result.
The first thing they have to do is have the ability to control the narrative.
If they can't control the narrative, they're in trouble because none of us are going to tolerate that if we understand it.
I used to say this before the age of the internet.
What do you think in classified documents?
What do you think in top secret info?
What do you think's in there?
Oh, this is just information.
If our enemies got our hands on it, No, it's information.
If we had it, if you just said, right, this is how we run the country.
This is what's really been going on.
That's what happened to JFK.
That's how all these things went down.
Obviously, what's in that documentation, in fact, the raison d'etre of those documents and of classification itself and of those agencies is to prevent you from ever understanding how you are truly governed and controlled.
Because if you knew what was in those documents, you would not cooperate.
You would not obey.
It would shock you to the very core of your being.
We are beginning to understand this now, that our most treasured and cherished institutions require radical reform and that it will not come from within the system itself.
We know that now.
So, just let me offer you this.
If you had access to this information, you would know that the only route is radical change, disobedience, revolution.
How should we be behaving now then?
Now that we're beginning to understand the truth, the reality, the reality they keep from us.
Let me know in the chat.
The CIA gave the analysts exceptional performance awards that came with cash bonuses.
Total bribery.
Total observable, traceable corruption.
Is there going to be a test for that?
There was a clear lack of interest in a robust analysis of Chinese military connections to WIV research and connections that could be drawn between US research and WIV activity, the whistleblower said.
In letting Fauci secretly influence analysts behind closed doors, the CIA may have allowed Fauci to promote his own personal interests, undermining the scientific integrity of the agency's investigation.
Despite his claim that he did not try to exert influence over investigations into Covid's origin, Fauci had a clear motive to divert attention from the Wuhan lab.
So there you are.
Perhaps when the next pandemic comes, and evidently it is, not just because some of the world's most powerful vested interests are telling you that it's coming, but But because simultaneously, none of the lessons of the last lab leak, if indeed it was one, have been learned.
The same scientists are conducting yet more dangerous research.
I don't want it, you don't want it I assume, and yet it's still happening.
We know that Anthony Fauci, who was presented to us as the figurehead, a paragon of truth and authenticity, is now seeming to be its direct inverse.
All of our values are being flipped.
The truth is being replaced by fiction.
Villains are being presented as heroes, and vice versa.
The whole reason for this cover-up is because it reveals the true nature of power.
That power has become corrupted, out of control, and requires radical intervention.
And guess what?
It's not going to come from within the system.
Even though, whatever hope you have, for whatever figurehead you're backing, what would happen if they were placed, dropped, into that cesspool?
Let me know if you think any individual can really make a difference.
No, we have to all change.
We all have to participate in change.
We have to radically change as individuals and we have to be willing to sacrifice and make the necessary changes in our own lives and in our communities and to demand democracy by any means necessary except, of course, violence.
Should they be carrying out those experiments now?
Should Andy Fauci be taken to task for his conduct if indeed this stuff is true?
And I'd also, let me add this, stop making humanised mice.
But that's just what I think.
Why don't you let me know what you think in the chat?
See you in a second.
Thanks for refusing Fox News.
We're just kidding.
No, here's the fucking news.
It may seem astonishing to acknowledge, even to countenance the idea that such dangerous
research continues to take place after what appear to be stark, beyond warnings, realisations
of the dangers of that research.
And it's preposterous to imagine that someone that was lauded as a figurehead, as a kind of prophet of the pandemic era, a self-proclaimed voice of science and manifestation of science could potentially be so corrupt.
And yet, That's what the journalism that we just used to make that content suggests, and maybe even in places appears to, according to that CIA whistleblower, demonstrate.
I am now honoured to introduce so-called journalist, that's the words of Congress, writer of Racket News and America This Week on Substack, and author of Griftopia.
It's Matt Taibbi.
Matt, thanks for coming on, mate.
Of course.
How are you doing, Russell?
You know, just very good and just very positive about life, enjoying life.
A lot of trust in our institutions, legacy media, got a lot of trust in that.
Government, a lot of trust in that.
Trust at a record high, I would say.
Yeah, faultless.
Not a fully immersive omnicrisis, geopolitical nightmares everywhere you look, corruption, censorship everywhere.
I mean, there's so much for us to discuss, but given that we've just done an item using your journalism, can we talk a little more, Matt, about Fauci's role in censoring the potential origins of the last pandemic?
And I suppose significantly that CIA whistleblower and like Fauci's agency tour to shut down investigation.
Yeah, so this is a story that grew out of the Twitter files a little bit.
Because a lot of the focus of the Twitter files was about suppression of COVID-related topics, a number of people came forward.
Michael Schellenberger and I, about six months ago, we started To hear about a whistleblower in the CIA who was coming forward with a story that Anthony Fauci had, at least on a couple of occasions, come to the CIA's Weapons and Counterproliferation Center.
I forget exactly what the acronym is, but it was what they were using to study the origins of of COVID and gave a presentation pushing the idea of zoonotic origin on the CIA analysts.
Later on, some six of the seven analysts at the CIA who were leaning towards lab origin changed their minds before the issuance of a final report.
They were given financial incentives by the agency to do that.
There are a number of other stories that came out as a result of all this, but he also went to the State Department and the White House, was pushing this proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2 paper that we also had reported on that he was heavily involved with drafting, probably never disclosed it to any of those agencies.
So it looks like a pretty sophisticated, energetic campaign to go through the intelligence agencies and executive branch agencies and try to convince them to not look at the lab origin theory.
If this is true, it seems to be the kind of corruption and hypocrisy that people that were judged to be conspiracy theorists very early in this process were offering.
I feel like pretty early on people were saying, how is the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded?
It was not even possible, as obviously you know, to even talk about lab leak theory at the beginning.
Does this, are you able, I sort of feel like I know that you are from when we spoke particularly at that censorship industrial complex event that we did, like able to look at this somewhat objectively?
Or do you find yourself sort of recoiling in disgust?
Or are you excited as an investigative journalist?
Like, oh my God, this is actual information.
Oh my God, it makes sense.
What, what does this do to you emotionally?
I ask because This would seem to be the type of story that an investigative journalist would be excited by, that this is something that you can show an unravelling of, almost a complete reversal of someone that's been presented as a hero, celebrated to an almost galling degree, an uncustomary degree, a degree that's actually bloody obvious that something was going on when you look at it now, that he was on the talk shows and the dancing syringes and all those kind of things.
Makes you think this isn't a normal thing to happen.
When the media does something that extreme, whether it's pro someone or against someone, possibly there's another agenda at play.
So there's a few questions I want to ask you.
Does it excite you as an investigative journalist?
Why don't we see that kind of investigative journalism taking place within the legacy media?
And what was your emotional reaction to it?
And finally, within this little bunch of questions, can you envisage that this will lead to any kind of criminal judicial consequences for Fauci?
That's a good question.
Well, just quickly, to go in order, I should admit that I was very taken in initially by a lot of the propaganda about COVID.
And I was reluctant to go anywhere near the topic because I didn't, I was a little bit afraid of aligning myself with sort of anti-vaccine activists.
Even if I was saying something true, I didn't want that impression out there.
And when we started doing the Twitter files, Barry Weiss and Michael Schellenberger were much, much more interested in the COVID aspect than I was.
I was trying to focus on the FBI intelligence aspect of it, mainly because I You know, I wasn't sure what was true about the COVID question, but we came to realize by the end of the project that the COVID messaging thing was central to the worst corruption that we were looking at in the documents, mainly because what they were doing wasn't taking things that were false and eliminating them.
They were taking things that were true and intentionally removing them and actually coming up with a reason to remove True content.
And that I think was terrible.
And this led to this series of stories, which I was excited about because, you know, I didn't have any particular feelings about Anthony Fauci.
I was a little annoyed by his imperious demeanor and his lecturing.
You know, just as an outside observer, he seemed obnoxious to me.
But when we got the documents showing his emails back and forth with the scientists who did the original paper concluding that the virus had a natural origin and saw how aggressively he was suppressing their natural reaction that this probably came from a lab or at least that they couldn't rule that out.
Seeing that in paper was very exciting because we're not asserting it, we're just saying here, Look at what he said.
Look at what they were doing.
They lied to you about what they thought.
And that's always exciting as an investigative reporter is when you get proof of something as opposed to having to rely on an anonymous source or something like that.
This latest thing with the whistleblower suggests something a little bit more sinister, which is an active cover-up of investigations into this question and then, you know, as to the question
of whether this will lead to criminal probes, I think it's possible because there is
more to come out about America's relationship to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the
sharing of scientific research, the possibility that some American scientists may have actually provided
the technology to help create this virus.
None of that is proven, but I think it's out there and there's, you know, from what we hear, there's more stuff that's kind of come out.
If it does, I think, yes, I think there will be probes.
That's pretty, that's interesting and somewhat exciting.
So then if there's a legitimate story and there's somewhat reliable evidence and sources available, part of my question there was why does the legacy media not spend any money, time, resources, investigative endeavour on stories like this?
What does that tell us?
I mean, it continues to astonish me that they're uninterested or disinterested.
I forget what the right word is in this situation.
But, you know, from the very beginning, COVID was a story that was reported in a very particular way.
I think a lot of reporters decided what they felt or what they believed about certain topics based on what Donald Trump's reaction was.
If Donald Trump suspected that there might've been lab origin, Or if you blame China, then the response was to go all the way in the other direction.
If Donald Trump said he took hydroxychloroquine, then hydroxychloroquine absolutely had to be snake oil.
There was no other way of reporting this because Anthony Fauci was presented as the kind of human counterpart to Donald Trump at the time.
as the alternative authority figure.
He's been embraced and I think there's an unwillingness to go near that topic
because they feel that that's implicitly encouraging people towards Trumpism.
But it's not. The two things are totally unrelated.
The question, we still have an unresolved question of where this virus came from.
They haven't answered that question.
So until they do, don't we have to keep looking for it?
I think we do, don't we?
Seems that it's being maneuvered out of the agenda.
And I feel that there's, and I'm obviously not the first to make the remark, that there's an emergent template where crises enter, a very strong narrative accompanies the origin of the crisis.
Anyone that dissents is maligned and it becomes very difficult.
And the thing you described about, you know, to be sort of inquisitive or to oppose the narrative is become aligned with Trumpism.
It's almost, I feel that they are creating that dynamic.
Myself, over the last few years, I've gone from a position of thinking, like, oh, Donald Trump, man, seriously?
And, like, then recognizing that there's a lot of people who see him as a sort of a real solution because of the berserker component, because he is an anomaly in the political space.
Then, like, for me, as it becomes slightly more sophisticated, I think, hang on a minute, if they don't like him as much as they don't like him, that at least is something, whatever's going on with this guy, the establishment don't want him in there.
Up to all the way where I start thinking he's alright!
Because in a sense you're maligned and marginalised and excluded from space.
The thing that you said about how they defaulted to Fauci as a counterpoint because of some rolling eyes and because they had a sort of a neocon stooge as he's starting to appear sort of up there on the podium.
It's now, we've now reached the point where you have the kind of, the space is becoming so fissured and fractured that new alliances were going to happen.
And I get, in that moment I felt, oh well that's the fault of the people that are reporting in this manner and refusing to investigate as a result of those assumptions, the ones that you just outlined.
But perhaps it's a, perhaps it's broader than that.
Perhaps this is just the, what these alliances are just going to occur because it is authoritarianism versus the periphery and anti-authoritarianism Well, I very much think it's the latter.
yourself in new alliances. What do you think it is? Which one of those?
Well, I very much think it's it's the latter. I mean, I'm working on a book now and looking into the origins of, you
know, this anti disinformation censorship complex. And part of it comes
from this political theory that was, you know, is derived by a German jury, he
was a Nazi jurist actually named Carl Schmitt, who one of his core political theories is that all politics, liberal
democracy is just window dressing.
All politics is really about Sorting friends from foes.
And it's all about the binary.
It's who's on our side and who's on the other side.
This came very much into play after 9-11.
Are you with the terrorists or against them?
And now it's sort of reflexively how we do everything.
It's are you on our side or are you on Putin's side?
Are you on our side or are you on the side of the anti-vaxxers?
Are you on our side or the side of the insurrectionists?
They're trying to eliminate those middle spaces, those shades of gray.
And that's been very effective.
And it's also convinced people to turn the blinders on when it comes to looking at somebody like Anthony Fauci.
In retrospect, we should have wondered right away about a guy who tells us that he lied to us about something like masks for our own good.
That's something that no journalist or scientist should ever be caught doing, saying, yeah, I told you a wrong fact, but I had to, like, we shouldn't let people off the hook for that.
But we did because he coded as somebody who was a friend and not a foe.
And that's how the media treated him.
I think that's the core authoritarian distinction is between his authority and everybody else.
Yes, you're right.
And you can see how authoritarianism is advanced by this false oppositional perspective.
You're either with the terrorists or you're against the terrorists.
In a way, what that creates is a conversational framing that is in its nature opposed to something that I think might be quite fundamental The decentralization of power, the demonopolization of powerful big tech entities, the prohibition of the overreach of the state, the foreclosure of the state's right to intervene in matters like how you raise your children or how you earn your money.
By creating that sort of polarity, in the end a sort of a relatively balanced polarity Would, almost on a mathematical level, lead to two spaces?
For or against?
Yes?
No?
Isn't it, by its nature, binary?
So I can see why that has prevailed, and how it serves authority, and also how we've experienced, even in this time that I've been, you know, intellectually, shall we say, engaged in these spaces, We've witnessed the inversion of meaning, like free speech is bad, free speech is hate speech, that talking about peace or advocating for peace is bad and disloyal, and how we've seen liberal...
Parties that were typically associated with advocacy for civil rights and liberal attitudes becoming authoritarian.
I suppose it's precisely because of this, the phenomenon you're describing.
So yeah, that book's going to be good, I reckon, because you can see how that would dynamically create that kind of fissure.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll work.
Yeah, thanks.
I get that.
Yeah.
And that's how the algorithms work in this censorship space.
They're all designed to kind of reduce everybody to which side of the line are you on, you know?
What they're analyzing is how do you respond to stimuli if somebody comes out with a crazy opinion about X?
Are you on this side of that opinion or that side of the opinion?
They're always analyzing.
The machine learning version of content moderation, that's what it does.
It's designed to score you on a spectrum of opinions.
And, you know, that's why things like this Digital Services Act that you've got in Europe now are so scary, because it's just creating an intellectual dragnet over vast territories and separating people according to their opinions.
Um, you know, and telling us that some opinions are just illegal, you know, and others are, you know, everything else is okay.
And that's a terrible, dangerous way of looking at things.
It's totally contrary to From a free market perspective it seems that what was and has been emerging in online spaces is the potential for global audiences to accrue
Topically, or via subject, i.e., Substack is an example, Rumble, the phenomenon of Joe Rogan, to take the most evident figure, that you can create new markets bypassing institutions.
And I would say that that trend Unchecked would continue and have connotations and could be extrapolated beyond media space and I would say into the administering of power, ultimately.
Why wouldn't it?
Why would you not if you recognise, oh I'm part of a community, we can intercommunicate, we can establish democracies.
Oh, I wonder how that would work if it was geographically localised.
I wonder.
There was a tendency and a trend that had to be arrested and has been arrested and is being arrested.
I wanted to ask you about the EU's Digital Services Act, the recent labelling of Ex Biteri Breton as a hub of disinformation, and the numerous comparable pieces of legislature, whether it's Canada's podcast bill, whatever they're calling that, The UK's online safety bill that sort of coincided with events that affected me personally, of course.
And I wonder what you feel this is in effect.
And of course, I wonder in particular, how you feel about the fact that they're often mobilized by things that almost anyone would agree with hate speech, child pornography.
Nobody wants that.
Yes.
But often there are matters for which there are already laws that don't require additional legislation or the foreclosure of free speech.
Right, and that's always how they propagandize repressive or authoritarian measures.
They start with something that everybody agrees with for whatever reason.
That's why in America, I think the first figure to be removed from the internet in a coordinated way.
Alex Jones was somebody who was really unpopular in many quarters.
So people didn't protest the underlying issue, which is, you know, switching out one way of regulating speech, which was always litigation based and doing it by this other means, which was corporate behind closed doors, didn't involve courts or juries or anything like that.
Um, that's scary, but all the laws that you're talking about, um, I have tremendous implications for the ability of ordinary people to conduct democracy.
I mean, these sort of top down measures, they imply that speech is dangerous.
And we found out, I mean, I think COVID is the primary example of of why these kinds of laws can be abused, right?
So, with COVID, one of the things that happened was you saw early on there were scientists like Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford and Martin Calder from Harvard.
Sinetra Guptra from Oxford, who were suppressing the Internet, not because they got anything wrong, not because they were inciting people or committing libel or doing anything that you would traditionally consider a crime, right, or a speech offense, but because they were opposing a government policy.
They were saying that they thought lockdowns were ineffective.
They thought that there were lockdowns were not scientifically indicated.
And the people who run the trust and safety departments or the censorship departments in these companies classified that as disinformation because it was information that produced the wrong behavior in people.
It aroused the wrong political response.
So even though it's factually true, it's narratively incorrect.
And that's what's so dangerous is that you have people with that kind of power Deciding what is and is not appropriate content and they will lie, you know, they'll abuse those powers.
It's already been proven.
That's what's so scary I think.
In a way, it's already happening, isn't it?
Because sometimes when I'm talking about what I believe to be an attempt to create systems of authority that are able to, because true authority I suppose by its nature, would bypass democracy and some of the stories that we track and obviously that you track and investigate, ...appear to be targeted and motivated towards the creation of systems that mean that regardless of what country you're in or regardless of whether or not what you're saying is true, there are new methods and modes of control being introduced, often under the auspices of safety, because the alternative would just be to announce that it's about control.
Talking about what's been happening with banking in Canada and appears to be being legislated for and certainly is increasing.
And I wondered actually, because you know Chrystia Freeland, the sarcastically named Deputy PM of Canada.
What's your personal experience of her, if that's not a rude question?
So, Chrystia Freeland was a reporter.
She wrote for the New Statesman, I believe the Financial Times, a few other papers.
She's obviously Canadian, but she was reporting from Russia at the same time I was.
There was a very small community of expats in Moscow in the 90s, and so we all knew one another.
We were all familiar with one another.
And Christia was somebody with whom I disagreed a lot during the Yeltsin period.
She had very positive views, for instance, about the figures that we now call oligarchs.
Sometimes she did.
And, you know, there were some columns that she wrote that even at the time I remember raising an eyebrow about.
When Putin first came to power, you can go back and look at this, there was a column that she wrote talking about how the West is falling in love with Russia again.
You know, the implication being that Putin was, you know, he was a more respectable face.
He was someone with whom we could do business.
And, you know, she had a reputation as somebody who kind of Toe to the establishment line, the American foreign policy line on Russia, which we didn't always agree with because there were pretty dramatic consequences for people in Russia at the time.
There was a gutting of the freedom of the press, there were elimination of all kinds of public services, and a lot of the Americans were cool with that.
You know, when she reappeared in this role in Canada, all of my old friends from Russia, we've been all texting each other about this.
It's unbelievable.
This stuff is, you know, the use of denying banking services, this invitation of Yaroslav Honka to The Canadian Parliament, it's hard for me to believe that Krystia, who has a Ukrainian background and started her career out writing for Ukrainian papers, didn't know what was going on there.
So the excuse that this all caught them unawares, I'm just not sure about that.
But yeah, no, and she seems very aggressive.
In promoting this very aggressive use of denial of services to people who are on the wrong side of the informational landscape and That's very concerning.
And it's totally contrary, again, to what traditional Western liberal democratic values.
You said earlier that it was using the ideas of Carl Schmitt that democracy itself could be regarded as a kind of liberal window dressing for binary systems, for dividing friends.
from foes and one of the things I've been most struck by is how the aesthetic of
liberalism, the rhetoric of liberalism is so closely allied to authoritarianism
and Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau and figures that I feel like you know
10 years ago or 15 years ago I would have I would have just thought, they seem nice, like the kind of
people that you'd want run in a country, sort of modern looking and sounding.
And before long, they're like literally applauding Nazis.
Now I'd, when we'd spoken about that, I mean, on our channel, assumed that that was just
an innocent mistake.
And the idea that it, potentially, but I do know that her own grandfather was part of
a, also a sort of, I guess, an amateur Nazi battalion out there.
And that her grandfather's, part of her grandfather's role was seizing printing presses from like
Jewish organizations and stuff.
So, what, you think it's... I mean, that's just speculative, is it?
I mean, it does seem like a pretty mad accident.
I assumed it was like a Jungian kind of deep, unconscious accident brought forth from the collective psyche that Canada, in all its liberal posing, somehow, like a fart, just revealed, oh no, we're applauding a Nazi!
But you think it's sort of, like, almost potentially deliberate?
Well, yeah, if it was a fart, that's one of the all-time loud ones, I would say.
First of all, it's impossible to believe that they were not aware that this guy fought on the other side of a war where 42,000 Canadians died.
Most people are pretty, you know, I understand it was a long time ago and not everybody's read their World War II history, but if your country fought in a war you have, you tend to know.
Who was on the other side of that conflict?
Yes, there are some legitimate reasons.
There, of course, were legitimate reasons to fight against the Soviets, among other things, because they had previously done a non-aggression pact with the Nazis.
They're not exactly great actors.
But in World War II, by 1941, they were on our side.
And this figure, Yaroslav Honka, was in the Waffen-SS.
I mean, it, it, it, it.
They had to have done some research on this, and it's impossible for me to imagine that they weren't.
They weren't at least aware that they were asking Parliament to cheer somebody who was fighting on the other side of their war.
So, the Nazi element aside, but you add the Nazi element to that, and that scene, it looks like what my podcast partner Walter Curran and I called a soft opening for asking people to accept certain fascistic values.
I don't know how else to interpret that scene.
It's a difficult phenomenon, or at least event, to interpret at all.
A few things I'd love to run through with you.
Firstly, the emergence, or at least announcement, that RFK is going to run independently and the fact that a significant number of Americans say they would consider voting for an independent candidate.
Do you think that this is possible?
Do you think it will alter the trajectory of the election?
Do you think it could even alter the candidate that runs for either the Democrat or Republican party?
Do you think it will change the This course during this election, do you think that he's going to get like super attacked from both sides now?
What do you think will be the broad impact of RFK's candidacy, Matt?
I think the candidacies of both RFK and Cornel West are going to have a significant impact on Uh, the election, at least I think that's very possible.
Um, Cornel West doesn't have to get that much support before he becomes a major factor in the race, uh, for a variety of reasons.
And it's the same thing with our RFK with, he starts getting even pulling the same numbers that he has been, you know, between 10 and 20%.
Uh, of even the Democratic electorate.
If you start adding the people who are among Independents and Republicans who would consider voting for him, then we're getting into serious numbers.
Now, the question is, will his candidacy hurt Trump, who's the presumptive nominee more than Joe Biden, who's the presumptive Democratic nominee?
I don't know, but, um, You know, there's a reason why the Democratic Party, actually both of the two established parties, hate these kinds of candidates because, especially at a moment like this one, when, you know, the incumbent is so totally unappealing.
I mean, he's clinically dead, basically, right?
So, if given the option of voting for somebody who's still alive and breathing and able to, you know, speak in his own language, People will do that, you know?
And I think both RFK and West are going to become real factors.
That I suppose at least is cause for some optimism.
Another subject I wanted to of course touch upon is the escalating violence in the Middle East.
I've noticed already that it's entering into an already difficult, divided, communicative space and this is almost the ultimate divisive issue.
Even prior to cancel culture, even prior to the kind of online tribalism That we see these days and the kind of self-censure and the censure of others.
This was an issue that was almost, I don't know, it appears to divide people like nothing else I can really think of.
What do you think is going to be the impact just in terms of journalism and discussing it and the calls for nuance and calls for peace when it comes to this horrific and brutal and difficult issue?
First of all, it's just awful.
Obviously, it's a terrible story and it breaks your heart.
One of the things that's really troubling about this era of journalism and even social media communication is that There's relentless pressure on people to have visible external symbols of compliance or support.
So anything from wearing masks to the Ukraine flag emojis to even for some people the American flag emojis or the black square or whatever it is.
There's always this pressure to kind of reduce things to, I'm on this side or I'm on that side, and I hate you because you're on the other side of this.
And let's come to those conclusions right away.
Let's do that in the initial hours of the event.
Whereas in my experience, it can take years before you really can have strong opinions about a thing because issues can be so complicated.
But you're right.
Of all the issues that there are in the world, this is the one that people feel most—they feel less tolerant of the shades of gray in between.
And I think that's dangerous because this is an immensely complicated issue and people on both sides of it would gain from learning the perspective of the other side.
And they're not going to do that.
They're going to wall up.
I mean, don't you think?
They're going to move to one side or the other and just pour invective and venom on one another.
And that's only going to worsen the situation.
When the only way out is to kind of reach some kind of mutual understanding or And I don't know.
I don't do you see that happening I'm not I'm not sure not sure that I is to speak to a genuine journalist That's what investigative journalism looks like and that's what investigative journalism does it looks at something that everyone assumes to be true wait a minute Andy Fauci is a great guy hold on a a second and suddenly revelations and suddenly reality is
different. How interesting what the legacy media investigate and what they don't investigate.
How revealing, whose side are they on?
Is it their job to investigate or is it their job to amplify and normalize the agenda of the
powerful? You let us know in the chat in the comments.
Remember, tomorrow we've been joined by Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, who said that
Wikipedia even, that sort of trusted resource of all of us. Who among us doesn't write their entire show
based on Wikipedia entries?
I know we don't anymore because, as Larry Sanger says, it's propagandist and biased.
If you want to be part of this movement, and we are going way, way, way beyond anything we imagine now, here on Rumble, we will describe to you the nature of the problem.
There, on Locals, we are interested in the solution.
On Stay Free with Russell Brown, we talk about the numerous ways that the world has gone awry, the corruption of the military-industrial complex, the inefficacy of the state, the corruption of the legacy media.
On Locals, what's it going to be like next?
How are we going to reorganise?
How are we going to get out of this?
As well as meditations, biblical readings, looking at scripture, religion,
all the tools available to us, the five ways that are going to change the world,
whether it's cryptocurrency, new biomechanical technology,
simply alkane philosophy revivified.
And I want to thank the people that are supporting us on Locals,
and I want to urge you to join our community.
Become an awakened wonder, if you can.
And man, we'll find new ways of getting everybody on board.
It's so important for you to support us now.
Once the government gets involved and Big Tech demonetizes you, it's us now.
This is it.
You've seen from Matt Taibbi how important your support is and I want to thank Benita08.
Thank you for being an Awaken Wonder.
Marnie Howe, Mad Nick, Kay Kinsley One, Del Boy W12.
You are all so welcome here.
Thank you for becoming an Awaken Wonder.
Thank you for supporting our movement.
Who knows what we can achieve together.
Let's remain Optimistic, let's remain powerful, let us remain above and beyond fear, but more important than that, let us remain free.
Join us tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
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