US Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy chats to Russell about the looming dangers of World War 3, his anti-war stance resulting in being shut out by the mainstream media, his solution to address congressional members trading stocks, and Trump's legal battles.You can follow Vivek’s presidential campaign by going to: www.vivek2024.com Support this channel directly here: https://rb.rumble.com/Follow on social media:X: @rustyrocketsINSTAGRAM: @russellbrandFACEBOOK: @russellbrand
Thank you for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand for an extremely special show.
Today we have an extended interview with Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican presidential candidate and outsider who could become increasingly significant as the travails of Trump increase.
If Donald Trump is taken out by the state, where does that leave Vivek Ramaswamy.
Does that mean he's next in line to be taken out as an outsider?
Or does that mean that he will elevate to candidacy?
Let me know what you think in the chat right now.
In this first part of the conversation, we're going to be talking about Dave Chappelle and Dave Chappelle's role as a free speech advocate in shifting times.
We talk about Israel-Palestine and how you handle that as the President of the United States.
Of course we talk about free speech as always.
Now, this interview was pre-recorded and you can join us live when we make that kind of content.
If you are an awakened wonder, press the red button.
You can join interviews live.
We do meditations.
We're planning a movement so that we can form new communities as the apocalypse apparently unfolds before our very eyes.
How does independent media become independent politics?
You tell me, because without you, we are nothing.
Thank you for elevating your consciousness above the level of fear.
Thank you for being willing to open up the belly of the beast, chop the head of the serpent and move forward in a glorious new movement together.
We are going to have to change politics pretty radically if we're going to change the world and perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy is part of the solution.
Let me know what you think in the chat now.
Of course, the first 15 minutes will be available on YouTube, but after that, we'll be flying on wings of freedom to Free Speech's sweet home, Rumble.
Here's Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek, thanks for joining us.
It's good to see you, man.
Vivek, this cannot be an easy time to have off-the-cuff, spontaneous conversations about politics, when the world's best comedians, like Dave Chappelle, find themselves unable to appease an audience with regard to a subject that you've spoken very boldly and bravely on, the escalating crisis in the Middle East, and it's almost its unique position now.
As part of a cluster of wars that you might call a kind of omni-war, an emergent global war, and I wonder if you can comment on that and I wonder if you can let me know really what you feel Vivek about the The entry into an already fractured, sensorial and conflagratory cultural space, the mother of all controversial issues, an issue where it seems that it's not enough to say, well, we just want violence to end, we want war to end, where people across the spectrum on that conflict want outspoken advocacy and condemnation of their opponents.
How are you coping with that?
As you make such great progress in your own campaign to be the Republican nominee.
Well, Russell, I think it's become increasingly clear that I am a lone voice in the Republican Party standing out against World War III and against war more broadly.
So I know you're on the other side of the pond, but as you know, I'm running for U.S.
president.
So I'm looking at this from a U.S.
perspective, and I don't think we should apologize for that.
My job as U.S.
president, if I'm elected, my moral obligation is to the American people.
Now, even in America now, that is a controversial thing to say, which is interesting to understand what's lurking beneath the surface of that.
And so I look at all of the conflicts emerging now as somewhat related in escalating the risk of World War III.
Think about the funding package that's making its way through U.S.
Congress now.
Biden has called for a $106 billion foreign aid package.
The majority of that is still directed at Ukraine.
$61 billion on top of the billions and hundreds of billions we've spent escalating that war in a way that I don't think advances anybody's interests except for a select few who stand to benefit from this conflict.
And I think that itself is a disaster that is already, and I'm going to get to the Middle East and the Israel point in a second, but the context is really important here, Russell, is already against the backdrop of major conflict brewing by way of proxies between the U.S.
and Russia, between the West and Russia.
We're driving Russia further into China's hands with the Russia-China alliance.
We have a no-win war that, if you look back now, it's been confirmed in recent days, Ukraine could have Agreed to terms of peace they were willing to a long time ago, except for the US and also your guy, Boris Johnson, goading them further into war.
That's where we are today.
And then this general logic that just because Putin is bad, that means Ukraine is good.
That's a false premise for continuing this war.
I mean, this is a country in Ukraine that has banned 11 opposition parties, that has outright consolidated all media into one state media arm.
Yes, there are familiar feelings that that happens in the West more broadly, but that's happening here in Ukraine.
You have a country that has effectively threatened not to hold its elections but for U.S.
forking over more money.
And by the way, occupied regions of the Donbas, like Luhansk and Donetsk, that are Russian-speaking, many of which don't view themselves even as really part of Ukraine, have not been represented in the Ukrainian parliament.
Against this backdrop, we're escalating our way into major conflict between nuclear powers and driving Russia further into China's arms.
It's nonsense.
So that's why I've called for a clear, fair, rational path to peace in Ukraine.
And I've laid out, and we can go into it, the terms of what that deal would look like.
But then right around that same time, now you see the escalation towards a possible broader regional conflict in the Middle East.
And I say this against the backdrop of what Hamas did to Israel.
It was wrong.
It was barbaric.
I said it at the time.
I say it now.
It was wrong.
And Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself and its own national self-existence.
But now we're seeing a cascade where I hope I'm wrong about this, Russell.
I really do, but I can see it with clarity.
Here's what I fear is about to happen.
Israel goes south into this ground invasion with Gaza without any clear objectives.
That then causes Hezbollah, they've said that this is their red line, to attack Israel from the north.
Right when Israel is mired in the South, that's a two-front conflict.
No way the U.S.
doesn't then get involved.
The U.S.
is involved.
That then triggers Iranian-backed militias through the Middle East who have said that U.S.
involvement is their red line to hit targets.
The Houthis in Yemen have said it.
The Bata Brigade in Iraq has said it.
The U.S.
has its largest embassy in Baghdad.
Now we're mired in a large-scale conflict in the Middle East.
We've done that before.
We don't want to do it again yet.
Yes, yet again we are on the path to potentially doing it.
Civilian casualties will mount in Gaza.
International allies will then turn their back on Israel.
And even if Israel does succeed in toppling Hamas, what then?
After Al Qaeda, you've got ISIS.
After Hamas 1.0, you're probably slated for Hamas 2.0.
And then this rolls out the red carpet, of course, for then China to be the ultimate winner of this and go after Taiwan while the U.S.
is mired in conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East, some of which have actually driven our already adversaries further into China's hands.
And that's a path to World War III.
And I don't think that that's an exaggeration.
So I know that took a little while for me to explain because I think these things have to be looked at in the context of one another for the risk of major conflict, dare I call it World War Three.
And so my job as the U.S.
President, I have clear pads, a clear vision of how to keep us out of World War Three.
And yet the shocking part is I am the only person in the Republican Party offering a clear stance on opposing World War III, a clear stance against this $106 billion aid package that Biden has proposed for wars that I think are not on track to advance American interests.
And it's precisely in times like these.
I mean, you brought up what does this have to do with the Jon Stewart piece?
Well, it's during times of crisis that we need free speech and open debate the most.
You know, it's easy and fashionable now to go back and say, oh, the Iraq war was bad and Afghanistan was bad.
Yes, it was.
But that's easy for people to say now.
That's lazy almost, because many of those people back then were the ones calling for that war.
They won't admit it.
They hope you weren't listening to them 20 years ago.
Well, the harder part is remember why we got into those wars.
They said after 9-11, shut up, sit down, do as you're told, follow the plan.
Well, it's moments like these that effectively you're being asked to do the same thing as an American or otherwise.
And that's the real danger of how we got into those wars.
So easy to sit in an armchair and say, oh, we shouldn't have been in Iraq.
Yeah, I said it at the time and I say it today, too.
The harder part is standing up with conviction when everybody else surrounding you is saying, skip the debate and march straight into that war again.
And I'm not refusing.
I'm refusing to comply.
To the contrary, I'm looking to lead this country in a manner that actually speaks with a spine in a manner that other Republicans seem, frankly, too afraid of their own shadow to be able to do.
Yes, Vivek, I think that's important and it is extraordinary how people are willing to mobilise condemnation of, if not entirely latent, conflicts due to the ongoing consequences of many of those actions, in particular across that region.
Certainly willing to speak out with a kind of advocacy and confidence that was As you point out, absent at the time.
One aspect or a few aspects of your answer I'd love to follow up on.
You're quite right, it was Boris Johnson of the UK that interrupted the potential peace deal between Zelensky and Putin at a time when a different pathway was clearly open.
And that is curious.
Another thing I want to touch upon is the bundling together, financially but perhaps even ideologically, these conflicts.
When you start to create aid packages of a hundred billion dollars, as you point out, the majority of which goes to Ukraine, a small amount goes to the conflict in the Middle East, some even preparatory aid for Taiwan.
You start to create I think a mental image that these wars are somehow conflated with one another, instead of discrete, distinct conflicts, each of which has to be understood in its own unique context.
And at some point, I would have to agree with you.
I mean, and how can this be a controversial thing to say?
A pathway towards peace has to be considered, particularly for you as a potential US president.
And just to let you know that 50% of our audience, at very least, ...are in the United States of America.
That's generally speaking where people consume our content.
What I'd also like to comment on is the way that you mapped out that trajectory, how the escalation of a Middle Eastern conflict in particular, even without taking a side ideologically, all of us have a responsibility to look at, hold on a minute, and then Hezbollah, hang on a minute, and now US, now Iran, whoa, where are we going with this?
It seems that we are heading towards World War.
It seems that if you're able to make that analysis, perhaps people that are heavily advocating for further expenditure and more aggression for this conflict and others have also got an idea that that's a potential outcome.
Is it conceivable Vivek, that they know that this can lead to at least an escalating conflict because there's no doubt that that will happen, but potentially even something that is global and that they can accommodate that vision and maybe even want it.
Or do you think they just haven't thought it through?
Well, it depends on who you're talking about.
Different people fall into different parts of that category.
And I'm sitting in a room here in Iowa in the middle of the campaign trail.
I can just make sure you can hear me well, right, Russell?
Good.
So listen, I think you raise an important point.
Even if you look at this morning, I wake up to Mitch McConnell, and this is not a Republican versus Democrat point in the U.S.
I want you all to really understand this.
This is not the traditional partisan conflict that they try to shoehorn into red versus blue, Republican versus Democrat.
No.
It's a bipartisan establishment in the U.S.
in both the majority of the electeds in the Republican and the Democrat party that are marching us towards this war.
These parties that otherwise disagree on everything, you know, they'll bash heads or pretend to bash heads.
On everything here at home, on some domestic cultural war and, you know, every Republican likes to be more outraged than the next about men swimming in women's swimming competitions, which I'm against too, but it's a pissing contest to show outrage.
But when it comes to the stuff that matters on foreign policy, they pretend like they're on the other, they pretend like they're opposed to the other side.
They're really on the same team.
Mitch McConnell called these conflicts interconnected.
So I want to say something about a path to world war, Russell, is the way you describe these conflicts may actually affect the way the conflicts themselves work.
I mean, that's the relationship between diplomacy and war.
And so seeing these conflicts inherently as having to be funded together or not, I think actually escalates the risk of correlation in how we potentially, God forbid, end up in World War III.
Now, your question is, are there vested interests or is this just stupidity?
I think there are elements of both.
Some people absolutely have their head in the sand.
It's amazing that even many of the politicians that will criticize me for lack of foreign policy experience I don't think they could tell you which provinces in eastern Ukraine are even occupied.
I don't think they could tell you what happened in 2014 that led us to the history of now.
They're just puppets, listless vessels, to borrow a term of Ron DeSantis, you know, in terms of reciting the slogans of their super-packed puppet masters.
They don't even know what they're saying for some of them.
For others of them, they absolutely are not dumb people, but they stand to benefit from it.
The Pentagon's budget this year, that's the, you know, here in the US, for those of you who don't know the Pentagon, that's the military branch of, the military of, the umbrella for all of the military branches and organizations where the decisions are made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the people who run the military.
That's the way to think about it.
The Defense Department, the Pentagon's budget, half of it, 50% of it, it's like an $850 billion budget, is going to defense contractors this year.
I don't want to go off on this side tangent too far, but it's worth just understanding the context.
Back in 1993 in the United States, under President Bill Clinton, so now there's a Democrat, the Defense Secretary convened a meeting of all of the defense contractors.
Back then it was like 50 some odd defense contractors.
And the government Well, I mean, this sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theory.
It's not.
It's just plain old mundane reality coordinated for these defense contractors to start merging with one another.
So, they consolidated some 50-odd defense contractors over the years into five defense contractors.
Now, just take a look at the cost of one of the stingers.
That's a shoulder-bearing weapon, effectively, that's born today, and we're sending them to Ukraine.
It is up from like $25,000 back then to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Even if you adjust for inflation and the cost of technology equipment improvement, that's an over 7x increase for the cost of the exact same thing.
After you saw the government coordinated consolidation of the contractors to the military, many of whom are then in bed with that same government.
So yes, what Dwight D Eisenhower called the military industrial complex, it is alive.
It is real.
You look at the other candidates in the Republican presidential field.
I mean, one of my competitors in this race is a woman by the name of Nikki Haley.
She is somebody who, after her short stint at the UN, which she uses to brandish as her foreign policy experience, her real foreign policy experience came when her family afterwards exploits those UN connections and government connections and otherwise to start, you guessed it, a military contracting business.
You guessed it, to join the board of Boeing, which she did special favors for back when she was a governor of South Carolina.
So my litmus test is if you are making money off your time of government connections and worst category of all, making money off of war or the path to war, you are disqualified From being the commander-in-chief, and yet we live in a world right now where the establishment, from the media, to both political parties, to the super PAC puppet masters, label that foreign policy experience and then push us further in that direction into war.
These are the mistakes that took us into places like Iraq.
We're making those same mistakes all over again.
So are there cynical forces at work, people who stand to make money off of this?
Absolutely.
And are they exploiting others in their own party to then say some of whom are too uneducated or undereducated on these issues to then come along and compliantly follow the plan?
Yes.
So it's both, Russell, is the answer.
And I think that is why they are allergic.
I mean, they're having an anaphylactic reaction to an outsider like me.
I'll just give you a couple examples.
I'm not A person who spins up victimhood narratives and cries about it.
To the contrary.
I'm going to show up and I think we're going to win this thing.
But just to give you a sense for what type of allergic reaction.
At first they said, oh yeah, young guy, a little bit different.
It's a cute little addition to the race.
And we can brandish that as a, you know, a nice little trinket for the Republican party.
But now it turns out into the race.
Here I am.
They're doing everything in their power to shut me up.
I mean, you turn on mainstream media on a given day, you see the treatment that I'm able to get right now for my contrary informed policy views here to keep us in peace rather than in war.
That's a cardinal sin right now.
And you can see the establishment in both parties coming for me.
Super PACs, those are the cancer on American politics, the farce where they say there's limits on how much you can contribute to a campaign.
It's a lie.
There are no limits on how much the multi-billionaire class, frankly, that donates to both parties, is donating in this particular case to Republican potential candidates, propping them up.
There's closed door summits where they're deciding which candidate they're going to put up against Trump.
I'm not invited to those, but the Ron DeSantis' and Nikki Haley's of the world are sparring and begging these people licking their boots for money.
That's part of the corrupt system.
And then you see the kinds of things that are happening even at events that I'm going to.
This is one I haven't talked about publicly, but I'm here in Iowa on this trip just a few days ago.
I'm going on stage and everybody else is speaking at this event, right?
Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, I'm speaking.
You know, we get up on the back of a, on a stage in a room full of people in Iowa.
Literally, I can see it on my timer.
It's still like 30 seconds left before we go off.
Just for me, not for any other candidate.
And I mentioned some of these foreign policy views in that speech.
The music starts playing, like it's literally, they've got like blaring outgoing music, like I was supposed to walk out.
I just stayed on stage for the full song.
It was very, it was, it was enjoyably awkward, but you know, I, I wait till that finish and then I'm going to finish my speech and make sure people hear what I have to say.
But this is not going according to the plan of the establishment.
If a guy is defecting from the Republican party right now in the United States, Their goal is to suffocate this.
They don't want debate on the merits.
Because we win on the debate on the merits.
What should we be spending our money on?
National defense.
Protect your own borders.
I think that'd be good for Israel.
Protect its own borders.
But my job is to run for U.S.
President.
Protect our own borders.
I think it'd be good if the U.S.
didn't economically depend on China as much anymore.
Onshore production to this country.
But in the meantime, avoid catastrophic World War III, which is otherwise what we're barreling forward into.
And that's a foreign policy agenda that apparently the Republican Party, the Democrat Party alike, don't want an insurgent Canada to actually state in public.
And that's exactly what I'm doing.
And I think that's The first step to keeping us out of wars that don't advance our interest is actually embracing more speech, not less speech, more free speech and open debate.
And it's when they tell you to shut up that you have to actually grow the spine to actually be more vocal than ever.
That's our best chance to keeping our way out of this major conflict.
I can see why there would be an appetite to censor you with music or with not including you in super PAC conventions because you are an innovative and discursive thinker and, in my reckoning, precisely what's required within a Republican party that elsewise risks being captured by the same kind of militarist interests that have conventionally held sway, as you've explained beautifully, Vivek, over both parties.
When it comes to the historic conflict between Israel and Palestine now, of course I have sympathies to all of the parties directly involved and suffering as a result of that horrific war.
There's no question that throughout the history of that region, or at least certainly the relatively modern history, that it united kingdom interests, Corporate interest, US interest have made conflicts in that region a lot worse precisely because of the military-industrial complex relationships and the ability that energy companies and the military-industrial complex have had to assert and exert influence over American and, you know, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, UK foreign policy.
What's striking at this time, and perhaps the way that you say super PACs are set up and elections are sewn up and favoured political candidates are shut out, or people that are willing to speak out against the establishment speak out against censorship, speak out against wars that have not been correctly contemplated are shut down is perhaps because of
the size and scale of the influence of this awful monopoly that you just
described that collapsed from 50 organizations to just five. And you're right, the
relationships of potential opponents with military-industrial complex
companies should mean that they forego inclusion in any race for
office of the nature that you are currently pursuing. What I feel, Vivek, very
strongly is that potentially now the centrist political class, the kind of
the centrist political class, the kind of neocon candidates that are visible on both sides of the aisle,
neocon candidates that are visible on both sides of the aisle as opposed to
as opposed to the more radical, sometimes demagogic, innovative, charismatic figures that
the more radical, Vivek very strongly is that potentially now,
are emerging that previously, presumably, would have been in the independent space,
in the case of RFKR, are perhaps the only chance that US politics, and therefore global politics,
have of pursuing a trajectory that seems to, by my reckoning, include the potential of world war as a favorable outcome,
as it's the kind of crisis that would permit the type of controls many believe we saw piloted
during the pandemic era.
It facilitates censorship, it facilitates lockdown, it facilitates the closing down of dissent.
Do you feel that if we have an election between party stooge candidates, Biden and whoever you would nominate as a stooge within your own party, that the advance towards war is inevitable because we'll be denied the possibility for proper conversations?
Is America, and indeed the world's only hope, to start considering Outsider candidates that are willing to speak out against their parties and to speak out against the kind of narratives that at the moment, it seems astonishing to me, aren't being questioned.
The possibility of alliance between China and Russia, terrifying.
The possibility of limitless escalation in the Middle East, terrifying.
The fact that we're bundling together funding without thinking about it, not to mention the fact that the military-industrial complex And America, as essentially their agent, sells arms to 57% of the autocracies in the world.
And even, it's potentially true, I'm sure you're aware of the CIA whistleblower that said maybe even Hamas's weapons were American-made, in office What would you do to match the invective of your campaigning to ensure that the military-industrial complex doesn't have that role in the world, given the importance of it and the power of the MIC in American political life?
It could be argued, many would argue, they're more powerful than either the Democrat Party or the Republican Party.
They dictate foreign policy.
Are you willing to oppose that and prevent arms being sent to autocratic nations and to stand up against those kind of organizations and their current Influence.
Now if you're watching this anywhere other than Rumble, Vivek Ramaswamy is about to comment on the, what he calls, this is his phrase and I don't know if it's a fair phrase to use, let me know if you agree, what he calls the Biden family and their criminal enterprises.
If you want to hear Vivek Ramaswamy talk about that and how it relates to the current Ukraine-Russia conflict, click the link in the description and join us there.
I mean, so you hit on a really important point, actually, which is the way in which we're often funding both sides of these conflicts and somebody else is making money off it.
It reminds me of Times Square, New York.
There was this guy that was selling, the guy who was selling an Israel flag and a Palestine flag to whoever wanted to buy it.
It's interesting that that guy in Times Square was making money from selling the flags.
People are buying from both sides of him.
But it's not that different than the military-industrial complex.
Even if you think about a conflict that nobody else, for whatever reason, seems to have any other interest in.
It's interesting how the good versus evil shows up in Russia versus Ukraine, but not in a different part of the Russian periphery in what's going on in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
And I'm not advocating U.S.
military involvement there at all, but it is interesting how nobody talks about how 120,000 Christians are being displaced in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Armenians live, back to Armenia as Azerbaijan's literally just rolled in and invaded.
But part of the uncomfortable fact is that the U.S.
has made for special exemptions that has sold and transferred arms, people making money off it, U.S.
allies, too, have armed Azerbaijan.
And so It's pervasive, this problem that you described.
And I know it's self-serving for a guy like me to say, no, this is why it takes an outsider, insurgent, anti-establishment candidate to win.
Like, this is an electoral pitch.
But I just think factually, me or somebody, it's got to be the case to be able to break this system.
Now, the reason I'm able to do it is that, and it's sad that it works this way.
It really is.
I wish it weren't this way.
But it's just a law of nature, Russell.
It's like a principle of physics.
This may be more immutable than some principles of physics, okay?
We went from Newtonian physics to, you know, an Einsteinian view to, you know, let's say a post-Einsteinian view today, string theory.
So even those things change.
This one doesn't change.
Every politician dances to the tune of their biggest donor.
Certainly in the U.S.
It's like a law of nature.
And in my case, that biggest donor is me.
I'm 38.
I've lived the full American dream.
I founded multi-billion dollar companies.
And so I don't want to be somebody else's circus monkey.
But unfortunately, that is what it takes.
It's not a system where anybody can step up and do this.
I wish it were.
But it doesn't work that way.
Politics is mother's milk.
It is money.
And so, one of the ways I'm able to do this, even getting shut out by the establishment media and otherwise now, it's one thing if I'm anti-woke and against the cult of racialism and transgenderism and even against some of the climate statements.
Okay, well that started to cross into really third rail territory.
But now, opposing these wars, that was the ultimate trigger that shuts me out of the mainstream.
So I'm spending time reaching people in roomfuls of 50, 60 people, 100, 200 people at a time in places like Iowa, where I've been in the last few days.
And my bet is that there's still some last vestige of the system where we, the people, can actually decide who governs, rather than having it decided in the back of palace halls, which is how it was done in Old World England.
But it's a myth to say that somehow that's not how it's done in modern America.
That's mostly how it's done in modern America, but there are slivers where we can exploit the crack.
And what I see is ordinary people across this country, they do not want to go to war.
Especially people in my generation.
I'm 38.
We grew up into the government lying to us about Iraq and Afghanistan.
$6.5 trillion.
See, the US has a $33 trillion national debt problem.
By the way, people forget that when they're signing up and sneezing $100 billion here, $100 billion there.
How about the backdrop of the fact that we're basically bankrupt to the tune of $33 trillion?
$33 trillion. But of that $33 trillion, $6.5 trillion was attributable just to Iraq and
Afghanistan and more than the money even.
Thousands upon thousands of our sons and daughters in this country, people my age and my generation, lives sacrificed that we will never get back.
We're on track to repeat those same mistakes all over again.
When I'm in roomfuls of people here, of actual citizens of this country, nobody wants to see that happen.
And yet the people who they've elected to office, through that broken, corrupted system are taking steps decisively to march us and make sure that same thing happens all over again.
And I just think that now is the time to debate these questions, right?
So let's just go into, for example, the Israel case which you raised.
There's a couple of different separate questions that I think we ought not conflate.
One question is that certain people will raise humanitarian questions or questions of proportionality or whatever.
I'm not even focused on that.
Put that to one side.
I think Israel does have the right to defend itself.
Absolutely.
You know, others may disagree with me on that.
Fine.
I'm on this side of the question.
Israel as a nation absolutely has the right to defend itself.
But I'm asking a different question, which is the one that they're actually even more
keen to suppress within the Republican Party.
Who says that this ground invasion is even going to be a good idea for Israel on its
terms of national self-defense?
Who said this is somehow ordained to succeed?
I think there are a lot of reasons to say it would not succeed, and that even if it does succeed nominally, what comes after Hamas?
That should not be beyond the pale to ask that question.
Should not be beyond the pale to ask how the heck did that security breach?
How the heck did that intelligence failure happen in the first place as well?
Those should be basic questions that are addressed now to say the money saved on a ground invasion, might that be better spent securing Israel's own border?
Just as we in the United States should be asking that question.
I went to the southern border of the U.S.
just a week and a week and a half ago.
I went to the northern border two weeks ago.
If that can happen in Israel, that can happen here in the United States.
And yet the irony is the same establishment that has led us into foreign wars from Iraq to Afghanistan to otherwise, has done nothing to protect this homeland.
You know, this woman by the name of Nikki Haley, she's actually calling for the Department of Defense in the U.S.
I'm not making this up.
I was here in Iowa at the same time.
She's calling for a Department of Offense.
I mean, that's ridiculous, right?
Now, I want you to use this.
I could care less for this particular individual, but she's a symptom of a deeper cancer in American politics.
And the donor class is now propping her up.
The mainstream media has decided that she should be the one opposing Donald Trump.
Just think about this for a second.
This is somebody who's saying the Department of Defense, which has badly failed to defend the American homeland, which is as vulnerable as it's ever been, is calling for, she's saying the quiet part out loud, make it a department of offense.
And by the way, this is the person who, after her short stint at the UN, started Or her family certainly did.
A military contracting business.
Made millions.
Went from being personally in debt to being a rich person.
Eight million some odd bucks made in the short time after the UN.
Joining the board of companies like Lockheed Martin.
And then now literally calling for a Department of Offense instead of a Department of Defense.
These people are bloodthirsty.
They're rooting for war.
What do these people screech?
She's screeching, finish them!
Finish them!
That's a slogan from Mortal Kombat, in case people forgot.
That's a video game.
Finishing them as though that's a model for American foreign policy.
Finish who?
They hide behind the smokescreen of saying they might mean Hamas without a clear strategy of what comes after Hamas.
But actually, it's not what they mean.
Finish them is purposefully vague.
Finish who?
It is the vague nebulous enemy.
Do they mean Iran?
Do they mean Russia?
And part of the point, I think, is to escalate for World War III.
And some of these people that, you know, the Biden family's in this category, I'd put the Haley family in this category.
When they pull the trigger, they ring the cash register for their own family.
I mean, Joe Biden, I think his son, their family sold off American foreign policy to make their family rich.
It is not an accident that we're sending We're sending billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to the very country that, huh, figure this one out, made a multi-million dollar bribe to the son of the president who had no business on Burisma's board.
I mean, this guy is barely qualified to do an ordinary job in this country, let alone to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company where he has no expertise, paid $5 million.
Is it an accident that when that same president or former vice president, now president, Is sending hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxpayer money to that same country?
It is not.
And I don't care if it's a Joe Biden version of this in the Democratic Party, a Nikki Haley version of this in the Republican Party, and it's symptomatic of other people in the Republican Party that have the same problem.
That's not good for the United States of America.
And Believe me, a lot of people in the establishment media, in the super PAC class, in the donor class, I can't tell you the number of, you know, potential backers I've lost over just saying the things I just told you there in that last 60 seconds.
But again, I'm not going to be somebody's circus monkey.
On a personal level, I would rather lose the election than to win by playing some careful political snakes and ladders.
But for the country, it's bad that the system works that way, because otherwise we're going to have somebody who's going to march us back into World War III, and I don't want to see that happen.
When you describe how immersed and institutionally corrupt both the Republican Party and Democratic Party are in terms of the kind of familial ties, their willingness to do the bidding of the military-industrial complex, and When you observe that in all likelihood the ability of the military-industrial complex to dictate foreign policy, even though it's harmful to American interests and potentially even the interests of their declared partners, that there's potentially an exploitative
Agenda that is both curiously familial in the case of Hunter Biden's opportunities with Burisma and potentially global when you think of Black Rock's post-Ukraine war in the event that there is a post-Ukraine war opportunities in rebuilding that nation as a kind of digital pilot scheme for a surveillance state.
Certainly one of the stories we've seen mooted.
Did it make you feel But these interests are so entrenched that you would have to enter the White House with a mandate to, for example, ban politicians in either the Republican and Democrat party from owning stocks and shares in companies that they regulate.
Certainly if they sit on special committees, you know, the kind of Nancy Pelosi type ability to be ahead of the market, that would have to be curtailed.
And perhaps even more terrifyingly, If not, I mean, for me, you talk about super PACs and stuff, but almost that, once in office, what do you do about donations?
What do you do about lobbying?
What do you do to prevent the United States operating as a kind of agent for the weapons industry when it comes to arms sales around the world?
Biden's famous lie about making Saudi Arabia a pariah before making their military capacity
a little higher with deals that went beyond any of the deals that Trump did, which were
condemned by the Democrats while Trump was in office.
These kind of policies, Vivek, are obviously much more incendiary than the rhetoric that
you're currently using.
And so are you willing to commit to policies like that, and indeed have you already?
And also, since you've been doing this, what has it done to you?
Since you've been running and having these conversations, what has it done to you spiritually?
What has it done to your feelings as a man?
You must have encountered things that are kind of damaging to encounter.
I'm not suggesting that you've been damaged by them.
I can see you're a very robust and strong person.
But what has it done to your kind of spirit to see, you know, even small things like they fade the music up to larger things like you're not invited to participate in that type of funding?
You know, that type of thing is almost, I almost laugh at that because that's exactly the system coming at me.
But the stuff that deals less with me, Russell, but an observation of now having the curtain lifted and seeing how the game actually works, that part has left me I would say it's a, it's a work in progress.
We're not, we're going to see this race through.
And so you're catching me probably halfway through this thing, right?
But it has left me cynical and jaded in a way that's not natural for me.
I'm a, I'm a naturally optimistic person.
And in my heart of heart, I still am optimistic for the future of this country, but it is, it's not, it doesn't leave you with the same optimistic Bullions, okay, that I began this campaign with.
And I think we're going to finish there.
We're going to get to that destination.
But I think having seen the game played the way that it is, having understood the expectations of how you're supposed to treat the super PAC puppet masters versus ordinary voters, just as a matter of the system, I'm not playing the game that way.
I hope I win this election.
My heart says we have a very good path to do it, but irrespective of me knowing that this is how the game works and kind of having seen it firsthand, it is discouraging.
No doubt about it.
It is deeply, it makes one deeply cynical.
It makes one jaded.
I mean, it makes a guy like me impulses, you know, that you have to sort of think about, okay, a guy like me has lived the full American dream, right?
I founded successful companies.
We've made, This country has given us the opportunity to achieve immense success and that includes wealth and we have two young sons.
One's three and a half years old, one's a year old.
My wife is doing outstanding work.
She's one of the best in the world at what she does as a throat surgeon.
We're living a great life with our family.
I mean, there are moments where you just wonder, Why bother?
We could just, we're going to be fine either way, really.
I mean, that's the reality for a lot of people who have been in the position that I'm in.
It's a reality for us.
We're going to be fine either way.
The country's not going to be fine.
And so that's what pulls me back into this, but there are moments that just make you think about if this is the way the game is played, screw it.
You know, why don't we just, why the heck don't you just opt out and just go live a better life for yourself?
And a lot of people who have achieved the kind of success that I have are making exactly that decision.
And it's sort of a jaded and cynical thing to watch.
But it's also part of what gives me my renewed sense of purpose.
Then you double back down and say, you know what?
If you're not going to do it, who else is?
You have a lot of good-hearted patriots in this country.
I meet them every day.
But money is the mother's milk of politics.
And if you've been given and blessed with the resources to be able to see this through, then if you don't do this now, I don't think we're going to have a country left.
And in some ways that cynicism comes back with a vengeance to come back and give me my redoubled sense of purpose
to see this through.
So on a personal level, that's kind of where you're catching me.
A little unstructured reflection, at least on that.
And I think it's something that will catch me three months from now and I'll let you know
how I feel about it.
As it relates to policies that I'm committing to, yeah, I think that this isn't that complicated, right?
So I don't think members of Congress or regulators or people who work in the federal bureaucracy should be able to trade personally individual stocks.
It should be all left to a blind trust.
They shouldn't know what they own or what they're trading at a given time.
It can come out with retrospect later.
That's the way that this should be done.
It's not complicated.
Now, I say this as somebody who began my career in the investment world.
I'm going to just state something obvious.
These congressmen and these bureaucrats, they would be better off financially if they weren't trading their own stocks, unless it was based on corrupt intentions, in which case they're going to do better.
That's the only way these people, these clowns, are going to do better than professional investors in a competitive market.
These are mostly clowns that would ordinarily, if they're behaving honestly, they would do better to leave their money invested In a blind trust by somebody who's not picking individual stocks or picking individual stocks without their knowledge, that would be the financially sensible decision, unless they were actually doing it and using their special access to information to be able to enrich themselves, which is exactly what's happening.
So I put an end to that.
No lobbying of the government.
For 10 years, at least, if you've been part of that government.
If you have been part of a bureaucracy or a regulator that has regulated an industry, you should not be able to serve on boards in that industry for at least 10.
Fine, let's at least make it five years after leaving office.
I think it's pathetic that you have a former head of the FDA immediately going and plopping on the board of Pfizer.
You see the same thing with the defense industrial complex.
You have a person like Nikki Haley, made special favors for Boeing in South Carolina while she was the governor of South Carolina.
After her time in government, she's now sitting, until this race, sitting on the board of Boeing.
In her particular case, for another company, collecting stock options while she is literally running for president.
As far as I know, that's unprecedented in U.S.
history.
Yet here we are.
These are basic rules of the road that should not be controversial.
And these aren't Republican ideas or Democrat ideas.
On the Super PACs, Democrats used to rail against them.
Now, they look the other way when they're the beneficiaries of the same game that the Republicans are playing.
My view is pretty simple.
If you're going to spend money on a campaign as an entity, or if you're going to run ads for a specific candidate, which is what a campaign does, then you're just bound by the same rules that the campaigns are.
$3,300 maximum.
Now, in the U.S., I'm a free speech absolutist.
I believe in free expression to the fullest.
but free expression means there's already rules that for certain other entities other than super PACs there are limitations to say you can't give to a candidate but you can advocate for whatever cause you want and you could put as much money into an entity that advocates for a specific cause a policy or a cultural vision there should be no restrictions on that but if you're advocating for a candidate And now the super PACs are literally running.
I mean, if you take a guy like Ron DeSantis, his entire campaign is literally being run down to operations to people who are knocking on doors or handing out leaflets or putting stuff in mail or advertising on television.
It's being run by the super PAC.
So if that's the case, that's corruption because obviously This is not disputed.
These people show up at events hosted by the super PACs to raise the money.
That's just running the campaign.
That's corruption.
The whole point of the $3,300 maximum in donating to a primary of a presidential election is to prevent a corrupting influence.
I would reinstitute that.
So those are what I would call my anti-corruption measures.
I've laid them out.
I'm absolutely committed to them.
And the irony is that the ideas that should be least controversial amongst Republicans and Democrats Thank you for that.
that are most controversial for a guy like me running within the primary, but I'm not
going to stop until we're done.
Thank you for that.
It's almost as if these institutions are organized to prevent individuals who might be ideologically
oriented, who might be in a position to make a meaningful difference, who might have the
personal confidence and principles to oppose the degree of corruption, be dissuaded from
ever entering the system.
In a sense, in a smaller, less relevant but comparable way, you see the same even in the entertainment industry.
The kind of products and commodities and individuals that succeed are the ones that are supportive of the The ideology of the time, even if that's a tacit ideology like materialism or progress or atheism or corporatism or consumerism.
I'm not even talking about like the hot button topics that define our time and that have become so divisive.
It's almost like the cultural machinery, the political machinery, are in alignment to sort of self-sustain, which I suppose
perhaps is a system's primary goal, is to prevent itself from being destroyed, particularly
from within. It seems though that we are at a tipping point that began, observably at
least, it seems in our country with the sort of Brexit movement, across Europe with anti-EU
parties that were opposed to measures taken after the 2008 financial crash. Trump evidently in
your country, and then that has progressed I think into figures like yourself and Bobby
Kennedy. Do you feel like what that tells us perhaps?
Is that the institutions themselves, even though when I talk to people that I respect and like, like Marianne Williamson, she would say, no, I have to do what I can for the Democrat Party within the Democrat Party.
Do you think that given the tide of corruption, the deep institutionalism, But really what is required is that, you know, let me ask you a host of things, you know, Bobby Kennedy's gone from trying to oppose Biden within the Democrats to running as an independent.
And several times you and I have both over this conversation, Vivek, observed That is a kind of neocon-centrist alliance that always comes together on matters of war even if they're willing to have highly invective spats when it comes to cultural issues.
When it comes to the major matters they fall in line.
Do you think that Even the apparent distinctions between Republican and Democrat are as not as radical as the distinction between anti-institutional thinkers from both parties and therefore is there an emerging sense that it's the machine itself that needs to be challenged which can only really happen from outside of it as it amounts to a kind of, well as you've said before and I agree with this, a revolutionary uprising.
Yeah, so look, I think the real divide in this country, it's interesting to use the word culturally incendiary invective.
The real cynical side of me, Russell, the more I'm seeing about this is thinking that all of it is in part just a production and a smokescreen to create the artifice of real disagreement or division That sidesteps the real third rail that they care to protect, which is the pro-war agenda from a foreign policy perspective.
Call it liberal hegemony, call it neoconservatism.
Two different ways of describing the same worldview.
And I think that's a big part of what's going on in moments like this one.
So, I think the real divide in the country, in the U.S.
today, it's not between black and white, as the media would at times have you believe.
It is not even between Republican and Democrat, not really.
It is between, in one version of this certainly, the managerial class.
And the everyday citizen.
Okay, what is the managerial class?
It is sort of the swamp that exists within government.
It's a horizontal class of people, the same people who become the undersecretary of God knows what in some deputy position of the bureaucracy of the federal government, who then become an associate dean of God knows what at a university, an ambassador to some second tier country abroad that then becomes the professional person who sits on on a corporate board of directors, the Lockheed directors
or the Raytheon directors on a given day. It's a horizontal class. It's the same class of people
that are crushing the will of everyday citizens by wielding control over the
institutions that they were supposed to safeguard but are actually exploiting to horizontally permeate
institutions and advance their own That's what you might call the Great Reset on one side.
It is the dissolution of barriers between the public sector and the private sector.
The dissolution of the barriers between nations, actually.
This is a trans-partisan, but transnational phenomenon as well.
The dissolution of boundaries, and we can talk about this in a little more philosophical, between the online world and the offline world.
That's what the metaverse is all about.
But it's the dissolution of boundaries between different spheres of our lives.
Let's stick to dissolution of boundaries between nations.
Dissolution of boundaries between public and private sector.
The dissolution of boundaries between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
That is what the Great Reset is really all about.
And then on the other side of this, you have what I call the Great Uprising, right?
I think that it's a transnational movement.
I am very focused on the U.S.
version of this.
That's the position I'm running for as President of the United States, who believe in the value of the nation, that I am a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen fighting climate change vaguely somewhere.
No, I'm a citizen of this nation, the United States of America.
It is an uprising that says hell no to the dissolution of boundaries between the public sector and private sector to create a modern form of fascism, a hybrid of corporate and state power.
So the military-industrial complex is all about, but it's really what big tech, big government is all about.
It's not big tech censorship, it is government tech censorship that does the bidding for that same force.
No, that says hell no to that vision that we, the people, decide who governs, how we settle our differences through free speech and open debate in the public square, not in the back of palace halls, not in Old World England, not in the back of a SuperPAC, not in the back of BlackRock's corner office on the Park Avenue of Manhattan today, not in the back of three-letter government agency buildings in Washington, D.C.
We say hell no to that vision.
That is what the American Revolution was fought to reject.
1776 vision said, for better or worse, and this is a crucial part of this, Russell.
For better or for worse, in the short run, we the people decide who leads and who governs.
Okay, that's a radical vision.
And so there's a lot of people in the U.S.
today, hey, say, hey, can't we all just get along, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, compromise?
No, these are Radical ideals that led to the birth of the United States of America.
The idea that you get to speak your mind openly as long as I get to in return.
That is a radical idea.
The idea that we the people sort out our differences on existential climate change, which I'm using their words, not mine.
The idea that we the people could settle that difference through a constitutional republic.
That is a wild idea because for most of human history it was done the other way.
So what you see really is a skepticism of the ideals of the American Revolution itself.
That's what's on the table right now.
I think we live in a 1776 moment.
I do.
And if that makes you uncomfortable a little bit, Good.
That's what the American Revolution was not fought to make people feel comfortable.
Right?
These are radical ideals that we have to, at times, take quantum leap steps, not just moderate steps, to fight and preserve.
Fight for and preserve.
And that's one of those moments we live in right now.
And I think it's going to take a leader that recognizes that.
You can't win a war unless you first recognize that you're in one.
And so I think it's going to take a leader who, A, recognizes that.
B, is not captured by the forces that gave us the status quo.
But I think that this is the other further step in this, Russell.
And, you know, I think that, you know, Trump brought elements of this.
And I respect him, actually.
I think he was a great leader in many respects.
There are other areas where I would build on that foundation and go further.
But I think it's going to take a leader who hasn't been wounded in that war.
And so that's what calls me into this.
I think it's going to take somebody with fresh legs, likely from a different generation to reach the next generation.
And we'll see where this goes.
I think that that's what it's going to take.
And there's a positive version of where this goes.
I think that in some ways, what a special time it would have been to be alive in America in the spring of 1776.
I mean, that, that would be a, it was a special time to be alive.
You have Thomas Jefferson.
I'm sitting here on a swivel chair.
You can see me swiveling, right?
Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair, the prototype of it while he was writing the declaration of independence at the age of 33.
Think about that.
There was something in the water back then.
I am optimistic that we live in a moment where we can revive the ideals of that American Revolution.
I favor doing it through peace, through activation of the energy of citizens that say hell no to that great reset in the peaceful version of a great uprising that does it through our electoral system and restores the integrity of our constitutional republic.
But if it doesn't happen that way, you know, I think That's the way I want to see it happen.
Let me just leave it at that.
I think that that's the moment we live in.
And that's what I'm looking to lead through a peaceful version of a great uprising that restores the integrity of our constitutional republic.
Vivek, when a figure like Jefferson enters into mythology, we do have a tendency to forget that they were real men.
Real people that had a real vision that they were willing to sacrifice for in order to bring about.
And it seems to me that part of the pervasive culture of our time is, except for matters that relate very directly to individualism and your ability to passively consume or passively protest without sacrifice, there's a kind of sense that the world is finished.
The famous edict that history is over.
And a kind of worldwide sense now that we're in a world where most terrain has been captured, most peaks have been scaled, many depths have been explored, that the world is over, that we've reached full saturation, that our role and our final apparition As consumers has been reached.
When we've spoken before, I've noticed in your rhetoric a kind of appetite to reawaken and revivify the principles of the founding fathers.
That kind of boldness, a willingness to embark on a brave adventure, an acknowledgement that that's going to be fraught with danger.
And when I listen to certain, sort of in particular, independent news commentators talking about the scale of corruption that we experienced during the pandemic when even in our conversation today the scope and potential for disaster that the march towards world war three plainly includes that it that what's required is a kind of firstly a revolution in consciousness when it comes to
Us all, as individuals, a willingness to look at our own lives and what motivates us and where do we see ourselves in five, ten years, both personally and on a global scale.
Obviously, I've had experiences lately working independent media where I see that the consequence and price of dissent, that dissenting voices will face serious opposition and sometimes that can be quite malign.
It's hard without scaring people.
It's hard without evoking the connotations of violence, which I noticed that you carefully stepped around, to awaken in people that this is a plain need.
This time we live in plainly has the kind of need for revolution The time that you alluded to and the people that you alluded to saw and were willing to carry out.
I suppose, though, that what we have to accept is those revolutions, whilst it was obviously a different time with different institutions and different challenges and different technology and ability to communicate, obviously revolution as part of its nature means an Overthrow of many institutions.
And when, you know, many of the things we've touched on, a military-industrial complex that's willing to risk the lives of the people of the world, the safety of the people of the world, Big Pharma, which I know you have connections to, but when we spoke previously you, you know, you said that you're an outlier and a radical in that world rather than a sort of a compliant member of a corrupt system.
That, you know, when you have Big Pharma that benefits from health crises, a military-industrial complex that benefits from military crises or wars, when you have an Energy companies that benefit from energy crisis.
It's plain that something rather radical is what's required.
When was the last time anything like that happened in your country?
Was it the revolution?
Was it the New Deal?
Is it possible that these institutions with a compliant and amplifying legacy media will provide a voice to a man like you who's willing to put these ideas in front of people and indeed, if you pursue these ideas to their natural conclusion, You're going to come up against interests that go beyond financial and go into some areas of deep state power that are pretty frightening to contemplate.
And I'm sure you've come into contact with some of the information I'm referring to there.
So how far are you willing to go when it comes to revolutionary politics?
You know, I want to also just say, I think that there's something to, just for people to know about my own background, I was an entrepreneur, right?
I mean, I'm not, I'm a business builder.
I've written some books.
This political world, or even the world of political revolution, that's not where I grew up, right?
I came to my views because of my experiences.
And one of the things I would say is, you know, people will say, or some of the things you say, do they sound conspiratorial?
Actually, I'm very different than even visionary conspiracy theorists.
What I'm describing is not conspiracy theory.
It is mundane conspiracy reality.
The real conspiracy theories are just the reality is hiding in plain sight.
I think pragmatically, Russell, to win this, I think it is going to take, I know this sounds self-serving to say, weirdly self-serving, and I don't mean it that way.
It's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I think it takes somebody like me, who understands the other side of how this game is played, understands the mundane realities of actually the merger between state and corporate power and the corruption that that creates on both sides, to be able to really be precise in how we level that system.
And that's what it's going to take.
So here's what I'm willing to do, right?
I think that I'm in this, I'm all in this for the phase of this.
And I hope that this is the only phase that's ever required to do this.
Peacefully, through the electoral process, get in there, have enough of a mandate to shut down, and I do think that, yes, this is the revolutionary aspect of what I will bring to the table as U.S.
President, to shut down the government bureaucracies from the FBI to the IRS to the ATF to the CDC to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the U.S.
Department of Education.
Government agencies that should not exist.
I've offered, these aren't slogans to me, in speeches I've given in Washington D.C.
and elsewhere, laid out unprecedented detailed plans for exactly how we will do this.
Phasing out the FBI, 35,000 employees, 20,000 will be fired, 15,000 will be reassigned.
What's the legal basis for doing it?
I've studied the current Supreme Court.
We're in a short window where we have a Supreme Court in the U.S.
that actually agrees with me.
On the unconstitutionality of much of what's being done and the constitutionality of a U.S.
president's ability to correct for it.
I win that 6-3 even if we're sued.
So that's the kind of battle I'm looking to go into is win this electoral battle, take battle against the deep state as the person who actually leads the executive branch of the government.
I've been a CEO.
I know that if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, That means they don't work for you, and I will exercise my power to gut that bureaucracy.
75% headcount reduction by the end of my first term.
Will they sue me for it?
Yes, it is.
We'll go to the legal battle.
I've studied the Supreme Court.
I understand the backstop of how we win.
That's what I'm signing up to lead, okay?
I am worried that if we don't seize this window to do it, I don't think we're working with a lot of time here, where either on one hand what we're going to have is a hegemonic combination of a corporate industrial complex, a modern version of the corporate state power, what we would call the Mussolini definition of fascism that governs, or something more that will be required to prevent that from happening.
And we're not... I'm an optimist, as you said, Russell.
I'm here to make sure we don't get there.
I've said this actually time and time again.
You tell people they cannot speak, that is when they scream.
If you tell people they cannot scream, that is when they tear things down.
And if pervasive government-private coordinated censorship suppression of the exercise of voice continues, I do worry that January 6th in this country will be a preview of 2021, will be a friendly parlay compared to what's to come.
But I am here to make sure we don't get there.
And so I'm all in for leading this now.
I think now is our moment to do it.
To Peacefully revive the ideals of the American Revolution.
I think we can do this.
I think that's the moment that we are in.
That's what I'm volunteering to lead.
I don't even relish being in the White House, by the way, right?
I mean, or riding Air Force One.
I don't think we should want somebody who relishes it.
You know, it's not that much of an upgrade from what I've been doing for the last several years anyway.
And I think that's, frankly, you don't want somebody who covets that position.
I don't.
But we're going to do it for eight years.
I'll be 48 years old when I leave in January 2033.
My older son won't be in high school.
And I think we will look back at this moment we were in now and laugh at ourselves.
That's what I'm hopeful we're going to get to.
It's just fast forward to January 2033.
10 years from now, we will look back and say, man, we were going through our version of adolescence.
That's what I want us to be saying.
You go through your adolescent years as a country.
You do some stupid things.
You lose your self-confidence.
You lose your way a little bit.
But we're stronger when we get to our adulthood on the other side.
That's the journey I believe we can be on.
That's what I want to say when I'm leaving the White House in January of 2033.
And so I want to stick to that path.
I think we have a clear shot at doing it.
I think we have clear objectives for success in this election.
And I mean, this election that's pedestrian.
I'm talking about that because I'm a candidate.
Fine.
But November 2024, that's not the destination.
That is the start line.
I think we have then an eight-year run after that to get this right, starting with the mother of all bureaucracies in the U.S.
federal government itself.
Anti-corruption measures for decoupling the private sector from the public.
Democracy and capitalism should not share the same bed.
They need a clean divorce.
Some social distancing, to use the parlance of the day.
That's what we need.
But if we get this right, yes, I'm confident that we will look at ourselves and this will go down as a phase in history where we were going through some deranged adolescence, but we found our way to revive who we really are.
I think that opportunity exists and I'm keen to make sure we capture it, but I don't think we're working with a lot of time, Russell, because I think the other path leads to some places where I don't want to see this country go.
Yeah, I agree with you and I thank you for elevating the calibre of the conversation with your personal integrity and your passion and vision, Vivek.
Thank you for that.
Now, what do you feel about the recent guilty plea of Trump's former legal advisers?
Is this the end of the road for Trump?
Is this something that's going to stick?
How do you manage to manoeuvre how that would affect you personally as one of the frontrunners for the Republican candidacy, albeit one that it's starting to seem like the party itself would prefer Not as with Trump before you, to malign and marginalise.
Where do you think Trump goes now?
Do you think this is a significant moment for him?
And how do you manage showing enough support for Trump, for the many people who adore him, as well as establishing a point of difference?
Well, part of the reason I've been so vocal in speaking out against these prosecutions against Trump, which I do think are politicized nonsense, is precisely because I am running for president in the same race that he is.
That gives me a special responsibility to actually say, you know what?
Would I have been as vocal on defending Trump if they weren't going after him?
Probably not, but I have a special responsibility to because these prosecutions are unjust.
We could talk about the legal mechanics of any given one of the cases.
I mean, the punchline is in each of these cases, they're using novel legal theories that have never been used in the past to stop an outcome from happening that has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with making sure that this man does not come anywhere near the White House again, which is they're using the legal system and the justice system to accomplish what is a fundamentally a political goal.
And that's a violation of the rule of law.
It's a violation of what the spirit of this country was founded on.
And that's not a threat to Trump, that's a threat to this country, is what this is.
It's a threat to every citizen and I'm keen to make sure that that is called out for what it is and hopefully cabinet is placed, which is why I've said that I would pardon Trump on day one if I'm elected.
And not just Trump, anybody else who's been a victim of a politically motivated persecution through prosecution of somebody else.
Under similar circumstances would not have been charged or would not have been punished in the same way from Douglas Mackey to Julian Assange to Edward Snowden.
You know, I've given a whole long list of people who we would go down.
Edward Snowden is a different case because he wasn't prosecuted, but the clemency of a particular kind, Ross Ulbricht I've talked about.
So we would go down the list.
Irrespective of Democrat or Republican.
But this is, I bring those names up because it's for me about more than just Trump.
It's about preserving the integrity of our justice system itself.
And so to call a spade a spade, here's what's going on.
You have a system, an establishment that has had an anaphylactic reaction to this antigen named Trump, that they are Stopping at nothing to making sure that he doesn't get there.
And I truly believe they will stop at nothing to make sure that this man is stopped in his tracks.
And they're using every mechanism of the so-called justice system and every other lever they have to do it.
Now, what are some of the lessons I take away from that?
Well, look, I'm a different person from Trump.
I come from a different generation.
I've got fresh legs.
One of the lessons is we cannot make this easy for them, right?
We have to hold ourselves.
That's what I'm doing in this race to the highest possible standard at every step.
I've done that in my life so far.
I'm going to have to continue doing that from here onward to make sure that we don't create tripwires where they're able to come after us.
Look, I'm living my life and we will aspire to in the white house.
I mean, the standard I want people to hold me to is I want them to be able to look their kids in the eye and say, I want you to grow up and be like him.
I can't look my two kids in the eye and tell them you have to follow the rules if the government itself doesn't follow the rules.
But I also can't look them in the eye if I'm also saying that I'm going to hold myself to the highest standard.
I want the people of this country to hold me to that same high standard.
And so I think if you're guided by that purpose, you look at what they will do to anybody to take them down with motivations that have nothing to do with what they're actually alleging against them.
Well, I think it's a lesson and I was grateful to be raised by two parents who instilled in this me at a young age and that puts me in a position to be able to do what we're doing now.
We have to hold ourselves to not the standard of being good, doing a good job, but it has to be impeccable.
It's just the way that it works.
It's not an even-handed game.
They don't apply the same standards across the board to people who come from those who tow the party line versus those who don't.
But that's part of the standard that I got to hold myself to.
And part of the sacrifice we're going to make is making sure that we play by, in a good way, a different set of rules, a heightened set of rules.
And that's what we're just going to have to do to be able to see this through.
Now, conversations like this are becoming increasingly difficult because everywhere you look, cancellations are taking place.
First they came from people no one cared about, like maybe Milo or Alex Jones.
I know loads of you do care about Milo and Alex Jones.
Then the fog of cancellation crept everywhere.
Creating a crisis where no one felt they could speak freely.
Where fear reigns supreme.
How do they benefit from creating a climate of absolute fear?
Is that the climate crisis we should really be concerned about?
The climate of all pervasive terror?
Even Jon Stewart now can't speak openly on Apple because of his views on AI and China.
Here's the news?
No.
Here's the effing news.
Thanks for refusing Fox News.
The news.
No.
Here's the effing news.
Apple are cancelling Jon Stewart.
Is it because he's critical of China, which are necessary for their manufacturing process and entire business model?
And AI, which are necessary for their entire business model?
Or is it for some other reason that's not related to money and corruption?
Now the problem is, when you embark on censoring free speech, curtailing and controlling the public discourse, it seems to be a process that gathers momentum.
It's very difficult to stop.
First of all you say, well I don't like that person, they shouldn't have free speech, and it's someone like Milo or Alex Jones or whatever.
Then it ends up being more and more people that used to be mainstream, anyone?
Spring to mind.
And then at the very end of the process, well not the end of the process because I'm sure it will continue, Jon Stewart.
Valid voices that appear to be sort of respected across the political spectrum because of the work that he did with New York first responders around 9-11, he has blue collar support, he's an intelligentsia respected guy, he's a mainstream guy, he's been in movies and all that.
Now Apple, who would have seen the acquisition of Jon Stewart's show as a kind of blue chip Acquisition, something that made their streaming service reliable and credible, are having to get rid of him.
Is that because Jon Stewart, in the end, is a critical thinker and will ultimately have to say stuff like, wow, what's going on in China?
And maybe comment on the escalating tensions between the US and China and the complexity of corporate relationships that are transcendent of national boundaries and are ultimately an expression of a globalist ideology.
And certainly the big tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, etc.
are in that transcendent big tech realm.
So ultimately you can't, can you, have a figure like Jon Stewart on your streaming service asking questions that will in the end lead to the regulation, dismantling, demonopolising of organisations like Apple.
If you start asking serious questions about Apple's business practices, you're going to come up with some answers that require intervention.
So in the end, you can't have Jon Stewart.
At least Apple can't have Jon Stewart.
They've cancelled him.
Let's have a look at that.
We worked hard on this!
Obviously they conveyed it as a sort of a serious piece of punditry.
Jon Stewart, very respected for his willingness to go out on a limb and talk about the Wuhan lab leak story, for example.
He might not be on the same side of the aisle as a lot of you, but Jon Stewart, in my opinion, has a great deal of integrity.
That's why he won't be allowed on Apple for very long at all.
He's not allowed on it anymore.
But where will this end?
Let's see how the legacy media reported on this.
Jon Stewart's Apple TV show The Problem with Jon Stewart is done after two seasons.
Staff members say Stewart told them last night he and Apple executives agreed to pull the plug.
The former Daily Show host had creative control over the show, but again, according to staff members, Stewart told them the company had concerns about the subject matter for the upcoming season.
Oh, the subject matter.
I wonder what subjects matter.
The planned topics included China, Israel, and AI.
Okay.
So, John, what are you going to be talking about on the next series?
Mm-hmm.
Just one moment, please.
Have Jon Stewart killed?
Sorry, what was that?
No, I'm saying we're not making the show anymore, but God, it's been great working with you.
You're very brave.
I mean, it's not me.
I wish it was up to me.
We just can't.
You know how it is, Jon.
Because remember, all of these shows and platforms have to look credible.
They have to look like they're telling you the truth.
Like, that's why when you watch regular news on CNN or BBC, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum, hello, it's the news.
This is serious.
This isn't just a TV show that's ultimately funded by Big Pharma.
What we're doing now is important, and I'm definitely wearing pants under this desk.
Shut up.
Apple TV Plus' esteemed talk show The Problem with Jon Stewart is reportedly drawing to a close after a fallout between the tech giant Apple and Jon Stewart himself.
The problem with Jon Stewart is they've run out of subjects that aren't offensive to Apple's business model.
The problem with Jon Stewart is one of the shows is about China next time.
Yeah, we can't do that because all of our products are, how do we put this delicately, made in China.
China.
Despite the show's premiere being hailed as a major success for Apple TV+, the company and the renowned ex-Daily Show host have split due to creative differences ahead of the talk show's highly anticipated third season.
That's why I think the culture has to generate issues that are divisive around which it can pick a side and just amplify that side.
And these are usually subjects which I think could probably be less contentious if you had a decentralised system of government where you were able to say, well, seems like you people are very in favour of this way of living and you people are in favour of this way of living.
Well, why don't you both carry on and leave each other the hell alone?
Because no one's up for that idea for some mad reason, what we have to continually have is an ongoing culture war that's unwinnable, as well as the many military wars that are also, in my view, unwinnable for us.
Unless, of course, you had some version of society where ordinary people were slaughtered en masse and autonomous machines could take over the roles, but there's no suggestion that that's going on anywhere.
And if it is, you're not going to see it discussed on Apple TV, who would probably financially benefit from such a horrific dystopia.
You have 20 seconds to comply.
The signs of a rift started to emerge as reports surfaced about Apple getting antsy over Stewart's guest lineup on the problem with Jon Stewart.
However, the fulcrum of the controversy seems to revolve around Stewart's plan to tackle issues such as artificial intelligence and China, which Apple reportedly flagged as contentious.
The sudden faltering of the show, which was due to start shooting soon, caught the production team off guard.
And until they can be replaced with Apple style robots, you can't have that show.
And also you would have to replace John as well.
But they're working on all of that.
Default setting.
Crush.
Apple's fears apparently stem from the fact that the tech behemoth has a future heavily pinned to maintaining a congenial relationship with China and the tech giant bends over backwards to stand the good side of the Chinese Communist Party.
Although there's no evidence that they care about limbo dancing at all.
When it comes to censorship of content in particular, Apple is happy to oblige the Chinese government in order to compete in the Chinese market.
Do you imagine that any of these corporations that say they care about ecology, economy, social justice issues, care enough about those issues to make compromises when it comes to profit?
Until you see that, what you've got is nothing.
Part of their ingenuity with the kind of products that we all love, the brilliance, aren't they ergonomic?
And God, Weren't they well marketed?
Inclusive, diverse, cool products that connect you across the world.
I'm on a skateboard.
I've got great hair.
But the truth is Apple don't care about any of those things I'm going to offer you.
They care actually about profit margins.
And if ever the ideology is at odds with the profit margins and the conditions of dominion that profit margins afford, they will hastily dispatch with all of their sort of rainbow colored exclusive livery and paraphernalia.
We'll be marched right out the door quicker than you can say Tiananmen Square.
This latest incident can be seen as an instance of corporate arm-twisting to possibly cloak any criticism or controversial discourse that might jeopardise its strategy.
Reports from The Hollywood Reporter suggest that Apple wanted the show to echo its official stance on these topics, therefore asserting the power of censorship over the freedom to openly discuss the aforementioned issues.
What's Jon Stewart supposed to do?
And now, China!
What a great country that is!
For workers.
And certainly there's no issue with the Uyghur population who haven't been put into concentration camps.
And certainly there's no child labor going on, which is a necessary byproduct of affordable devices that are ruining your life.
Stewart didn't bow down to Apple's suppressive demands.
He chose to assert his commitment to open discourse and freedom of speech by walking away from the show rather than compromising on the content.
The Times report does not delve into specifics about why the show's planned coverage of artificial intelligence and China triggered such strong reactions in Apple's executive echelons.
However, it does underline the inherent conflict between corporate interests and the freedom of speech.
Yeah, there is an inherent conflict.
And in fact, when we talk about globalism here, we mean the conflation of these interests.
When the state and corporations are entwined to the degree that the function of the state and the execution of policy becomes determined by corporate interests and is transcendent of national sovereignty in two ways, i.e.
One, the population of a country can't prevent it, prohibit it, vote against it.
And two, it's happening in numerous countries simultaneously across the world.
And you see simultaneous legislature passed to support this evident agenda, as with the many current censorship bills brought about by the censorship industrial complex.
What you have is entirely at odds, not just with free speech, but with humanity itself.
Free speech is just one of those principles that we'd all agreed was a non-negotiable.
Even though we all recognize it could lead to conflict and people's feelings being hurt and listen to stuff you don't agree with.
In fact, that's the whole point of it.
Once you start rolling that back and saying, we trust this group to regulate free speech, then you're beginning to open the door to forms of tyranny.
And when you see that there are institutions, entities and partnerships on this planet that have unprecedented power and a plain agenda, which is not about your protection and your service, then what you have is, yes, very much.
It's not surprising that a tech giant like Apple would rather trim its content than jeopardise its relationship with a key market player like China, indicating a shift in power dynamics from content creators to corporate movers and shakers.
I wonder what's going to happen to Apple with the apparent escalating tensions between US corporate interests and China, the ongoing apparent amplification of stress in that region.
People lobbying, rallying even, for war and conflict in that region.
What's that going to do to those corporate interests?
Do they benefit from war?
I mean, it just presents us with a lot of questions.
Questions that Jon Stewart will not be analysing on his Apple show because Apple don't want those questions asked or discussed there.
At the time of writing, Apple has yet to give a reason for the cancellation.
Why are people assuming that the reason for Jon Stewart's show's cancellation is connected to China?
Could it be some of these reasons?
The nature of Apple's relationship with China.
As Apple and its flagship iPhone have grown to global dominance over the past two decades, much of that has come with the help of... Comments?
It's China.
China!
Like a certain little cold that really made its mark like Beatlemania, the problem started in China.
China!
Consider the following.
Over 95% of iPhones, AirPods, Macs and iPads are still made in China.
Oh!
In the second quarter of this year, more iPhones were sold in China than in any other country, including the US.
Oh, so it's their most important market.
Last year, about 90% of Apple's total revenue came from China!
And it was 74 billion dollars.
Okay, so there are some financial imperatives.
I mean, Apple is one of those things that's so bloody enormous we can't even really think about the scale of it.
You can't conceive of Apple.
That's why odd extraordinary stuff like the cobble mining children in the Congo, digging that stuff up, just gets kind of... that's too much to think about.
Just give me something simpler to think about where I can say, I'm on this side or I'm on that side, because none of us really are.
We are on the side of children digging for cobalt in Congo.
Well, actually, if you've got an iPhone, you are on that side and I've got an iPhone.
One of the other contentious subjects that Jon Stewart is due to discuss in his now cancelled show is AI.
So what's the relationship between Apple and AI?
Of course, their products will presumably deploy AI, but is there anything else?
Apple are part of a group of Silicon Valley companies helping the Pentagon in the AI arms race.
Oh, well, just Silicon Valley and an arms race.
Nothing that heavy going on.
Just a race made out of nuclear missiles and stuff that's going to kill everyone.
Nothing that contentious.
The Pentagon Silicon Valley Defense Innovation Unit recently appointed Doug Beck, a vice president of Apple Inc., as its new director.
What?
Someone that used to work for Apple, working at the Pentagon now?
That's not what happens.
Oh, wouldn't you like to see Jon Stewart's take on that?
Yeah, I would actually.
I think Jon Stewart would be incisive, come up with some brilliant jokes about it.
Not on Apple, he doesn't.
Beck, who served in the US Navy for 26 years before joining Apple, where he reported directly to Chief Executive Tim Cook, is regarded as key to accelerating plans to bring the military and Silicon Valley close together.
All right, before I go to bed, I don't know about you, I pray, Lord God, will you please, please, please bring the Pentagon and Silicon Valley closer together.
Can you enmesh more big tech giants with vast, unaccountable government institutions just to ensure that people like me and my children and all the people across the world really are tyrannized into absolute terror and shame, unable to openly communicate because of the monstrosity of the state?
And thankfully, the Lord, whichever one I was praying to, appears to have answered.
Apple presents itself, doesn't it, as a very modern company.
Of course it has to do that.
It's about technology.
It's one of the companies that's used to mythologise and instantiate that living myth.
But we are moving in the right direction.
Through technology, through medicine, we're progressing.
Look at those cavemen imbeciles.
Look at those Russoian nutjobs, living in copses, gathering berries, hunting for elk, bloody fools.
We believe in the idea of progress and Apple, perhaps more than any other brand on the planet, represents that progress.
Now, as long as you don't question human history or look at evidence for other civilizations or other crackpot whackjob theories, that myth is a binding one.
All of us are supposed to accept that we're moving in this direction.
Things are getting better.
In spite of the evidence, crumbling institutions, increasing tensions, things are getting better.
As a modern company, Apple of course has to appeal to modern audiences, young audiences, and they have of course generated an ideology that I believe is a disingenuous one.
One that has in it many principles that I would support, i.e.
you should be able to express yourself however you want to as long as you don't hurt other people.
Values that I think most people agree with.
But those too have become oddly contentious.
The issue that Apple has when it comes to broadcasting content or platforming content is they can't have a truth teller and critical thinker on their platform because the truth is not good from Apple's perspective.
The truth is is actually quite unappealing.
And even prior to this season and the potential for hypocrisy or contradiction around Jon Stewart's potential opinions on China and AI, it was already the issue of the children labouring their minds, which is not really good for anybody.
But what other woke problems do we have?
And where does this issue of censorship end if indeed this is a form of censorship?
Apple, one of the woke corporations, continues to use slave labour in China to make its products a 2021 report show.
If you were woke, and by woke you mean you care about moral, ethical, humanitarian issues, you probably wouldn't use slave labour, I suppose.
Executive Officer Tim Cook has categorically denied the technology firm's sources from Chinese companies that use Uyghur slave labour in its production lines.
Last year, he was asked directly by Congress if he could certify here today that your company does not use and will never use slave labour to manufacture your products.
Mr Cook replied, Forced labour is abhorrent and we will not tolerate it in Apple.
I agree completely.
But an investigative report from the website The Information shows seven Apple suppliers have been accused of using slave labor.
So I wonder if there'll be an investigation.
Hopefully the legacy media are even now sending hundreds of investigators over there to do thorough talk to everyone involved.
Make sure you get to the bottom of this because, you know, because you're so humanitarian and stuff, you're not going to want slave labor going on and certainly not going to want people lying about it.
At this point, it's just an accusation.
So get investigating, guys.
The information and human rights groups found seven companies supplying device components, coatings and assembly services to Apple that are linked to alleged forced labor involving Uyghurs and other oppressed minorities in China, the report reads.
At least five of those companies received thousands of Uyghur and other minority workers at specific factory sites or subsidiaries that did work for Apple, the investigation found.
You see, in China, as in our countries, there will be loads of subcontracting to the point where it's like, I don't know.
Who did those Uyghurs work for?
It's difficult to say.
There's no paper trail.
You can't have little Andel computers going around the world getting updated every 10 bloody minutes without cracking a few Uyghurs.
That's the reality of the situation.
We all know that.
He's not even really working for us.
Is it the continual flow of commerce, commodity, and products?
It's not like, do you feel any better?
I mean, I love the phone.
It's fantastic.
But are we not losing something?
And what's clearly being lost is any ethics and morality.
What we have is the pose, the posture of morality.
We really care.
Hey, you shouldn't say that.
What do you mean you did that?
That's shameful.
We really need to address that.
Hey, it shows me on the phone.
Look, we can see all of the good work we're doing.
Where'd you get this phone?
I don't know this geezer.
What's your name, mate?
I don't need to know his name, some sort of little Uyghur.
Fuck him.
The whole thing is built on lies.
International human rights groups and the US have charged China with genocide against more than a million Uyghurs.
Bloody hell, they're actually being killed.
The minorities are sent to concentration camps.
That doesn't seem good.
Away from their homes, in many cases sterilised.
Apple, this is not sounding very woke!
Subjected to live and work in poverty as a way for the Chinese Communist Party to cleanse them from their Islamic faith.
Something eerily familiar about that reminded me of something, but no, I don't know what.
The information associated with other human rights groups uncovered previously unreported
public statements, photos and videos by Chinese local government offices and state-run media
in China, as well as with unnamed employees to back up their reporting.
People often point out when talking about dystopias the difference between George Orwell's
kind of communist version of dystopia and Aldous Huxley's pleasure-oriented, soma-induced
stasis and slumber verses of dystopia in Brave New World.
We've obviously got over here the Brave New World version, haven't we, where we think
we've got pleasure and devices and everything slick and nice and people say the right words
and try their best to say the right things.
And over in China, there's a bit more George Orwell, there's a bit more boot-in-the-face
standard every shopping bag's in front of a tank.
But the fact is, dystopia is already here.
How can I make such a claim?
Well, when the pandemic happened and we saw how China were able to respond as a result of being a declared and obvious autocratic society, we first of all thought, we'll never be able to do that in our countries, but we managed just fine, didn't we?
Turns out it's pretty easy to just switch off life like that.
Stay in your homes, do as you're told.
People didn't go, no, wait a minute, we're a democracy.
Well, some people did, and those people were cancelled either then or just a little bit down the line they found a way to cancel them.
So what this shows us is in the end, you can't have free speech at all.
You might not like right-wing libertarian people.
You might think, oh, I don't like them.
But the fact is, Apple are unable to platform Jon Stewart because Jon Stewart will say things that Apple cannot have said on their platform.
Not because Jon Stewart's not woke or Jon Stewart's not clever or not compassionate, but because Jon Stewart is critical of corrupt power.
In a statement to the information, Apple said that despite the restrictions of COVID-19, we undertook further investigations and found no evidence of forced labour anywhere we operate.
We will continue doing all we can to protect workers, ensure they are treated with dignity and respect.
Yet Mr Cook continually pushed back against Congress lobbying to weaken a bill it was crafting preventing U.S.
companies from using slave labor in China.
Oh, why?
Why would you do that?
That doesn't make sense.
In a December 2020 report, the Tech Transparency Project found one of Apple's most well-known iPhone suppliers was using forced Uyghur labor in its factories.
Well, that's the end of that then.
China became a key component in Apple's supply chain in the 90s and early 2000s because of the country's vast number of low-cost labourers.
We are interrupting this vital stream about cancellation and the way that censorship is increasing because we need you strong.
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Okay, let's get back into the censorship and cancellation crisis that is devouring what's left of the mainstream.
Apple seems willing to overlook China's ongoing human rights violations in order to have access to this cost-effective manufacturing base and the country's 1.4 billion consumers.
It's also willing to overlook its commitment to Jon Stewart.
I mean, of course it just And it's not even, I suppose, like I'm really blaming Apple.
Apple's just the system.
Apple is in itself a projection of a set of ideals.
No?
Apple came about as a result of some ideologies that are not regulated or not controlled or not pushed back on because of ideas like centralisation, globalisation, progressivism, materialism and rationalism.
This is housed in a philosophy that I would say should be as open to interrogation as any particular religious ideology.
You might say, we want to form the world according to Judaic law or Christian Or Islamic law?
And you go, well hang on a minute, should we look at this?
Because rationalism and materialism have to be judged according to their results.
And the results are in.
And they ain't looking that good.
Global war, massive corporations that lie and don't own the fact that they require slavery, products that appear to be contributing to demoralizing and demonizing our consciousness.
Is there a better way?
Is there a different way?
Can we attack it, critique it, or even discuss it?
Not on Apple, you can't!
Apple has a history of cowering to the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2019, Apple removed HKMap.live, an application pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong were using to track police from its App Store.
Wired reported around the same time that Apple began hiding the Taiwan flag from users in Hong Kong and Macau, reinforcing the CCP's One China policy.
Additionally, Apple told some of its television producers to avoid portraying China in a negative light in their productions, as not to anger the CCP, BuzzFeed News detailed.
Look, we all have alliances.
We all have sponsors.
I mean, you won't see me saying stick a mule about guys anytime soon, but you have to wonder what the consequences are when stuff's happening.
happening on a global scale. That's why what we need are independent media,
demonopolised big tech organisation, decentralised government. The more these
things coalesce and come together, the more damage they do while continuing to
claim to serve you and we pass on the savings to the consumer. What savings? We
pass on the dead wiggers to the consumer. I don't want them.
Moreover, to comply with CCP, Apple removed the New York Times and other private
networks from its Chinese App Store and began storing Chinese iCloud accounts in
China, making it easier for the government to potentially obtain information
on its citizens.
I wonder if they cooperate with other nations' requests of that nature.
Let me know in the chat.
Yeah, Apple wants Americans to believe it's woke, virtuous, and promotes a just world for everybody.
It's probably about as true as Coca-Cola is youthful.
Coca-Cola is delicious.
Apple products are great.
But they're not anything else than that.
They are not any kind of ideal.
That connection we're making in our own mind.
And we have to stop making it.
because the facts are Uyghurs are likely used for slave labour,
children are mining for cobalt, not just for Apple, but for other smartphones too,
and Jon Stewart, he's a real victim here, is not able to openly express his opinions on China or AI
because it would be at odds with Apple's ideology.
And that is obviously frivolous compared to the exploitation of children or genocide,
but it is one of the components in the kind of globalism that we're continually critiquing here.
You have no power.
You cannot trust the media.
You cannot trust the judiciary.
You cannot trust the state.
They will do anything they can to prevent you from mobilizing and awakening and opposing their systems of power up to and including cancelling any dissenting voice.
Mr Cook issued a statement in support of Black Lives Matter, promising to push progress forward on inclusion and diversity so that every great idea could be heard, saying the company would donate to groups like the Equal Justice Initiative, which challenge racial injustice and mass incarceration.
How bitterly hypocritical.
Do you feel sometimes we live in a system where they just say stuff that's easy to say, that anyone who's actually a dissenting voice is immediately vilified and shut down?
Where is the evidence of anyone having real principles in these organizations?
That's why when people gag Donald Trump, you don't immediately go, oh, he must have been saying some things that are so powerful that people don't want him to.
You can't have any trust in these institutions Because you see now the modality, the mentality, the morality, the lack of ethics that undergirds their entire model.
Big tech and big tech organizations benefit from global centralization.
The state benefits from global centralization.
None of them benefit from you becoming awakened and empowered and able to make your own decisions for your health, for your loved ones, for building community.
Your freedom is their problem, and through the media they will amplify the agenda of
the powerful and close down dissent.
They will narrow the bandwidth of your possibilities as much as they possibly can, so that you
are unable to be discerning, so that you are unable to awaken, so that you are unable to
form alliances with other people who are basically just the same as you.
Despite their cultural values or their religious values, we have more in common with one another
than we do, obviously, than an organization like Apple that will do whatever is necessary
to maintain favourable relationships with China, including a flagship show just because there's a risk that they might
say something that they don't like. But that's just what I think. Let me know
what you think in the chat. See you in a second.
Let me know in the chat how you feel about the increasing power of
cancellation culture while we continue our conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy.
Is he the solution?
Is bipartisan politics the solution?
Or do we need independent thinkers and independent media to come together to oppose this system?
Back to Vivek Ramaswamy.
Now, given that a lot of your experience was gleaned in the pharmaceutical industry, and as I've said already in this conversation when we spoke previously, you outlined how you were, in a sense, an antagonist in that world rather than a kind of Moderna or Pfizer player.
I wonder what you feel about recent revelations that the vaccine for the Pfizer vaccine specifically given to the public was different from the one tested in clinical trials and that that included the use of E. coli in terms of its plasmic component and Other undisclosed components, including SV40, which is a cancer-promoting component.
I wonder what you feel these ongoing revelations, whether it's this one or the myocarditis, pericarditis is bad for you stuff, and, you know, let's throw in the Wuhan lab leak theory versus the wet market.
What do you think America and the world have learned during the pandemic period about authoritarianism, about the role of the media amplifying propagandist messaging that Facilitates the powerful.
And how would you ensure nothing like that ever happened again?
Particularly with the WHO marching forward with a treaty that could mean that they demand 5% of the health budget of any member nation.
What do you think about that, Vivek?
It's unbelievable.
So a lot there.
A couple things.
One is there is no doubt.
I mean, there's not a debate.
There's not a point that's any sensible person can rebut.
Okay.
there is no doubt that the FDA used dramatically differential standards to usher in the approval
of the COVID vaccines compared to any other vaccine or any other medicine that otherwise is held
to different exacting standards.
And I'm a right to try absolutist, Russell.
What does that mean?
It means that just because the FDA hasn't approved it doesn't mean that you or anybody else,
that you or I or anybody else in this country shouldn't be able to take it.
We should be able to make an informed choice ourselves.
But the other part of the right to try is the right not to try.
Just because they have forced it through a process using unprecedented standards to do it doesn't mean that you should ever in any circumstance be forced I'm a right to try absolutist in both directions, and there is no doubt that they use differential standards to push this through.
The same FDA that says you cannot even try a vaccine or a medication that has not been through 10 plus years of testing and been through the same process.
In the world of biotech, there's this old adage, process is product.
So even if the process varies slightly, there are other kinds of cases where the FDA says, nope, 10 more years, you can't bring that to market.
They apply differential standards here.
That is wrong, and we have to admit that, or else you're going to be vulnerable to make the same mistakes again in the future.
As a matter of policy, I think we have to look to the future, but how do you correct the past?
Vaccine manufacturers have somehow gotten away with a crony capitalist privilege of saying that unlike other product manufacturers, who if you harm a consumer, you can be sued.
Somehow in this case, these vaccine manufacturers have a special shield of liability, the product of lobbying, no doubt.
That says that those vaccine manufacturers can't be sued for product liability.
That's a different set of rules.
I will strip that.
That's one of the, I need Congress to do it, but I will push that through and Congress and Maybe we're going to get Congress to come along on that.
Strip back that crony capitalist privilege that allows these actors to act with impunity.
That's wrong.
That's just one example.
It's not an end-all be-all solution, but it's an easy thing we can do.
What are the lessons we've learned?
It's during times of crisis.
I mean, it applies to the earlier part of the discussion we were having relating to war.
It's during times of crisis or so-called crisis.
That we need to protect free speech and open debate the most.
I don't think we would have shut down the schools or the economy if we had been allowed to debate in the lockdowns.
I don't think we would have waited two, three years to slowly, carefully admit that that virus came from a lab in Wuhan, that it was a man-made virus.
We would have known that sooner if you had been allowed to say.
That it was a virus made in a lab.
I don't think that the vaccine mandates would have withstood public scrutiny if you had been actually allowed to debate it on the merits, including both the risks included.
So that's one of the key lessons is free speech is not meant for the easy times.
It's meant for the hard times.
That's who needed to defend it most.
And that relates to the merits of the wars that we're sleepwalking our way into as the United States and beyond.
And then you raise a question about institutions like the WHO.
This one's easy.
If you are hostile to the sovereignty of the United States of America, then I will not use our dollars to fund you.
We will defund the WHO.
Hell no is the answer to the WHO.
And the answer as well is we will also, by the way, bring zero-based budgeting to any source of funding and foreign aid, so-called aid, in places like Central America or other parts of the world.
No, we will ask what advances the U.S.
interest if we're using U.S.
dollars to fund it.
The WHO does not advance U.S.
interest, so we're not going to fund it.
But I'm going to bring that mentality of zero-based budgeting to the deep state abroad.
I mean, that's what these multilateral international three-letter agencies are.
But that's what the three-letter agencies are here in the United States.
The SEC, to the FTC, to the FDA, to the CDC, to the God knows what, to the FBI, to the Department of Education will apply that same standard, zero-based budgeting.
And I do think from a You know, there's certain people that are too incompetent to do it this way.
I think the antidote to that is you need somebody who has been a CEO, who has actually built successful things, stood up to bureaucracies in the private sector, successfully created real value to be the one who does it.
But certain people in there are plenty smart to do it, but they're corruption captured by financial forces.
And you got to make sure that you have somebody who's at least independent of those financial forces to be able to do the same thing.
And so that's the kind of leaders I think it's going to take.
And I think it's a A benefit, Russell, to also have leaders from a different generation that in some ways haven't been captured by the same muscle memory of the last 30 years or the last 130 years, for that matter.
I think that we have to break away from some of this is neither corruption nor incompetence, but it's just habit.
And I think it's important that we get to truth.
It's easy to pin the tail on any one of these things.
They say it's all incompetence or it's all just corruption.
These are important parts of the story, but some of it is just habit and muscle memory, inertia, momentum in a direction that you happen to have gone.
And so it's all of these things, right?
And so there's no silver bullet.
There's temptations that we might have to say there's one silver bullet to a complex pathology.
The reality is there's a complex set of forces that account for why we are where we are.
And I think it behooves us not to fall in love with our favorite solution and to pin the entire tail, pin the entire thing on that donkey's tail.
We got to see the whole thing for what it is.
It's a combination of inertia, combination of laziness, combination of outright levels of stupidity that you could not imagine combined with a level of cynical corruption that fuels the machine.
And it's all of the above.
And so I think when we think about what leaders lead us forward, you've got to see that problem for what it is before, you know, imagining that there's some silver bullet.
There's not.
It's going to be a plethora of partial solutions.
That's how we get there.
In a way, you're already bringing about revolutionary perspectives and revolutionary conversation.
And even in fact, on an essential level, your energy and To a degree, Persona are bringing some necessary radicalism, certainly into the Republican primary process, and hopefully it goes further than that.
Do you feel that... These are a few things I'd like to put before you before we wrap this up, and thank you for all of your time today, Vivek.
Do you think that some important components for genuine advance to occur are, one, Decentralisation wherever possible, or federalism as it's known in your country, i.e.
the role of governors and mayors, where possible people should have a maximum amount of power.
And do you think it's important that independent thinkers and people with a different perspective enter politics to ensure that these Atrophying institutions are boosted and what advice would you offer and what warnings would you offer to anyone thinking, who's not from a conventional political background, if they're thinking of entering into that space?
What are the risks?
What challenges will you face?
So, the answer to your question is yes.
People who view public service as service, rather than as a career, I think are critical to fixing the system.
Okay?
No doubt about it.
Now, the advice that I would give is this.
Decentralization, I mean, that's baked into the U.S.
Constitution.
Thankfully, other countries don't benefit from this quite as much, but it could help other countries and other Western democracies just as much.
But in the U.S., we have this thing called the Tenth Amendment.
The power not reserved to the federal government is reserved respectively to the states and to the people.
So, the vision is the least possible power should be concentrated in the federal government, then more to the states, then more to local communities, and then ultimately to the people itself.
We've inverted that pyramid.
Inverted back in the direction of total decentralization.
All else equal, that's the right way to go.
And I think it's a good model to bring to other countries as well.
Even if they don't have a Tenth Amendment, other countries can at least have governors, mayors, etc.
that bring that vision and I think will speak to people in a way that I think is an untapped opportunity.
So, that would be the positive advice that I'd give you, both in the United States or any other country that you're in.
Now, my advice, cautionary advice along the way, and this will be an interesting maybe note to close on Russell, I've got a campaign event I'm rolling to from here.
And maybe I'll, maybe I'll talk to them about this.
You got my, my juices flowing here.
I think I will talk to them about this actually.
It's pertinent is here's my caution.
Okay.
We've spent a lot of this conversation, I spent a lot of my time talking about the powers that be, the woke industrial complex, the merger of state power and corporate power, the top-down version of this problem, and it exists.
But if you want to use a scriptural analogy, right, it's sort of when the Israelites escape the Pharaoh, okay, in the book of Exodus, they're wandering in the desert, lost in the wilderness, yet to find their promised land.
What do they say?
They say, we want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh.
In some ways, we are spending our time here talking about half the problem.
That is the Pharaoh of our time.
Everything we've talked about would fall in that category.
I'm not going to rehash it.
But there's another half to this.
What is it that makes us want, as a people, makes us want to bend the knee?
The great uprising only works if the populace is actually up for it.
But there's half of us.
And I say us.
I'm not blaming other people for this.
I'm including all of us in this.
There's something inside each of us that also, a side of us, that makes us want to bend the knee.
The sheep inside each of us.
And so my concern and my insecurity here, I think it's worth putting on the table, is not that we, the people, are going to fail to be successful.
And I'm not looking to lead a revival of the American Revolution.
Others in other countries in the modern West can look to do the same thing.
Others here in the United States can do the same thing.
It's not that we can't be successful.
It's actually the long hard look in the mirror that when push comes to shove are the people who are on our side of the great uprising against their great reset.
The most powerful force may also be the force within that when push comes to shove causes you to make you want to bend the knee.
And I think that this is a deeper, more philosophical discussion.
If you lose faith, patriotism, hard work, family, pride, self-confidence at the same time, you're going to bend the knee to something.
If it's not COVIDism, it's climatism.
If it's not climatism, it's Zelenskiyism.
If it's not Zelenskiyism, it's World War IIIism, broadly.
You're going to bend the knee to something.
And I think that's the real risk in this.
People can find every excuse not to get behind the vision that I'm articulating to be able to say that, okay, well, I was in it part way, but then we, you know, find some excuse, whatever it might be to say that, Hey, we're not going to go that direction.
That I think is at least as big of a risk.
The inner, Israelite lost in the desert within each of us, right?
The inner force that causes us to want to bend the knee.
That is how this ends, maybe.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
And I think that that would be my cautionary note to any leader who's looking to do the same thing.
Yes, it's going to take people coming from outside the establishment to win this war.
But make sure that you're rising to the occasion to fill that vacuum of purpose and meaning enough that make sure that when you look back, you still have the people that you thought were following you, following you at every step of the way.
And for me, you're catching me midway through that journey.
So let's have this conversation in eight, nine months, and we'll see where we stand.
My heart says we're going to be successful, but that's incumbent on me as a leader and anybody else who takes this cause up to make sure that it's not just the eye on The forces that be, that's where we're taking our aim to be sure.
But there's a force within each of us, within every one of us as citizens that makes us want to bend the knee as well.
And the story is incomplete until we actually answer that question of what is it that makes us want to pledge allegiance to that different flag or that different God, the climate God or whatever COVID God or whatever new God they foist on us.
That psychological spiritual battle is really half the story too.
Vivek, thank you so much.
I hope I know you for a long time.
I hope that you do well in this presidential campaign.
I'm wishing you the best.
Thank you so much for your generosity with your time, your generosity with your vision, your open-mindedness, and your fantastic and always enjoyable discourse.
Thank you, Vivek Ramaswamy, and I wish you all the best in the ongoing campaign, mate.
You can follow and support Vivek's presidential campaign by going to vivek, that's v-i-v-e-k, 2024.com.
We're posting a link in the description.
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