"Let’s Take Our Country Back" | Exclusive RNC Kari Lake & Jim Jordan Interview - SF 416
Check out that Dr Gundry video at https://GutCleanseProtocol.com/Brand⏰ BE HERE AT 12PM ET / 5PM BST ⏰Here’s an interview from the RNC! I spoke with Kari Lake and Jim Jordan about fighting against mainstream media and deep state endorsed narrative, technological dictatorships, censorship and lying being readily accepted in COVID times, and the requirement of citizens to awaken knowing the US is not where it should be, and what to do about it. Remember to subscribe!Check out my social medias and more - https://linktr.ee/RussellBrand
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Thanks.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We've got some very special interviews that I grabbed while I was at the RNC.
They're pretty fascinating to watch because they are, I would say, members of that party that have been influential in a variety of ways.
One's Carrie Lake who's sort of like a superstar politician who became disenchanted with mainstream media.
And ultimately ended up running for a variety of political positions, one in particular of course, but she still remains a significant voice within the Republican Party and also got the ire of the mainstream media as you might have seen in this viral clip.
You are just a sad case of a human being and I'm so sorry for you.
I'm sorry that you bought into the propaganda.
I hope that you'll look in the mirror and see that you've been following propaganda and you don't understand what's happening.
So I'm guessing if you don't win in November, you won't concede.
That's the rule that you're playing by now, is it?
You are... I actually think you need your head examined.
Can you answer that?
I think you need your head examined.
Now, when I had a conversation with her, she was a lot more convivial, congenial, gentle, and downright reasonable.
That's what's mad when you meet all of these fascists that the legacy media tell you you gotta hate, because they're perfectly reasonable people.
Now, I recognize that duplicity and deception are of options available to people interpersonally, and I would say that's the very charge that I would level at most of these free letter legacy media
institutions. They act like they care for you, they act like they're helping you, they act like they're
informing you, but ultimately they're amplifying the message of the powerful. This is a
brilliant conversation, I think, between me and Carrie Lake. Certainly a lot less antagonistic
than some of the conversations like the one we've just seen over there. The first part will be
on YouTube, then we'll be exclusively on Rumble. Remember to like and subscribe, download the Rumble
app if you get a minute, and enjoy this conversation with me and Carrie Lake. Carrie, thanks for
joining us today for Stay Free with I'm thrilled that you are here.
You look amazing.
I love your earrings.
I love everything about you.
It's extraordinary to meet you and to experience just how gentle you are.
You being yet another one of the people that I meet in over this extraordinary experience that I've seen vilified and demonized to an extraordinary degree.
It's been very Difficult.
I've also experienced it myself, by the way.
But I wonder what kind of impact that's had on your ability to remain faithful and gentle, having been subject to such coruscating judgment from the media within once you so safely and presumably for a while happily worked.
Yeah.
I don't like it.
I don't like it.
It's not my favorite thing, but I know who I am.
My family knows who I am.
My children know.
Those people close to me.
And frankly, a lot of the people in the media, especially Arizona media that I used to work with, they know who I am.
And they know it's not the person that they are now broadcasting out there.
And I have to go and prove I don't have horns sometimes.
But this is just the world we're living in.
Do I wish it were a more gentle, Friendly world, yes, but we were born in this time, and I never questioned God.
He put us here for this moment, and He never said it was going to be easy.
When you're living the truth in a difficult time like this, you're going to get castigated.
You're going to get canceled.
You're going to get slandered.
All of that's going to happen.
But I know that the ultimate meeting, the one I will have with God someday, I want that one to go well.
So I'm going to take any punch they throw my way.
It just serves to strengthen us.
It gives you more courage.
Once you act courageously, then the next time around you know what to do.
Okay, another courageous act, and another courageous act, and along the way other people are seeing it.
And they're saying, hey, maybe maybe I can be courageous, too.
And that's why you see an arena full of courageous patriots here in Milwaukee celebrating the America First movement.
And there's tens of millions, hundreds of millions, I think, at home who feel the same way.
Carrie, externally this event, though, and movement, in fact, is vilified at large in much the manner that you have been, and I have been, individually.
In fact, I would say one of the moments of my personal changes in sympathy and understanding came when I saw how readily and indeed enthusiastically In a significant portion, maybe over half of the population, were breezily damned and condemned in a manner that felt very unappealing and in fact appalling to me.
A similar thing happened in my country around Brexit, around of course you'll be aware at the same time that Donald Trump was elected initially, that I sensed in media and in institutional places this great disdain for working people and how easily it was interpreted into condemnation first and then legitimization for that contempt subsequently.
These people are racist, these people are boring, these people are dirty.
They can do that to entire populations or they can do it to individuals.
I've witnessed both and of course experienced both as you have.
What was your perspective when you worked within media when you were, to a degree I presume, a darling of it and herald it?
How do you go from basking, or indeed at least living, if not basking, I don't want to assume basking, you might have just been living?
I love that word.
Have a little bask!
How did your perspective of it change?
Because now, how do you regard the institutions within which you worked, and how will the reverse trick be done?
Now, all of these people that loathe the movement of which you are a part, which will presumably come to government in November, this is my assumption, although I've heard that people don't want to be presumptuous, How will there be a true unifying process rather than one of vengeance and ongoing condemnation?
I know there was a lot there.
I got a lot.
Okay, I'm going to go back to the first part of that.
When I worked in the media for 30 years, 27 years covering Arizona, 22 is the lead anchor at the main number one station.
I helped bring them to the number one position.
I have a great relationship with the people of Arizona.
Of course, I saw the newsrooms across the country.
I started back when news was fair.
You cover both sides.
You keep your opinion out of it because I'm old school.
I'm a little bit older than the average person in TV.
But then I saw how the older people were kind of being pushed out and young people were coming in who just fresh out of J school, journalism school.
They weren't taught that.
They were taught to be social justice warriors.
So that's how the shift Where you went from newsrooms being a little more ideologically balanced to being 90, 95, 98 percent left-leaning or downright leftist.
And so it was an uncomfortable place to be, to be kind of to the right.
You know, when Donald Trump came down that escalator, I said this man is speaking not only my language, but the language of the American people.
And I immediately, I started really seeing it when Donald Trump came down the escalator and I saw how people just churned on him, calling him things like racist and just the worst names and people in the news business.
And I'm thinking, what did he do that was racist?
I saw this pile on and I was curious about it.
I'm like, why the pile on?
What is going on here?
And it was so unfair.
But I always push back and I always really push to be fair with whatever came out of my mouth.
It was only during COVID that I realized I cannot get the truth out here.
It's a half-truth here, a little morsel of maybe truth, but the government line here, only government doctors are pre-approved by the CDC.
Could we put their line out?
And I'm old enough to know what propaganda is.
I mean, I've studied history.
My father was a history teacher.
I realized one day, I've been working since I was seven, by the way.
I'm from a big family.
My family didn't believe in child labor laws.
I started babysitting at seven, back in the 70s when people would leave a baby with a seven-year-old.
So I've been working my whole life and I finally, during COVID, with all of this insanity that made no sense, lifted my nose off the grindstone and I did not recognize my profession anymore.
And I went to my husband one night.
I was working from home because of COVID.
They separated us out.
We don't want to spread the cold virus.
And I came out of my office one night after doing the news and I said, I can't do this anymore.
Some of the things that they have put in these scripts are lies.
And I know that's immoral.
Like, sorry to interrupt you, but what lies, may I ask?
Well, I mean, lies about half-truths.
So, half-truths like hydroxychloroquine is deadly and dangerous.
It's been around for 60 years as one of the most safe drugs out there, and it might have potential to help.
Ivermectin is horse, you know, that kind of stuff.
Pushing the Fauci line.
Pushing the narrative, if you don't get the vaccine immediately, you're responsible for the death of your grandparents.
And our little kids, if they get near grandma and grandpa, are going to kill.
Peaceful protests when our cities were burning to the ground.
That kind of thing.
The pushing of fear on COVID deaths and COVID cases.
And I didn't want to be part of that.
So I walked away from my job.
I walked away from a very large seven-figure contract at a time when things were, you know, where's the economy going?
We didn't know.
But I just threw my life 100% to God and I said, God, I know this is right.
And when I did that, I said, I know you've got me.
I'm walking away.
I just want to know that I'm not going to regret this in six months.
Can you give me some reassurance?
I was praying.
This is a true story.
I was praying at my office.
I said, give me some reassurance.
I'm not going to look back in six months and say, oh my gosh, you walked away from that kind of money.
And at that moment, as I was praying, I grabbed my Bible.
Opened it to a random page, drop my finger down, 1st Timothy chapter 6 verse 7, "You
bring nothing into this world, and it is for certain you take nothing out."
And I took that as an answer I was seeking from God, "You're going to be okay.
You're worried about walking away from a huge paycheck?
That doesn't impress God."
That doesn't impress God, but if I say and collect a paycheck like so many people in the mainstream media, they're being paid by their corporate donors and managers, not donors, their corporate CEOs and their bosses to basically lie and divide our country.
So we walked away.
I never looked back.
I never thought I'd be in politics, but The people of Arizona reached out and said, would you please run for office?
We need somebody who's got courage, who's honest and understands the issues.
And that's how I ended up in the world of politics.
Yes.
And again, immediately became the recipient of great ire.
And a person that only consumes, shall we call it for simplicity's sake, the ordinarily available sloth and trough of vile slops that amounts to legacy media coverage, you would assume that you were kind of a villainous figure.
I was actually surprised, though, that they were so awful to me.
At first, when I decided to jump into politics, I knew nothing.
I didn't know how to get into politics.
I covered it for years.
But I had to call the AZGOP and go, how do you run for office?
Would you know?
And citizens should know, because our founding fathers envisioned citizens stepping forward and running.
It shouldn't be such a complicated process, but I had to call and ask, and I jumped into the race as a fed-up mom and a former journalist, and I had no idea what to do.
I didn't know the first thing about it, and I just started.
I announced I was going to run for governor at the time, and I said to my team, I'm not going to do any interviews.
Because the fake news is so evil.
When I walked away, they covered it.
They got all the facts wrong.
They tried to make me look bad for walking away from my career.
And so I said, no interviews whatsoever.
I'm just going to ignore the fake news.
And then I got talked into doing one five minute interview with the local station.
It was a total hit piece.
I recognized immediately the questions were just meant to, like, gotcha, try to, it was going to be a negative piece.
Yeah.
And inside, Russell, I was seething.
I was like smoke coming out of my ears.
I felt like I was losing control.
I was just filled with anger that they were doing this.
Not, not why are you running?
Why did you walk away?
What do you hope to do and accomplish if you're elected governor?
None of that.
It was just all negative.
Yeah.
So I finished the interview.
I gave him more time than I promised.
I got on the phone with one of the guys on my campaign.
I said, that was the biggest mistake I've ever done.
I think I completely lost control.
That's going to be a really bad thing.
And as I'm talking to him on the phone, my husband is like re-racking the video and he pulls his headphone off.
He goes, I don't know what you're talking about.
This is brilliant.
You burned the guy to the ground.
And that's when I realized that I had the ability to turn the tables on the media.
So we put that out and we started showing both sides of the media the nasty questions they ask.
Because when they edit the piece, they take their nastiness out and they just put your response.
So we started turning the tables on them, putting the video camera on them.
And that kind of became a little bit of our campaign.
We are going to expose the fake news.
I think it's one of the most dangerous entities right now in America because they've been lying and committing character assassination against President Trump and his supporters for eight years.
How do you withstand that?
No wonder people have TDS.
When I see somebody who doesn't like President Trump, I'm not mad at them.
I actually feel bad that they've been the victim of the largest smear campaign we've ever seen inflicted on one individual or one political movement.
The largest brainwashing campaign.
They've actually been brainwashed, which is a very powerful tool to try to turn people against one another.
Yeah.
You didn't know I was going to talk so much, did you?
No, I hoped.
Gosh, there's so much there.
But one thing, when you describe the process of turning the cameras on the media, it seems like you've individually experienced and participated in one of the transitions that's taking place, i.e.
the kind of loss of that centralized power.
And it's And how it is becoming disseminated and diffuse that they've lost the ability to absolutely control the way that information is presented, the way the information is categorized.
Their false narrative.
Their false narratives are being lost.
Thank God, by the way.
Yeah, thank God for that.
And it shows like yours.
I mean, your show reaches more people than Network News.
You know, Dan Bongino, huge numbers.
They're reaching more people.
Steve Bannon, before they silenced his voice and locked him up ahead of this important election, reaches more people.
We're watching as the legacy media is collapsing, and they're trying to act like they're still out there and still all-powerful.
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healthy and age beautifully. I think it's analogous though to other institutions, Cary.
I feel like all centralized authority will be under great threat and the lurch towards authoritarianism seems to me to be a plausible and even understandable response to that.
These institutions can no longer legitimately exercise the type of control to which they've become accustomed when it is no longer necessary because of what we're afforded through the miracle of immediate communication, for example.
You know the famous Breitbart phrase, you know, that politics is downstream of culture?
Well, culture is downstream of technology.
And what we are, I think, ultimately experiencing is how this technology facilitates systems of government that are more, as you were, I think, alluding to, more open, more immediate, more accessible, more citizen-led.
Yeah, you explicitly said, more citizen-led.
That is now possible.
Like an informed population participating, indeed, what else would they do?
In their own governance.
Anything else is on the scale of authoritarianism and people are rejecting it.
And peculiarly, it is this side of the bipartisan divide that is most commonly characterized as tyrannical.
When I have much more fear now, digital feudalism, as Bannon would call it, and the kind of technological dictatorships that are being augured all on the basis of compassionately protecting us.
And I suppose the pandemic period was when that Reach the kind of febrile hysteria.
We have to protect you so much that we're going to have to medicate you, control you, lock you in your home.
If you dissent or criticize you are in danger of being smeared and shut down.
Censorship.
And it seems to me that you have experienced your incubation chrysalis and metamorphosis during that precise period.
Is that right?
Censorship.
What you're describing is the censoring of our voices and the shutting down of our voices.
And the shocking thing was that members of the media were OK with that.
And it's like, wow, you don't want other voices to get, you don't want other ideas to get out there.
So it's incredible what's happening right now.
You know, we've got, I think what you're talking about also is like citizen journalists.
We need citizen politicians.
We need citizens to step forward.
When our founders signed their death sentence, signing the Declaration of Independence, and we fought the Revolutionary War, and we won, and our founding fathers crafted the United States Constitution, one of the greatest documents ever written.
And by the hand of God, the hand of God was on them.
There's no way that that brilliance and that document could have just come from man alone.
But one day, Benjamin Franklin came out, one of our founding fathers, and a woman stopped him, you know, this saying and said, Sir, what kind of a government have you given us?
And he turned and said, a republic, if you can keep it.
We are, sadly, but also I'm glad because we're seeing some big things happening.
We're in the if-you-can-keep-it part and we're seeing a beautiful thing.
Citizens rising back up and saying, oh hell no, we're not letting this country go.
There's nowhere to go if America falters right now, if America goes down.
Ronald Reagan said, If we lose this country, we will plunge into a thousand years of darkness.
We are at a cross in the road right now.
Are we going to save this beautiful country, and in effect, I believe, save the world?
Or are we going into a thousand years of darkness?
People realize that's how serious the moment is, and they're jumping in.
I see it every day on the campaign trail.
I see moms who have very little time.
They're packing the kids lunch.
Trying to make sure their kids have their homework done, they're making dinner, they're doing all the things that they do, and they're coming to our campaign and saying, I've got two hours every afternoon, how can I help?
What doors can I knock on?
Who can I talk to?
How can we come together and save this country?
It's such a beautiful thing.
The media wants us to think we're divided.
If we think we're 50-50 divided, then we're looking at people who are citizens with disdain and they're our enemy.
And the fact of the matter is I think we're way more united, maybe 80% united, not 50-50.
But the media has to keep this lie going that we're 50-50 so that we'll stick in front of the TV set and be angry at fellow citizens.
The only people we should be angry with is the media for lying to us and trying to further divide us.
Is it true that at points in the last couple of decades you have been affiliated with and connected with Democrat Party figures and movements.
Is it true that you voted for Obama and Kerry and stuff like that?
I did not vote for John Kerry, but Obama, yes.
And I'll tell you why.
I had two little kids.
I had one baby on one hip and the other baby on the other hip.
And the Iraq War had started when my first born was born.
I was actually Really pregnant in the hospital when it was delivering Ruby when it was starting and I recognize at the time this we rushed into this war weapons of mass destruction turns out we relied to
And we went into that war based on lies, and nobody ever, ever, ever did jail time for lying to the American people.
So as a young mother looking at these two precious babies, I said, who's going to get us out of this war?
Who's going to start more wars?
And at the time, we had a newcomer named Barack Obama.
Didn't know much about him.
And we had John McCain, who I'd covered, and I know he, you know, being a kind of a war hawk and very much into that, I decided to take a chance on Barack Obama.
I was a Republican from the time I was a child at 18 because Ronald Reagan was the president of my youth, the great Ronald Reagan.
We were born an hour apart, a few decades apart.
And so he was just the great, great president.
And so at 18, I registered as a Republican.
And then when I voted for Obama, I became a Democrat for four years, and then I became an Independent.
And now I'm back Republican.
I think we have the greatest Republican Party that we've ever had.
I believe that the party of Lincoln is going to save our country once again.
I call it the party of Trump, too.
And I want everybody to know that.
You know, we call it the America First Republican Party.
I don't care if you voted for You know, I don't care if you voted for Obama, if you voted for John Kerry, if you voted for Hillary Clinton, if you voted for George Bush, whoever you voted for in the past, if you are waking up and realizing that this is not working, what's happening right now is not working,
And you want to have secure borders, you want to have a great education for your kids, you want to have safe streets, you want to have a peaceful world, not World War III, then you are welcome in the America First Republican Party.
Let's grow this and take our country back.
It's less about being Republican and more about being American.
Very disarming and brilliant.
I really enjoy the way you've still got them anchor skills, huh?
Turning, stick it down the barrel, deliver that straight down there.
Someone pointed and said, that's your camera.
But you know, it's also good.
I feel that I ended up in this kind of by accident.
The people asked me to jump and I thought, okay, I'll jump into politics.
And I look back at all the gifts God gave me in my life from being in a big family, Where you have to learn you don't always get your way.
When you have nine kids, you rarely get your way, but you have to learn to work with people.
Growing up in Iowa, which is one of the most friendly states in the whole country, and you learn to befriend and talk to people and not be afraid of people but want to learn more about them.
Going into journalism, which is about digging into issues and learning and then putting a story together to explain what you've learned.
Being in Arizona for 27 years, getting to know the people, the issues that are important, all of that I've been able to use in politics.
We need some good communicators in Washington, D.C.
to communicate what is so amazing about the America First movement.
We have something to tell the people, and we have the solutions, and we just need some good messengers to tell them.
Ronald Reagan called himself the great communicator.
And boy did we need him when he came on the scene, because Carter had left us in an ash heap.
And through his gentle optimism, beautiful faith, great spirit, and patriotism, he said, we're going to get through this.
We don't have to worry.
America's gotten through tough days before, and let's come together.
Trump tried to do that in his first term, and I believe the deep state and the media prevented him from doing that by demonizing his supporters, scaring people from publicly supporting President Trump.
Because they knew if he brings this country together, it's game over for the corrupt swamp.
It's game over for the corrupt media.
And now look where we are.
We're starting to come together and their agenda is falling by the wayside.
You know, it seems really clear to me that there is significant opposition against the military-industrial complex and against big pharma, some pretty powerful forces.
There are points, of course, where I'm listening to you, Cary, magnetized as I am, where I have to deploy my discernment when it comes to, for example, the presidency of Reagan, when I think about Iran, Contra, and the Various institutional problems that come, I believe, with government, even though, of course, one of his many mantras was the reduction of the size of government.
I feel that the insidiousness of power, in a broader sense, is to do with something spiritual and profound.
I feel fascinated to be inside this convention and to be able to have these extraordinary conversations.
The thing that I, not cling to, but move towards most is my Growing yet new faith in Jesus and the sense that if we are able to locate something of that, not only in the discourse, but the implementation of these ideas, some incredible changes might take place.
Absolutely.
And when you're Christian and living the Christian life and truly living as a Christian, you will be criticized.
Yeah.
Even though it's about peace and it's a beautiful religion and Jesus Christ was our Savior, but you will be criticized.
And I think people are afraid to truly live as Christians, and we have to look to our Savior Jesus Christ, and we saw what happened to Him.
And living our faith is going to be difficult, but it's important.
I think this is how we actually help to save our country and bring more people to salvation.
But it's not going to be easy.
God never said it was going to be easy.
I don't think anywhere in the Bible does it say things are going to go easy for you if you are a believer.
It doesn't say that.
So we have to be strong in our faith.
I just came from a great event, the Faith and Freedom event, Ralph Reed's event, and listening to the great Mark Robinson speak, boy is he powerful, North Carolina, Mark Robinson, and saying what we can't lose is love.
We get so caught up in this battle right now, and we think we're battling the Democrats.
We're battling the people who don't agree with us.
And he said, no, we're actually not.
We're trying to win people over and show them that we're about love.
The enemy is not our fellow citizen.
It really isn't.
The enemy is the lies.
And the answer is the truth.
And that's why I believe the danger of the fake news continuing to lie, that's what we have to go after.
Because they're the ones who are fooling people into believing all of this falseness.
And you talked about the military-industrial complex.
And Big Pharma.
This is where all the money is.
A Senate seat like I'm in, and the reason they're not here, they don't like me, is these are worth a trillion dollars to them.
How much does war make?
Trillions of dollars.
They don't want somebody who wants peace.
Peace does not make them money.
The only people who prosper in peace are we the people.
And so the military-industrial complex is truly a problem, and we need to try to get that money out of politics.
So many politicians, they need the money to run, they need the money to win, and they're willing to take it from literally anybody.
Even if they have to sell out their country.
Thank you, Carrie, for illustrating that so plainly and clearly.
It's wonderful to have these conversations about the abstraction of finances and corrupt finance, obviously in particular from these institutions.
I'm being told I have to hurry up, I think because Peter Navarro is here.
Oh my gosh.
Oh, you have to go.
Where are you going to go?
I'm going to be doing a book signing relatively soon.
It's called Unafraid.
Do you seem unafraid?
You know what?
I don't think I've always been unafraid.
I mean, I think it's natural, but what I've learned about fear is when you approach something you're afraid of and you work through it, then you're not afraid of it anymore.
Thank you, you did say that at the beginning, that once you've experienced and practiced courage.
Yeah, it gets easier.
I am changing my prayers, though, lately.
I used to pray, God, give me strength.
And God, when you pray for something, He always answers your prayers.
And I found that when I was asking for strength, God was giving me difficult things to work through.
And I finally said, okay, God, I think I'm strong enough now.
Help me find joy in all of it.
That's my new prayer.
I just want to find joy.
I don't want to ever be kind of hardened by it all.
I want to keep that softness somewhere.
So now I'm like, God, I think I'm strong enough now, God.
Make sure I'm finding the joy in it.
Thank you, Carrie.
I've been told that we have to move along.
It's such a pleasure.
Joy, you're amazing.
Thank you.
You are.
We all are.
What I like about Jim Jordan is he sat as chair of many of the hearings regarding the pandemic period and in particular ones that regarded Fauci.
So even though of course he's a career politician, he seemed to me to have a good degree of valor, integrity, authenticity.
He also, and I didn't know this till I spoke to him, was a decent standard wrestler.
And we talk about the analogies and comparisons, I suppose the parallels I suppose is the right word,
between wrestling physically and wrestling politically.
Hope you enjoy this conversation with Jim Jordan.
I'm live at the Republican National Convention today.
I'm with Jim Jordan.
Jim, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you.
You've had a life, in a sense, that's been defined by combat.
It's really astonishing to meet you, because you seem like a very gentle and congenial man.
And yet, I know that you're a significantly gifted wrestler, and I've seen you in combat, albeit vocal combat, with opponents in your role.
And I've had to write this down, and this is my problem, not yours.
Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
What I know that from...
That's a complicated job title, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
But what that is to the layman is seeing you taking Anthony Fauci to task and being confrontational.
I wonder about people that have that combative component to their nature, whether there is a correlative to your early ability or practice as a grappler and grappling more verbally.
No, it's interesting.
I tell people, when you're an old guy like me, the closest thing you can get to a wrestling match is a hearing.
And particularly when you have someone like Fauci, who I think wasn't square with we the people, when he did all the things he did and said all the things he said.
As an example, I went after him because I asked him the simple question, when does it end?
When do we get our freedoms back?
This is a particular hearing a couple years ago.
When I was a kid, I wanted to play middle linebacker.
You know, when you grow up in Midwest, you love football, you love sports, but as you can see... Middle linebacker requires... Yeah, a little more size than I have.
More this gen on there.
It requires height, girth, strength, weight.
Whereas you are more nimble, angular, agile.
I could tell, though, that you can wrestle.
The good Lord had other designs.
I'm five, seven and a half on a good day, so I had to wrestle.
But it's been great for our family, and I love the sport, and it's as It's as basic as it gets.
Two guys step on the mat, if you can throw him down more than he can do it to you, you win.
It's pretty basic.
And sometimes, to your point, sometimes a hearing, it becomes, particularly cross-examination, where you got a hostile witness, I don't mean hostile, but you know what I mean, like in a cross-examination kind of hearing, it becomes kind of like a wrestling match.
Yes, I suppose it does.
And I wonder how you contend with that.
I'm not flexible enough to do too many years of wrestling.
I'm not flexible enough to do that.
You should have good psoas, open hips.
I wonder about the use of legs.
I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Oh, so you know something about that.
And when I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with people that are skilled wrestlers, it's basically, it's all right, you can just move stuff.
Don't worry about it.
Don't panic.
It's all pre-recorded.
There's nothing to worry about.
Just move things.
When I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with people that wrestle, sometimes it nullifies the Jiu-Jitsu.
For example, there's this one guy I wrestle with.
He gets hold of your arm, pins it to you, then he travels right around you and then gets across you in side control, as it would be called in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
It's a very powerful sport.
People use their bodies really, really brilliantly in wrestling.
Sorry, I've got sidetracked into the particularities of the sport.
A lot of the UFC guys, many of them, Their base skill set is they start in wrestling and then they move to the jiu-jitsu or the Brazilian jiu-jitsu or to judo and then of course the striking and the boxing.
But it seems like a lot of them start with that base techniques, base skill set of being a wrestler.
Can I ask, in your role, I wonder when you went from thinking that what we knew about the pandemic did not warrant inquiry, that we should continue to follow the science, accept the narrative, accept the findings of the various regulatory bodies Who are sort of epitomized really in the figure of Anthony Fauci and perhaps the whole idea of government bureaucracy and bureaucratic power has come to be epitomized in the figure of Anthony Fauci.
At what point did you think, oh this is not an honest actor upon whose expertise we can rely, but potentially the kind of face of the very kind of corruption that Republicans are notably interested in reducing?
I don't know if there's one exact point, but I would think it was probably when they were downplaying natural immunity.
Like, suddenly we got the first virus in history where there's no natural immunity.
Really?
And then they just told us so many things that over time just turned out not to be true.
I remember we had Dr. Birx in front of a committee probably two years ago, and I remember asking her, Simple question.
My turn to ask her.
I asked her a question.
I said, Dr. Birx, when the Biden administration told us that the vaccinated couldn't get the virus, were they guessing or lying?
Because it's got to be, you know, did you not know, you're kind of guessing, or were you actually lying to us, which is even worse.
Because the truth is, what they told us turned out not to be true.
And you can go down, and I know you've covered all this before, but Almost everything they told us turned out not to be true.
Didn't come from a lab.
Wasn't gain-of-function research.
Wasn't our tax money used in the Wuhan lab.
All those seem to me not be true.
Vaccinated can't get it.
Vaccinated can't transmit it.
Mask works.
Six-foot social distancing was based on science.
There's no such thing as natural... There's like eight lies right there.
So at some point, we're just like, why should we believe anything you tell us about this virus, right?
And the worst was, though, when they said to men and women in our military, you don't get to shine.
We're going to kick you out.
And they tried to say it to businesses.
If you don't have people get the vaccine, they can't work.
This is America, for goodness sake.
You can't do that.
When you describe it like that, Jim, it sounds almost like a coup took place because how would power migrate away from the autonomy and sovereignty of individuals to these institutions that are unelected and yet publicly funded, having the power to make those type of decisions?
How did that happen?
I'll just answer my own question, but I'll do it quickly.
It's your podcast, you're allowed to do that.
Well, Jim, was it the exploitation of a crisis to legitimise authority that would have otherwise been immediately rejected by a discerning population?
And do you not think that what's revealed during the period of the pandemic is a degree of corruption that's actually institutional?
Both within the pharmaceutical industry and also in the regulatory bodies.
And do you not think that they can never inspire the hearings that you've already conducted?
And as I said to you, I love your style, I like that you get into people, wrestle that you are, but isn't the kind of reckoning that would truly be required, doesn't that kind of amount to the disbanding of some of those agencies and maybe even the incrimination of some of those figures?
You're making the argument for basic conservatism.
It's why you want a smaller government.
Bigger the government, Uh, the more more potential for abuse.
I think a lot of this is driven by just raw power at the end.
Uh, I think Fauci sort of liked it all liked all the Publicity, the prestige of it, the power of it, and I do think there were people in elected positions who tried to exploit it for political gain, particularly when it came to the election.
So I think all that was a problem, but you're making the fundamental argument for why it's better to have smaller government, because smaller government typically means greater freedom for we, the people.
Jim, I believe in non-interventionism and I believe in independence and I believe in freedom.
What I also believe is that the regulatory bodies that we do have ought to be functionally fit for purpose and the kind of hypocrisy and exploitation that is afforded when the FDA is primarily, not primarily, but significantly funded by the organizations and corporations that it is supposed to be regulated.
In a sense, isn't that Not just an over-preening and over-funded bureaucracy, but a far deeper problem.
Corporatization and commerce embedded into state institutions, Jim.
Fair question.
political scientists have an agency capture where it's, you know, the very entities that agencies are supposed to
regulate and oversee become captured by those entities.
And you get this, what some people call it, the Stockholm Syndrome where it's like, well, we're all working together
here, but that may not be in the best interest of the consumer, the best interest of the citizen.
So that is a I think a valid concern and something I think many of us.
Many of us kind of suspected during the pandemic.
Yeah, because I'm an outsider.
I'm not from your country, and I'm not from Capitol Hill, as you can plainly observe.
But the layman's perspective... You dress just like a congressman.
Layman's perspective on political corruption is that the overlap between commerce and corporatism and state has become so immersive and embedded that it's ultimately operating as one corrupt sort of tumor almost.
I mean we saw it in this area because it was big government, big media, big tech working together to censor People who spoke out against what was going on in the government.
And it's like, that is a scary alliance.
And we saw that largely with people speaking out against COVID.
You said anything against the orthodoxy of the administration, you were censored.
And the example I always point to is the third day of the Biden administration, Third day, January 23rd, 2021.
There's an email from the Executive Office of the Presidency of the White House to Twitter and it says, take down this tweet ASAP.
And the tweet was from RFK Jr.
And he said two sentences.
He said, Hank Aaron passed away after taking the vaccine.
He took the vaccine as an effort to encourage more black Americans to get vaccinated.
So he had maybe three sentences in there.
Every sentence is accurate.
Every sentence is true.
And the Biden administration was telling the third now.
Now think about this.
Take down a true statement, a true tweet, government pressuring big tech to do so, and the person they're trying to do this to is their opponent.
RFK was getting ready to run for president.
That is not supposed to happen in the United States of America, but it did, and that's the scary part.
And we saw, whether it was COVID or whether it's related to the election or other issues, that big government, big media, big tech, and I always say there's a formula.
I attribute this to the left.
The left will tell a lie, big media will report the lie, big tech will amplify and assist the lie, and then when you tell the truth, they call you a racist, or they call you something else.
And then by the time you're proven right, they've already moved on to the next lie.
So now we've been proven right, like, the vaccinated can get it, the vaccinated can transmit it, the masks don't work, we've been proven right on this, but they're already on to the next issue.
And that's a problem, and it's something we gotta stay on top of.
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Thank you.
Of course, you make a lot of important points here, some of which potentially could become contradictory in so much as the regulatory overreach that led to the censorship of the RFP tweet.
How would one oppose that?
Of course, first of all, you need a principle like free speech.
But then, is there the requirement for the regulation or enforcement of that principle, and does that not amount to a degree of regulatory authority?
That's a sort of a genuine question.
But beyond that, isn't it evident, Jim, that what's happened is that through technological and communication advancement, we no longer have the same...
Yeah.
And the argument that is commonly offered when it comes to gun regulation, say by those that believe that there ought be more, is, oh, well, when they came up with those ideas, you didn't have sort of rapid fire X, Y, Z. And now I'm not getting involved in that argument.
I recognize I'm in America.
You guys do what you want.
I mean, I'm down with it.
I'm down with all forms of freedom.
But what I will say is that technology and communication has entered into an area where there are now new possibilities for immediate communication and the emergence of new elites.
And indeed, the creation of the categories of misinformation, malinformation, disinformation is a response to this new ability to create consensus, to deny narratives.
I mean, if we could pivot using just this as our framework to recent events, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Were X still in the thrall of the Biden administration?
Would there be widely circulated images of, that person moved funny in the background, why was there not a security detail here?
What's going on there?
You know, by the way, there are of course conspiracy theories on the left, there are conspiracy theories on the right.
People on the left, because I still read their stuff, and I mean the establishment left, because the real left is who knows where they would be.
But like, They are saying, no, this must have been done by the, you know, even sort of credible commentators, as much as anyone's credible online, you know, saying, well, maybe the Trump administration did this, you know, that kind of false flag stuff, the kind of things that you would be familiar with if you operate in those spaces.
So I wonder, are we not in a sense being confronted with the kind of changes that amount to the advent of industrialization and how that created different political movements?
Isn't there a requirement for political movements that are adept at handling the new Technology, ultimately.
Yeah, great question, great points.
I still think the best way to sort it all out is the Constitution, is the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is our right to speak and not be harassed and intimidated for doing so by your government.
And I would argue during COVID, During COVID, every right we enjoy as Americans was assaulted under the First Amendment.
Every right we enjoy.
Five rights.
Your right to practice your faith, your right to assemble, your right to petition the government, free press, free speech.
Everyone was attacked.
During COVID, they told Americans you can't go to church on Sunday.
Remember what the mayor of New York said to Jewish Americans?
Couldn't go to church.
You can go to Senegal.
What are you taught in America?
That's why we started this place.
So you practice your faith.
They said, I always point out, two years ago I spoke to the New Mexico Republican Party in Amarillo, Texas because they had to go to Texas to get the freedom to assemble because their crazy Democrat governor wouldn't let them do it in their own state where they pay taxes.
So they had to go to Texas.
You wanted to come talk to a member of Congress and petition him two and a half years ago?
Couldn't do it at the Capitol because Nancy Pelosi wouldn't let you in.
And then free press... People should have forced their way in, I think, Jim.
They should have just gone in there, pick a day, and just burst through the doors.
Free Press, Jen Psaki stood at the podium a couple years ago and during a press conference and said that, these sentences, and I'm paraphrasing, but she basically said, most Americans get their news from social media platforms.
We, the Biden administration, are working with them to limit the misinformation that Americans see.
And I'm like, did the press person just say in the press room she's for limiting the press?
Like, again, in America.
But the most important right you have is what we're doing right now.
The most important liberty we have is our right to talk.
Because if you can't speak, you can't practice your faith, you can't share your faith, you can't petition your government, and you don't have a free press, that is the most important right.
And that's the one they're coming after trying to censor and working with big tech and working...
God bless Elon Musk for buying Twitter and open it back up to where it's truly a First Amendment free speech platform.
But this is, I think, this is at the heart of this election too, because if the left continues to win elections, they will further restrict speech rights, further restrict your First Amendment liberties.
I think that's The way to combat this is to just make sure the First Amendment stays as robust as it always had in America.
Because actually, Jim, we can create new consensus through communication and conversation.
The reason that I think the peculiar paradox that you described of the press secretary describing to the press a prohibition of press freedom is because it's tacitly understood that the press Is an institution that to a degree is in alliance certainly with factions of government, and I'm sure that varies and vacillates depending on which party is in government.
And what we have is a novel phenomena emerging, the potential for new voices, independent media, a new consensus, evolving consensus.
And I think that that might create a kind of devolution of power, a kind of new diaspora that's not actually very well suited to the centralized coagulation of power that the old Yeah, I think that's accurate too.
And we had a witness, she was a powerful journalist who covered, she's from Canada, she testified in front of our committee, and she was one of the journalists who covered the whole trucking issue up there, if you remember, during COVID.
Yeah, of course!
And Zubrin, I can't think of her name right, but she made a great statement in the committee, she says, the hallmark of Western civilization is that we settle our differences via debate.
Yes.
And you talk it out, you debate, you have votes.
That's how you're supposed to because if you can't settle differences and you can't come to some kind of decision and reach some kind of consensus via debate, via voting, the alternatives are scary and we never want to go there.
So that is why we have the First Amendment so that you The way you combat bad speech is with more speech, is with good speech, and you have that debate.
That's how our system works.
And right now you have so many on the left who say, no, no, no, no, no.
The cancel culture mob will come after you if you say something wrong.
Here's a great example.
Dianne Feinstein, because she said something, this is a little different because it gets to this cancel culture, but I just happened to think about it.
I remember when Dianne Feinstein, liberal iconic senator from California, There used to be an elementary school named after Dianne Feinstein, but someone found something she said 30 years ago, and the Dianne Feinstein Elementary School is no longer named after her because of something she said 30 years ago?
We don't want that, and we certainly don't want this limit on what people can see and post and say, which seems to me where the left wants to take us.
I've noticed myself that it seems that The very threat that appears to be amplified and conveyed with regard to the discourse around Trump and the MAGA movement, i.e.
this is a return to tyranny and dictatorship that belongs to the 20th century, is in fact being augured and implemented through Anodyne bureaucracy through these sort of banal and sterile models of like, we're going to protect you, we're going to help you, it's for your convenience.
Models of citizen management have been slowly introduced, often using crisis in order to facilitate further centralized authority, as in the obvious example that you've been describing so articulately over the course of our conversation.
My concern is that that will continue.
Because there is a lack of agility to deal with the new dynamics that have emerged out of these communication models, which would seem to me to facilitate further decentralization, further federalization, greater ability for electoral representation, which I won't call democracy in this context because people will shout, at me until I fall unconscious. It seems to me that because
there is a resistance, a refusal to yield that, this tendency towards decentralisation,
authoritarianism is appearing in an odd new form. It is not the authoritarianism of Pol Pot or Mussolini
or Hitler. It's the authoritarianism of Huxley and of Kafka and of course of Orwell.
Bureaucratic citizen management, SOMA-induced, screen-staring, switched-off citizenship, and it sort of is happening while you're being told, you're being defended from it, and it seems to me that that's something that you are trying to oppose.
Do you imagine it's something you can successfully confront?
Well, we've exposed some of it.
I mean, easy example, maybe the best example is The Department of Homeland Security, what, a year and a half ago, tried to form the Disinformation Governance Board.
This Nina Jankowicz was going to head this.
And it was as if some bureaucrats, to your point, some group of bureaucrats can tell you what you're allowed to say, what you're not allowed to say, what's disinformation, what's misinformation.
The last thing you want is a bunch of government bureaucrats defining all this.
So I think you're right.
And then you have all these agencies, CISA, Cyber Intelligence Security, I mean, then you have FIDF, the Foreign Influence Task Force, where the FBI meets with the CIA, meets with others, and it's all to combat disinformation, misinformation.
It's the same group, by the way, that knew the laptop was real and allowed the whole You know, narrative to be that, no, no, no, this was a Russian information operation, baloney.
So, you're right.
That's the last thing we want is bureaucrats in the government defining what we're allowed to see, what we're not allowed to see, what we're allowed to say, what we're not allowed to say.
That is a scary place to go.
It's why we've had the hearings we've had.
And try to bring to light this and look for legislative ways to remedy it.
People think that those hearings don't ever lead to real justice, that they become sort of a cathartic exercise, just an opportunity to sort of vent and spritz the issue, rather than go, that's criminal!
I should be in jail!
That doesn't seem to happen.
Question and comment a lot.
We can't indict anyone.
We're the legislative branch of government.
But I will tell you that there's no longer a Disinformation Governance Board because we made a big issue of it and folks like you talked about it and how ridiculous this was.
The IRS made an announcement probably two years ago that they will no longer make unannounced visits to American citizens' homes.
The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service says we're doing this for the safety of our agents.
Maloney, they're doing it because we caught him.
They were knocking on Matt Taibbi's door literally the day he was testifying about the Twitter files and the censorship industrial complex as he and Michael Schellenberg are two great journalists, former Democrats frankly, who said this is wrong, this is an assault on the First Amendment.
We've probably had more Democrats testify in front of our committee than any Republican chairman ever.
We've had RFK testify.
Democrats tried to throw him out of the committee.
We've had Schellenberg or Taibbi.
We've had Tulsi Gabbard.
We've had them all come in because they all believe in the First Amendment.
And to me, this is so central to who we are as a country, because if you can't have honest, robust debate, Again, as the journalist from Canada pointed out, the alternative to settling disputes is a dangerous place, and we never want to get there.
So let's focus on that great document, the Constitution, and the most important amendment to it, the first one, to focus on that.
Jim, you seem like a very kind and decent man, just based on our intuitive human interaction.
Thank you, I'm really trying my best, I'm really working on myself, and I'm allowing myself to be worked on.
We're all in need of God's grace, I know that much.
I wonder if you feel that this is a moment of light in American politics, or a moment of darkness, and if recent events might be an opportunity for positive change, or do you sense something, kind of a heaviness?
How do you feel as someone who's been involved for a long time?
I mean, first of all, it's America.
Always on the optimist side.
It's the greatest country ever.
And I do feel, and I think President Trump said this, I think, Sunday, that it's time for a more unifying country.
And, you know, in light of what he's been through and his amazing reaction to the tragedy of what happened on Saturday, I mean, I think that's an American reaction.
I really do.
Where it shows the character of President Trump and just who he is.
But it also is sort of American.
It's just like, that's the American spirit.
Like, we're not going to lose.
So I'm optimistic.
I always am about our great country.
Thank you.
I see the optimism in it.
I really do.
And then yesterday with the guy who's selected as VP from Our Great State is The American Dream.
His story is the American story.
Come from the humblest of homes to, you know, success, amazing, best-selling book to now, I think, going to be the next Vice President of the United States of America.
That's American story.
And then, then later yesterday, last night, you know, that was Saturday or Monday afternoon.
Then last night to see president Trump walk out.
After what he'd been through, I mean, it just, it was special.
So I'm always optimistic about this great country.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Amen.
I enjoyed it.
And for outlining and explaining.
I've never done a podcast quite like this.
Well, you're right.
I mean, this is an extraordinary day for both of us.
I'm being told that you are to join Dan Bongino without delay.
Thank you.
I really enjoyed it.
God bless.
God bless.
Thank you.
God bless you, sir.
Thank you very much for joining me.
Tomorrow on the show, there's a total different pace, a change of direction and a great conversation with George Janko.
This is one of the conversations that was available early on Locals like our Adam Carolla conversation that's up there now.
That's why it's worth becoming an Awaken Wanderer to get access to the additional content and to be part of our community.
