“KAMALA’S DICTATORSHIP!” – VP THREATENS Elon Musk & Free Speech, Vows To SHUT DOWN X?! - SF446
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In today’s show, as Elon Musk rallies following Brazil’s banning of X, reaction to news that Kamala Harris will shut down the platform if she wins in November. Plus, Michael Franzese joins be to discuss his life as a former mobster in the Colombo crime family, and his subsequent conversion to Christianity.
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Hello you Awakening Wonders there on Spotify, Apple, Stink Whistle, Gurgle Dot, or wherever you download your podcasts these days to remain at least peripherally connected to some tendril of truth in a bewildering miasma of lies and propaganda.
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Thanks.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We're talking to Michael Francis a little bit later, as long as we can still freely communicate.
Remember, later this month, I'll be peering at Rescue the Republic, also known as Rescue the West.
And I wanted to pay particular attention to this image.
There I am at the very front of that boat.
Just in front of Donald Trump, I'd like to know what this is.
I'm going to find out what that is emulating that image because I want to know which one of the people, which one of the brave heroes that likely my ancestors were in a war opposing, given that I'm English, a red coat, etc.
I am the facsimile of in that glorious image.
There's details in the description of how you can attend that.
There's a lot of excitement obviously in the post-Tulsi, post-Bobby Kennedy moment that makes it pretty clear that what we have now is an anti-establishment movement versus the establishment.
Let me know in the rumble chat or indeed if you are an AwakendWonder let me know in that chat there.
And if you are an AwakendWonder we will find ways to get you some free tickets for that
I mean, I'm not sure, actually, that you even paid to attend that event, but we'll certainly give you some sort of VIP thing.
We'll find out more about that as it draws closer to us.
You'll certainly have to be in a wake and wonder to participate.
Now!
We recognize the significance in particular of the formulation of an anti-establishment alliance because we are reaching a kind of fever pitch of censorship.
Here's Elon Musk responding to the protests in Brazil.
This was a few months ago.
People of Brazil are evidently not happy with what's happening in that country and it's surprising to learn the United States of America, far from opposing a foreign nation that are legislating against an American corporation,
They are supporting it.
Here, Face the Nation appear to be saying that Elon Musk is a peddler of misinformation.
Let me know in the comments and chat if you agree with them.
David, you've been really proactive, I see you online, pushing back when you encounter really serious election misinformation, particularly when it comes from someone like Elon Musk, who owns a social media platform and has been pushing some really inflammatory claims when it comes to voting.
Yeah, there are very powerful forces that want us as Americans who live in our democratic society to doubt that democratic society, to doubt our elections that decide our leaders, and to hate our neighbours, to think of our neighbours as enemies if they happen to disagree with us politically.
And the fact is that our elections are as secure as they've ever been.
It's actually a bit like a children's book
Where the language that's used to describe the opponents is precisely the language that you could use to describe yourself.
I'm going to make sure that I'm not doing it.
I'm going to make sure that I'm not participating in anything other than unifying language of hope and optimism and real and radical change in the face of, it seems to me, sets of legislation across the world designed to inhibit personal freedom.
Let's try our best to do that because here's a resurfaced
Clip of Kamala Harris saying, or appearing to say at least, that she would ban X were she to ascend to the high office of presidency.
He has lost his privileges and it should be taken down and the bottom line is that you can't say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter.
I don't know, does that make sense?
Have you seen some of the investigation into child exploitation on Meta and how in fact it does appear to be one rule for X and one rule for Meta and very much in Meta's favour.
The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power.
They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation.
And that has to stop.
Oversight and regulation, control and censorship, synonyms, and it'll be easy to get lost in a maze of nomenclature if you weren't paying attention to what's happening across the world right now.
And Wokeness there pointing out that Kamala supports what Brazil just
Did to X. In my country now, we are experiencing, as we are across the world, resurgent nation-first politics.
Many people are concerned about what's happening in Germany and the recent election results in Germany.
Let's have a look at Nigel Farage from the UK commenting on the UK, the country I live in and I'm in right now, putting out
Issuing jail sentences for violations of social media codes and practices.
Have a look at this.
So there I was in Barnsley campaigning in the general election and a lout opposite side of the street gets a cup, fills it with cement, loves it.
At the bus that I'm on and you can see the picture here of me ducking and me shouting for everybody else to get down.
It was a very dangerous, provocative, violent thing for this guy to do.
Luckily some builders who were working on the site stopped him, apprehended him, he was arrested.
Today
He's been given a suspended prison sentence.
He will not serve any custodial time at all.
But you see, in Keir Starmer's Britain, if he put something intemperate on Facebook after a couple of glasses of wine, he would have gone to prison.
And that's the mess we're in.
Can you believe, in the year to March, 147,000 people guilty of carrying knives, some of sexual offences, have been given community orders, which means they don't get criminal sentences.
Our prisons are full.
We're letting people out who are violent offenders to put Facebook offenders thought speech, some of it not very nice, I'll accept, and to chuck them in prison for a short period of time.
Law and order, crime is out of control.
We're even allowing people to go shoplifting up to 200 quid without being prosecuted.
You simply couldn't make it up.
Extraordinary.
This kind of discourse is becoming prevalent in our country, obviously in yours, and one can only assume that conversations like this are happening in, well not happening in Brazil anymore, they've shut down X.
Presumably they're happening in Germany, in France, across the world, the sense of polarization which is increasing, which is odd given that in reality I think now what we have are interconnected nodes and communities that defy the previous categorization of left and right.
That's why this Rescue the Republic event is taking place because now there are alliances between figures that are to the left of the government, figures that are to the
Right of the government, most of whom are interested in, I would say, more individual freedom and opposing the establishment.
Let me know what you think about that in the comments and the chat.
Douglas Murray was on Piers Morgan and they were talking about Tommy Robinson, the activist often condemned in legacy media for being racist and right-wing.
He denies in fact both of those charges, saying that what he in fact is, is a journalist who opposes
Aspects of Islam that he would describe as being primarily centered around the grooming gang stories and extremism, and in particular where extremism and terrorism meet.
Tommy Robinson's been on Jordan Peterson recently and has become, in this country at least, a kind of
Depending on your perspective, I suppose, over either an avatar of emergent working class activism or an absolute pariah.
Here's Piers Morgan discussing him with Douglas Murray.
Now, I suppose whatever your
Viewers on Tommy Robinson on the religion of Islam, surely all of us want for any individual or any group to be able to openly communicate.
And if you don't, because you sort of think that the incendiary language contributes to social unrest and unease.
And I just wonder what the pathway is that's imagined through all of the polarisation and
The sort of quite jarring social disturbances that we've had in my country, your country, across the world, last few years in particular, if you're placing the control of information more and more in the hands of the government.
This is what Douglas Murray and Piers Morgan said.
People were looking for people who they could say had coordinated this.
I would say it's much worse than that.
I would that there were clear coordinators here because you could go after the people.
But there weren't, Piers.
As I understand it, from what I can see, this was angry crowds of people that sometimes became mobs and they weren't coordinated.
That is much harder and much more worrying.
Because Starmer and the rest don't seem to know what to do.
I would take a slight issue, because I think when you have massive followings on social media like Andrew Tate, and I challenged him about this before I went away and we had a pretty robust exchange, but also Tommy Robinson, who's been allowed back onto X by Elon Musk, which I don't think was a good decision, but we can debate that another time, but when they have these big followings and they are actively promoting
Completely wrong information suggesting that the perpetrator was an illegal Muslim immigrant to the country on a terror watch list.
That's when the trouble starts.
Tommy Robinson on Jordan Peterson said that he did not promote the idea that it was an illegal immigrant and of course Andrew Tate on Piers Morgan Show
I suppose really what we are in the midst of is a terrifying moment when it comes to who do we grant control to?
Who do you fear most?
Who are the pariahs and villains in all this?
And perhaps if we might allow for a moment our thinking to rest upon solutions, can you imagine there being some social pact and ease between communities at the moment that appear to be...
Being aggressively groomed to oppose one another.
And as long as there is social unrest, and as long as there is hatred online, the ongoing clamour for further censorship will continue.
And that is why, at heart,
If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be leaving in a second.
And over the rest of the show, of course, we'll be talking to Michael Francis, Mob Boss, one of the most powerful mafia figures in your country in the 90s, excuse me, 1980s and 1990s, who has found Jesus Christ and now walks a very different path.
It's a fantastic conversation, you'll want to stay for that.
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We're going to leave YouTube now.
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Join us on Rumble for my conversation with Michael Francis.
It's a brilliant conversation where we talk about faith, identity, maleness, masculinity, and so much more.
Remember, you can become an Awakened Wonder, and when you are one, you qualify to get live tickets to any events that I appear in anywhere in the world.
I often do live stand-up events.
Remember?
You came to those.
Did you enjoy those?
Have a look at this clip from my recent stand-up.
Performance.
You had the phone on the chair, then you sort of moved a bit.
Leg room coming out of your arse.
And then the phone just fell down, and you're like, oh, there's the phone.
Sometimes, do you know what I've done?
I've done this even earlier today.
It's a brilliant move.
Like, phone fell down.
I was noticing other people noticing it.
Just fucking left it there.
Fell down.
Other people were like, oh.
Just left it there.
You don't own me!
Phone me!
Yeah?
You think you control me?
Do you?
I'll just stay down there.
Pick me up, Russell.
I will in a minute.
Also, if you're on Awake and Wonder, you are able to pose questions.
Any question you want to me, and I will answer it.
Here's one of them now.
I wanted to ask you if you've been diagnosed and if you agree with it of bipolar.
I myself have been diagnosed and living with bipolar type 2 and it'd be lovely to know if you're on that journey as well and what you do to support it, to keep the moods in check.
I've had no diagnoses of conditions like
You know, bipolar, since I've been drug free.
When I was still using drugs, I was diagnosed as being depressed and bipolar.
And now, with the number of diagnoses they issued around Asperger's, autism, ADHD, I'm very curious as to how I'd get on under scrutiny for those conditions.
Thanks very much for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
Here now is my conversation with Michael Francis, which I know you are going to love.
A strong, assertive, masculine man who says that Jesus Christ is the greatest male role model that I ever lived and that our infatuation with materialism can only be cured by one particular pathway.
It's a conversation that I love.
Hope you enjoy it as well.
Michael, I'm so happy and it's a pleasure to be in your company in his name.
Well, I feel the same way, and that's a big amen, brother.
Amen.
Good to see you, mate.
Thanks for coming on.
So many of my mates are massive fans of you, like, you know, like, you know, I interview people all the time, but a lot of my mates wanted to come today, and one of my mates is hanging out on the other side of this curtain.
You've inspired a lot of people.
I think you, in particular, speak to people that, hmm,
It's funny, isn't it?
Our culture doesn't have a way of directing the energy of young men anymore.
The energy of young men, it's almost like it's surplus somehow.
What do you think about that?
Well, I agree, you know, especially in our country.
Well, I shouldn't say that, but you know, I'm more familiar with that.
There's been a, uh, obviously a feminizing of men.
Um, you know, this guilt trip that's been laid on men if they try to be men and, you know, act responsibly towards women.
You know, I've always said this, Russell, you know, when men are acting like men, it's not demeaning to women.
It's a benefit to women.
And people just don't seem to be getting that.
So there's a couple of us out there, yourself included, I think that are,
You know spreading that message, and I think it's catching on.
You know, you tell me your experience, of course, please, that's why I'm here, I'm so interested to learn from you.
But before I was saved, and even before I got into recovery from drugs and alcohol, I was trying to make sense of the world, I was trying to get things from the world, first through drugs and alcohol, then through fame and work.
A lot through sex.
I really didn't have a very good attitude when I was promiscuous.
I really saw the world as something there for me to consume.
But you've obviously come from a very different... I wonder if there are some comparisons.
Like, when you've got, like I have, an ability to perform, say you're charismatic, you can hold people's attention, if you've got a certain amount of drive, if you're willing to be hit in the face with a lot of no's, if you're willing to take rebuttal and rejection and humiliation and keep on going,
There are systems that will monetize that.
There are systems, for example, Hollywood or the television industry.
They go, that person, yes, we can use that person.
And for a while, they'll commodify you and use you.
And then once you're not very used to them anymore,
You're done.
Now that's, you know, in one way that sounds ruthless, but that's, it's just business.
I fancy that it might be the, um, this comparable, albeit with perhaps rather higher stakes in the world you're from, to the kind of motifs and, um, what do I want to say?
Systems around, uh, organized crime or whatever term you use to describe the, your life before coming, uh, Jesus.
I wonder if you've noticed that.
For example, people right back away from you.
Even people that have known me for a long time and know that my conduct around women, for example, was selfish.
It was selfish and I was a player and a womanizer and that is not what Jesus intends for us.
That's not what God intends for us.
I am here to be of service, to be loving and to be kind, not to exploit the fact that I'm famous and those women want to sleep with me and just like think, yeah, let's go.
But I was in darkness.
I was a fool.
Like, I wonder if, uh, you know, like all the people that knew what it was and knew what it wasn't sort of were really willing to sort of take the
That's right.
Well, you know, Russell, there's no question that on the street, you know, you have to show your value, so to speak, and you have to show when you can contribute to that life.
And, you know, there are different levels of success in that life like anywhere else.
And I was fortunate in that I knew how to use that life to benefit me in business and in other ways.
So for a long time, I was a pretty respected commodity.
You know, but it's like anything else when, you know, you turn your back on that or for any reason you're not, you know, providing the same services to them.
Well, then people turn on you.
And, you know, that's what happened to me.
You know, but in my life, Russell, I look at it differently.
I took a blood oath, you know, to abide by the rules of that life.
And I knew there were consequences if I didn't do that.
So I don't I'm not mad at anybody.
I understand people turning on me because I came to realize that it was a bad life.
It's really an evil lifestyle.
And the reason I say that is because I don't know any family of any member of that life, including my own.
Not my wife and kids, but you know, brother, sister, mother, father, that hasn't been totally devastated.
And any lifestyle that does that to a family is a bad life.
So I came to realize that, obviously, you know, when I became a person of faith and realized that, you know, my answer was in Jesus and not in the street, not in making money and not in, you know, the success that I might have gained at that point in time.
So yeah, were there people that turned on me?
Of course, until today.
I mean, hey, you're a rat, you left a wife, you're no good, you're bad and all that.
But you know what?
Most people see it differently now, because if you can act a certain way over a period of time and you're consistent in that way, people start to notice that.
And they say, well, you know what?
Maybe this is real.
Like I was always told my, you know, my, you know, coming to faith was hypocrisy and I was using it.
And I was going to make money with it.
You know, you probably heard the same thing, all that nonsense.
But, you know, again, if you're consistent over a period of time, people start to see that and they start to back off.
And I think that's happened with me.
I'm sure it's happened with you.
It certainly will.
That's just the way life is.
Firstly, I wonder if you can point to values that were present in the life that you were born into that you think are admirable.
Certainly, there must be certain universal principles that make that lifestyle exciting to people outside of it that have only ever glimpsed it peripherally through, briefly, through associates.
For example, I was a drug addict for a long time, so
I mean, it's
Bravery, camaraderie, a code, being against the establishment, being willing to be an outsider, being willing to sacrifice yourself for others, being willing to kill or die.
Those values, like when we started our conversation, seemed like the kind of values that are being bred out and selected against, repressed, oppressed, criticized and condemned in males in our culture.
A lot of my friends that have ended up
Uh, you know, serving prison sentences, for example.
I feel like, you know, in a different time, they would have been heroes in the military, like they're people that, you know, if they'd been correctly directed.
Um, for myself, I feel like I'm someone that if I'd have been introduced to spiritual principles very early in life, I might not have had the road for addiction I had.
From the inside of it, because you've already said in the first few minutes of our conversations that you have obviously experienced the havoc and devastation that that way of life wreaks on families and therefore by its fruit shall we know it, it's obviously not positive in that regard.
What is it that is alluring?
You know, when you say about the blood oath and all that, those kind of things, it seems like it's somehow
Not only outside of culture, but somehow transcendent of it.
Better than it.
You know, the great gangster movies of the 70s and 80s provide us with critiques on America itself, like, oh, well, isn't America generally just gangsters?
Aren't global elites just gangsters?
So what if, you know, working-class and blue-collar and immigrant people set up their own gangs?
They should be able to, you know, like, that's sort of like some of the stuff that has always turned me on about it.
What do you consider to be the values within the world that you are familiar with that are worthy of reverence?
Well, you know, you said it.
You know, when I came into the life, I had a very idealistic view of the life because, number one, we're men's men.
Now, what does that mean?
It means that we respect women.
It means we take care of our community.
It means that we don't lie to one another.
We protect one another.
We have this camaraderie among guys.
We've taken a blood oath.
You know, when we take that oath, Russell, it's not an oath to lie, steal, cheat, and kill, even though I'll be the first to admit that's part of that life.
We take an oath of silence.
The oath of America means silence.
We're never supposed to violate the rules, meaning we don't betray one another.
We never talk about the life.
We're not even supposed to admit that it exists.
We never violate another man's wife, sister, daughter, brother, mother.
Never do that.
You pay for that with your life.
You know, and you gotta be honorable with one another.
So that's what we're told, and that's the ideology.
So, you know, that's very powerful.
To me, I don't think there's anything more powerful than this brotherhood, you know, among men.
I got your back, you got mine.
But you know, it's like anything else, Russell.
You know, it's like our government.
They're taking an oath to protect and obey and
You know, and what happens, you know, it gets corrupted.
So it's like anything else, the life gets corrupted, but the ideology of it going in, it's wonderful.
And that's why so many young people, young men, look at that and say, wow, Michael, you had it all.
You had the cars, you had the woman, you had the great suit, you had money, you had power.
It's very alluring and attractive.
And it's like anything else once you get into the life you see what it's really all about and you got to learn how to navigate it just to uh in some ways survive um but you know again even when I look back I mean I had a lot of good friends you know Russell the age-old question why do why do good people do bad things you know and I say this I met a lot of guys that I thought were good people now we were corrupted in our thinking and our thoughts and we did bad things as a result
Didn't make them bad people.
Didn't mean they had a bad art or anything.
Because sometimes you can think you're doing the right thing and you're actually doing the wrong thing.
If you're fed that.
If you buy into the ideology around you.
And I think that's what happens to many of us, you know?
I mean, it happened to me.
I'll be quite honest.
I did bad things thinking I was doing good things at that time because of the oath that I took.
Honor is a beautiful and highly potent concept.
I suppose within honor there must be the idea that we value something more highly than ourselves, that there is something that is not material that binds us together.
And honor, I think, is integral in the spiritual life.
That what I'm discovering and learning about now, Michael, is in lived faith, I'm continually observing as I try to reassert power again in my own life, my own self, what I might consider the satanic aspect of my nature.
Part of me that is fallen, that part of me that is either Adamic or sinful, to continually yield to Christ.
In that there is something very difficult to grasp.
The idea that I will be carried, the idea that I do not have to make decisions anymore, the idea that I will be shown.
In your concept of honour
That is an allusion to there is something bigger than self.
But I can see that what happens, whether it's show business or crime, what people are focusing on actually, they might like some of the code, the honour, the silence, the willingness to die or kill.
But also the cars, the drugs, the power.
Power is a very corrupting idea.
Power is very, very alluring.
I was reminded recently of our Lord when in the sham trial of Pilate, never spoke, stood in silence while being condemned.
So there's that idea of silence there, and there is no doubt that this is the most honourable being that ever existed.
To live, to aspire to be like Christ is a very high idea.
I wonder, can you tell me about the process of relinquishing your former position, being like a very rich man at 35, being revered and respected, and what
What you were experiencing in terms of pain and shame and loss and isolation and how Christ Was maybe then calling to you and where you felt it and how you've made that transit that transition Well, you know Russell for me, you know a guy that always felt that I was in control I never thought that there was a situation that I couldn't handle, you know always figure it out and
And then, you know, I go to prison and I spent my first night in solitary confinement.
I spent 29 months and seven days in solitary.
And that first night was really a night, and I had done five years in prison prior to that, but this time
The way the feds were on me, I really thought that I was going to lose everything, my wife, my children, everything dear to me, my freedom, and that I would never get out of prison again because that's the threats that I had on me at that point.
And so I was broken to my lowest
Agreed.
And then what I learned, I started to study the Bible because I challenged God that night.
I didn't say, hey, you know what?
I took a blood oath.
I trusted my father.
I came into this life and look where it got me.
I may die in here.
What good did it do me?
So I said, I believe there's a heaven and a hell, but I don't believe you just yet.
You got to show me, God.
You gave me a free will.
I could choose one of any hundred faiths.
I don't have to choose any faith at all.
Prove it to me.
Because I was big on evidence.
Still am.
And what I learned through that three years, I studied.
And I studied the Bible.
And I had my wife send me books in on other faiths.
So I really did the work and the research.
That's what I needed to do.
But I've learned something, Russell.
To become a better person, more Christ-like, it's not something that you do from the outside in.
Jesus transforms you from the inside out.
People have said to me, it's so hard to be a Christian.
No, it's not.
If you do the work and Jesus really starts to come into your heart, He changes you from the inside out.
It's a different feeling.
Now, I say this too, and you know this.
I still have urges.
There's times when, you know, hey, you can take Brooklyn out, your boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't always take Brooklyn out of the boy.
And you know the same.
I have urges to do the wrong thing.
I resist them more often than not.
I still sin at times, obviously.
I don't always, you know, make it through.
But it's because I have this transformation from within.
I developed this Jesus conscience that, hey, I got to be careful because you said this, there was no greater man that ever walked the face of the earth than Jesus of Nazareth.
Separate his deity for a moment from his manhood.
Because me, I'm always, hey, what's a man's man really all about?
Well, Jesus is the epitome of a man's man.
There's nobody like him.
Nobody ever will be like him.
But if you, if you allow him to come into your heart, you learn about him, you continuously nourish, because we live in a world where we have so many distractions, you have to be continuously nourished, put yourself around the right people, separate yourself from people that might lead you astray when you get weak.
Well, that's, that's the way that you straighten out your life.
And I found that to be that way.
And I try to resist temptation whenever I could.
You know, look, that life that I was in was very alluring.
I mean, you know, like you.
I mean, you had a jet plane, a helicopter, you had women, you had money, you had power, you had people at your, you know, beck and call.
It's a tough aphrodisiac.
Power is a tough aphrodisiac to get rid of.
But for me the only way was through Jesus and I believe he'll find in the same way.
Sounds like that solitary confinement period was a kind of wilderness for you where you were shown that what appeared strong was indeed temporary and could all be swept away.
I feel like in a couple of times I've had my own version of having an experience.
Oh my God!
This is what I thought I was supposed to do.
I come from a normal background, a place called Essex.
Essex is kind of like New Jersey, I guess.
And, like, you know, I was kind of a nervous kid, felt like I didn't fit in, and then, like, when I discovered I could make people laugh and that, I felt like, this is, oh my god, I've got this power, I've got this power, like, you know, I made my dad laugh, I made people at my school laugh, I, like, became a stand-up comedian, I got, like, you know.
It was sort of an incredible and exciting journey, and it took a long while as well for me.
It took a long while before money started to come, before power.
And all the while, by the way, I've become a drug addict, getting addicted to crack and heroin.
I didn't get addicted to drugs when I had excessive revenue.
I got addicted to drugs trying to make it on the way there, like still living on welfare, hand-to-mouth, small gigs in front of small crowds, little jobs here and there.
So by the time that I got sort of to become famous and then famous in your country,
You know, and it was actually a bit empty.
You know, I'm not saying anyone that's experienced deep hedonism, deep epicureanism, knows what it's like to sleep with multiple people simultaneously, knows what it's like to be able to walk up to someone and sleep with them that immediately.
Like, this is an incredible feeling.
And I think that people that don't know what that's like,
Might not know how to even judge what that's like.
A lot of people that haven't done that might never have had that temptation, is what I'm saying.
They might never have been in that position.
I don't know what it's like to have the violent authority that you'll have dealt with, so I don't know how I would deal with that.
There's been times in my life I think if I could have had people killed, I might have gone, kill that person.
I feel like that's in me.
I've never been tempted in that way.
I suppose, you know, to have it all stripped away, to be faced with nothingness again, like, you know, it's happened to me a bunch of times in my life, to be, that fear, that dread, there's a truth in it.
You're just, like, you know, I'm a 12-step guy, got clean in the 12 steps, and one of my friends said, last time it happened, when I was sort of really attacked in September in this country, and just felt everything falling apart, one of my friends went,
You're just experiencing powerlessness.
That's all.
You're just being shown that you have no power.
You didn't have power anyway, and now you're being shown it.
And, you know, like you're saying, like, the aspect of Christ the man, I can't sort of,
You're the sort of first person who's put it like that, really.
There's something very important to me that it's a man, because I don't trust men, I don't like men, I don't like being told what to do.
You know, I have great friends, I love my friends or whatever, but the idea that I would bow down before a man and say, you are my king, my master, my lord, my saviour, you have all authority, thank you for saving me, Lord Jesus, show me how I can serve, instead of... I always, you know, partly wanted to be Jesus,
Never did I think I would surrender and bow down before Jesus.
You know, that for me, that's a big, big change.
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And I say that as an Englishman for whom the date 1775 is a very painful thing to reflect on.
I wonder if you could tell me about in that wilderness, in the period of solitude, what verses and what moments come to you as seeing that there was a light beyond the false Luciferian light of the power you'd previously known?
Well, that's a great question.
And Russell, that first night, I was I was just done.
I was in my cell.
I was done.
A prison guard came and he opened, you know, the latch on the door and he said, Francis, you OK?
You don't look good.
And I said, get away from me.
I don't want to see you guys.
I'd leave me alone.
Well, that guy comes back maybe two minutes later and pushes a Bible through the slot on the door.
I'd never really read the Bible.
I grew up a Catholic.
Catholic school, you know, you read the catechism.
The priest reads the Bible from the pulpit on Sunday.
So I jumped off the car, I picked up the Bible, I slammed it against the wall.
I was just, I was just done.
You know, feel sorry for yourself the whole bit.
And then I picked up the book because I said, you know what?
It's only me and God in this cell.
I got nothing but enemies.
I believed in God.
Not that I did anything about it.
I just believed in him.
And I said, I don't need another enemy.
So I picked up the book and it falls open to the book of Proverbs.
Just, that's how it opened up.
So I'm starting to reading and I'm saying, wow, you know, this guy Solomon, he was pretty smart.
Really in God, you know, Solomon's brought to what faith you are.
Solomon was brilliant.
And then Russell, I came to a verse that really just stopped me cold.
I think it was the first time that the Holy Spirit got my attention because I was desperate.
It was Proverbs 16, 7.
It says, When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, even his enemies are at peace with him.
And what got me with the enemies part, because the government was upset with me, guys on the street wanted to kill me because I walked away from the life.
My father practically disowned me.
I mean, I had it.
I was in a bad way.
And it was the enemies part that got me, because I had nothing but enemies, and then something just brought me back, and it was almost as if the spirit was saying to me, you know, you always have been pleasing to me.
Who are you kidding?
You know, you married a Christian girl, but you're doing the same thing you did all along, you know?
And it just got to me, and then it was almost as if you said,
But if you did the right thing, I can take care of your enemies because I'm God.
That's how that verse came to me that night.
You know, it was interpreted that way.
And so and I wear it right here because I don't ever want to forget that night.
And every time morning I see that verse and that's it.
And then I came to another verse that really has been the verse of my life for us.
So that's Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 and 6.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart because I realized in this life everything is really about trust.
Trust in whoever.
Whether it be your wife, your children, your business partner, friends, your community, your government, whatever.
It's all about trust.
That comes first.
Lean not on your own understanding because there's times we just don't have the answer.
I mean, I didn't happen that night.
You don't have the answer.
In all your ways, okay, honor him and he will make your path straight.
So that first just really got to me that night and I said, okay, God, I'm going to give you a chance at this.
And me telling God, I'm going to give you a chance.
Show me, show me what this is really all about.
And that's where my journey really started.
And you know, I got to tell you, there's something
I think isolation like that is a form of torture.
I saw a lot of guys that did not do well in that situation.
I don't demean them.
It's tough.
They just didn't do well.
I'm dead against it for young people.
It will mentally and emotionally really have a bad impact on their lives.
But somehow, because I dove into my Bible and I had my wife send me all these books and I had something to live for, I had a wife and kids outside, I was able to get through it and come out okay.
But I came out a stronger person of faith.
And I'll tell you what I did, and I think this is important to hear.
I wanted to study Jesus of Nazareth, so I separated his deity from his manhood, and I wanted to see what kind of guy he was, because I was always, you know, you got to be a man's man.
My father drummed it into my head.
That life is all about men and men of honor, and we're men.
So when I studied Jesus of Nazareth, I said, wow, this is the greatest man I've ever come across ever.
He's manhood.
So I said to myself, I said, you know what?
If I try to emulate Jesus throughout my life, I'm going to be a better person.
People are going to benefit from me.
I'm going to do the right thing more often than not.
Everybody's going to benefit from me and I'm going to benefit from it.
And then I said, well, when I die, if he's not the savior of the world, well, I'm dead anyway.
So what did I have to lose?
But throughout my life, you know, I benefited myself and everybody else.
So I came to that conclusion first, and then, you know, the Spirit really got to me and showed me the rest.
And, you know, over the past 25 years for me, it's only gotten stronger.
What I know He's done in my life, what I've seen He's done in so many others that put my testimony to pale.
I mean, I've seen
God really works in people's lives and makes tremendous transformations, tremendous.
So it's there, it's there for everyone to see.
I've been surrendering more deeply, I've been offering
up myself more deeply to Christ and like you there is something ridiculous about an individual sort of barring or bargaining with or negotiating with the all-powerful Trinity that is beyond time and space.
The line, the verse that got me first, you know, in my own, because I love reading the scripture.
For some reason I always thought I knew what was in the Bible without reading it.
I thought I'd get the idea, but when I actually read it, like a verse like 1018, when the disciples return from having gone out in pairs to prepare the way for our Lord, and they're excited that they've done healings and stuff, and Jesus says,
I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.
You will do great deeds, for your name is written in heaven.
You will move among snakes and scorpions.
It made clear to me that one of the mistakes, perhaps the chief mistake that I've made throughout my life, is setting myself at the apex of things.
Like Satan, I want to be separate from God.
I want to run my own principality.
I want to be the king of my own little life.
Have favourites.
Have people that I damn.
In my dealings with men, working out, is this a higher status man than me that can give me something?
Or is this a lower status man than me that I can push around?
Is this a woman that I'm attracted with and might sleep with?
Everything about utility.
Now, that's not all I was.
Somewhere within me was this sort of latent possibility of becoming better.
And it's been somewhat gradiated, because I'm certainly a lot better
You know, when I'm not taking crack and heroin, like that, and that's 21 and a half years ago that that stopped.
But what I can see is that, that longing for power, that satanic longing to be the king of my own domain, that negotiation that he makes in, is it in Matthew, and I suppose it's in a few of them, but like, you know, the, you know, I'll give you everything, why don't you throw yourself off of this, why don't you turn the stone into bread, all of that stuff.
You know, like that negotiation with a satanic.
What has happened to me since I got baptized, since coming to faith, is that I think that that is diminishing.
I still, like you have said earlier, feel sin in me, feel like I want to take control sometimes, feel fear in me, maybe even feel lust in me.
But what's starting to become cultivated is that is not who you are.
That is not the way we are going.
That's not what this is for.
You have been shown again and again that you are
Yeah.
I don't know.
So I wonder if you feel like you've been challenged, like, oh, now I'm this guy, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a public speaker, I'm a successful Christian.
I wonder how you navigate that tension and space of ensuring that it remains in his service.
And if you have felt in the past, oh, now I've fallen into it again, the trap of self, as it were.
Well, you know, I don't think that I could ever fall into that again, and I'll tell you why.
A couple of things that really had an impact on me.
First of all, you know, I saw some very powerful men in my former life, Russell, and every single one of them, almost to the man, ended up either dead or in prison.
They were all defeated.
As a matter of fact, Fortune Magazine, back in 1986, 50 biggest and most powerful mob bosses, they had a list of us, 50 of us, right?
I was on that list.
Well, today, some 30-odd years later, and these are men more powerful than me, okay?
48 of them are dead.
Wow.
Number 49 is doing life in prison.
I'm the only one alive and free.
So that had an impact on me, number one.
And this may sound crazy, but you know what had an impact on me?
I used to follow the Shah of Iran.
One of the wealthiest men, if not the wealthiest man in the world at that point, and he couldn't save himself from cancer.
And then I looked at J. Paul Getty, richest man in the world, or one of them at that point, had seven people at his funeral when he died.
You know, and I'm saying we really are very fragile human beings.
If we get to think that we're all about something and that we're better than everybody else, you know, the hammer could fold very quickly on us.
And I've watched powerful people go down throughout my life and I said, you know, who are we really to think that we command so much power and respect that it's going to last and we're going to be able to reign over people.
So that had a major impact on me.
You know, one of the worst qualities I find in people, people that have made it, that are successful, is arrogance.
And I just don't like it.
I love confidence.
I love confidence in people, but I hate arrogance.
It's just so unattractive.
And when I looked at Jesus and his humility,
At any point in time, he could have changed what was going on in his life.
It was just so attractive to me.
Humility became very attractive.
So, not meekness, not, you know, being a pushover, but, you know, the right humility.
I think you know what I mean.
And so all of this really, really sunk in, and I guess, you know, look, I'm 73 years old, so maybe as you get older, you start to, these things mean more, and they have more of an impact on you, but it's, and I'll tell you this one story.
I'm on a stage in, I forget where it was, but there was 20,000 people, a huge church in Chicago,
And when I was walking off the stage, you would have thought that I was a rock star and people would try to jump at me and get, I never experienced that before, even though people, you know, they enjoy what I do.
But I get off the stage and my wife looks at me and she says, remember, you're a lot more blessed than you are good.
Don't ever forget that.
And it just hit me right away.
So it's good to have that balance in your life.
Somebody that's always reminding you, you know, just take it easy.
Don't, don't get outside of yourself.
And so it's, it's worked for me.
A lot of people will probably remain fascinated in the life that you previously inhabited and it will be like your story or your testimony or however you see it.
Like, we'll remain to a degree defining, and I'm thinking about my friends that were excited that I was speaking with you, and I feel like a lot of them are perhaps, I don't know because I'm not them, but I get the idea that what they're interested in to a degree is the ability to have power, the ability to control, the ability to build organizations, the ability to maximize, optimize, and
You know, like anyone who is in the 12 Steps, I have a sponsor or a mentor.
I have men, you know, that are further down the path than me that I turn to.
And a couple of women, actually, but mostly men.
And I also have men that are younger than me or have been in recovery less time than me that I pass on information to.
Now, a lot of time what I know is, you know, like when people talk to me, they're impressed that I was in movies.
They're impressed that I slept around with lots of women.
They're impressed by the accumulation of things and possessions.
How do you pass on your ministry knowing that you can't sort of fast forward people?
No one could have stopped me.
No one.
I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe if I'd have been taken into some sort of rebatical teaching when I was five years old.
And they said, listen, this world's never going to work for you.
You're a spiritual person.
You're a person that's going to get addicted to drugs and sex and stuff if you don't really pursue the spiritual.
But aside from that, and that didn't happen, you know, it's very hard to sort of say to people who want power, who want money, who want to know how, you know, what is it about organized crime that means that people wouldn't stay in line?
But it sounds to me that was
We're good to go!
Well, listen, I think, you know, I'm an example of that.
I mean, I had it all.
Well, look, you know, Russell, during a time when I was in that life, we were at one point bringing in five, six, seven, eight million dollars a week.
I had my own jet plane.
I had a helicopter.
I had a couple hundred guys under me.
I had, you know, a house in three different states.
I had boats in the backyard.
So, you know, and that's very alluring, obviously.
Um, but, and I'm not going to say this, you know, a lot of people said I had it all, but I was empty.
I wasn't empty because I was so aggressive and just wanted to do the best job that I could do.
I wanted to accumulate wealth.
You know, somebody told me, you know, Michael, why don't you stop?
I was defrauding the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline.
Michael, why don't you stop now?
You got all this.
I said, Hey, you know what?
You get as much time for a million dollars as you do for a billion.
So I may as well keep going.
Why should I let anybody else take it?
That was my attitude back then.
You know, but again, you know, realizing the experience that I had when I lost everything and could have, you know, could have spent the rest of my life in prison away from, you know, everybody that I loved.
And a loss of freedom is a horrible thing.
To lose your freedom is terrible.
So it just really sunk in.
That in combination with my learning about the Lord.
And, you know, I try to explain that to people.
And sometimes people say, well, yeah, Michael, it's easy for you to say because you had it all.
You've experienced it.
I say, well, yes, and I've also lost it.
So I understand.
And I can tell you that while I had it, it wasn't an easy road for me.
You know, people think you just snap your fingers and that happens.
It was a lot of work.
You know, and I just learned something, Russell.
It's the way you treat people.
You know, you said something about fear.
Chaz Pomatteri, a dear friend, Bronx Tale, great movie.
You've seen the Bronx Tale, right?
He played Sonny, which I thought was his best role ever, right?
There's a part in there where little Claude Joe is asking Sonny, he says, is it better to be loved or feared?
And Chaz turns around, the character says, better to be feared in my life.
And he gave reasons why.
So in another conversation, I said, Chaz, let me ask you a question.
I said, what do you believe?
Do you believe it's better to be loved or feared in that life?
And he saw Michael.
He said, the way I see it, because he's not a member of that life, better to be feared.
I said, Chas, you're wrong.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, well, fear did keep us in line.
I said, but fear is transferable.
What do you mean?
I said, when the government came out with the RICO statute and they got ahold of guys and they said, listen, you either cooperate with us or we're going to put you away for a hundred years.
And that's the kind of time they can give under that statute.
We'll put you in a witness protection program.
We'll pay you some money.
We're going to put your guy away forever.
We'll give you a new identity."
Well, the fear of the mob was transferred to the fear of the government, and as a result, so many guys became informants.
They just said, hey, I'm not doing it.
I'm going to take the deal.
So when you have fear of somebody, it can be transferred.
When you love somebody and really love somebody, you're not going to hurt them.
And that's what I found out.
You're not going to hurt them.
So I try to make people, you know, like me, not love me, but hey,
I'm not looking to hurt anybody.
I, you know, you stay in your lane.
I'll stay in mine.
Um, I found out another thing, you know, the best way to defeat your enemies is to make them your friends.
I've had that philosophy throughout my life.
Um, and it's worked for me, you know, it really has.
And I try to tell people the same thing.
So it's not about money and power.
It's about contentment in life.
It's about, you know, being comfortable in life.
You know, I value I'm on vacation now.
I'm, I'm actually in a,
In Tuscany, Italy, from my hotel room.
Yeah, my daughter actually got married here yesterday, so it's been a couple weeks.
But, you know, how do you replace this?
You have a great time, you know, you can do the things you want to do.
You don't have to, you know, be conquering the world to do that.
Work hard, be aggressive, make yourself money, be comfortable, and then enjoy your life.
And don't hurt people.
And that's my philosophy.
I like your point that fear is transferable.
I feel like Machiavelli's book, The Prince, talks about the importance of leaders being feared rather than loved.
But as you said, the epitome of masculinity, by your reckoning, is Christ, and Christ is love incarnate.
And I'm thinking of the energy of the book of Acts.
That's
I don't
We're good to go!
How do I get my Christianity down small enough to deal with like the small intricate matters of dealing with being a father or being a person a colleague at work or whatever but when you say trust
Learning trust, and the impact that trust has on fear, and how hard it is to trust, obviously with your background, but even mine.
You know, trust is not easy to me.
I don't like trusting people.
My way of handling that dilemma is to not be in relationships where I don't have the power, and you actually, that means you've got to live in a box.
I don't
Like, principles that recur throughout the Old Testament and then reach their zenith, we would say, as Christians, I guess.
Like, when he says, you know, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
This is where we're being invited to go, into this state of evangelical love.
And I know that all the time it's not going to be tambourines and jumping about.
Sometimes it is going to be filling your car with gas or, you know, the mundane tasks that any human being
I think?
This is something that interests me, of what our role is as apostles, what our role is as ministers.
What do you see your role is, and is any of the aggression that you describe in your former life being utilised yet in your new life as a carrier of Christ's message?
Yeah, well, you know, our mission is clear.
You know, Jesus' last command before he, you know, ascended into heaven was in Mark 16, 15, go out and share or preach the good word to all of creation.
So we have an obligation as Christians, you know, to share our faith, not to impose it on anybody, not to try to turn anybody into a Christian, but to do exactly what you're doing now, to share our faith.
We have that obligation.
God gave us that, you know.
And I take that very seriously because I also believe, Russell, that to those of us who have been given much, much is expected in return.
So I live by that principle and I also live by the sin of omission is just as sinful as the sin of commission, sometimes maybe even more sinful because when you see something that you know is harmful or bad or wrong or against Christ and you don't speak up,
You could be jeopardizing other people by not sharing because if you have a platform and you have influence and you have over people and you're not sharing the good word or making them aware, well that's a sin of omission and that's serious.
So taking all these things into account, I feel I have a personal responsibility to honor the Lord in that way and do my job as a Christian.
You know, I also, I will tell you this, I interviewed the son of Sam, I'm sure you're familiar with that, David Berkowitz, who's a Christian, who I believe is sincere.
I believe it.
Over a period of time, he showed that.
You know, I interviewed him in prison.
He has no hope of getting out.
He doesn't want to get out.
He understands it.
I had a very good interview with him.
And people then, I got some backlash on it, you know, how could you do that?
He killed all these people and so this and that.
And I said, hey, you know, who am I to pass judgment on him?
You know, the life that I led, that's number one.
And number two, I learned that I think the 10 greatest words that were ever spoken, think about it, when Jesus was on the cross, after he was condemned, you know, innocent, put to death, all the abuse that he took, you know, turned over by the people that, you know, that he thought were his allies, some of them,
And he looked down or looked up and said, these 10 words, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
And I said to myself, my God, I feel I've been wronged in life.
We all feel that way.
But if Jesus can do that, who are we not, you know, to carry the burden of unforgiveness against anyone?
And I've realized it's such a like I had issues with my dad and all this kind of stuff that went on.
That I thought did the wrong thing.
But I said, who am I?
You know, I was on the street at one time.
You know, I was never perfect.
Who am I, you know, to hold this burden and this grudge on my shoulders?
And I found it very, it was very free to get rid of that and understand, you know what, Lord, you're right.
We are to forgive.
And people say, well, you know, if your wife or your daughter, your sister was a victim of David Berkowitz, would you have forgiven him?
And I said, I don't know.
I honestly don't know.
I hope I could practice what I'm preaching right now.
I really do.
I said, but I know what the right thing is to do.
I'm hoping that I'm, you know, committed enough to do that.
But I'm going to be honest with you.
I don't know at this point.
I hope I never have to find out.
But you know, I hope I answered your question.
I think I did.
That's beautiful.
What do you think, Michael, what do you do about like, you know, I talk about the news a lot.
I talk about American politics.
I talk about the corruption of the judiciary.
I talk about how
President Trump, what he is being through.
Talk about how I consider corruption now to be coming more in the form of bureaucratic governments that pretend they're there to help you rather than populist demagogues that might be a 21st century version of Hitler.
I don't buy into that idea.
I wonder how you, as a Christian, as a public commentator, as a leader in your field, take on the sort of mad hysteria in your country in particular leading up to this presidential cycle and where you sit within it as a Christian.
Well, Russell, first of all, I ask you to please, you know, keep telling the truth as you do, because I follow you and I appreciate that, because our country is at a very severe crossroads right now.
You know, it really is.
And corruption... Look, I've seen this all my life, but never to... and I was part of it, you know.
I had politicians on a payroll.
I was paying politicians to get me licenses that I could use to defraud the government, and I was paying them
By helping me do it, and they knew what we were doing.
So I mean, I know all of this, but I've never seen the level of corruption as I'm seeing now.
That's why I wrote a book, Mafia Democracy.
It's like they're patterning themselves after, you know, the mob.
There's no question.
They're corrupt.
They're just so fraudulent.
They don't tell the truth anymore.
I've seen all of this.
And I feel a responsibility because it's one thing to do that and be a corrupt person.
It's another thing when your level of corruption is really severely hurting others.
And that's what I see that's happening, not only in our country, but around the world.
Because the world goes in many ways as America goes.
You have a weak America, it's bad for the whole world.
And I've never seen anything like this before.
So yes, I've been very outspoken about it.
I've been trying to alert people.
And it's, you know, I say, listen, I think Joe Biden is one of the most corrupt politicians ever.
And I feel the same about Harris.
And I feel the same about Pelosi.
I don't mind saying it.
I've been saying it about Schumer and Jeffries and all of these people that have lied to us for years and years and years at the detriment of people
You know, that had trust in them and put them in office.
And I feel a responsibility to let people aware, know this.
These people do not care about us.
They don't care about your interests.
They have their own self, you know, righteous agenda.
They've made themselves wealthy on your backs and we can't continue this.
What they've done to President Trump is outrageous.
It's out, it's, I can't even comprehend.
How they can use the law in the way they did against this man.
The hatred that they have for him.
Only because he didn't bow down to them.
Like neither one of us would want to do.
We don't have to bow down to any human being.
And he wouldn't.
And I really believe he wanted to make this country good.
He was a businessman.
He knew what to do.
You know, I look at his family.
He's got a great family.
He raised his kids.
They all care about their dad, even with three wives in there somehow.
He's a good father.
You know, you could see it.
So why the hatred for this man who is bucking the system and trying to do the right thing is just
It's so hard to understand.
So yes, I have a voice, you have a voice, and I hope, you know, you see it from the outside in.
You know what, I spent a lot of time in your country, and to the man, people coming up to me, Michael, what's happening in America?
What's going on?
I've never seen anything like this.
I've seen it in Italy.
I've seen it in Croatia.
We just, everywhere, people are noticing what's going down there.
And this election, November 5th, is the most critical election of my lifetime for sure.
I believe that if Trump doesn't get back in office, I don't think we can save America.
Thanks Mike.
I'm sorry to rant on that Russell, but I'm very passionate about it.
That's good.
Now it's interesting that you brought up your book, Mafia Democracy, and it's very interesting to see.
I've always thought this, with like the royal family, because ultimately at some point in history, there was a land grab.
At some point in history, a army went
We're in this position now, we're having that land, we're having that power, we're having those resources, we're having those taxes.
In order to sort of make you forget that, there's insignia, and sigils, and unicorns, and lions, and robes, and crowns, and jewelries, and scepters, so that you don't, and marches, and parades, so you don't ever think, that's just a mob.
And like now, with bureaucratic power, it's like the
I mean everything is very rational and logical and here's the data and here to help and get in your home and we're gonna need you to do this and it's for your own good and it's for your own safety and we need to censor this and control that but behind it what I see is the same energy of control that more brazenly
We would see it as criminality.
And it's interesting how they're able to dress it up.
Because it's corruption, it's stealing, it's exploitation, it's the misuse of institutional power.
It's pretty fascinating.
It's good to hear your take on that, Michael.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, and the other thing, Russell, you know that I could ask you this question.
You have a friend, a business partner, a relationship.
They lie to you once.
All right.
You know, things happen.
Lie to you a second time.
You start to get a little shaky.
They lie to you a third, fourth, fifth time.
Hey, I'm done.
That's it.
It's the trust issue you talked about.
These people get up there and lie every single day on film, on camera, no care whatsoever.
And you're supposed to trust them again?
You know, and this is the word that I'm getting out.
Just, you know, there was a famous football coach, you know, his name was Bill Parcells, the coach of the New York Giants.
And he didn't like the media.
And they gave him a lot of adulation.
They said, wow, you know, you're the best coach.
And what do you think of this great team?
And he looked and turned to a reporter and he said, hey, we are what our record tells us we are.
That's it.
And you know, I've been telling people that.
Just look at the record.
Study it.
Look at it because your life, your welfare is at stake.
Look at it.
Don't make it emotional.
Don't think because this man was in a hotel room in 2006 with somebody or you didn't like him because he has bad tweets or whatever.
Look at the records.
That's it.
What's going to be the best for you, your family, your country, and the world?
And that's the message that I'm preaching.
And it's not a message of hate.
I don't want... I say, Biden, I don't want anything to happen to you.
I know you're a thief and everything else.
Just go away.
Harris, just go away.
Leave us alone.
That's all I want.
Go enjoy your life somewhere else.
Leave us alone.
Let us get on with our lives the right way.
That's it.
Yeah.
And my feeling is, is they somehow believe what they're saying.
That they believe it.
That's what makes them so terrifying, is their certainty.
You are right about that.
Yeah, Michael.
Thanks, man.
Thanks for joining us when you're away at your daughter's wedding.
That's very kind of you and oddly in keeping with some of the themes.
I've come to you on your daughter's wedding day and asked a favour and you can't say no as the tradition dictates.
That's why you're brilliant and you're quick, Russell.
That was good.
Thanks, man.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for joining us, Michael.
Appreciate it, Russell.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand today.
We will be back tomorrow, not with more of the same, but with more of the different, and I will be joined by Jay Bhattacharya, a brave and bold man who stood firm, clear, and prominent during the heights of the hysteria around the pandemic, notably with his Barrington Declaration, and many of the things that he claimed have been proven to be right.
If you're a member of our Awakened Wonder Community, this conversation has been up and available for a week.
Let me know what you think about it, guys.
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