All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 13, 2025 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:03:33
Deep State Exposed: Veterans in the Crosshairs – SF518
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Thank you.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
Thanks for joining us for a whole new year.
It's 2025. It's a new schedule for us.
We're saying goodbye to a lot of people this year.
We're saying goodbye to Kamala Harris.
We're saying goodbye to Joe Biden.
We're saying hello to Facebook because Facebook won't be censoring political content.
And we now know that fact-checkers were just another word for censors.
They weren't checking facts.
They were censoring inconvenient information.
Let me know in the comments and chat if we can ever forgive Mark Zuckerberg for that.
Someone should fact...
Check the way that the syllables of his name roll off of the tongue.
We're going to be talking to Lara Logan a little later on the show about January 6th.
And now, with our four days a week schedule, we're providing additional content on Rumble Premium.
Don't worry, if you're on Awaken Wonder on Locals, you still get everything there.
But if you are a member on Rumble Premium, you also get access to all sorts of other Rumble content creators' content in addition to an ad.
We've got Lara Logan coming up later talking about January 6th.
We've got Rob Schneider coming on the show on Thursday.
And tomorrow, if you are a Rumble Premium subscriber and a Locals member, I'll be talking to the creator of The Chosen, Dallas Jenkins, who tells me that he and his wife...
Predicted my coming to faith.
It's going to be an extraordinary conversation.
We'll talk about the relevance of Christianity in contemporary culture and what appears to be a Christian revival and the likely shape of Christianity in the new formation of the coming government.
So that's me and Dallas Jenkins tomorrow.
Certainly a Christian revival seems to have taken hold in Five Guys.
Have a look at this.
I just wondered, I can't just see it on the menu, but where do I get the five guys from?
The?
What?
The five guys.
I didn't know if it was like a special rumour you can take me out back.
No, I don't think that's a problem.
What, but after your shift?
I mean, I'd want to give you a good rating.
I'm a Christian man and I'm watching myself.
I'm asking for what's on the menu, that's all.
Genuinely, I feel like I'm doing it right now.
I can hold you on the menu if you want.
Oh, that's a shame.
It's just, that's really English, isn't it?
While my country appears to be falling apart, while the Labour government is in disarray, while the grooming gang scandals fracture the nation, at least people have some moral fortitude when propositioned in a fast food restaurant.
That's...
Pretty encouraging.
It's a new year, but some things simply haven't changed.
Dozens of Congress folk are still beating the stock market.
You're still better off just copying Nancy Pelosi rather than getting financial advice from global professionals.
Now it's time for our main story.
Our content will once again be back.
On Facebook, we've got to assume that there will still be some fact-checking, which we now know is a synonym for censoring.
Meta says that fact-checkers were the problem.
Fact-checkers rule that to be false.
So let's have a look now at what the Facebook fact-checking was about.
Are we at the beginning of a new era when it comes to censorship and communication?
What does it mean now that Dana White is on the board at Meta?
What does it mean?
Now that fact-checking is being revealed to be what many of us suspected it always was, censorship and control.
Let's have a look at this article.
Mark Zuckerberg has a new message, this time with a promise to restore free expression across Meta's platforms.
With a new plan to phase out third-party fact-checkers and replace them with a community-driven system, Zuckerberg says he's putting the power back in the hands of users, a bit like Community Notes over on X. Meta's
This fact-checking program introduced in the wake of the 2016 election to combat misinformation became a lightning rod for criticism.
The idea was simple.
Enlist third-party experts to separate facts from fiction.
The execution, well, let's just say it left a lot to be desired.
For a company that spent the last few years bending over backwards to appease the Biden administration, the pivot is stark.
Gone are the days of aggressive content moderation aimed at stifling misinformation about COVID-19 or election integrity.
A noble sentiment if you ignore Meta's cosy relationship with those very same regimes whenever it's convenient.
But there's history here.
Meta's decision to ban then-President Donald Trump in January 2021 was more than an act of content moderation.
It was a seismic event in the digital age's ongoing battle over free speech and platform power.
Coming in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot, Facebook's decision to bar Trump from its platform marked the first time a sitting US president was silenced by a social media giant.
Meta cited Trump's posts as violations of his policies against inciting violence, but the move left the nation divided, sparking applause from critics and outrage from free speech advocates.
At the time, Zuckerberg defended the decision as necessary to prevent further violence, yet the ban, initially temporary, morphed into an indefinite society.
of suspension.
When Facebook's oversight board, a body meta itself created to add legitimacy to decisions reviewed the case, it upheld the suspension but scolded meta failing to outline clear standards for banning political leaders.
This lack of consistency added fuel to the fire, intensifying criticism of Facebook's opaque decision making and amplifying concerns about tech platforms unchecked power over political discourse.
It's actually not been that long since Facebook banned Donald Trump and since all of us and people in my community and people that use the sort of independent media that you're used to came to regard Facebook as just a place for families and the elderly.
I don't use Facebook especially anymore.
So let me know in the comments and chat, do you see this as a rebranding exercise or do you see this as a return Hey everyone.
Let's see Mark Zuckerberg himself addressing these issues and let's try to determine the following.
Is it just that Meta is an international big tech platform and will do what is financially expedient?
Is it that we're experiencing a seismic political shift around the world?
Is it that Mark Zuckerberg has had some radical change of heart?
Are we witnessing a new era of free speech and open communication?
And all of the powers that were coalescing around neoliberal centre-left parties that now appear to be in decline and disarray with the resignation of Trudeau, the British Labour government in total despair and meltdown and the victory of Trump in the United States of America.
Where is all that power now going to situate itself and how will it be expressed?
Let's have a look at Mark Zuckerberg.
I want to talk about something important today, because it's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
I started building social media to give people a voice.
I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today.
But a lot has happened over the last several years.
There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.
Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
A lot of this is clearly political.
But there's also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there.
Drugs, terrorism, child exploitation.
These are things that we take very seriously and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly.
It's interesting really because the online space is perhaps best regarded in the way that you might regard.
It's like a territory.
It's like a nation, a state, a town, or a county.
And in any nation, state, town, or county, you will experience the malign as well as the benevolent.
So, of course, online there are legitimate reasons for concern.
There is child exploitation.
There is pornography.
There is terrorism.
And there are all, and by the way, there are conversations about most of those subjects.
You know, like part of the cultural divisions that we've been experiencing so starkly, because...
Some people see things that we regard as child exploitation as...
Potentially appropriate fashion imagery and symbols.
And when it comes to terrorism, there are some people that regard terrorists as freedom fighters.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
And when it comes to drugs, there are people that say that we should have free access to drugs.
So every single one of the bullet points listed there have complex moral arguments around them.
I guess the issue is, who is the arbiter of morality in each of those subjects?
And where do you derive your political and moral authority from?
Particularly if you are ultimately a secularist, rationalist, individualist and materialist who believe that humankind are the apex of authority and power.
So quickly, while Mark Zuckerberg appears to be positioned himself as a person who's just trying to ride his way through the rhythms and tides of an ever-shifting culture, and perhaps that's legitimate and true, I don't know Mark Zuckerberg's heart.
Maybe he is someone who's just trying his best.
Perhaps he is just like, you know, he is...
Ultimately, I suppose, just a human being who invented something that became phenomenally successful and relevant and significant and ultimately a tool of political, corporate and commercial power.
And now he, like all of us, is just trying to operate within those systems.
The challenge, I reckon, comes when we seek...
Two, regulate any of these spaces.
Mark Zuckerberg's clearly moved from kowtowing, as that article in Reclaim the Net said, to Biden and centrists and globalists, and is now repoing himself, at the most political level it looks like, and the most obvious level, let me know in the comments and chat if you agree with this, with new and resurgent nationalist right-wing powers and authority.
But ultimately, though, where is a true and reliable authority that's not going to come and go with each administration, with each election?
So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.
But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.
Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's millions of people.
That was never the issue, wasn't it?
The issue was never that they might accidentally censor 1% of posts.
It was deliberately censoring people that were talking about vaccine harms.
It was controlling the conversation around COVID. It was censoring ultimately all political material.
Do you remember the day?
When Instagram just flicked the switch, where it said, unless you flick this switch, you won't see any political content.
That's very different, actually, from what Mark Zuckerberg is describing.
Complex systems might inadvertently cause censorship.
It was a deliberate choice to censor.
Yeah, this is brilliant.
Let me know what you think in the comments, but I see this.
As an aggressive rebrand, as their recognition that, oh my god, it hasn't worked.
This experiment, this move towards globalism and totalitarianism under the auspices of care and concern, which reached its apex and zenith in the COVID-19 era, where, if you look at it just as a sort of a simple template, oh no, there's a really dangerous situation, we have to protect you, therefore take this medicine, stay inside your home, wear that mask, stay six feet apart.
Don't look at that news.
We're censoring that information.
Don't listen to Joe Rogan.
That has failed.
It's failed.
It's over.
And now, obviously, there are attempts to malign the voices that support this kind of liberty and this kind of free speech, which, by the way, does have complex components to it.
And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.
So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes.
I mean, that's pretty amazing, isn't it?
The reason elections seem to suggest that people don't like this anymore and the people that do like it aren't in positions to grant big contracts.
Simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.
The rest of the show will be streamed exclusively on Rumble.
Click the link in the description and join us there for the rest of the show.
More specifically, here's what we're going to do.
First, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X. Get out of here, you fact-checkers!
The jigs up!
People have realized that what you're actually doing is not checking facts, but censoring inconvenient information.
And now, is he literally about to say, we're going to do what they do on X, and I'm going to be a bit more like Elon Musk.
I've just invented an electric car.
I'm going to tell you something crazy.
I like Donald Trump.
Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in Phoenix, believe that we are endowed by our creator.
To life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the Constitution.
A Christian university, eh?
GCU believe in equal opportunities and equip everyone to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing, creating, as they believe, a ripple effect of transformation.
Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, a master's, or a doctoral degree, GCU's online and on-campus learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique goals.
Why don't you learn a bit more?
With over 340 academic programs as of March 2024, GCU provide you with a path to fulfill your dreams.
The pursuit to serve others is yours.
Let it flourish.
Wow.
It's a pretty profound goal, isn't it?
Because everything we do is about self and this is about service.
Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University.
Private, Christian, affordable education.
Visit gcu.edu forward slash Russell.
That's visit gcu.edu forward slash Russell.
Two S's, two L's.
Give it a try.
Thanks.
Starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.
We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.
They did become the arbiters of truth.
But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.
So over the next couple of months...
Look at this.
Meta's handling of COVID-19 content moderation will likely go down as one of the most contentious chapters in its history and not without reason.
As the pandemic unfolded, the company enacted some of its strict policies yet targeting what it labelled as misinformation.
Posts were flagged, discussion suppressed, and claims outside official narratives were summarily removed.
While Meta argued these measures were crucial for public safety, we all saw something far more troubling.
We're going to phase in a more comprehensive community note system.
Second, We're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.
Wow, this is significant, isn't it?
This is more than AOC removing the pronouns from the buyer.
This is a massive, significant cultural shift.
If you see the impact that Elon Musk is having on American politics and British politics...
Primarily as a result, yes, of his financial power and political relationships, but let's face it, because he is the owner and arbiter of X's...
Online content presence and discourse.
Now that Mark Zuckerberg is saying we're not doing that stuff anymore, the world's going to change rapidly and radically.
As we continually say on this show, the old elites and centralised powers have lost control as a result of technological change, and the new elites are formulating, and now we're watching it in real time, working out how they are going to manage the new political space.
What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far.
Wow, that's so incredible, isn't it?
Would you have imagined two or three years ago that you'd be seeing this when people were getting cancelled for saying stuff?
It got really, really out of hand.
And look at it, it's like over.
It was just a trend.
So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.
Third.
We're changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms.
We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation.
Now we're going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations.
And for lower severity violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action.
The problem is that the filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn't.
Those bloody filters writing a letter to Anthony Fauci and telling him if he wanted anything removed from our platform.
It was the filters that did that.
Those bloody filters, they did January 6th.
Them bloody filters, they released a bunch of viruses from the Wuhan laboratory.
It's the filters!
So by dialing them back, we're going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.
We're also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content.
The reality is that this is a trade-off.
It means we're going to catch less bad stuff, but we'll also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.
Fourth, we're bringing back civic content.
For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed.
"Can we see less politics?
It's making people stressed!
Could you lock us in our home?
Being outside is making us stressed!
Can you tell me what to think?
It's making me stressed!" This is an extraordinary pivot from Mark Zuckerberg and an indication of a globally shifting culture.
In a sense, what the 2025 election of Trump represents is the end of the movement towards global totalitarianism.
I don't think it means...
The end of evil.
And I don't think it means the end of technological feudalism.
I'm sure there's all sorts of ways that power can manoeuvre to ensure that you are captured.
And I'm certainly not suggesting that the Trump administration is without flaws.
But because I happen to have personal experience of a number of high-up officials within that movement, I feel like personally qualified to say that the way that, for example, big pharma and health, free speech and censorship will be handled will be a...
Significant improvement on how it was being handled under the previous administration.
And I think the genuflecting fluctuations and apoplexy in the UK is an indication that this mood and this movement will spread.
And watching Mark Zuckerberg bend the knee and offer a mea culpa, let's take it in good faith as like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg has realised that he was heading in the wrong direction, or perhaps it's just a politically What we as a global community can take from it is that the world has changed.
That that particular era is over.
You can't diagnose whether or not this is going to be a glorious new golden age for free speech and freedom more generally.
But the old power doesn't have the tenacious grip upon the throat of the population it had a little while ago.
Here's Chris Pavlovsky, Rumble CEO on X.
Talk is cheap.
Same with Daily Wire.
We were literally number one informational source on Facebook before censorship decreased our reach by 90%.
That's pretty amazing.
I wonder how it's going to impact platforms that have built their...
Platforms like Rumble and X are all about free speech.
If Facebook becomes a free speech platform, will you start using it again?
Again, let me know in the comments and chat.
When you see people that were, generally speaking, on the rise prior to the MAGA election of 2025, do you see that you are, do you feel so much like you're looking at ghosts or twitching corpses?
Here's Joy Reid, who's pretty distressed about Facebook's repositioning.
Why would conservatives think fact-checking is biased against them?
I mean, what are you sharing if you keep getting fact-checked?
For false information.
Think about it.
What were conservatives sharing on Meta that was getting flagged so much?
COVID? War between Russia and Ukraine?
Are they spreading false information?
Hunter Biden laptop?
Russiagate was made up?
And why were they so eager?
And why are Republicans in general so eager?
Adverse events?
To end the idea of fact checking.
What are they trying to share?
What is the motivation for not wanting it to be fact checked?
It's not Republicans, though, is it?
It's Mark Zuckerberg.
And in a sense, what this shows you is there's a massive political shift and ultimately companies like Meta will have to follow the money and go, Dana White, would you like to be on the board?
It's a massive repoing.
And in a way, things had got out of hand, hadn't they?
Crazily and insanely out of hand.
What do I envisage as being the next significant shift?
Hopefully, people in government will confine themselves to managing Sounds like a good way to proceed.
Let's see what Glenn Greenwald's saying about it.
There's panic in self-annointed disinformation and fact-checking groups that have coerced big tech to pay them to dictate which political ideas which must be removed.
The post-2016 financing of censorship industrial complex bought power and profit for the Facebook won't pay anymore.
Amazing.
You know what's fascinating is that groups like CRISP and Logically AI were involved when I was attacked in September 2023 and ensuring that those stories were handled in ways that were maximally impactful and, what do I want to say, effective in diminishing my impact online.
So I know about the groups that Glenn Green Meanwhile, a major announcement this morning from Meta.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
In a video posted on his platforms today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing big changes to the company's Fact-checking policy.
NBC's senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson joins us now with more on this.
And Hallie, the timing is a bit curious.
Just days ahead of the start of a new administration.
Yeah, that's right, Craig.
Good morning to you.
And the big headline here, no more fact-checking, as we've noted for the last eight years on Facebook and Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg himself is announcing these new changes for Meta, calling the recent elections a cultural tipping point, he says, towards prioritizing free speech.
So this morning, he says that Meta will move away from the independent, nonpartisan fact-checking they've had in place since after the 2016 election.
Did he call it independent, nonpartisan fact-checking?
Is that what he was called?
Instead, he says, they'll rely on...
In other words, users putting out context.
This is similar to what X is doing.
Whales are indeed mammals.
Look at the example.
A tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.
Don't you dare mention that that injection gave you myocarditis.
Zuckerberg says Meta's complex moderation system makes too many mistakes with too much censorship.
It's the complex system.
It's the complex system that did it.
Was it a complex system or was it an attempt to censor opposition, shut down dissenting voices and control the narrative in favour of globalist totalitarianism?
The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US. And that's not all.
Meta also plans to get rid of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender and to move their content moderation team from California to Texas.
Oh my god!
They've actually overdone it!
You can't get the hell out of California!
We're going to Texas, mama!
Do you know what I like?
I like hot sauce, firing guns, driving around in a Ram Longhorn, and I loathe immigration.
And what are your pronouns?
I don't have pronouns.
Among other things, you reference the timing.
This is all happening less than two weeks before President-elect Trump is sworn in.
And as Zuckerberg and some of these other tech titans appear to- That is unbelievable.
We're going to Texas!
Like the Beverly Hillbillies in reverse, just loading up and heading to Texas right now.
...be looking to make inroads with the incoming administration.
After Mr. Trump's win in November, Zuckerberg, remember, traveled to Mar-a-Lago.
his company donated a million dollars to the Trump inaugural fund.
Keep in mind the backdrop here.
Over the next four years, the Trump administration will set federal policy in areas like AI and antitrust that are really important to Meta and these other big tech companies too. - Yeah, but I don't think it's anything to do with that.
It's just those complex systems.
That's amazing.
Put on your Stetson, load up your sick shooter, and get your ass to Texas right now.
Unbelievable.
So there you have it.
We thought that the territory of Facebook had been...
Forever conquered by fact-checkers that online spaces like physical spaces were controlled by globalist resources and were fulfilling a globalist agenda.
That's all radically changed.
They've worked out that the world's going to be governed differently, America's going to be governed differently, that their entire business is under threat.
No one knows how this is going to unfold more broadly and whether or not new elites will emerge to replace the old elites and new restrictions will be put in place and new biases will replace the old.
But in terms of the trajectory of where power was heading, this is an incredible disruption and an incredible event.
This is something that would have been very difficult to predict before the election, but I suppose it's...
Absolutely obvious.
Of course Mark Zuckerberg has to refine and redirect his business model to fit in with a new administration.
In a way it's heartening because whatever you believe about Trump and the MAGA movement, it at least shows you that politics is not completely insignificant.
I'd reach the point where I thought that it don't matter who you vote for because globalist power is so insidious, deep and entrenched that there's nothing you can do anyway.
I remember saying publicly there's no point voting.
Well then...
There is a point in voting now because you can see the elevation of political movements that can radically transform what were presumed to be the apex predators of global power.
Big tech companies, global corporations, they're now having to reform their entire modus operandi on the basis of the will of the American people.
Imagine that.
How extraordinary.
If you're watching this on Facebook, hey, welcome back!
I hope you're enjoying it.
If you're watching this on X, thank you.
But you should know that our home is over on Rumble.
Hey, listen, we'll be speaking to Lara Logan in a minute about January 6th, but we'll, of course, touch upon the Facebook topic and a variety of other subjects.
Later this week, I'll be talking to Rob Schneider.
And also, join us live tomorrow on Rumble and Rumble Premium.
Don't worry if you're one of our Awaken Wonders on Locals.
You get all of our content there for my conversation with Dallas Jenkins.
We'll be breaking bread tomorrow, talking about the chosen and faith and resurgent Christianity and how the power of Christianity Okay, well, let's get Lara Logan on the show.
Right.
Lara Logan, thanks so much for joining us today.
Our regular weekly correspondent, Lara Logan.
You look absolutely magnificent.
I can see there's still Christmas decorations in the general background.
Get them out of here.
Heretic, heretic, blasphemer.
Repent, repent.
They're exposing me now as a bad mother.
Yeah, get...
This under some kind of control.
Now, Lara, one of the things you want to talk to us about is January 6th, revelations around January 6th, but also one of the sort of more...
God, sometimes I think it's an out there theory.
You tell me, because there are so many things I've spoken to you about that seem outrageous.
I don't know how to calibrate anymore.
But the idea, some people have said, and it's kind of regarded as a sort of right-wing theory, that part of the migration crisis includes a plan to...
...incorporate into various nations fighting-age men in order that at some sort of predetermined time there can be insurrections.
Now, you have a comparable theory that cites as its central target American veterans.
And are you saying that it's possible that even prior to the inauguration and the commencement of Trump's presidency, it's possible that we'll see some kind of threat?
And what is that threat?
What does it center around American veterans?
Okay, I look at what do we know?
We know that there's been an attack in Las Vegas that doesn't add up on any level, that was blamed on a Green Beret active duty.
We know that there's been an attack in New Orleans that was blamed on a military veteran.
And when you look at information warfare, because we're in the midst of fifth generation warfare, which is where the information ballot space is the whole war.
What you see is consistent themes.
So U.S. military and veterans have been demonized consistently.
Remember the beginning of the Biden administration when it was all about how the ranks need to be purged of all those racist Trump supporters?
This actually began under Obama, who got rid of hundreds of flag offices.
And at that time, I was contacted by an extraordinary number of Marines and soldiers and SEALs and others who were constantly under attack and investigation for basically doing their jobs.
And these are individual stories that never made the news.
But I watched in real time over the last at least 10 years as the FBI and intelligence and Homeland Security have built a narrative that the white man is the greatest threat to this country.
And the subset of that...
Of course, there's your military veterans.
And why are they so preoccupied with demonizing people who really are heroic in many ways?
They have sacrificed everything to serve their country.
These are people who believe in the United States Constitution.
They don't serve a party.
Contrary to what people tell you, I have spent many years on the battlefield.
I married a soldier.
My house is constantly filled with these people.
And I have listened for more than 15 years.
They believe in upholding the United States Constitution.
So this idea that the military is going to be provoked into civil war, that veterans will be provoked, the problem they have is not that they will be provoked, because they have resisted provocation after provocation after provocation.
The problem is that they are highly trained and disciplined.
And they're taught to think for themselves and they're principled.
And so if called upon to defend their communities and to defend this country against the real threat, they will not hesitate to do so.
And you have more than a million veterans in the state of Texas, the state of California, the state of Florida.
I mean, state by state by state.
This presents a formidable force that is within your communities.
And when you look at North Carolina, look what happened.
People were in dire need.
The federal government failed them.
And who came rushing into the breach?
They came with helicopters.
They came with medical expertise and resources.
They came with food.
They came with tents.
They came with their hearts.
And they came with their souls.
I mean, they were really, really ready to risk everything.
And they came on mats.
And that's, you know, that's an extraordinary thing.
This is the thing, Russell, about humanity.
We've always been taught that our human frailties are our greatest weakness.
But in a sense...
You know, they're our greatest gifts.
This is what separates us from machines and AI and robots and all that other nonsense they want to tell us is going to take over the world.
You know, and so when you look at what's happened, these terrorist attacks that are taking place, there's significant acts that are happening all over the country.
There's, you know, there's been fires in all different places.
California now, you have to wonder, are they burning the evidence?
You know, you really have to wonder.
There's a lot of evidence to get rid of in California.
And you start to add up all these little events.
If you're an intelligence person, your job is to look at the whole picture.
And what you have across the whole picture has the hallmarks of an insurgency.
Then again, I talk to about five or six different, you know, groups of intelligence analysts and operatives who are working to understand what's going on.
And what they are seeing and hearing is, you know, they see the cartels, Mexican, Venezuelan and others.
For the very first time, really operational, working with nation states like Iran and, of course, the Venezuelan government and the CCP and so on, and Islamic terror groups.
So they're tracking a nexus of America's enemies, state adversaries with terrorist organizations from the Islamic world, the Orions, obviously the Persian world, the cartels.
When you see a nexus like that, if your job is to plan for the worst, Right?
That's your job as an intelligence operator.
You don't plan for the best.
And just hope that you're going to make it through the worst if it happens.
You plan for the worst, the most lethal course of action and the most likely course of action.
And for a year now, I've been tracking reports of dirty bomb threats and concerns that intelligence have been monitoring and also nuclear threats that they've been monitoring.
So there's a lot going on under the surface here.
And what it adds up to, according to these people who are professionals, Is they see the hallmarks of an insurgency being fomented.
That doesn't mean it's going to happen.
There were a lot of things that were planned to disrupt the election and they didn't happen.
It's because people are working diligently.
People like the ones I talk to are working diligently behind the scenes to get this information to the right people and to stop these things from happening.
But there's definitely a heightened level of concern right now.
In today's world, it's more important than ever to take control of your digital security and financial freedom.
That's where Ledger comes in.
Ledger's new devices, Ledger Stacks and Ledger Flex, make it incredibly easy and secure to take control of your digital assets.
Your digital assets could be getting tampered with.
Ledger's intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to take control of their crypto, regardless of their experience level.
When I'm dealing with crypto, I need my intuition, otherwise I get baffled.
But more than just being easy to use, Ledger allows you to take control of your financial future, aligning with the principles of individual freedom and self-reliance we value.
Did you know that Ledger is used by 7 million users and takes control of 20% of the world's digital assets?
That's a pretty reliable credo.
Take control of your digital future and start your journey towards financial freedom.
Buy your Ledger device at shop.ledger.com forward slash brand.
Are you saying that there could be coordinated attempts...
To stage a series of, inverted commas, terrorist attacks that can then be attributed to sets of domestic terrorists and then be used to delegitimize Trump's inauguration and prevent it taking place.
Because I don't see, I mean, even with all of this, how would it happen?
So then what would its value be?
So destabilizing the country so that you can disable his administration and his agenda, right?
Because what is part of his agenda?
A big part of it is accountability.
A big part of it, I mean, Tom Homan said it on stage at the Republican National Convention.
He said, you know, we're going to declare the cartels a foreign terrorist organization.
So once you do that, you change the playing field completely.
Because why?
Who has had jurisdiction in the war against drugs and, you know, your operations against cartels and so on?
It's been law enforcement.
Well, where does their jurisdiction end, Russell?
It ends at the United States border.
When they go into Mexico, Mexico or Colombia or any of these countries, they're going at the behest and invitation of the host nation.
So they're very limited in many respects in what they can do.
And when you look at a narco-terror state like Mexico that's completely run by the cartels, it's a joke.
Acting like the Mexican government is a real government and the newly elected leader of Mexico, the socialists, acting like she's not doing the bidding of these cartels is really foolish at this age and stage in the game.
Because you only have to look at Mexico to see the reality of what that country has become.
So when you start to...
To look at this, I'm not even sure that the inauguration really matters at this point.
I believe it's more symbolic than anything else, because you've had the January 6th, the very significant legal recognition of the election results has taken place.
So, in a sense, part of the inauguration is just for show.
So it really, in one sense, it doesn't matter if the inauguration happens or not.
This train has left the station.
Okay, and these guys are coming into office.
What matters now is if you're the deep state, what do you do?
Well, first of all, you take off your blue uniform and you put on your red uniform, right?
Because you got to disappear.
You have to infiltrate.
So we know they're infiltrated throughout the government, throughout every agency.
The deep state is actually something called the Senior Executive Service, the SES. It is a layer of bureaucracy that is outside of the accountability of Congress that awards itself its own salaries.
They can't be fired.
They're not subject to any of the normal checks and balances that affect the average civil servant.
So this is something that's not made up.
It's actually physically real.
And these people know.
That accountability is coming.
And they know they're going to be exposed.
And what else do they know?
That they've literally committed real crimes.
So not the kind of conspiracy that they throw out in the papers or on TV. A seditious conspiracy under the laws of treason and sedition, where they conspired with each other to undermine a legally elected president, the will of the people, the Constitution.
The list is endless.
These are real crimes.
And there's many more that go along with that.
Obstruction of justice and so many other things that they've done.
And if this administration is fighting for its life and fighting for survival, then they're not going to be able to implement that agenda.
And also, what will people associate?
If the violence doesn't begin until Donald Trump gets into office, then everyone will say Donald Trump brought with him pain, death, suffering, chaos.
We need to get rid of Donald Trump.
So that we can have what?
Peace in our country.
Didn't they promise us that at the end of Trump's first term?
Oh, we need to get Trump out of office so America can go back to normal.
It's part of the information war.
I see what you're offering us, Lara Logan.
A slap around the face, a glass, a cold glass of water straight between the eyes to waken us up from the idea that perhaps the election and inauguration of Donald Trump, as well as Elon Musk's increasing global influence and ability to cause as well as Elon Musk's increasing global influence and ability to cause such extraordinary new conversations, even in the United Kingdom, might be the beginning of the rise of new populism and with it
I was very struck, Lara, by Mark Zuckerberg's recent Mia Culpa fact checkers as censors video.
Oh, well, what this means is even the largest big tech platforms and all of their extraordinary power, which I liken to the power of drug cartels in Mexican democracy, based on what you just told me, that even they are able to pivot, reorganize, put Dana White that even they are able to pivot, reorganize, put Dana White on the board, slap on a bit of lipstick and a little bit of eyeshadow and present themselves as an entirely different
I've been, before our conversation, wondering how deep state power would maneuver in the advent of a new government who may have flaws...
And maybe far from perfect in a number of ways, but certainly represent a disruption in the New World Order trajectory that we've been witnessing since, you know, since 2020 at very least.
So you're saying that how this will play out will be through a series of ongoing deep state...
...and activities that you don't feel will be weeded out, controlled, eliminated, prevented or curtailed by the power of the new administration.
You're saying there will continue to be sets of powers that are beyond the reach, remit and control of the incoming government?
No, not quite.
What I'm saying is that there will be attempts...
To do those things.
I don't think they're beyond the reach and power of the government.
Everything comes down to what is Donald Trump really prepared to do?
How much abuse and punishment can Tom Homan take?
You know, what is it going to take to break their will?
What will it take to get them to falter?
Because they are under siege.
all around them now what they have many many benefits today that they didn't have in 2016 right because first and foremost you have a population you have people like yourself with millions of followers and you have a population that is saying no we're not buying it like when they put that Nonsense email out from the Green Beret in Las Vegas who somehow was planning to make it to the Mexico border but shot himself in the head and blew himself up.
I mean, people are calling them out, right?
These stories are not holding.
They're falling apart in many directions because people from all walks of life are seeing it and they're not staying silent.
And yes, thanks to Elon Musk, they have a massive platform which broke the information dominance, the hold that they had on the narrative.
So what I'm saying to you is all of those things will be happening.
What you're talking about, where there is an opportunity for the rise of new populism, that's real.
You only have to look at Argentina under Miele and El Salvador under Bukele and look at what's happening.
In Canada, Justin Trudeau has been, you know, forced to step down.
These people are afraid of what's coming.
But if you're the deep state, I mean, in one sense, Russell, if you want to be biblical about this, this fight began, what are we, 2025?
2025 years ago, right?
I mean, this is when this fight really began.
And so what are you going to do if you're these people?
You're going to try to limit the reach.
Of Donald Trump and his new administration in every single way possible.
We know from experience that they're going to slam him with lawsuits in every direction.
But they're not just going to do that.
They're going to put lawyers, like they put an immigration lawyer as the acting attorney general to replace Merrick Garland.
Why did they put him there?
Not to help Donald Trump, right?
Not to help secure the border.
They put him there to stop.
Their agenda to use the law as a tool or to misuse and abuse the power of the law as a political tool instead of for justice.
So they're going to do it with lawyers.
They're going to do it with information.
We know that they're going to show screaming children and terrible stories of families ripped apart.
And this great person that's worked in this sandwich shop for three generations is now being sent home.
You know you're going to see it.
One emotional story after another.
So there's going to be a massive push in the media.
And then at the same time, there's going to be people around the president in his inner circle inside those agencies, those bureaucrats who are going to undermine, undermine, undermine, wear away at people's confidence.
Then there'll be attacks on the people inside of his administration.
I mean, the kind of people that you're talking about, Russell.
I don't put it past them.
If they have to drown someone in the river to say, look, someone drowned in the river because of Donald Trump, they're quite capable of doing that kind of thing.
You know, you can't underestimate what you're up against.
But I never, ever forget that what really lifts us up and holds us together, our humanity, the things that make us great, we know that when we work together, what happened over the last election?
Black people, Hispanic, white Americans, everybody said, we don't care.
We don't care about your false narrative.
We don't care about race.
We don't care about any of those things, and we never did.
And you know what?
You've pushed us too far.
So we're not afraid anymore.
I'm not afraid as a black person to stand up and say, I support Donald Trump.
I'm not afraid as a white woman to say, I do, right?
We took that fear away because human beings have an enormous capacity to rise beyond anything we can imagine.
When they really understand what's at stake and they see that, okay, this is the moment, right?
I mean, look at history.
History is replete with examples like this.
What did Nelson Mandela do when he was in prison?
You know, when he was offered freedom over and over and over again, but on certain conditions that it would have undermined the principles that he stood for.
So what did he say?
He said, no, I'm going to stay in prison.
I'm going to stay here.
Until my people can be free.
I don't want my freedom means nothing if my people can't be free.
And by the way, you know, I know a guy from Texas, Michael Morton, falsely accused of murdering his wife.
He was offered his freedom, and he didn't take it because he knew he was innocent.
And eventually, his DNA testing after 27 years, and I think of Michael because Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison too.
So here's this man.
You know, he lost everything, including his wife, who he never harmed.
And when they offered him his freedom, he said no, because he knew that they were trying to sell him out.
And what happened in the end?
His conviction was vacated, and he was declared innocent, and they found the real murderer.
So when you stand for principle, you know, it's just an amazing thing about us that...
Principle is rooted in truth, and the ultimate truth is God.
So when we stand for that, and we stand for God, we don't have to worry if it looks overwhelming.
We just have to know we did the right thing.
We did it with the full force.
Every single thing I have in my body, every single day, I give to this.
When I go to bed at night, I am broken, tired, right?
I give everything I can every day, and some days, you know...
I'm far from perfect, and I feel like I never did enough.
But at the end of the day, when you feel overwhelmed, you just got to know that God's got it.
Surely these examples of heroism are always inspiring to hear of and the principle of self-sacrifice and self-sacrifice is the highest order and that our king's great power was not his power of dominion but his power to sacrifice himself is the highest principle around which we might order ourselves.
In a culture that has sanitized, diminished or elsewise obscured the power of Jesus Christ it's easy to get lost in the morass and stimulation of individualism, the pursuit of pleasure, the pursuit of personal glory.
What I have felt up until the election was the type of tyrannical power of which God's.
We had to be most alert and about which we had to be most concerned was a kind of sanitized and bureaucratic technological feudalism that using the language of care had extracted God from public life and maybe even from their human heart and had given us instead a pantheon of false idols, whether they were technological, ideological, commodities, icons and celebrities.
Now, I'm very curious as to see how this MAGA stroke Maha movement will govern.
I'm fascinated to see how these new emergent sovereigns like Elon Musk will influence politics across the world and what their shortcomings will be because they are...
Ultimately, human beings and the type of reverence and zeal that you're discussing has only one proper destination, that of devotion and dedication to the one true God.
I suppose, just getting back into my work this year, I'm noticing, oh right, the EU are pursuing and attempting to shut down Elon Musk, while I see other people on the periphery say that, well, Elon Musk is like an oligarch and the world's richest man, and has all sorts of personal agendas.
And what's interesting talking to you, Lara, is because you sort of operate on the edge of prophecy, as well as within journalism, Interested to see now how dark power will reorder and reorganise now that there has been this rupture.
Because I think after 2020 and the various lawsuits, most people didn't imagine there would be another Trump administration.
And a significant number of people had been seduced by the idea that Trump was an entirely malign individual.
And even me, my sort of support.
Of this administration comes about somewhat because of figures like Bobby Kennedy and just learning more deeply and getting a greater understanding of how malign these kind of institutions that were in government, the Labour Party in my country, the Democrats in the United States of America.
That's where my perspective came from.
But you're right, Lara.
As Christians, we have to look to people that are willing to sacrifice themselves.
And I think perhaps now, if we have a government that's not directly opposed to the interests of the people that they have been elected to govern, it'll be interesting to see how evil is manifest, whether it's manifest within those governments, whether it's manifest within institutions outside of government, and how...
America, in particular, is going to respond because I can see that outside of America, they are looking for ways to control and shut down free speech and ensure that populist uprisings elsewhere are assuaged.
They're still looking for that inside America.
They'll shut down free speech the moment they can.
And you know what you said about Elon Musk?
This is the reality.
Technology today...
Gives a tiny, tiny, tiny group of people extraordinary power.
Like Mark Zuckerberg has no business having any power or say over the public discourse in this country.
He's a cowardly, spineless, little weasel.
That's what he is.
And when the going gets tough...
What does he do?
He changes his stripes.
He will be, Mark Zuckerberg will literally be whatever you need him to be in that moment.
And it probably goes back to the fact that he's been living a lie all this time because he never created Facebook.
The whole story is nonsense.
Facebook was created by DARPA and the CIA. It is one of the world's largest, most successful collection systems because people agree to be surveilled and they provide you the material.
They open the doors and let you come in.
You know, I mean, all of technology does this.
So, you know, what have we seen throughout human history that when extraordinary power is concentrated in the hands of one man or one woman, it rarely works out well.
And we are heading into a world where we have less and less and less control, even our cell phones.
You know, I tried to call someone today and it told me this, you know, the person you're dialing is restricted.
You are not allowed to make calls to this phone.
They can do that with any phone.
They can literally, all the access that you believe technology gives you, to the internet, to information, to this, to your bank account, can all be turned off anytime they want.
Someone else controls it all.
The Wi-Fi in your home, if you didn't install it and you don't know how to uninstall it or to fix it, someone else controls it.
I don't understand.
You see commercials on TV, you know, Google, open my front door, you know, sign up to ADT, Google, whatever, security program.
Are you nuts?
If they can open your front door, they can close it, which means they can close you out.
So we don't know how this is going to play out.
And this is a really interesting time right now, actually, because...
We have the rise of independent media and podcasting.
We have the death of legacy media.
And those two things are going to have to somehow, you're going to have to take the good from this and you're going to have to, you know, adjust for the weaknesses of this in order to give birth to something that's going to withstand all of these forces.
Because everything that destroyed legacy media is already at work trying to destroy independent media.
You know, I mean, don't fool yourselves that anyone is immune.
Almost no cover.
They don't have cover financially, most of them, and they don't have, you know, they don't have teams of people and lawyers and support behind them.
So, you know, how difficult is it going to be to take them out one by one by one?
You know, not that hard, quite frankly.
So this is an interesting time to see what rises out of it, Russell.
And I know we're probably out of time, but it would be remiss of me to leave you without saying perhaps one of the darkest...
One of the darkest moments that we have witnessed in the last few years is the selective, intentional, targeted persecution of American citizens who went to the Capitol on January 6th.
And I did some work.
On that, investigating, I found the most unbelievable stories all across this country.
Extraordinary people, many of whom had very little, many who'd never seen the Capitol in their lives before, had never been to Washington, D.C. And they took their savings.
They'd spent money they couldn't really afford to go there and be a voice for everybody else.
And they were cast.
As insurrectionists, which was a lie.
There's people like the Oath Keepers sentenced to, you know, years and years and years in prison for something that is completely fabricated.
And it was designed to cover up a stolen election.
And it was meant to suppress that populist voice you talk about.
And look what happened, Russell.
They failed.
They failed.
And there were people who, in spite of, they lost everything and they still didn't take a deal.
And there were some people who just didn't have a choice, like Victoria White, who was beaten almost to death.
If you haven't seen my episode on Victoria White, we show that there were, I think it's three or four.
Separate police officers beating this unarmed woman, blood streaming down her face.
She's a mess.
I don't know how Victoria White survived.
She's an amazing woman.
And those people got away with their crimes.
They were cast as heroes.
Now, many of them were heroes.
Many of those officers were.
They were also victims of January 6th.
The people who set the conditions for chaos.
Those are the kind of people right now who are doing a number of different things.
Some of them are running, scared.
You know, they're looking at each other not knowing who's going to be thrown under the bus.
Some of them have doubled down and some of them have fled.
But I can tell you this.
The only thing that I know is that this administration has a short window.
It doesn't have four years.
There's about 18 months before the midterms start.
You know, before all the politicking talk of the midterms start.
And that's not a very long period of time.
So they're going to be sold.
Everything they face will be trying to stall them and derail their agenda and cause infighting and disable them.
And the true test, what the people can do, what this populist movement can do with its voice, you know, they can speak up because that cacophony of sound and support.
That will be the cover that gives these people, these leaders, the courage they need to move forward.
Lara Logan, tell us your comeback every week and beguile us and dazzle us with insights and prophecy.
All right, well, thank you so much.
We'll be parted for a whole week.
I don't know how I'm going to do it.
It's going to be a challenge, Lara, but with the kind of tenacity, like two Nelson Mandelas, we will serve our time graciously.
Laura, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for that and we will provide links to the work you've done on the January 6th stories and thank you very much for your time and we'll see you again next week, Laura.
See you next week.
Well, thank you, Lara Logan, for joining us today, and thank you for being a member of our community.
Remember, we'll be back tomorrow with Dallas Jenkins at 9.30 Central Time, that's 10.30 Eastern Time, for a conversation about The Chosen and Christianity.
Rob Schneider will be with us on Thursday, and we'll be back tomorrow, not for more of the same, but more of the different.
Until then, if you can, stay free.
Many switchers, switchers, switchers. switchers.
Many switching, switch on, switch on.
Many switching.
Many switching, switch on, switch on.
▲
Export Selection