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Feb. 6, 2025 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:21:56

Trump in Gaza - a construction project? – SF533

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	Hello there you awakening wondersteaders.
	Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
	Oracle special with the great Neil Oliver and Lara Logan, where we'll be talking about three defining news stories this week.
	First, Lily Phillips and ethics and morality and the pornographization of culture and even interaction.
	Secondly, Trump's...
	Acquisition of the Gaza Strip.
	Just empty rhetoric or the wrecking ball horror that his detractors fear.
	And finally, USAID, the CIA in different forms under different guises.
	Is that the reason that neoliberalism and social democracy has fallen away into failure and being replaced by this kind of...
	Populist nationalism best defined by the Trump MAGA movement.
	We'll be talking about all of those subjects and more.
	If you don't have Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now and use the code BRAND to get a reduction in addition to...
	More content from me, like me, a shooting range, me doing different interviews, me hanging around.
	You'll also get additional content from Glenn Greenwald and Dan Bongino and Crowder, as well as an ad-free experience over on Rumble.
	For the first 20 minutes or so, we will stay with you on X, YouTube, Facebook, wherever you're watching this, but then we will be...
	Our home on Rumble.
	And don't worry if you're a local subscriber, we'll continue to provide that content until you find the time to join us over on Rumble Premium, our main home.
	So without any further hullabaloo, ludicrousness or needless linguistics, let's welcome to the show Neil Oliver and Lara Logan.
	Lara Logan, Neil Oliver, thanks so much for joining me today for Stay Free Oracles with Russell Brandt.
	You two being the oracles in this instance.
	Thank you for joining us, Lara.
	Russell!
	Neil and I last week soldiered on as bravely as was possible without you.
	We felt somewhat impeded.
	Did quite well, didn't we?
	As I recall.
	Yes, that's right.
	We looked like twin denim armchairs in a club for men that you simply didn't penetrate, Lara, and it's on you.
	And perhaps the reason I'm using such gendered and eroticised language is our first subject today is Lily Phillips.
	Now, I recognise that Lily Phillips is not at the very forefront of the news cycle right this minute.
	Over the next hour, we will be talking, of course, about Trump's acquisition of Gaza and additionally USAID. Which some people, me specifically, are calling the story of the century.
	And if anyone else uses that phrase, they're a plagiarist plagiarising directly from me.
	But first we're going to talk about Lily Phillips.
	Not just Lily Phillips in her capacity as an OnlyFans model.
	I want to tell you why, both of you, why I'm interested in Lily.
	And watch out for any purility, prurience or unwarranted attention here.
	I am struck by Lily Phillips because a lot is enshrined in this story.
	Lily Phillips famously slept with 100 people in a day, and marathon and gargantuan sex sessions are hardly news.
	They've existed in pornography and in culture for a long time.
	Something that's fascinating about Lily Phillips and the OnlyFans phenomena, though, is the normalization of the commodification of sex.
	We not only have the commodification of sex, which we've had, I suppose, for as long as we've had prostitution, but now we have the normalization.
	And almost banalization of that commodification, i.e.
	the idea that anybody can sell sex at any time.
	And here's an example that really made this hit home for me.
	My wife told me that she heard of a fitness instructor that simultaneously does OnlyFans.
	And when I heard that, I thought...
	Of what it would do to me if I didn't have a consistent and robust moral framework in the form of Christ Jesus.
	If when I'd been any age from 14 to 30 in my single adult life, I suppose, or post-pubescent life at least, if I'd have known that you could meet a human being, interact with them at a grocery store or outside a schoolyard or indeed in a fitness class, and then you could pay money to see that person intimately expose themselves in a way that typically...
	Hopefully they only would to a loved one or a gynaecologist.
	I don't know what that would do.
	Do to me spiritually.
	And when I think of that ad infinitum, when I think of the phenomena of pornography, when I think of its impact, the commodification of all that is sacred, it helps me to understand something that is culturally pervasive that probably hasn't yet been correctly defined.
	Lara, I know you have strong views and are a strong advocate for anti-trafficking measures when it comes to women and children.
	I also know that you've been the victim of rape.
	And I wonder how you feel about the sacredness and sanctity of sex and what the commodification of sex, whether it's someone like Lily Phillips or even someone like me, who when I was a famous person was being indulgent, hedonistic, epicurean to a ludicrous degree.
	What do you think is the impact of the commodification, commercialization and normalization of that commodification when it comes to the erotic?
	Dear Lara.
	You know Russell.
	I think the only thing I can tell you is what I told my children, is that they want you to believe today that you can have physical, intimate interactions, sexual interactions with people, and that it doesn't take anything from you.
	And I think that's just a lie.
	And I think that's part of the reason that Lily Phillips, in the documentary film that was made about her doing this stunt, Is crying, right?
	She's weeping.
	And it's obvious that this person who, for whatever reasons, I don't know enough about her and her life and what brought her to that point, but this is a person whose soul is just being obliterated.
	I mean, I was lucky enough to be raised to love myself.
	You know, and to have a sense of self-worth.
	I'll tell you what my mother told me when I was a young girl.
	She said, I'm just going to be honest with you.
	She said, if you want to come cheap, there isn't a man in this town who won't take you.
	She said, they'll be lining up from here to Timbuktu.
	And I tell you something.
	She said, at your funeral, you'll still be that girl.
	You'll be that girl that everybody took a ride on.
	You'll be the town bicycle that everybody loved to ride.
	And she said, it's up to you to put a price on yourself.
	Because if you don't put a price on yourself, nobody else is going to do that.
	And she said, and while you're at it, don't worry about letting me down.
	Just worry about letting yourself down.
	Because if you never let yourself down, you'll never let me down.
	And she said, and the other thing I want to tell you is, if you get pregnant, don't listen to anything anyone says.
	There's no good way out of it.
	Doesn't matter whether you have an abortion, whether you give your child up for adoption, whether you have to become a teen mother.
	These are all hard, hard choices.
	And these are mistakes that have a cost that stays with you for life.
	And she said, you don't want to be in that position.
	Trust me.
	Just don't put yourself in that position.
	And not everybody has a mother like that.
	Not everybody grows up with that sense of self-worth.
	Obviously, become a society that when you take the meaning out of life and the meaning out of spirituality, if you say, well, God, it doesn't matter.
	Religion is corrupt and priests are all pedophiles and it's all evil and horrible and we're better off without it.
	What you essentially do is you take purpose away, you take meaning away, you really take spirituality away.
	This concept that you can find spirituality in nature and it's got nothing to do with God is sort of ridiculous to me.
	And what you do is you end up with a very sad, very rich, but very broken, empty little girl.
	That's what I see.
	When I see that little girl, I know she's 100% responsible for her actions and for her choices.
	She's old enough.
	She's made choices.
	The other thing my mother would say is everybody pays the piper, right?
	There's no getting away from everything.
	There's a price for everything, and you don't get to choose if you pay it or not.
	You pay it.
	That's how it works.
	So she's going to pay the price and is paying the price, obviously, for her actions.
	But we live in a society where people can profit off of that, all the people that are around her that are profiting off it, all the men.
	I would hope to God that I didn't raise a son that would be lining up to be one of those hundred men that just wants to be there.
	But I'm not unrealistic.
	I know how the world is.
	For me, it's soulless.
	And I think it's indicative of the fact that we've become lost.
	We've lost our sense of decency.
	We've lost our sense of humanity.
	We've lost, I mean, when you're putting yourself out like that, it's just, it's physically disgusting to me.
	It's literally disgusting.
	I can't fathom it.
	And I have nothing but pity for all the people that are involved in elevating that and putting it out and profiting off it because you sold your soul and you sold it to the devil.
	And that's, you know, that's between you and the devil and God if you believe in it.
	But, you know, it's an indictment on us.
	On us all and it's also a warning because this idea that you can do OnlyFans and you can do a little bit here and a little bit there.
	OnlyFans is grooming and it's grooming for a much darker world just like pornography is training.
	You know, traffickers today they use pornography to train kids so that they know what to do when they put them to work.
	That's what it's for.
	And that's what it's used for.
	And I understand if you're a person out there that says, well, what's wrong with looking at a little bit of porn or whatever?
	What you do in your private life is what you do in your private life.
	And that may very well be true.
	It's not for me to say.
	But what I do think each one of us has a responsibility to do is to look at the whole picture.
	And when you are raising young girls to believe that there's some kind of achievement in selling yourself and selling your body, I mean, sex is always sold.
	We're not unrealistic about that.
	You can't be self-righteous and say it's okay to do it in a movie with mood lighting and make it look beautiful, and it's somehow different.
	No, it's the same thing.
	It is the same thing.
	And so we have to ask ourselves and come to our own decisions is where we stand on that.
	But when you get to the point where a girl is doing that to herself and people are trying to elevate her for that, people are offering her more money and better deals and all the rest of it, there's going to be nothing left of that girl.
	When they're done with her, there'll be nothing left of her.
	They're not only elevating her, but also simultaneously denigrating her.
	That formed part of the conversation between Lily Phillips and myself, which I approached openly and transparently as a person that in the past has had Not a complicated relationship with sex, an exuberant relationship with sex, and I discussed that exuberance.
	All right, stay on there.
	I didn't know how else to describe it.
	I'm enthusiastic, man.
	By the way, actually, Laura, I heard that there was a point where that dog in your room made a low, grumbling sound while out of frame, and I'm glad that the dog has subsequently been revealed, because otherwise, Lord alone knows what conclusions we might have drawn from it.
	Unseen beasts that roam.
	It was certainly alarming.
	If you're watching this on X or YouTube, remember that this show in its entirety is available exclusively on Rumble, and you should become a member of Rumble Premium to get ad-free content as well as additional content, including early access to the content I made.
	Please...
	Please use the code BRAN to get access to that.
	Here's a small part of the conversation between Lily and myself where she talked about how she started on OnlyFans.
	And Neil, after that, I'd love you to come in on what you think happens to morality and the very idea of sex as sacred when it's introduced to the...
	To mass technology, because I think that's an important part of this story, not just ethics and pornography, but the impact of technology on morality.
	Here's Lily Phillips talking about how she got into the OnlyFans.
	I was, like, 80 and I started to hear about this OnlyFans.
	For me, I thought it was, like, the perfect job because it, you know, combines something I love, sex, with, you know, a job.
	And, like...
	You know, being able to monetize off that and being creative.
	And so when I went off to university, I knew that what I went to university for wasn't quite what I wanted to do.
	I wasn't really sure why I went to university.
	I just kind of went because everyone else was.
	And then that's when I was like, you know, I'm going to start.
	Later we'll be talking about USAID, which until pretty recently I would have considered to be one of the great controversial moments in the Trump administration.
	But of course, since then, there has been the Trump acquisition, let's call it, of Gaza.
	We'll be talking about all of that a little later.
	But first, Neil, I'd love your response, mate, on the Lily Phillips phenomena and the impact of technology on pornography and the impact of pornography on the human spirit and what your reaction is to this.
	I find it difficult to follow Lara talking about it because, you know, one of my basic reactions to the story is that I do believe that sex is profoundly different for men and women.
	That's my opinion.
	You know, I think there's no way of...
	Of making broad generalisations that, you know, that sex is just sex and that it affects men as it does women.
	And I do think comment on the Lily Phillips story is more relevant coming from a woman and from women because, you know, a male response to the act is profoundly different.
	But I suppose what I thought right away was, I think she's 23, is that right?
	She's about that age.
	And she's obviously been in the industry for a while.
	She was younger when she started in the industry.
	And I'm a dad of, you know, my daughter's 21. And so I, you know, anything that happens to any young woman, whatever it is, I automatically think about it in relation to mine.
	I'm just frankly horrified at the thought of it.
	I think there's no way, I don't think there's any way of looking at what happened to Lily in that project, in that stunt, as Lara called it, without seeing it as a violation.
	But without saying that she was in any way coerced, we're taking it as read that she was completely compliant with the event, but looked at objectively.
	I heard her use expressions at certain times when that coverage that Lara's talking about, where she seemed to be distressed about what had just happened, and she was talking about one in and one out.
	There's no way you could listen to the testimony from her own lips without...
	It sounded like violation.
	And again, you know, I'm always just reflecting that back and thinking about it in relation to my own flesh and blood.
	But I think that, you know, again, I mean, my wife...
	You know, has talked with all sorts of conversations about sex over the years, you know, for all sorts of different reasons.
	And she has always reiterated to me that it's very different for a woman than it is for a man.
	And that's always been my instinct.
	And I've had the testimony from people that are very close to me, very intimately close to me, that reinforces what I've always thought.
	And I find it very difficult in that context to imagine that...
	A woman, a young, a very young woman like Lily can commodify sex in that way without taking a profound hit.
	If you want to see the rest of this show, you'll have to join us over on Rumble.
	Click the link in the description and join us there.
	Let me ask you both.
	Wait, can I interrupt and ask you both?
	Would either of you have done it?
	Would you have been one of those hundred?
	When I was younger, I wouldn't have hesitated.
	I maybe wouldn't have wanted to be in a context with loads of men, but what I was aware of when speaking with her was the kind of, and I declared this in the conversation, is that the periphery of my being, there is a kind of shadow that is stimulated by the image of absolute Lack of inhibition or prohibition around sex.
	And I said, when I was younger, I would have, I can, I said, like, almost like a phantom limb, as it were.
	I can feel the sort of haunting of the power of the erotic.
	And that is to acknowledge its sanctity, its literal sacred set-apartness.
	So yeah, I would have, when I was younger, like, not...
	Perhaps literally have been in the line, but certainly I would have co-signed the idea that we should engage in sex abundantly with any consenting adult who's up for it, that there should be no censure.
	Totally, I lived like that.
	But would you have been like number 80, number 85, number 90?
	Would you have been the hundredth guy in a day to go and have sex with a young woman?
	Yes, I recognise now, as the man I am here as a follower of Christ Jesus, I hear how outrageous and ridiculous what you're saying is.
	But what I can tell you is, there was a time when I was about 23 or 24, when I probably was still using drugs, where I filmed something with a sex worker, stayed at her house, and she was working and stuff, and I had sex with her at the end of it.
	And I remember part of what felt eroticised was the fact that this is a person that had been objectified.
	And there is also, may I say, some sort of warped sense of some kind of peculiar reverence, some perverse, I suppose is the word, reverence, of cherishing and treasuring sexually a woman that has been through that.
	I remember I've slept with a bunch of sex workers.
	I've had sex in situations with more than one, and sometimes significantly more than one, woman.
	And I remember that it was the feeling of kind of the erotic power in that.
	That is quite close to love.
	About dominion, subjugation and exploitation.
	It can sometimes be this extraordinary and subtle warping of love and sanctity and intimacy.
	So I don't think...
	To your point, Neil, about men, I'd like to turn this over to you again, if I may.
	She talked about that much of the ire and condemnation she had received in particular online came from pious men.
	Like, sort of saying, like, ugh, she's disgusting.
	And like she also said, but...
	Guess who's lining up?
	I wonder what we do with that tension.
	I would never, not in a million years, judge not.
	I don't know her.
	I haven't walked her life.
	I don't know anything about her.
	I'm not going to condemn what she did because I think that's...
	She's a human being.
	She's a life.
	When I say that I'm appalled, I'm only reflecting on it and empathising with the situation in which she put herself.
	And then further, not imagining, but the very idea that anything like that would happen.
	Any of mine would want to be involved in anything like that.
	I just have to say that that frankly appalls me.
	But I don't want that to come laden with any kind of pious Victorian dad style, you know, walk through the streets with a flaming pitchfork about it.
	You know, she's a, you know, God love her.
	She's a human being.
	She's a life.
	And she's doing her thing.
	I am genuinely...
	I'm so fascinated and impressed to hear you speak, Russell, because you speak with such honesty.
	I think it's very, very powerful that you're frank and that you find, actually, in the moment, persuasive ways to talk about the ways in which that kind of situation can be profound.
	But I myself, I don't have any experience of it.
	Me, personally, I've only ever wanted to be the only erection in the room.
	And the very thought about there being a queue of guys, you know, priapic at the prospect of what...
	That's anathema to me.
	But again, I'm not, I mean, whatever, people are into group sex and multiple partners and all of the rest of it.
	And I'm not making a judgment on it.
	But I can only seek to empathize with the situation and think, I just feel very, my sense is that Lily Phillips, having gone through that and whatever else that she has gone through, having gone through that and whatever else that she has gone through, there will be long term unhappy consequences as a result Maybe I'm wrong.
	But I can only conclude from my experience of life and having been intimate with and spoken to a number of women that there's no way that what she has been doing and what she seems to be proposing to do next, there's no way that that can be processed and become a happy part of a life going forward.
	Hopefully she'll survive it and come through it.
	Russell, let me add.
	That's all.
	It is sad.
	And I want to just add one quick thing that will answer your question about the technology.
	There's a broader problem here when you step back from the personal impact to Lily and the personal choices made by the people that encourage this.
	And that broader impact is, yeah, group sex is one thing, but now you're adding in technology, right?
	Now you're adding in social media and the vehicle by which OnlyFans Literally, because of the economies of scale, because this can now reach people all over the world, the amount of money in it is enormous.
	And it's like nothing we've ever seen before.
	There's nothing that Playboy ever did at its heyday that comes close, right?
	We're talking about technology that is making this instant and is making this accessible and is making this...
	Hey, Barry!
	Sorry.
	It's making this happen on a scale that has never, ever been seen before.
	And what it's doing at the same time is it's encouraging our kids.
	This is, you know, the problem with what Lily Phillips is doing is that she's being rewarded for this.
	She's richer, you know, than any young girl can ever imagine.
	She can have anything she wants.
	She can do anything she wants.
	You know, she's being painted as being powerful in her own way because there's a whole ideology today that sex workers make the choice, they're not the victims, the prostitutes of old were, that there's something powerful and that we should empower them because they have every right.
	She said, I love sex and basically I don't want to go to college and do the hard work.
	I don't want to be enslaved.
	Right?
	And live my life like everyone else is living it.
	I can do two things I love and I can make, what is it?
	It's easy money.
	And what do we know about easy money?
	Easy money is always the same.
	Easy money always comes at a cost.
	Because there is no, the thing about life is that there are certain fundamental principles.
	You get out of something what you put in.
	You know, things are a product of hard work.
	How much work are you willing to put in?
	And everybody wants to take shortcuts and they want to tell themselves that they can change the rules.
	But the rules of the game, in a sense, they never really change.
	And the reality is that when you try to take these shortcuts, it usually means that there's something darker there.
	And what technology has done is it's taken all of that darkness.
	And it's created a marketplace for it.
	So whether it's the OnlyFans, or whether it's the Hurtcore, which is sadistic pornography, or whether it's the snuff films, these things through technology and the dark web, they have a broader audience, they have a broader reach, they have more power than they ever have, and they're setting an example for all of our kids that it's okay.
	What they're doing is they're saying it's okay.
	It's okay for you to sell your soul if it gets you a pair of designer shoes.
	It's okay if it gets you an Instagram, a crown, it makes you an influencer, it gives you followers, that this is the way to live now.
	And we're all okay with it.
	And there's nothing essentially wrong with it.
	And, you know, I mean, my heart breaks really when I see her in that film talking about what happened.
	But then I take a look at her ex account and it's, you know, I mean, I mean, there she is, selling herself and setting an example for all of our kids that this is what you've got to do if you want to succeed.
	And that has an impact.
	You know, I remember my son and my daughter, young, having an argument once.
	And my daughter is feminist, you know, like me, and so on and so on.
	And she said, if boys have the right to sleep with anybody they want, this is about six, seven years ago, then girls should have that right too.
	And I turned around and I said, That's not really the whole point.
	That's not really the whole point of the argument.
	I said, when, you know, you, yeah, sure, people can have sex and say, oh, it was just, it was just physical and it didn't mean anything at all.
	Sure, you know, there's, that happens all the time.
	I said, but this is, you're taking the mystery and the magic and everything that matters, you're taking it out of this and you're making it now, like, there's many other lilies out there.
	Many other Lilies.
	You can find them.
	There's a girl who did 100 guys in a weekend in New York that was on Instagram.
	There's lots of other videos.
	It's not just Lily.
	She's at the top.
	Of the game.
	But they're setting the stage, they're letting you know that there is nothing, that you lose nothing, that you give nothing of yourself, that there's nothing spiritual and magical about that connection that comes from physical intimacy, not just the sexual part of it, but when you really love someone and when you bring all that together, they're taking that away from our children.
	That's what they're actually doing.
	Certainly I would say that there is an impact for men as well when it comes to promiscuity, even though I take and acknowledge Neil's points that there are biological and anatomical differences that likely have...
	Bear out psychologically and even spiritually on the mind of the sexes.
	All of that and more is covered in the conversation between Lily Phillips and I. I don't think I didn't notice that Lara Logan's dog during that conversation appeared to disappear to tend to her OnlyFans account for canines, which I'm calling in my mind like bony fangs or OnlyFangs, something like that.
	I'll come up with something for it.
	Remember, we are speaking about Trump's extraordinary acquisition of Gaza and the shockwaves that that's sent.
	Around the world as well as USAID and that story.
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	Thank you so much for joining me on Stay Free Oracles with Russell Brand and Neil Oliver and Lara Logan.
	We've already discussed Lily Phillips.
	You can see that interview now on Rumble Premium or wait till next Monday when we'll be streaming it.
	On Rumble.
	If you get Rumble Premium using the code brand, you get access to all sorts of additional content from me and other Rumble creators as well as an ad-free experience.
	Now, many people saw the advent of the Trump administration as an end to the global order, as a significant shift in the trajectory of presumed Kafkaesque institutional tyranny.
	The Trump movement was a spoke in the wheels of a particular type of globalism with the announcement that Trump says that...
	We are going way beyond the tongue-in-cheek talk of the Panama Canal and Greenland into an extraordinarily contentious area, perhaps the most contentious area in the history of...
	Our kind.
	And to hear Donald Trump talking about it in the kind of extraordinary terms of construction, as if it's just another deal, has been pretty startling for some.
	Not for people, though, who on the periphery have claimed that MAGA Trump is just another iteration of centralized global power playing out in democracy.
	So what does this tell us about the Trump administration?
	Here's Donald Trump himself talking about the acquisition of Gaza.
	We'll be talking about that after this.
	The US will take over the Gaza Strip.
	And we will do a job with it, too.
	We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.
	Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings.
	Level it out.
	create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.
	If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what's happening in Gaza, why would they want to return?
	The place has been hell.
	Trump is the most, let's say, unpredictable and exciting political figure.
	If you can divorce your own political perspectives from it.
	Perhaps since the...
	Great leaders of the 20th century and all that might be packed into some of those extraordinary leaders.
	But he still has the capacity to surprise.
	I don't think any of us expected him to turn up in Israel next to Netanyahu saying America are going to take over Gaza.
	By what authority can Trump make that claim?
	And what does this do?
	Neil, to the already pretty entrenched divisions between the left and right, the left will claim that this is an example of the megalomaniarchal Trump that they always feared, and it's difficult really to see how this was part of his America First campaign agenda.
	Neil, how are you dealing with this?
	I looked on at Trump saying, listened to Trump saying these things alongside Netanyahu, and I'll be honest with you, I don't...
	I don't understand precisely what he could possibly have been saying, really.
	I mean, I listened to the words more than once, but I still don't understand.
	What does he mean?
	And was he deliberately using language in such a way that it left it dubious?
	I mean, as you said, as you alluded to, I mean, by what authority could America take Gaza?
	Take Gaza from whom and under what legislation or under what right?
	Is that possible?
	Is that what he meant?
	I don't know.
	Obviously, you go back a year and more ago and his son-in-law was talking about beachfront property in Gaza and it being an enormous investment opportunity and all of the rest of it.
	I listened to that at the time and thought...
	Did anybody know that he was going to say that there?
	And then you watch Trump in that press conference and you think, did anybody know that he was going to say that there?
	And Benjamin Netanyahu didn't seem to understand, judging by his body language, it didn't seem as though he had been pre-warned about what Trump was saying.
	He didn't understand.
	So there's just this whole bubble of uncertainty hanging all over it, because in the face of it, it sounds like it would be...
	To any rational person, it would be completely illegal and impossible for the USA to take Gaza, level it and redevelop it and decide who was going to live there, which is what he certainly seemed to be saying.
	And then that bit in the second clip, you know, where he says Gaza's been such a terrible place, why would anybody want to go back to it?
	So that's open brackets.
	The people who previously lived there are not going back there.
	Whether they want to or not, he seemed to be implying that whoever was going to live in the redeveloped Gaza was not going to be the people who have spent seven decades and lifetimes of hurt and pain trying to hold on to something.
	So, in short, I look on it and I don't know how to interpret what Donald Trump said there.
	It seemed impossible.
	I suppose many of us were wondering what a newly emboldened 2025 version of Donald Trump might look like with him, confirmation pending, surrounded by legitimising and, in my view, brilliant figures like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard.
	I feel like my general...
	The opinion of Trump changed over the years as to, oh, this dude is a wrecking ball when it comes to globalist power, and even though he is a nationalist and a populist, people love him because he's kind of funny and affable, and he's an old-school entrepreneurial tycoon-ish figure that regards everything as a kind of a deal opportunity.
	Kind of from that perspective, there are aspects of this rhetoric, at least, that aren't surprising.
	But when it comes to the most contentious historical issue that encompasses ideas like imperialism, colonialism, And spiritual legitimacy of the rights to claim land, claims that could, of course, be made by Aboriginal Australians or Irish people to the British or Indian people to the British or Native Americans to currently settled residents of the United States of America.
	It's a massive and enormous question.
	Laura Logan, I think that you're generally pretty supportive of Donald Trump.
	How dare you reconcile your broad support for Trump with this sort of extraordinary piece of geopoliticking?
	Well, I also did a double take.
	You know, it came out of left field.
	I wasn't expecting it, and I had to listen to it a couple times.
	I saw different headlines and different people commenting on it, and I had to go to the original video to listen to it just to sort of wrap my head around it.
	I'm not 100% convinced that Trump meant what he said.
	I don't...
	I don't think he's making it up.
	I think that Neil's very astute observation there of Jared Kushner.
	I remember when he said that about beachfront properties in Gaza.
	And it also stuck out because, you know, Gaza obviously is, on the one hand, you have this massive destruction.
	But then on the other hand, I have been to Gaza and I have seen the ginormous Porsche dealerships and all the luxury car dealerships and the very wealthy parts of Gaza, especially.
	Especially after Hamas came in, they stole so much from the people and it helped them to keep the people in poverty because that was very much a recruiting tool for them.
	And not to say there weren't other issues, it's just something that's not often remarked on or not often known because people don't generally go to Gaza and see these things for themselves.
	But I'm always, you know, this is one of those situations.
	Where I immediately hold and try to figure out what is this really about?
	Because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
	I mean, it sounds, you know, it sounds simple in one respect.
	Oh, we're going to, you know, take over Gaza and rebuild it.
	Well, rebuilding, I've seen that in Afghanistan.
	I've seen it in Iraq.
	I've seen it in Syria, South Sudan.
	I mean, all over the world, right?
	Rebuilding is hard.
	And obviously people are very entrenched there.
	I didn't take that clip.
	Of Trump saying, you know, why would anyone want to go back there as meaning that they're going to bring other people in?
	Neil, I can see why when you take a clip like that in isolation, it can make you think that.
	I took it more as, why would these people want to come back to nothing?
	Like, why would they want to come back to the life that they had?
	We're going to fundamentally change what's here, and we're going to make it better for them.
	Like, that was my read, and I did listen to a little more of it, so maybe that's...
	Maybe that's why I took that a little differently.
	But this is what I would say.
	When Trump said we're going to take the Panama Canal, I don't think he had any intention of taking the Panama Canal.
	What he wanted was exactly what he got.
	He got Panama to say, we're not going to play with China anymore.
	If you're going to threaten us, people have to believe he's serious.
	Because if they don't believe he's serious, it's not going to work.
	He's got no negotiating power.
	He's got no leverage.
	Well, I can't be sure, but I imagine that if you sat down with him, he would have a very, you know, reasoned, articulated, substantial argument telling you why he means it.
	But I'm not really sure that he does.
	And it's the same thing.
	And in terms of how could they legally do it now?
	The only way they could legally do it was if the Palestinian Authority, the people, you know, in charge who legally owned Gaza, were, I mean...
	We agreed, made an agreement with the U.S. And I don't think it's beyond Trump to do.
	I mean, we don't really know at this point.
	We don't have a good granular idea of how much legs does Hamas still have in them.
	And what about Hezbollah and the Iranians?
	There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that I know about that is not reported, where Iran has taken massive, massive, massive hits to their infrastructure.
	And people blame everything on the Israelis.
	Even when the Israelis don't actually have the military capability to do what's being done, which tells me that the people who are really doing it are the U.S. So I know that there's a lot going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of.
	I mean, of course there are people within Hamas that are completely ideological and cannot be bought, just like anybody else.
	But there's also a lot of them that can be bought.
	There's also a lot of them that have paid a very heavy price at this point, have been brought to their knees.
	And I don't know what kind of deals are going on behind the scenes.
	I wouldn't put it past them to make some kind of crazy deal.
	It seems insane.
	It does.
	It seems insane on the surface.
	There's no question about it.
	But that's when it doesn't add up.
	I know I'm missing pieces of information, and they're critical pieces of information.
	So I don't want to be definitive.
	I just find it very difficult to contemplate even the possibility in the real world.
	That Trump's sponsors and major donors and Benjamin Netanyahu and the party of which he is the front could entertain the idea that Donald Trump was going to redevelop Gaza, by whatever means, and reinstall the incumbent population now into a lovely Gaza.
	And that was one way in which one might have read what Trump seemed to be saying.
	But I find that impossible.
	But I think the other thing to be, you know, when you look back on the history of, which is from 1948, or even further back, you know, you go back to 1917 and the Balfour Declaration.
	And when you look at it from the distance of time and think that in that instance, You know, Britain invited itself to decide to give away a territory that it didn't own and had no ancestral claim on to someone else without any consultation whatsoever with the incumbent population.
	And that incumbent population was frightened and forced away from it.
	You know, from their homes, from their olive groves, from their fruit trees and all of the rest of it.
	They were just forced out of it and found themselves disenfranchised and exiled in living memory.
	And it seems absolutely, it's surreal now to watch Donald Trump representing the United States of America seeming to now take claim ownership of part of that territory and again decide, it's surreal now to watch Donald Trump representing the United States of America seeming to now take claim ownership of part of that territory and again decide, you know, without direct reference territory and again decide, you
	Now looking on at Donald Trump as the next person coming in saying, well, I'm just going to tell everyone what's going to happen here.
	Let me throw something controversial at you both, okay?
	Let me throw something controversial at you.
	Neil, I understand it, and that's why I don't really believe it.
	I'll be honest with you.
	I have nothing to base this on, but my gut instinct is he's playing a hand and he doesn't really have any intention of doing that.
	I don't know what he intends to do, but I don't think it's that.
	But on the other side of this, let me ask you both a question.
	I have been in one war after another, after another, after another.
	And they never, ever, ever end.
	And they never get better.
	And people are entrenched in the population, and they use the population, and they exploit the population.
	And I'm not excusing anyone, right?
	I'm not saying these people are worse than the US, or that the US is better than Hamas.
	I'm not saying that.
	I'm just saying we are in a very interesting moment here.
	Modern history, where there is someone who's not playing according to the rules that we have seen.
	And the rules that we have seen, going back to the Balfour Declaration, or whether it's the Durant Line in Afghanistan, or whether it's the separation of Rwanda.
	I mean, I'm a product of colonialism and all the rest of it growing up.
	In South Africa, I've seen that all over Africa.
	I've been to probably 40, 50 countries where I've seen that.
	So I know exactly what you're talking about.
	One after another, you can trace modern warfare to decisions that were made by the Arabs, not just the Brits, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the French.
	I mean, all of them have their legacy of imperialism that has torn tribes and societies and countries and areas apart.
	All of them have it.
	And before that, there were also Other forces doing that long before the British ever set foot in Arabia.
	You know, I mean, there were things that were happening with the Ottomans.
	The Ottomans went into those lands.
	I mean, so depending on how far back you want to go in history, you can find this cycle repeating itself, repeating itself.
	And now I'm curious to see if this is actually a moment where we're going to change the rules of the game.
	And I don't know that that's right.
	And I'm not saying it's good.
	And I don't even think it could work.
	Honestly, I don't think the US could rebuild Gaza.
	And that's probably one of those clips where someone will play it and show how wrong I was 10 years later.
	But I just know what's involved in rebuilding.
	But what I am interested to see here is what exactly is at play?
	Because not every Palestinian supports Hamas.
	Not every Palestinian wants the genocide.
	of every last living Jew, right?
	Not every Palestinian wants a return to what they had before.
	And I don't know if this...
	I don't know what this means.
	When it doesn't make sense, there's a reason it doesn't make sense, right?
	And this doesn't make sense on the surface.
	Trump's leadership, I suppose, has always contained a component of staggering havoc.
	That he tore apart the playbook when campaigning to be the leader of the Republican Party.
	He tore up the playbook when electioneering against Hillary Clinton.
	And in his first term, domestically, there was this sense that we're dealing with a leader that's not confined by norms.
	Those norms themselves have to be undergirded by sets of moral authority that broadly have...
	To see Trump playing that out on a geopolitical scale, we are at the kind of nexus of the issue that's around which appear to web ideas such as colonialism, imperialism, spiritual power, is extraordinary.
	And I take your point, Lara, that to end this sort of ancient cycle of violence, what kind of epoch-shifting act and figure does it require?
	Is it the return of Christ?
	Is it a UFO to...
	Land at the site of the temples?
	Or is it?
	The sort of extraordinary individual power of Donald Trump that's going to provide this fracture and warping in our understanding of reality.
	Like you, Laura, I can't actually imagine it.
	And like you, Neil, I sort of have this sense that, does Donald Trump mean that?
	Does Donald Trump just go out like...
	And what I really think it is, it's a sort of Donald Trump being Donald Trump, this person that uses tactics, rhetoric and behaviours that are way outside of what we've come to accept as normal political discourse.
	It's like guerrilla politics.
	He'll just say a thing and now we're all having to deal with this new reality that's almost been spoken into being by him.
	And it's so sort of absurd and extraordinary that you almost can't keep up with all of the moral, ethical, national, historical, colonial narratives that have preceded it.
	It's like, it's like and it's not like...
	Being there, you know, the Peter Sellers movie about the American president.
	Obviously, Trump bears no...
	I'm not suggesting for a moment that he's like the character that Peter Sellers plays in that film, but the character Chancey Gardner would say things and everyone else would just interpret it for him.
	You know, he would just say these...
	He would just say things as they occurred to him.
	And all these, in inverted commas, cleverer, statecrafty people around him would say, ah...
	You see what he's done there?
	That's very, very clever.
	It's a bit like that.
	You know, Trump just seems to speak.
	And then people talk about playing 3D and 4D and 5D chess with what he may or may not be doing.
	But he says something and then we're doing it now.
	And everyone in the State Department runs about going, ah, I know what he meant.
	Because what will happen now is.
	And maybe he did mean that, but it's also possible that he just speaks.
	Well, and it's also possible that he has a different plan.
	I mean, like you said, Netanyahu's body language showed that it wasn't something that they had sat down in meetings and figured out and knew exactly what to say.
	And it didn't seem that way.
	But we don't know because we weren't there.
	But what we do know, you know what I do know?
	I know that the new director of foreign assistance at the State Department, Who would presumably be quite heavily involved in a project like that.
	I know this is a very serious person and someone I've known for 20 years.
	And so I think we have to wait and see.
	I think that's the thing, is not to be too reactive.
	I think that's my point.
	It's easy, you know, if you're like, oh, if you feel for the Palestinian people, well, how dare he?
	How dare he say that he can just come over and take this?
	Who does he think he is?
	Or if you hate Donald Trump and you're right, I told you Donald Trump was like Hitler or whatever it happens to be, you know, whatever your position is.
	This kind of knee-jerk reaction is sort of fostered by social media because we've taken the critical thinking and the thought out of it and the time out of it.
	I think we need to give this one time to play out.
	I don't think he meant for a second that he's going to annex Greenland, for example.
	However, the U.S. does pay all the bills in Greenland.
	And there are a lot of people in Greenland who say they want to be part of the U.S. But is that what he really wants?
	Is he angling there?
	You know, to say, okay, if we're going to pay your bills, there's certain things we're not going to let happen.
	We're not going to let our adversaries use this against us.
	Or, by the way, is Greenland the door, you know, to Antarctica and a whole lot of other stuff that's been going on that we don't...
	I mean, there's a lot of unanswered questions about what's been going on in Antarctica all these years.
	Why did John Kerry come back from Antarctica and say that no one was allowed to go and visit?
	Why did Admiral Byrd at the end of the Second World War report that he'd been in massive battles in Antarctica?
	What exactly is there?
	So, you know, I feel like this is one of those situations where, within a very short amount of time, we're probably going to learn a lot more about what he really meant.
	Surely there's only so many times, though, that you can play...
	I mean, he just says, see Panama, I'll have that.
	See Canada, I'll have that.
	Greenland, I'll have that as well.
	I hear what you're saying.
	When he says it in Panama, the Panamanians go, all right, hang on, hang on.
	We might have to rethink exactly what we're doing.
	But how many times can you play that card?
	Well, it depends on your other cards, Neil.
	It depends on what's in your hand.
	Because if that's your only card, then you're like the boy who cried wolf, and no, it's not going to work very well.
	But that's not Donald Trump, right?
	I mean, he's president of the United States of America, so he's got a strong hand.
	Yeah, Neil, you could be a Panamanian diplomat in that outfit, as a matter of fact.
	You're the exact sort of person that they'd send to negotiate for their canals.
	And I love your analysis.
	There's no question.
	We could put you anywhere and you'd thrive and succeed.
	There's no question about it.
	I also enjoyed your Chancey Gardner from being there analysis, that he is somehow an avatar and cipher for all of our projections.
	I've pondered similar things myself.
	Certainly, it seems that Donald Trump is bringing to international diplomacy the sort of sense of a wild and occasionally unbridled havoc that he's brought to various strata of US domestic politics.
	And perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.
	And maybe, like you said, Laura, we should wait and see what will happen.
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	USAID or USAID. Even the way you say it.
	It's politicised.
	If you call it USAID, you're likely on the left and regard it to be a bit like Band-Aid, but for international forum diplomatic aid granted to America's friends around the world.
	If you call it USAID, you see it as the apparatus of the deep state.
	And this is the conversation that's unfolding right now in real time with the likes of AOC advocating for USAID or Joy Reid saying that it's a kind of coup against the state to destabilise and even abandon it.
	Here's Representative Jamie Raskin saying...
	That Elon didn't create USAID, so he can't destroy it.
	And I'll be looking forward to hear what you make of this after Lara Logan.
	Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people.
	And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it.
	And who's going to stop him?
	We are.
	We're going to stop him.
	USAID cannot be created or destroyed, only altered, or does that matter?
	Lara Logan, where do you stand on the USAID story?
	Well, I've got to be honest, Jamie Raskin is disgusting to me.
	He is one of the most awful human beings on the face of the earth.
	And he's pathetic.
	And why do I dislike him so much?
	Well, because he was one of the chief architects of the persecution and the cover-up following January 6th, who felt nothing to tear apart families and destroy lives and put innocent people behind bars.
	So I find my skin crawling having to listen to him.
	But the funny part there is he says that the Congress created USAID for the American people.
	No, USAID is a foreign aid, international aid agency, right?
	So it wasn't created for the American people.
	Most of the American people had very little idea that USAID even existed before this happened.
	Most of the American people had no idea that their money, their tax dollars, were being taken to fund things like, let me see.
	George Soros' fund to install prosecutors that follow their ideology.
	And you can see their handiwork in San Francisco, which has been destroyed, New Orleans, which is down the toilet, you know, and so on and so on and so on, right?
	Most Americans, the majority that voted Donald Trump into power, do not support George Soros or the Open Society Foundations or any of the groups in his affinity network.
	And so they are shocked to discover that hundreds of millions of dollars of their blood, sweat and tears Is being used to finance things that they regard as basically slitting their own throats.
	So when Jamie Raskin and these people, they talk about oversight.
	They didn't do any oversight of USAID. In fact...
	In fact, what USAID did was bypass Congress.
	They bypassed oversight.
	And they created the power unconstitutionally and against the law.
	They created the power for these satellite offices of USAID that was spread all over the world to completely bypass everyone and get money directly.
	You know what really irks me, Russell, is I have to say this.
	People are very cavalier about American tax dollars.
	I am not.
	Because I live in a beautiful tourist town in one of the wealthiest counties in Texas.
	And the vast majority of people living here do not take a vacation because they can't afford it.
	Most of the kids that come to my house, and there's 20 or 30 of them every weekend, have never been on an airplane.
	And it's not because, as many Europeans think, They're a bunch of ignorant Americans who don't give a shit about the rest of the world and think America is so great, I don't need to travel.
	They can't afford to travel.
	They can't afford to go outside the borders of the United States.
	They can't afford to fly from one state to another state.
	Most of them don't have medical insurance because their families can't afford it.
	I just, I cannot say it strong enough.
	I don't have a fancy house.
	And a lot of these kids, when they come to my house, they've never seen anything like it.
	And most, you know, many of these kids are white.
	Some of them are Hispanic.
	I live in a mostly white town.
	I'm not going to apologize for it.
	It just happens to be the case.
	You know, but obviously we have a lot of Hispanic people here.
	And my kids have lots of Hispanic friends, and so do I. But, you know, this is not a...
	This is not a racial thing.
	This is American kids of American parents.
	Their parents don't often...
	They always work.
	They often work more than one job.
	And they live just to survive and exist.
	They can get by if they don't ever get sick.
	And they don't ever need to see a doctor or they don't ever get hurt.
	But if anything goes wrong, they're in real, real trouble.
	These people, it's their tax dollars.
	It's their blood and their sweat and their tears and their sacrifices.
	They have been denigrated.
	They've been dismissed.
	They've been disregarded.
	They have been targeted.
	They're treated like they're absolutely worthless.
	Until when?
	Until somebody wants to...
	They want their tax dollars to pay for my kid.
	I'm some elite person in Washington, D.C., but somehow I don't think my kid should have this burden of their fees from college, so the American taxpayer can just pay for it.
	The American taxpayer can finance, let me see, trans operas in Serbia.
	Do you know that program was 50 million dollars they were funneling into LGBTQ causes outside of congressional oversight into Serbia?
	You know, the kind of things that they have been financing, it's not just these outrageous programs overseas in foreign countries.
	It's not just that you're paying for children in foreign countries to get scholarships and to go to university, but you're not doing that.
	For American kids.
	It's not just that Americans don't believe in many of these things.
	It's that what you've done is you have taken the United States government and you've used it as a slush fund to finance an ideology that is profound, that ultimately is the death of everything that these people who are paying for it actually believe in.
	And you've done it You've done it in darkness.
	You've hidden what you're doing from the American people.
	And so any person who's standing up now and says, oh, how dare E.R. must do this and how dare we have to stop this tyranny and we need oversight.
	We need to know what they're doing.
	It's incredible to me.
	As usual, they never want to address the substance of what you're dealing with.
	And of course, what they also don't want to address is that the president, through his executive order, When you are violating the law, as the USAID has been doing, they've been violating the law over and over again.
	They've been money laundering to all these affinity groups and all these NGOs and they have been pushing this through.
	They've been stealing from the American people and all so that they can keep these people subjugated.
	Americans are very giving people.
	You only have to look at philanthropic rates to know they don't like people to suffer and they're willing to help.
	But no one's been helping them.
	The quality of their life has been going down and down and down.
	Almost none of the kids that I know had Christmas.
	One of the kids I know, he got socks and t-shirts, a couple of them.
	Three pairs of socks, three t-shirts for Christmas.
	A lot of these families can't afford Thanksgiving.
	They can't afford to buy a Thanksgiving turkey.
	They can't afford to travel, to be together.
	This is standard.
	For people all across America today.
	I don't think that any of these people want innocent people to suffer.
	But when you find out that less than 10% of the money that has supposedly been going to help poor people or people in need in foreign countries has actually been reaching those people.
	When you find out that Angelina Jolie and Sean Penn, these people were paid millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
	Buy USAID to take trips to Ukraine, to Ukraine, so they could do photo ops that could justify hundreds of millions more dollars going to finance a war that nobody believes in, that is absolutely unwinnable, that is costing lives on a daily basis.
	I mean, it's unconscionable what has been done.
	And for the Democrats to focus on Elon Musk, And to go there with their stupid little pathetic posse.
	And by the way, it's not just Democrats who have benefited from this system.
	There is a plethora of Republicans whose hands are as dirty as every single one of those small, little people that stood and staged their protests and went out there.
	So this is not, I'm not painting this as a partisan thing.
	They just chose to stand on the wrong side of history.
	Elon Musk has been given legal authorities by Donald Trump.
	I haven't read every contract.
	All I'm going to say is...
	The Trump administration learned its lesson the last time around.
	When they were being, every single thing that they were trying to do was being attacked by the other part of this affinity groups who go after them with lawfare and try and shut them down with legal actions.
	They learned their lesson from that, and they were a lot more careful this time.
	It doesn't mean that they're foolproof, but they knew what they were doing, and they're making sure that they act with legal authority every step of the way.
	Trump's declaration that Gaza could be occupied and developed is...
	Perhaps the kind of rhetoric that defines the fears of MAGA Trump's opponents, that he could be a Megalomayanak unbridled influence on global politics, is an idea like USAID, the kind of pinnacle of that kind of globalist neo-left politics that preceded it, i.e.
	because we are so philanthropic we're going to tax you, because we're better than you we're going to make moral choices for you, we're going to invest in ideas that you...
	And it won't just be philanthropic and humanitarian altruistic causes.
	It will be...
	To some degree, participating in the 2014 coup.
	It will be funding foreign news organisations like the BBC who have received USAID contributions.
	Do you feel, Neil, that USAID is one of the defining initiatives of the type of politics that appears to be dying with the advent of MAGA-style nationalist populism?
	I was...
	The statement amongst many that was made about Because it's a front for the CIA, Neil.
	That's why.
	Everybody knows USAID has been a front for the agency for a long time and so has the State Department.
	It's so simple.
	The fact that AID, everybody reads it as aid.
	It's like puppies.
	Everyone likes aid.
	But it's actually the Agency for International Development.
	The acronym doesn't stand for what you might be invited to think when you see US aid.
	And that it was a bigger budget than the CIA, that it was a front for the CIA, and that it was understood around the world.
	I think possibly people in America maybe came late to their understanding.
	It was understood all around the world as a front for the CIA. And people on the right and people on the left had grown very, very suspicious of it.
	You know, the fact that USAID involvement in Cuba, under the auspices of helping with AIDS and HIV, but at the same time they were really just trying to pull people in to foment a colour revolution against the regime.
	And that you had people like the rightist, the right-wing president of El Salvador, you don't want anything to do with that kind of operation because we know they're at it and we know what they're up to.
	In the same week, the leftist president in Mexico was saying the same thing.
	People on the right or left of the political spectrum around the world were saying, no, USAID is a cover.
	It's all about fomenting regime change.
	It's all about fomenting colour revolutions and all of the rest of it.
	You know, go into a country in Africa and promise to irrigate the fields.
	But we really know what it's all about.
	And America and, you know, myself, you know, you come late to the, admittedly come late to the game and understanding what these things are all about.
	And I think it's a, it is a potential, as Russell, you were teeing it up as a matter of enormous significance that Donald Trump, in his first few days in office, has shut the HQ and pulled the plug on it.
	But as I heard Mike Benz, Mike Benz, who is...
	who amazes me with his every broadcast, I heard him saying that although the HQ has been shut down, it's potentially the case that everything that USAID were seeking to do has now just been taken under the wing of the State Department.
	That the ideology may have gone nowhere and that the objectives may have gone nowhere and that the funding may just have been redirected so that it's now in the State Department.
	In which case it would make Marco Rubio the most powerful Secretary of State in history because of the international reach that it would give him potentially.
	So again, it's one of these ones that it's too early.
	everything I think we've been saying tonight about everything, apart from Lily Phillips has been about, you have to wait and see you know, it's just too early to tell exactly what is meant by what, on one reading of it, may be a truly momentous decision, But the wider world has evidently been well aware that when you see USAID coming into your country, it's not about irrigating the fields.
	It's not about building airports.
	It's not about making people's lives better.
	It's about getting in under the skin to push American foreign policy.
	And I want to just add to that.
	One thing, Neil, that gives me hope that it's not going to be what Mike Benz described.
	We've seen that happen over and over again, right?
	I think we talked about it with the WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
	So he has good reason to talk about that.
	And I have reservations about Rubio.
	We'll see what happens.
	But knowing who Trump just put as the Director of Foreign Assistance at the State Department, I know this is not the same game.
	Because that person is the one who went into USAID in Trump's first term and uncovered what they were doing.
	And he's part of the reason that this is all happening today.
	So Trump has outmaneuvered them.
	In this case, I do know for a fact that Trump has outmaneuvered them.
	Because he's already taken care of that side of it.
	This isn't going to be a just transfer.
	And also, you know, listening to you, you made me realize that we all wondered how Trump was going to take on the CIA. We know how he tried to do it last time.
	And he was told, you know, you go after the intel agencies, watch out, they're coming for you.
	And they did.
	And they made his life a living misery.
	Well, guess what you just did?
	You removed that front for the CIA, which was a massive, massive Part of their operations and he took that down before he took the agency out.
	So that's very interesting to me.
	When we talk about the 5D chess, that would be a 5D chess move, right?
	And already having people that are in place in those blocking positions so that you don't have that shifting of the money and it doesn't just flow around.
	That will be interesting.
	I agree.
	We still need to see how it plays out.
	And the last thing I want to say is, did you see what happened to Politico after USAID's money got frozen?
	Did you see that Politico couldn't pay the salaries of their employees?
	Did you see all the money that USAID has been putting into U.S. media?
	It's not supposed to be like that.
	I mean, they've committed crimes.
	They have violated the Constitution.
	I think it's still what we know is the tip of the iceberg.
	It's good that you say that, because under all of it at the moment, in the UK and in the US, which obviously I don't know in the same way as I'm aware of the Constitution, let's say, in the UK, one of the fundamental, one of the two or three truly fundamental problems, as I see it, is that We live in a lawless West.
	In the UK, and it's apparent in the US as well, in terms of the way in which the Constitution has been set aside in all but name, and in the same way the Constitution in the United Kingdom has been set aside, the powerful have put themselves in situations where they have sought to set aside the law.
	You know, they operate...
	In complete disregard of the law.
	And although they disregard it, they can't get rid of it.
	The law is there.
	We talked about it last week, or we talked about it the first week that we were all together.
	Yeah, you should have come, Lara.
	Maybe if you'd shown up, you'd know what me and Neil talk about.
	Yeah, Lara.
	But it's drawing attention.
	We'll have to wait and see whatever Trump is actually up to.
	But what is being laid bare is that at the highest levels, it's lawless.
	And that's a very dangerous stone to have been unturned in the rock pool to make too many people aware of.
	Because if the powerful and the decision makers disregard the law...
	Then it sends down a cascading signal that there is no law.
	And that's very interesting to watch, to put it mildly.
	So perhaps at the very least what Trump is doing is exposing the blatant lawlessness of the people that are supposed, perhaps more importantly than anything else, but to uphold the law.
	How brilliant.
	At the start of this conversation, while we were discussing Lily Phillips, we talked about how technology amplifies beyond scale and magnitude ideas that have to be understood molecularly, i.e.
	the sanctity of sex, the sanctity of that exchange.
	Prostitution is the advent of the commodification of sex, but when you add technology to that and mass broadcast, you create a moral problem that goes way beyond its simple amplification.
	Then when we discussed the type of statecraft, You can sort of see that there are large,
	millennia-old questions in that region that need to be handled correctly, deftly and carefully.
	You can see in the USAID story how the delegitimisation of neoliberal social democracies has taken place precisely because they use philanthropy and altruism as a mask for corruption, use their deep state agencies in ways that are veiled and deceptive,
	and that Donald Trump, once again in this instance, appears to create a kind of havoc with his unusual guerrilla tactics in these arena and with the deployment of an agenda that's difficult to understand for casual observers.
	Perhaps he just does see things in entrepreneurial terms, construction, development, deals.
	Maybe that's what it is.
	Certainly I don't feel qualified to say, but I certainly feel more edified and better educated on these subjects haven't listened to you, Neil, with your ever-palescent, glorious, Gandalf-like wisdom dispensed from by the hearth, this time in a safari suit.
	And we are never more illumined than when in your occasional presence, Lara Logan, rhinestoned and magnificent, offering insights and incendiary, invective, almost, it seems, unvaryingly.
	Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us for this episode, Lara.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And Neil, it's always wonderful to be joined by you.
	Always my pleasure, Russell.
	And thank you, Lara.
	Lovely to see you again.
	Pledge both of you!
	Promise me that we'll do this all over again next week in a new news cycle so that once again we can enjoy the occasionally avuncular, always oracular vernacular of these fantastic contributors.
	Thanks very much for joining me today for Stay Free Oracles with Neil Oliver, Lara Logan and Russell Brand.
	See you on Monday for that interview with...
	Lily Phillips, where we'll be talking about the commodification of the erotic technology, morality, and of course where I'll be contributing from the perspective of a former womanizer and player myself.
	Remember, if you get Rumble Premium and use the code BRAND, you get a discount as well as access to all of my content, and Lord alone knows there's enough of it, as well as an ad-free experience on Rumble.
	Thanks for joining us today.
	See you next week.
	Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
	Until then, if you can, stay free.
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	on. Switch on, switch switch on.
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