Destiny, Javier DeRusso, Jill Stein, and Emily Wilson dissect Kamala Harris's controversial endorsement of Dick Cheney, contrasting pragmatic power-seeking with principled rejection of authoritarian figures. They analyze New York Times polling showing Trump's lead due to Democratic voter fatigue and debate the legal ethics of Isaac Hayes III's copyright lawsuit against Trump's campaign for using his father's music. The discussion expands to Russian interference, where court documents reveal nearly $10 million funneled via Tenant Media to commentators like Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin, sparking a fierce debate on whether this influence rivals AIPAC's spending or remains legally significant despite its scale. Ultimately, the episode exposes deep fractures in progressive strategy and highlights the pervasive, often hidden, foreign manipulation of American media landscapes. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Historic Election Environment00:12:34
Dick Cheney, the most dangerous vice president in the history of the United States, and says, I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris.
She issued a statement saying, I'm proud to receive Dick Cheney's endorsement.
A vote is a vote just because somebody endorse it.
Did you literally take an endorsement from Adolf Hitler to win power?
Jill, if you got an endorsement from Dick Cheney or Vladimir Putin, a public endorsement, what would your reaction be?
The Justice Department is alleging that some of the biggest stars in right-wing social media were unwittingly, they say, part of a sinister Russian operation to influence a 24 US election.
I'm not a fan of Russia having any involvement in our politics.
I don't believe that many of these commentators necessarily knew exactly where the money was coming from.
There's so few money in right-wing media because it's hard to tell the truth because you get censored and taken off everything.
So maybe that's why they were so thirsty.
Half a million dollars a month for a show that's barely doing any views from a political organization.
Ah, sure, why not?
That's wild to me.
The Harris honeymoon is over.
And if you don't believe me, ask the New York Times.
This lady's poll puts former President Trump a point ahead of his rival for the first time since the great replacement of Joe Biden.
Must despite 50 straight days of a Soviet-style program to rebuild the vice president as a visionary cultural phenomenon and a beacon of joy.
Now, there are many possible reasons for this, but one of them may simply be that ordinary Americans are getting fed up with being told the sky is green and the grass is blue.
Dick Cheney is a case in point.
For the past two decades, he's been the béte noir of American progressives who brand him a racist, warmongering supervillain who only became vice president because the Supreme Court ironically stole the 2000 election.
But now he's endorsing Harris and her campaign wanting to know it's because he's saving democracy.
What we do believe in is that the United States should retain its democratic foundations.
And it's not just Cheney.
I think there is a significant number of Republicans who say, well, you know, I may not agree with the vice president on this issue or that issue, but I cannot support somebody who's a pathological liar, somebody who fomented an insurrection to overthrow the election returns.
So I applaud the Cheneys for their courage in defending democracy.
Obviously, on all the issues, we have very different points of view.
Well, Trump derangement syndrome is now so pervasive that Bernie Sanders, who's slightly to the left of Karl Marx, is now on network television praising Dick Cheney.
The Harris doublethink doesn't stop there.
Her campaign says she's simultaneously the front runner with all the momentum, but also the clear underdog in tomorrow night's debate, just as she is campaigning as a, quote, new way forward, as well as the current and serving vice president.
Just as her values haven't changed, but every single one of her policies seems to, including this proud campaigner celebrating Trump's border wall, which she repeatedly condemned as a medieval vanity project.
Some regular commentators on this show have accused me of being pro-Trump.
I often say in response, it's not my job to pick a side or my job to vote.
I'm not an American citizen.
So I'm not going to tell you how to vote, but it is my job to call out obvious hypocrisy and manipulation where I see it.
And love him or loathe him.
And there are, of course, many tens of millions in both camps in America.
Trump is, well, Trump.
We kind of know what he's like by now.
Carmela Harris, though, remains a pretty unknown quantity.
And tomorrow night, we'll find out the American people are buying into her.
What drawing me into debate is the streamer Destiny, Javier DeRusso from Praveen You, host of Emily Saves America, Emily Wilson.
And I'd like to welcome Jill Stein, who's campaigning for the third time as the Green Party's candidate for president.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Let me start with you, Destiny, if I can.
The honeymoon was on fire for Kamala Harris.
The coronation happened.
The DMC convention happened.
It was all going swimmingly.
And you would have expected the polls to reflect this glorious few weeks of the anointment of Kamala Harris as the joyous, brave new way forward to save America.
And yet the latest New York Times poll of likely voters nationally has Trump ahead of Kamala Harris.
How can that be?
I mean, we've still got a lot of work to do.
And I mean, the polls are all over the place.
This is a historic environment for a political election.
You know, who knows where the polls are going to be a week or two from now?
Everything is still changing.
Yeah.
How important do you think tomorrow night's debate could be?
I mean, the last debate ended the political career of Joe Biden.
It precipitated the events that led to him quitting the race.
Could this determine tomorrow night 90 minutes of Trump v. Harris live in front of the American people and the watching world?
Could it trigger effectively the end of this race?
I feel like debates aren't really important until they are.
Historically, debates haven't seemed to move the needle too much when it comes to favorability or desire to vote for a particular candidate.
But I mean, obviously, the last debate, because people had a perception about Joe Biden, that seemed to be true.
After watching him debate, that shifted the needle significantly.
So, I mean, it's hard to say.
It could be that tomorrow both of them do their thing.
You know, Kamala gives her sassy pushback.
Trump gives his normal, meandering, stupid, brainless answers, and nobody really cares much about what happens because everything goes as expected.
Or it could be that one of them has a huge, you know, step-out moment, that one of them loses their cool, and maybe that moves the needle a lot.
It's really hard to say.
I think making predictions in this election at this point is pretty much impossible.
Well, on that, I completely agree with you.
Javier, you reposted on X, day one of the Black Voters for Trump tour was a massive success.
The next time the left tells you MAGA is nothing more than a bunch of old white guys, shows them this picture.
The next generation of black America will destroy the Democrat Party.
And you said about Kamala Harris in August, a woman who's confident in what she stands for would be able to not only handle but address and overcome the criticism.
Kamala Harris doesn't have that same resilience.
Not even the left will respect her after about a year once the honeymoon of electing a black woman wears off.
I mean, strong words there, but what is interesting to me is how Trump's support amongst black Americans has been consistently increasing in the last year.
And you've seen it being eroded from the Democrats, which is almost unprecedented, really, in modern times.
Why do you think that is happening?
Well, it's largely happening because we're tired of being lied to.
I mean, for how much longer can we have the Democrats telling us over and over that they are going to do all these great promises for us just to not follow through with anything?
I mean, just look at the way back in 2020, Joe Biden went and acted like he was going to be the biggest spokesperson for BLM.
Then the second he got into office, he had nothing to do with the black community anymore.
We have seen these lies play out time and time again, and it's exhausting.
We see the way that our economy is in shambles.
We see the way that our border is wide open.
We see all these pressing issues that are not being addressed properly by the Democratic Party.
And at this point, it's like, what do black men have to lose?
Why would we continue to go the same way that is clearly not working for us?
Why don't we try something different and get away from the Democratic Party?
And that's why more eyes are beginning to open up, because for far too long, we were told we weren't even allowed to consider conservative views or conservative policies.
We were called coons and Uncle Tom's and all these different slurs.
And why is that?
Because they wanted to take away our power.
They wanted to take away our power to think for ourselves and to go out and seek the truth.
And that's why so many more black men are starting to vote for Donald Trump, because we ultimately want a better future for ourselves and for our next generations.
I mean, Jill Stein, it's been the presidential race this year where absolutely nothing could be predicted.
It's been a roller coaster ride, the like of which we've never seen.
This debate could be enormously transformative in the way the last one was.
What do you think Carmela Harris needs to do to try and defeat Donald Trump tomorrow?
I think it's highly unlikely that this debate is going to capture the spirit of the American people.
You know, I think we're seeing the two parties basically fail.
Well, I think we are seeing the two parties fail to address the health care crisis, to address the housing crisis, where 50% of all Americans are basically one or two paychecks away from eviction, can't afford their rent.
63% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
And yet we are spending half of our congressional budget on the endless war machine.
And by the way, the vast majority of Americans want an end to the genocide going on in Gaza.
And yet, as well as a weapons embargo to make that happen.
Yet we are not seeing the two major candidates actually address either of these crises.
And there's basically an unwritten agreement that we will not address basically the dominance of Wall Street and the war machine over our economy, over our lives.
The voters have basically been thrown under the bus.
So it's no wonder that both candidates, I think, you know, what you see largely are people voting against the candidate that they hate the most instead of for the candidate that they want.
And I'll just say that my campaign will be doing an after-commentary, also addressing the same issues brought up in the election, but from a very different point of view that actually addresses the crises that Americans are facing in every dimension of our lives.
If, though, the majority of Americans shared your view, why would the Green Party not be doing a lot better in the polling?
Well, for one thing, we're not covered by mainstream media, with the exception of, you know, a few minutes here today, and thank you so much for that.
But we are systematically suppressed.
And let me just say that the Democrats have pulled out all the stops in order to throw us off the ballot.
They have their army of lawyers in order to not just deny third parties, but to deny voters what voters have actually been vehemently clamoring for.
At record numbers, 63% of Americans are now saying they need other choices and in this election.
So the American voters really want other choices here.
Those are being denied.
The Democrats have also publicly advertised for infiltrators and spies in order to disrupt our ballot drives.
And this is their strategy.
They do not want to face us in the court of public opinion, keep us out of debates, keep us out of press coverage, fear campaign and smear campaign against us so that they can simply eliminate their competition.
They are quaking in their boots.
They have also hijacked our public funding, which we qualified for in order to prevent us from getting on the ballot.
However, we are largely prevailing in spite of their army of lawyers and the rest.
And we will be on the ballot for about 95% of voters.
We will be the only anti-genocide, anti-war, climate emergency, pro-worker campaign that is on the ballot across the country with a potential pathway as far as you want to go.
And this is what voters are clamoring for, and this is what the debate should actually be about.
How do you feel about Carmela Harris's U-turn on fracking?
Well, she's done a lot of U-turns.
I mean, this is to be expected.
You know, she puts her fingers to the wind, and basically, you know, she's done a U-turn on immigration.
You know, she's pulling back on the tax, the increase in the capital gains tax, which, you know, which Biden had promised.
You know, and this is typical of the Democrats.
You know, they went into the last election saying they were going to fight for a $15 minimum wage.
They wouldn't even bring that to a vote, that they would stand for workers, yet they basically forced the railroad workers to accept a contract that they had already rejected, which created very dangerous working conditions, which laid the groundwork for the catastrophe in East Palestine.
You know, long ago, Barack Obama was talking about the public option as an alternative so that people could actually afford their health care instead of this crisis that we continue to have to this day.
Absurd Endorsement Standards00:11:04
You know, yet where was it?
The public option disappeared.
The supposed bulk purchasing for pharmaceuticals that would bring down that price.
Well, that became 10 pharmaceuticals by 2026, where the price would be reduced.
So, you know, what we hear from the Democrats basically is a lot of lip service from the Republicans.
We really don't hear much at all.
They don't even make promises.
But Democrats make promises and then break them, which is why, which is basically driving people into the arms of Donald Trump.
The most spoiled elections that the Democrats ever had was 2010, following the Wall Street bailouts.
While millions of homeowners got thrown out, there was the Democratic trifecta, you know, basically bailing out Wall Street and throwing working people under the bus.
That is why people are moving to the right.
That is why people are so hungry for other options.
As you were saying in your previous segment, what we must have is a debate.
If we can't actually have a debate in our elections, when are we going to have a real debate?
And you don't get that from two parties that are bought and paid for by the same very powerful economic war machine, by Wall Street, by APAC, et cetera.
I don't disagree with you.
Emily Wilson, just want to talk about something.
You posted on video on X saying morally superior liberals are like, I would never vote for a felon, Trump, but here's our statue of George Floyd.
Another video you said about women, I'm sorry, I'm so tired of the tens of thousands online saying, I'm going to vote for her, Carmela Harris, because he's going to strip away all our rights.
What rights?
He was already president.
What rights did you lose?
Zero.
He's trying to protect women's rights.
Now, there'll be lots of women on the left who will say he's trying to destroy women's rights and that the whole abandonment of Roe versus Wade after he packed the Supreme Court with conservative judges was specifically designed to remove women's rights.
What do you say to that?
Oh boy.
Yeah, no, those two videos got a lot of feedback on.
No, when I specifically ask what rights were taken away under Trump, I mean, they can't say.
I don't think any of those women's rights were taken away under Trump.
And now that he's agreed to not do the nationwide abortion ban, and now that he's moving forward with wanting to protect IVF, it's just one of those things they continue to say because, frankly, they have nothing else to say.
And then obviously these are the same women that are single voter issues.
They only care about aborting children.
And then when it comes to protecting women by keeping men out of sports, out of our spaces, and dangerous men out of our country, they're completely silent on.
So they don't actually care about women's rights or protecting them.
Once again, they don't know what a woman is, so it wouldn't matter either way.
And yeah, I just think it's funny that the morally superior liberals are so quick to be like, Trump's a felon, he's a bad guy, and all these things.
Yeah, you know, and they're like, no, felons should be able to vote and do all these things.
They're like, unless it's Donald Trump, but George Floyd was apparently an amazing person.
So.
Well, George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer who was convicted of brutally murdering him.
And unfortunately, we saw it all on a cell phone.
Otherwise, it would have probably never been reported.
I can see you shaking your head there, Destiny.
Do you want to say that?
This happens all the time.
Whenever you debate conservatives, I mean, it's happened here, I've seen it happen in other places.
It'll be like, here's the standards for Republican lawmakers.
And then they'll point to like people on Twitter on the other side.
Like, well, what about that person?
Well, I don't remember voting for George Floyd for president or nominating him for president.
The idea that that's your basis of comparison, like, oh, you've got a problem with Donald Trump.
Well, what about George Floyd?
It's just such a hilariously telling, I think, example.
Well, let me ask you a difficult question.
Well, he was also, he was also a criminal that overdosed, but that's another situation.
That still doesn't get him any closer to being nominated for president of the Democratic Party.
I don't understand what the comparison is for.
It's just funny to have different standards.
You're like, this is fine, but this isn't fine.
That's the whole point of that.
You don't need to read that deeply into it.
It's not going to happen.
Well, it's funny to have different standards.
Do you have different standards for different people?
Isn't that the point to have different standards for different people?
Yeah.
The point is that they've uplifted George Floyd.
They put him on murals.
They have tattoos.
People have tattoos of George Floyd.
They uplift him as this amazing, heroic individual.
And the point that she's making is less about George Floyd being president.
It's the way that they degrade Donald Trump.
Because yes, it is not a glorious thing that we have a presidential candidate who has felonies on his hands.
But what is more her point that she's making here is that they are degrading him, making it seem like he's this awful person.
Like he is the worst person to ever walk this earth.
But then George Floyd, who has this terrible rap sheet, he is uplifted to the heavens by the left.
So it's not about him being president.
Well, let's not.
No, it's just so stupid.
I'm sorry.
I love my mom to death.
She's one of the best people in the world.
She would make a horrible president.
Okay.
If my mom was auditioning to be my mom, I would be number one, her supporter.
If my mom was auditioning for president, I'd be her biggest hater on the internet.
Like, obviously, you have different standards for different people.
This is such an insane point.
Why would you even try to defend this?
At least let her dance.
And I'm sure the entire point is the left has different standards for everything except for Donald Trump.
That's the whole point.
Anything he does is horrible.
But if anyone otherwise is a- Let's talk about it.
I'll tell you what.
Let's talk about...
Let's talk about different standards because I found it fascinating, Destiny, over the weekend, that out of nowhere, Dick Cheney, who was named Darth Cheney after Darth Vader by Democrats for 20 years.
He was to them the evil personification, the villain figure of all conservative ills in America.
The guy who took America into the illegal war in Iraq, who trampled over human rights left, right, and center.
And yet suddenly he pops up because he doesn't like Donald Trump and says, I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris.
And rather than renounce that endorsement with great speed, which is what she should have done if she had any principles, she issued a statement saying, I'm proud to receive Dick Cheney's endorsement.
What happened in the 24 years of Dick Cheney's the most, according to Joe Biden in 2008, the most dangerous vice president in the history of the United States is what he said about Dick Cheney.
And here's his own vice president saying how proud she is to get that endorsement.
Do you think that endorsements are endorsements are endorsements are one way?
He endorsed her.
I beat it represents some segment of the Republican Party that's obviously dissatisfied with trying to re-elect a traitor, an insurrectionist.
Would you be proud if Dick Cheney endorsed you?
For running for president?
You take any endorsement you can get, of course.
Just because somebody endorses you.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Just because somebody endorses you doesn't mean that you support their beliefs.
You take any endorsement you can get.
So if Adolf Hitler decides to offer an endorsement, you would accept it.
A vote is a vote.
Just because somebody endorses you have to.
What does it mean to reject?
You'd literally take an endorsement from Adolf Hitler to win power?
Well, right now I wouldn't because Hitler's dead.
So I don't know what is the point.
Do you have to go with different segments of voters that are being created?
This is such a nonsense question.
It's actually a very good question.
It's a very good.
But I'm going to bring in a living figure.
If Kim Jong-un decided to offer an endorsement to Kamala Harris, should she accept it or not?
When you say accepted endorsement, should she have a formal ceremony celebrating it?
If Kim Jong-un today said, I endorse from North Korea Kamala Harris to be president of the United States, would you think she should accept that?
Tell me what you mean when you say accept it.
Should she tell him no?
Should she issue a statement that she was aware of it?
Well, with Dick Cheney, she issued a statement saying how proud she was that he endorsed her.
And that staggered me, given what a hate figure Cheney has been for three decades or more to liberals, progressive liberals.
Here's one of the most progressive, if not the most progressive liberal Democrat nominee in American presidential history, saying how proud she is that Dick Cheney endorsed it.
So my question to you was frivolous to start with.
Would you accept Hitler's endorsement for a candidate?
And you said, absolutely.
We didn't dispute it.
And then you said, but he's dead.
So then I said, well, what about Kim Jong-un or President Xi or Vladimir Putin or the Ayatollah Khomeini?
I mean, at what point do these endorsements, if you accept them proudly, become actually disgraceful slurs on your own integrity?
This is a nonsense question.
And I remember back in 2008, I watched Ron Paul get hit with the same question when I was a young college kid.
I used to be a libertarian.
I think that, I think it was some KKK organizations when they came out.
They supported Ron Paul.
And people were saying, Ron Paul, do you disavow the endorsement from the KKK leader?
And Ron Paul said, you know what?
If people want to vote for me, that's fine.
I'm not going to tell people not to vote for me.
Just because somebody endorses me, just because somebody endorses me doesn't mean that I support all the views of that person.
You would agree with that, right?
No, no, no.
If somebody endorses you, it doesn't mean you're not.
Sorry, no.
I would say, no, if the KKK want to endorse me, I will publicly denounce that endorsement and say I want nothing to do with it.
That is called being a civilized human being.
You appear destiny, correct me if I'm wrong, to be of the view that literally any endorsement that helps you win power is absolutely fine, even if they're genocidal maniacs.
I don't know if I would consider Dick Cheney to be a genocidal maniac.
He was literally confused.
He wants to vote for you.
He literally wants somebody to vote.
If somebody wants to vote for you, this is a ridiculous, this is an absurd standard.
If somebody wants to vote for you, then allow them to vote for you.
If their fans want to vote for you, then allow them to vote for you.
Why would you sit here and fight against an endorsement for a vote?
Well, okay, let me go to somebody who actually needs...
Absolute nonsense.
Okay, well, I don't agree with you.
I think you've just discovered you've opened a can of worms and you can't work out a way to get out of it.
Let me bring in Jill Stanton.
I mean, Jill, if you got an endorsement from Dick Cheney or the Ku Klux Klan or Vladimir Putin, a public endorsement, what would your reaction be?
I would publicly reject it, but let me say I think more important than the endorsement is the fact that the policies of Dick Cheney, you know, his neocon approach to our foreign policy, his endless war machine, you know, his very hostile, you know, it's like fight first and ask questions later.
I think that's the core of the problem right here, is that the Democrats have very much adopted the agenda of Dick Cheney and the Republican war machine.
That is the more critical problem here than the endorsements.
But yes, absolutely, I would certainly reject those endorsements.
But the real problem here is that the Democrats have really adopted the public.
I want to show a picture.
This is a view with a world leader.
Let's take a look.
It's you sitting at a table with Vladimir Putin.
So if Vladimir Putin offered you an endorsement, what would you say?
I would absolutely reject it.
Dangerous War Machine Agenda00:03:17
And I was there actually at a conference in order to challenge Vladimir Putin.
Unfortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to talk with him because he sat at that table for about 10 minutes before he gave his speech in Russian.
There were no introductions.
There were no exchanges whatsoever, no conversations.
The one person I could talk with was a former German foreign minister who is sitting to my right, Willie Wimmer.
But otherwise, I was not able to talk to any of the dignitaries.
The guy on my left, I thought, was just Putin's bodyguard.
It turned out he was like his, I think his press.
his chief of press or something like that.
But there were absolutely no introductions.
And by the way, the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated in detail whether there were any connections between myself, my campaign, and the Russian government, et cetera, and gave me a full exoneration and thanked me for my full cooperation.
So unfortunately, that photo is used as part of the Democrats' arsenal of trying to silence their competitors.
Okay, well, you've given a response to that, but let me put a quote back to you, which you said in February 2024.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a provoked response to the bigger, more murderous and illegal game plan of U.S. Empire.
In 2014, the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, led by far-right insurrectionists, was a giant step towards the goal of adding Ukraine to NATO and putting hostile bases and nuclear-capable missiles right on Russia's border.
That sounds like a fairly ringing endorsement of Putin's invasion.
Well, what you didn't include was the first part of that quote, which was actually a condemnation of Putin's invasion as likewise being murderous and illegal, which it was.
But the point is that it was totally avoidable, and once it occurred, it was actually quite fixable.
And unfortunately, the U.S. and the U.K. disrupted the peace accord, which was well underway, a peace treaty between Ukraine and Russia.
And the U.S. came in, and the U.S. came in and said.
So that is the problem.
This has been ginned up for a long time.
Just to create a very unfortunate circumstance that puts us all at risk.
This is like, think of this as the Cuban missile.
I need to ask you in reverse.
Just to clarify, though, when you say that the invasion was a provoked response to the bigger, more murderous game of the U.S. Empire, do you stand by that statement?
So it's important.
Let's put the Ukraine war in context of the 75 regime change operations of the U.S. Absolutely.
I would like to be able to explain that statement so it doesn't have to stand as a soundbite.
But absolutely, I mean, the U.S. spends more on our military than the next 10 countries combined.
We spend half of our congressional budget on these endless wars.
And what's going on in Ukraine basically was just the latest in a whole series of absolutely catastrophic wars that are robbing the American people blind.
We're spending half of our congressional budget.
The average household, according to Jeffrey Sachs, who I know is a friend of yours as well at the University of Columbia, it's $12,000 is the cost of the endless war machine to the average American household.
Now, most Americans do not know what we are paying for this and what the risks are, because as I was mentioning, this is the Cuban missile.
Global Division and Distraction00:05:55
I know what you're doing.
And you may recall.
I know what you're paying for.
You're paying to preserve.
I'm sorry?
I think you're paying to preserve freedom and democracy, which is, by the way, what America's position in the world was for many, many decades, and very successfully.
I want to bring in Javier here.
Well, she's no longer succeeding, Shall I?
We're getting into interesting moral mazes here.
Destiny doesn't mind having endorsements from Adolf Hitler or Kim Jong-un.
Jill, they're thinking that America somehow is more to blame, it seems, than Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and so on.
How are we getting to these weird moral places?
Why is there not just an agreed line between people of all sides that yes, we defend freedom and democracy where we see it attacked and imperiled?
And yes, actually endorsements from genocidal maniacs are not to be accepted.
Because that would make too much sense, Pierce.
I mean, at this point, we've already seen that politics, both domestically and globally, it's all about division.
It's all about getting us to point the finger at each other.
And overall, it's just an L for all of society.
I think you should not, when it comes to, I want to go back to when it comes to accepting that endorsement, you can also just remain silent as someone comes out and endorses you because ultimately you do want those votes.
But the way that the left has embraced Dick Cheney's endorsement is just hilarious to me, especially considering Joe Biden's on record saying that Dick Cheney was the most dangerous vice president of all time.
And they spent 20 years calling him a war criminal and all these nefarious things.
But then you have Bernie Sanders going out and saying how great of a thing it is that Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris.
But again, it just goes to show that this election is very much the people versus the system.
And Kamala Harris is the representation of the system.
And Donald Trump is representing the people.
But when it comes to just the moral standard of all these different foreign entities and all these different just allegations of who's a war criminal and who is not, we are not focusing on what we can do to actually make people have a better quality of life here in America.
The number one thing that is missing from modern political discussions is actual policy.
And actual policy would be relatively easy to compromise if we got rid of all the antics, but that wouldn't get ratings and that wouldn't get the attention that people want onto other things so that they can distract us so that they don't have to do the actual work that it would take to solve our country and turn things around.
Okay, let me bring in Emily.
I mean, Emily, do you think, I mean, political endorsements, they, you know, right now, they can be very valuable or not, as the case may be.
I'm really not convinced that Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris will be anything but in the slightly longer term, bad for her, certainly terrible for him and his reputation and his daughter, who was a great Republican cheerleader and then decided to go full on against Trump.
It cost her her seat, obviously.
And they're the pair of them now queuing up to support a Democrat nominee and she's proudly accepting them after 25 years of vilifying this guy as the worst of the worst.
I mean, she flip-flops on a lot of things, so I'm not surprised by this.
It's also the news cycle now.
Let's be real.
People are going to forget about this when she does the next dumb thing in a couple days.
And, you know, the next speech comes out where in 18 minutes she can't even make one coherent sentence.
But I do find it interesting.
Very viral clips have been going online the past 24 hours I've been seeing of an interview with Putin where he's smirking, almost laughing, saying that she should be the next president and she should win.
He's basically endorsing her in this video, which I think is insane.
But weirdly, the media is suppressing that story right now.
So I find that interesting.
Yeah, I mean, look, there's only one reason why Vladimir Putin's endorsing Kamala Harris is he wants her to be president.
The only reason he wants her to be president, he thinks that she will be a weaker president of the United States than Donald Trump.
Because Trump, for all the attempts to try and frame him as Putin's great buddy and so on and so on, he's unpredictable.
And I think on the world stage, I quite like that unpredictability.
It seemed to keep them all in their boxes, whether it was Kim Jong-un, President Xi, Putin, Ayatollah Khomeini, they all kept in their boxes pretty much.
No, they literally, what are we talking about?
Iran literally attacked Saudi Arabia under Kim Jong-un literally, that's great that you have a cute little phrase of in war, but they were attacking the country with bombs, okay?
I don't know what you would have called that.
Whatever you would have called that is fine.
That's congratulations, okay?
Kim was still testing missiles, okay?
That didn't stop under Donald Trump.
The appeasements that he was making around the world towards people wasn't moving us towards peace.
It was moving us towards this false sense of security because Trump was too stupid or too lazy to actually deal with any of the issues that were going on around the world.
This idea that he somehow gets credit for foreign policy because he kicked the can down the road on everything, that he invited the Taliban to Doha to make an agreement cutting out the Afghanistan government, that he abandoned allies in Syria while also bombing a Syrian airport.
We say, oh, Trump was the president of peace when he was making deals in the Middle East, cutting out the Palestinians, when he was having photo ops of people like Kim.
This idea that Trump was some great master of foreign policy is hilarious.
Also, this idea that we should be talking policy in the United States instead of antics, I agree 1 trillion percent.
It's actually a huge problem that I have.
Kamala Harris is significantly to the left of me on a lot of economic issues.
We can't talk about that because the conservatives have abandoned policy since 2016.
They just want to talk about whatever crazy antics Trump is up to.
And the idea of making fun of Kamala Harris being unable to string together like a coherent sentence when Donald Trump gave a three-minute rambling answer to what policy would you support to help children and to help childcare for struggling families is hilarious.
Donald Trump literally can't speak.
He has never put together a coherent policy thought.
That's why he does three hour long interviews every day with the biggest people in the country because he can't talk.
Got it.
You should try actually watching one and listening to the words that he's saying instead of getting so excited that Donald Trump's going to be aware of what he's saying.
I watch every single really give me one coherent policy position that Trump has expanded on in the last two months.
Copyright vs Political Motives00:14:27
So out of Theo Mahal, we had one hand.
On all of the critical issues that the American people are demanding.
You know, if you go to Kamala Harris's website, what do you find?
You know, you find advertisements for, you know, for basically brand clothing and, you know, mugs, coffee mugs, and so on.
You will not find her policies.
And likewise, in the literally statement horror debates, we are not seeing coherent policies and they're not being debated.
Why?
Because they're both being funded by the billionaires, by the oligarchs, by the upper 1%, and you have the parties enforcing that.
If you saw the footage from the DNC, from the floor of the DNC, you saw the ring of corporate sweeps up at the top costing anywhere from half a million to $5 million.
That is the power in the House, both for the Democrats and the Republicans.
That is why we badly need to open up this political process.
And that is what the American people are demanding.
You know, it's the American people who are locked out of this discussion.
I want to say that we're locking out other candidates who are not bought and paid for.
Okay, I want to just bring in another guest to have a quick chat with me, and I'll get the reaction from the panel.
A judge has ordered Donald Trump to stop using the song Hold on Coming after the family, one of the co-writers pursued a lawsuit.
Trump's campaign used it at the RNC in July, as well as before and after speeches at various rallies.
Thank you.
God bless you.
God bless you.
Well, the estate of the late great Isaac Hayes, through Isaac Hayes Jr., alleged Trump's campaign had infringed his copyright and should pay damages.
Isaac Hayes' son, Isaac Hayes III, joins me now.
Isaac Hayes, great to see you.
First of all, can we agree on one thing?
Trump's dancing is not bad for a guy of 78.
I don't have any comment about his dancing.
It's not a dance.
It's just a shimmy.
But no, okay, to get serious, why are you so angry about one of these songs being used at a Trump rally?
I mean, after all, I would imagine that there would have been lots of conservative voters who would have bought your father's records.
Well, it's not to do with that.
It's a longer story that people really don't know about, which is the fact that my father lost the rights to his music a year before I was born.
So during the span of his lifetime, he never saw money from those records.
Our family never saw the income from those records.
And so in the United States of America, we have a copyright termination law that if there were bad deals done, the opportunity for the author of those works to reclaim those copyrights is something that was possible.
So we filed termination notices for these songs in 2014, knowing very well that they would come back.
So as soon as we get these songs back in March of 2022, here comes Donald Trump infringing on the copyright at the end of the NRA convention in Houston, where we didn't want him to play the song without, you know, preparing to actually have a proper license.
And so I thought it was distasteful to do that on the hills of this mass shooting in Houston with the NRA convention.
And so that is where this stems from.
It's not, I'm not angry.
This is simply a matter of copyright law and someone that is not paying to have the proper license to use the song.
Oh, that's interesting.
So to be clear, if Trump paid up, then you wouldn't have any problem in principle with your father's songs being used at the rallies.
No, well, here's the thing.
I would have a problem with Donald Trump.
I think people have tried to make this a political conversation.
This is not Republican or Democrat.
This is the nature and the character of Donald Trump, a person that has been found liable of sexual abuse, using a song that says disparaging things about women.
He says, you know, very cruel things about women, especially women of color.
And I know my father would not want that person using that song, right?
And more importantly, Donald Trump has a name.
He sued over 100 people for his brand, his image, his likeness, his IP.
That's true.
And so how can he infringe on someone else's copyright when he sues people for doing the exact same thing?
No, no, I think that's a very valid point, but I'm just curious what your real motivation is because you seemed at the start of this to say it wasn't about anything other than a copyright issue, which made me think that you wouldn't have an objection in principle if you paid the money.
But it seems to me like you do have an objection in principle to Trump using your father's songs at all.
Yeah, that is secondary to the fact that he doesn't have a license to do so.
But even if he offered to pay, would you ban him from using it?
No, no, he wouldn't be allowed to, we wouldn't want him to use it anyway.
No.
Right.
So it's not really about the money, is it?
It's actually, it's you don't like Donald Trump.
No, it's not saying that I don't like Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has a character and a nature that does not gel well with our brand.
I'm going to tell you, here's something that's more important.
That song gets licensed, right?
An enormous amount of times.
The perception or the understanding is that when someone like Donald Trump uses that song, it's an endorsement of Donald Trump.
And I don't want people to perceive that that song is an endorsement of Donald Trump.
I don't think anybody thinks that Beyonce is not endorsing Kamala Harris by her using her song, right?
So as the writer of the song, then we have a right to say we don't want people to appear that we are endorsing Donald Trump by allowing him to use this record.
Okay, but what if Trump comes back and says, all right, I'll give you a million dollars every time I play it?
No.
We're past that because he's actually violated copyright law, right?
He's actually violated copyright law by not having a proper license to play the song.
He played this song 133 times over the last two years.
And a good portion of that time, he did not have the proper license from BMI to play that song.
And then when he was told to not play the song and got notified legally by BMI to not play the song, he continued to play the song.
That's open and shut copyright infringement.
That's $150,000 every time willful copyright infringement is done.
So no, this is not.
This is not a significant thing.
How much are you actually suing him for?
$3 million, I've read.
Is that correct?
Well, we made a request for $3 million, right?
That was before we had the opportunity to settle or not take this case to court.
But since then, they never responded.
So we had to file an injunction.
We got a temporary injunction.
And so now every single use of that song is something that we would either go to trial with or some sort of mediation will be worked out and that song will be paid for.
Isaac Hayes' third.
I really appreciate you joining me and clarifying that.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Let me bring back the panel here.
So Destiny, we start with you.
I want to play a clip.
This is Elton John during an interview with Variety where he was asked about Elton John, about Donald Trump calling Kim Jong-un little rocket man.
Let's take a look.
I know that you're not a supporter of Donald Trump's.
He loves your music.
How did it feel when he took the lyrics to Rocket Man and he used it as a nickname for Kim Jong-un and then he gave Kim Jong-un.
I laughed.
I thought it was brilliant.
I just thought, good on you, Donald.
I'm the Rocket Man.
Yeah.
Donald's always been a fan of mine and he's been to my concerts many, many times.
So, I mean, I've always been friendly towards him and I thank him for his support.
Yeah, when he did that, I just thought it was hilarious.
It made me laugh.
Now, I was very surprised by Elton John's words there.
I was expecting him not to say that at all.
But you've got two very contrasting positions there, Destiny, from two musicians.
One is the son of a great musician, one is the actual musician themselves.
But it all revolves around Trump and him using their brands in some way to further his objectives.
What's your view about this?
Should it be tolerated given that everyone does it?
Should it not be tolerated?
Should people like Isaac Hayes III on behalf of his family have a legitimate case to sue for millions?
I mean, copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
I'll say that when I looked at the two different situations that were presented here, though, it kind of looks like the big difference is who's endorsing who.
So for Isaac Hayes, if the appearance is that the music that he I think is exercising control over, if that music is making it appear as though his family or his father is supporting or would have been supporting Donald Trump, that's the issue that he has with it.
Whereas if Donald Trump is supporting a different musician, that musician is probably likely to just say like, oh, okay, that's cool that he supported me.
Like, that's it, because it's just an endorsement.
It doesn't mean that you endorse all of their views, right?
You endorsing somebody else is a much bigger deal than them endorsing you, is what I would say.
That looked like the biggest difference there between those two situations.
All right, and have you, I mean, it's an interesting one, isn't it?
Because there will be lots of people at Trump rallies who probably are big fans of Isaac Hayes' music.
You know, I remember when I was a CNN and getting involved in lots of angry debates with NRA people about gun rights, that there were big stars who would call me and say, I don't want to do that interview with you next week, not because I don't like you or don't like the show, but because I don't want to alienate half my audience, which certainly is a perfectly sensible position to have.
Is it sensible for these artists or their families or their estate representatives to go to war with Trump, given that so many of the audiences may be actually people that like the music?
Well, in general, I think it's lame, tired, and played out.
Just because your song is playing at a rally or at an event doesn't mean that the artist who made the song is endorsing the candidate that is playing the song.
The candidate that's up on stage might just be a fan of the song.
That does not mean that it works the other way around, especially respectfully considering that Isaac Hayes is deceased.
Nobody is sitting here thinking that, oh, his whole family must support Trump if he's using this song.
However, I will give Isaac Hayes his family his credit.
If it's true what he's saying about the copyright infringement, then yeah, pay him his money.
I'm all for if that is the situation that's happening here.
I'm sure it's not that big of an issue for the Trump campaign to pay him accordingly if that's the case here.
But then you look at someone like Elton John, he's an example of someone.
He is way too rich and way too established to be bought and paid for.
He does not care about playing into the antics of, oh, I'm a celebrity.
That means that I need to be far left and I need to be anti-Trump because majority of celebrities either do not care or a lot of them have begun or began to lean very conservative over the last five years, which you talk to a lot of them here in LA, but they're not public about it because they still have this idea that if they at all tiptoe in the waters of potentially voting Republican, then they're going to be canceled.
But I really don't think that that's what should matter.
I should not be hearing so much about whether or not Taylor Swift is a Republican.
That should be the most irrelevant issue that is on the table.
We should be focusing on the issues that are actually happening in our country, but instead we're looking at the celebrities and looking at them as if they're supposed to be the ones leading our country.
All right.
Jill Stein, do you play music when you do campaign events and things?
No, usually I don't.
I keep those universes entirely separate.
They kind of occupy different parts of your brain.
So I'm not an artist or a musician in the political world at all.
And I have to say I really respect the right of artists to decide how their work is going to be used.
I think it's fine for it to be used if they want and fine for them to say, no, this is very, you know, this is very precious and deep and I don't want it used by a candidate that really violates the values of the work of art.
You know, my problem with all this.
I totally respect.
Yeah, the problem, Emily, with all this is that you could go to a massive party, you know, a nightclub with 5,000 people in it and half of them might be MAGA supporters and the DJ might play all sorts of songs, right?
What's the difference?
I mean, respectfully, I completely disagree with everyone.
I think it's a song.
I think music is for everybody.
I think it is absolutely silly to put any politics with any kind of music.
It's music.
It's for everybody.
It's truly that black and white.
The first guy's statement is so hypocritical.
He's like, it's not political.
It's not personal.
And then he goes on about how he doesn't like Donald Trump.
I'm like, so this is clearly very personal.
And of course, now you want money out of it.
I get if you violate something, you should pay.
But it's so funny because I'm like, now it's, of course, it's personal.
And the second one, do you notice how they have to start off?
They're like, you're not endorsing Donald Trump and you're not a fan of him.
And then he has nothing but nice things to say about him.
I'm sorry.
Frankly, it's very silly in general and it shouldn't matter at all.
I sort of agree.
I just think music's for all.
And also, you're right.
Music is for everyone.
Yeah, and Isaac Hayes III there, I did think he started from a position of it's about copyright and he ended up making it pretty clear it's because he can't stand Donald Trump.
He went from logical to emotional and it was hypocritical.
I'm afraid I kind of agree with you.
I'm not even afraid of it, actually.
I think it is hypocrisy.
I want to turn just quickly to...
And I just want to add that a political use of a work of art is not indifferent.
It's not abstract.
It's not economically indifferent.
You know, it's a very economically charged use of a work of art.
So I think it's entirely within the right of the artist to say, you're not going to exploit my work for something that really deeply offends my values or my copyright.
It is.
Politics is not like some neutral thing.
Politics is very important.
Yeah, but Jill, the point is, I think the point Emily's making that I agree with is just be open about it.
Just say, no, we cannot stand Donald Trump.
He makes us puke.
We're not going to let him use my dad's songs.
I can respect that.
It's when you try and pretend it's about copyright and stuff, but actually, as the interview progresses, you know, we don't want to make this political.
Well, actually, you do, because you can't stand him and you don't want him using your music.
Well, here's the real question for Emily and Piers.
Let's say that you and your friends recorded songs as part of your band and Hitler wanted to use those songs during one of his presentations.
Would you be happy with it?
I would ban him immediately.
Well, then there you go.
Apparently, you agree that artists should have control over who plays their music.
It brings the moral maze full circle.
I want to quickly talk about another moral maze.
Foreign Influence Propaganda00:08:13
No, I think he wants the check.
Yeah, I think he wants both, actually.
Yeah, I think he just wants money, if I'm being honest.
Yeah, I suspect that's the case.
I can't believe that.
I mean, it's Donald Trump who wants the check and Kamala Harris.
Yeah, personally, I would really miss the politicians who are getting the big checks.
I would really miss the Trump dancing.
He's just got it right off to a T to that song.
So personally, I love those gifts with Trump.
The Justice Department is alleging that some of the biggest stars in right-wing social media were unwittingly, they say, part of a sinister Russian operation to influence a 24 U.S. election.
They weren't directly named to personalities or accused of any wrongdoing.
Court documents unsealed on Wednesday revealed that Russian state media producers funneled nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee-based online media company.
A company identified by CNN later as Tenant Media, including Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Taylor Hanson, Matt Christensen, and Dave Rubin, many of whom have been on this show quite regularly.
Two Russian state media employees charged with a conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and money laundering.
Quite a serious story, this, clearly.
Destiny, you've been pretty outspoken.
You said about Tim Poole on X, unbelievable.
You're either maliciously working against the U.S. or so effing stupid you couldn't discern Russian propaganda talking points from what's actually true and factual news.
If nothing else, the credibility of everyone around you should be destroyed as a result of this.
And you also posted on X to Benny Johnson, suggesting otherwise, you knowingly spread disinformation and bullshit on the internet, aligning with Russian interests, and you absolutely should have effing known better if you were getting paid massive amounts of money to do it.
Your lawyers could email me.
Well, first of all, have the lawyers emailed you yet?
No, nobody actually sues your defamation in the YouTube world.
It's just a thing that people say because they have no idea what the actual malice standard is and they have no idea what anything entailing a lawsuit is.
My biggest issue with this is I do believe that I do believe, assuming everything that on the end is true, that the six commentators weren't told explicitly that they were being hired by what was ostensibly an arm of the Russian propaganda machine.
But at the very least, Dave Rubin and Tim were getting offered such exorbitant amounts of money that for you to not even stop and ask the question when you purport to be a journalist or like in Tim Fool's case, an investigative journalist, and you don't even stop and you're like, hmm, half a million dollars a month for a show that's barely doing any views from a political organization.
Ah, sure, why not?
That's wild to me.
Javier, is it problematic this or not?
Can you say that one more time?
Is it problematic to you what's happened here?
I mean, of course it is.
I'm not a fan of Russia having any involvement in our politics.
I don't believe that many of these commentators necessarily knew exactly where the money was coming from, but I don't know.
I don't want to speak on anyone's behalf because I'm not too familiar.
But I think it just goes into the greater issue that's here.
I don't like that Russia is getting so involved with our politics, and I don't like all the influence that China has had on our politics and on our country in general.
I think it's ironic that the news broke about this whole Russia scandal less than 24 hours after there was a Democrat official who had just gotten exposed for being connected with the CCP as well.
I think this speaks to a greater issue that whether you're Democrat or Republican, we should all be very unhappy with the foreign influence that's coming to our media and spreading propaganda here.
But we'll see how this plays out as more information comes to the surface.
I mean, I should make it clear that all the ones who've gone public about this, Benny Johnson, Tim Poole and others, have all vehemently denied having any knowledge about where this money was actually coming from.
Emily, do people have to be more careful?
Sorry.
I'm just coming from common sense here.
I work in right-wing media.
It's pretty tough.
No one's throwing money like that my way, I'll tell you that.
But I think it seems a little suspicious and common sense.
There's so few money in right-wing media because it's hard to tell the truth because you get censored and taken off everything.
So maybe that's why they were so thirsty.
If they were innocent, that sucks.
But if they knew, whatever happens to them, according to law, maybe it.
I'm not on any of their sides.
I'm not personally friends with any of them, and I don't know what's going on.
I just want everything to be fair as it, you know, that's it.
Jill Stein is Vanimir's best friend on this panel.
That's a joke.
What do you make of this?
Well, you know, I think in terms of being fair all around, it's important to put this in context.
As Destiny said, there's a handful of views here.
So this is not the big impact.
On the other hand, let's look at AIPAC, which ought to be treated and considered a foreign agent, which has spent $100 million, I think, so far in this election, which has enormous impact on who goes to Congress and who doesn't and who's removed.
And then what policies actually, you know, there was Netanyahu accused as an absolute war criminal by the International Criminal Court, being applauded with a standing ovation once every minute by a Congress, which is completely out of step here with the American people.
And you've got APAC, which is a very powerful force behind this.
So, you know, I think that's where we need to be looking.
You know, RFK, the original RFK, not RFK Jr., but the original RFK as an attorney general and JFK were both in the process of reclassifying AIPAC as a foreign agent, which it should be.
Okay, well, just to be clear, none of you have enormous impact.
Unlike a handful of views here, which these videos have.
I think it's really important.
I have to get with you.
I don't know if these are the new Russian marketing orders that went out to all of the propaganda people that worked for them, I guess, at international media.
I hear this line a lot, the big impact line.
That's not relevant.
First of all, people say, well, it didn't have that big of an impact.
That's not true.
If you're receiving money and you might think that that money is tainted because it's coming from a certain source, you're not only going to change your views on that platform, you might change your views on your own platform.
The work that Tim Poole was doing for tenant media wasn't getting very many views, but his main channel is probably one of the most popular right-wing podcasts in the United States.
He probably does more views than most other political commentators online, save for a very small handful.
So the idea that he might be changing that content so that he continues to milk those fat half-million dollars.
Yeah, but to be clear, there's no evidence any of them.
Yeah, but there's no evidence any of them changed.
Sure, we can say there's no evidence, but I'm just saying that that idea, whoa, it's just a small impact.
This is just one company that was called out.
I think the DOJ said there were some 600 foreign influencers that could be taking money from Russian sources right now.
So I don't think it's fair to just wipe it off saying it's a small impact.
Number one, number two, APAC, okay, has Israel in the name.
The issue with this funding wasn't that Russia was funding media.
It's that there was no disclosure.
They lied about it.
That's the big issue.
APAC is not undisclosing money.
We don't know who they are.
Like, oh my God, APAC supports Israel?
That's insane.
That's crazy.
They are violating.
Yes, the violation of the USOS FARA, yes, which is disclosure for international policy.
This is actually a violation of HARA.
Okay, listen, I've got to leave it alone.
It has to do with disclosure, which is about disclosure.
That's very important to the State Department.
It's not illegal.
Not to do it.
To exercise influence on behalf of a foreign government is actually illegal without having declared it.
So there are real legal consequences here.
Yes, there absolutely are.
And you can debate whether it's a tiny wave or a little, a slightly larger blip.
But the point is that AIPAC has a huge impact here and ought to be treated fairly and equally.
The sun has a bigger impact on our climate than our cars do.
That's not a point to anything.
It doesn't mean anything.
AIPAC and AIPAC and foreign money coming in through shell companies isn't even in the same conversation.
All right.
I've got to leave it there.
Well, I think it is to a lot of American people who are watching our foreign policy, really.
Well, you both made your point.
You both made your points there.
Israel has equal points.
I'm going to leave it there.
Thank you to my panel.
Be clear, none of you are being paid half a million dollars to appear on this, not even me.
And the Russians have got nothing to do with it, as far as I'm aware.
So, none of you have changed your opinions today because you're being paid to by the Russians.
So, on that basis, it's an extremely useful exercise for the last hour for my panel.