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Ep. 66 A spirit of sadness has descended on the country. You see it everywhere. That's not surprising, says Tony Robbins, and it's not forever. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 19, 2024 https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/2024/01/20/576544/
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1748465355876700234
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Ep. 82 Joe Biden has put hundreds of his political opponents in jail. Here’s the latest, a working journalist who’s exposed the fraudulence of the January 6th myth. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 20, 2024 https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/2024/03/21/582461/
Video Transcript AI Summary
I'm Steve Baker, and I'm an independent journalist who was arrested for covering the January 6th protests. Despite working as a journalist, the FBI singled me out and charged me with crimes like disruptive conduct for simply being there. I was even asked to surrender in shorts and flip-flops, likely to be put in an orange jumpsuit, but my attorney negotiated against it. While being processed, I was cuffed, fingerprinted, and leg chained. An assistant US attorney named Adam Dreher is responsible for my case. Despite some support, no mainstream media has defended me. This is a clear case of political tyranny.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Among the many thousands of Americans who came to the Capitol Building on 01/06/2021 were an awful lot of journalists, working journalists, and they were there because, among other things, it was a news story in progress. So they went to what we call cover the story. And the overwhelming majority of them worked for various organs of state media, the Associated Press, Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, and their job was to bolster whatever the people in charge claim is true. But there were also some independent journalists there that day. One of them was called Steve Baker.
He now works for The Blaze. And he was there for the same reason everyone else is there, to watch the protest play out and to cover it. And like so many reporters that day, he eventually moved with the crowd inside the Capitol Building, and he did so peacefully to cover the story. We're not guessing about this. He did not show up to break windows or poke anyone with a flagpole.
He was there to cover it as a journalist. So we have footage of it of Baker in the capital. I'm gonna put it up now. You can see he's not rioting or attacking police. He's standing there watching what's happening around him, covering the story.
But because Steve Baker wasn't wise enough to get a job with the Washington Post or the New York Times or any other news outlet that works for the Biden administration, the FBI singled him out not as a reporter, which he is, but as an insurrectionist. And then they charged him with crimes for being there. The charges include disruptive conduct and restricted building, parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol Building. And they meant it. They weren't joking.
And by the way, no one defended Steve Baker. None of the free press organizations that exist to defend working journalists stood up for him or said a word when Baker was arrested at the FBI office in Dallas. Here's video of Baker turning himself in. As you can see, he was humiliated. They cuffed him behind his back, not because he posed a threat to anyone, but because they wanted to make the message crystal clear to everyone else.
Only regime media will be treated as legitimate. Others will be crushed. Steve Baker joins us now to recount his experiences with the so called justice system. Steve Baker, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 0: So when last
Speaker 1: doctor for having me.
Speaker 0: Of course. When last we spoke about a year ago, there were hints this was coming. I'll just speak for myself as a middle aged American man. I didn't really believe that they could arrest a journalist for covering a story. They did ultimately, as we just showed, arrest you.
Mhmm. Were you as shocked as I was?
Speaker 1: Probably not as shocked because I had been dealing with this for about two and a half years. I initially had a threat of prosecution going all the way back to November of twenty one when my attorney received a email from an assistant US attorney out of Philadelphia in which she said, your client, meaning me, with is going to be arrested or is gonna be charged within the week. And so after we did a bit of a a bit of a media pushback, kind of an offensive against that threat, then we didn't hear from them again for twenty months. Now after twenty months, I was starting to feel pretty good about it. During that interim time, I actually spoke with you.
And then, in August of last year, we received a grand jury subpoena. My attorney calls me back, says, alright. We've got a grand jury subpoena for your work, your actual videos that you took on January 6. We complied, yet again, and then we didn't hear from them for another four months. Well, during this time, I'm now working for The Blaze.
And so I was actually in DC. As a matter of fact, I was sitting in, representative Thomas Massey's office on December 14, just this past, December. And, I get a text from my attorney, which is never a a welcome thing, an unsolicited text from your attorney, which he said, I think this is the one, the big one. So I stepped out into the hallway there at the Rayburn Building and called my attorney, and he said, they want you to self surrender next week in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. So, the blaze went into high gear.
We did another media offensive, had millions of views of this the story that we were telling about me having to self surrender, and they backed off yet again. They we got another call the next day from the FBI saying that they were gonna put that off until sometime after Christmas. Once again, we didn't hear from them for two months until two weeks ago, we got the notice that I was going to have to self surrender this time, and this time it was for real. They actually said that it was only gonna be for misdemeanor charges, the four basic misdemeanors that all the low level January 6 offenders get. And because I'm happened to be working here in Dallas right now, where Blaze is headquartered, we decided to go ahead and do my self surrender here at the FBI field office.
So they didn't raid me. They didn't come out to my hotel or to the Blaze studios. We went down to the FBI field office and submitted myself. The interesting thing, Tucker, is that in the notice from the assistant US attorney to my my lead attorney is that they wanted me to show up at the field office, and I quote, wearing shorts, t shirt, and flip flops. And I knew what that meant.
That meant that they were probably gonna change me into the orange jumpsuit and that I would then be leg shackled because the plan was for the FBI to process me there at the the field office, put me in a car, take me downtown to the courthouse where they would hand me over to the US Marshals, and then I would wait in a cell until I was marched before the magistrate in front of the, the in in front of the whole court. And so what ended up taking place is that, my attorney negotiated with the two FBI agents in advance of me surrendering. I did not have to get into an orange jumpsuit. I showed up with a jacket, tie, slacks, dress shoes. They made me take off my shoelaces, my belt, and my tie, and then hand my jacket over to my attorney.
Then they took me they allowed me to wear my own shirt, my own trousers. They handcuffed me, fingerprinted me, marched me out to the car, which has been seen on camera, took me to the took me to the courthouse, handed me over to the US Marshals, and that's where they put the leg chains, the belt chain, belted my wrist, or chained my wrist to my stomach, and then sat me in a gel cell with a meth dealer.
Speaker 0: It's hard to believe any of that's real. A couple of questions. One, what's the name of the, assistant US attorney who did this?
Speaker 1: Adam Dreher out of DC.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Adam Dreher, I I hope becomes famous. It's not a threat, but I think we deserve to know who is doing this. I mean, the state of Texas has more than a million, illegal invaders in it right now. There are also an awful lot of murders in the state of Texas, and so this is what they're spending their time doing.
I have to ask, did any of the FBI agents we always hear that, you know, the line agents are good guys. Did any of the US marshals say to you, you know, I'm embarrassed that I'm chaining you, to, you know, chaining you to your own stomach on a misdemeanor charge for something that isn't actually a crime? Did anyone betray any acknowledgment that this is, like, all a farce?
Speaker 1: The the two agents that processed me did not do that. I have received messages from retired whistleblowing
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Agents all over the country apologizing to me for the behavior of the, the once the agency they were once proud of. I will tell you that while they were patting me down and going through the process, I did chat with them and I asked them point blank. I said, so how often do you do this to misdemeanor defendants? The first time there was a little bit of mumbling, and then I kind of reiterated. I said, is this is it is it normal, or do you get you do process misdemeanor defendants on a regular basis as they're patting me down?
They went they were dead silent. And, of course, that's because we know the answer, Tucker.
Speaker 0: Yeah. How about how about speak up, son. I pay your salary. Like, how dare you treat me
Speaker 1: this way
Speaker 0: as an American citizen? Seriously. They didn't answer the question. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the hundred year. Yeah. In the hundred year history of that agency, hundred plus year history of that, they never processed misdemeanor defendants of any kind, particularly nonviolent misdemeanor defendants. It's that's not what they do. I mean, every single FBI agent will tell you that when they joined the the, the agency, they were told that they were they were on this, planet in in this country to go after the whales, not the tiny little minnow.
Speaker 0: But why don't they quit? That's what I don't understand. I mean, I I've always respected law enforcement on principle and FBI agents, I guess, on principle. But if you're participating in a system that's just political tyranny, which is what it is, it's not a it's not there's nothing justice related about any of this. It's Joe Biden putting his critics behind bars.
How can you live with yourself? Like, isn't at a certain point it their responsibility too?
Speaker 1: I I've been analyzing that the answer to that question for quite some time now, and the only answer I have is that we're now into a generation of special agents and even special agents in charge that came in after the Patriot Act, that came in during the Obama administration, that came in after the politicization was overwhelming at the top in the leadership. And in fact, now the you know, in most of the field offices, those in charge are are political operatives by by and large, Tucker. And so that's the answer. Now we'll tell you this. When I got to the courthouse, one of the, US marshals processing me down there, he actually looked at my paperwork, and he said point blank, this is bullshit.
Yeah. Well, he's right. He's right.
Speaker 0: And good for him.
Speaker 1: And I said and and yeah. And then he said and he said, and I will tell you what else is bullshit. He said, we process a lot of these. He said, you guys, you know, you j sixers. And he said, I think that, former president Trump should be paying for every one of your legal fees.
Speaker 0: I agree with that too. I I do agree with that. Yeah. And I think it's yeah. I strongly agree with that.
So, yeah, I mean, I think you should be afraid to behave like this if you're an FBI agent. I think you should be afraid of it. You you can't act like that toward your fellow citizens, and you can't be the instrument of political tyranny and get away with it. So did anyone is there anyone to appeal to? So you you work with Glenn Beck who is really taken up and good for him.
He's a good man. Your your cause. Yeah. But did anyone with official power step in to try and help you?
Speaker 1: No one with official power. I mean, we've had quite a few people speak out on my behalf. We've had some congressmen speak out on my behalf. We've had current presidential, nominee or, nominee apparent, as well as those, couple of others that were running, Ramaswamy, DeSantis. And then in addition to that, we've had a host of other friendly media.
But as you can probably surmise and as you obviously stated earlier, nobody from the mainstream media has come forward yet and said, hey. You know, we probably better stick up for this guy even though he's not necessarily one of us because pendulum swing.
Speaker 0: Right.
Speaker 1: And more important more importantly, Tucker, pen whether the pendulum swings or not, if it continues to swing far into the tyrannical left, they purge themselves eventually if you've read a history book. They will take out the factions of the factions first.
Speaker 0: Yes. Well, but such a thing as principle exists. I mean, some things are just wrong because they're wrong. Racial discrimination, putting people in prison because you don't like their political views. These are just wrong.
It doesn't matter who they're happening to. They're just they're just wrong, on their own terms. Did it ever did part of you think, well, maybe I just won't participate. You know, I've spent my whole life in this country, paid taxes, believed in the system. This is not justice.
This is not the justice system. This is a tool of political repression. And maybe you just say, come and get me. I'm I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: Well, that
Speaker 0: playing along.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, for for two and a half year yeah. For two and a half years, I didn't have to set my alarm clock because every morning at 06:00, I would wake up because I've been following these cases. I've been following these trials. I followed hundreds of these cases.
There's over 1,350 of these arrests so far, all manner of defendants for, January 6. Most of them, of course, are nonviolent. And I've been following these cases, and believe it or not, many I mean, far, far too many to even, recount of the simple misdemeanor, defendants, including other independent journalists, have been SWAT rated at their home. Some of them have been imprisoned and did nothing more than walk around in the capital with a big camera rig, no pating parading, no picketing, no chanting USA USA or anything else of that nature, And, they they did their job professionally. And when they got back home, they were SWAT raided by 20 agents with the red dots on their chest and on their wife and on their children and then hauled off, convicted, sent to prison for months.
Independent journalist.
Speaker 0: It's beyond. It's so what happens next in your case?
Speaker 1: I have in two days, I have a DC hearing. It's, it's one that I can do by Zoom. It's simply not much more than a repeat of what we did in Dallas because this was an out of district hearing. So now I've got to do it before a DC Magistrate. So it's a magistrate.
So it's just basically the same thing without the leg change this time. And then we start the process of our strategy, with my with my legal team to determine how we're going to proceed, and part of that process was learning who our judge was, and that's pretty interesting. I'm revealing that to you for the first time. Judge Christopher Cooper is also the exact same judge who held, Catherine Harridge in contempt two weeks ago.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I'm very aware of that. It's unbelievable. See, Baker, I appreciate your taking the time to update us on what has happened to you. Again, it's tyranny.
I know you know that, but it's shocking to see it. Good luck.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Tucker.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Free speech is bigger than any one person or any one organization. Societies are defined by what they will not permit. What we're watching is the total inversion of virtue.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1770571020983824433
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Ep. 32 You’ll be shocked to learn this, but it turns out the whole George Floyd story was a lie. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 20, 2023 https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/2023/10/21/567455/
Video Transcript AI Summary
Now that we know certain narratives aren't true, it's time to revisit the George Floyd story. The medical examiner found no evidence of asphyxia or strangulation, suggesting Floyd died of natural causes, exacerbated by drug use. This contradicts the widespread narrative.
George Floyd is the Democratic Party's ideal black man: poor, uneducated, and dependent. Democrats want more like him because they vote Democrat. The party degrades black people to maintain control, fostering a sense of victimhood and dependence. They use groups like BLM as militias, exploiting isolated incidents to ignite division and advance their agenda. BLM doesn't stand for Black Lives Matter; it stands for burn, loot, and murder.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Now that we know that it was not in fact a pandemic of the unvaccinated, now that we know that Ukraine is not actually winning the war against Russia, it could be time to revisit some of the other slogans we've been assured are true and ordered to repeat. Are they in fact true? Did, for example, a racist white cop actually murder a man called George Floyd, a civil rights leader, in Minneapolis on Memorial Day of twenty twenty? Now we've been told that that happened, told it relentlessly for more than three years. So at this point, we've been told it so much that pretty much everybody seems to believe it.
And because everyone does kinda believe it, a small group of people has been allowed to make massive changes to American society. They include but are not limited to decriminalizing stealing, defunding the police, adding a new federal holiday to the calendar called Juneteenth, the ceasing of hiring all white men in corporate America, and, of course, significantly, they also sent a cop called Derek Chauvin to prison for more than forty years. He would be the racist white devil who murdered George Floyd. But the question is, did he actually murder George Floyd? And the answer is, well, no.
He didn't murder George Floyd. And we're not guessing about that. We know it conclusively, thanks to a new court case now underway in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The case was brought by a prosecutor there called Amy Sweezy. She's suing her boss.
So the case is not actually about George Floyd or Derek Chauvin, but it tells you an awful lot about both of them. In her deposition, which you should read, Amy Sweezy describes a conversation that she had with the county medical examiner, Andrew Baker, right after George Floyd died. Quote, I called doctor Baker early that morning to tell him about the case and to ask him if he would perform the autopsy on mister Floyd. Suzy recalls all this under oath in the deposition. Quote, he called me later in the day on that Tuesday, and he told me that there were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of mister Floyd's neck.
There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation. Oh. In other words, George Floyd, according to the official autopsy, was not murdered. He died instead of what we used to call natural causes, which in his case would include decades of drug use, as well as the fatal concentration of fentanyl that was in his system on his final day. So this was not a killing.
It was yet another narcotics OD in a country that accords more than a hundred thousand of them every year. The medical examiner clearly understood that, in fact, articulated it. And Sweezy explains. He said to me, she recalls in the deposition, Amy, what happens when the actual evidence doesn't match up with the public narrative that everyone's already decided on? And then he said, quote, this is the kind of case that ends careers.
In other words, everyone lied about it from the very beginning. The people who knew the truth hid the truth and allowed the revolution to proceed. Now they've been exposed. Now we know the truth. What happens next?
Well, they're gonna ignore it. The Biden administration just issued a long purple statement celebrating George Floyd's birthday. He's a martyr. Despite the fact, we know that he was not murdered. And by the way, Derek Chauvin is still languishing in jail for the rest of his life.
So how do we respond to this? How do we respond to the truth once we have it? Well, Vince Everett Ellison seemed like a good man to ask. He's the author of Crime Inc. He joins us now.
Vince, thanks so much for coming on. So as with so many other stories, the origins
Speaker 1: me, Tucker.
Speaker 0: Of COVID. Oh, it's it's a blessing to have you. We now know what actually happened, but the question then is what do you do with that knowledge? We know that the US government, Tony Fauci, worked with the Chinese to create the virus that overturned the American economy, but, like, what do we do with that knowledge? What do we do with the knowledge that George Floyd was not actually strangled to death by a cop?
Speaker 1: We have to acknowledge the people that gave it to us and why. See, George Floyd is the Democratic Party's prototypical black man. These are the black men they are trying to create. So George Floyd has to be elevated. He has to be celebrated.
He's perfect to them. He was poor. He was uneducated. He was a drug addict. He didn't have a job.
He was he he was, down there begging and and and crying and asking the white people to not kill him. To a Democrat to a white Democrat, this is the perfect black man. So he has to be elevated. Look. Not a a few days ago, Kamala Harris and, Joe Biden celebrated hip hop music.
They had a celebration of hip hop. Hip hop culture is America's culture. It is a genre. It is music and melody and rhyme, and hip hop is also an ethos. A music genre that calls the black man the m n word, calls women the w word and the b word, talks about misogyny, shooting police, smoking dope, selling dope, fighting, killing, acting a fool.
They celebrated this genre. Why? Because this is how they see black America. They see us the same way they see George Floyd, and they have to make more of us because everywhere they rule, you know, John F Kennedy stood in front of the, Berlin Wall in the sixties and said, if you think that communism is great, let them come to Berlin. Well, if you think that the Democratic Party is great, let them come to Detroit.
Let them come to Chicago. Let them come to Saint Louis. Let them come to LA, Portland, Seattle, Memphis. Anywhere where they rule, you will see George Floyd's all over the place, and they're proud of them. In Baltimore, Maryland, they spend $21,000 per child for for for every child up there in inside the school district.
Not one school is proficient in math, science, or reading, but they keep it going every year. Why? Because they're producing George Floyd.
Speaker 0: And George Floyd We're dying. We're dying. We're party. But but why would so when most of us, you, me, I think all normal people look at George Floyd's life, you think this is a disaster. This guy never added anything.
He took a lot in prison at least eight times. I mean, his life was a tragedy at best. Why would you want more people like that? Because he votes for
Speaker 1: the Democrat party, and then he teaches his children to vote for the Democrat party. And then these white democrats can feel superior to him. Yes. He can be controlled by them. Just like think about the old slave plantation, Tucker, back in the day.
How they wanted their slaves to act. Subservient, obedient, ignorant, you know, doing what he was told, not asking any questions, having a slave mind, being dependent on them. This is how they want black men to be in America. This is how they want the whole black community to be. This is why, it started in the civil rights movement when Martin Luther King Junior in his ivory green speech said, one hundred years after the emancipation proclamation, the Negro is still not free.
He said five times in that speech that we were not free. It turned the declaration of independence on its head because in our declaration of independence, it said that our freedom was an inalienable right given to us by God. John Locke in the second treaties of government said that an inalienable right is a right given from God. It is irrevocable, non transferable, and and and and and and unsellable. The government cannot touch it.
It supersedes law. It supersedes the constitution. However, King said that we was coming to government and to the white man for our right to be free. Even at the end of the speech, he said, on some certain day, we'll be free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we're free at last.
He said in that speech, when will we be satisfied? He said, we will never be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. That's a fancy way of saying never. And so black people heard that speech and said that we were not free in America. And we make our children recite that speech every single year on King's birthday.
And they say in that speech, the Negro is still not free. George Floyd was a slave in his mind. And the civil rights movement caused him to be a slave in his mind. And today, they're still marching sixty years later telling black people, you're not free. Beg for reparations.
Beg for affirmative action. Kill your children in the womb. Cut off your your your child. You castrate your children. Let drag queens come into school and shake their minds in your children's faces.
Run God out of the public square, and then they end up like George Floyd. But the one thing they do consistently is they vote for the Democrat party, and the places where George Floyd's live, they stay in absolute power.
Speaker 0: That's a pretty that's a pretty dark explanation. So you're saying that the Democratic Party as an organization intentionally degrades black black people to keep them compliant and obedient.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes. In my book, Crime Inc, I talk about one of the main things they do like the like the mafia and organized crime. They humiliate black people. They demoralize them. It's a Marxist construct.
They demoralize their people. They beat them down. They tell them that they're victims. Well, it was Martin Luther King Junior that said, they tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Well, how can you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you're bootless?
You know? He told us we were bootless. You know, you have black, preachers and and you've heard you know about Iron Triangle, the black preacher, the black politician, the black civil rights worker. They go into the black community. Consistently, you're a victim.
You're oppressed. The country hates you. Well, see, I look at them and I say, I'm a black man, but I cannot be oppressed. You know why? Because I'm a child of God.
I'm an heir of Jesus Christ. I cannot be a victim. Why? Because I'm an heir of Jesus Christ. I'm a child of God.
I cannot be a victim. See, they tell these people to go against their religion and their basic ideology because most black men say they're Christians. Right? But then they walk around saying, I'm oppressed. I'm a victim.
I'm afraid. 365 times in our bible, they tell us to fear not. Yet, they walk around saying they're afraid in in in The United States Of America. LeBron James said he's afraid. Kareem Abdul Jabbar said he's afraid.
Kaepernick said he's afraid. Well, I'm a black man in America, and I'm not afraid of a damn thing. I don't ask for permission in my own house. America is my home. So as they walk out here crying, talking about, I'm frightened.
I'm afraid. I can't make it. Please help me. I tell them they stick in my nostrils. They're in the front of God.
The flip side of white male intimidation during the civil rights was also a black male cowardice. They laid down and let them beat them, slap them around, rape their wives and their children. Well, no. Not me. Never me.
I'm a free man. I live in The United States Of America. This says the honor to be that it's that there's white supremacy and that, white people have some type of privilege. Well, as I said before, it is a privilege to be white, but it's also a privilege to be black. And it's a privilege to be an American.
And it's really a a privilege to be a Christian in The United States Of America, the greatest country on the face of this Earth. And they're not gonna make a George Floyd out of me. I stand up strong. I look them in the eye, and I say, I'm a free man. My freedom comes from God.
It's an unalienable right given to me by him. You cannot touch it. And if you try it, I got two things that'll get you off of me, Jesus and my 38. Come try me out.
Speaker 0: So so the Democratic party used BLM as a as a domestic militia in the last presidential cycle twenty twenty to defeat Donald Trump. Do you expect something like that to happen again?
Speaker 1: Well, you see how they use the same tactics as Iran. Iran has Hezbollah and Hamas as their militias. And the Democratic Party uses BLM and Antifa as theirs, Throwing the rock and hiding the hand. Of course, they're gonna do it. They've always done it.
Even at the beginning, they use the Ku Klux Klan for for for the for for the military ring. Now they're using BLM. They're using Antifa. They're using NAACP. And there, there are suicide bombers.
They're their shot troops. They're their brown shirts. They're their street soldiers. And they're gonna go out there, and I guarantee you, Tucker, they're gonna they're gonna look over all the black on black violence. They're gonna look over all the black men killing black men.
They're gonna look over all the snatch and grabs and all the burning and all the fighting and looting and acting a fool. And they're gonna find one crazy white cop that's gonna do something to some crazy black man, and then they're gonna try to burn this country down for it. That's their plan. That's their template. I hope America's ready for it because it's coming.
And it always works for them. It always works because the the press and everybody's just waiting. Oh, they're on the they'll know they're they're on the starting line just waiting for it. And as soon as they find that golden kill, that golden kill, watch them go crazy with it. BLM is gonna start getting their money from the Democrat party because that's where they get it from.
The same way that Hamas gets their money from Iran. The the the, BLM gets their money from the Democratic party. And BLM does not stand for Black Lives Matter. It stands for burn, loot, and murder. And that's what we should call them from now on.
Speaker 0: Vince Everett Ellison, bible under 38. It's great to see you today. Thank you very much.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1715465410856841628
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@conspiracydup - ConspiracyDailyUpdat
Tucker Carlson Live Tour in Sunrise, FL Russell Brand and John Rich on the mass Christian awakening growing in the West. Something great is happening and it’s undeniable. Includes paid partnerships. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCar… https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/2024/09/29/602102/
Video Transcript AI Summary
We launched TCN to produce in-depth content others ignored. Our latest exclusive is James O’Keefe’s “Line in the Sand,” documenting his undercover work with cartels involved in large-scale human trafficking.
Our nationwide tour proves live events can’t be censored. America isn’t as bad as the internet portrays; it’s full of good people. We're seeing widespread deception, making it crucial to discern truth from falsehood. We’re discussing this with John Rich and Russell Brand, who offer valuable insights from their experience in the entertainment industry.
The media’s lies are often obvious—like claiming Iran is behind Trump’s assassination attempts when a neocon was responsible. Trust your instincts; they’re designed to protect you. Protect your online privacy with ExpressVPN. This is a stressful time, so improve your sleep with Eight Sleep. Ultimately, truth and faith are paramount.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: One of our plans when we started TCN was to run great long form content, documentaries, and topics that other people were ignoring. Well, we have the best so far. It's called wine in the sand, and it's by James O'Keefe, O'Keefe, one of the last brave and honest journalists in this country. How brave? James O'Keefe embedded with the cartels as they moved migrants engaged in human trafficking at the largest scale in modern times from Latin America to The United States.
Embedded with the cartels with hidden cameras, and the result is this documentary, Line in the Sand, which we are proud to run exclusively on TCM. Line in the Sand, October 10, highly recommended. Thank you. Every night, this is our, fourteenth or fifteenth city, and every night I I've been traveling with the Sambrosa guys. The best.
Absolutely the best. Thank you all for show I'm amazed if there's anyone here, given the weather, thank you. I know this I've been getting videos all day, from my neighbors and people in Florida, and I'm just I'm sorry about what happened, and I'm just I know a lot of you had to drive through the muck to get here, so thank you very much. I'm great I'm grateful to be back in Florida. Well, I love you too.
Thank you. We we went on this tour for a bunch of different reasons. The most obvious being you can't censor a live event. Mark Zuckerberg can't get in the way, so that's that's pretty great. Another was to feel better about what's actually happening in the country.
Is it as bad as the Internet tells us it is? No. Not at all. It's a great country filled with happy people despite everything. Every city we've been to from the East Coast to the West Coast and everything in between back to Florida, every city we've been to, we haven't I don't think I've met one nasty person.
Everybody's been nice, not just to me, but to each other. And you're just reminded it's a, you know, it's a great place, and accounts of America's collapse are absurd and probably part of a psyop that we should not fall for. And the third reason we went on the road was honestly to see what's true. If there's one marker of this moment, it's deception. Oh, no.
You are hot. I can't even see you. You can't say naughty things to me. I'm a married man. Plus, I don't have my glasses on and I'm backlit, so all I hear is the darkness barking naughty things at me.
But it's hilarious. Thank you. I'm 55, so I'll take the compliment. But it's true. You I think there's every person in this room has had the same moment over the last five years where you realize that something they told you was totally insane.
Like, you're crazy. You're a conspiracy nut. And then you just realize when they will actually that's true. And if that's true, what else is true and what else is false? And what else have they been lying to me about?
If it's not actually safe and effective, what else is a lie? And I doubt there's a single person in this room who hasn't had that experience. And you go through stages of it just like any moment of grief. And the first one is thinking, well, you know, am I the only person who realizes what's going on? And you're sitting, you know, like, alone in your den at two in the morning on your phone, and you're like, oh my gosh.
You know, the whole thing is a lie. It's an op, and you feel like you're going crazy and you think, well, maybe no one else sees this. And then you come to an event like this and you look around at all these incredibly nice people and you realize, no. Not only am I not alone, not only am I not alone, I'm not weird. I'm not a freak.
I'm not a conspiracy nut. I don't care what Wikipedia tells me. I'm like a totally normal person, and I know that because everyone sitting around me is a totally normal person. People who, like, love their children more than anything. That's not weird.
Not only is that not weird, that's the most normal, wholesome, good thing there is. And it's just nice to be reminded of that. But then the next question you have is, okay, if everything I've been hearing is untrue, certainly a lot of the big things are just completely untrue, and no matter how much they yell at me and demand that I believe them, they're still untrue. I don't care what you call me. It's not safe and effective.
Sorry. So the question really becomes, how do I know what's true and how do I know what's false? And that's really the point of tonight. Every single night we've had has had a kind of different point, at least in my head, as conceived in the shower. And tonight, I've been really brooding on that question, how do you know what's true?
And we have two amazing guests, and I think the point of the conversation will be how do you know what's true and how do you know what's false? And both of them are friends of mine, like, actual friends of mine, like, late night text friends of mine, but also men of deep experience in the entertainment business. Talk about a hall of mirrors. You think your world is crazy. And they're men of deep faith, John Rich and Russell Brand.
So they'll be joining us, and we're gonna talk about that. But I just I was obsessing over this today because I never watch television. We don't have a television just to try to keep the deception at a low roar in my house. The first thing you can do is throw your television out the window, And then once it's on the ground outside the Second Floor window, jump on it and then run your truck over it and then set it on fire. And that is a good first step toward getting closer to the truth.
In other words, don't just get rid of it, but destroy it in a symbolic way. Offer it up as a as an offering to the gods of truth. You're gonna kill kill your television. But I happen to be at a hotel room where they come standard and you're not allowed to destroy them because this isn't actually Led Zeppelin nineteen seventy seven. You don't get to throw them out the window onto the pool deck because you get arrested.
So I didn't. And I turned it on just to see what they were saying, what lies they were telling, and I sat there slack jawed as they explained to me totally seriously that the real threat that former president Donald Trump faces is from Iran because they're trying to kill him. They're trying to assassinate him. And everyone on the screen said, oh, yeah. Yeah.
Iran's the threat. I'm thinking, I mean, I don't know anything about Iran. I'm sure they're threatening. I'm sure they're bad. Not here to endorse Iran.
Hardly. Having spent three years being called a puppet of Putin, I just wanna say, ahead of time, I'm not a puppet of the Ayatollah, whatever his name is. Not a Shiite. So I'm not carrying water for the Ayatollah when I say that that's probably not true. And how do I know that's not true?
In fact, it's so not true. There was a little bit baffling watching all these kind of serious looking national security experts on the television telling me, oh, no. It's Iran. And my tip-off was, well, they tried to kill Trump twice in the past six weeks, and it wasn't Iran. In fact, the last guy who tried to kill Trump was a neocon, actually.
The same people who want war with Iran. In fact, how do I know he was a neocon? Because he literally moved to Ukraine to fight. Okay. So he had exactly the same politics as Lindsey Graham, not attacking Lindsey Graham.
I'm just saying. So there was that guy, and then boo boo boo. Okay. I'm not, you know, fine. But he was an Iranian.
Again, not carrying water for the Iranians. I'm probably one of the few people in this room old enough to remember the nineteen seventy nine hostage crisis. I never thought I, you know, would be defending them. But in this narrow way, I will say they didn't do that nor did they climb onto the roof of a building a 30 yards away from Trump during a rally in Butler Township earlier this summer and take a shot at him, shoot him in the face, and kill the guy right behind him. That was not the Iranians.
That was a liberal. And he was allowed to do that because the Secret Service, which is controlled by the Biden administration, let him do that. Okay? So you can say, well, are you alleging a conspiracy? No.
I'm just telling you what happened. I've spent my life at events controlled by the Secret Service because I cover politics. And I can promise you that no one with a range finder is allowed through the magnetometer because the range finder is for shooting people. So when you carry a range finder through and they bust you but then just let you do it, and then they let you crawl up onto a roof a 30 yards away with a two two three, they're letting you shoot the guy. And that's exactly what they did.
And nobody for some reason wants to say that, but it's just a fact. So you can, you know, you can draw whatever conclusions you want, but the one conclusion no honest person can draw is that Iran is doing that. No. Iran's not doing that. The Biden administration did that.
And the people who tried to kill Trump are Democrats. They're not Iranians. Okay? And so it speaks to a larger problem, which is even now, twenty one years after they told us Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, spoiler alert, he didn't, four years after they told us that, you know, the COVID virus came from a pangolin, which by the way, not to be, you know, a walking desk reference here, is a mammal that was somehow being sold in a seafood market. Remember that?
It came from a pangolin. Oh, a of course, there's a pangolin, another pangolin born virus. Something we dealt with a lot growing up in Southern California. I remember my mother saying, just be careful of the pangolin. You gotta cook them.
You know? It's kind of a classic vector for coronavirus, the pangolin. Stay away from the pangolin burger or get it at least medium well. A pangolin. Right.
It it didn't come from the biolab four hundred yards away that was funded by Tony Fauci. Definitely not. Remember they told us that? And if you're like, wait a second. Wasn't there a biolab right there?
Getting US taxpayer funding working on gain of function to make the coronavirus more dangerous? Shut up. Kind of like when they announced it in a senate hearing on television that there are all these bio labs in Ukraine. You're like, wait a second. What are your bio labs in Ukraine?
Shut up. Conspiracy theorists. No. You just said that. Shut up.
Racist. Racist? I thought the Ukrainians are white. Shut up, anti trans guy. Okay.
Okay. That all happened right in front of us. Then, like, just take the shot. It's totally safe and effective. Once you take it, you can't get COVID and you definitely can transmit it.
Really, then how come you have COVID, Tony Fauci? Shut up. You're trying to kill your grandmother. I like my grandmother. Shut up.
Okay. So all of a saw all of that happened. At a certain point, you gotta think the people telling you to shut up, shut up racist, that group. They're they might not be telling the truth about everything. Just throwing that out there.
Like, maybe Lindsey Graham is not totally on the level. And yet today, they're telling us that Iran is really the threat. It's not the threat that we see right in front of us, which is them, the ones who let them shoot Trump. No. It's a country that most Americans couldn't find on a map.
It definitely must be them. And and really the only solution to this is to go to war with them because we def the one thing we definitely need is more sort of pointless foreign wars that we're gonna lose. Okay. And you start to realize two things. One, they're not very creative in their lies.
They'll just go back to exactly the same lies. And when they do tell those lies, everybody whose job it is to kinda screen for lies, all the gatekeepers, all the fact checkers, the guys who run Wikipedia, the Snopes people, they'll all sort of nod and be like, yeah. That's right. That's totally true. And, unfortunately, a lot of people just will sort of believe it.
Like, some people don't seem to be learning the lesson, which is that you have to decide for yourself. And the first line of defense when you're deciding whether something is true or false is just common sense. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? And here's one way I judge it.
So if the Biden administration, which controls not just Trump's security, but also his access to classified information, because they control the intel agencies. So if the Trump campaign wants to know what's going on, they have to rely on the Biden administration to find out. And if they wanna protect themselves for that threat, they need to rely on the Biden administration to supply security. That's actually how our system works. I don't think that's a wise system.
Just saying. But if what they were saying is true, then they would, if they really believed Donald Trump was at risk of being shot out of the air with a surface to air missile, that's what they're telling us now, or being assassinated by Iranian sleeper cell because I know my neighborhood has quite a few, then they would be providing additional security. Right? But they're not. They're providing so little security that he can't have outdoor rallies because they're withholding security.
They're literate he had to cancel an outdoor event in Wisconsin last weekend because they wouldn't provide enough security. But if you actually believed that one of the most famous peep the most famous person in the world, the guy who's ahead in the polls, whatever they tell you, Trump is ahead, the man most likely to be the next president was at risk of being murdered by a foreign power, you'd probably provide enough security. And if you didn't have it, because they were running around the country protecting doctor Jill, which is what happened in Butler, Doctor Jill was under grave, grave threat. A lot of people are trying to stop doctor Jill before she heals again because as a doctor, that's what she does. Doctor Jill, don't get me going.
How can one woman's ego trip control a nation of 350,000,000 people? It's kind of amazing. But anyway, but if you really believe that and you didn't have enough security because they were with doctor Jill at a diversity conference in Knoxville, you would bring in the National Guard or maybe the hundred and first airborne. You would use the military to protect the future president from murder by a foreign power, but they're not doing that. They're saying this is happening.
The threat is so high that you can't appear outside, but we're not gonna help you protect yourself with security that you paid for. I'm thinking this is not on the level because that doesn't make any sense at all. And if it does, tell me how it makes sense. And this is true of virtually everything they say. It's not hard to determine whether it's true or false because you just assess it on the basis of, like, first grade logic.
And that's true for almost everything, and they know it's true. And that's why they spend so much time trying to convince you that you're insane and try to convince you that your senses don't work. That actually they hand you a hamburger that smells like a dog bomb and they're like, no, no, it's really good. It smells like dog crap. I'm not eating that.
You must eat it because it's delicious. But I feel like I'm gonna vomit when it gets to me, shut up and eat it. There's something wrong with your palate. There's nothing wrong with your palate. Your nose works fine.
You know what's good or bad. You know what's right or wrong because you're born knowing. All of us are. We were born knowing what's right or wrong. Our moral code is no different substantially from the moral code that Hammurabi wrote thousands of years ago because it's in us.
We know. And so the trick is to convince you that you don't know, that you need doctor Jill or somebody else with a fake credential to know what's right or wrong, and you absolutely don't. You don't, and no free people does. You are allowed to decide for yourself on the basis of your values, your senses, and above all, your instincts. And I tell my kids this all the time, and I really mean it.
Your instincts are designed to protect you. They were given to you by God at birth with one job, and that job is not to get elected to some stupid statewide office. There's no senator instinct. They're not trying to sell you a reverse mortgage. Your instincts are not trying to get rich.
Your instincts only exist to protect and serve you. That's it. They're the most reliable guide you have, so trust them. Despite all the noise and all the noise, if you actually think about it, it's my job to think about it, all of it all of it is designed to get you to ignore what's obvious. What's obvious?
And they do that for two reasons. One, there's a certain power trip involved in lying to people in a way that's so obvious they know it's a lie, but making them believe it anyway, because really only God can do that. And that's what they loved about COVID, but it was so clear that everyone who got the shot was still getting COVID. They totally got off on preventing you from saying that because that's true power. It's easy to fool someone.
It's much harder to get someone to repeat a lie he knows is a lie. Right? And that made them feel powerful. So that's the first thing. The second thing is they try to make you feel like there's something wrong with you, that you're in some weird minority of people, like some freaky subcategory that just doesn't wanna castrate kids.
What? You You don't wanna castrate what's wrong with you, man? This country was built on child castration. We wouldn't have an America without child castration. Like, what?
And you're like, really? Is that really a weird view? Yes. It is. You cannot allow them to do that.
And as I always tell my kids, you know. For example, if you're talking to someone and you get the creepy vibe, like Tim Walz. I'm just throwing that out there. I've I've never met Tim Walz. But the first second I was like, man, I don't have enough evidence to indict you.
I'm not going to. Okay? But you're a creep. I went to boarding school in New England in the nineteen eighties. You were my dorm master.
I know exactly who you are. I know exactly who you are. There's no reason for you to be in the shower, Tim. Please leave. I felt that so overwhelmingly from him.
And then I thought to myself, maybe I'm being unfair. No. I'm not. Again, I'm not gonna accuse him of anything specific. I have zero evidence.
And I'm not gonna bring charges against him because I can't. Right? That's a process that requires proof. I don't have proof. All I have is my spidey senses, and they're never wrong.
And if I feel like you're a creep, I don't know exactly what you're doing, but you're doing something, you weirdo, because I can smell it. And I always tell that to my children. Don't let anyone convince you you're wrong. You're never wrong. Don't attack the person.
Just get away fast, and don't get into his van ever. That's fair. Right? I don't care if it has heart shaped windows and funny bumper stickers don't get into his van. The same is also true for deception.
I don't know what you're lying about, but I know you're lying. I can feel it. All of us have that power. We were born with it. We can smell deception, and we know when someone's telling the truth.
We can't always prove it. Usually, I can't prove it. But if you've ever been around someone who's saying something you've never thought of before, but it's true, it hits a different way. It hums like a tuning fork. You can feel it inside.
That's true. I never heard that before. I have no evidence that that's true. I've never even thought of that. That is true.
I know that's true. The truth and whoever's yelling yes, yeah, baby. Because that's that's the feeling you have inside when you hear something that's true. And they're always like, have the facts checkers assess? That's not a Wikipedia.
That's not true. The CIA hasn't vetted that. That's a conspiracy theory. Okay. It's still true.
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That's exactly right. As I always say to my children, your instincts are imprecise, but they're unerring. I don't know exactly what you're lying about. I don't know what you're hiding. I don't know what your freaky secret is.
Is. I don't wanna know, actually. No interest at all. But I know you got one, and I know you're lying to me. And I'm at this stage in my life, at my advanced age, having cycled through a few jobs in my time, I've decided I'm just gonna say that.
I'm gonna say that because I really believe it. And I'm never again gonna sit there and let them tell me that Iran is the greatest threat when I've been to most cities in this country and they're falling apart and Iran didn't do that. You did it. You did it. Our leaders did it.
The people who run this country let their country die. The mullahs didn't do that. I'd love to blame the mullahs. I wish a war with Iran would fix Redding, Pennsylvania and Gary, Indiana and Philadelphia and New York City. I really wish that.
That'd be easy. Just beat Iran and prosperity and self respect return.
Speaker 1: No problem. We've got
Speaker 0: the weapon systems for that, but it's much more insidious, and it's much more obvious. The people who run this country don't care about the people who live in the country. It's literally that simple. And if they did care if they did care, they'd have the view, I'm sure of every single person in this room which is I'm not defending around. I'm sure it's terrible.
That's why I don't live there. I live here. And what I care about is here. Because I was born here and my parents are buried here and I will be too and my children will live on here because we're Americans. And we want this country to thrive.
And so our focus, our attention, our love is focused on our nation and how its people are doing. That's what we care about. And that's the lens through which we make all judgments. Is this good for my country? For and by my country, I mean me, my neighbors, my wife, my children, everyone I know.
My generations yet unborn, I'd like them to be born in this country and live the life that I have lived. Will the decision make that possible? Will it help them? And if it won't, I'm not I'm not for it. And by the way, anyone who is for it is not my friend.
This is not simply a disagreement. You're my enemy. If you don't care about me, if you're willing to walk around this country full of the best people there are, I've been all over the world. I can promise you this is the nicest country by far. You get lost in America, I'm lost.
Try being some, like, tourist from a foreign country. You can barely speak English. It doesn't matter what country, actually. It can be Liberia or Belgium. It doesn't matter.
You show up in some town in Oregon, you know, or even Massachusetts, kinda rough, but even in Massachusetts, I'm totally lost, you say in broken English. And they're like, oh, go this way. They'll help you. Try being a dog in America. No country has ever treated dogs better than America.
And if that's not a measure, when you're a dog in America, you've won the dog lotto. Try being a dog anywhere else. It's a dog's life. Right. Well, try being him.
Right. Certain well, that's true. Things are changing in certain parts of Ohio. And the dogs know that in their distress. Trust me.
They're like, you can get eaten there. We're out.
Speaker 1: By the
Speaker 0: way, when Trump said that, which was the single greatest thing Trump has ever said, everyone hated that debate, and a lot of Trump voters hated that debate. You know, a lot of people who like Trump really hated that because they like Trump. And they want him to do his best, and then he comes out and he's just, you know, pretty Trumpy. No. Don't say that.
You know? And, but if you look at the numbers, he actually did pretty well after the debate. You you know what I mean? It's it's almost like watching your kid play soccer. You're you're too emotionally invested in it.
Like, come on, Dylan. Make the kick. And, like, no one else notices. Only you because it's your kid. That's how I think a lot of Trump they want him to be you know, they they love him.
So they want him to do great, but, actually, he did pretty well after the debate according to the numbers. And one of the reasons he did is because Americans are just not for dog eating. I'm sorry. They're not. And they can tell you they get all hyperventilating and all hysterical.
Shut up. There's no dog eating, which is exactly the moment you know, oh, yeah. There's some dog eating going on. %. How do I know that?
Because the liar said it's not true. That's why. Chances they're eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio. 1 Hundred Percent. Hundred Percent.
I bet my house on that because Wikipedia says it's a conspiracy theory, Don. I'm out of control. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
But the point is the point is sorry. By the way, most people know that. That's why the moment that just appalled David Muir I've been in journalism for thirty three years, and I can promise you he's a very good journalist based on his abs. It's so funny. It's like imagine going into any business out of self love.
It's just not a good motive. You know what I mean? Because you wanna look at yourself on camera. Every shot of David Muir, he's like admiring his biceps. He's doing this slow rotisserie turn.
What a douche. Anyway, he was it's like a joke. It's like a joke. Only only when you work at ABC News do you not know that everyone else thinks you're absurd. Luckily, I have an ever present knowledge of being considered absurd because I know that I am.
And I know that I am because I've been in hotel rooms for seventeen straight nights and they have mirrors outside the shower. And every time I emerge from the shower, I'm like, I'm kind of impressive. And then I see myself, I'm like, what is that? There's like some lumpy primate standing in my bathroom. Like, what the hell?
And it's such a wonderful it's horrifying, obviously. But it's such a wonderful moment because you are a lumpy primate actually. And it's so good to know that. It's so good to see yourself in perspective. No matter how right you think you are, fundamentally, you're absurd because you're not god.
And I do think that we should install a series of mirrors outside David Muir's bathroom. And all of them, Wolf Blitzer and all the Wolf Blitzer. Alright, Wolf. Let's see you naked. I'm serious.
Like, nobody looks good. I mean, it's just a fact. I don't. I'll just say it. But they don't know that they don't.
And it's so embarrassing. Anyway, the point is, when someone's telling the truth, you know it's true. Don't second guess your instincts. They're the greatest gift you've ever been given. And on the basis of them, tell the truth yourself and tell it without fear.
It doesn't matter what they call you. It doesn't matter how loud they yell. When you're telling the truth, you know it's true, and everyone around you knows it too. And there's nothing more liberating than that. And so I hope you will.
And so with that, I want to invite the first of two guests. So we're gonna, have my friend John Rich, who's actually a wonderful man, in addition to being an amazing performer, and then we're gonna invite our friend Russell Brand. But first, my friend from Nashville, Tennessee, John Rich.
Speaker 2: How about a round of applause for America's number one patriot, Tucker Carlson?
Speaker 0: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's you. It's either you or Ted Nugent. I say it's you though.
Speaker 0: I think it's definitely Ted Nugent. Honestly, I love I love uncle Ted. Been to my house. Wonderful man. So, you are one of the few people I was I've been brooding on this truth or falsehood question all day long.
You are one of the few people I've ever known, and I'm proud to be your friend, who doesn't ever seem to struggle with this question, what's true and what's false? You seem to know it and you seem to trust your intuition on this question. Is that true? And if so, why do you trust
Speaker 2: it? Well, humans don't really have inherent intuition, in my opinion. Is a thing called discernment
Speaker 0: preach
Speaker 2: discernment discernment is what King Solomon asked for and you know as the bible says it that Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived. Well, okay. If that's the case, I wanna learn about what he was all about, because I I could use some wisdom in my life as well. And when you see what Solomon was asking for, he could ask for anything. He didn't ask for more money.
He didn't ask for more power. He said, give me discernment. I want discernment. I wanna be able to tell what's true and what's false. And I think in this world we're living in today here in 2024, it seems like everything is a lie or a version of the truth, however you wanna put it.
Even from a lot of Republicans that are out there, the spouting it off, and you're and you're looking at that going you see them say something and you go, that does not seem true to me. I don't know what's not true about it, but it doesn't seem that way. So my suggestion would be, if it doesn't seem true to you, it's not true. Just go with that. Don't try to talk yourself out of that.
It just hits you in the gut wrong. It's just something about that's not right. So people are thirsting for truth. I think that's why why they're showing up in crowds like this to hear you speak because they know that you're not working for anybody, nobody owns you, and you're just saying the truth. That's it.
The truth is the greatest commodity ever.
Speaker 0: I I do think unemployment makes you more honest, if that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No doubt. You can definitely lie your way into another great job anytime you wanted to.
Speaker 1: No. Thanks.
Speaker 0: I don't think I'm in danger of being snapped up by CNN. So what do you I mean, you live in Nashville. You're in the entertainment business, but you're very more than any singer songwriter entertainer I've ever met, you're very connected with what you know a lot of people. Everyone I ever meet is, like, knows you. Where do you think we are in this race, the presidential race, which is thirty odd days away?
Speaker 2: Where are we at in the presidential race? I think Trump's gonna win. Now, my personal thoughts are on it are this, the more it looks like Trump is gonna win, the more danger the country is in. Because the other side, this you're not just looking at if they lose, they're losing the White House. They're in big, big trouble if he gets in there again, because let let me ask this crowd a question.
Do you feel like you're somewhat even of a different person than you were four or five years ago as to what you know now? Right? I think I think COVID was the was the big catalyst for that, Tucker, that Listen, I was a guy that said, well, if you're a Republican, you're a good guy. That's how I felt. If you're a Republican, you're a good guy.
If you say the right thing in the interview, yep. If you say what I think, I'm I'm behind you, man. Let's go. And then COVID comes along and we see how we were manipulated, lied to, and the catastrophic results of those lies, what that yielded in our population, and we saw our own party doing that and realized, hang on a minute. You mean to tell me that this guy that I've always thought was a real McCoy is in the pocket of big pharma?
What? That can't be true. You remember having that experience? That cannot be true. It can't be.
It can't be. And then as time goes by, you realize, oh, yeah. It is true, and it is true as a heart attack is true. And then you start to step back from the whole thing and go hang on a minute. I think this whole thing is playing we the people to their own end, which is something horrible.
And so now, I don't think I like these guys anymore, and then they start seeing We The People standing up out of their chairs and starting to flex their muscles to go hang on a minute now. Uh-uh. No. And then you see the intensity of the pushback start to kick in, don't you? Here they start arresting grandmas for praying outside of an abortion clinic.
Or you see them listen, I've been to the Capitol many times. You know they have magnetic locks on those doors? The doors are this thick, you know, and they're magnetically locked. I mean, I mean, you can't get in. And they swing those doors open and say, come on in guys, and here come all the people going, wow, I can't believe I never thought I'd see this before.
Arrest, arrest, arrest, arrest, arrest, arrest, throw them all in jail with no habeas corpus. Forget excessive bail, no bail. It would be tantamount to in Nashville if I saw a guy standing up on the street outside of my house and I said, open the front gate. I said, hey, buddy, come on in. And he did.
I said, follow me to the front door. And then I took the locks off the front door and opened the front door and I said, come on in the house, man. Go anywhere you wanna go. Check the place out. And he goes meandering through my house.
And about the time he's up on the Second Or Third Floor, I come up there and I I aim a rifle at that man. I say, get on the floor. I'm calling the cops, you're under arrest, and I throw that man in jail. He goes, what are you talking about? He opened the gate, the front door asked me to come in.
Now I'm in jail for invading his house. That's right. That's what that is. Agree?
Speaker 0: Well, not only do I agree, I mean, the videotape is now public.
Speaker 2: We've all seen it.
Speaker 0: Yes. And that's literally what happened.
Speaker 2: So I think when you see things like that play out in the in our country listen. Don't take this the wrong way, but it feels like The USA has become the USSA to me. The people running this country, peep people ask me all the time. I'm out on the road playing music and stuff, just regular people. John, why do you think people in this country are going out of their way to destroy it?
I mean, make that make sense. I said, because the ballgame that they're playing is way bigger than The USA, that if if they can get The USA to come down remember this, Tucker, nobody ever reaches forward standing on their own two feet for a handout ever. They only reach for a handout. They only reach for a lifeline when they're down on their knees, and they're in this position right here. Please help me.
Please make save my life. I'm about to die. Save me. Save me. Save me.
They reach up. Well, the only way you can get that to happen in America is you gotta put us down on our knees, all the way down on the floor, down with our faces down, and it's a life or death situation, and we'll accept anything that they offer to us just to make it stop. And I really think what their goal is is to inflict so much pain and misery on this country that at some point, America's down on its knees and even the most patriotic among us will say, just make it stop. And when you do that, they got you. And I think that's the game they're playing.
I think it's much bigger than politics at this point.
Speaker 0: I don't think there's any doubt about that. So this is a stressful time here. The kids going back to school, vacation is over. It's the height of a presidential election season. There's a lot going on.
You need a good night's sleep, but it's never been harder to get it. So we're talking about this in the office the other day, and a couple people who work here were raving about a product called Eight Sleep. And I wanted to know more about it. It turns out that temperature has a lot to do with whether or not you sleep comfortably and wake up feeling rested, like you actually slept. Now the makers of Eight Sleep Pod figured out that if you make a climate controlled mattress cover, you can add to your existing bed.
Speaker 1: You don't
Speaker 0: have to buy a new bed, just the cover, that it changes everything. You get far fewer problems with falling asleep and staying asleep, and so you feel rested the next day. Sleep actually has its desired effect. The eight sleep pod can be used to warm up or cool off your bed, and that matters because temperatures change seasonally. We have climate change in this country.
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So you had one of the most amazing things I've seen in a long time. You wrote a song, pretty recently on, you know, a specific theological topic, the book of Revelation, which if you'd said to me, okay, there's a country music star been in the business thirty years, and he's gonna write a song in the book of Revelation, and it's gonna go to number one in The United States, I would have said, I don't I don't think it's possible. Of all books of the bible, by the way, they don't even teach that book in the Episcopal church or really any book in the Episcopal church. But anyway, but the point is
Speaker 2: We gotta get you into Pentecostal church.
Speaker 0: That's, I'm headed there, man. But anyway, the point is you end there. How do you I mean, what was that? That song was the biggest song in The United States. Like, how did that happen?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on your show to break that song because that's where everybody learned about it. Even my normal outlets in the news that would normally have me on to sing my new song would not have me on to sing that song.
Speaker 0: I'm not gonna ask you to be more specific, but I think I know what you're talking about, John Riche.
Speaker 2: Well, the I said, well, why can't I come sing that song? And they said, it's just it's it's too graphic. It's too graphic. And I thought about thought about
Speaker 0: This is a channel that'll air a car crash live.
Speaker 2: Right. Thought, well, well, what's so graphic about it? It's literally out of the pages of the book. It's the Bible itself. I just made it rhyme.
That's all it is. But I think the line that got them was when it said, brimstone upon their heads and millstones around their necks. They'll feel the shaking when the trumpet sounds. And no matter where they hide, there'll be nowhere to run when Jesus puts his mighty foot on the ground. That tore them up.
They didn't know what to do about that. Christians have got to realize that Jesus was not on the defense. He was on the offense the entire time. He was on the offense speaking the truth to these people that a lot of them got turned around and saved, but the hierarchy and the elites that he spoke the truth to murdered him. Jesus was not murdered for something that he did.
He was murdered for things that he said. He was murdered for freedom of speech. They murdered him. They beat him half to death, and they hung him up on a cross and bled every last drop of blood out of that man. And he allowed them to do it.
If you wanna know if you're a Christian in this audience who you actually follow, who is the son of God? The son of God could have evaporated the earth with a flick of his pinky, and he did not do that. He allowed them to torture him to death on behalf of us. So who are we to lose our nerve in these times that we call tough times? Who are we to lose our nerve right now?
If that's who you follow, then follow him. Follow his example. Be on the offense. Speak the truth. That's it.
The second thing I'd like to say about that, Tucker, a lot of Christians are under the misconception that, well, God's not gonna let anything bad happen to me.
Speaker 0: Where do they get that idea?
Speaker 2: They get that idea from preachers because preachers like to preach that, hey, nothing bad is gonna happen to all of us because he loves us too much to allow us to go through anything bad and that keeps the churches packed and that keeps the offering plate plate packed. And then I go, really? You should have told that to Daniel back in the day when Nebuchadnezzar invaded Israel. You know what they did to Daniel? I'm sorry.
Is anybody in this room better than Daniel? Raise your hand if you find yourself to be higher than that man. Nobody. Right? Daniel.
Speaker 0: Wait. No. Nobody? Nobody. I didn't see a hand.
Speaker 2: Daniel sitting there and guess what Daniel was? Daniel was a patriot. He was a Hebrew patriot. He was ready to fight Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians to the death. He was ready to go.
Nebuchadnezzar comes in there, takes over Israel. They put Daniel in chains and all of his friends, castrate him and all of his friends and throw him in a pit. Daniel. And then as time goes by, many years, Daniel winds up being the only guy that can interpret the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar. And so Nebuchadnezzar starts to raise him up in the hierarchy of that empire, and basically Daniel became the second in command of the Babylonian empire, but not before he was dragged off in chains and castrated in front of all of his friends.
What about Job? What about Job? Did Job have some pain in his life? I think so. What about Noah?
Did God rapture Noah out of the flood Or was Noah directly in the flood, but he had a boat? God said, Noah, there's a flood coming, build a boat. Noah's like, what? He goes, trust me, build a boat, Noah. The verse preceding that, Tucker says, it says, and God was grieved because he had created mankind in the first place.
That's how polluted the earth had become, how wicked it had become. And what it says in revelations is that it will be as it as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it will be at the end. And so you go, what was it like in the days of Noah? Well, the whole earth had been polluted to to the point where God said, I am grieved that I even made mankind in the first place. What a statement.
From him? I should have never done this. And then it says, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That doesn't mean he pulled Noah out. He said, build a boat, Noah.
Noah goes, okay. So he starts building his boat, and it took him a couple of hundred years or so to build it, being scoffed at and scorned the entire time. Spit spit at, called every name in the book. He just kept hammering, kept building it, kept going, kept going, and then here comes the flood. Now do you think Noah was really excited when the rain started to pour and the water started gushing out of the ground and the earth started to get flooded?
Every human being he ever knew in his life, even the wicked ones that were his next door neighbors and he might have shared some goat's milk with or whatever, being a good neighbor, they're all gonna be gone. You think he was really excited and feeling great about life at that point? I bet he was scared to death when that started happening, and the boat starts to float and go up and up and up. And the same flood that destroyed all the wicked raised Noah to safety and he got to start over again. Now if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and his word does not change, which is what the book says, that means we change and culture changes, but he does not.
So who are a bunch of fat lazy American Christians think they are that they're gonna be able to escape what's coming? You can survive what's coming, but you can't escape it, and that's what preachers don't preach. That's that's why people think that they're gonna escape all this. You asked a great question. That is why they think that, and that's a dangerous place to be in mentally.
Because when things do get hard, you're not gonna recognize them for what they are.
Speaker 0: So it sounds like you're saying that part of the deal is suffering, and you can't lie to yourself about that.
Speaker 2: You can lie to yourself about anything.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I mean, I I actually have you.
Speaker 2: No. I mean, who am I? I've got a listen. I've got a high school diploma. I grew up in a double wide trailer in Amarillo, Texas.
My dad spent his life preaching in prisons and in Mardi Gras on the streets of this country. I do not come from some hierarchy family, but I think that's where a lot of us come from. The truth is not complicated. It's just difficult to get your head wrapped around because it is so abrupt when you finally run into it. You can't hide from it when you finally see what it is.
Most people don't want to talk that way. Tucker will. That's why he got fired. That's why a lot of stuffs happened to him. That's also why this room is full of people right now because you want to hear the truth.
Just tell me the truth. It is infuriating to know that every day you wake up, everything you hear is either a straight ahead lie or a twisted version of the truth. And your to your question earlier, how am I supposed to know what's what? That's where discernment comes in, but you have to ask for that. Human beings do not innately have discernment.
That's not something we have. You have to ask him for it like King Solomon did and many others. And if you do ask him for it and you're serious about it, he'll give it to you. He will let you know when somebody is a liar and somebody's telling you the truth He will let you know when you read something Or you're trying to read the tea leaves, which is what literally everybody in this room and around our country are trying to do right now Put together all these jigsaw puzzles try to figure out what's about to happen. He will help you with that.
Ain't that great? Because who are we? Like this little tiny grain of sand on the world's largest beach, but he cares about each and every one of us individually. It's so powerful. If you can ever get your head wrapped around that man, your laugh will get better quickly.
Quickly. I I hate to ask you, but can you play a
Speaker 0: few bars of that song? Can I play what? A few bars of revelation.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can play that. Yeah. You want you wanna hear that? You wanna hear some music? So, Tucker, I've been watching these these events you're doing.
I haven't seen I saw Kid Rock come out. He didn't sing anything.
Speaker 0: No. He didn't. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: getting ready to one up Bob right now.
Speaker 0: Alright? Let's
Speaker 2: see what I got. I will tell you this before I play this song. I wrote the song at the end of 2023. It was if you watched our interview, I didn't set out to write it. It was it was, an unofficial download.
It was, an unapproved download that hit me on this song. I picked up a guitar and I started writing this thing, and then it was, what do you want me to do with this, man? I mean, seriously, like Tucker said, you're gonna put out a song about the book of the Bible that most people won't even flip to. That's what he told me to do. So I did it, and as I started taking my time, I said, well, how am I supposed to enter do this to the world?
And the person that came to mind that would be the absolute greatest if you could ever get him to do it was Tucker Carlson. If he would do that, that's probably the biggest intro on the song. So thank you. That's that's how I felt.
Speaker 0: You texted me. I went for it.
Speaker 2: Dancing in the flames. The people cursed his name, bowed at the altar of the father of lies. But there's a number to their days and all their evil ways. Lord's gonna turn away from all their cries. I can feel it coming like a dark train running.
Get ready because the king is coming. The king is coming back again. Brimstone upon their head, millstones around their neck. You'll feel the shaking when the trumpet sound. No matter where they hide, there'll be nowhere to run when Jesus puts his mighty foot on the ground and says, coming back again.
When judgment comes like a lightning clash, their foes will wail and their teeth will gnash. You'll set fire to the evil ones and all the wickedness they've done. There'll be no time to turn around as the stars begin to hit the ground and the mountains fall and the veil is torn with the sound of that stubborn horn. I can feel it come like a dark train running. Oh, get ready because the king is coming.
The king is coming. Oh, ever. I can feel it coming like a dark train running. Because the king is coming. The king is coming back again.
Speaker 0: Is
Speaker 2: coming
Speaker 3: back
Speaker 2: again. So wrote the prophet John before his days were done.
Speaker 0: John Rich, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tucker.
Speaker 0: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. Yes, sir. So I wanna, bring someone else out on stage and I I was thinking about it today, and I've been on the road for, like, thirty years just covering stuff.
And whenever we're in a different city, anywhere anywhere, really, we always have a a dinner, and I always try to invite, you know, as many different kinds of interesting people as possible. Often people have got seem to have nothing in common. We once had a dinner party with Alex Jones and Steve Inskeep from National Public Radio. Steve Inskeep was horrified. But anyway, the point is, it's interesting to have different kinds of people.
But one thing I've noticed in the past five or six years is that people who would seem to have nothing in common
Speaker 1: at all
Speaker 0: sometimes do have deep things in common and I feel that way about our next guest, Russell Brand, who is from a completely different world. Movie star from England was on what I thought was the left and I wound up believing that I had everything in common with Russell Brand, and then, of course, I found out today that Russell Brand and John Rich, who were from Polar you would think sort of different poles in our society are also friends because we have everything in common and which is to say, their values are totally aligned, and you're seeing that a lot. As the world goes crazy and we're filled with sadness watching it, and the institutions we grew up with and loved and trusted crumble or betray us, the flip side of that, the compensation for that, the good in the world is that our relations with other people become deeper and more real and more honest, and we realize actually that things we thought divided us are totally irrelevant, and what matters is who we really are. And so with that as the backdrop, I wanna invite my friend, John's friend, Russell Brand.
Speaker 1: Alright.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Russell. So so to give the audience some, sense of how much things have changed, I met Russell in his dressing room a couple hours ago, and he said, why don't would you come and do a podcast with me? And I thought, I I don't know. I thought we're gonna talk about the news of the day. And I get there, and there are three crackers and two cups of grape juice sitting on the table and I'm thinking Russell and I don't drink.
So I'm like, what? Is that wine? No. It's grape juice. What is that?
And he said, we're gonna have communion, which I loved. I don't think we would have been doing that three years ago. Russell, how did you get to a place where you're having communion in the Green Room at the arena in Fort Lauderdale before the show?
Speaker 1: It's been an unusual week.
Speaker 4: Well, I've I said I feel that I've, been saved. As we were discussing earlier and as becomes increasingly evident, we're no longer discussing trivial material, ideological, or economic differences. We are discussing spiritual warfare and the necess necessity for absolute victory. The absolute necessity for absolute victory. And as we have to overcome the dead former person in each of us and transcend, the same must happen, I suppose, for our culture.
It seems that we're at a critical point where sort of tweaks and measurements and levies and tariffs will be insufficient when it appears that a diabolical opponent is concealed behind the mask of globalism. This must be confronted in your country and in mine and across the world. And frankly, John Rich and I have had enough of it, and we've decided to wear a uniform.
Speaker 0: Well, yeah. I I I did notice that. We're starting
Speaker 2: a band. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be good, Tucker.
Speaker 0: I'm I'm a little out of step because I Well,
Speaker 2: you know what? If you're gonna be in our band, there's something you need. Do you guys like my boots? Yeah. Now listen.
I don't even think he wears socks. He's he's just some kind of hippie guy living in the woods. I don't know. But, Tucker, I thought you were an 11, but I found out you're a 12. Not to brag.
You're like not to brag, but your feet are pretty big. So I don't know if if I could hand these over to you
Speaker 0: Oh my word.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna be in the band. You need some of those redneck Riviera boots, buddy.
Speaker 0: What do
Speaker 1: you what do you
Speaker 2: Those those are 11 and a half. So maybe we I could send you a pair that fit. Maybe we should give those away to the audience tonight. Somebody wants them. I don't know.
Maybe we'll
Speaker 0: have a raffle after. Join us backstage for bingo after the show.
Speaker 2: Those would look good on your feet. They would.
Speaker 0: Those are amazing. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. You're gonna be in the band. I mean, Russell, when are we gonna write our first song, man? That's the real question.
Speaker 4: Probably over the course of the evening, I would have thought to celebrate the wonderful people of Fort Lauderdale. Well done. Surviving that hurricane. Well done. Surviving everything.
This whole thing is
Speaker 2: a country song. Something is a country song right now. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Totally.
Speaker 4: You see everything in terms of
Speaker 2: the country song. Of a joke, like the three of us walk into a bar and
Speaker 0: I'm I'm a bystander in a check shirt, but it's it's the two guys in the in the black Nashville shirts. I love it.
Speaker 4: What I like about John Rich, if I may have a moment of your time.
Speaker 0: You may. Oh, please.
Speaker 4: I don't know. Did any of you see when John Rich was on Jordan Peterson's podcast and like, Jordan Peterson's quite an intense person. I think you'd agree. He's not like if Jordan Peterson's coming to her house, you don't think all is that mild mannered gentle fellow, Jordan Peterson. He's quite intense, isn't he?
But John Rich out intensed Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson. Can't accept Christ as your savior. Accept him now. Oh, no.
Speaker 2: I did earlier today. I was I accepted Jesus earlier. Actually, I've been thinking about this. No. Accept him
Speaker 1: as your lord and savior. You're not being Christian enough. Put these goddamn boots on. March to Calgary right now. Kneel before the crop.
Well, no.
Speaker 2: Come I've actually written the book wrestling with God. It's taken quite a lot of time. It's quite an endeavor. You're not Christian enough.
Speaker 4: Calm down, John.
Speaker 1: We're all trying our best. Unless this actual rapture
Speaker 4: and battles between the archangel Michael and Satan, John nods off to sleep. True.
Speaker 0: I'm watching this. It's so good. So where where would you say we are in in
Speaker 4: Four ordered out. I knew I
Speaker 1: knew I'd get one eventually. I saw it. They're fine people and they, Tucker. You can't keep them down. You can't oppress them.
Speaker 4: You can lie to them.
Speaker 1: You can belittle them. You can try and take away their God, but they will rise up these people. They will withstand hurricanes. They will overwhelm lives. You can try to put a pastiche of phony joy on, a parade of grins and of pagination.
Turn the page. But the people of Fort Lauderdale are already awake.
Speaker 2: Amen. Get her done.
Speaker 0: Get her done. You I I always ask you this in public and in private, but I can never control myself. When was the moment you found yourself awake?
Speaker 4: This is me. Because we've you've had John on. John's done a slightly intense song and everything, his revelation song. So it's difficult, I think, when you interview a musician and the musician does their song, you have to sort of just go.
Speaker 1: Like, while John's gone, revelation. There's an angel coming back again.
Speaker 0: Hey. Well done. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: He is amazing.
Speaker 2: Is that the Rage Against the Machine version of what I sound like? What is that? Russell, come on.
Speaker 4: It's gonna work, miss Band, eventually, I think. Try and get the boots on now.
Speaker 0: What are you gonna play?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, frankly, I was just gonna stand in the background and just hope that not to get overwhelmed by it all. Now, when did the awakening happen? And the awakening is continually happening, Tucker, isn't it? Because this is the I suppose I will say this. When we have these conversations and you, sort of, say that you're from the right, and like you've, you know, worked in legacy media all those years.
And, and actually, when I'm talking to, like, John Rich on a recent podcast that I you know, we chatted, me and John. I I love John, because I love his intensity. You look at him, he's like he's like, even now, I can feel his eyes pouring into me.
Speaker 1: You're not being Christian enough. I'm trying. This is as Christian as I can be. It's not good enough. Like,
Speaker 4: I'm not like I'm from England, so I don't know what goes on in, you know I don't understand your country. I don't understand anything. You know, if it was like I I thought it was fantastic when Barack Obama became president of your country. Well, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Fort
Speaker 4: Lauderdale. Fort Lauderdale. Because I thought, what a wonderful indication of the progress of this nation. 02/2008, you will recall that there was a terrible financial crash across the world and that the instigators of this economic nightmare, which continues to affect people, not only in this country, but across the world, ought to have led to a reckoning of financial systems, ought to have led to a reckoning of the type of elites that managed to maraud unseen behind visual government. If there is a power that is veiled, it is the power that goes unchecked when events like 02/2008 take place.
I never would have considered myself a person that would have even conceived of voting for a a Republican of any variety. For me, my memories of the Republican party is like George Bush and Cheney and Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction and needless loss of lives of Americans and Iraqis and British people and people across the world as a result of those conflicts. We're now beyond partisanship. I as I said last time we spoke, when Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy joined the MAGA movement, it became clear to me that what we're dealing with is beyond the typical political taxonomies. This is indeed something deeper and more profound.
I feel that there's a kind of attempt to mask in language, lies, and words something very, very powerful, malfeasance, and nefarious behind these bureaucracies timeless, ineffable, difficult to under difficult to understand and impossible to decry. I never thought that we would reach a point where I'd find myself saying, in this election, something has to be done to disrupt what's happening. See me, so when you say like awakening, I I've awoken from being a drug addict. I've awoken from thousands of of sessions and compulsions. And now, where I've awoken from is the idea that people that talk about protecting the vulnerable have any concern other than the maintenance and exertion of further power.
I think it's happening in my country. I think it's happening in your country. I think it's happening in France, in Canada, across the world masquerading under the auspices and livery of liberalism is something darkly authoritarian. And anything that can disrupt it, prevent it, or stop it proceeding, I think, is, vital. So awakening, I think, is like an ongoing thing, Tucker.
Speaker 0: We hear a lot from viewers about big tech censorship, and those reports are more frequent than ever right now. Censorship meaning shutting down your access to information, not lies or misinformation, but true things. It's only the truth that they censor, facts that get in the way of the lies they're trying to tell you. The net effect of this, of course, is interfering in the twenty twenty four presidential elections. That's why they're censoring more than ever now because the stakes are even higher.
You're probably not shocked by this, but the specific examples of it do throw you back a little bit. We've seen screenshots and videos showing how a Google search to learn more about the attempted assassination on Donald Trump, instead push users to information on Harry Truman or Bob Marley or the pope. Anything other than the relevant truth, which is that they just shot Trump in the face. They don't want you to know that because it might help Trump. We've seen examples where Facebook marked true photos of a bloodied and defiant Trump as misleading.
Somehow, those pictures were a lie and then limited their visibility. Its AI assistant explicitly denied the shooting ever took place. This is insanity, but it's at the core of big text editorial policy which is denying the truth to you in order to control the outcome of this presidential election. It's not democracy. We've seen examples where a generic search for information about Donald Trump was automatically rephrased to show positive stories about Kamala Harris instead.
Is there any clear example of election interference? So what do you do about it? Well, Parler has been down this road. Parler's pulled right off the Internet for telling the truth. But it's back, and it's reaffirmed its lifelong, unwavering commitment to free speech.
On Parler, the Bill of Rights lives. The First Amendment is real. You can say what you think because you're a human being and an American citizen, and not a slave. On Parler, users can freely express themselves, tell the truth, express their conscience, and connect with others who are doing the same, and they will not be interfered with. They will not be censored.
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That's why we're on Parler. Our handle is at tucker carlson, and we encourage you to join us there. You have the right to say what you believe, so does every American, and you can do it on Parler. Get the Parler app today. You you became a Christian, and you were baptized several months ago.
It does seem like you're not the only one. It seems like people, while I speak for myself, who grew up in a completely secular world are all of a sudden seeing that there's more out there than our five senses can perceive. Do you sense some kind of some kind of Christian awakening in our society in the West or is that my imagination?
Speaker 4: I don't think it's your imagination. Though you've got wonderful imagination, Tucker. No one would deny that.
Speaker 0: That's true.
Speaker 4: I was listening at the side of the stage to John's beautiful song, and for a moment, I did consider that perhaps I I and I suppose people are pondering this now. Maybe we will be alive for the return of Christ, for the physical, actual return of Christ for the second coming. Because I can't imagine how long things could go on being so subtly Luciferian without opposition. Yeah. It seems like there's a Christian awakening.
Yeah. It's evident the more that I learn, the more that I read scripture, the more that I listen to people that know a lot more than I do about this subject and the Lord alone knows there's enough of them, the more it seems plain and evident to me that we are at some kind of precipice, at something of a reckoning. I don't know what is gonna augur. I don't know what will be born. I don't know what's coming forth.
But something in me believes that it is not the dystopia that is being currently imposed. I think that something significant is happening. Like, when my earlier encounters of Christianity, I felt like it was a sort of a a placebo, a panacea, a palliative, a kind of offering to dumb you down and to distract you. I don't know how I managed to avoid the deep and profound truth. I don't know how I suppose it's because of this, like we were discussing earlier.
If someone says to you, do you believe that God came to Earth in the form of a man and died that you could be forgiven and redeemed and rose again that you may live in eternity? My rational mind coached as I have been by a culture, the apostasy I commit now is the apostasy of a culture that increasingly we're realizing is appalling and disgusting. Everyday there's another story whether it's or tales of Hollywood corruption and debauchery. For me, to go beyond what my rational mind, such as it is, can understand, to believe in order that I can receive, to believe and accept that Christ died for me, that he died for each of us individually, died for all of us collectively, that that's beyond my comprehension because my comprehension is so limited. It's been it has bought me a piece beyond all understanding.
Speaker 0: So, I I love I wanna ask each of you. I wanna ask you to flesh that out and John for your response. You said, you sense that the dystopia that's building and that's obvious I'm not even gonna describe it, but the centralization of power, the intense anti human impulses that our leaders seem to have, the main goal seems to be to hurt people, prevent them from having children. By the way, if someone doesn't want you to have children, he hates you. That's the measure.
When you love someone, you love your children. You want them to have children. If you don't want people to have children, you hate them. Really simple. So you see all of this happening globally at the same time, and you feel like, wow.
In ten years, this really is gonna be a totalitarian global state, but you're saying you feel that's not actually the future in your gut. You don't think that's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I can't believe that that is what's happening, and that's not what's prophesied. Everything that's unfolding, and again, I'm very new to this, you know, like, I've only been Christian six months. I've been under quite a
Speaker 2: lot of
Speaker 4: pressure. But them apostles hadn't been doing it long, had they John? They were out there getting amongst it, spreading the good word, trying to save the world. And for me, yeah, it's very much the Christianity of Revelation, not the Romans 13 that tells you to, obey the government. I don't know I don't know who slipped that in there.
I'm very much I'm very much this is it. This is the this is it. This is what we're here to do. This is it. It's happening.
It's unfolding before us. So can I flip like, what was the question, Taka? Because I've got so excited about the people who fought like that.
Speaker 2: The the
Speaker 1: question we're in an ice hockey rink.
Speaker 0: That that there was a glimmer
Speaker 1: of cowboy boots on the stage. How are we to make sense of this? You're wearing gingham as usual.
Speaker 0: I only have one shirt, and I wear it every day and I'm really happy with it. I wear it fishing, shooting, sitting on stage. It's the all purpose shirt. Highly recommended. No.
We spend our lives, you and I, John is a has a much more decent life, but we spend our lives describing everything that's terrible and where this is going and you offered a glimmer of hope and you said, I can't imagine that there isn't victory.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah. I was I mean, this is what I'm saying. Something so profound and unusual has happened to me. After, you know, I've done a lot I've spent my life hedonistically. I've indulged in epicureanism.
I've experienced a lot of the things that the culture tells you you're supposed to do. Get famous. Enjoy some yes, sir. Absolutely. Are you still are you still expecting an ice hockey match?
It's difficult for me to contextualize that at this distance. What what I would say is, why do I feel optimistic about this? Because my belief in Christ is beyond the rational mind. It is a feeling of a rising God present in all of us. It is the knowledge that I am forgiven, that we are all forgiven, that none of us are pretending to be perfect.
None of us are trying to hold ourselves up to the measurements of this culture, that transcendence and the revelation is available to all of us
Speaker 0: right now. Why do I
Speaker 4: feel optimistic about it? Because something very strange is happening, I think. When I find myself in Fort Lauderdale, sat between Tucker Carlson and John Rich talking about
Speaker 0: Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus. Yeah. He'll work it out. We don't have
Speaker 4: to do anything anyway, do we? We can just relax here and try and force Tucker Carlson into those shoes.
Speaker 2: But you you brought up the word dystopian. You know? And I think in a lot of our minds, we we read the book of Revelation, and we envision what the world must look like when that book is playing out and it looks like a apocalypse movie to us, but it won't look like that. It does not say that. It says back to Noah as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the end times.
And it says in the days of Noah, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. They were going on with regular life. The world was not falling apart. It was just wicked. And Noah was living in the middle of that, so it's not gonna look like some apocalypse movie before he comes back.
It's gonna be they're not gonna like us very much. Anybody that won't submit or bend, to the will of this of this empire that's gonna come up there. I think we're watching being built right now. They're not gonna like us very much, but it's not gonna look like some apocalypse movie. Ain't that interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And and the and the truth is and I'll stop, but the Lord wins. He wins in the end. He he destroys all of them, and we we win with him. So that's the victory. It happens at the end.
You just have to go through the you have to go through the rut to get there.
Speaker 4: Why I like what John Rich just said, if I may tell you, Tucker, even though I know you were here and you're just there and he's there, look. It's like that what I liked is John Rich was describing worldliness, mundanity, banality. And what I'm experiencing is the kind of banalization and desacralization of everything. You're right. It isn't like sort of some roaring and demonic hellscape.
It's a sort of crushing ordinariness. It's a crushing mundanity. It's the crushing of the spirit that your life is sort of trite and rote. And here you are, devour your gruel and stare at your sticky screen endlessly. Like, there is not even that dramatic or barbaric.
You're right. It's the it's the mechanical tedium of a global bureaucracy that sees everything as data, that would patent seeds, that would patent life itself, that would see ovaries as little more than a resource. All things Mundial literally of the world. Worldliness, the flesh, and the devil are the opponents that we must be aware of, John. You're right.
And it is the tediousness, I suppose, that we must oppose through his glory and perhaps through these shirts and those little booties.
Speaker 0: I those shirts are an act of defiance. So I am struck, and you put it so nicely, the sticky screens will keep me up at night thinking about what exactly that is.
Speaker 1: I hope not.
Speaker 0: But, no, I'm I'm praying. I'm praying for you. I'm praying for
Speaker 4: all of us.
Speaker 0: That was
Speaker 4: a joke. I just did a joke.
Speaker 0: Sorry. But I I was taught to believe that when totalitarian government came people would be marching through my town and I'd have to salute them. I didn't realize it would be like a heavy set middle aged woman kind of scolding me about health.
Speaker 4: We read a bit of George Orwell before, Tucker and I. And, of course, if you think of the ongoing portrayal of Trump as a kind of throwback as they continually say that he is a dystopic dictator and that he'll make himself present for life. But, indeed, it is more these anodyne bureaucracies that are vividly portrayed in the right as the Czech writer Franz Kafka's work, who talks about unknowable bureaucratic entities that can accuse you of stuff and you never know quite where it's coming from. Or Aldous Huxley, who writes not about dystopias, in fact, but utopias, where everything is one. Because the key thing is, of course, the replacement of God.
Once you've extracted God, then they are God. Once you have denied people access to the divine then you are free to replace God in their lives. You are free to issue new creeds. You are free to issue new dictums and I, I thought it was very, beautiful in that bit of Orwell from September that we was reading, me and, Tucker before, we was having a chat back there. But, when it says that famous bit from George Orwell, when it, like, he talks about the dystopia that's being created and he says, if you wanna have an image, you'll know this line because you are well educated beautiful people of Fort Lauderdale.
If you wanna imagine the future of humanity, says the leader or a mouthpiece of the dictatorship depicted in 1984. He says, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. Now, that's not like the the jackboot of the very real Nazis. It's the identity of the human face. In whose image were you made?
In whose image were you made? If you can stamp out and grind out the God from man, then you are free to replace them. And what could be more diabolical, more Luciferian, more evil than that?
Speaker 0: Can can I ask how many people in your orbit, friends of yours, people you talk to every day understand what you've just said. Un see no. No. No. I don't mean understand the words you've said, but understand the terms that maybe we're not just looking at, like, a presidential election or referendums against the EU or debates over climate change or war or whatever, but that this is all part of something much larger, a reorganization of the world into what you just described.
Speaker 4: Revivalism has happened before, hasn't it? There's been revivalism in my country. There's been revivalism here famously. And and even in the sixties and seventies, someone was telling me today there was a revival of Christianity. I think it's difficult for I don't know if it's difficult for people to understand.
Count we used to think that the counter culture was gonna provide rebellion, radicalism, anti establishment materialism. That's, in fact, the place where you and I met was I mean, not literally, but I mean, sort of, spiritually as it were, was you don't trust the establishment. I don't trust the establishment. I mean, you know, people say, no. When did Russell get red peeled?
And when, you know, Russell, you are a Republican type stuff. Because I believe in individual freedom. I believe that the government shouldn't get involved. I feel like, you know, wanna be just leave people to hell alone. But, like, but what the the difference is or or the distinction is, I suppose, that, you know, like, I I've adored counter cultural figures that have come out of your country, civil rights leaders.
These are, like, magnificent people. Often, curiously enough, deeply religious people, that are willing to sacrifice their lives for a higher good. I think it's hard for people in my circle, as you ask, to, equate Christianity, which has somehow been, through slander, through hyperbole, through blasphemy, reduced to something I don't know quite what it's been reduced to. Banalized, criticized, blasphemed against. I don't think people recognize that within it is the key, the door, the path, the light, the bread, the vine, the salvation that we require is all embedded there.
You can't, sort of, solve it within this paradigm. You can't solve it with this versus that. You can't solve it with rationalistic and materialistic means. I'm not surprised that they still look to the counterculture. That they still look to, no disrespect, men with guitars because maybe you are the man with the guitar to do it, John.
Like, but they're still thinking that the culture is somehow gonna generate some solution. But, for me, it's not that. It's so, but I can hardly condemn people for not recognizing that the solution is to be found in Jesus Christ, our savior. Because, you know, six months ago, I'd not been baptized. Six months ago, I didn't know that I was chosen.
Six months ago, I didn't understand my heritage. Six months ago, I didn't understand the simplicity of this. And my prayer is my literal prayer in this moment is that people will join this awakening. People will join this awakening. And for that to happen, I think we have to be so open hearted with love.
It has to be clear, so absolutely clear that this does not run on hatred, that this does not run on condemnation, exclusivity or racism or damning or tribalism. We have to recognize what he taught us. We have to recognize and live his final words. Love God with all your heart and love one another. Love one another.
It isn't easy to love one another, is it, sometimes? Is it, John?
Speaker 0: I'm I love your point about the counterculture. I'm really
Speaker 2: Why did he look at me when I even said that?
Speaker 1: Of course, you have been all fierce. All the time I say, it's not Christian enough.
Speaker 2: I never said that, by the way, Russell.
Speaker 0: Well, I'll say the counterculture is not counterculture enough for me. And I've noticed that all the counterculture figures, no offense to guys who wear black shirts in general, and are telling you how radical they are and dye their hair blue, they all seem like bodyguards for BlackRock to me. And they all seem to be on the side of the defense contractors and Dick Cheney just endorsed Kamala Harris and she likes it. And no. I'm serious.
And they all seem I mean, for all the radicals running, I'm so radical. I'm a trans person. Really? Why does no one mention that they're loaning money at 30% interest in, like, half the country's enslaved by the credit card companies? No one ever you're not allowed to say that.
And when Donald Trump said that the other day, which you're absolutely not allowed to say is, like, well, maybe we should just, I don't know, cap the interest at 10% at some point because we used to put members of the Genovese family in prison for loan sharking at the rates of the credit card companies for charging, but you're not allowed to say that because you're like a socialist or something. That's sick. And I'm I I I guess I even feel guilty just having grown up in a world where, like, you criticize your credit card company was, like, blasphemy. But I guess if you were thinking about what's best for people or flip it around what's really bad for them, being deeply in debt to a bank is not freedom. It's slavery.
And people who are getting rich from slavery are bad people. And I don't know why you can't say that. And when Trump said that, and then maybe who knows, you know, I know I'm sure AEI and all the other supposedly conservative think tanks in DC are, like, issuing frantically issuing white papers paid for by the credit card companies to tell you that he's actually Hugo Chavez for noticing, but it's still true. It's still true. And if you were actually counterculture and in a world where the culture is really dark and anti human, you should be, then you'd be saying stuff like that.
You wouldn't be flacking for BlackRock and Boeing and you wouldn't be psyched when Dick Cheney endorses your pathetic status campaign. And so, like, I don't know. I'm hoping for a revival of a counterculture a little bit.
Speaker 2: Conserv conservatives are the only real outlaws still left in The United States Of America. We're the real outlaws.
Speaker 0: So sorry. And by the way, I'm not a socialist. Thirty percent on a credit card? Why is that not embarrassing? If I lit a marble in a restaurant, I'd be arrested.
But if you charge if you get rich charging 30% on a credit card to poor people, everyone's like, oh, that's so great. It's not great. It's disgusting and you should be ashamed.
Speaker 2: I've got a lot of friends that are Democrats in the entertainment industry that are I mean, big time liberal guys. I mean, Bernie Sanders liberal that are friends of mine. Comedians I know. I know you know a lot of them. Singers, songwriters, people like that.
And and they see how bad things are getting in the country, and they'll call me up on the phone, sometimes even come over to the house and wanna sit down and talk to me. They're so upset about what they see going on, but they just can't get themselves to think about voting for Donald Trump. And so they asked me, how do I get over this, man? Because I just don't like the guy. I just don't like him.
And so my answer has been this, and I think this is an important thing for people to hear because I'm sure everybody in here has family members that have that feeling and neighbors and friends and maybe even kids. Right? We all know all know a bunch of them. So here was my answer to them. The system is evil, and the system is trying to murder Donald Trump.
So who does that make Donald Trump? That makes him the enemy of the wicked. So it doesn't matter if you like everything about him. They hate him, and they're wicked. So that should be enough for you to understand he's your guy.
It's a logical thing to come to a conclusion, I believe. That's how I've been talking to people.
Speaker 4: What what
Speaker 2: do they say? Temple. Right? Well, they say, well, that's a good point. I go, no.
That is the point. I said, Dick Cheney is a bad guy. Kamala is a bad girl.
Speaker 0: Lots of bad
Speaker 2: people all getting together from both sides of the aisle to try to take this guy out. That means he is not part of them. By default, he is not part of what they are for. I think it's a simple argument. I mean, Russell, obviously, Russell, dude, you talk like a thesaurus, man.
I mean, I wish I could record it. I always learn new words when I hang out with Russell. You know, eighth grade eighth grade was a long four years for me, I'll be honest. But, you know, I write simple country songs, but I think that simple answers and logical conclusions will unravel the complexities of these people's minds when they are just tore up. They know things are going wrong and they don't like Trump.
What do we do about it? I go, listen. The system is evil. The system is trying to murder him. What does that tell you about him?
He's the enemy of evil in our country right now.
Speaker 0: Can can I say one thing about just about Trump? If if Trump did no other thing throughout his life but drive Dick Cheney to the Kamala Harris campaign Yes. That would be enough. And I just want to apologize. I want to admit that I spent years defending Dick Cheney, that I was wrong, and that a lot of people I liked and respect defended Dick Cheney.
It's not even about Dick Cheney the man. It's about the worship of violence for profit, which is totally immoral. It's totally wrong, and a lot of us were cowed into pretending it wasn't wrong, it is wrong, and we're not allowed to kill people except in self defense. That's true. That's always true.
And we can argue about what self defense is, but if you find yourself killing people because you're making money from it, that is murder, and we should never defend it. And I don't care what party is doing it. I don't care what they tell you about their motives. That's totally wrong. And I feel ashamed for the countless times when you can look them up on freaking YouTube, which exists just to shame me.
But the many times when I defended that, and I and I do feel shame for that, and I'm really sorry I did. But thanks to Trump, intentionally or not, now we see the clear outline. At this point, 21 after the Iraq war, if you're on Dick Cheney's side, you have no excuse, actually. Period. And now he's with her, and we got, I don't know, Bobby Kenny and Russell Brand.
I think it's a pretty good trade. You were kinda on to the Dick Cheney thing early. How'd you know?
Speaker 4: Well, I thought he came across as a bit evil.
Speaker 0: He did come across as a bit evil. You're right.
Speaker 4: And then, like, you know, when anti establishment then, when I was just, you know, trying to pass my time, bide my time quietly as a heroin addict, was that when people went to war on false pretenses and it was clear that it was to some degree a corporate endeavor and you'll notice that the British have never been guilty of colonizing a planet. Seems that, like, that lineage has been able to snake its way in a serpentine coil. Either side of the aisle, the beast is lithe. The beast moves easily through the institutions. The beast is observable when you see its eyes and when you see its flickering tongue and the dark liquid spittle beneath the ground that it forever plunders and pummels.
The black gold of oil. Ah, Cheney mining onwards.
Speaker 0: It was good.
Speaker 1: Look. I'm still angry when he said
Speaker 4: about when he said that I sound like a theosaurus, and you lot laughed. Now that was hurtful.
Speaker 1: I've come here from Great Britain. I'm trying my hardest.
Speaker 2: Can you do something for me? Can you just say, I just want Russell to do this for me just for my own entertainment. Can you say, to be or not to be? That is the question. I gotta hear it in a Russell Brand fashion.
Speaker 3: To be or not to be, that is the question.
Speaker 4: Whether it is nobler in
Speaker 3: the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Oh. To take arms against them.
Speaker 4: Here we go. By opposing, end them. Yeah. I used to know a lot more Shakespeare, John, but then I started hanging out with Republicans.
Speaker 1: In a crazy attempt of, Armageddon,
Speaker 0: I've I've noticed that people who against who are against war now are fascists.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 0: How does that work?
Speaker 4: If you're pro free speech, pro health, particularly the health of children, if you're pro opposing globalism, corporatism, the excesses of big pharma, the exploitation, an evident and obvious lie that took place on a global scale during the pandemic, The shaming, blaming, condemning, and interning of people across the world. Potentially, the poisoning of hundreds of millions of people. If you oppose this, if you oppose the machineries that facilitated it, advocated for it, but were quite willing to condemn people of all hues, colors, cultures, and persuasions, call people the vilest names, condemn them as racists or worse simply for opposing the excessive force of a state that's supposed to exist entirely of yours in your service during this time. Yes. This was a a large part of my awakening.
If you can't hear the sirens then, if you can't see that that is a call, a clarion call, a harbinger, if you can't see that that is the moment where the skies are darkening, bruised, if you can't hear the trumpets then, then hear them now. For surely, something large is upon us. Surely, some slouching beast is coming towards us awaiting to be born unless we can oppose it duly. Me, what I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not a regular Trump voter kind of guy. I'm not allowed to vote at all actually from because
Speaker 1: I'm from England. Although, maybe, because apparently, I don't need no ID. Could just show up.
Speaker 2: Everybody else is doing it. You should too. Come on, man.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna try it? I mean, hello. I'd like
Speaker 4: I wonder if it only works if you vote for a particular candidate. Then sort of come round again with, like, a
Speaker 1: John Rich handlebar mustache and try and vote again.
Speaker 4: Amazing. I'm just here in your wonderful state to have a bit of fun, To spread a bit of love. I'm here to be lovely to you. What I think about, Tucker, what I try and think about, because you know, I remember I'm a a show off for a living. Like I'm a comedian.
I used to be in films in Hollywood, don't you know?
Speaker 3: Oh, I saw some things.
Speaker 4: Now, I try to remember that I'm here, like, firstly because you asked me to come here and if you asked me to do things, I try to do them because you're a beautiful person and I care about you. You're a beautiful man. And also because I think that you deserve some joy and some love. I'm here because I want to entertain you and amuse you and make you happy and be truthful and authentic before you. It's a great privilege to have that opportunity.
Before everything,
Speaker 1: I was just trying to eat
Speaker 4: in the world but there's never enough to eat here. There is only one bread that can fulfill this hunger. There is only one light that can illuminate the darkness. There is only one vine that can feed us. There is only one door through which we may pass to the true bliss of knowing him.
Even if that bliss involves great suffering, great suffering, in the suffering we can join him, not that his suffering wasn't complete and perfect, not that his suffering didn't do for us everything that he needed to do, but if we can feel in our own suffering, and I know that there's so much suffering. I know from my own and I feel yours too. And I know that the deepest truth is love. I know I know that any one of us could get involved in some petty spat any one of us could rub up against each other the wrong way, though I'd be very careful. This is Florida.
This is concealed carry. I know that the I know that the deepest truth is love. I know that in your vulnerability, in your frailty, in your fragility is where that we can love one another. And I know that this is where the healing can come from. I know that he wants us vulnerable.
That's where his strength can abide in us. So this is why I'm talk to you about previous elections and previous candidates and previous parties and the hypocrisies and their failures because this is an important time. The for when John gives the example of all, you know, like talking to people that are never gonna get down with Trump because a lot of people are watching CNN. A lot of people not that many. Some people are
Speaker 1: but it's still on, ain't it? They're trying their best. Pfizer's got to advertise somewhere.
Speaker 4: I'm saying that there's a particular burden upon us to be beautiful and to be forgiving. It's all it he tells us exactly what to do, ain't it? He tells us exactly what to do. It's not to be ardent and hostile. He only flipped over them tables for a little bit.
We can't just stay in the perpetual flipping of the tables. We shouldn't be sitting at the tables that he flipped over. That's for sure. But love is his main message. Love, isn't it?
And that's a duty and it requires a diligence and it isn't easy, is it, Tucker, to return to that love? Although you, you great fearless, sockless madman, you seem to be able to do it.
Speaker 0: The best. Alright. Now I know.
Speaker 2: You having fun, Tucker? I'm having fun. It's everything
Speaker 1: you thought
Speaker 2: it would be.
Speaker 0: Honestly, you get John Rich and Russell Brand. It's the best. I know, however, that a lot of people have to go back to soggy homes. There are people with fans going in their living rooms right now.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0: I wanna, I wanna end with each of you. I'm gonna ask each of you to do something and I hope you will things that I think you're great at. John, will you play a song for us of your choice? Sure. And Russell, will you send us out, I know it's only been six months, but you're great at it, In prayer after John's song.
Speaker 4: Yes. I'd be honored. Alright. Can I just say before John sings, like John, when John went,
Speaker 1: I'm just a simple singer of simple country song?
Speaker 4: Like, it sounds like like Archangel Michael fighting the devil outside of church. It's not singing like about a heartbreak, is it? Like a Mustang.
Speaker 1: Singing simple songs about Armageddon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If I didn't know you better, I'd punch you right in the mouth, honestly.
Speaker 4: Well, he doesn't know. Absolutely. Advantage of that conceal carry law.
Speaker 2: Y'all know what I meant by that. Right? Well, it's been a a great conversation, Tucker. Thank you for having us up here and all these people who care about our country for showing up. I I thought I'd end it with something we could all laugh about.
Is that okay with you, Russell, since you're, I've become good friends with this guy better by every conversation and text. He's he's legit, legit, legit, man. He ain't kidding at all. I'm so proud of him. We're lucky to have him on our side.
Okay. This is a song called I'm Offended, and it goes like this. It seems like these days, no matter what you say, someone's losing their ever loving mind. It's like they're looking for a reason to have the fragile feelings hurt every single time. My country truck, I gas it up.
You got your fancy Tesla hooked up to a plug. I know you're mad. You think I'm bad? Because I'm breathing free at last, and you're still stuck behind your mask, and I'm offended. You're offended.
Let's all get offended tonight. Come on. I'll order us to clear we can sit down right here and scream and yell and cuss and fuss and pie. Now hang on just a minute. You can't amend the first amendment.
You're offended. I defend it all the time. So let's take another sip. Don't hold back and let it rip because in the end, you'll be left, and I'll be right. And I'm offended.
You're offended. Let's all get offended tonight. I'll order us to fear we can sit down right here and I pray to God. You think that's odd? Because you say he don't exist.
So why are you so pissed? I'm offended. Come on now. You're offended. Let's all get offended tonight.
I'll order us to beers. We sit down right here and scream and yell and cuss and fuss and fly. Hell, Lord, arrest of fear. We can sit down right here, scream and yell and cuss and fuss and find.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Cut your music, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to America.
Speaker 0: John Rich. Wonderful. That's so I wish I wish I could do that. That is so cool. Alright.
Russell Brand, would you mind, would you do us the honor of ending this evening on a prayerful note?
Speaker 4: Yes. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, creator of heaven and earth. Lord, forgive me making this prayer in public. Please, Lord, ask that everyone hears what they need to hear, and I thank you for bringing us together. I thank you for the gift of this hour, of this moment, and of this breath. Thank you for, Lord, for the opportunity for true unity, Lord.
Thank you, Lord, that we may know freedom in you. Thank you, heavenly father, that you came here, that you sacrificed yourself, that we may be forgiven, that you died that we may know eternal life, Lord. Heavenly Father, at this time where we feel fraught, when we feel afraid, when we feel that the true light is being blinded out and drowned out by the false light of intellectualism and materialism, and by the deception and lies of those that claim to care, that mask their true intentions by words, behind words of kindness. Lord, may we feel you. May we feel your presence in this moment.
Heavenly Father, ask that all of the people here that are suffering can feel the warmth for your presence with them now and this moment. And I ask that as we approach this election, with all of this violence that there is in the world, with all
Speaker 4: of the war that there is
Speaker 3: in the world at the moment, with all of this conflict, with all of this contradiction and hypocrisy, Lord, I ask that you show us a way, that you show us a path, because it's only you that can show us. Lord, I'm thankful to you that we are brothers and sisters here together. And I ask that all of you, would you join me now using the prayer that he taught us, and don't be embarrassed if you say thou or you or however you say it. Please join me, all of you in the Lord's prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Thank you, lord.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 0: Any prayer that starts with thanks is a good prayer. Gentlemen, thank you very much. And thank you all for coming out in the middle of a storm. I appreciate it. The big tech companies censor our content.
I hate to tell you that it's still going on in 2024, but you know what they can't censor? Live events. And that's why we are hitting the road on a fall tour for the entire month of September, coast to coast. We will be in cities across The United States. We'll be in Jacksonville, Florida with Donald Trump Junior.
You can get tickets at tuckercarlson.com. Hope to see you there.
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Ep. 102 Che Guevara was executed in 1967 in a remote Bolivian village. One of the last people to speak to him alive was CIA officer Felix Rodriguez. Here’s his story. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 6, 2024 https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/2024/05/07/587006/
Video Transcript AI Summary
This photograph captures Che Guevara shortly before his execution in Bolivia in 1967. Felix Rodriguez, a CIA officer involved in the operation, recounts how Guevara was captured and the circumstances leading to his death. Rodriguez explains that Guevara was considered a threat due to his pro-Chinese stance, which conflicted with Cuba's Soviet alignment. After a brief conversation with Guevara, Rodriguez learned of the order to execute him. Despite attempts to intervene, Guevara was killed shortly after their exchange. Rodriguez reflects on his experiences in Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and his subsequent work with the CIA in various conflicts, emphasizing the challenges and moral complexities of his role in covert operations. He expresses concern about the current political climate in the U.S. and the rise of socialism, drawing parallels to his experiences in Cuba.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: This is the last photograph of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara alive. It was taken in Bolivia in 1967. It's a very famous photograph, probably familiar to most people watching this. This man standing right there is not familiar to most people watching this. He should be.
He's about to be. His name is Felix Rodriguez. He's a long time CA officer in the operations directorate, and, and he joins us now to explain this picture and to tell us about his life. Mister Rodriguez, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 0: So, it's it's a remarkable picture, and the longer I look at it, the more I think that. Can you tell us where this was and what was happening?
Speaker 1: Well, that was, in La Guerra, Bolivia. That's where he was captured. And I came in with the helicopter with the colonel in charge of the operation, and after a while, I got to talk to him. And I even thought about taking the picture, but while I was talking to him, the pilot of the helicopter came with a camera from the head of intelligence who wanted a picture with Shay. So I asked him, commander, do you mind?
He say no. So we took him out of the schoolhouse and gave my camera to the pilot, and he took that picture.
Speaker 0: What so so you talked to Guevara. What Yes. Of course. What what were the circumstances? He'd been captured by Bolivian soldiers?
Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes. Actually, they thought that he had been killing Africa. But then when they captured Dibre and Busta, who was a a French intellectual and then a newspaper guy from Argentina, they confirmed that Che Guevara was there. So as long as they understood that he was there, they sent a Special Forces unit from Panama to train a special battalion to operate against him because the Bolivian didn't have any experience. And then they sent a couple of us from the CIA to provide them with intelligence.
And the reason they sent us is because we were not U. S. Citizen. At the time, Vietnam was taking place and there were people coming back in plastic bag from Vietnam, and they didn't want any American coming back in plastic bag from Latin America. At the time, we were not even residents.
We are not citizens, so we didn't fall into the restriction of ambassador Henderson. That's why we were able to go there.
Speaker 0: So you're working for the CIA full time, obviously, carrying a weapon, obviously, but not a US citizen? Yes. What was Che like that day?
Speaker 1: Why, first you know, a lot of people ask me, you know, what I thought about Che. Che at the time was nobody. Che became a figure after he was dead. Cuba made him a figure
Speaker 0: Yes.
Speaker 1: After after war, even though they were the one who sent him to be killed. Fidel could not stand him there because Fidel depended on the Soviet Union and Che Guevara was pro Chinese. So when he was in Africa in 1965, 'sixty four, all the weapon he received was from Red China. Then he didn't want to go back to Cuba. He went to hire in the Czech Republic and they had to send people to convince him to go back to Cuba and to give him an opportunity in another place.
But when he was sent to Bolivia, it was definitely mine for him to be killed because the Soviet didn't want him to be any successful because they knew that Che was pro Chinese. And if he took a revolution in there, it would go toward the Chinese. And at the time, the Chinese and the Soviet hated each other very much. So when he was sent to Bolivia, his transmitter was not even working. In December of 'sixty 6, when they had a dinner with Mario Monje, the head of the Communist Party of Bolivia, who had been with Fidel 2 months before, complete the complete progress, he told the Bolivians, garridas that were with Che, if they stayed with Che, they were expelled from the Communist Party.
And then they had a officer in intelligence that they have sent to La Paz Paz, Reyna Montero to help him. And as soon as he was in with all 17 people, they took him out of the picture and told Shea that they had to take him out because his visa had expired. And actually, he was a Bolivian citizen by then. So he was definitely sent there to be killed by Cuba because he could not succeed because it would be a revolution that would be pro Chinese and Cuba dependent on the Soviet Union.
Speaker 0: So he's he's obviously, he's a prisoner in this picture. Does he know when this was taken that he's about to die?
Speaker 1: Not at that time.
Speaker 0: No. So what happened in the moments after this picture?
Speaker 1: Well, in in the sequence, first of all, when we arrived with the helicopter on the following date, which is 9th October, on Monday, we came to the room with the officers, and he will not talk to anybody. And Cornell was trying to interrogate him. Look at he didn't say any word to the point the guy said, look. You invaded my country. At least you can have the courtesy of answering me.
He didn't say a word. So when we finished that, I came out, I asked all his documentation to photograph it from my government, and the colonel ordered his back be given to me. He has some Chinese code books. He has some picture of his family, some medical man for his asthma inside, and he had a diary. It's a German book.
It was written in Spanish. That's his diary. So I photographed all of that. Then while I was there, there came a news that the quick telephone call, and I was the highest ranking officer. So there was definitely the orders to execute him.
We had a very simple code, 500, 600, kill him, 700, keep him alive. So it came 500, 600, which colonel Centeno came out. I told him, I said, look, this order from your high volition command to eliminate the prisoner. The order from my government tried to keep him alive at all costs, so we have helicopters to take him to Panama for interrogation. So he looked at me and say, Felix, my name was Felix Ramos.
He said, you are being very helpful to us, but this is order from my President. He looked at his watch and he said, the helicopter is going to come several times bringing food and ammunition, taking our wound and our dead, but after 2 o'clock, he's going to come up and pick up Che Guevara's dead body. You cannot use TCA him any way you want because we know how much harm he has done to your country. So I said, Colonel, try to make them change their mind, but if there's no change in mind, I will view my word of honor. I will bring you dead body of shade.
So we braced, and he left. And sure enough, the helicopter came several times. That's when the mayor came and asked for a for a picture with the prisoner. Then I start waiting and see what happened, and then there was a a school teacher who came to me and said, why are you going to kill him? I said, why do you say that?
I said, look. We saw that saw that you took a picture of him outside and looked. The radio is already giving the news. So at that that point, I knew it was nothing else to be done. So I got into the room.
I stood in front of us and said, commander, I'm sorry. I tried my best. He turned white like a piece of paper and he said, it's better this way. I should have never been captured alive.
Speaker 0: So you told Che Guevara he was about to be killed?
Speaker 1: Yes. In a way, the way I say, say, I'm sorry. I tried my best. I understood what I was saying. Then he took his pipe out and said, I like to give this pipe to a soledadito who treated me well.
That time, Sergeant Teran, who he knew was the one executing the the live prisoner, burst into the room. I want the pipe. And she said, no. I won't give it to you. So I ordered him 3 times to leave the room.
When he did a look at, she say, would you give it to me? He said, I will give it to you. So I put my pipe here. I say, is anyone anything you want for your family? Then I will say, in a sarcastic way, say, well, if you can't tell Fidel, he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America.
Then he changed his expression saying, if you can't tell my wife to remarry and try to be happy. That was his last word. He approached me with shook hands, we embrace. It was a very strange, unique moment in my life because we never order prisoner to be executed. At the time, I even thought about calling the telephone line and telling the pilot that my government was able to convince them to bring share alive, and I remember what happened when Batista released Fidel Castro and what happened to my country.
So I told myself, look, this is not your word. You are here to advise, not to command. This is the Bolivian decision, so let history run itself. So I let it go the way it was, and that was the the end of it.
Speaker 0: And what happened to Che at that point?
Speaker 1: Well, after we embraced, which was, like I say, a very strange moment for me because he was my enemy at the same time, I I feel sorry for him. He conducted himself with dignity at the end. I left the room and there was Sergeant Terrain. I told him that not shoot to put here down because he man is supposed to die from combat wound. Simi capitaine, simi capitaine, and he left.
So it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Bolivian time. When I left there, about 1:15, I heard it burst, and that's the time that he was killed and executed. So They
Speaker 0: just shot him in the room?
Speaker 1: He was shot by m2 Karabin that was borrowed by the this sergeant from lieutenant Paris who had an automatic Karabin. I understand because I was impressed. And he came in and said, I'd like to talk to you. And, he told me he said, look. I know you're coming to kill me.
He said, no. No. We are not going to kill you. You are worse you almost are life than dead. And then he told me, I know you you you are going you do know you're going to kill a man.
So he opened fire. He shot 1 like this, so it's a bullet that hit here, which is a normal reaction to try to cover yourself. So he was shot and killed. I came back a few hours later with 2 of the captains from the operation, Captain Gary Prado and Celso Torrello, and we got into the room, his head was facing the ceiling, he was covered with mud. So there was dead body of 2 Cubans behind him that have been killing operation.
One was Captain Pantoja and another Captain from the Cuban Army who died in combat. So we embrace in there and Kari Plau semi capitano, we are finished in the guerrillas in Latin America. And I told him, in capitano, we haven't finished it, at least we have delayed them for a long time. So we could hear the helicopter coming and they immediately left. So I asked for a bucket of water.
I cleaned his face and took all the mud out of his face. I tried to clog his jaw with my handkerchief, which I lost in the helicopter with the wind. And then I tried to close his eyes, and it was impossible. They have been open too long. So I tried to close and it popped up again several times, so I gave up on it.
So we took the body, and we tied up the right side of the helicopter. While we're finishing to do that, I remember You
Speaker 0: tied it to the struts of the helicopter?
Speaker 1: To the right pontoon of the helicopter, the right side. And I remember the the pilots that I had, my name was Guzman, who named Capitan, moved forward to balance the helicopter. So I put my hand under him and pulled it out. When he brought it out, it was completely covered with blood. Apparently, it was shot in the aorta.
And these plastic things are didn't allow any water to go through. It was a big pool of blood in there. I look at it. I didn't say anything, but I thought to myself, there are people who have blood in their hands. I have a hell of a lot of fear.
So I cleaned the blood, and this is right side of my pants. I came in, and then a soldier came and said, my older my older father, Schillerz, went to see him. So we stood with helicopter running for maybe a couple of minutes, and there was a priest who came on a mule. He came around. He got down on the mule, and he gave him the last benediction, which I took picture of it with a Minook camera that I have left.
I thought to myself, this this guy was an atheist. He didn't believe in God. Nevertheless, he received the reference from the Catholic church. And from there, we took off, and then we landed in Valle Grande. There were thousands of people waiting at the wrong way.
There was, like, 15 different planes from the press, from the military waiting for the for for him to arrive. So I put my cap and run into the people, so I my picture was never taken. And then he was taken into a schoolhouse, prescription to a hospital, Metro Senor de Malta. Then in the evening, there was a a a meeting, and the general was telling a colonel is if if if Fidel denied this is Che Guevara, we need tangible proof of it. Cut his head and put in formaldehyde.
So I said, Miguel, you cannot do that. I said, why not? He said, supposedly, Fidel denied this is Che Guevara. You are the head of a state. You cannot show the head of a human being a proof.
He said, well, what do you suggest? I said, well, you want some tangible proof of it, cut one finger, and we have the fingerprint from the Argentinian federal police, and it can be checked. So he ordered both hand to be cut. So I left with all the documentation for Santa Cruz, and my other friend is staying there. And then about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when the press was gone, they took his body.
They cut both hands and put in formaldehyde and 2 other bodies, and they took it to the very end of the wrong way and the bury hanging in there with 2 bodies. There was a bulldozer there who was making longer the wrong way, and he was buried right there. Now later on, years later, when Fidel said he found the body on the side of the wrong way with 7 other body, I can assure you that was not jegarbora because he wasn't buried there.
Speaker 0: Amazing. And so what did you do? That was 1967. Let's back up really quickly. You're you're born in Cuba.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 0: How did when did you come to the United States?
Speaker 1: Well, I came in 1954 for school. I came to PerkinElmer Prep in Pennsylvania. I spent 6 years in there, 7th and 8th grade in my high school, and I actually, went off, my last year to go to the first thing that was against Castro was the anti communist legion of the Caribbean in the Dominican Republic. So I participated in that operation when I was 17, 18 years old, and I came back. And then after graduation, I was accepted at the University of Miami for civil engineering.
But before I went there, I've learned there was something going on in Latin America. Against Castro, I joined what later became the Bay of Pigs invasion. I was 19 year old at the time.
Speaker 0: What was your role in the Bay of Pigs invasion?
Speaker 1: I was part of what they call the special forces or infiltration thing. So I was a group of about 36 people. We got into Cuba a month and a half before the invasion to work with the resistance. I came in clandestinely by boat, I started working inside the island, helping with them with all kind of equipment and trying to do an uprising on another area, then actually the Bay of Pigs surprised us because they never told us anything. If they had been able to tell us that the invasion was coming, we had enough explosive to be able maybe to blow some bridges toward the Bay of Pigs and delayed the advancement of Castro's troop, but they never throw anything.
We learned through the Cuban radio. So at that time, I was lucky, I was able to make it through the Venezuelan Embassy where I spent 5 and a half months. In Havana? In Havana. And then finally got safe conduct, went back to Venezuela at the end of September.
Speaker 0: How did you get from the Bay of Pigs to Havana? That's a long way, isn't it?
Speaker 1: No, I wasn't in the Bay of Pigs. I landed near Havana a month and a half before the Bay of Pigs and worked with the resistant. You know, we had a mechanism of the of the internal resistant to pick us up near the highway and then take off to safe houses in Havana. Then we started working with them in there during that time. So I wasn't at the Bay of Pigs at the time.
And I was lucky because I didn't have any idea of any embassy in there, but the lady who was driving me around was close connected to the Spanish embassy. And the Spaniard, Alejandro Vergara, who were in charge of the call propaganda, actually was intelligence, came to pick her up because they were surrounding our building. Fidel very successfully, well, he surrounded every single block in Havana. And if you were a male or military agent, you were not assigned to a military unit, even though you might have been even a communist, they will take you and put in custody. There were baseball fields with 250,000 Cubans in their theater, the capacity for 5,000 people, 5,500.
So they were able to disarticulate internal resistance that way. Even they pick up some of my friend at Kueming and then they release them because they had no idea who they were. But I was lucky to make it to the Venezuelan Embassy and then back into Miami. I actually got to Miami on the very first October of 1961. And then by the end of October, I was back inside Cuba, went back 7 times because I was the only one who left the contact open after the failure of the Bay of Pigs to bring people and equipment in and for intelligence purpose.
Speaker 0: What what kind of equipment were you bringing in?
Speaker 1: Oh, we were bringing explosives. We were bringing AM3, machine guns, all kind of hand grenades, some of those things that they were still bringing in to be able to support a future resistance. But then it didn't work out. Then I decided or actually, in 1962, I decided to marry my present wife of 62 years. I told her.
I said, look, Rosa, I'm going to quit. I'm going to go into civilian life, but I want you to know if there is something serious about Cuba, I will go. So she made the mistake of agreeing to that. Because we got married in the 25th August, I start working at a company for $1 an hour called it's called, ACE letter service propaganda. Then I was improving towing packaging company, $1.35 an hour.
So while I was working there and remember I got married 25th August. In the in the month of October, I got a call from a CIA guy and said, Lou, I need to talk to you after you work at that company. So I went to see him at the parking lot of the, Howard and Johnson at Kraftw University of Miami. I sit in his car and say, Felix, the marines are going to land in Cuba, and we need you. I look at him and say, Tom, if the marine is going to land in Cuba, what the hell do you need me for?
Good point. He said, well, you know how to operate a radio beacon. We'd like you to parachute behind a Soviet missile base in Santa Clara to set up a radio beacon so that our air force can hit with precision the air base. At the time, we didn't have the GPS system that we have today. So at that time, I agreed.
So they took me to a safe house, and my basic training was ramping from different altitude, and the three point of contact, so I didn't break a leg. I couldn't even call my wife. My wife went back to the to the apartment, and and, of course, that night when Kennedy went on national television declared the October crisis. So he realized it was something related to that. So the day we were going to parachute into Cuba, the day the crew shut back down the operation.
And then after dive, we started a job, so then I continued to work with the CIA. For how long? Oh, until 1976 when they retired me for security consideration after Colonel Centeno Nagy, who I was his adviser, was assassinated in Paris. He was the Bolivian ambassador there. He was killed, and they left a sign saying the Che Guevara commando.
Then they also assassinated Major Quintanilla was the colonel then. Roberto Quintanilla in Hamburg, Germany, who was the consul general from Bolivia there, also left a sign saying, commando Che Guevara. And they called my home and say, Felix Ramos, you're next that's the name that I use in Bolivia. That never came out. So the agency proposed me one of those program to change my name and go to another state, which I would not accept because of my kids.
So what they did, they went to my home. They did a security evaluation. They, actually gave me a bulletproof car. They bulletproof my car in in Langley, Virginia. I got a license to carry concealed weapon that was difficult to get at the time, and they gave me a total disability.
I didn't have to work, have a routine of work, and put some iron fences in my house, some security, and then I signed a paper for them. If I got killed related to my job, my family could not, you know, they could not sue them in any way or form because what they offer me that they consider, I refuse to. But then after that, I continue independently to do some things like I went into El Salvador, flying with Salvador in Guarillo as a volunteer with a concept that I developed in Vietnam where I spent two and a half years in Vietnam, after Bolivia. And, he was very effective in El Salvador when he was there.
Speaker 0: What were you doing in Vietnam as a CIA officer?
Speaker 1: Well, that my responsibility was to stop the rocketing of Saigon and and the rocketing of the boat coming into Saigon. We were advising a unit called the PRU, Provincial Reconnaissance Unit. It's a CIA unit who was managed, paid, and controlled by the CIA. It was almost impossible to stop the rocketing of Saigon. And indeed, for psychological reason, every week, there will be 102 point Soviet missiles going to the city at random.
Normally, they try to hit the presidential palace and the US embassy, which they never did, but it was a psychological thing. And we start looking in an area. It was impossible to locate these people until I was able to capture one, who was the bodyguard of Touton, the commander of that unit. And he told me that they were hiding in an area that we never thought of because the tide of the water will come up, like, 17 feet. And what they did, he told me, they had 55 gallon drums.
They soldered 1 on top of the other, so they were sleeping there when the water went up. When the water went down, they rung across the river. They fired the rocket into the area, and then they came back and hide again. Then I started looking in that area, which we never did before. And actually, on the 4th December of 1970, I was able to establish contact with the commander of the unit.
We killed, like, 18 of them. We lost 3 of our PRU. And from there on, we continued the pressure, and there was not a single rock of fire into Saigon after that. And for that, I got equal to the congressional medal of honor from the Vietnamese Armed Forces called the the cross of gallantry with gold star. I got one of that, 2 silver star and 6 bronze star during the time that I was with them.
And then Amazing. Then I got the intelligence star for valor from the CIA because of the operation in Vietnam.
Speaker 0: I'm sure you've been asked this a thousand times, but since you worked there, you worked for president Kennedy Yes. And he was, of course, killed in November of 1963, and countless books have been written blaming Cuban exiles, people who participated in the Bay of Pigs, for being involved in some way with the CIA in that assassination. What's your assessment of that claim?
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you. Most of the brigade member believes, president Kennedy was a traitor. He was the one who definitely he had the responsibility and he was responsible for our failure. Looking from another point, I believe that he was a young president, ill advised, and we paid the price. And I believe that, actually, he was killed because he tried to amend that.
After he was able to pull the brigade out of prison, he opened the armed forces of the United States for the brigade members, became a second lieutenant in the US Army in 1963. And then he promised us a special operation, which was started in Central America in 3 different bases and not many many people know about it. But then he was assassinated. A lot of people believe that it was only 1 shooter. I believe there were 2 shooter.
We have information that there was a Cuban, which is now a retired general, Fabian Escalante, who was a captain at the time, who was in Dallas, and he was the 2nd shooter in the assassination of the president.
Speaker 0: Will you just okay. I'm sorry. Will you say that one more time? What's his name?
Speaker 1: Fabian Escalante. Escalante. Fabian Escalante. And he was in Dallas that that day and then he left. It was something that the and Castro said that that that he knew that Cuba, the United States was trying to kill him.
He would be very careful because the Cuban also had a very long hand. So it wasn't a matter either Kennedy or or or or Castro. I think that that's why he got killed.
Speaker 0: So you believe that Kennedy was assassinated by Cuban forces, Castro? We're Cuban forces, Castro?
Speaker 1: Well, great. So I guess, yes. Remember that Oswald was in the Cuban embassy, for several hours before he went to Dallas that day. And we also had the fact that, with no question about it, that Fabian Escalante was there. And then Tivo denied at the beginning that he was ever in the Cuban embassy.
Later on, when they learned that we, as CIA, we had pictures and movie of him getting into our embassy. Then they said that they went into a very distinct check and they found out that indeed, yes, Oswald was in the Cuban embassy and they claimed that he came in there to get a Cuban visa and he was denied. But I do believe that it was a participation of Cuba in the assassination of the president. And later on, one assistant of president Johnson said that they knew about it. But for security consideration, they denied to the public the participation of Cuba in the assassination of the president.
Because remember, at that time, there were already 4 offenses missing inside Cuba. When the October crisis took place, they already have been able to bring into Cuba 4 offensive nuclear missiles. That's why when Krushet thought and he knew that the US knew that we had 4 offensive they got 4 offensive missiles inside the island, it could bring 20 of them. That's when the October crisis took place. But there were still 4 missiles inside Cuba that were offensive.
So at the time, everybody said, well, they cannot attack Cuba because of the Kennedy Khrushchev Treaty. It was never implemented because the important part of that treaty was that there would be a personal ocular inspection by American personnel in Cuba to make sure that they had taken out those 4 missiles, and Cuba never allowed them to be able to come in to check for that. So that compromise was never the Kennedy crew check was never implemented at all.
Speaker 0: Do you believe the CIA had any role in Kennedy's assassination?
Speaker 1: No. I don't think so. I don't believe so. I know there's a lot of allegations to that effect, but I don't think so. I don't believe so at all.
I am convinced.
Speaker 0: Did you ever come across Howard Hunt during your Yes.
Speaker 1: I met him, after he came out of prison. Actually, he was coming for Christmas out of prison, and I have met his daughter with our team at home, Kevin. And we we run to each other into Sears, so I invited him to come to my home.
Speaker 0: You ran into him in Sears?
Speaker 1: Yeah. In Miami. And I invited him to come into my home. While I am sitting there, I get a call from the chief of station from Miami saying, Felix, by the way, Howard Hunt would be in town. Make sure that you don't meet him.
And the guy was sitting right in front of me. I already had given him my card to use for the 3 days he was in in Miami. So later on, I called my boss and say, shoot. You should have called me late sooner. I say, what?
They said, well, I had Howard Hunt in front of my house. No. I said, yes. You didn't tell me, and and I drove him to Sierra. I brought him to my home.
It's the first time I ever met him.
Speaker 0: Amazing. Why did the CIA not want you to see Howard Hunt?
Speaker 1: Because they don't wanna see make they they believe there is a connection between the CIA and them. Even though Howard Hunt was working for the CIA, but he was head of the task force for the White House with Nixon. Yes. So there was a connection there.
Speaker 0: Yes. There was. Interesting. How did you get involved in the Iran Contra story?
Speaker 1: Well, when I was in in Miami, I thought, I saw what the war was going on in El Salvador. I had implemented a helicopter comm in Vietnam that was extremely effective against the Vietcong in there, of with intelligence going to the area with gunships and then spotting them. I was flying on the low helicopter, spotting them and coming back with TrueBank and get the result. So I volunteered to go to El Salvador in 85, early 85. That's why I went to El Salvador then as a volunteer.
Nobody was paying me anything.
Speaker 0: Who did you volunteer to? Mhmm.
Speaker 1: Who who did you With Salvadorian Air Force. Yes. But it wasn't easy. It was very difficult because you have the US military commander, general Gorman, 4 star general, who command all the military assistance to the area. And here is a Cuban retired from the CIA trying to implement a military concept in his area.
But I was lucky that the vice president of the United States had Don Greig, who was my boss from Vietnam, as his national security advisor, and he knew how effective my concept was, so he helped me, to be able to get the clearance from the State Department and other people for me to go down there. So I start working with the concept down in El Salvador, was extremely successful. At one point in time, Oliver Ngoals had a problem with a plane that was stuck in Portugal that he could not bring in because of Honduran closed the entrance of his plane there because of an incident they had with a plane with EDI resistant. And he knew that I had an excellent relationship with the Salvadorian, so he sent a note to me that if I could get the Salvadorian to hold all of this military equipment from Portugal until he was able to solve the problem with Honduras. So I talked to the to the head of the air force, he sent me to the minister of defense, and they agree.
That's how I got involved in the into Iran Contra thing. They brought the plane. It was storage in there for a for a while. And when they saw that, they asked me if I could ask the Salvador again if they could do the maintenance of the aircraft from the Nicaraguan resistant operation in El Salvador. And that's how we got started in that operation in there.
But really, the vice president had a very little to do in this operation. Of course, when the Iran Contra broke, they blamed that they actually, they came out to say that I was sent to El Salvador to violate the Bolan amendment to support the Nicaraguan resistance and my helicopter concept was a cover up, which wasn't true. That wasn't the case at all. And then they they subpoenaed me to testify in front of Congress. I was the only one who went to Congress without a lawyer and without immunity.
Everybody else went with lawyer immediately, and they tried. Even the White House called me and said, boy downgrade from the White House. They wanted me to bring a lawyer that the lawyer was going to pay for. I say, look. I have done nothing wrong.
If I have to bring a lawyer for what I did, I am in the wrong country. I don't believe I am in the wrong country. So they told me, no. You don't understand. You know you know how these congressmen are.
They might ask you to, push you into saying something that might hurt the vice president, and I refused. So I was the only one who went without a lawyer and without immunity, and, it came out fine. And the only guy that I really don't like at all because after that, his he caused me to testify in his committee was John Kerry.
Speaker 0: Why didn't he like John Kerry?
Speaker 1: He's funny. He was the war hero. To be honest with you, I I I was invited when when he run for president, the Vietnam veteran for the truth, make a big rally in the west wing of the capital. And at that time, they asked me to be one of the speaker against him because what he did to me you know, he accused me of receiving $10,000,000 for the Medellin Cartel for the contract, which wasn't true. You know, I was it was a pain.
It was very hard for my family because I was flying El Salvador, and my and my wife called me and said, Luis, front page in the Miami Herald, your picture when you were in the army that you received $10,000,000 from the Medellin Cartel. I said, you know, that's not true. She said, I know, but here is subpoena from Senator Kerrey's committee. So I called from El Salvador Senator Kerrey's, and I asked them. I said, look.
You don't need a subpoena with me, but send the ticket in Easter because I'm doing mileage, which they did. So I flew to Washington. We have spent 4 hours in in a deposition with him. He was represented by by a man there was a Mitch McConnell was the minority. So there was Robinette representing Mitch McConnell and another guy who represented him.
After we finished the testimony, they wanted a closed hearing. We wanted an open hearing. There was nothing classified about it. I retired in 76. We are talking something that happened in 1985.
But the carrier didn't want the truth to come out, so he refused to have an open hearing. We have to go into a close hearing. When I had the opportunity at the time, when I first came in, they asked me if I wanted to say something. There was all the senator. And, and they asked me and say, you wanna say something?
I said, yes. I look at him and say, senator, this will be the hardest testimony of my life. So why do you say that, mister Rodriguez? I said, senator, it's very hard to have to ask a question for somebody that you do not respect. I either respect you and you are doing here.
Mister Rodriguez, because we disagree with you, we are no less patriotic than you are a senator. You didn't even have the guts to throw your own medal when you were protesting the Vietnam War. Don't believe everything you see in the press. I know that the hell of a lot of better that you do, senator. He said that was a veteran who asked me to throw his medal.
I said, bullshit. It was everybody's perception. It was your medal you were throwing over the White House, man. So really didn't hit very well during that hit at all. And, then I talked to a lot of people who were working.
Do you know that he was never ever wounded in combat? He doesn't have one bullet hole in his body, and he claimed 3 3 purple heart to be able to leave Vietnam. He knew that there was an unwritten law that if you get wounded 3 times in one tour, you could request to leave Vietnam. Yes. And that's exactly what he did.
What he did, he scratched himself. He claimed it was from a from a hangar, and he never got a bullet hole. He got scratches. He always claimed that he had been wounded that time, get a get a a purple heart. The third one, they it was denied.
The guy didn't say it was it was worth it. He had to wait until they changed that guy to be able to convince the other guy to give him his 3rd, purple heart, and that's why he left Vietnam. And then we went with Jane Fonda, talking about the our people in there, was a shame because today, I see how our people treat the military with respect in the plane. At the time when I came back, they would not even wear their uniform because they were called were work criminals and all of that because of John Kerry and Jane Fonda. Cowards.
Speaker 0: So what was the resolution of Iran Contra? You testified.
Speaker 1: Well, at at the end, really, actually, when you look at it, it it was they they didn't have a case at all because the only reason they brought the Iran Contra hearing was because the violation of the Obama amendment of using US money to support Nicaraguan resistant. So what happened is when general Secor did some transaction, with Iran, remember, with Israel, He got the 1,000,000 of dollars from that transaction. The congress determined that that money that he had belonged to the US government, not to Secours. It's still in court today. It's still in court today.
It's over $8,000,000, and he used a 1,000,000 and a half to help the Nicaraguan resistant with that money. So because of that, since the congress determined that that was money that belonged to the US government, they violated the Boling amendment. That's how he came together and put up the the the run contra hearings and committees and all of that that he went through. Let me tell you. It wasn't it was, it wasn't easy because after so many questions, I I was tired.
Before that, my son and my daughter went to see I had an FBI agent that always I'd be in contact with them for my security. I learned recently he already died from his widow that my son, my daughter went to see him before I testify in congress, and they told him, look, Carlos. Everybody's telling us if my father doesn't bring a lawyer, he will go to prison. Please convince him, to bring a lawyer with him. So he did he didn't tell me that.
He came to see me and say, look, Felix, you're going to testify in congress, and you're going to be on the road. You cannot lie. No matter what happen, you cannot lie because if you do, they will ask the same question 15 different way, and they they will know. Now if there is some sense you are not very happy with it or you are not very content with it, you don't remember. You don't remember they cannot do anything, but don't lie.
I never lied, so I came out fine.
Speaker 0: How did you have you ever wondered how you lived so long having been through all these conflicts?
Speaker 1: I believe, honestly, I believe in God. For example, when I was in Vietnam, my boss, Ted Shockley, who was a lay in with the CIA, used to tell people that I had a death wish, that I wanted to get killed, which was not at all. I was so convinced, Tucker, that no bully was going to hit me. God gave me that conviction. So I could sit in the helicopter to see, they'll shoot you my head.
Come on. Shoot you them because I knew he wasn't going to touch me, and I never did. So it wasn't our bravery. It was my conviction that I knew he wasn't going to to hit me.
Speaker 0: A married man at that point.
Speaker 1: Yes. I have 2 kids already.
Speaker 0: And you were never worried about getting killed?
Speaker 1: I knew I wasn't going to get killed, not even wounded. I didn't. I have people wounded next to me. My helicopter took 30 different occasions to fire, took hits in the helicopter body, but I was shot down 5 times, Vietnam going in El Salvador for an ambulance.
Speaker 0: You were shot down 5 times? Yeah.
Speaker 1: But, you know, my back is in bad shape, but probably I'm still alive, and I believe it was God who definitely was his enemy. That's why I didn't worry about it. Not that I was brave, I was convinced nothing was going to happen to me.
Speaker 0: But you're right, it turned out.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 0: What was Ted Shaklee like?
Speaker 1: Oh, he was was the most intelligence man that I have ever met in my life. He was the one responsible for the Berlin tunnel. Yeah. He was stationed in Miami, and we became close friends until the day he died. And we were close.
We used to meet, he was the head of a station in Saigon and we developed a personal friendship. He's the one who one time told me not to fly and they had a defector in Paris who has said that they were hijacked or going to hijack the plane of the Cuban involved in the assassination of Che Guevara. So Charlie called me at the station and said, you are going to Miami on vacation, don't fly into Miami. So what I did, I flew into Atlanta, rent a car, went back, spent the Christmas with my family and back. Then I went back to Atlanta on the 6th January of 1971, and, I had a cousin in there.
So she was at the airport. I had a flight who left Atlanta, Houston, Houston, San Francisco. I had, like, 4 hours over LA in San Francisco. And then I found out there was another plane stopping in Dallas 1 hour later, so I changed that to stay with my cousin one more hour. So when I got to Vietnam, nobody was waiting for me.
So when I got in there, I went to the to the hotel. Our hotel changed. When I got to the embassy, they told me I said, what are you doing here? I said, what do you mean? I supposed to arrive today.
Nobody was waiting for me. I said, no. No. No. Your plane was hijacked to Cuba.
We're trying to find out how the hell we can get you out of there. That's why when we went, the agency sent me and my family to Argentina in 1970 1973, they got our passport. Our passport of my wife and I said place of birth, Colorado, in the state of Cuba for that trip. So in case I got hijacked, they could claim me as a US citizen. That was the only time I was a US citizen by birth for about 8 years.
I have copy of the passport.
Speaker 0: Amazing. Did you ever meet Fidel Castro?
Speaker 1: No. I wish I had because he would not be there, a long time ago.
Speaker 0: What what do you think of Cuba now?
Speaker 1: It's a disaster. I don't know how they are still be able to stand the way it is. The economy is completely on the ground. I I cannot understand the people who talk about socialism, who talk about progressive. Look.
Whatever socialism touched, completely destroyed. Look what happened to Cuba, what was one of the most prosperous island in 1958. You know, the dollar, if you know, it was the Cuban peso was higher 3¢ than the dollar. You wanted to buy Cuban peso, you had to pay $1.3 for the Cuban dollar. The same as the Dominican Republic, it destroyed the economy.
Look at Venezuela, the richest country in America with the reserving oil, unbelievable, and look how it is. Whatever they touch, they destroy it. That's what I have been very concerned in this country of all of these people talking about socialism, all of that. They have no idea what it is. Unfortunately, we have a lot of professors in the university that inculcate this idea that they have never lived through.
That's what I tell people when I talk to them. People can tell you what socialism is when they had never lived it. When you live in there, you see what happened to you, you understand what socialism is, And we know because we suffered that in our own flesh.
Speaker 0: Have you ever been back?
Speaker 1: No, I can't. I have 3 deaths in absentia. Well, I was back the last time. It was in 1965 when I was with a team to photograph a Soviet submarine base in La Cijuan Air in the Isle of Paine. But that's the only time that I've touched Cuba and saw it, but I never I How
Speaker 0: did you you said you you went back a number of times
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: On in a clandestine way. How did you get in?
Speaker 1: By both clandestinely. We had people working for us in the inside who will contact us at the at the at the call time.
Speaker 0: Trusted them? You were never worried about being betrayed or executed?
Speaker 1: We had to trust them. We had no choice. There were there were people that were betrayed later on, but I was lucky as hell. Really, I was very, very lucky.
Speaker 0: Did they get out, the people who helped you?
Speaker 1: Some of them then some of them are still living in there. But they have been but nobody knew that they work or or or or help us.
Speaker 0: Did you just go from Key West? Or how did you
Speaker 1: Well, it was in between Key West and with Key West and Islamorada. They will a boat will pick us up in there, take off to the mother boat, and then we'll take off for Cuba from there for the operation inside Cuba, in and out. Only one thing from the Bay of Pigs people who entered Cuba, only one thing made it by air. They were parachuted in, only 5 people. Most of us entered by boat clandestinely, and there was a group of about 5 or 6 who came in through the airport with their real names, with cover story that they were coming back from American universities, but most of us came in clandestinely by boat.
And the mechanism was we will go to the coastline, there was a reception team there with lights. We disembarked. Then there was a guy who take us maybe 4, 5 kilometer into the main highway where the car from the movement will pick us up and take us to a safe house in Havana. We had to trust them. We had no idea who they were, but we were lucky.
Speaker 0: Was anyone from the CIA, any of these teams ever caught?
Speaker 1: No. Personal from the CIA itself, they never participated in SAIC. They didn't allow them to do that. There were only Cubans involved in that operation. We're CIA case officer.
We don't call it the controller, we call it the case officer.
Speaker 0: Were any of them ever caught though by the Cuban government?
Speaker 1: No, no, no. Our people did, yes. From my infiltration team, 4 of them were executed by firing a squad. One of them was killed defending a safe house and there were 17 of them who spent 20 years in Cuban prison because when the treaty came to release the brigade from prison, our people, even though we were brigade member, were not considered who landed the military. They consider us a spy because we gained the reconnoctively.
So we were not part of that exchange of prisoner. So my people from my infiltration thing has spent 18, 20 years in prison before they were released.
Speaker 0: Did they come to the US when they got out? Amazing. So a lot of people got caught in captivity. Yes.
Speaker 1: It was a disaster.
Speaker 0: What do you think of the CIA now?
Speaker 1: It's not what we used to be. I recall in my time we were given a task, we would run an operation if there is any problem, then we went to our legal service, the counsel to ask how we solve the problem. Because of the situation that happened in the past that a lot of agents have lost their retirement, all of that because of operation, now they go when they are given a mission, they go to the lawyer first and find out what they can do and what they cannot do, and they put a tremendous disadvantage on us. In my in my time, you could do a hell of a lot of more things than they can do right now. They try their best anyway.
But, and and the guy who really destroyed the CIA was Jimmy Carter. How? Well, I talked to Shagre. He told me about it. We had very high penetration, for example, in Al Qaeda and in Sandero Luminoso.
If we had those people, 9eleven would have never happened. When Jimmy Carter became president, he asked for a briefing from the CIA. He wanted to know how those penetrations were handled. So Shockley was the one who in charge because he told me personally, he was the one in charge to brief the President Carter on that. So he told the President that you have a guy who infiltrate into a cell.
The guy was coming to more and more access higher in the organization. He will come up, for example, with an operation that we're going to do a terrorist operation. So there is a very pragmatic group who will study the operation, what's very minimal damages they will allow the operation to go through because if every time you have a guy inside and the operation failed, they know somebody is infiltrating there. So there you have to allow some operation to go through with minimal casualties. Given Cartesay, it was immoral to do that.
So he actually ordered all of those penetrations to be terminated. So people that took years to be able to be able to get in and set them inside the nets like in Al Qaeda or Sendero Luminoso, they had to be told, sorry, we cannot support you anymore. We recommend that you leave the cell. We cannot pay you anymore and terminate it. So we lost all of our eyes and ears inside the terrorist group with Jimmy Carter, and he put a lot of emphasis on satellite.
Satellite doesn't get inside behind the head of people. So we lost that. That's why we had 911. We had the Cerro Luminoso take over the embassy of Japan in Peru at that time. If we had what we had before, that would have never happened.
Then it was authorized, but it would take a long time to rebuild that type of situation.
Speaker 0: The CIA, it seems more a military force now than it once did. Do you think that's accurate?
Speaker 1: No. We have we have always we have the CLA and the CIA military branch. We have our own, for example, Air Force. We have our own Navy with different specific equipment that nobody else has, have been developed for a special operation with us. And there is a paramilitary apparatus that we shall only belong to, we used to call it Special Operation Division, now they call Special Activity Division that operates paramilitary operation in areas that and they do a tremendous job.
That's the thing that we never get recognized for it. People are blaming the CIA is blamed for many things that happened, but there is a lot of success that can never be told. We have saved a lot of life in the process and nobody knows about it and nobody can take credit for the situation. We have in our world several stars with more than 100 people have died within the CIA. Most of them doesn't even have the name, and they're only one star because they were so classified that the name never appeared.
So you have to be dedicated to do that because you which is one of the organization that receives very little credit and do a lot of.
Speaker 0: Where do you think this country is going right now?
Speaker 1: Well, I hope it changed. A lot of people used to say in Cuba, it could not happen here. Other people say it could not happen in the United States. After what happened in Cuba, where I have seen other places, I am concerned about this country. I hope that we can regain the presidency because this thing goes to what they call socialism, it will be a disaster.
We would never know United States where it is. I am concerned because I know what happened in Cuba. And unfortunately, we have a lot of professor, a high level university who are leftist, brainwashing the head of a lot of our bright student and that's a very concern to me.
Speaker 0: Have you seen that in other countries?
Speaker 1: Well, more than the United States and any place else. They have concentrated in real estate because they know the importance of the United States and and that's what it's really concerning this this country here. I think this coming election is very important. I don't know who the hell is going to be the president, but if the the Democrat get the power in there and they continue the way they are with the open border and all of that, in a few years, we will know know the United States where it is now today. We can lose the United States.
I never thought I could say that, but now I can say that I'm very concerned.
Speaker 0: How can it be stopped?
Speaker 1: Well, I hope that people realize what's going on. We're always going on in the United States, and people realize and vote intelligently this time, see the reality of what's going on. And I want to say more, I think people intelligent would be able to understand that.
Speaker 0: Looking back, my last question, if you could do something different with your life, would you have? I mean, it seems like you got into this kind of amazing line of work almost accidentally?
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be a civil engineer. Really? Really. My grandson now is in the 3rd year of civil engineering at the University of Washington, and George Washington University, but that's what I wanted to be. And, look, history took me to a different place.
I was never able to graduate from high I graduated from high school from Eareford University. My son, my daughter did, my wife did when she was at Bard University, but I didn't. But I don't complain. I think that I had a a life that I can see myself and and think that I contributed a little bit to have a better world that we have today, and I I don't regret what I did. No one bet of it.
Speaker 0: Well, you certainly had the most interesting life of almost anyone I've ever talked to, so that's Thank you, sir. Worth a lot. Mister Rodriguez, thank you very much for telling us all that. Pleasure. Free speech is bigger than any one person or any one organization.
Societies are defined by what they will not commit. What we're watching is the total inversion of virtue.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1787603250822193463
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@conspiracydup - ConspiracyDailyUpdat
Ep. 104 What’s it like to work for Jeff Bezos? Here’s an account from someone who sells for him. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 10, 2024 https://conspiracydailyupdate.com/2024/05/11/587470/
Video Transcript AI Summary
Buying products on Amazon is easy, but many sellers struggle under the company's policies. A documentary titled "Amazon Market Power Monopoly" reveals how Amazon controls pricing, forcing sellers to keep prices low or risk losing visibility on the platform. For instance, if a seller lists a product cheaper elsewhere, Amazon can remove their "buy box," drastically reducing sales. Sellers like Molson Hart, who runs an educational toy company, face constant pressure to raise prices due to Amazon's increasing fees, which also affect their pricing on other platforms. With Amazon controlling about 50% of the online market, many sellers feel trapped. Despite challenges, some sellers still find success, but the landscape is increasingly dominated by foreign competitors, particularly from China, who benefit from lower costs and fewer regulations.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Buying products on Amazon.com is a little bit like masturbation. Not everybody admits to it, but honestly, you suspect it's pretty common. It's just so easy. But what exactly is Amazon dotcom do? How did Jeff Bezos get so rich?
The details are unknown to most people, even frequent users of the site. When your documentary takes a closer look at what Amazon does at its business practices and what those practices do to the people who try to make a living selling their products on the site. The documentary is called Amazon Market Power Monopoly. So the filmmakers interview Amazon sellers who say they are barely keeping their heads above water because of the company's policies. Those policies tell them exactly how much they can charge for their own products.
So So take a look at this clip from the movie. It shows a German businessman who makes and sells children's beds and does nearly all of his business on Amazon dotcom. He says the company puts pressure on him to keep his prices low as low as possible to keep customers from buying that same product on another site such as eBay. If Amazon finds out that he's selling his products cheaper on another site like eBay, they will punish him by making his products very hard to find on Amazon. And they do this by taking away what is called his buy box.
The buy box is the area you click on the product page to make a purchase. If there's no buy box, customers tend to leave and buy it somewhere else. That sounds confusing. Watch the man demonstrate exactly how this is done.
Speaker 1: His most important online shop window at Amazon, the so called buy box. The framed box around the shopping cart field.
Speaker 2: So this whole box here that's just called the buy box, and you can see the add to cart button here. And if I click on it now, then I have this in the shopping cart, and I can buy the item.
Speaker 1: But Marco Schacht can also lose the buy box for his beds. For example, if his prices are not competitive.
Speaker 2: It means for me with buy box, I can sell. Without buy box, 95 to 99% of the sales are gone. It's 8 and the buy box.
Speaker 1: Who gets the buy box is decided by Amazon alone. Marco Schoch shows us. So
Speaker 2: I'm going to change the price to €349. And we will see that in about 15 minutes, the buy box here is gone.
Speaker 1: And indeed, after 15 minutes, the buy box has disappeared. For customers, it now seems as if the item is not available at the moment.
Speaker 0: In other words, Amazon decides what you charge for your products. And if you don't obey, they will shut you down, but in the most passive aggressive corporate way. They just removed your buy box. It's fascinating, and there's a lot like that in this film. It goes on to follow the business of a man called Molson Hart.
He's a CEO of an educational toy company that does most of his business on Amazon. The film crew was there when Hart learned that Amazon would once again raise its fees on him. So in order to turn a profit, he was forced to jack his prices. Watch.
Speaker 3: We are probably gonna have to raise prices. Why? What's going on? So, what they what Amazon did is they, increased all the fulfillment fees by about 5%. So, if you look over here, we got an email, shipping brain flakes is gonna be 5% more expensive.
Speaker 1: Now, the Texan has to recalculate.
Speaker 3: So it's the same In order to keep our profits at the same level, we're gonna have to raise the price by, you know, 50¢. So maybe we're gonna go to 1799, up from 16.99 and
Speaker 1: The problem, if he increases on Amazon, he must also increase the prices of his products on Ebay, Walmart, and even in his own web store, although they are not affected by the fee increase. If he doesn't do that, Experian shows that he loses the buy box on Amazon.
Speaker 0: Oh. So it's not really a free market tactic. If they're forcing you to raise your prices on other platforms, it's a monopoly tactic, and there's a difference. That's not the free market you just saw. That's how monopolies operate.
Molson Hart knows that very well. He's lived it. He's the man you just saw in that clip, and he joins us now. Molson Hart, thanks for joining us. The clip we just played is a fair representation of your life as an Amazon
Speaker 3: seller. Yeah. That's absolutely a fair representation of our life as an Amazon seller. If your products are cheaper off Amazon than they are on Amazon, then you lose all your sales on Amazon, which is a big problem for us because 90% of our sales come from Amazon.
Speaker 0: So what you're saying, I think, is that Amazon sets the price market wide, not just on its own site, but on other sites. So that's is is that correct?
Speaker 3: In a way, that's true. Right? So if you look at the statistics, and a lot of people have a different statistics out there, Amazon controls roughly 50% of the whole online ecommerce market, depending on how you calculate it. And for us, since 90% of our sales come from Amazon, and since Amazon is more expensive to sell on than other platforms like eBay, Walmart, or even our own website, Amazon, in a way, kinda does set the price. Because if we price our products lower off of Amazon, because those, those off Amazon platforms are cheaper than Amazon, we lose 90% of our sales on Amazon.
So we have to constantly keep our prices up off Amazon. And we can't we can't lower our prices on Amazon to the costs off Amazon because then we'll end up losing money because Amazon is more expensive to sell on than it is to sell on off Amazon.
Speaker 0: It's fascinating. Thanks for watching the episode with Molson Hart. It gives you a sense of what Amazon is really like, worse than you thought. So if you don't wanna use Amazon and up till now, you haven't had much of a choice because it's effectively a monopoly, well, now you don't have to because there's an option. A new service made for you, it's called Public Square, and they're building a brand new way of conducting commerce, selling and buying that goes back to America's roots.
So far, they have over 75,000 small businesses from this country offering their products and services. So if you're a small business owner hoping to sell handcrafted goods, guns, ammo, fresh food, household essentials, whatever, Public Square is perfect for you. It's a great place to do that, to sell what you make. And it's also a great place to buy what other people make, and it's easy. You can add your business in less than 10 minutes for free and and sell your products nationwide.
Furthermore, go to public square slash tucker. They're a sponsor of this program and we're happy to have them. Proud, in fact. So if I can just ask a stupid question, how does Amazon know what you're doing off Amazon?
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a great question. So I think they do it 2 different ways. The primary way they do it is basically by using an algorithm that just like scrapes the entire Internet, looking at prices on Walmart, looking at prices on Ebay. And in in the video that you showed in the documentary, that's how, Amazon was able to shut down that person's product so fast within 15 minutes.
So the algorithm is kind of, like, monitoring the whole Internet to see if prices are higher or lower on and off Amazon. And it it might also be possible for there used to be, like, a button on pages on Amazon where consumers could report, like, a better price elsewhere. So there might be, like, a human component as well, but it's mainly just an algorithm where they're watching prices on and off Amazon.
Speaker 0: But they know when you've been sleeping, they know when you're awake. I mean, this
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like a
Speaker 0: they're part of the surveillance data. I mean, they're you wouldn't imagine because you're selling on Amazon that Amazon would be watching your behavior in other places. Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah. To my mind, it's totally unnecessary, and there's there's no need for this policy. They used to contractually enforce this. So there used to be a line in the contract that sellers signed with Amazon that would say that you would not sell your products for less off Amazon. And then there was, like, kind of like a a regulatory kerfuffle in Europe, and they ended up removing that from their contracts, but then they maintained the policy, algorithmically.
And, in 2019, I I wrote an article about it, and I can kinda explain why it's so hard to get these kinda narratives about Amazon. But I wrote an article about it, and that article ended up getting wrapped up into some into, like, an FTC lawsuit, the state of California versus Amazon, and that's why we're talking about it today.
Speaker 0: What just back up a a sentence if you would. What do you mean it's so hard to get that story out?
Speaker 3: So, like, as I said, right, 90% of our sales come from Amazon.
Speaker 0: Right.
Speaker 3: And, no one in their right mind, like, wants to bite the hand that feeds them. Right? So the people who know most about Amazon are the sellers who are selling on Amazon, like like my company. Right? And so we're when people speak up, you're you're taking you're taking some risk.
I I try to be fair regardless of whether or not I'm being critical of their policies. I think they're a good company with great people with some some bad policies. Right? So don't wanna bite the hand that feeds you. And then the second thing is, my company, you know, all companies that sell on Amazon, they sign a contract that says that, you know, you're not gonna make public statements about Amazon.
You're not gonna speak to the pest, to the press without, express written permission from Amazon. Right? So those are two reasons for the people who know most about Amazon to not speak about Amazon. And then you also have to remember that Amazon is, like, really big in the documentary media space because Amazon has its own Netflix. Right?
They have Prime Video, they have their own Hulu. So if you're if you wanna make a documentary about Amazon, you have to like think carefully about, you know, what's that gonna do to your career going forward. I'm not saying Amazon does this, but, you know, you may not be able to sell a film or documentary to Amazon in the future. And so, you know, those are the reasons why it's kinda hard to get this information out there.
Speaker 0: How long do you think before they get their own defense department?
Speaker 3: Defense department like, the Department of Defense or, like, lawyers?
Speaker 0: I mean, you're you're describe you're describing a company that's a lot and, of course, we all sort of know this on some level, but that's a lot more powerful and a lot more willing to flex its power than maybe some of us imagined just 10 years ago.
Speaker 3: Well, okay. So, like, I I I am a witness in I don't know if I'm technically a witness, but I've been pulled into those two lawsuits. The FTC in a bunch of states versus Amazon and then the state of California versus Amazon. And, like, generally speaking, I can say this about my interaction because I'm bound by, confidentiality in terms of what I can say with the lawsuits.
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like, it is an attorney's job to discredit someone who, doesn't help the the attorney's case. Right? And, that is that's pretty much what I have been well, that is what is often experienced in lawsuits of this kind. And, you know, I went through 16 hours of depositions, 8 hours from the state of California, 8 hours from Amazon. I spent, like, you know, 20 or 30 hours collecting documents, and it's been a very painful, time consuming, and expensive experience for me.
Amazon does a lot of things, but I don't know. I mean, they got the drones, but I don't I don't think they're selling weapons, quite yet.
Speaker 0: Right. I well, I didn't think they'd have a movie studio and be able to control coverage of their own company a few years ago. So, you know, you never know where these things are going, Molson Hart. But I just wonder since you obviously thought about this in in larger terms because you've been involved or witness to these lawsuits. Mhmm.
I mean, isn't this aren't we approaching the definition of a monopoly? So business is something that controls its silo you know where it operates a monopoly is a business that controls an entire market and kind of what you're describing is a company that just controls online commerce The pricing.
Speaker 3: Amazon with its weight and the the way that they keep on jamming fees down sellers throats. And this isn't just about me as someone who sells on Amazon complaining about Amazon's fees. Like, these fees end up becoming higher prices for you if you shop on Amazon. Right. They, I don't wanna say that they control pricing on the entire American Internet or the countries where they operate.
But, you know, they're pretty you know, they they have a lot of weight when it comes to where prices are. In terms of whether or not they're a monopoly, you know, that's not for me to decide. That's for the courts to decide. And Yeah. Like I said before, I sincerely not just saying it because I don't wanna get smacked by Amazon.
I mean, I don't. But they are a good company and they have they have great people, but they do have some bad policies. And I think the best outcome would be for them to, you know, stop with the bad policies. And I wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos on Twitter. It got some play.
I think he read it because he's responded to me on Twitter before or x, I should say. And, you know, I think it would just be better if they ended the bad policies rather than, you know, potentially being broken up or something like that. But, again, that's not really for me to decide.
Speaker 0: Well, they're not gonna I mean, he owns the Washington Post, which is the main news source in the capital city. So I don't think they're gonna be broken up anytime soon, and I suspect the post would editorialize against that if it came down to it. So let let me just ask you since it's your business, since you're in this business, who makes money selling at Amazon?
Speaker 3: Amazon? Yeah. So, like, for us, right, so we have a one of our best sellers is Brain Flakes. I got my prop. It's $17, okay, on Amazon right now.
And, after all the fees are paid, we get 7 out of the $17. Okay? So it's $17 on Amazon. After the fees are paid, we receive 7. With that $7, we have to pay rent, insurance, all employees, and then we also have to pay for the cost of the product.
Wait. Wait. Wait. What what wait.
Speaker 0: So the the $10 you're subtracting from the 17 does not include your manufacturing costs or
Speaker 3: Correct. Yeah. So you start at 17, 10 of those dollars, and I can run through the fees.
Speaker 0: Would you mind? Well, because that's that's a crazy number.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Do do you want me to break down how Would
Speaker 0: you mind? Yes. I mean, wait. Hold on. I'm just I'm I'm a little bit surprised.
I mean, I thought they took a VIG of some kind, and they should as they're selling your product for you. That's great. Mhmm. But the fact that they would take the majority of the retail price is stunning to me.
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's more than the majority. And you have to remember that we are not selling to Amazon. We are selling on Amazon. So all the risk is with us. If the product doesn't sell, Amazon has no risk.
They can actually just continue to charge us fees. Not only that, they'll charge us, like, extra double fees for having too much inventory at Amazon. So, yeah, at the risk of embarrassing myself on your show, I will attempt to do some math and I'll tell you how we go from $17 to $7 all the way down to our profit. Yeah. Let's do it.
Alright. So $17. First, in our category in toys, Amazon charges 15%. Okay. So that's 8 so let's call that around 2.50.
Okay? So 15% of $17. So now I'm down to 14.50. Okay. Then we have to pay a fulfillment fee to Amazon.
That's around $6.60. So I think about 4.50 14.50. So that gets me to 8 that gets me to $7 90¢. Okay? So just those two things, the the 15% commission and then the $6.60 fulfillment fee that Amazon charges, I believe got me down to, 9.
I I'm embarrassing myself, but something like the high sevens. And then we have to pay advertising and storage and shipping to Amazon, and that gets us down to around $7. Okay? So we receive $7 when one jar of brain flakes is sold. And with that $7, we have to pay our rent, our employees' salaries, our insurance.
We even have to pay for we have to insure Amazon as well. Okay? And then we have to pay for the cost of the product, which is, like, let's say, 3.50. So on the $17, we'll make, depending on what our costs are because costs go up and down, between 3 to $4. So our profit is about 3 to $4 out of the $17.
And there are, like, all sorts of crazy fees I could walk you through. It it's wild.
Speaker 0: That is amazing. That's not at all what I imagined at all. So the the the the strong majority goes to Amazon right off the top. So then who
Speaker 2: Yeah. How how could you
Speaker 0: make a living doing I mean, how many brain flakes do you have to sell to, like, take a week off and go to Disney World in August?
Speaker 3: Disney World's pretty expensive.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It is.
Speaker 3: You know, we we're lucky to to sell 100 of thousands of jars of brain flakes and bigger sets. And so if we're making 3 to 4 dollars, a jar or or whatever, you know, and if you sell a $100,000, you you can you do have money to pay salaries and rent and all that stuff, and you can maybe go to Disneyland, once every 2 years, I would say.
Speaker 0: Does anyone get rich selling that you know of get rich selling on Amazon?
Speaker 3: Yeah. People people still do get rich. I think a lot of Chinese companies have gotten rich as well. Pretty crazy statistic for you. Over 50% of the top sellers on Amazon are not American.
Okay? So you so in the US marketplace, like, let's say, 52% of the sellers are non American. And of that 52%, the the top sellers are that of that 52%, they're predominantly Chinese. And the Chinese sellers, even though we're selling in the United States, even though it's our country, we should understand how marketing works here, it's our language. They they they just clean up.
They do very well in terms of market share. They don't all make money, but, many of them do. It's still possible to make money on Amazon.
Speaker 0: You're not even describing the source of manufacturing. I mean, I think the number would be a lot higher than 52% if you were if you were measuring where the stuff was actually made. But you're talking about the sellers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That that's such an excellent point. So if you go back to, like, the 1970s, 1980s, we had a lot of manufacturers in our country, we were making things. All those factories shifted largely to China, some to Mexico, overseas generally. What's going on now is that the Chinese, and other countries to some extent, are kind of vertically integrating and they're taking over the product design and wholesaling and distribution that had traditionally has been in the United States.
So once upon a time, you know, you could buy from an American factory. Okay? And the American factory would sell its product to an American store or whatever. And then we had this transitional period where Chinese factories were selling to distributors who were selling to stores, or Chinese factories were selling to Target or whatever. What's happening now is the Chinese factories are selling directly on Amazon to US consumers.
And the net result of this, because the playing field is, in the Chinese favor, and I can kind of explain why, is that the US, like, wholesale distribution product design industry has come under threat from very tough, difficult competition from China. And so now, like, we lost our factories. And in my opinion, I think we're gonna lose this middle part of our economy, largely, to companies in China.
Speaker 0: How does how does China have a structural advantage in this?
Speaker 3: So for 1, these Chinese sellers, they're selling on Amazon. They don't have to file US income tax returns. They don't have to worry about estimated taxes like like we do. They're close to the factory, so they can iterate on products much faster. They have lower costs.
And, you know, that's enough. If they're less susceptible to lawsuits because they're overseas, and it's just, you know, they may or may not have government subsidies or just like I mean, think about it. If you wanna design a new product, isn't it a lot easier to, like, go down the street to the factory, talk to the guy, work that out, than it is to, like, communicate over video, fly to China, deal potentially with the quarantine, and work that out in order to make something new? So the Chinese have a lot of, advantages when it comes to selling on Amazon. And what's wild is, like, we're sellers on Amazon.
Whenever we get an email from Amazon, like, the top part, it's in English, and then, like, the bottom part, it's all in Chinese because so many sellers are are are Chinese on Amazon.
Speaker 0: Amazing. Are you gonna continue doing this?
Speaker 3: Selling on Amazon? Or Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna for many years, we've tried to reduce that. It used to be 98%.
Usually, before, 98% of our sales were on Amazon. We've got it down to 90%. Percent. And then in 2023, we've gotten it down a little bit lower. And so we're just continuously trying to reduce our dependence on Amazon.
But it's so difficult in the toy space. It's hard, but, like, I like what I what I'm doing. I like my team, and, like, it feels really good to, like, make something and then to make something that's, like, good for people, like, you know, helps spatial thinking. It's an educational toy. So, yeah, I wanna keep doing it.
Speaker 0: And last question, I can't resist. Is Molsonhart your real name?
Speaker 3: No. It's a fake name. No. It's it's real. So, I It's
Speaker 0: like the greatest name ever.
Speaker 3: It my brother's name is Hilton, and the joke is, he's, where he was conceived, and I'm why. My dad used to work for Molson Breweries up in Montreal, Canada, and he saw it fit to name me after the brewery, even though I'm unrelated. My brother was, I can't believe it. He was conceived in a in a Hilton hotel in Arizona.
Speaker 0: Boy, your your parents are heroes. I've never met them, but I like them so much. You're always a consumer about your children. Molson Hart, thank you for that explanation. That was absolutely the most interesting thing I've heard today.
Appreciate it. Free speech is bigger than any one person or any one organization. Societies are defined by what they will not commit.
Speaker 3: Is
Speaker 0: the total inversion of virtue.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1789052798870471092
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