transcript

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Speaker 2:
[01:01] Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, and what a show we have for you today. Russell Brand is here, and this is gonna be unlike anything you've ever seen here on the MK Show. We first met several years ago on my set at NBC, where he came out and at the time was full of energy and a huge star. And even back then, I remember said something like, you're far less polarizing than people tell me you are. And we bonded immediately. He's of course a British comedian, he's an actor, he's a media personality. And he knows a thing or two about being polarizing now himself, unfortunately. Rising to fame back in the 2000s as a stand-up comic and landing high-profile roles in Hollywood films, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, not to mention the animated blockbusters Despicable Me, Trolls and Minions. He appeared on TV shows, comedy programs, and landed on the front cover of The Rolling Stone. How about that? It's an iconic image of him. And he was further catapulted into the headlines with his high-profile marriage to pop star, Katy Perry. Everyone wanted to know every detail about their lives. They were one of the it couples of the decade until the marriage ended a couple of years later in divorce. In recent years, he's reinvented himself as a host and a commentator, amassing millions of followers and content focused on politics, media criticism, and what he describes as threats to free speech, particularly during the COVID pandemic where he was absolutely fearless, questioning government policies, big pharma, and mainstream narratives in a way few were. And it was bold and it was noticed by the British government. Brand has also spoken openly about his personal turn towards spirituality and Christianity, saying that his faith has given him a sense of peace after years of struggling with various forms of addiction about which he is very open. But there have been some serious allegations against Russell too, and he is set to go on trial in the UK later this year. We're going to get into that as well. Nothing's off the table today. As the investigations and public debate continue about him, he remains as outspoken as ever. And now he's out with a brand new book. It's called How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. May Take 50 Years of Sin and Serious Fuck-Ups to Get Started is the subtitle, which is pretty spectacular. Great title. Here's a question for you. How many brokers does it take to insure your business? If you're like most business owners, the answer is too many. Multiple policies, multiple applications and no clear view of how it all fits together. And when questions come up, it's not easy to get the clarity you need at all. No one's there for you. But Supersure changes that. A one stop shop for all of your business insurance backed by a team that works with you year round, not just at renewal. You are not a burden to them. They will take care of you. They want you to be happy. And if you've ever stared at a policy wondering what it actually covers, Supersure has a fine print fax tool that translates the legal jargon into plain English so you know what's covered and what's not, it's not some shell game that they seem to be enjoying playing at your expense. Right now, you can go to supersure.com and get a full report on your current policies with no obligation. Find out if you're overinsured, underinsured or somewhere in between. Go to supersure.com. One super agency, one powerful platform, all your policies in one place. Imagine it. Go to supersure.com/megyntoday. That's supersure.com/megyn. Paid for by Supersure Insurance Agency, LLC, a licensed insurance agency. Russell Brand joins me live here in the Red Studio. Great to see you.

Speaker 4:
[05:00] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:
[05:02] Thanks for coming. Okay. So it's been a while. What has it been? Eight years since we last saw each other.

Speaker 4:
[05:09] Yes. I remember where you were in the culture then is I feel that you've previously been on Fox and then you came on to having your own show. I feel like it was you moving from being a news-oriented person to let's have a daytime version of you with celebrities and the culture. But I feel like there's a lot of excitement around you at that time. And so while I was preparing, I mean, mentally and spiritually to come and meet you, I was thinking that both of us have moved through the culture in ways that are comparable, have been very close to what one might call its center. Because I was going to use the word heart, but heart doesn't seem quite the right word for the culture because heart is perhaps what it's most lacking. And it's exciting and interesting to speak with you because I know that you will recognize themes and trends that I've experienced.

Speaker 2:
[06:00] Yes, very much so. I mean, watching your evolution has been very interesting to me because I didn't know you other than as a celebrity back then. But when you came onto the set, you had so much energy, positive energy. You were so kind. And I was in the midst of a terrible year there because it didn't go well for me at NBC. I wasn't liked by virtually any celebrities, and yet I found myself immersed in them. And it was so rare to have somebody come on the set and be so nice to me and so complimentary. And I remember being like, I love Russell Brand. And actually somebody asked me a couple of years after that, who was my favorite celebrity who I met in my time at Fox and NBC. And I said, Russell Brand, because you were so warm. You were so nice. You acknowledged the thing about being polarizing. You said, you're actually quite lovely. And I remember we had a laugh over it. And now, you know, as I've watched you go through your past few years and become this scourge of a certain section, I feel for you because they're doing it to you. Same stuff they've done to me. As soon as you get political, especially right wing political, boy, they come for you.

Speaker 4:
[07:04] Are you able then, I wonder, Megyn, to whilst, because I suppose the impression I had when I met you, I was wondering why I would have a prejudice before meeting you. Where would I have gotten that from? And I suppose there are some assigned cultural figures that you're allowed to like if you're a participant in the culture. And then there are other people that are meant to be kind of pariah or that you're not meant to approve of or like. And I reckon, I suppose, that I came in there as part of a Hollywood liberal set. Even though that kind of liberalism would not be the values that I grew up with, in a way what I'm starting to feel now is a connection to actually where I'm from and kind of who I've always been. That when you get sort of pulled into fame, it does an interesting thing to you, because any sense of deficiency, inferiority, can be sort of temporarily medicated by the attention.

Speaker 2:
[07:54] The soothing balms.

Speaker 4:
[07:55] The soothing balms of synthetic glory. Like if they will give you a kind of, you're amazing. Because in addition, it's not like everybody didn't like you in NBC. You were sort of a glorious enough individual to have your own sort of show and everything. And so, you know, what I'm going through now is acknowledging and addressing how I have contributed to the conditions that I am experiencing and what lessons are available. And they're pretty obvious and pretty evident. The complexity only being in the small portion that is framed by illegality and criminality. There's a very small margin, almost everything else I would entirely agree with.

Speaker 2:
[08:37] Owen, and you've been self-reflective on. I want to talk to you about so much of it because my next phase of you, while I watched you during COVID and I loved all that and I thought you've got he's gotten very brave and very outspoken in a great way. Then came all the allegations, the sexual, alleged sexual assault and rape and so on. And it first came in this UK, quote, documentary. They use that term very loosely there and here. And I'll tell you up front, I was angry when I saw that because they did it in such a compelling way that, especially the stuff about the 16 year old, that I was angry with you. I believed what they said or at least believed that there was enough smoke, there might be fire and said to the audience at the time, the conservative movement doesn't need somebody like that. Like we love what he's saying about COVID. But if this is a guy who's sexually assaulting women and taking advantage of 16-year-olds, we need to move on without him. And felt that anger for a couple of years around you. Because I just thought it was so reckless and it was so wrong. And I knew that it might be false. But it seemed overwhelming, the way that they presented the evidence. And then the more I looked at it, the more I started to recognize, I might not know the full story. Because since then, I have seen what the British government has done, what my own government has done, to certain figures that it doesn't like. And I have an enormous amount of open-mindedness to you are being railroaded and attacked by people for reasons having nothing to do with actual facts, but with your right-leaning stance on certain issues, your growing prominence as a figure in a bunch of discussions that they find very threatening. And honestly, I just reevaluated the whole thing and thought, I need to be open-minded to having been wrong in my initial assessments, and I'm interested in a conversation about it all.

Speaker 4:
[10:35] Thank you, Megyn Kelly, for giving me the grace to address in particular your anger, which is entirely legitimate and recognizable. And the plain fact of it is, is that in Europe and in the United Kingdom where I'm from, the age of consent is 16. And I did sleep with a 16-year-old. When I was 30. But when I was 30, I was a very different person. I was a lot younger and I was an immature 30-year-old. Consensual sex, actually, with a variety of people, when there is a strong power differential, as there is when you're a famous man that has the ability to attract women that I had at that time, I think involves exploitation. I think it is exploitative. I recognized that my sexual conduct in the past was selfish and I did not apply enough consideration, barely any, I suppose, really, to how that sex was affecting other people. The only matter that I would contest while acknowledging, firstly, your right to be angry as a woman, who, given what I know about you and the industry you've worked in, I'm sure that you have personal reasons for feeling grieved towards powerful men, because in spite of, occasionally, men coming to the forefront of the culture, whether it's the most hideous gargoyle villains, as rendered and portrayed, or the more innocuous and party boy style exploits of women, a category that I suppose I must fall into, it's plainly something that exists within our industry, and one might say culture at large. While I was transgressing lines of being a person who was sleeping with people because I had availability to, not only, by the way, waitresses and strippers and fans and people, but like, you know, powerful women as well, or like, powerful professional women that had gravitas and status and power. I was only really thinking of myself, and obviously this is, I have to be careful of contempt of court, because that's a law in my country, where I can't say anything publicly that might in any way influence a potential jury. But obviously, as soon as I've said, I'm not guilty, what I'm in effect saying is, I had consensual sex with lots of lots of women, and you can argue that that's not appropriate. But the age of consent is an important thing. The ability to consent is an important thing, like i.e. drunk people can't consent, mentally ill people can't consent, children can't consent. Consent is what's important. And what fame gave me, and what addiction fueled, was opportunity for endless consent, which led me to be a hedonist and a fool, and an exploiter of women. And that is wrong. And that is something that needs to be redeemed, and addressed, and atoned for. What I'm obviously not only querying, but violently, or aggressively, or assertively opposing, is the idea that this is a judicial criminal matter, where consent was overridden. Actually, what happened was, is consent was directed. That's what being famous, and being, if I may say, forgive me, charismatic affords you, is the ability to direct consent. That doesn't mean it's right. It's actually not right. It's wrong. It's a sin. It's an expression of selfishness and false idolatry. I provided a lot of material through my foolishness and my selfishness around women that meant that when I became not a person that was celebrated by the culture, as a representative of individualism, hedonism, you're the most important thing in the world. There's no essentially acting like if there is a God, you're it. That's what the culture wants you to believe. It doesn't want you to have a higher authority to which you submit that none of us have control over, that we don't actually, we're not the final say on what's right and wrong. God is the final say. Now, I have a trial, so in that trial, I'll have the opportunity, as will people that feel wronged against, to achieve justice. And I have no problem in praying for absolute justice and the best possible outcome for everyone involved. Indeed, that is my prayer, Megyn, because however I look at this or carve this up, there are people that feel hurt enough to participate in this venture. Now, as to the second part of what you're saying, why did it happen when it happened? Because a documentary was made that framed my very explicit public behavior in a particular way. I believe that there is a strong connection between when it happened and what I was doing publicly. I'd moved from being acting in movies and being on TV and writing books and essentially advocating for the kind of cultural values that most people within the institutions of power and entertainment power endorse and espouse, to being quite critical of them, openly critical of the pharmaceutical industry, the British government, bureaucratic agencies that have unelected power that we are often taxed for and are funding. And in COVID, I really started to find a voice for something I'd long felt, that real power is inaccessible to ordinary people. I'd got into a lot of controversy and trouble in around 2015 when I was thinking of running for mayor of London, when I'd said there's no point voting for anybody because whoever you vote for, you're going to get the same institutions. And boy, does that seem apposite and perspicacious now when we have a very powerful and idiosyncratic and seemingly self-empowered individual as the leader of your country, the most powerful nation in the world, who many people believe is currently fulfilling an agenda that is not endorsed by the American public. And many people also believe is not even in the best interests of the United States of America. So if someone as powerful and magnetic and idiosyncratic as Donald Trump can be maneuvered by invisible institutions of deep state international power that are not beholden to the populations of the nations that they are elected to represent, then all of us are participating to some degree or another in sets of powers and interests that do not like to be challenged and are difficult to challenge. So whatever one thinks about this current conflict, one thing I pretty strongly believe is if Kamala Harris had been elected, you would still have this war with Iran in more or less the same way. And that's what's kind of disheartening about it, is that power is going to do what it's going to do. In fact, when you reflect even for a minute, it's ridiculous to think otherwise. Otherwise true global power would have to pivot every four years to accommodate significant variation depending on which political party got elected. The likes of Kissinger, players on the world stage have always known, you need 20-year, 30-year, 50-year, 100-year American projects. And it's very interesting to know that the project of the next American century included we're going to have wars with Iran, we're going to have wars with Lebanon, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan. You can tick all those nations off and most people that have been paying attention have already conducted that exercise. Now, what the pandemic provided, I suppose, was an interesting window where for a moment there was an attempt to assert global control, not even national control. You remember, we all do, at the beginning of the pandemic, they said, well, in China, of course, with their social credit scores and their centralized communist control, they can immediately submit an entire population. But you try that in the United Kingdom or Italy or Lord above forbid, the United States of America. Well, what happened? They were more or less able to assert that level of control in what is superficially a very different political system, explicitly democracy. And yet, when it was the lockdowns, when it was you can't worship, when it was take these vaccinations, people generally speaking abate. The only problem was that with a decentralized media that's not controlled by the same resources and forces as customary media, there were voices like Joe Rogan, most obviously and evidently, who I suppose framed and platformed significant and more importantly, authoritative voices around the vaccine. We're talking about McCulloch, Robert Malone, Jay Bhattacharya, people who blessedly now one positive of the current administration are in government under the HHS of Secretary Robert Kennedy. Now, outspoken critics of the COVID pandemic, people that said how can they possibly research these vaccines? How can we know what the side effects are? Did they even test for transmission? Once these threads start getting pulled, we know that companies like Moderna and Pfizer spent a good deal of money observing and doing their best to de-amplify what they called anti-vax voices. In my country, for example, Megyn, there's a group called the 77th Brigade. They're a PsiOPS organization run by a man called Mark Lancaster, who's married to Dame Caroline Dynage.

Speaker 2:
[19:00] She's the one who tried to stay for you.

Speaker 4:
[19:01] On the very first day, on the very first day that these unsettling and disturbing allegations were made, Caroline Dynage, who works for the government, was ready to say, X should demonetize Russell Brand, Rumble should demonetize him, YouTube. And YouTube, of course, did. Now, when did Caroline Dynage even learn the nomenclature of CPMs and programmatic ads? Well, perhaps it's possible to imagine in a Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi type way, perhaps some information crossed the marital bed, because her husband, Mark Lancaster, runs the 77th Brigade. They are, and you can look at this now online to ensure that what I'm telling you is at least somewhat accurate. The 77th Brigade are a PsiOPS organization that operate in partnership with the military in countries like Syria and Afghanistan, when those nations are occupied, and internal dissent has to be quashed and controlled. An online organization such as we saw in the Arab Spring has to be managed and manipulated. That includes the amplifying, online messaging, intercepting, controlling, shutting down, and all sorts of things that we don't understand because we simply don't know the technology. Normally, PSYOPs of that nature are not able to be practiced domestically. It's illegal. But in the same way that they found a way around surveilling citizens using the Five Eyes, and I understand from Netanyahu there is now a sixth eye in Israel, the Five Eyes get around that problem, the Five Eyes being the Anglophonic nations, Canada, the United States of America, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, by spying on one another's citizenry and sharing information. That way the US doesn't break any of its internal laws about spying on its citizens, and neither of the UK, and yet the information is acquired, the information to control people, as Edward Snowden revealed at the time, they have all the information they need on you, so if in one day in the future you become an enemy of the state, they will find something with which to criminalize you, if that should be required. God forbid that that is ever required in anyone's life, but if it happens, they've got the information. So 77th Brigade were allowed to do that in the UK, because COVID was treated, as some of you will remember, and it was extremely advanced in your nation, it was a kind of military exercise, a kind of war. Now I only know this because I was reading the good work of other journalists and reporters and independent media contributors at the time. And that meant that most of us, a significant number of us, had a very different picture of COVID in real time than the one we were being offered by the very institutions that you and I worked for, Megyn, where on late night TV, you know, the likes of Stephen Colbert were dressing up as a syringe and dancing around, where I remember another late night show by my fellow Brit and, you know, a person I have good affection for, James Corden, dancing in the street, celebrating Anthony Fauci. Who now would celebrate Anthony Fauci in the same manner, knowing he's in involvement with the HIV crisis?

Speaker 2:
[21:49] Trump. Still defending him.

Speaker 4:
[21:53] So I suppose that was a rather long answer, but it was a complex question. And I want to thank you for having me on and giving me the opportunity to address the thing that's troubled me most about this, is I have obviously, through my conduct, hurt people. It's not criminal conduct. It's not right, in fact, to use the phrase that they use to censor people on X these days. Awful, but lawful, I think is what I say. It's not right to sleep around with lots of people. I say that not only as a father of doors, but of a son. I don't want my children growing up thinking the apex of your human power is having a lot of sex with people. Sex is a very powerful thing. It's a gift. I misused it and I understand now, but there are consequences to that.

Speaker 2:
[22:34] Can we talk about, we can circle back on the allegations, but let's just talk about how you got to be you. Because I have-

Speaker 4:
[22:42] It was a terrible mistake, Megyn. This is what's happened.

Speaker 2:
[22:45] Having read more about your background, your whole story came into more clear focus for me. It wasn't an ideal childhood. Your dad wasn't really present. Your mom went through a lot while you were young, and forgive me for raising it so casually, but you also were the victim of sexual abuse, my understanding is. So that's a lot for anybody's first 18 years. How would you describe your childhood?

Speaker 4:
[23:11] Well, I suppose because I have the blessing of being in 12-step recovery now, I encounter people on a daily basis that have suffered enormously, enormously. And I have the privilege of very dedicated, imperfect parents. Like my children have got very dedicated and imperfect parents. My father, Ron Brand, he did his best, but he was on his own mission. He lost his own father when he was a baby, when he was 7 years old. My mother, as you've alluded to, had cancer about 5, 6, 7 times in a very short time frame that was in my childhood. And you're right, I did experience some sexual abuse outside of the family when I was very young, when I was 7, and then again when I was a teenager. Now, because I'm aware that my doting, loving parents, God love them, my dad in particular, he'll be watching this live if he knows I'm on it. But I don't want to prioritize my own self-aggrandizement and my tendency to mythologize myself and to sort of lean into this idea that I come from a humble, blue collar background and I overcame heroin addiction and crack addiction and all of that, some of those things are true. Because now I recognize that who I've always been and who I am now is a broken person, who my parents are are broken people. I was talking to my mom on the phone here and she's like this, my mom who loved me was so happy when I've got to be famous because she thought, oh, look, it all makes sense now that weird little kid that I was raising. Now he's famous and like, look, everyone loves him or at least some people love him. So my childhood was chaotic and it was difficult and it was hard. And I've always, always felt desperately, desperately alone and exiled here and broken. And a lot of the time, very, very afraid and very, very unhappy in the world. And frankly, when I became a drug addict, it was a tremendous relief. And any drug addict watching this or alcoholic will recognize what I'm saying. It was the first time life made sense was when I was able to medicate internally and chemically the feelings of total abandon and loss here. And that's really nobody's fault because I know people that have grown up in care and foster homes and with unbelievable, horrific suffering. And I know people that have grown up in opulence and splendor.

Speaker 2:
[25:18] When did the drug start? Because I know you found acting in high school?

Speaker 4:
[25:22] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[25:22] And when did the drug start? After that?

Speaker 4:
[25:24] Yeah, immediately after. It's almost you recognize in your own life, Megan, two tracks running simultaneously. One where you're being guided by sort of almost, one might say, a heavenly hand and the other sort of pulling you back. I could sort of start smoking weed like any kid at 15, 16. Then it just escalated. I had such an appetite for it. Every single drug. Well, this is what I think might be somewhat significant is that I treated it like worship. Like I worshiped drugs. I worshiped it. I loved taking cocaine. I loved heroin. I was fascinated with heroin before I ever took it. I really thought this is gonna be it. This is gonna solve everything. I was around, the first time I took it was 19. I was dependent on it by the time I was, I reckon 22, 23. I got, my first like real gig was I started hosting shows. When I put on 24, 25 on MTV, this was before I knew I was, they were late at night. I was in night clubs and I would talk to people that it was when club culture was a big deal in Europe and people were taking like ecstasy and MDMA, MOLLY you call it in your country I think. And like people were off their faces and I would say like crazy stuff to them because I was high also but I was able to follow these very surreal and unusual rants. What people didn't know is that while they were on ecstasy, I was on crack and heroin. And that was my first like little go at being famous and having money and not living on welfare. And I exploded into that little life so quickly that I hit a ceiling, I hit a parameter, I crashed and burned real fast.

Speaker 2:
[26:43] To the point where, I don't know, it sounds like it was just prior to this, but you did your first acting gig in high school, then you went to the Royal Academy of Theater. What do you call it?

Speaker 4:
[26:51] What's the name of it? Interado is what you're alluding to. And I still feel a pang of disappointment even to hear its name mentioned. I went to a place called Drama Center, which is a very good school where people like Pierce Brosnan and Simon Callow, and who are these stars nowadays? Bass Bender, Tom Hardy, like good actors went there. So like a very gritty Stanislavski based school. I went there and they loved me, they adored me, then I went crazy, I took too many drugs, they threw me out. Like I get thrown out of everywhere. Thrown out of the UK, thrown out of Hollywood, thrown out of every school I was ever at.

Speaker 2:
[27:19] But you kept landing on your feet.

Speaker 4:
[27:20] Somehow.

Speaker 2:
[27:21] So you were young, you were in your young 20s when you found the glory of these drugs, which of course is always followed by something, I don't know what we call it, but it's the opposite of glory. And how long did it take you before you got clean off the drugs and sort of the sex addiction took their place?

Speaker 4:
[27:36] Oh, well, the sex addiction, I have to say, was, you know, like I got concurrent. Yeah, but it gets worse without drugs, you know, because obviously there are impeding factors with, if you're dependent on heroin, without going into too much graphic detail, there are a number of obstacles to a successful sex life. But like I stopped taking heroin when I was like 27 and stopped drinking and by God's grace became abstinent one day at a time through the 12 step programs, really the foundation of my spiritual life, thank God, because that's where you first learn that it's not really drugs you're addicted to, you're addicted to yourself, you're addicted to this particular perspective, you're addicted to control, you are so obsessed with who you are and what you want that you can't really be of any use to anybody in this world, that's what I learned anyway. But I only learned it briefly and the thing is, is once I stopped taking drugs, my life improved radically in a number of ways. I became successful in my country, I got a bunch of TV shows and became quite celebrated. In fact, one might say it really took off like a rocket. And there was a moment of real glory. Don't you remember, Megyn, wasn't there a bit when you first started to be successful where it's like, oh my God, it's working, I'm successful, people see me. A world that's continually saying no is now just saying, yes, yes, yes, you can host these awards, you can have a book deal, you can have your own shows. It was so amazing when that happened. But I think probably because of what I would now call a sort of false idolatry, I easily, or cross addiction might be an easier term, I drifted into just the worship factor, that tendency to worship really drifted into the availability of casual encounters.

Speaker 2:
[29:08] I mean, can you describe, because when you write about it in the book, you're very open about these addictions and the sex addiction details. By the way, we're speaking with Russell Brand and the book is How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. You put it out there and one of my questions was, with the number of women who you openly talk about having interludes with at a time, in a day, several times a day. This is all before you were young, but there was no little blue pill. How does a man even keep up at that level?

Speaker 4:
[29:42] I have this real appetite for what I recognize now is God and that's not unique to me. I think anyone that is an addict and this is how the 12-step program describes it, really, they are looking for God. We are all looking for God. We were made for God and by God. We were made to love God. Now, if you live in a culture and a world that denies the existence of God, I personally was trying to defibrillate the dead and inert world into life through chemicals at first and then, you know, sex is a gift and sex used appropriately is a marvelous and wonderful and holy experience, but sex in the hands of an idiot is a sort of a dangerous tool. So how I did it is I've got a lot of energy. I've got a lot of energy.

Speaker 2:
[30:24] Yes, we can see that.

Speaker 4:
[30:25] And a lot of gifts, but those gifts must always be marshaled to the service of the highest good. And if you don't know that and you use it essentially for self-indulgence, you will get in, as it turns out, very, very serious trouble. You will get in very serious trouble and you will hurt a lot of people. Well, just the other day in a 12-step environment, I heard someone say that when you drink a bottle of Jack Daniels, the bottle, the once you put it down, doesn't have any feelings about it. When you start to do stuff like that in other areas of behavioral addiction, obviously sex is what I'm referring to, then you are creating a lot of ill will.

Speaker 2:
[30:59] Have you ever tried to put a number on the number of women who you've been with?

Speaker 4:
[31:03] You've still got the fox skills there, huh, Meg? I'm curious. You've still got the fox skills. Get a number, get a stat. Well, all right, let's think about this mathematically. There was a sort of a period between, like, you know, I think I became sort of attractive in the late 90s, and I think that that attractiveness endured till possibly in 2015, let's say. I, Megyn, we are talking very high numbers. We're talking four figures, and it's difficult, particularly if you want to include all of the varieties of sexual contact, then it would be.

Speaker 2:
[31:31] So thousands.

Speaker 4:
[31:31] Thousands, thousands, thousands. It was my main job. I was very, very devout. It was very foolish. It was my main job. I can even feel a little smile curling at the corners of my lip, even as a person is facing trial in October. I'm still like, yes, I did very well. I still not learned the lesson. I have learned the lesson. I've learned the lesson, Lord. I have learned the lesson.

Speaker 2:
[31:49] Yes, but we're talking about sex here. We're not talking about sexual assault, which is very different.

Speaker 4:
[31:53] Well, but it's still sex is sacred. Sex is sacred, and pornography desacralizes sex, promiscuity desacralizes sex, making sex the apex of your identity, whether you're a heterosexual or not, it desacralizes sex. It's a holy power that I misused.

Speaker 2:
[32:10] So you write, you go on a deep dive on your sexual escapades in the book, and I'm just going to read a little bit from it. Again, it's called How to Become a Christian in 7 Days with Russell Brand. I had sex with multiple women, often at the same time, most days for years. It was normal to have three ways and four ways, and for women who had not met prior to fold into one flesh in my bed. It happened every day. Here are a few occasions that stand out, that will help you understand the levels of excess, the sheer abundance and implausibility, the pointlessness of coercion, meaning you never had to nor did coerce anybody to do this with you, as well as the hollow sadness that is an inevitable accompaniment to all forms of addiction and sin. Such an important point, the hollow sadness. You're right. After a transatlantic flight from LA, I invited the whole female flight crew back to my house. They came, they drank, we all messed around. Some of them were married or in relationships. I felt like an alchemist. I could create ecstasy out of mundanity. When I would tell my male friends these stories, especially older married ones, I felt so valuable and impressive. Now I see things very differently. After a show at the Brixton Academy, the female cast of a popular reality TV show, tumbled out of the after party and poured into my hot tub with no more fanfare or fuss than I once would have tipped the contents of an instant soup into a mug. There were at least five of them, a couple were sisters, as if some dormant part of me were, at least some dormant, as if some dormant part of me alive only in Christ already knew the man I would become, the challenges and trials I would face and the significant fact that I myself would one day be a father to daughters. The apparent mad and hedonic glamour was haunted by something I couldn't understand. So this is a fascinating picture because this is the kind of stuff that everybody dreams a famous man, a successful actor, host, comedian, rock star, whatever life will look like. But they don't acknowledge that second piece of it. That it actually is the same as doing heroin or being an alcoholic, that there's a downside of shame, disgust, and never being able to fill the thing you're trying to fill inside of yourself.

Speaker 4:
[34:23] Yes. If God wants you and God loves you and God does, then you will fill this presence, even at times where you think it's unlikely. That, I suppose, is in my book because I recollect it so clearly that it seemed on the surface like everything you would want in the most ridiculous male fantasy that you can be offered. Multiple attractive women simultaneously use the adored center and focus. In the midst of that, I sensed something a bit ikky and death-like, and obviously, in retrospect, as I've said, I see what that is now. What you are creating for yourself and for other people is suffering, and you are making yourself into, this is what I understand it as now, Megan, is making yourself a kind of God. Gifted as I have been with the ability to connect, I could help a lot of people. I could help people. I didn't recognize that or see that. I have an opportunity to be of real value, to live a life of actual meaning, of meaning. These things, oh man, I was once at a 12-step meeting in New Orleans, and I was famous then, I guess, and this guy who had this great beard, he was older and kind of scruffy and dirty, but solid, looked like a sailor or something, wearing like a sailor's hat, and he was sort of big. And it was in New Orleans, I got arrested on that movie even, man, it's been so crazy this life. He said, fame, celebrity, those things, those are crumbs. I want to be at the banquet. And just yesterday, I was reading in the Gospel of Matthew. The banquet is what we've been invited to. We are able to be participants in the glory of all creation. And our challenge is this, all of us will be like Christ, tempted by the devil. We will be offered the world, have the world, be in charge, have big contracts, be a star, be fantastic, have women envy you and men want you, or whatever is correct for your gender. But if you choose that path, you will end up in a hollow, empty barrenness and maybe even worse. Maybe you won't be blessed as I have been to see the way out of there. And even with the trials and challenges ahead, what I've been granted as a slow learner is a very clear correction and a very obvious illustration that I've been blessed with. I've got an amazing wife that just loves me. I've got really, really beautiful children. I've got amazing friends. Now, when that voice and that appetite, that craving, that longing, which I would see kind of as demonic now, when I feel it, I give it to the cross. I give it to him if I'm smart enough, if I'm alert enough, if I'm awake enough to. I don't ever want to go back there. And I am sad but grateful to have been a participant in a culture that amplifies and advocates for that way of life continually because even though we have been post-me too now and we've seen lots of statues, real and figurative pulled down, I think a lot of young men that don't even observe traditional media anymore but like participating in online media figures and there are a lot of them, very male oriented social media figures will still think that my identity is if I can sleep with lots of women, if I can have fast cars, if I can dominate and control. But this empire of domination and control, it uses us as its fuel. For a minute it will tell us we're beautiful but when it's finished with us it will spit us out. Well, we have the opportunity to love someone who loves us in our brokenness, in our vulnerability, in my ineptitude, in my frailty, in my inability to continually be the man that I'd like to be. But to not be a good enough dad, to not be a good enough husband, why would I not participate in that and participate along with other people in that? Why would I follow this empire of false idolatry and lies, where every single hero that it erects eventually inevitably tumbles and falls because that's what empires do. When what we have access to is eternity, that which is outside of time. We will go at best gracefully to our graves, but the grave is coming with its hungry mouth. When we get there, let's go there hand in hand together into eternity, not having tried to create the simulacrum of permanence here. Permanent idols and skyscrapers and self-made icons scratched out with our own clumsy hands.

Speaker 2:
[38:42] Let me ask you something that Bill Maher says about something he says on this subject. He never married and he says it's because he didn't want to have to give up lust, that he enjoys lust too much. As somebody who's been on both sides of this and is currently in a loving marriage, which does, I hate to tell you Bill, include lust. It's not like the first day, it's not like the first year, but it develops into something else. What do you think he's missing?

Speaker 4:
[39:12] What Bill Ma, with all due respect to him there, is missing and living through is a self-perpetuated adolescence, clinging to some injury or wound, I would imagine, that occurred around the time when, you know, I speak as someone who belatedly received these lessons. What Bill Ma is missing is intimacy. You can achieve through promiscuity a kind of false intimacy that sort of feels kind of wonderful sometimes, particularly with the charge of sexuality around it.

Speaker 2:
[39:40] Especially the whole flight crew there.

Speaker 4:
[39:41] Oh man, there's nuts coming at you from every direction. Can I get you a hot towel, sir?

Speaker 2:
[39:46] That's what she said.

Speaker 4:
[39:48] But what you are missing out on is true intimacy. You are eating the crumbs, that which has fallen from the table, the appearance of something, instead of the thing itself. I actually really love Bill Ma. I've been on his shows a couple of times, and I think he's a really, really lovely person. And I reckon that what Bill Ma... What I would pray for Bill Ma is the ability for him to love. Like, to one day we will heal, and hear Bill Ma say, man, I don't know what I was afraid of. I have a father. I have a wife that I love. This is amazing.

Speaker 2:
[40:20] Right. Why did I wait so long?

Speaker 4:
[40:21] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[40:22] I don't know if he's capable. He doesn't strike me as somebody who's capable. He's in a very different place.

Speaker 4:
[40:27] You have to arrest yourself. You have to participate in your own delusion. We all of us hold the key to the way out. I recognize that I did. You know how all of us are meant to say, I don't regret anything because I wouldn't be the person I am. That is one perspective that's available. But obviously for me, I'm like, wow, I wish I hadn't hurt all of these people. Also, I knew my wife when she was 19 and I was 30, around the time all of these things are kicking off. I could have married her, I could have eight kids, I could have been 20 years in, I could have had more time with her.

Speaker 2:
[40:51] But you know that's not really true because had the you of that year married her of that year, you wouldn't have produced the same kids, you wouldn't have been the same people, you wouldn't have been as good parents. I do think that kind of stuff is meant to be when it happens. Yeah, there's a zero point in lamenting timing on things like a great relationship. It's like it came when it came because you were ready for it, you manifested it when you were ready for it. Okay, let's talk about the young girl because that one's just bothering me. How is it that you had a relationship with a 16-year-old girl?

Speaker 4:
[41:22] All right, I'll give you some stories because some of this stuff pertains to ongoing legal situations out of respect for the judicial process.

Speaker 2:
[41:30] I don't want to get you in more trouble than you're already facing with.

Speaker 4:
[41:32] Yes, I'm in enough trouble. I want to contextualize it in this way. The reason the age of consent exists is to protect people, children, who can't make a decision. So if the age of consent is 18, then don't have sex with someone that's 16. If the age of sex is 16, don't have sex with someone that's 15. That's the law. I'm talking about the law. If you're a 30-year-old man and you're really famous, I now know, don't have sex with anybody at all because you are over-endowed and empowered in ways that make the match unlikely to be fair. What I would say is, I didn't have a passion for young girls, you know. That's not my thing. That's not my thing. That's just...

Speaker 2:
[42:11] No, it's just reading up on this piece of your history. It's not a common theme that keeps coming up.

Speaker 4:
[42:16] No, I really liked older women, black women, white women, thin women, fat women. It was love. It's perverted love, actually. It's like, oh my God, you're so... And also, it was sincere. The reason that I was sleeping with lots of people, I think, is because I see beauty, I see it, I see the beauty. I'm not like, oh, I'm just going to tell this ugly cow. I mean, I love you. I love you. It feels very, very real. So for me, the age of consent would be something I'd be very alert to and would check. And also, by the way, I'm not like, yeah, it's not a kink of mine to like, if anything, it would be, oh no, man.

Speaker 2:
[42:50] You'd like the seniors?

Speaker 4:
[42:52] Yeah, if anything. Do you know what?

Speaker 2:
[42:54] I didn't know that was a thing.

Speaker 4:
[42:55] When I was young, when I was really little, I just grew up with my mom, huh? Just that I'm the only son of a single mom. The lady from the house opposite, Josie, who I just was on the phone with, where my mom was with her. They're like 80, my mom's 80 now, so I think Josie might be older than my mom. And like I remembered that when I wrote my first book, I'd wrote in it, written in my book, should know the tenses as an author, like Doug would never make a mistake like that. I'd written about Josie, right? And she would have been like, she was a single mom herself, and she one time, her water, her hot water weren't working at the house, and I was about seven years old, and I went and played with my toys in the bathroom. She said, can we use your, can I have a bath at your house, Babs, my mom, because the hot water's not working at mine. And I heard that phone call, and I went and took all my toys into the bathroom, and played in there. And when Josie came, my mom went, hey, Russell, get out there, Josie's having a bath. And Josie said, oh, he's only a little boy. And I was like, ha ha ha, the whole thing's a scheme.

Speaker 2:
[43:51] You were looking for a cougar.

Speaker 4:
[43:52] I found her. Obviously nothing happened. I sat there playing with my farmyard animals and toys like any innocent, normal child. But what I want to tell you is that I just had an enormous appetite and craving for sexual inc... Where do you go with it? If you're looking for something of meaning, and feel like, look, I started with weed, then I end up on heroin. I start with sleeping with one person at a time, and I wish I had the common sense to fall in love and to be a bit more. By the way, sometimes I was, I keep telling people this, when I was touring, doing crazy ass world tours in arenas, I'm telling you, it's like women throwing their underwear at me and all that kind of stuff, and people getting wristbands to come backstage. It was unbelievable. Remember, I wasn't captain of the football team at school. I was a nervous, weird kid. I'm unusual. When that happened, I was very, just like a fish trawler or just some open hole, just everything falling into this open hole. So I'm not like, hey, can I check your ID? What about you? Have you got any psychological problems? Were you abused as a kid? I have that level of awareness now that I can see where people's injury are. I really sense it now. But I didn't care. I've been stupid. But I do remember actually in Australia, like encountering a young woman and there being anatomical evidence of her lack of experience and saying to her in that situation, oh, actually, hey, like this probably isn't a good way for you to have sex for the first time. So I wasn't like an inner, unalert, like I'm explaining in the book, he's always there, he's watching you. And also, I'm a 12-step person. That means as a 12-step person, that means you do an inventory with your sponsor where you tell them absolutely everything. If you're not entirely honest, you do not receive the benefits. Confession, truth is the foundation of everything. I would be lying to myself if I lied to you. I mean, we're on where it's being filmed and broadcast and stuff like that, and I'm not stupid. But what I'm saying is, but I've never done anything where I've manipulated consent. I've manipulated consent by conducting it. It's a kind of energy conduction. But bypassing consent is when you make people do things they don't want to do, not make people do things they wouldn't normally do. That is too young. You shouldn't sleep with anyone really younger than you. And if I'd had more, I mean, I wouldn't go, I don't want to time travel back and be a more efficient womanizer.

Speaker 2:
[46:12] I don't think 14 years difference is in itself scandalous. It's just given the age she was, it was. But if she were 25 and you were 39, I don't think people would be looking at that.

Speaker 4:
[46:23] Yeah, he is young. But I don't know if you remember from your own adolescence, because I do, that there were some young women, like girls, let's call them girls, there were 16 that were like kids, and then there were others that were like women, and like 25-year-old guys would pull up in cars outside the school, like just at my normal comprehensive, that means regular state school. When all the girls in your year go out of-

Speaker 2:
[46:45] Listen, you don't have to tell, I was called a pedophile enabler, because I said there's a difference between 15-year-olds and five-year-olds when we were talking about what Jeffrey Epstein is. Really, the point I was making was that the term pedophile only applies to somebody who likes pre-pubescent girls, which is a very different thing than liking women who are in their late teens, and then you get in the 15-16 range and it depends. It really depends.

Speaker 4:
[47:13] I guess the law is the law. I'm in a legal situation. Morally, of course it's wrong.

Speaker 2:
[47:18] But I mean, there are 15- and 16-year-old girls who are having sex with 18- and 17-year-old boys. The age difference there does feel exploitative and shocking.

Speaker 4:
[47:29] Yes. 15-year-old, 16-year-old kids having sex with each other is none of my business. Me, as a 30-year-old, I had no business having consensual sex with women that were just past girls, that were just over the age of consent. It wasn't like my thing, you know what I mean? This one, that one, this one, fine.

Speaker 2:
[47:48] So I think her fake name is Alice.

Speaker 4:
[47:51] I don't know if that's her real name.

Speaker 2:
[47:52] From the documentary. She went on camera.

Speaker 4:
[47:54] Actually, it wasn't. They were all actors, I believe. All of the women.

Speaker 2:
[47:57] I had some more actors and some more like the adult version. I thought that we had the actual version of Alice. I don't know, actually, to be honest. But did you, were you shocked to see that she was speaking out about it in a way that painted it as not consensual?

Speaker 4:
[48:12] Yes, because, yes, of course, actually. Yes, yes, absolutely. I, if, again, with respect to ongoing judicial proceedings, this is a person that, outside of this difficult matter, were I to encounter her, I would greet her as a person that I held in very high regard.

Speaker 2:
[48:36] Did you and she, did you feel like it ended well? Did you feel like you had a good, you know, you got out of it well and you two were in a good place?

Speaker 4:
[48:43] Um, yes.

Speaker 2:
[48:45] So you were stunned?

Speaker 4:
[48:47] Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2:
[48:51] Is there any way, I have to take a break in a minute here, but is there any way do you think Russell, like, out of these criminal charges? Do you think, have you been able to speak to any of these women to try to like find out one on one?

Speaker 4:
[49:02] I think about that sometimes and I would like to, I would like to because there's, I would, I wish I pray that there were a way that I could, as a human man.

Speaker 2:
[49:13] You get in trouble for witness tampering at this point, I guess. Right.

Speaker 4:
[49:15] It's not legally permissible. But yeah, like, I recognize that people feel that they have been wronged and I understand why they would feel like they have been wronged. But you know, like, it's a sort of an odd philosophical device to use your own children. But like, I have daughters, they're babies, but they're presumably, I would imagine, from the way, you know, there's a potential that they will find a certain type of man appealing when they grow up based on the way that they're being raised and who their primary male role model is. There will be a very, very strong difference in my mind where one of my beloved daughters to sleep with a charismatic wild womanizer than if they were to be violated by a rapist. In one case, I would be sad about it and go, well, there's the life is full of lessons kid. In the other one, we've got a very bad situation.

Speaker 2:
[50:06] Yeah. All right. Stand by. We have to take a break. There's so much more to go over. What a man, what a life. Russell Brand bears it all in his new book, How to Become a Christian in 7 Days, asterisks may take 50 years of sin and serious fuck-ups to get started. Don't go away. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet. And now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card and the security it offers are under attack and that Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Walmart and Target at the expense of everyday Americans. Credit cards can keep your payments secure and provide rewards that families use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Electronic Payments Coalition says the Durbin-Marshall mandates would let corporate megastores cut corners on credit card processing, routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks with weaker security and fewer protections. Find out more at guardyourcard.com and consider telling Congress to Guard Your Card.

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Speaker 2:
[52:17] We're back now with Russell Brand. He is the author of How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. Asterix may take 50 years of sin and serious fuck-ups to get started. It is available now at tuckercarlson.com. Our pal Tucker is launching an imprint, and Russell's book is the first big project within the imprint. So we're supporting two people at once, but read the book because you're going to love it. Russell is unsparing of himself, which you can hear him do here on this set as well. So I'll move on from the women thing in one minute, but I want to ask you about one other person who was featured in the documentary because I think her story illustrates how this whole thing is a lot more complicated than it may look to the outside world. Now this woman's name is Nadia, and she's featured in this British documentary called In Plain Sight, which details an alleged rape. That's what she says. The problem for Nadia is, and in this, I'm going to play a sound bite from it.

Speaker 4:
[53:11] Oh wow.

Speaker 2:
[53:12] It's played by an actress, to your point.

Speaker 4:
[53:15] I see.

Speaker 2:
[53:15] It's not, whoever Nadia actually is, this is not the actual Nadia. It's some woman claiming, I had this relationship with Russell, and this is the terrible thing that happened to me. And we'll go through it in just a couple of details, but here it is. I think it's thought too.

Speaker 3:
[53:29] And he's like, please come, just come and cuddle with me. So then I gave in. He comes running out of the bedroom naked. I'm telling him to get off me and he won't get off. And he has that glazed look in his eye again. I was very distraught, trying to get out of the house with him being so much taller than me, like holding me up against the wall, pushing himself in me. I couldn't move. And he finally comes and gets off of me, and I push him away. He blocks the door. He's like, are you okay? I'm like, no, I'm not okay. Get away from me. And he's like, well, let's calm down.

Speaker 2:
[54:48] Again, that was an actress purporting to be this woman based on this woman's testimonial of her relationship with you. She also claims that there was a text message after the fact between the two of you where you sent her a text message at 3:29 AM. I'm sorry. That was crazy and selfish. I hope you can forgive me. I know that you're a lovely person, X, that you tried phoning her at 3:51 AM, but the call went unanswered. And she says later in that same day, she went with a friend to a rape treatment center at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. She did not go to the police. And then she saw a therapist and they saw therapy notes from this rape, it was all at the rape treatment center where she had those. So that's her story. Then you find out a little bit more in that she says in this text to you, allegedly, this is reported later by The Mirror, Russell, when a girl says no, it means no. Do I have to go and get myself tested? Last time you asked me condom or no condom, when I say condom, that doesn't mean it's optional. You don't have the best reputation. And you responded saying, I pride myself on being safe, trying to make the right decisions. Obviously, this is a bad one. I'm so disappointed in that you wrote, You don't need to get tested. I will make this up to you somehow with love and kindness. Not my original idea, which was more sex. You're being funny here. So this whole text exchange is kind of illuminating to me. And I wonder, because this is somebody who claims she was in a relationship with you, she had had consensual sex with you, that particular night she did not want to have sex with you, and that you forced yourself upon her. When you watch that and when you see that, what's your reaction to it?

Speaker 4:
[56:35] Well, I must say, Megyn, it makes me uncomfortable, to tell you the truth, because, as I've said, even whilst I believe that the challenge that I face is one of the misuse of being in a position where lots of people had sex with me, just to even see, iterate it, albeit by an actor in a documentary, which I think had an agenda, if that's my opinion about it.

Speaker 2:
[57:06] Well, nor is it journalistically sound to use an actor like that, but that's another problem.

Speaker 4:
[57:10] And also to shoot an actor in silhouette as well, if it is an actor. If it's an actor, you don't need to shoot them in silhouette. That shows that there's an intention and the type of music being used. But I suppose, look, I'm here in, of course, I sort of just think about, what's my motivation even in coming on your show? What's my motivation? Am I falling again into the trap of wanting stuff, wanting to be successful, wanting to be powerful, wanting to have influence, wanting to get out of the consequences of my actions? And so, what I have to say is, my behavior, which my position is, was consensual and therefore non-criminal, is definitely immoral. And I suppose my job as a follower of Jesus is to focus on how I can follow him more closely. And I don't really, Megyn, get a lot of delight out of going, that person said this, but actually that. Although those things will be very important in the trial that I'm facing because that's the nature of it. I'm being put into a criminal situation. That's the nature of what I'm facing. And do know that I will be literally in like a glass box, like Hannibal Lecter, like in the pre-trial one. So to me, I'm in a sense trying to manage this in a number of different fields. In the judicial and legal one, it's a matter of course demonstrating that the encounters that I had were consensual. In a public relations field, which is I suppose what I'm in now, I think I have to take the opportunity to say that I'm not saying, so what, these women are lying, they wanted money, who cares, F there. I'm not like, that's not my position. My position is yes, I recognize that my conduct has caused harm and pain. In a PR situation, like being on the Megyn Kelly Show, my, I think my role and my job is to make it very clear to people that that behavior, as I describe it, was not behavior that I would endorse, but it's not non-consensual or coercive behavior. However, people obviously plainly, as we just saw there, albeit played by an actor, they'll hurt by the encounters by me, and so I've obviously got some work to do somewhere.

Speaker 2:
[59:27] So what level of stress are you at about this criminal trial?

Speaker 4:
[59:30] All right, so sometimes it's unbelievable. Sometimes it's kind of unbelievable. Sometimes I can't, sometimes I think, if this can happen, then anything can happen. If, look, when I was-

Speaker 2:
[59:43] It's coming in December?

Speaker 4:
[59:44] October, I think it's October the 7th, the trial, in the United Kingdom, so it's sort of, you know, it's coming up close and I've got, like a normal family, I've got young children and all that kind of stuff. So I'm living a normal life, I'm working, and sort of part of my job is public facing, and I'm assessing that, and what contribution can I make, and how has it impeded me and impaired me and slowed me down? What are the positive things that have come from it? Like certainly it's been very, very, very humbling and confronting, because I already recognized that sexual addiction was wrong. I've already recognized that as a married man, or anyone in a committed relationship, I suppose, you've got to be straight and faithful. All of those lessons I kind of learned, but I believe in God, so all things are from God. This is from God. Yeah, I agree, I agree. And I don't like it very much. I mean, and it is extremely stressful, but because of my faith in God, when I feel frightened, and I sometimes do, what I try to do is recognize that He is a great and loving God, and that He will use this in some way. And on a slightly less mystical plane, I recognize that I have some serious amends to make, and perhaps by God's grace, an opportunity to put right the wrongs I've done. But I have to tell the truth, I can't put right wrongs I haven't done, only the things that I've done. And I've been, I was clear about those things at the time, because, Megyn, when I was doing that stuff, if I was on a talk show, or if like, I'm aware of attractive women, I'm not blind, I can see attractive, and when I was like a single person, I'm like, assessment, are you married? Yes, okay, no problem. Unless you're married and you've got an open marriage, right, fair enough. What about you, are you not married?

Speaker 2:
[61:21] Like some of those flight attendants.

Speaker 4:
[61:23] Right, like so I was an open channel, but for the wrong frequency and the wrong energy. What's it like now? It's very, very pressurizing. And as a Christian, I recognize that pressure can be very refining, very refining. So I try to keep my mind and my prayers on the people involved in this that are hurt and that need resolution and justice. I'm trying to be aware of that. I'm trying not to be selfish. I'm trying to pay attention to everyone participating in this is doing their best.

Speaker 2:
[61:53] Does it make you angry?

Speaker 4:
[61:57] The anger, I've never felt, I understand the position. Look, when Me Too happened in 2015, you know, I was like, wow, I've slept with lots and lots of women. I wonder if during this moment, I'm going to face some allegations. And that did not happen. Because I think some people, it seemed to facing allegations that maybe it looked like consensual activity reframed.

Speaker 2:
[62:19] Again, that's one of the things that's very, you know, suspicious about the allegations against you is that no one did come forward then. It wasn't until you got very outspoken in your more right wing views that suddenly Channel 4 thought it would be a great time to do a hit piece on Russell Brand and found some women. I mean, it would be the equivalent of like going around and finding all the women who had slept with Jon Bon Jovi and saying, do you ever have anything that didn't feel 100% you know? It's just when you go to a man who's been as exposed as you have, like a rock star, as you were describing, if you really, really, really lift up every sheet and kick every tire, you may find some women who are unhappy about their experiences. I'm not diminishing them. Maybe they're true, whatever, we'll find out at the trial. But maybe they're not true. And maybe this did come up because there was a new agenda when it came to your name, and it was much more interesting to silence you and smear you. And honestly, Russell, I'm not diminishing anybody's story, I don't know what happened, but I can relate to this to some extent. I have seen my own self get attacked by different groups over the years when you fly too close to the sun or when you're over an issue that's this particular group's favorite issue and they need you to say it in a different way or feel a different way, that I now am very suspicious about like massive harms that come to people when they speak out on a particular issue or in a particular way. It happens over and over and over.

Speaker 4:
[63:47] Yes, it is interesting. One of the outside of my own experience where of course, by definition, I can't be objective because I am the subject of it, I do try to imagine that the way that power operates these days is to first decide an outcome. This is the outcome we want. How do we get to that outcome? We need these resources. We need control of social media. When there's a spate of stories, for example, saying we're really concerned that young people using their social media are getting too much access to pornography, either the government and the state are really concerned about the moral well-being and purity of our youngsters, or they're looking for a way to legitimize some measures and control that they would like to assert. That's why I think the pandemic period that many of us have sort of, you know, everyone wants to just get on with their lives and no one wants to look back over their shoulders.

Speaker 2:
[64:39] It's so depressing.

Speaker 4:
[64:41] It's interesting. It's interesting. But what were the results of the pandemic? I think when we look at, you know, key bono, I think is the phrase in Latin, who benefits. When we look at what happened, who benefited, whether it's a sort of something that's personal or whether it's something that's larger, more macro, then it helps us to understand clearly what's required. I think that the agenda right now is to create a great deal of social unrest and cultural confusion, people arguing and quarreling about identity and ideology, a kind of Tower of Babel moment where everybody is in a mad conflict, a cacophony of argument. In this cacophony of argument, I think there will be an attempt to assert centralized control, increasing centralized control that is not national but international. I think the pandemic, whether deliberately or not, was an opportunity to pilot levels of control. What are the problems you face if you tell people everyone's got to get in their house? How do they respond to it? How much trust do the media have these days? Who trusts CNN, MSNBC, Fox, whoever? And I think they learned a great deal. And I would be very surprised if we didn't see in the coming years attempts to shut down anybody who has a meaningful, dissenting voice. If you have a meaningful, dissenting voice, it's quite likely that you will be subject to a tax.

Speaker 2:
[66:06] 100%.

Speaker 4:
[66:07] The money, people will look at your taxes and the way you pay them, they will look at your sexual history, they will do whatever they can. And if there's nothing else they can do, it seems that sometimes very convenient people are assassinated, people that it's beneficial to not have around.

Speaker 2:
[66:23] Well, you made an interesting point in Tucker. You made it, you know, facetiously, but, you know, there was obviously an element of, are we onto something in the discussion about the lone gunman? I had never heard somebody say it the way you said it. Like, wow, it's really interesting how these lone gunmen are out there assassinating all these really prominent, important figures. You know, if you were if you were a government who really wanted to get rid of a problematic person, you'd be really smart to partner with one of these lone gunmen. Like, that's basically how you put it. You said it more articulately than that. But I like that. That was more persuasive to me than any conspiracy theory in quotes I've heard on any of the assassinations. It's like, if you are a government or a government agency or an underworld related entity and you want to take out somebody really famous, wouldn't it make sense to do it that way as opposed to just sending your super secret sniper into the crowd and taking him out?

Speaker 4:
[67:17] Yes. Are you a teenager with no social media imprint who's never been on any of these sites? Are you despairing and at a loss? Then you could be a lone gunman. One hundred lone gunmen. Maybe you could be a tool of the state. I was just thinking then that perhaps what's important is for us to recognize that everyone is broken and any of us that have invested our hope in some political figure or cultural figure in the end, disappointment is what's coming because they're all broken and hopeless in their own way. And another thing that I feel might be important is to look at who we can forgive and who we can move towards in good faith because I think we're doing their work for them. When I say they, I mean the true power, the empire. We're doing their work for them when we quarrel with one another, when the chat is full of intermittently anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, hatred, loathing. I regard it as a kind of frequency. Once you are on that frequency of hatred and condemnation, they've already got you. You've been, as we would say in the UK, lifed off, you're partitioned, you're no good, you're useless now. When you remain in faith and in grace, open-hearted and willing to forgive and willing to love, you move into a different terrain and different territory. If we don't instantiate a different type of politics that's actually, ironically, the system that would work rather well is democracy. If we do not use the technology that we have right now that's in my country being used for facial recognition technology, that's just been litigated, they're now going to have facial recognition technology cameras all across the UK. Many people are concerned that in the United Kingdom, you're very likely to be arrested. We have more arrests than any other nation for social media posts. There's an attempt to get digital ID mandated that has been temporarily rescinded because there was so much public resistance, which optimistically suggests that if we are willing to unite in a line, we can oppose this technological feudalism that seems to be coming down the line. What terrifies me, Megyn, is that the enemy, the empire, deal only in counterfeits. Instead of unity, they will have totalitarianism. Instead of intercommunication, they will have mass surveillance. All of our communications, observed and controlled, all of our information, pre-tued. Any opinion that's not convenient to the empire or to the state, passed off, ignored and censored. I really believe that we are at a pivotal moment. I think everybody knows that. I don't want to indulge that kind of fin de sicle narcissism that every generation feels. We are the ones that will experience the Armageddon. We are the ones that will experience the apocalypse. Surely we will.

Speaker 2:
[69:54] But in the wake of COVID, why wouldn't we be asking those questions? I mean, we just had our president send out a post saying, no, I think I'm willing to sacrifice my liberties, my civil liberties in order to have the government have this control. It's fine when in the context of these FISA warrants and the FISA court. And this is something that we on the right cheered post 9-11, you know, these Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, these warrants that you can get to, you can get access to millions of people's metadata from their phones. And the way the government justified it was, yes, some Americans may get swept up in our search for spy communications or terrorist communications, but it's, we're not after them, we're after the bad guys. And it's not like we're pulling, you know, Megyn Kelly's texts and reading them. We're basically just going to see her metadata in the field of lots of metadata. And we accepted that post 9-11 because we were scared shitless. It was, we were, I mean, we really had been attacked and 3,000 of our fellow Americans were killed in the most brutal way possible. So we sacrificed a lot of our core beliefs back then. But it's been 25 years since 9-11. And to pretend that we still need this tool for the terrorists, all right? Like what? To prevent that from happening is bullshit. That's for us. And there should be objections by the American public. But wait, I want to circle back. As we went back to policy and our governments, and I just want to stay on something about you, because I read, I don't know where I read it, but your wife said to you, or maybe gave you a written, was it a psalm, a verse from the Bible, about when we get persecuted, we feel great joy, something to that effect?

Speaker 4:
[71:29] Yes, that's from James 1. Now, I don't want to paint a picture of my wife as a devout Christian. She's very much a lapsed Catholic. Her family, her father in particular, is a very dedicated Catholic. But my wife, you know, if anyone's suffering as a result of my Christianity, it's my wife. And if anyone would know if it were a performance, it would be my wife. But she did very beautifully when I was going back for one of the preliminary hearings prior to my trial, made this beautiful painting of a Magnolia and a verse from James 1st in the New Testament of James' letter for the first chapter is, we consider it great joy when we face trials of any kind. Well, we're being invited.

Speaker 2:
[72:12] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[72:13] I love that.

Speaker 2:
[72:14] So I didn't-

Speaker 4:
[72:15] Do you do that?

Speaker 2:
[72:16] I always, always say this. I say that to myself. I say it to my staff. I say it to young people when I speak to them on college campuses. I confess it's a take on something. I first heard many, many moons ago from Oprah Winfrey back when we liked her. But it was a good piece of advice. And it was whenever something comes your way that's hugely negative or a massive challenge, your first response should be, thank you. Thank you. Because how do we grow? How do we evolve as human beings? How do we become people with superhero muscles, emotional muscles, unless that stuff does come to us? If that stuff never comes to us, we remain boring, rather uninformed, weak, unprepared for some massive crisis that may be coming down the line. Each one of these that does get thrown to you, as long as you don't even have to win. I mean, I'm not talking about like, okay, you go to prison for 10 years. That's tough. But my point is, if you just keep going, if you just handle it, if you don't stay in the fetal position in your bed, it's already a win. You've already grown. It's a huge opportunity to evolve as a human. And the bigger the challenge, the bigger the fear, the bigger the opportunity.

Speaker 4:
[73:24] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[73:25] So I love what she wrote. Yeah, she didn't write it originally, but I love what she stitched.

Speaker 4:
[73:29] Yeah, absolutely. It's incredibly encouraging and precisely the wife that I'm, I deserve, maybe I don't deserve.

Speaker 2:
[73:39] No, you must deserve her.

Speaker 4:
[73:40] You must deserve her, man. Thank God.

Speaker 2:
[73:42] You wouldn't have her if you didn't.

Speaker 4:
[73:44] You know, like what I think, Megyn, whether it's you or me or Tucker or whoever, there's this sense that in the end, the technology that meant that you don't have to work for Fox no more, and you can work for Sirius if you want to, and you can do partnerships that-

Speaker 2:
[74:00] I don't work for Sirius. They licensed my show.

Speaker 4:
[74:02] They licensed your show. Brokerage. The power of the brokers has been diminished. That's the real trend that's significant. Information has been decentralised. So either the political systems will have to learn to evolve and adapt and reflect this decentralisation or perversely, they will constrict and try to legitimise more and more centralisation and authoritarianism and a kind of technological feudalism, a centralised control. It's pretty clear that they've taken the latter path. I think most people were temporarily excited about blacker nationalism because it seemed like in the powerful, and as I say, it is a syncretic figure of Donald Trump, there was at least a kind of stumbling block and maybe even a bulwark against advancing global imperialism where using the idea of care and protection, more and more control was being asserted. You have to sign this in order to do that, we need you to carry this, we're going to eventually plant a chip under your skin. All those things that were once the preserve of the conspiracy theorists advancing into everyday life. Think about what you thought about what David Icke and Alex Jones were saying in the 90s and how you revered the New York Times and BBC. Well, which direction is that needle moving in? Are there paedophile rings? Is there occultist power? Can we trust the mainstream narrative on the most important issues, whether it's wars or assassinations? What I believe they fear most of all is that this ability to instantaneously communicate will become politicized, that ultimately people could have decentralized communities and localized politics, that you would have minimal government, minimal intervention, maximum ability to run your community, like the Amish if you wanted, or like gay people if you wanted, or like Muslims if you wanted, that you don't need the intervention of a global bureaucracy anymore.

Speaker 2:
[75:58] I wanted to read this to you because you mentioned Alex Jones. So he and I have a very interesting history together. But I have to tell you, even at our worst in terms of our fighting, I always said he has been right about so much. We had our big...

Speaker 4:
[76:15] Did he attack you sometimes? Or did you attack him?

Speaker 2:
[76:17] No, he never attacked me. You do an attack once in a while? I can definitely do an attack. But I went to interview him while I was at NBC to do like an in-depth profile on him. And it was not long after he had said that the Newtown families made up the murder of their children. So, you know, he was like very, very hot potato to touch at the time. But I thought it would be an interesting profile. And he had moved off of that. So I kind of thought we were just going to do a profile on Alex Jones. And we would touch on that, but it wouldn't be the theme of the piece, because he was interesting and I knew he had gotten a lot right. Anyway, we went there and he kept doubling down on the Sandy Hook thing, which turned the whole piece into something that did look more like a hit piece, because of course I had to get contentious with him, because that's insane and wrong and it wasn't made up. Those kids were killed. So anyway, then he taped me, he released it. It just was like this crazy, crazy ass shit time in my life. But having said all that, it's water under the bridge. And I've been watching what Alex Jones has been doing lately and I actually really appreciate it. I think he's been doing great shows and his messaging around the whole Israel thing has been must see. And I mean, like I said from the beginning, he's been right about a lot. Just today, there was a big piece of news last night, I don't know if you saw it, Cash Patel announced that the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, which is supposed to be this great group that protects America from racism and all the isms. Like they'll be the first to call you out if you're a terrible person so that everybody knows, Russell's terrible, Megyn's terrible, stay away. They're this or that and the other thing. And then turned into just this left wing group that would bash anybody on the right. That's how it's been for years. That they have been paying, paying members of the Ku Klux Klan, of the Aryan Brotherhood to go infiltrate. They say, it's just to infiltrate. We're just, they're like inside sources. We didn't create them to, we didn't pay them to create the event, just to infiltrate. That's not what the indictment says. And they've been exposed now as basically paying the very people, they then look at their donors and say, hey, pay me to protect you from that person I'm paying. I'm gonna use your money to pay him to cause hell, including in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the Unite the Right rally that would just cause a massive headache for President Trump from the beginning of his first term where he said, because there were skinheads there, but there were also people who were just pissed off that we were pulling down statues of Confederate generals or just even Christopher Columbus. And Trump said, you know what? He said, not the white supremacists, but outside of them, there were very fine people on both sides. And that quote was used against him unfairly for many, many years and still is. Alex Jones. Okay, back in August of 2017, Charlottesville was a false flag run by Southern Poverty Law Center operatives who hired actors to pose as Nazis. Fucking, the guy, I could give you so many of these by Alex Jones. After we did my interview with him, where it did get contentious, but I spent days with him, he said so many things. They sounded crazy, Russell. We went back to the NBC fact-checking machine, which is good. NBC's biased, but they're not reckless, generally, when it comes to, like, their reporting. Don't get me wrong, I understand what happened with Russiagate. And I'm not talking about MSNBC, I'm talking about NBC. They all came back true. Everybody's like, he's a lunatic. He says the frogs are turning gay and they're turning transgender. We're like, he's a nutcase. True, true, true, true. It was amazing. The Sandy Hook stuff was very, very wrong and untrue, must be said again. In any event, he's on the list, right? Like, he's been, of course, due to his own behavior and due to just being right about a lot of the stuff that they don't want out there, they've authorized him. They've done it to Tucker. They're in the process of trying to do it to me. I'm a lot harder because I don't have the conspiratorial gene that a lot of these folks have. And their conspiracies in many places have turned out to be true. So it's like, shame on me for not having more of one. But I just, I'm not built like that. I'm a lawyer, I'm a linear thinker, very, very fact based. You know, I don't believe anything until it's really been proven to me with like facts I can hold. But they're trying, like, they're trying to do it to me right now. And it's infuriating. And now I'm much, much more suspicious about the narratives I've been told about many, many other people, right? Like, are they really crazy and conspiratorial? Or do they know something? Have they hit on one of those soft spots that you're not allowed to touch?

Speaker 4:
[80:52] It's very hard to stay present. It's very hard to stay present and assess when you're being emotionally stimulated. The whole culture is continually emotionally stimulated. Sexual imagery, imagery of violence and fear, these things create bewilderment and disorientation. You shouldn't consume too much of it, if any, at all, as a matter of fact. Over time and right now, AI and the Internet are creating something that's akin to a counterfeit consciousness. Remember Carl Jung saying that we have a collective unconscious. It's almost as if there's a repository for all of our thoughts. It says that we are all participants in the Holy Spirit, that all of us can share in God's grace and presence right now. That eternity is not just beyond time, but it is within and throughout time. Now in creating this online Internet space where all consciousnesses and individuals can potentially interconnect with one another, we've created a kind of facsimile or counterfeit of a psyche. The psyche is generating the kind of shadow archetypes that Jung himself spoke about. And because we live in this materialistic secular culture, we don't have the language or even the diagnostic tools to recognize these types. The dark woman that will tell you truths that people don't want to hear and uncomfortable about. The ranting preacher that might say things that are sometimes crazy or prophetic. Have you looked at the prophetic language in the Bible that has a great many truths to tell us? The thoughtful khan, the meaty, solid warrior that thoughtfully pontificates and interrogates people. Our internet online new media space is like a new consciousness, inhabited with people like you and me and Tucker that have lived for a while in the old media and then these other creatures that came from the periphery or were born within it. But there are great truths that are being told by you with your understanding of litigation and systems of justice, media. You have a great deal to offer. Tucker, with his background there that's sort of deep, deep embedded in systems of state and power and media and journalism. Those outlier characters like Jones, you can see that guy when he's on there, 25 or 30 turning up protesting against wars, telling us way before 9-11 that it was going to happen and who was going to have done it. If you dismiss that person or if you condemn that person or if you try to control or shut down that person, there may be reasons for it, but those reasons are not going to be for your protection. And again, another useful paradigm for understanding this is what was the entire mentality behind the pandemic. We have to take these medicines and we have to go into our homes because life is sacred and we have to protect each other no matter what. We especially have to protect the vulnerable. Well, where else do you see them operating and governing in order to protect the vulnerable? I don't see it. I see exploitation and I see control. Whenever they come to you saying that they want to protect you, they actually want to control you and you know from your own life as a parent or someone who loves anybody that protection and control are on a spectrum. I want to protect my children and part of that is I have to control them. But we are children of God. We are not children of the state. The state tells you there is no God. The empire tells you that nothing is real if it can't be measured and then it acts like a God. It wants to control every aspect of your life and like God it wants you to come innocently like little children. It wants to determine right and wrong. Even something like woke-ism. A couple of times you've said that I'm sort of right-wing and I would like to say that I don't agree with those taxonomies or labels anymore. I'm a follower of Jesus and if more people follow Jesus, I believe the world will just naturally improve. Because as CS. Lewis said, if you have lawyers that are Christian, they'll run the law in a Christian way. If you have media commentators that are Christian, they'll do their job. Every role could do with Christ being in charge of it. Now what I see when you live in an anti-Christ world where you deny connection, where you deny eternal life, where you deny the love of God, where you say you're an insignificant set of molecules in infinite space that somehow has evolved to the point where it's even able to make that assessment, which is one of the great paradoxes of atheism, of course, that the instrument with which you've deduced there is no meaning is itself a result of these meaningless procedures. How can you ever make such an assessment? While telling us they do that, that they can do that, their rationalism always leads you to the same place. Whether it's the bombast and let's face it, media brilliance of Donald Trump or the sterile charisma of Barack Obama. It always leads to them being in control, you needing them, you paying too much tax, you ceding too much control. Police forces that are disoriented and exhausted and not respected and not living in the communities that they're policing. We can change all of it. We can change it with ideas that people purportedly believe in already. We've got people in government telling us that they're Christian. Let's see the Christianity.

Speaker 2:
[85:56] We've got people- Get back to that.

Speaker 4:
[85:58] Let's do it. And people running every country in the world, more or less, that say they believe in democracy. Democracy, if it doesn't mean that we govern in accordance with the will of the people, means nothing. What democracy means, I have been taught these days, is these institutions that we control constitute democracy. We're going to put them all around the world and control them there. But we could have democracy. The technology exists.

Speaker 2:
[86:23] I mean, look, we thought we were getting that when we elected Trump, and we thought that... Did you? Yeah, I did. I don't know. Maybe I'm naïve. I'm old, but I'm naïve. I just thought that Trump really meant it when he promised to buck the system. He promised he couldn't be bought. He was bought. Like the Miriam Maddelson, $250 million bought him on Iran and Israel, and he's doing exactly what she wanted him to do. He was manipulated by Netanyahu. She's thrilled. This is not what his base wanted. And it's unfortunate. I didn't think Trump could be bought. I really believed that he couldn't. It's hugely disappointing, and I feel as many do, which is it's a betrayal. A lot of my audience disagrees with me, and I understand they're POV too, but that's how I feel on Trump.

Speaker 4:
[87:07] What do you think they love about Trump still, once the migration from America first politics becomes evident? What is it, the charisma, the figure? Because what I like about him is his energy. I was like, Trump was coming into a set, when I was in 2015, I was like, this guy's crazy, that's ridiculous, it's not possible. But the second time, I liked it, the central powers didn't get what they wanted. I liked that. Same was with Brexit. I don't care about Brexit, EU, not EU. I don't care about admin. But what I like is when you see the people not behave as they're supposed to. I love that. But what is it this time, what's happened, Megyn? And people that still love him, what is it that they still love?

Speaker 2:
[87:46] There's a lot. I think his sense of humor is very endearing, is very charming. And he can actually be very self-deprecating, which is charming too, especially given the amount of power that he has. I think the amount of shit that's been thrown at him and his unwillingness to stay down, he just gets back up no matter what people do to him. I mean, try to put him in jail multiple times. They tried to ruin his family. They tried to kill him. I mean, so much has happened to him and he just keeps going. You just cannot stand him down. And that's very admirable. For most of his time in the public eye, he has had all the right enemies. He stood up against the race dogma, the trans dogma, the xenophobe dogma about having a southern border in a way that was very admirable and we needed desperately because we were losing those wars. The woke thing was taking over in every department with our children, with our lives, at our employment, and Trump was the bulwark against it saying, hell no. And he had this sheer strength and power to turn it all around. He really did. It was like the parting of the seas. I will just make this happen despite all odds with my immense power. So all of that has been just inspirational. I think many of us just like Trump. We like his personality. But then the other truth of it is there are aspects of his personality which are obviously not good and that we've mostly just chosen to overlook. He's not a moral man. He's obviously not the greatest husband in the world. And he's extremely petty and thin skinned, extremely petty and thin skinned. And what we're seeing right now is he's churning on his most loyal supporters because they don't support this war and getting in bed with people who fucking hate him and have hated from the beginning and were the original never Trumpers. As though that's what MAGA is. That's what his core support should look like. Meanwhile, there are many who are over here who have loved Trump for many, many years. We've had our skirmishes in the past. Tucker's had skirmishes with him. I have too. But who fought harder than a lot of others during the law fair against him to make sure people knew that it was bullshit, stood up for him during the actual electoral contest to make sure people understood what was at stake and why he had to be the choice. There's no loyalty in return ever from Trump, ever. If you have a principle disagreement with something he does, you're otherized, you're the enemy. And at this particular moment, he's alienating so many of his core supporters, biggest believers and boosters, and running to people who have not been able to stand him for 10 years like a Mark Levin or a Ben Shapiro who actively was against Trump. He was a total DeSantis guy. He only went on board with Trump when DeSantis was, of course, toast. And he had no choice but to save his audience and get on board with a Republican nominee. Whatever, it is what it is. It is what it is. But there's still, in my view, a lot to like about Trump. It's just some of those darker demons are much more in the front view right now, because he's like a cornered animal. He's got no support in this Iran war. He can't bring it to an end. These are tough motherfuckers who are not doing what we want them to and coming to the negotiating table and giving us what we want, so we can get out and just declare it a win. He sees his poll numbers are now his latest poll approval on Iran was 30, at 30 percent. I mean, his job approval in like the last five polls has been in the low 30s, low 30s. So his legacy is on the line and you can tell he can tell. So he's acting out in a very, very bad way. And my prayer every night, every night Russell is that he will get back on track. He will reconnect with what the agenda that we put him in office to enact. He will extract himself from this very money driven agenda by the Maria Maddelsons of the world. She's purchasing what she wants and Trump's being manipulated into doing it, which is infuriating. And that the country, or at least those of us who are on what I call team sanity, can come back together and work to defeat these crazy leftists, like James Carville, who wants to pack the Supreme Court and add Puerto Rico and DC as states. The Republicans will never win another national election if we do that. Anyway, it's a very tumultuous time. If you are exhausted, foggy, anxious, or if your metabolism's flatlined and doctors chalk it up to age, you might just be getting ignored. Because that is not necessarily just a part of getting older. And it's why Joi and Blokes exists. Joi was built for women who have been dismissed by the medical establishment for far too long. 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Speaker 4:
[93:32] It sounds deeply tumultuous. It sounded like you, points feel like personally betrayed as an advocate for Trump and at other times ideologically betrayed. And with this war, some of the larger points I've seen sort of play out over a long time, because I don't have anything like the granular detail or the journalistic excellence that you've just displayed in describing that. But from my sort of more vague and hazy perspective, like what I've seen, I've just seen people saying, oh well, Trump always had those views about Iran. Trump always said that Iran...

Speaker 2:
[94:04] That's what they say.

Speaker 4:
[94:04] That's what they say. And that Iran, if they were, are able to develop a nuclear capacity. Now, for me, those arguments seem, in one case, irrelevant. These always felt it. And in the second instance, it was very similar to the weapons of mass destruction argument that was used...

Speaker 2:
[94:22] That's it, exactly.

Speaker 4:
[94:23] So I wonder then, what is this force, this power, that is so sufficient that it would... See, don't you sometimes think we have great leaders and great people? All it is, is just for a moment, they're the temporary conductor. You know, Churchill, very fallible, broken, alcoholic, depressive, lunatic, who, not necessarily lunatic, but for a moment, was able to carry world opposition against, as best we can understand, this great force for evil. So, with Trump, what do you suppose is happening? Do you think, bore, in a sort of financial and economic way, do you think, compromised, in the post Epstein world, we all have to assume that it seems that people largely are, or what is this power that is so large that it can wrangle this gargantuan male away from what seemed to be his evident trajectory to at least continue to consolidate a very large group of supporters?

Speaker 2:
[95:21] I mean, I think on Israel, in the Republican Party, there's never been any downside to being 100% pro-Israel. From the time I started at Fox News in 2004 until only very recently, in the Republican Party, there was no downside to saying you were 100% on Team Israel to promote Israel, to go visit Israel, to take money from AIPAC. That was, no one in the Republican politics would ever second-guess it or judge it. It's only been more recent because, well, I mean, Gaza, I mean, that's really one of the main things. It was happening on the left prior to Gaza. But the violence that Israel unleashed on civilians in Gaza just got to pass the point where you could overlook it as a friend who was looking at your friend who got attacked viciously on 10-7 and trying to look the other way. Some of these civilian casualties are gonna happen, it's war. It happened when we did wars too. But to the point where it's like, jeez, this is out of control. It defended you a lot of times on the genocide claim, you know, tens of thousands more and more and more. You're kind of undermining my ability to root for you, never mind defend you. And I think Republicans started to feel it too, young Republicans first. And they started to migrate away from Israel. So the stakes changed, like this ardent support of Israel no longer became totally acceptable within Republican politics. And the coalition that was totally pro-Israel started to fracture. The Democrats left, the independents left, the Republicans started to trickle away with youth first, going entirely, entirely. And now the only people who really support Israel are senior citizen Republicans. People basically were 65 or around there, or older, and Republican. Those are the ones who are still pro-Israel, which includes Trump. And he didn't get it. He did not have his finger on the pulse of where the party was on Israel. And still, I think, thought he could do something that would be great for Israel, which is start a war with Iran. And it would go over well, that his core base would applaud him for it. And I believe him that he never wanted Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I think those statements were sincere. But more than that, he promised no new wars and no wars in the Middle East, which last time I checked includes Iran. And so, but if Trump had looked at us and said, and Tulsi Gabbard had looked at us, and Joe Kent had looked at us, and the IAEA had looked at us and said, Iran is within a month of getting a nuclear bomb, the country would have stood behind Trump. We would have believed them. But that's not what happened. The IAEA and Tulsi and Joe Kent, they all said no, they're not. They don't have the capacity to get a nuclear bomb. They're nowhere close to getting a nuclear bomb. And by the way, those strikes we did last June were very effective in dismantling whatever nuclear program they had, whether it was civilian or not, and they'd been enriching beyond civilian needs. So it wasn't true that they were about to get it. If it had been, the country would have gotten behind him, we would have looked at that secret escape hatch from No New Wars of unless Iran's about to get a nuclear weapon. It wasn't true. He used that excuse that he had always said, they can't have a nuclear bomb, to do what Netanyahu wanted him to do, and what Netanyahu convinced Trump to do, which was to start a war with them. And he did that because he was razzle dazzled by Netanyahu into believing that the hiatus is going to be above ground, so are stop emissaries, we can take them out. They try to kill you, now you can get him before he gets you, it'll be like Venezuela, you'll get in, you'll get out, you'll be a hero, you'll change the whole world, cuz a kinder, gentler, Jeb Bartlett type is gonna take over in Iran and be the new Ayatollah, the sweet loving one who sends his cookies upon his ascension. And Trump listened, Netanyahu played him like a fiddle, he played to his hubris, which is exactly how you're supposed to manipulate Trump. All these world leaders know it, look how they bend the knee at NATO now, it's ridiculous, they call my daddy our daddy. It's like, oh my God, that's what they do. Look at the cabinet members at the cabinet meetings. Oh, thanks to you, Mr. President. It's like they all have to kiss his ass before they give their updates because they're trying to manipulate him into keeping them in their roles and into liking them. And that's all well and good. It never really bothered me that much. I don't love it, but it doesn't. But when it's working to start wars, it's deeply problematic. And it's how we got in this mess.

Speaker 4:
[99:39] With people like, say, Thomas Massey, who would have long contested this would play out in this manner, or any average, pick a random Democrat that would have said, if, well, don't you remember what they were saying is if you vote for Trump, it's going to bring about global annihilation and the world, all of the, you know, what they what they call Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, do you say that your adjustment is as a result of action and therefore legitimate? And anyone, like whether it's you or Tucker or Candice or people whose opinions matter in this country, you have a responsibility to alter your perspective on the basis of new information and evidence or do you con, or is there a concession to be made to those people that prior to Trump Point 2.0, however you say that thing, were saying, you can't have this guy in Chaheed and ask, you know, all of the stuff that they said. Do you feel any of that? Or is it like, cause where I am, not that you asked, but like, you know, just to add this, is that we all feel that politicians like Barack Obama, Netanyahu, Tony Blair, not we all, some people feel that those people are kind of, whether they're the sort of compromised political class that is epitomized by the Epstein stuff or not, there is some way that they are controlled. That's what people feel. They're controlled, they're not really in charge. There's a set of powers that are beyond and behind them, and maybe it's occultist, maybe not, difficult to corroborate, who knows. Where do you stand on that? And do you not feel, what do you feel now? Like, where do we go now? Because you're not gonna get another Trump, you're not gonna get another populist like that. So like, where do you put your political vigor and influence in light of all this?

Speaker 2:
[101:22] Well, I certainly am not thinking, gee, we should have gone with Kamala at all. I mean, because as upset as many of us are about this war, Trump closed the border, which saved countless lives. Trump did issue a bunch of executive orders on the trans issue, which saved a bunch of children's lives. And you know, Trump-

Speaker 4:
[101:43] Kennedy, HHS, that's all good?

Speaker 2:
[101:44] Huge, I mean, we could do more. I have to be honest. Like, there's more that Kennedy could do. Standby, let's leave it there. I'm gonna take a break, do an ad, and we're gonna pick it back up in the opposite side with Russell Brand by his book, How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. He sticks around, a quick break first. Okay, let's talk about an uncomfortable reality. What happens financially to our loved ones once we pass away? We put off thinking about it. I know, I do it too, but the best thing we can do for our family is to ensure that they're not left with a financial burden of mortgages and tuitions and medical bills, all of it, right? Like, if you think about it, like, take one day to think about it and you don't have to think about it again. Fortunately, taking steps to financially protect your family is so much easier nowadays than it used to be. This is where ethos comes in. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy and it's 100% online. You don't even have to see a real person. You can get a quote in seconds. You can apply in minutes. You can get same day coverage. There's no medical exam. And all you need to do is just answer a few simple health questions and you will get up to potentially three million in coverage. At least you can if you qualify. You will get the lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Some policies, as low as 30 bucks a month. It's no wonder why Ethos has 4.8 out of 5 stars now on TrustPilot with over 4,000 reviews. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/mk. That's ethos.com/mk. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Hey everyone, it's me, Megyn Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on SiriusXM. It's called The Megyn Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda and no apologies. Thank you for watching. Callahan, Emily Drushinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, SiriusXM 111, and on the SiriusXM app. We are back now with Russell Brand. His new book is How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. It's out now. Go get it on tuckercarlson.com, because this is the first of the new Tucker imprints. So we were talking about Trump when we last left off, which is, that's all we've been talking about for 10 years. Like Trump dominates every thought and every conversation. But what were you trying to ask me?

Speaker 4:
[104:18] Well, I'm trying to ask you anything. I was successfully asking you. Sorry, sorry. Where do you put your political enthusiasm if you've been disabused of the notion that any political leader, no matter how charismatic and demagogic, is gonna achieve anything, that they will ultimately be subsumed by some invisible interest that appear to steer well power. What are you using there?

Speaker 2:
[104:39] Yeah, and you were saying could it happen to like a Thomas Massey? I actually don't think it could happen to a Thomas Massey. I don't think it could happen to a Rand Paul.

Speaker 4:
[104:45] No, I was using Thomas Massey as an example of someone that sort of trod the line, like that guy. He's, no, this is my views. This is my views. They're trying to buy me. I'm not doing it. Like someone that's sort of shown kind of an integrity, and I mean integrity in the sense of he's remained sort of in alignment with-

Speaker 2:
[105:01] And I think there was a red flag on Trump because what was he at heart? A deal maker.

Speaker 4:
[105:05] Right.

Speaker 2:
[105:05] He's been a deal maker his whole life. And that should have been maybe more of a red flag that he would say. There's no core principles in there that are driving him on most issues. Like there were a couple, like I do believe he's against illegal immigration. I do believe he saw genuine concerns around the trade war and manufacturing and what China was doing. I think that was sincere and we've seen him try to do something about that. He's got sincere beliefs about doing business with other nations and how we can make America richer. And I think like all that glad handing he did with his Saudi Arabia summit, where he's like, yeah, you're going to invest in America. Great. We're all going to get rich. We don't have to like hate each other anymore. I think that was sincere. But that deal maker thing is probably what got us into trouble on the Iran thing. So I don't know. I rarely put my faith in politicians. I'm not sure I ever really totally put it in Trump. I fell in love with Trump's professional promises to us. Like I really believed he would close the border. He would kick out the illegals, that he would stop the trans mania. I believe that he would crack down on crime to the extent you can at the federal level. I have to say he's lived up to those promises, except for the deportations. He has closed the border. He has done a lot on trans. He has tried to do what a president can on crime. I'm grateful for all those things, but this other stuff, Epstein, Iran, the economy, have been pretty disastrous.

Speaker 4:
[106:35] Okay, so it's like you are quite objective, and while I'm listening to you, I'm remembering that famous moment, I think, in the primaries, where you'd say red eyes and red...

Speaker 2:
[106:44] Blood coming out of my eyes, out of my wherever.

Speaker 4:
[106:46] So it's kind of like that's one of the most memorable and like, whoa, Trump, kind of pop culture moments. But now, it seems from a well-versed, studied and journalistic perspective, you're saying that Trump isn't fulfilling his pledge to his voter base. And what I'm curious about is, the problem we have, Megyn, as content creators, is that we can just live in the mad vicissitudes of never-ending conflict and just sort of find a path through it. Someone's telling me, oh, a lot of people think Tucker has become more expressive or condemnatory of Trump and in particular, regarding foreign policy in Israel, obviously, that there's a kind of tactical move, there's a strategic move, there's a way of garnering audience. And yeah, I really don't feel that either about Tucker at all, or anyone, actually, or people we're discussing. But what I'm trying to ask, and I suppose now I am trying to ask, is like, where do you put your enthusiasm now? Because 28, JD Vance, like, where do you go? Okay, but this time, because me, I've reverted to where I was as a kid and a smackhead, a drug addict, saying, you can't trust any of them because there are systems that control them, and it doesn't matter how, as long as these systems are fundamentally controlled by the same interests, whether they're global bureaucratic or deep state.

Speaker 2:
[108:09] They call that being blackpilled.

Speaker 4:
[108:11] So where do we, if we're blackpilled then, and me as a follower of Jesus, and you're Christian, hey?

Speaker 2:
[108:17] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[108:19] So where do we go? Where do we go when it comes to advocacy? What are you saying?

Speaker 2:
[108:24] Well, the next step is relative evils.

Speaker 4:
[108:27] Oh, great. Well, I don't like that.

Speaker 2:
[108:28] I know. It's unfortunate, but that's the next logical step because it is a binary system. One of them is going to ascend to power, and you have to choose the lesser of two evils. That's really what it's always been about. I mean, even with Trump, you know, he asked me to come speak for him and go to that rally and sort of endorse him the night before the vote. And I did wrestle with it, but something inside of me told me you have to do it because I knew, I knew we'd be in far worse shape if Kamala Harris won. She could not win. There was just absolutely no way we could allow that. So it wasn't like I love and adore Trump. You know, personally, he and I have always had a friction between us. It's been very complicated between us for many, many years, which is good. I would take complicated. I'm a journalist. I never wanted to be his bootlicker and I never have been. I never have been. He and I have had ups and downs and I've been critical at times and very, very promotional at other times. But I knew that he was better than she was. And I still feel like we'll have to make that choice next time around. But look, I have voted in nine presidential elections. Five of them I voted Republican and four of them I voted Democrat. And it wasn't all like the four when I was super young. I am a true independent. I will make up my mind based on the person who gets the nomination and go from there. And what does the country look like? What are the issues that are really important right now?

Speaker 4:
[110:01] But Megan, from where we are now, what level of independence does that demonstrate really when surely what we have agreed on is that there is no meaningful transaction taking place in the tension of a bipartisan system?

Speaker 2:
[110:15] Well, but take what I just said. Like, if your top issue is... And my two top issues were the border and the trans thing. And Trump did a good job on those. I'd like the deportations to happen, but like we've made so much progress on the trans thing. We are still cutting off the penises of little boys, but not as often as we used to.

Speaker 4:
[110:34] I did one this morning.

Speaker 2:
[110:36] And the whole messaging around it has changed. The Olympics changed. This is all thanks to Trump. All these hospitals are stopping the procedures. That's thanks to Trump. So we've gotten something.

Speaker 4:
[110:48] But compared to potential Armageddon and yielding to perhaps the supreme forces that ultimately control the world, those are pyrrhic victories indeed.

Speaker 2:
[110:57] And somebody had to ascend. So what are you going to do? Like completely withdraw from the process altogether, cede the arguments, let the Democrats make two new states, so we'll never see a Republican in national power again. Like no, I have to fight those battles.

Speaker 4:
[111:13] What if the... Can we not generate new battles by proposing radical systemic change and the radical decentralization of political power? I'm asking you this because I'm curious.

Speaker 2:
[111:26] We have to get rid of the two-party system. Yeah, the first thing you have to do is get rid of the two-party primary system.

Speaker 4:
[111:31] Cool, just do that. I mean, why are people not acknowledging that if the technology exists for all of us to carry digital ID, essentially 70% of the global population to get vaccinated overnight from either a made up or potentially not as threatening as it was presented, disease, then why don't we collectively, particularly people that have extraordinary sway and indeed if you are about to face extraordinary attacks, it's precisely as a result of the influence and impact you could have. Why, I'm curious, genuinely, this is a real question because I'm trying to understand it myself, what if these voices in independent media became overtly and deliberately active in politics? Doesn't that have the extraordinary salve of resolving these cultural issues instantly, i.e. if there is a community that wants to be run in accordance with Sharia law within some state somewhere, then allow them to democratically do it. If there is a community that want to have a sort of a trans utopia, allow them to do it. However, in these communities, we want to maximally run them in accordance with these principles. In a sense, what is the point of nations of this size and scale? Do you not consider that the rise of nationalism was itself a response to globalism and people beginning to sense that there was no national sovereignty in France, or in Germany, or in Sri Lanka, or in the United States of America? If you look at trends like, for example, the rise of agricultural protests, it's an indication that through global bureaucratic edicts, they're trying to control food sourcing. And indeed then, if there is a global problem, perhaps because of the miracle of this new communication in which you are a leader, that we could be advocating not just for a different incumbent in a corrupt system, but a different system entirely. And it's not that long ago, 250 years or wherever it was, since the establishment of your great country, that even when the War of Independence was won against that other country, I don't remember who lost it, but I'm sure they had some good points and a reasonable king who was not syphilitic and mad. Many, like isn't it Patrick Henry, said, we've got to go further, too much centralization. Empower states and then the states empower communities and the communities empower the individual and you have to end, the problem of donation has to end, lobbying has to end unless you make those kind of proposals, unless you make the position of leadership a position of service so that you don't even attract those people.

Speaker 2:
[114:07] Or just smaller, or just smaller.

Speaker 4:
[114:09] Whatever possible.

Speaker 2:
[114:10] Yeah, much, much smaller.

Speaker 4:
[114:11] De-ideologize it.

Speaker 2:
[114:14] Look, I love your optimism. I guess I'm just a cynical mofo at heart where I'm like, that's never going to happen. The corporate money. You don't seem cynical. On this front, I just feel like there's too much money. There are too many entrenched interests that control all of this that I feel no cogs in the wheel are going to change it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I should be more optimistic.

Speaker 4:
[114:34] No cogs in the wheel will.

Speaker 2:
[114:35] But I will say one thing to your point. I think that this little ecosystem of independent voices is important.

Speaker 4:
[114:43] People are getting killed for it.

Speaker 2:
[114:45] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4:
[114:46] People are getting shot dead in public because of the impact. It seems to me people are having their reputations tarnished, I think precisely because of that. So what my interest is, is why are we pretending that we are at an advantage when you centralize power? Of course, there are areas where central coordination is beneficial. But the principle ought be decentralization and democracy. These are not new ideas. If the technology that existed today existed when this nation was founded, how much power would they have afforded at the local level? They would have afforded more.

Speaker 2:
[115:23] Yeah, a lot.

Speaker 4:
[115:24] Now that technology does exist.

Speaker 2:
[115:25] That of course was the original ideal anyway. That was the whole goal of having these little states that were experimental and a very small national federal government that we'd all join, and we'd have some basic ideals that would be enforced at that level, but that each state could have its own personality and its own laws and its own culture. That was always the vision for America. It's only as the country went on that we got a more bloated and empowered federal government that we then seeded a bunch of powers from the congressional branch, which is the people's representative, to the executive branch. It's gotten bigger and bigger under Obama, under Biden, and now under Trump. I'd love to get back to where we have a very, very tiny disempowered executive who really can't do much. Yeah. That'd be great. That would be much more consistent with the way the founders wanted the country to run.

Speaker 4:
[116:17] And now with the technology that we have, that flow, that charge could be reversed. It's absolutely possible that people could participate in democracy. When I've had to do it, like in 12 step groups that I'm a member of, they're democratic and it's slow and it's boring. And it doesn't matter how well you think you talk or how charismatic you think you are, you only have one vote and you only have one voice. And so if they want a coffee machine, they'll get one. If they don't want a coffee machine, they won't get one. It's humbling and it's cohesive. And he has no favorites, Our Lord. He sees us all, you're all just my kids. I love you all. I made you perfect and individual. You're exactly as you're meant to be. And then we won't dislocate into bizarre crazes like wokeism, the important principle of kindness and compassion. We know that Our Lord, if he were here, would love people that were confused and broken and concerned and trying to align their inner self with an outer world that they felt didn't understand them. We know that the broken that were lost in the fentanyl crisis would find comfort in him. I feel that he has to have the government resting on his shoulders. We can't let human beings run society through rationalism with the idea that human authority and the human mind is the supreme system of judgment. And I feel like, I know what I'm asking actually, because I don't know anything, what the last few years has taught me is how little I know about anything. But I'm wondering, why not have, dissolve power wherever possible, wherever possible, allow people to run their own communities locally, grow food locally, do not put poisonous substances into food or water or the air, do not try to control nature, have independence when it comes to the manufacturing of your food and utilities, lose your obsession and fixation with gadgets and endless progress. It's not going to answer the problem. Even the mad and giddy progress and ascent of the false gods of Neuralink et al. will come tumbling down eventually. We are made to be custodians and stewards to the land, and we're here to love one another. And these ideas are perfectly expressed. And the miracle of my Christianity, let me for one second talk about this book and not do my trial practice, which you have been very good at. Thank you for being a compassionate and judicious interrogator when it's come to those complex matters. But what I really want to say is that the reason I became Christian is because what I had learned as an addict in recovery, that this world can never give you what you think it can give you, not through drugs, not through sex, not through fame, not through approval, applause or anything. Christ has it for you already and he's waiting to give it to you. And I thought I was so smart. I thought I was so smart. I'm countercultural. Before you were talking about red pills and blue pills, I'd already taken so many hallucinogens. I'd seen through all of the veils and walls of your phony systems. Then I read that book, the holy book. I read the Bible. And what does it say in there throughout the New Testament? Be careful in this world. The devil's in control. It's fallen into the control of someone who's going to create systems that seem like God's kingdom, but they're actually false, completely false. Don't trust any leaders. They're all broken and fallen. Even the wisest kings we've ever had may fall into corruption and concubine and idiocy because of hubris, because of vanity, vanity, all is vanity. What do I learn in there? That God loves us so much that not only does he create us to be in relationship with one another, that he is willing to absorb all of our sins and our brokenness and the worst things you could say about yourself and think about yourself. He knows them all and he loves you anyway. And it doesn't matter if you think you're born in the wrong body and it doesn't matter if you think you don't fit in with this tribe or that tribe or you don't fit in or you don't belong. He loves you. He made you to be as you are.

Speaker 1:
[119:58] And we can't outsource power anymore to ideologues who don't understand the most basic principles of unison. We are all his son. He loves all of us. He don't want us hating Muslims. He don't want us hating gay people or trans people or people south of the border or north of the border. He wants us to be one family. And reason decoupled from the divine leads to a kind of insanity. But reason is a perfect and beautiful tool for organizing resources. If we recognize our place as his children. But when we start to clamber above him, which by the way was the floor of Satan, Satan's self, the fallen one who wants to run his own counterfeit kingdom, who thinks there is no God, who poses as a God, then we get into very, very deep trouble. So I don't even really care if this book gets read or not read or creates one Christian or no Christians or many, many Christians. All I'm really interested in is participating in something truthful and valuable. Even when I come on your podcast, I don't want to sit here and try and persuade people that I am something that I'm not, or that I wasn't something that other people say I am. I'm going to die, you're going to die, we're all going to die. That's the truth of our situation. Now, while we're here, do you want to stay in some stupid fetishized hatred or do you want to participate? I think that's a great way to communicate in the coming of his kingdom, which is what you are called to do. And if ideas occur to you that might bring that about, don't be afraid to openly share them. Don't be afraid to notice that the technology that you vote for pop idols or X-Factors or some dumb thing for could be used to say, I don't want to have a war with Iran. I don't want one. I'm not sending you my taxes. I'm not doing that anymore. We're not being radical enough. We're not being Christian enough. We've forgotten who the God is that died for us. You have to be bold and you have to be willing to die for it. And given what you're saying on your show right now, it seems like you're willing to die for what you believe in. So die for something worth believing in.

Speaker 2:
[121:55] It's a risk we're all taking every day these days. I mean, just being bold with our opinions and saying them unapologetically given the environment we're in. So what about the title? Can you expand on that for the listening audience, how to become a Christian in 7 days? What is it with the 7 days?

Speaker 1:
[122:09] I liked that the world was created in 7 days or all of reality was created in 7 days. And of course it can't have been because day is a rotational astrophysical phenomena. So 7 is the number that means completeness, become complete. And then I liked that it had that little potential for a joke, how to become Christian in 7 days. Astro-ists may take 50 years and initially it says and false rape charges to get started. But then when I was showing my daughters the book cover, I didn't want to have to explain to them. So I changed it to Sirius F-ups.

Speaker 2:
[122:44] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[122:46] And so that's what it means. It means that, and also coming Christian, it's not like you, actually you already are a Christian, you've just forgotten because what it means is you're the follower of the way. That's what it was called in the first place. There is this way, there is a righteous path. You can see it as a neurological path if you want to because such things surely exist, MRIs reveal that. Or you can see it as a geographical one, or you can see it in a whole bunch of Meridian, myriad Meridian ways. But there is a path, there is a way, there is a calling, there is a real you that you've always known you were, and you got distracted at points by glamour and the things of this world. But there is a home calling for you. In a way, the likes of you and me are participating in apostasy. We are leaving a culture that told us you are the golden and blonded goddess woman that's actually smart. You poor broken silly little boy, go out there and womanize. We can leave that false priesthood. We can leave that and we can participate in something valuable. All it really is, is God incarnated, God within you. You can know God yourself. You don't need brokerage. You don't need institutions whether they're vast and wonderful, like the Roman Catholic Church or disparate and magnificent, like the evangelical movement in this country or traditional, like the Church of England in mine. You don't need that brokerage. He is here now with you. He died for you and he spent quite a lot of his time actually saying, you lot that are saying you're the authorities are really misrepresenting the message as I understand it, using the word with the Pharisees to demonstrate to them exactly how they'd gone wrong. But there are two forces of power on this world. Babylon, the power of empire that wants to control you militarily, and the pharisaic class that wants to control you ideologically. Our Lord, He came to oppose both of them and to let them know that they were both wrong and forgiven and that we as individuals could follow Him. What we have a chance to do and what I'm really trying to put across in this book actually, and I'll shut up, is it's in the Bible. All these things that I thought I'd understood, like I can't trust this system, I need the mystery of God. Where is God? I feel so alone, I'm so broken. All the things I was looking for in LSD and false intimacy, all the things that I was trying to rant about at MTV VMA Awards. It's all in there. He's telling you, it's all explained in his own language. And I like it. When he came to me, he came to me as a feeling in my abdomen, in my gut. It came in an instant, a suicidal moment, I knew Christ was real. Like Jesus from school, a nativity place, and boring, I know, Domine. That's, it's real. And from that moment on, I had to read the Bible and I read it and then I learned, oh my God, all of it is all in here, it's all real. And it's so close to being crazy. It's so close to being crazy. It's so close to folklore and mythology. But these edge land ideologues that we've cited already today, the Alex Joneses, who is a Christian, of course, or David Icke, who's vehemently opposed to Christianity, tell you continually there are demonic, difficult to detect forces that are controlling our reality supernaturally. They tell you that institutions are controlled by occultist endeavors. They tell you that there are pedophile cults sacrificing Jews. None of that's not in the Bible. Every single thing that I've just said is in the Bible. There are demons, there are devils, there are angels, there were giants. To conquer those giants, you're going to have to think different. You're going to have to think different. Ah, the sad ingenuity of Steve Jobs wrestled towards just making gadgetry when he understood something vital. Connection and extension of yourself through technology could bring about his kingdom, the merging of the kingdoms. A new kingdom is coming, it's changing, it's happening now, it's happening now through eternity, in this moment now through him. And we can be participants in it if we're, and this is where it's wonderful, because everyone thinks, what can I do? Like you just said, I'm just a cog in the machine and all of that. Well, you're actually a pretty important cog. You're a vital cog, you are a perfect cog, you're interconnecting, actually you specifically, Megyn, beloved Megyn Kelly, are connecting with millions of millions of people and people actually really care about what you're saying. And if they hear your optimism and your faith and your boldness and your bravery, which they are hearing every day, then they will understand it, they will know it. The sheep will hear the shepherd's voice, they will hear it in you. They're hearing it now, even in someone as broken, as messed up, as selfish, as foolish as me. They know.

Speaker 2:
[127:09] We all have those foibles expressed in different sins and different mistakes, but we all have those foibles. And speaking of Katy Perry.

Speaker 1:
[127:16] Hold on. That was pretty skillful. Go on, then. Go on.

Speaker 2:
[127:20] Well, I wonder...

Speaker 1:
[127:21] Because I've met Doug now and I like him.

Speaker 2:
[127:23] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[127:24] I'm going to read them books of Doug's.

Speaker 2:
[127:25] I think you'll really enjoy them.

Speaker 1:
[127:26] Historical novel, plus he's double handsome.

Speaker 2:
[127:28] Yeah, right?

Speaker 1:
[127:29] Double Dutch handsome, you said.

Speaker 2:
[127:30] He looks like a Dutch. He looks like a Dutch. He is Dutch. And he looks Dutch. He's tall, he's got the wide set eyes, he's got the angular face.

Speaker 1:
[127:37] Touch that Dutch.

Speaker 2:
[127:38] Now...

Speaker 1:
[127:39] But check first. Don't put them clogs on without asking. Don't you put that finger in that dike without asking. Don't you spin them windmills without... Don't you go to that Anne Frank Museum.

Speaker 2:
[127:49] Who talked about a finger in a dike?

Speaker 1:
[127:50] That's a Dutch story.

Speaker 2:
[127:51] I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1:
[127:52] Sorry. Gotta be careful these days.

Speaker 2:
[127:54] I went with it.

Speaker 1:
[127:56] Although, look about where you're gonna go and you'll see a double joke. Because you're gonna go back to your subject.

Speaker 2:
[128:01] Yes, right.

Speaker 1:
[128:02] And the last thing I said was finger in a dike.

Speaker 2:
[128:04] Oh, that's true.

Speaker 1:
[128:04] You're gonna say...

Speaker 2:
[128:05] Okay, so well, what is it like to have your ex-wife dating dike Justin Trudeau?

Speaker 1:
[128:11] I've put up with a lot with that ex-wife of mine, but you took it too far, KP, with Orlando Bloom.

Speaker 2:
[128:19] Yeah, respectable.

Speaker 1:
[128:20] Legolas. I love that guy.

Speaker 2:
[128:22] Yeah. Brilliant.

Speaker 1:
[128:23] Fair enough. Trudeau, though. Potentially Fidel Castro's spawn. No. There we draw the line. It's horrible. I did not like that Trudeau, because no, he's a child of God and he's beloved. But what we'll say is I didn't like it when he was having a go at them truckers. I didn't like they kept blacking up inexplicably and then sort of pretend to be ultra-woke. He does have fantastic hair. I didn't like it when they invited, I think, an actual Nazi into the Canadian Parliament.

Speaker 2:
[128:48] Yes, they did.

Speaker 1:
[128:49] I specifically don't like what is typified by those good-looking politicians, Obama, Macron, Blair. They're sort of good-looking and they're charming. But you think, who do you work for really? Who's running this? Because it can't be you. I don't like that sort of pose of compassion that's absolutely undergirded by selfishness, probably because I recognize it myself. I'm so selfish sometimes. But I don't like that. The trucker bit is what got me. They called them Nazis.

Speaker 2:
[129:15] It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1:
[129:15] They were just being sort of bold and brave and stuff. So yes. Is she still going out with him?

Speaker 2:
[129:20] Yeah. We checked this morning and it appears that they are still together.

Speaker 1:
[129:23] Keep checking. She could come to her senses any minute.

Speaker 2:
[129:28] It is disappointing, isn't it? When your ex gets together with somebody who doesn't make you look good at all, doesn't increase the average at all.

Speaker 1:
[129:35] Look at the category I'm in now. I'm in with Trudeau. It will be a relief to be in a rape trial. See?

Speaker 2:
[129:45] Never lose your sense of humor. Not even about the darkest things.

Speaker 1:
[129:47] You can't take that away from me, baby.

Speaker 2:
[129:49] Do you guys keep in touch? She said you never contacted her again after you sent her a note saying you wanted a divorce.

Speaker 1:
[129:56] Look, that is true.

Speaker 2:
[129:57] Wow. Never anything, not a text?

Speaker 1:
[130:00] I stay in touch with her father Keith and her mother Mary, because they're good Christian folks, and I must say I feel a good deal of sympathy with the recent allegations around Katy from 2010.

Speaker 2:
[130:13] She's been accused of sexually assaulting Ruby Rose by allegedly exposing her vag to this gal's face, which she's denied, but there's a criminal inquiry underway in Australia as a result of these allegations.

Speaker 1:
[130:25] To me, this is probably the old school man in me. I don't even hear the crime there. What happened? I can't even hear where it is. Like someone would have to poke me with a stick. There, that's the bit. There's a crime.

Speaker 2:
[130:39] No 20-year-old girl wants another woman rubbing her vag on her face uninvited.

Speaker 1:
[130:44] That's the crime.

Speaker 2:
[130:45] There it is, Russell.

Speaker 1:
[130:46] I got it. I got you. Are you available for the trial? The puck is coming.

Speaker 2:
[130:51] Yes, I will come.

Speaker 1:
[130:52] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[130:54] She denies, again, Katy Perry denies that she did this.

Speaker 1:
[130:56] I didn't handle that marriage very well. I can see in retrospect absolutely what the problem was. In fact, I explained that in the book. What it was was...

Speaker 2:
[131:01] You said you were married to celebrity itself.

Speaker 1:
[131:03] I worked it out.

Speaker 2:
[131:04] So how so?

Speaker 1:
[131:05] Well, because I, you know, look, when you fall in love with someone, like, isn't it amazing to be in love? Isn't it so amazing? Well, imagine that sort of compounded with everyone else acting like it's important. It's like, oh my God, this is overwhelming. Plus, she's a really lovely... You know what there is about her? She has an innocence. She's a very beautiful person. She's also incredibly driven and worked really, really hard. I saw her working really, really hard. Here's me taking total responsibility for all the mistakes I made in that marriage. I wanted to grab her like a kind of, there, got it. I felt like I was inadequate and not enough on my own. So I saw this big glorious thing. Even though I knew her as a person as well, as a person, she was a normal person. Everyone's a normal person. You've been around famous people. Who's famous when it comes to shower time, picking your nose, scratching your ass? Everyone just breaks down into mundanity and flesh and fallenness in the end. But she was really, really, really, really lovely. But it was my fault because I pushed to get married early because I felt inadequate and insecure and like I wasn't enough. And that if I was married to her, that I would somehow be a better person and more important. And that put her under an unnecessary amount of pressure and strain. And then when she was unable as a very young woman, like she was 25 or 26, she was young herself there. She couldn't fulfill those obligations because she was quite rightly, one might argue, certainly from a materialist and a feminist and celebrity-oriented perspective, pursuing her dream, of which she successfully did, of becoming the world's most famous pop star. And when she was doing that, I was in sort of a crisis of like, hold on a minute, I'm lonely and this isn't working. This isn't working. Why do I not feel, you've married a pop star.

Speaker 2:
[132:44] I did it.

Speaker 1:
[132:45] Come on, why is this not working? So, it was my fault.

Speaker 2:
[132:50] Do you feel like if she weren't a celebrity, it could have worked?

Speaker 1:
[132:53] Probably not because I was fated to marry my incredible wife, Laura Brand, who is sort of who I already knew and had already married. But I didn't learn the lesson then. I went on to go with Jemima Khan, who was married to the now jailed, former leader of Pakistan, who went out with a few grand, a bunch. She was like a billionaire and glorious and amazing hair and a 300 acre estate and riches. And I thought, yes, yes, this, then I will be okay. Yes, that's it. I got some of the details wrong. It wasn't American pop star, it was British aristocrat. And then of course, once again, she's a human being and I in my own foolish way objectified her. So I had to learn that lesson. Finally, I think now I have learned, don't try to take things from people, just leave people alone, be happy in your marriage and serve God as best you can. And remember, you're going to forget that all the time, like an idiot and go back to thinking life's about you. But then you now hopefully a part of a community, see Jake there who's with me, I have people around me now who are following God in their own broken way and I just can look at them, how they're doing it, you know?

Speaker 2:
[133:56] Now, as I'm listening to you talk, I have this fear in the back of my head, Russell.

Speaker 1:
[134:00] What is it?

Speaker 2:
[134:01] I'm worried about your criminal trial. I don't think that you're going to get a fair shake in Great Britain. Oh no. They love to put people in jail.

Speaker 1:
[134:09] Oh no, I don't want to go to jail.

Speaker 2:
[134:10] I know.

Speaker 1:
[134:11] It's my strong preference to not go to jail.

Speaker 2:
[134:14] So what if you go to jail? What kind of jail time would you be facing if the worst happened?

Speaker 1:
[134:17] I mean, I think if you are convicted of being a rapist, you go to jail for a very long time, which, if you are a rapist, I think is only right and only fair.

Speaker 2:
[134:26] Yes, but what if you're not and you get convicted anyway?

Speaker 1:
[134:29] That's not fair. That would be what we call injustice.

Speaker 2:
[134:33] Okay, but I actually have a worry that they'll send you because maybe, what if it is part of your path? What if you're supposed to be like ministering to men in jail or changing the lives of the least fortunate among us? And this is part of, you know, God's plan for you.

Speaker 1:
[134:47] If it's God's plan, then there's no point resisting it, is there? If it's God's plan, then off I go and I will serve him there. If that's God's plan, I don't like that idea much because I'd much rather be with my little children and my wife. Herbie is two and a half, Mabel is nine, Peggy is seven.

Speaker 2:
[135:03] They're little, yeah, you're still in the two single digits.

Speaker 1:
[135:07] But surely you can't prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone raped someone if they've not raped someone or proved reasonable doubt. Jury trial, yeah, they've not banned them yet in the UK. They're trying, but they've not managed to yet.

Speaker 2:
[135:18] That's good, that's good.

Speaker 1:
[135:19] 12 human beings like me, they'll look and see what goes on.

Speaker 2:
[135:22] It's so hard to defend yourself against something that you may or may not have done 20 years ago. That's the problem that we have with the case against Trump, the civil rape allegation that he faced by E. Jean Carroll, which she won.

Speaker 1:
[135:35] Was that in the changing room one?

Speaker 2:
[135:39] Yes, in Bergdorf Goodman, Bergdorf Goodman, that he allegedly grabbed her and raped her. It was 30, 35 years earlier. It's like, how are you supposed to, after all that time, or what happened to Justice Kavanaugh, our Supreme Court Justice who got accused of sexually molesting a woman 30 years earlier. Like, you have no papers to show where you actually were that day, you don't have a contemporaneous memory of, absolutely was not doing that with you because I was at a Starbucks and here's my receipt. It's very, very hard to disprove.

Speaker 1:
[136:07] The legal standard, Megyn, is beyond reasonable doubt that this person did it. Beyond it will be not reasonable to doubt it. If you like, I doubt that happened. That's, you know, and one might think that 25, 30 years ago in itself is reasonable doubt unless you're able to. And look, the thing I take heart from is I go in myself and I look at and I see, I try my best to see myself as he sees me and I see what I am. Oh, you idiot, you fool, you poor, broken, silly boy. I don't see, oh yeah, then there was that time, you know, like this and also as I was telling you before, I think, like when you do 12 steps, you have to interrogate yourself. You have to honestly say to someone, this is what I've done. This is what I've not done. I've done these things. You have to tell them because then they go, okay, well, you know, you've got to make amends. And the fact is that I owe an amends to women for sure in a sort of a general way and in a specific way. And may God grant me the opportunity to make those amends. And I guess, look, if we've got faith in God, the faith in God has got to be, if it's not faith in God that I'm going to get what I want, it's faith in God that he knows what I want and he knows what's best for me. Forget what I want. What I want is not even a factor anymore, sadly. Because what I want, you know, like, listen, I tried to get what I want. What I wanted was I want to be really, really famous. I want to marry pop stars, be around really glamorous and beautiful women, sleep with them. And then one's not enough, I'll have two. You know, that's what I thought, when I'll do drugs, I'll do drugs all the time then. What I want is not a metric, but I'm-

Speaker 2:
[137:41] Right, we've learned to reject this.

Speaker 1:
[137:44] But then the problem is that we live in a nitty-ditty donkey island. You know, we're all living on Pinocchio, the donkey island of Pinocchio, no? Like, everyone thinks smoking cigars, and like everyone's selling these ideas to one another to a lesser or greater degree. If you are this type of person, pursue this full-side, or if you're this type of person, pursue this full-side. I really, really do not want to go to jail. But look at what happened to Julian Assange. That dude, they never even give him a trial. They stuck him for five years. He was in that embassy. I went and saw him there, and I go, can I look at your bedroom? He goes, well, come on, let me have some privacy.

Speaker 2:
[138:15] And you were not even the most famous person who went to visit him. Pamela Anderson was visiting him.

Speaker 1:
[138:19] How, yes, how did that pan out?

Speaker 2:
[138:21] I mean, imagine being Julian Assange, and Pamela Anderson walks into your room.

Speaker 1:
[138:26] I'm like, wait a minute.

Speaker 2:
[138:27] I love my prison.

Speaker 1:
[138:29] I'll Wikileak that. And when I was, you can leave your file anonymously. When I visited him, yeah, he's a hero, that dude. And I'm friends with his wife, Stella. And while he was away, he would send me messages. Once it all kicked off with me, he goes, because that's what happened to Julian Assange, first of all, is they accused him of rape. Oh yeah, I remember. And then like, well, yeah, I went and visited him that time. I liked that dude, but he did, after, he's a real hero. He's a genuine hero. So is Edward Snowden. The hero means you're willing to sacrifice everything for what you believe in. That's a hard line, man. He then did five years in Belmarsh. Belmarsh is no joke of a jail. That's a cat A prison. That's the most severe prison. I think he did a lot of it in solitary. Never had a trial. And really what his crime was is he told the truth about corrupt, in this case, I have to say, American power. He exposed Hillary Clinton to an enormous degree. So the people that were disposed to support that dude, all of the Democrat left, they went, we don't care. And all the Warhawk Republican types, they're like, we don't care either. 10 years of CIA, we're going to kill him, weren't they? So yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, justice and truth, these are ideas that presume God. In my country, the United Kingdom, it's gone a little bit godless. Like you can get an abortion now. I think even on the child's third birthday, you can still like, no, I've gone off it. No, it's annoying, get it out of here. You can be euthanized like if you, I think you could be euthanized if you're annoying.

Speaker 2:
[139:58] Yeah, oh God.

Speaker 1:
[139:59] No, you're out. And like this is Britain, a lot of people are annoying. Look at the, just consider the teeth.

Speaker 2:
[140:03] That's probably why Harry and Meghan left.

Speaker 1:
[140:06] Not bad.

Speaker 2:
[140:06] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[140:07] Look at that.

Speaker 2:
[140:07] Thank you. Well, listen, I hope I'm wrong. I hope, I'm not predicting, I'm not predicting a guilty.

Speaker 1:
[140:14] Don't predict it.

Speaker 2:
[140:15] I'm just, I'm worried as I, I'm looking at the cross on the cover of the book and I'm thinking, how does this, where does this journey go next? And I really hope, you know, and I'm also thinking about something Erica Kirk said at Charlie's funeral, how Charlie said, use me, you know, use me Lord. And she was saying, those are powerful words. Oh. You know, like, I hope you don't get used in the way we don't want to see you get used. But as you point out, if that's God's will, then it, then so it must be and he knows better than we do. And there must be something for you there. There must be something, some work for you there.

Speaker 1:
[140:46] Oh man. Someone said, like, why did he come when he came, the Lord? When did he, why did he choose that moment out of all eternity? Like, was it because of these political conditions with the Romans? Was it because of the Pharisee class? Why was it he chose then? And someone said, I think it was Father Mike Schmitz, actually the Catholic YouTuber. He's fantastic. And he said, it was just for a thief on the next cross. That's the only time he could have got that guy.

Speaker 2:
[141:11] That's right. That's probably spot on. Listen, God bless you. Good luck to you.

Speaker 1:
[141:17] Thanks.

Speaker 2:
[141:18] We'll be following very closely.

Speaker 1:
[141:19] God is great.

Speaker 2:
[141:20] And honestly, I'm so glad we have this conversation. Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1:
[141:23] I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:
[141:24] Yeah, it was very cathartic for me. I, for all the reasons stated, I got to the place where I didn't want to talk to you, and then I really did want to talk to you, and now I have talked to you, and I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity, and I've gotten to know you better.

Speaker 1:
[141:37] Thank you. Are you available for jury service in October and then Night King? Don't have to be a resident.

Speaker 2:
[141:42] Yes, we'll swing by.

Speaker 1:
[141:43] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[141:43] I know Tucker's going. He and I will go. We'll make a day of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[141:47] I think he's banging me out for eight weeks.

Speaker 2:
[141:48] I'm going to go out with you two. Nobody's going to have a glass of wine with me. Abby, come with me. All the best to you. Good luck. Buy the book, Russell Brand, How to Become a Christian in 7 Days. May take 50 years of sin in series. Fuck off to get started. All right. We will be back tomorrow with some of our MK true crime favorites.

Speaker 1:
[142:06] And also, we usually do something called MK Ultra. Do you do MK Ultra? That's your elite. That should be paywall.

Speaker 2:
[142:13] That's my secret special. Yeah, exactly. Behind the payroll offering. Tonight is the California gubernatorial debate, isn't it? Yes, tonight is the debate with Steve Hilton and Katy fucking Porter. Can't wait. So we'll have that for you tomorrow as well. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.