Hearts of Oak Podcast

In Conversation with Tommy Robinson

Join Hearts of Oak for an exclusive interview with Tommy Robinson, where he delves into his ongoing legal battles and the profound impact of his activism.
Robinson shares insights into his voluntary return to the UK and his subsequent detention under contentious terrorism legislation, shedding light on what he describes as a concerted effort to stifle journalistic freedom. He discusses the pivotal role of social media in amplifying alternative voices against the backdrop of mainstream media's alleged collusion with state powers.
Despite facing vilification, Robinson points to a swelling tide of public support, underscoring a disconnect between the establishment's narrative and the grassroots sentiment. Tune in as he criticizes political figures for their lack of solidarity and calls for a united stand at an upcoming rally, positioning it as a critical juncture in the battle for free speech and the preservation of national identity.
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Interview recorded 23.10.24*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
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Transcript:
Perfect, Peter.
How are you?
Good, good.
So, on Saturday, there are lots to talk about in a short space of time, but you're back on Saturday.
It's going to be a huge day.
Let me touch on that.
Let's touch on your book and then what's been happening in the UK with Patriots, basically, in jail with Peter Lynch, that.
But on Saturday, tell us about Saturday.
Why should people be there?
First of all, I didn't have to come back.
My offence is a civil offence, which means that they couldn't have forced me to come back.
There's no way they could have come and got me on an extradition order for a civil offence.
So, I didn't have to come back.
So, for the record, I've chosen to come back.
So, as you follow whatever happens in my upcoming court case, know that I chose that.
I chose to play the film.
I'm going to tell the judge that. I made the decision, a conscious decision, to play the film. It's my job as a journalist to show the truth.
It's been my job to talk about the difficult subjects that others shy away from. I made that decision on the 27th of July to play that film, knowing full well that they would send me to prison.
And I've done that because I believe I'll let them hurt me to hurt themselves. Because 54 million views on the documentary so far and the entire globe watching what's happening in London this Saturday and in my upcoming court case, it's going to damage them more than it's going to damage me.
I'll go to jail, I'll come back out of jail.
I am concerned that they can give me four years, but I'm in that position now. So that's where I'm at.
So this Saturday, I still, Peter, just to say, there's a warrant out for my arrest, yeah?
Yeah, yeah.
They didn't arrest me at the border.
Yeah, you came in fine.
Okay, so that's not right.
That shouldn't have happened.
So I believe I'm answering bail on Friday for terrorism offences.
Terrorism.
I'm about to be charged under terrorism legislation.
So, on the 27th of July, when we held our successful rally, the next day I was detained at the border under terrorism legislation.
The legislation that's been passed by the Labour government, that's who passed it originally, states there's no right to remain silent.
So when you're in an airport or at a border, if you're detained by the counterterrorism unit, you have no right to remain silent.
So for six hours, I was grilled, and I had to answer every question.
If I didn't answer any question, I'm automatically charged under the Terrorism Act.
But the other thing is, you have to give them your passcode to your phone.
Now, if you don't, you are in breach of the Terrorism Act.
Now, I refused because the reason being I'm a journalist.
I'm a journalist, and my sources of information are protected.
At least I thought they were.
But they then arrested me.
So when I said, "No, you'll not have," and I gave my justified reason, your police forces have allowed the addresses of victims of sexual exploitation by grooming gangs to be targeted.
You've got rid of evidence.
Corrupt police officers have been working with them.
Officers have even been raping the girls.
And you want me to give you my sources of information so you can put them on some database computer system that any police officer can access, including every Muslim police officer across the country?
It's not happening.
So I give as a journalist, when people give me information, do you know episode six, Peter?
We're on episode six of The Rape of Britain.
Lots of things have been thrown in my way.
Episode six, we have covert recordings that make serious allegations against a leading Labour politician.
They know that because counterterrorism questioned me about it.
So that's what they want to get in my phone for.
I know why you want to get in there.
And they have got in my phone already because I've had emails going back and forth to my solicitor about warrants that have gone to the judge.
So I'm answering bail because I didn't let them in my phone. They should have charged me there and then, but they didn't.
So my solicitors believe, because I have to go there at three o'clock, two things are going to happen.
They're going to charge me under the Terrorism Act.
And they then will possibly try and remand me to prison this Friday.
Now, they're planning that because of the demonstration on Saturday.
And the current outstanding warrant I have, which I haven't executed, I believe they'll do that this Friday.
Because then there's no chance for me to get bail because it's Friday.
I'll be held for court on Monday.
Could you see this attack on journalists?
I mean, Martin Sellner was blocked going into, was it, Switzerland, like two weeks ago, and they brought a 14-day restriction because he was going to speak at that weekend.
And it seems as though that's in Germany.
But this kind of attack on journalists, you'd expect China or Middle East, but it's here in the UK.
And I'm about to go to jail for between two and four years on Monday for making a film, for making a film.
And there's no argument.
There's no argument about the contents of the film.
There's no argument that I've made stuff up.
It's just that they didn't want you to see the film because they were busy lying to you, deceiving you.
And the biggest question for me is when you watch this documentary, which 54 million people have, what else are they lying about?
What other stories are we being spoon-fed by the globalist, corporate-controlled bastard of a media and the politicians?
All of them work.
There's like an unholy alliance.
We look at it in the documentary.
The media, the politicians, the police, they all work together.
And they work together to control a narrative to feed you and spoon-feed you.
Bullshit.
Just as they've done with COVID, just as they've done with vaccines, lockdowns, Brexit. Whatever subject they choose, they choose what you know and what you hear.
Whatever person or character they choose, like me, but not just me, Martin Sellner, any of these characters, they tell you who they are.
They don't want you to hear from us.
And Elon Musk is really in their way. And now you see their scheme.
Okay, so Musk.
Yeah, Musk.
Okay. You've met a lot of people.
You've connected with a lot of people.
But it's still Musk, you look at it whenever he retweets and says, what's wrong with the video, you probably thought, holy shit.
Well, I looked through every morning during the troubles.
Yeah.
The riots, and every morning, three, four of our posts were liked by Elon Musk.
He was following everything. Now, what Elon Musk allowed was the British public to see what their media didn't want you to see.
Now, obviously, with their control element, through censorship and big tech, and before big tech, they controlled you through their mainstream newspapers and the TV.
All of a sudden, social media comes.
They've lost control.
There's a populist revolution across the world, starting in India with Modi.
Then we see Brazil.
Then we see America.
We see all these countries.
They lost control for a few years.
Boom.
Through big tech, delete everyone, censor everyone, change the algorithms, push their voices. They regained control. I was disappeared for five years.
In comes a billionaire who's not willing to back down, buys up X for 40, what, 48 billion pounds.
Fuck you to the establishment.
We're having free speech again. What does free speech mean?
It means Tommy Robinson goes like this.
And it means 1.7 billion people have interacted with my stuff in the last 12 weeks.
It means that you're searching for the truth.
The public want the truth.
They know they're being lied to.
The best thing is at the minute, they know, the public know, they're being deceived at every level.
We all know mass immigration is not good for us. We know diversity is not our strength.
We know we're being replaced.
We know it's all orchestrated.
There is no refugee crisis.
They're creating it.
They're bringing them in.
So you're being replaced. You're being enslaved.
Your wages are going down.
Your cost of living is going up, and that's all planned. Every last bit of it is not, it's manufactured.
And anyone who's talking about it, they used to just be able to go, delete him from YouTube.
Yeah, we'll delete him from Facebook.
We'll ban his name.
Not anymore because of X. So Elon Musk is, I keep saying it, he won't be remembered for Tesla.
He won't be remembered for sending things up into space. He'll be remembered for saving freedom of speech.
And the Department of Government Efficiency, Dodge, when he does that.
He can't wait.
Two weeks, but in those two weeks, see, I'll be in jail.
I'll be in prison too late for me.
So what does it mean?
Because you talk to people in the UK and they see you through the prism of the media, the legacy media.
And I know talking to members of the establishment more and they are, you know, the Daily Mail says this or the Times says this.
But that Times piece saying Jordan Peterson has mainstream Tommy, that was intriguing. What has that been like?
Because the world sees you one way, but the Brits see you through the prism of the Daily Mail.
America doesn't see it that way. They see you through the prism of Jordan Peterson saying, this guy's great.
Yeah.
Well, I don't think the Brits see me through the Daily Mail either.
I just think that their whole monopoly and the power they've had is gone.
They just don't realize it.
They've tried to make me the most hated man in Britain. And in doing so, they've made me the Robin Hood of Britain.
They've made me.
The more they attack me, the better my profile goes.
And the more they attack me, and there's a reason for that, when they're attacking me, people know it's because they want to attack them. I'm giving people a voice.
I'm saying things that people aren't prepared to say because they've got jobs and they'll lose careers.
So they're grateful that I say it. So when they see me come under immense attack, they feel aligned and emotionally attached to the story. So lots of people do.
So, I get surprised in the street at how people embrace me, not just, "All right, Tommy," but the fact I've had people come up to me crying their eyes out regularly.
So, I see the attachment they feel, and I have my finger on the pulse, which is why even with Nigel Farage, I think you haven't got your finger on the pulse.
You're making these comments, and you don't get the feeling and mood of this nation currently where we are.
I don't think anyone can quite understand how quickly this has changed in 18 months.
Katie Hopkins, for example. Katie Hopkins left this country the most hated woman in Britain. She's returned. I've walked down the street with her.
I've gone into London with her. I've taken her to the local pub.
And she's loved.
She's a fucking hero.
She's loved by everyone.
She's a women's champion.
Yeah? So...
They're not winning.
And they know they're not winning.
And even now, so I've been very emotional last week. So every time I've spoken about issues, I end up bawling my eyes out on each one of the things. But every time, it's pretty embarrassing.
I'm waiting for all these videos and all these interviews are coming out this week. It's just me crying.
I'm like, baby. But that's because I'm thinking of my kids and I'm thinking of the effect.
I make decisions.
Every decision I make has an effect on my family and they have to deal with it as well.
But to the establishment, which is basically what my statement to the court says, "Do your fucking best."
Yeah, I'm not here to apologize, at all.
In fact, I've done my job, yeah? If my job puts me on the wrong side of your bullshit injunction that prohibits the public seeing the truth, and that means I have to sit in a prison cell, off I go.
Yeah, now that's the position I'm in, and I know, and I don't think they get it.
Say they go maximum on me and give me four years.
They're going to enrage people.
My work for 15 years has been to wake people up, to get them to view what's happening and understand what's happening.
Understand we have a politicized, weaponized judiciary.
We don't have a justice system.
We have a legal system.
When they, the establishment, one, they put a target on you, they use that legal system as a weapon of the totalitarian state because we don't live in a free state.
We don't live in a democracy.
All total bullshit.
So they don't realize by gunning for me like they're going to and probably hammering me, they're awakening more people than I can ever.
It'd take me seven days a week of work for the next 10 years to wake up the amount of people that will be woken up on Monday when they send me to jail.
And there's a distinction between the police, the Bobby on the beat, those who work on the streets.
They all shake my hand.
Yeah, but also the government because it's not necessarily the Bobby on the beat who just joined the police to fight crime; they are being told what to do.
And they're simply following, because every police force follows the orders of the government. And we have a far-left government, and they're basically told what to do.
This case has not been brought against me by the police.
This case is not...
So Jamal, the child in this story, has not asked for me to be prosecuted, which is the usual process.
His lawyers have not asked for me to be prosecuted.
I am being prosecuted by the Attorney General of Keir Starmer's government.
That's who's charging.
And first it was the Conservatives.
It was the Conservatives, yeah.
And it just gets passed on.
It's a Tommy file. Keep it up.
Yeah, keep it up.
There's no difference.
I hope people realize that.
What Labour has done in the last three months, they've just shown themselves.
The Conservatives were doing exactly the same.
They were building this aspect of a totalitarian, controlled state.
They were busy.
They've been busy for 13 years abusing your rights and planning it all.
Labour has come in and just gone, "Fucking, we don't care what people think."
Whack. Let's do it really quick.
Let's hammer them.
Let's put people in jail, like Peter Lynch, for two years, eight months.
For what?
Have you seen the videos?
So I've seen the videos, but that two-tier system and Elon Musk is, when he was told, shut up, he just doubled down.
How well have we seen that two-tier system?
But Musk, using a hashtag two-tier kier, was like, this is beautiful, being the opposition to the government. But that, you can have rapists who...
You can have rapists who get out after two, three years.
You can get those with sex images of children actually walk free, like we've seen if you're part of the establishment.
But you say hurdy words to a police officer or you shout something at a dog and you get put two and a half years.
I think we are seen through it.
Politicians now who were silent, media people who were silent, are now saying, this has gone too far. I mean, hell yes, it's gone too far.
Do you know that, for me, Reform had five candidates selected?
Yeah. Have you heard any of them talk about Peter Lynch yet?
Have you heard any of them talk about the demographic replacement of Great Britain, or us as Britain?
No, they're afraid of that.
Have you heard any of them talk about any of the fucking subjects that people voted for them for? No. You're meant to be reformed.
You were elected to be the opposition voice, to give the people without a voice a voice. And you're doing the same shit.
You're meant to be the different...
I'll just sit and think, well, I've been waiting for the fireworks.
Where's the fireworks? You were elected.
Do you know what?
If I stand for election and I go into Parliament, you'll see fireworks.
Yeah.
I'll fucking let the whole fucking place go.
And I'll tell them everything that you want to tell them.
So I'm reforming, I look and think, well, he's got to be careful, he's an MP now.
What do you mean he's got to be careful?
He was voted in not to be careful.
You were voted in there to give a voice to the voiceless. Well, the voiceless at the minute are being killed in jail.
They're being murdered.
The voiceless are being taken from their kids and put in prison for hurtful fucking words.
And you're sitting there silent.
And you've actually promised you'd be a voice for the people's movement.
Well, all the people are being trampled on.
The people's rights are being taken.
What are you doing about it? It just winds me up. I think, no, you said you were different.
You said you were going to be different.
You've all just sat there doing exactly the same as all the other parties, being careful. No one wants you to be careful. You weren't elected to be careful.
But a lot of MPs are elected, as we know, as you know, because they want a position.
It's not about doing good. It's about power, influence and a position.
They want to be part of the establishment.
Whereas we want to tear down that establishment.
But they've perceived, they've given the image, which even I was guilty of telling people to vote for Reform, they've told people this is what they want to do.
And then they've done nothing.
Since they've got in, I'm not being funny, what have they done since they've got in?
Absolutely fuck all.
They haven't challenged, they won't talk about Islam, so as you become a minority in your town and city, as another 30 mosques are being built today around the nation, they're not going to talk about it.
They'll sit there quietly while Islam takes over Great Britain, and then they'll talk about the boats.
Oh, the boats.
The boats aren't the biggest problem here, yeah?
The boats are easy to talk about.
You need to talk about difficult issues, like the fact that we, by 2041, as white Brits, Anglo-Saxons, are going to be a minority in our own country.
That cannot be allowed. And they won't talk about it.
For me, it's cowardice. It's total cowardice.
You were elected to give a voice to the voiceless, and the voiceless are still voiceless.
What are your thoughts in two weeks?
A huge event that will give us the ability to return free speech.
And I think why the establishment fear Trump getting back in again, which all mean all the betting sites have him winning.
I was watching yesterday, Sky News were having to admit that every betting site has him winning in every swing state and therefore winning.
But if he wins, it kicks off, it encourages the populist movement side across Europe and then gives us hope here.
Because here it's a few individuals, but not a political movement.
What he does is he makes Viktor Orban a somebody again.
He makes the new Austrian leader a powerhouse. At the minute, the Western leaders or the communist leaders are in power, whether it be Macron, whether it be Keir Starmer, whether it be the Germans who are trying to ban and outlaw AFD, the Democratic Party.
They become nobodies, minus Trump wins.
Trump builds his allegiance with the populist leaders.
And just to make a point again on the populist leaders, you see all these populist leaders.
You see Le Pen, you see Wilders, Swedish Democrats.
When I started my activism, Swedish Democrats were on 1.5% of the vote.
They're now on 25%.
They didn't get there, Nigel Farage, by being fucking cowards.
They got there by saying Islam has to stop. It has to go.
They didn't get there by mixing the words.
And you know the whole time that they were brave and fearless when they were putting their lives on the line, their reputations, all of these populist leaders, Nigel Farage's UKIP refused to align with them.
The whole time said they're toxic and they're far right.
Like, we're all far right.
So, yeah, it winds me up that the people's only choice at the minute is a party that gave away the chairman position to a Muslim who funded the most money.
Sold their fucking heart like that.
It just winds me up because I think there is...
I was hoping to build a cultural movement and hope that, okay, there's Reform.
Let them be the political solution.
We will electrify the working class.
No point in electrifying the working
When I've watched you over the years, one phrase that comes out is attitude and how you actually engage and deal with an issue and where the system thought they could actually get rid of you and crush you, that you've got that tenacity that you just keep pushing back.
And I think that can be infectious.
I think that's why these rallies, the book, we'll touch on that, but why all of that is so important, it's so essential, because you show what it means to go into battle, kind of the same attitude as Bannon has.
But I don't want to.
I know.
So I've been shitting myself.
You're not asking for it.
No, and I've been shitting myself.
And I've been shitting myself.
But at the same time, I know that if they were able to silence me and shut me up and break me, then it would send a devastating message to the rest of the people who are looking at me.
And as you said, courage is contagious.
So people will see and think, well, hold on, if he can stand up. And do you know, on our last event, I look at the people at our last event, I look at the people who are going to come on the 26th, even if they manage to put me in jail.
I look and think, each one of them showed immense courage because I know the process you've gone through.
I know you've been worried about going.
I know you've been scared.
I know you've thought about your reputation.
I know you've thought about your neighbors.
What have my neighbors seen?
What if everyone says I'm at a far-right rally?
What if the media...
And then you've got to the point where you've gone, you know what?
Fuck all that, all right?
I'm doing the right thing.
And courage is still being scared.
But still, you're terrified.
But you still know what the right thing to do is.
And sometimes, unfortunately, in a tyrannical totalitarian state, doing the right thing is sometimes seen by them as doing the wrong thing.
There's a time that comes and mass disobedience is needed, and you talk about our latest book, "Manifesto," that went straight to number one.
Knocked Boris Johnson off the top spot.
And the thing is, I just laugh because that's my fourth Amazon bestseller.
Was it The Guardian wrote a piece and they hadn't read it?
They wrote a piece about the reviews.
Read the book.
Your response and the way they acted is exactly what we predict in the book about a controlled state, and they're lying to you about everything, letting you understand how the world actually works.
How this country works, how everything's planned and orchestrated, including the immigration crisis, how they don't actually care who they're farming.
We're like animals to be farmed, yeah?
And they don't care what color or race we are as long as the 1% are just milking the fucking shit out of us, yeah?
And they want us to have less freedom and less movement, less everything.
And for them to get richer and for us to get poorer, and then all of us to be down here like little ants just being governed by them.
That's the plan.
They're being very successful, but if enough people wake up to it and plan mass disobedience, like for example, a million people calling in sick one day.
Sort of what we need to understand that we have the power, we just need to come together.
Sorry, my phone doesn't stop.
It's a new phone.
I don't know how to put it.
That's just my little girl.
I don't know how to put it on silent on this new one.
It used to be there, didn't it?
How do you put the 16 on silent?
Tommy's looking for a new tech person to help on.
Yeah, I lost my phone.
But the police, you know, took my phone on the 27th of July.
They gave it back to me, and straight away, as soon as I got it back, it came up with an error saying, "not an original Apple battery, not an original Apple screen."
Oh, really?
I wonder what you've been up to there, guys.
Give me back a phone that you're fucking watching everything on.
But they can call anyone a terrorist because obviously, as you pointed out, it gives them the right to then access your information.
So it's irrelevant.
Whether they think you're going to carry out any activity really in terrorism.
It's simply using that as a way of accessing journalists.
They actually told me as they detained me, "We believe you may be in preparation of acts of terrorism."
And they said, "We know you're not.
We know you're not that.
We know you're not, Tommy, but this legislation gives us the opportunity to do this."
It's like, oh mate, this is insane.
The book, Manifesto, because Peter McLaughlin is your co-author and he obviously wrote Easy Meat and he understands the grooming.
I mean, he kept records, and he's a perfect person.
He's the most intelligent man I've ever come across.
The most intelligent man, do you know how he predicted and sat and told me that COVID was coming the year before?
So I have all these discussions going back and forth about the money bubble, the printing of money, gold, where we're heading, what's happening.
And about a year before COVID, he said they're going to create and manufacture a massive crisis because the money bubble is going to burst.
And they've just been printing money, and it doesn't work like that.
And when it bursts, everyone's going to look for someone to blame.
They need something else.
So they're going to create something, probably a pandemic.
Probably, and he told me all this, and then COVID comes, and he rang me, I remember him ringing me up and said, "Tommy, I said, I fucking know, you told me so."
I know, he goes, "This is it, mate, this is it, this is it, lockdown, printing money, this is it, this is them controlling it, which is what immigration is all part of."
So using Peter's knowledge, as well as my life experience, and what we've seen together, we put it into a book called "Manifesto," giving people an opportunity to understand this is how the world works, and it's going to piss them off.
You see when the actual one percent read that because they've lied throughout the whole history.
They just change history, they change it.
They decide what happened and they change and decide what you know about a certain individual.
So, for example, if it wasn't for X over the last five years, once I was censored, you go on Google and search my name, none of my videos come up.
It's all the propaganda hit pieces against me.
They then are in the education system.
So throughout the whole national curriculum now, they teach the next generation of kids about me.
Well, guess what they're teaching them?
They're not teaching them about a nice guy who stood up for my country or my rights or young women who were getting raped.
They're teaching them I'm a racist, I'm an extremist.
They put up a picture of Adolf Hitler and then they put up a picture of me. So the next generation is being brainwashed; this is what they do.
So, the whole generation of people come out who have access only now to the internet because I'm not allowed on any social media, and they just get fed and history, their history that they're teaching will tell the next generation I was the devil.
Until someone like Elon Musk comes along and says, "No, you won't."
Well, let Tommy have a voice.
And then I can just go, bang, yeah, here we are, 54 million views.
And we can buy books that they can't get rid of.
And then people, and then you can see the appetite for the books is there because each one of them has gone straight to number one.
That must infuriate.
I remember there's this.
It's so badly you sold OUT. That's how badly it did.
And do you know what?
On pre-orders, the new books come this week.
By Monday, we've sold out.
We've sold out again, yeah?
So it's like, what's the journalist?
There's a journalist from Cambridge who always writes shit about me.
That doesn't narrow us down, does it?
And he's an author.
And every time my book goes to number one, because I've gone on Twitter and I message him saying, "Oi, oi, this football hooligan's got his fourth bestselling number one.
Your whole life is dedicated to trying to be an author and you can't sell any books, bro." But anyway, the fight is on.
I said it's fight or flight.
And I could have chosen to stay away from day dot when I started my activism talking about Islam.
We've never run away from the issue.
Yes, I went away.
Yes, I stayed away until this week.
Why did I stay away until this week?
So that me and my team could put together a documentary to expose Keir Starmer and his regime of tyrants.
So the documentary goes live this Saturday.
So again, if they detain me on Friday, they're going to blow shit up on the media. It's going to go around the world. Our documentary's going to get more views. The documentary's still going out.
I've already made a video to be played on the 26th, yeah?
It's still happening.
When you send me to prison, I've already made a video about that.
So I know through the power of our movement, because we are a movement, you think you can cut the head off.
We're a movement.
Everyone's part of it.
And they're just going to go boom.
And the whole entire globe is going to look at the judge who sentenced me to jail.
They're going to look at Keir Starmer.
And if any of you clowns think they're going to look at me negatively, they're not.
They're looking at you negatively. In this battle, I win.
I temporarily lose in jail, but eventually, I win.
It's not just me that wins, we win.
The future belongs to nationalists.
The future belongs to patriots.
You communist tyrants, Keir Starmer, enjoy your little period.
You're going to be remembered as the worst prime minister this country ever had. You'll never last five years.
Never, ever last five years.
The Bannon phrase, next man up, he was put away in jail, is going to be released in a few days. As a hero? Yeah, as a hero.
Oh, Steve.
But nothing has stopped.
You've got the war and posse stepping to do that.
And for you, it's happened whenever you've been locked away, people still stand up.
It doesn't stop us.
The biggest demonstration will happen once I'm locked away. So we've had three United Kingdoms.
I'm going to plan my fourth United Kingdom once I get my release date.
You're slowing it down temporarily, but I don't think you will slow it down.
What I think my imprisonment will do is galvanize our support base and bring them together more than anything.
Now, there'll be a lot of attempts just to warn you.
There will be attempts to cause infighting, cause disruption.
The government will be everywhere waiting.
The minute I get imprisoned, bang.
The government infiltrators come out, and so will the far-right racist Nazi scumbags who always have been, but none of them are willing to leave.
None of them are willing to put their face up there.
So I hope, I'll give a date.
I hope to hear as many of you outside the prison as possible in a couple of weeks.
And it's built because I remember the Free Tommy demo on Whitehall.
I think Raheem and people like that were leading that.
That goes by me six, seven years.
But the current time we find ourselves in because of the COVID tyranny means that a lot of people have woken up and realised, actually, you cannot trust the media where before maybe they did.
You cannot trust the police where before they did.
And there's an absolute lack of trust. So the message you're bringing that we can come together and start something is so important.
I think so timely.
So timely.
And do you know how powerful you've been on the events, man?
And it's like, look, I've got goosebumps just thinking.
I've got goosebumps just thinking.
Oh, it's fun.
People coming together, it is good fun.
It's not just fun, it's camaraderie. It's like we're there together, and it's us versus them.
And everyone here in this crowd now realizes that.
And if you fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us.
And Keir Starmer decided that, yeah, when he started imprisoning innocent British people, brave people, hardworking people, men.
He fought, and his government fought that would make us all terrified.
And make us hide and stop commenting.
Because the hope is that you self-censor.
The hope is you don't talk about these issues.
The hope is you don't think you can go out and legally protest.
What we're going to show you this Saturday, we're going to show the world, is that you can.
Bigger, better, stronger, louder.
This Saturday, 26th.
When's this going out?
It's going out Friday. It's all gone a day before.
Come on, get your shit together.
Get your train ticket.
Get out to London.
Scott, don't go to football. No more excuses.
If your missus says she can't go, leave her.
Right?
Leave her.
I didn't say that.
See you later.
Do you know what the difference is?
It's the women that are coming.
I mean, the men tell you the women they can't go.
It's a family thing.
Kids coming along.
Here is the text with corrected grammar:
I am so shocked at the amount of women.
And do you know when you win the women?
And why the women?
Because British women are looking around.
They're scared.
They've got daughters.
They've got families.
They've got futures.
They're looking and thinking, hold on a minute.
I had a woman who stopped me.
She lives in beautiful North Wales.
And she said, "I never used to like you at all.
Yeah.
And now they've put all these migrants in my little village, and we're all scared, and they're harassing the women."
I said, "And now you see what I've spoken about."
She said, "I've looked into everything now."
She said, "I'm sorry.
For 10 years, I've hated you.
I've hated you."
She said, "And now I'm looking, and Jesus, he's right about all of it."
That's because now it's a sad state of affairs.
So many people can see it.
But what's Keir Starmer managed to do with the riots?
He hasn't discussed anything.
He hasn't discussed the rapes, the murders, any of the crimes committed, any of the stabbings, any of the killings, knife crime, terrorism, jihad, Islam.
He hasn't had to talk about any of it by branding all of you as far-right.
So on the 26th, it's that important that you behave.
It's that important that you don't give them any ammunition to attack us. Any of their instigators with face masks.
If you wear a face mask, it will be asked to be removed.
If you don't remove it, we have 400 security at this event.
We will remove it.
Okay, you will be escorted away from the demonstration.
So please, lads, I understand your anger.
I understand everyone's anger. We have a right to be angry. But if we didn't have a platform and people weren't listening, I'd understand the overstepping of the aggression. But the entire globe is watching you this Saturday.
If I'm not there, the entire world, their media, every important live streamer, everyone, their eyes are on you.
Make us proud and make your country proud, man.
Make your country proud, make Keir Starmer feel like the little fucking weasel that he is, sitting in number
Shitting himself thinking, "Ah, it didn't work.
We thought jailing them all would work. No, Keir, it doesn't work, no.
It doesn't work. Prison's not gonna stop us, mate, at all.
Nothing's gonna stop us.
So when we say we want our country back, we mean it.
And there's no end to that.
It's not like we're gonna stop fighting, we're gonna carry on fighting forever."
So come, make sure you're following his Twitter account, X account, or whoever is putting it on.
But yeah, come and be smart. Don't fall into the trap.
No, come and smile.
Come and smile and have a great day.
Because I know each one of them has been great.
So you'll soon forget your anger with the music we've got going on.
We've got a band, a beautiful band, the British Patriot Band.
It's the Black Gospel Girls.
We've got them singing four songs.
We've got a surprise guest who's a fabulous singer, singing three songs.
And we've got another lad who sings songs about Keir Starmer, singing three songs.
So we have a lot of music, as well as a fabulous new expose documentary to premiere on the day, as well as a list of multiple speakers, some coming from France, some people coming from America, some people coming from Canada, people coming from Australia, from all over the world, they're coming into London.
So if they can make the effort to get on flights and come from that far, get on the train, man.
I know it's expensive, I know it's hard, I know it's difficult, but the 26th of October is going to be etched into British history.
It's a time when we stood up to Keir Starmer.
Of course, just drive down and share with people.
And bring family and bring kids, because this is all about, as you've talked about, Tommy, about kids, the future generation, fighting for a country of freedom for them.
It was great to see all the families, man.
Do you know what?
It was great to see the total diversity of the crowd and to see that, I'll just smile, because I think all your years have lied to the public. It fucking didn't work at all.
Everywhere I'm going, do you know the black community, the Asian community, the Hindu community, the Sikh community, everywhere I go, I get a show of love.
They didn't hate me because of your bullshit.
No one believed you. Your media power's gone.
We are the media, yeah?
We are the media.
I've done a little rant yesterday about Peter Lynch's death.
It's at 1.8 million views.
Go eat your heart out, BBC, yeah?
We are the voice of the people, and nothing's going to stop us, all right?
Tommy, thank you, and I'll certainly be there on Saturday, as will tens and tens of thousands. Let's go for 100,000.
Let's go for over 100,000.
Let's just take over London, man.
Yeah. I hope that we've put on a...
No, each time it's been a festival, so I hope you've enjoyed it each time.
And if I'm in prison, then smile for me, because I'll be smiling as well.
I'll be smiling knowing that they have just awoken more people, and I'll be looking forward to reading your mail, hearing from each one of you, and I am blessed.
I'm blessed that I know my children will be supported and will be okay no matter what happens.
So thank you, thank you, for you know, the whole way through this fight when I've been down at times and feeling like fucking hell, man.
I know there's an army behind me, and I read every one of your messages. I may not answer the DMs, but I read the heartfelt messages; I read the support. It picks me up, and if ever I'm down, I just pick up my phone, go through the DMs, look for the hot chicks, I'm joking, but I'm grateful.
I'm very grateful for your support, every one of you, and even my legal battle now, Ezra.
I was fucked last two weeks ago; I was fucked. Even fucking weeks, Ezra rides.
Ezra Rides save the day.
And he's been so busy, and he goes, "What's the latest?" I ain't even got a lawyer booked; they froze the Tide account, which is where they froze it. They refused point-blank; we've got them.
I've got the stuff to show the judge.
We said, "Okay." They said, "We'll send the money to another account in this name."
So, well, we can't get one in this name because you've closed it, you know?
So then we set up another account, and then we got them to send the money there, and it said "pending" for seven days.
And then the new account, they sent us an email.
"We're closing again before we get the money."
So then we said, "Right, so we're at the stage now.
We need the bloody money.
I'm in a court case.
Send the money directly to lawyers.
We'll get the lawyers to message you."
"No, we can't do that. We won't do that." Then we can set an account up abroad, you know?
And then we send them the same name account, and they say, "No, it has to be in the UK." It's like, you literally are stopping us from being able to defend ourselves.
Now, why would they do that?
My first line of defense in this case, they never gave me an injunction.
During the opening of this trial, they're asking the judge to excuse the fact they never gave me the injunction.
I swear to God, I've read it.
It's like, "What the fuck?" They admit they never gave me the injunction.
To give an injunction, they have to use a process server for it to be legitimately given. They say we emailed him it.
Well, that doesn't fucking count, does it?
That doesn't count.
That's not being given an injunction.
So you haven't given me a legal injunction.
So then their opening statement says, "We understand we did not follow procedure, but we're asking for the judge to excuse this."
So all they need to do is get a judge that doesn't actually follow the law because the law is the law, and Justice Nicklin, who gave me the injunction, we've got a case where he says that emailing does not constitute service.
So he's saying what he's done is not legal, but we won't get to that.
I am not, but I am not putting my hopes on that.
They're sending me to jail.
There's no way the Attorney General's office has not sat down and already knows they've got a fixed sentence for me.
So I'm going to jail.
I suspect I'll be happy if I get two years.
I'll be happy and smiling.
If they give me two years, I'm happy, yeah, because it could be four.
Unfortunately. And then I'll be on solitary confinement for a year.
But then, with your help, with Ezra's help, which Ezra said he's going to fly over, we then fight for a judicial review because they can't hold someone in solitary confinement for that long.
It's fucking ruined you, yeah?
So they're not allowed to do that.
So then they have to look up; we can fight.
The fight just continues.
And I've always been in a position to fight. I quite like a fight, yeah?
But I've always been in a position to fight because people have put me in that position.
Without you, there would be no fight.
So thank you.
And this time, Ferdragan family, you won't have Julian Assange up.
I won't have Julian Assange up above me at the wind, like twice.
What was that in there?
Four months?
Twice he spoke.
But imagine how broken he is.
Imagine how broken he was.
And they got away with that.
Look what they've done to him as a journalist.
They got away with it.
So who knows what they're going to do now.
But I also know that whatever they do, our voices will echo throughout the globe.
So please, if you want to know what you can do, share the documentary.
Make sure you share it everywhere.
If I'm in jail now, share it with your friends.
Play it.
Upload it.
It's only on 55 million.
Yeah, it's only on 55.
Send me a jail card.
Elon! Share the film.
You're at war with Keir Starmer.
Just show the film.
It destroys the judiciary. It proves everything we all know.
So, you want to put a smile on my face in jail, share the film then.
All right, Saturday. We'll see you there. And Victoria is it?
Victoria Station, 11 o'clock.
Must from 11 o'clock. Start at one.
It's going to be a beautiful day. Behave, everyone. And that's coming from me.
Be good.
Tommy says be good.
Be good, man.
That's what Lord P says.
I know.
I just spoke to Lord Pearson.
He said, I just spoke to Lord Pearson on the phone.
He said, Tommy, what was the last thing I said to you?
I said to you, please behave.
What have you done now?
I said, Lord P, I'm not going to behave.
All right?
Not with them in power. Cheers.
Yes, thank you.
To Peter, thanks.

Richard Gamble - Building Faith: The Journey to Constructing the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer

🎙️ "Welcome, dear listeners, to a special episode of the Hearts of Oak podcast!
Today, we dive into a project that's not just building walls, but building faith, hope, and community. Join us as we explore the ambitious vision behind the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer with its founder, Richard Gamble.
Imagine a monument not of stone, but of stories—a towering structure outside Birmingham, set to open its gates in 2027, where each brick whispers a tale of answered prayer.
This isn't just any wall; it's a beacon of positivity in a world that often highlights the negative. Richard Gamble, a man of many hats—from IT to church planting, and now, a monumental architect of faith—shares his journey, from a divine inspiration on a country walk to rallying a global community to contribute to this living testament of hope. Through his eyes, we'll see how this wall aims to change the narrative, showcasing the dynamic, ongoing conversation between humanity and divinity. It's more than a structure; it's a movement towards recognizing the miracles in our daily lives, a cultural shift towards embracing faith in a society where it's often overlooked.
Are you ready to be part of something bigger?
To add your story to a wall that will stand as a reminder of God's continuous work in our lives? Stay tuned as we delve into the vision, the challenges, and the ultimate goal of the Eternal Wall. This isn't just an interview; it's an invitation to participate in a legacy of faith and answered prayers. Let's get started!"
Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.Connect with Richard and the Eternalwall project:Website Eternal Wall: https://eternalwall.org.uk/Home - Eternal WallRichard Gamble: https://www.richardmgamble.com/Richard M. GambleLinkedin: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/gamblerichard
Interview recorded 22.10.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/Transcript:
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(Hearts of Oak)
And hello hearts of oak thank you so much for joining us once again with a brand new guest discussing a huge venture up in the middle of England on prayer and that is Richard Gamble.
Richard thank you so much for your time today yeah
Peter thanks for having me on I appreciate it.
Great and I've come across the website through different friends. This is the eternal where you can get eternalwall.org.uk.
And if you don't go any further in this interview, then check out that.
You can see how you can be involved in a huge project, maybe one of the first of its kind, looking at the importance of prayer and looking at answered prayer.
And I think often, certainly as Brits, we talk about unanswered prayer.
And this is about answered prayer, which is something very different. But this is the eternal wall of answered prayer just outside Birmingham, up in the middle of England.
But before we get into all of that, Richard, maybe I can ask you to introduce yourself.
You've got a varied background from Bible College, IT, chaplain at Leicester City, and then this huge project that it seems like a NOAA endeavor, being given something which is phenomenal.
But maybe take a moment and introduce yourself before we get on to the wall of answered prayer
Yeah, I'm 56 years old, three children married became christian when I was 20, I suppose you'd describe me as a bit entrepreneurial, tried loads of things, planting churches and stuff like that was rubbish at it.
Bought and sold a software business been involved in consultancy all you know really varied and you touched on being a sort of pastor to footballers in in the in the premier league so wide and varied a little bit crazy nobody knows what to do with me, but in 2004, I was and this sounds a bit strange, but I was I was carrying a cross around my county, because I wanted people to just think about Jesus during Easter rather than Cadbury's cream eggs, though I do love them.
And while I was doing that, it got a massive reaction and I sort of prayed and said, God, what do you want me to do next?
And he gave me this idea, vision to build a national landmark about Jesus.
So, the last 20 years of my life have been largely devoted to that.
And this is getting closer.
This is opening in 2027, so three years away. It'll be the largest symbol of hope.
This is from the website In the world, and we'll host an interactive collection of stories that will be a testament to God's faithfulness.
And it'll be constructed with one million bricks, each one linked to answered prayer.
Maybe just touch on that how people can go to websites and be on one of those for answered prayer and then we'll take a step back of the process.
Yeah, sure I mean the the thing that's unique there are many elements of this project that's unique, but if you look at all the national landmarks across the globe this is one that is crowdfunded, crowdsourced, but also crowd created.
So, what we're trying to do is create this giant infinity loop piece of art with stories from all over the world and the idea is that people go online onto eternalwar.org.uk and just share with there's as many stories as they can of times that they've prayed and how God has answered and the concept is that other people then can come to the monument or look online maybe they type in the storm of life that they're currently going through and then they can find stories of people who've been in the same situation of them but have found hope through prayer to Jesus and I suppose part of it is birthed Peter from you know that there's never any good news, you know.
There's never any good news I don't really watch the news very much these days because I just find it utterly depressing and we have to find ways to get the message of hope out there there's a lot of good.
Stuff happening on this planet God is not dead he's still alive he's still he's still active.
But but we are not in the structures of this world free to share those stories anymore so we have to find another way.
I'll not bring up the picture of it because I'll let the viewers and listeners go to the website and look it up for yourself.
It is a colossal endeavor.
I will get into all of that, but maybe take a step back.
I mean when did you have this idea which obviously is a god idea because no sane person would come up with this themselves using their logic and reason, but yeah, give me an insight into how you begun to have this idea and then how conversations were.
I mean how do you tell your wife you're going to build something?
Yeah, I mean that is the thing I came home one day and my wife saw my little twinkle in my eye and she was like, oh what's going on, and I was like I think we're going to build a national landmark babe.
And I suppose you know that the thing is well where do you start and bear in mind I'm completely impractical.
I'm banned from DiY in the house.
I set fire to my own bathroom once and that was the final straw for my wife.
So I had no idea where to start with that it was just an idea and a concept so really I spent 10 years talking about it to people and praying you know simple as that and then I carried on with my different businesses and endeavors.
And then 10 years ago, just that was the time when in my prayers, I really felt God's only right.
It's time to, it's time to get moving on that.
So I, The way that we started it really was we ran a global competition with the Royal Institute of British Architects because I thought I've got to have something to get this going.
And, you know, the crazy thing was we did a crowd funder where I basically said we're going to build a national landmark about Jesus.
It's going to be made of a million bricks.
I don't know what it's going to look like.
I don't know when it's going to be where I don't know where it's going to be and I don't know when we're going to be able to build it but if you want to back this project that'd be amazing and we had an incredible story where where all the money came in with a day to go on the campaign and that sort of literally kick-started us to get going.
And then with the royal institute of British architects we ran this global competition and we got 133 entries from 28 countries, and, you know, just try to get to that point of finding the right design, which is the winning design is like a giant white infinity loop, and it arches sort of 50 metres into the skyline.
So to give you an idea, in the UK, for UK listeners, that's about two and a half times the height of the Angel of the North.
For those in the States, if you imagine the Statue of Liberty taken off her plinth she'd just fit underneath it so it will be a it will be a colossal structure, and there's been a lot of prayer to get to where we've got and and to get the right people to help us to build this.
And when you think of size, the Christ the Redeemer statue, which many people will think of as a symbol of Christianity in Rio de Janeiro, I think that's like 30, 35 meters or something for the size.
So this would tower above something like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
But the interesting thing, Peter, is if you Google Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, you don't find anything about Jesus.
And it basically has turned into this sort of supposedly a symbol of Brazil welcoming all people to the country.
And you may Google it and find out about a French bloke who built it.
But I think it's diverted significantly from its original purpose.
We believe that around 30 million people Google that landmark every year.
And our our vision if you like is well if we can get 30 million people googling eternal war then they're going to open it up and find this database of a million answered prayers, and what are you going to do you're going to want to search it.
You're going to want to find out the things that God has done and we hope that that will inspire people to try praying.
I think we find in today's age that a lot of signs that were built to point people towards God have just become tourist attractions.
You think of cathedrals all over the world, and people flock to see a cathedral.
And somehow many people don't make the connection that this is actually for God and pointing to God.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right I remember in the beginnings of this watching a program about Notre Dame being burned and you know a leading architect started talking about what an incredible piece of architecture this was.
And I was like, wait a second, this is built for the glory of God and so we are doing a lot of work to make sure that we put in mechanisms to make sure that this is always unashamedly Christian, And the beauty, of course, is because every brick represents a story of answered prayer, you can never really change its meaning.
And we are building something that is going to last for hundreds of years.
And who knows what our country and what Western society is going to look like in a hundred years' time.
But what I can tell you with supreme confidence is that right in the heart of it, there'll be a massive landmark that will be telling people about Jesus and I think for your listeners that's the exciting thing that if they can take the time to share stories of when they prayed those stories are going to keep being told long after we've all left the planet.
It's a proper legacy project in that respect.
It's very unusual for the UK, for US listeners for the war and posse, faith and Christianity is very much a public issue where people regularly talk about we've moved far away from that in the UK.
I'm sure there must have been people that said, Richard you know, maybe we need something a bit smaller, just just hidden away somewhere.
We don't need to be so loud about this.
Yeah, you know it's really interesting in the in we have like a public consultation for the for the planning process the zoning process for those in the States and you know somebody came up to me, a Christian, and she said, you know I know god answers prayer, but why do you have to brag about it.
And sort of stormed off.
And it's very interesting to me that you know that the British culture is one of of reserve not really wanting to brag about it, and yet you know we've had an incredible story about how God gave us the land so that we know this is exactly the right place to build it.
And God has decided to do that in a country that is so quiet, but the word of God is pretty clear.
You know, there are literally hundreds of scriptures that talk about proclaiming the deeds of the Lord, remembering the things that he's done, meditating on his deeds.
There's loads of evidence of people putting stones down to remember what God has done.
And so I do think it's going to be a little jolt to the culture in this country when when it finally starts to get built you the.
The size of it, you touched on that, having the land.
You don't put something like this just in your back garden, so what were the what were those conversations, because you have an idea of concept one you can build it that's one thing.
You need to put it somewhere what were those conversations like with me local authorities or local landowners as you sought to find not only a piece of land, but permission to put it there?
Well yeah I'll take those two two things because they're two significant stories really. In terms of the land we presented the concept in parliament in 2000.
I think it was 2014 and I remember one of the members of parliament asking me well this is a great vision, but how are you going to fund it, and I just quick as a flash said oh I've got a really big backer behind me.
Which at the time I was very convinced that that was Jesus that was behind me, because I only had five pounds in the bank.
I was very happy that he didn't follow up with the question of who that big backer was, but at that point I was like well I really need to find some land so we were invited to go to a conference, my wife and I, in Reading, California.
And we went to that conference and my wife and I were like okay we've got to find land now, and then somebody came up to us and said, hey I've been praying, I don't know who you are, but I feel like I've got a word for from God for you.
Which I was like oh right okay, and she just basically said you know God wants you to know he's got some heavenly land for you.
Now for me that was pretty amazing early on in the journey to travel halfway across the planet and somebody to tell me something like that.
So I just had a had a chat with my team right and I said you know I've got this word that God's got some land and one of my team just said well I'll just ask him where it is.
She said that'll save us a lot of time and money and I just sort of laughed, I went yeah okay.
And so she basically prayed and you know sent me a google map with this piece of land circled and said either this is the land or the person who owns it is going to be significant for the project.
And then but what when she sent it through what she didn't know was two days previous the guy who owned that land had emailed me and asked to meet with me which is mad and so then I meet with him and he basically the end of the meeting God had spoken to me in 2004 to build a landmark.
He then told me that God had spoken to him in 2003 to build a landmark. And I'd never told you about...
You mean God was ahead of you, surely not.
Yeah I know, I know well that has been one of my major lessons on this 20 year journey he has a better plan than me and yeah so incredible so he decided to give me some land I didn't tell him about the land that the woman had circled and basically he gave me a number of bits of land which didn't work and then eventually he paid an architect to look at all the land they owned in the UK and he came back with the piece that the woman had circled which is just outside Birmingham which is 90 miles north of London in between two motorways where you know.
I think it's sort of about 800,000 people will see. It'll have that much impact so.
That's great but then the massive hurdle on top of that is how do you get how do you get planning and and in context of we're talking about a country where you can lose your job for wearing a cross, you know.
we we are now I think, you know, in in recent days somebody has got arrested for praying you know outside silently praying so we're now we now live in a country we're in certain parts of the country it is illegal for a Christian to silently pray.
I mean it's an incredible move so for me on that journey peter i'm talking to people about this great vision and everyone's going oh that's really nice rich yeah that's great and inside they're thinking he is never getting the planning permission he is never getting the planning permission but but one of the things that I've discovered I was expecting it to be an immense battle and and it wasn't as as much as I thought there were multi-faith objections, but my argument was hey we do live in a multi-faith society in this country.
But I love the fact that we live in a multi-faith society because we have the freedom to express our faith and this is how we as a faith want to express it and actually the planning consultant did a brilliant job of demonstrating that their multi-faith policy is couldn't restrict them from giving us permission, because it wasn't multi-faith.
So you know it was a long process, COVID hit in the middle, but we just kept on going and you know through through a lot of prayer we pretty much turned around the council that was 14-0 against to to winning 13-0 with one abstention.
And the council are all behind us they're very, very positive.
They appreciate the sensitivity in which we're approaching this because in our education center, we will have a piece where we say, well, this is what other faiths believe about prayer.
I don't think we need to be shy about that.
And I'm very happy for people to come and make their own decisions.
But the beauty of the project is you're creating a piece of art that allows people the space and time to consider whether Jesus is alive and whether they should pray and as long as you do that in the appropriate sensitive way I think it's okay.
Obviously, for the council it's a massive bonus that we're building a national landmark that I think we did an economic report that said it's going to generate 1.2 billion for the local economy in 10 years.
So, you know there were practical economic reasons why they were positive but I didn't get the degree of opposition I was expecting in that respect.
As a sidestep I would also love to get to Reading California but never been able to get there I've tried on two occasions and both times God's put a block so I'm hoping for the third time.
I can pigeonhole you now immediately, Richard.
But it's that opposition, because this is about prayer.
It can be general.
People can see it as general.
You talk to those who are not Christians who say at times of crisis they pray.
Say, well, who are you praying to?
And that's a confusing topic for them when they don't actually believe in any greater being, in any creator. But what were the conversations?
Because, again, we live in a very multicultural society.
We live in a society where under 50% say they probably believe in God.
Church attendance has fallen.
And you're probably doing what, in effect, the church should be doing, but maybe has taken a backseat on this.
But tell us about the conversations you have with local authority, with councils as you're putting forward.
What was that like?
Because you talked about full opposition to full acceptance.
Well, I think in some respects, the narrative that we are a secular society is false.
I don't believe that is the truth.
And so we're spun statistics that just aren't true.
We did some research just after COVID and 50% of 25 to 18 year olds said that they prayed at least once a month.
Now, when that was presented on the BBC, they spun that. And they spun it to say, well, there's a rise in Islam and a rise in Sikhism.
And I was like, that is not what the statistics say.
That's not what the research says.
Richard Gamble:
[22:15] And you can go online and see me getting quite cross on the BBC.
But the reality was those statistics were 56% of people said that they were Christian.
I think it was seven percent said they were Muslim so the statistics don't bear that out and I think even that the narrative of like oh well the church is in decline. I don't believe that, that is not what i'm seeing and what I'm seeing. I'm in a unique position because I'm traveling around churches all over the country to share about this vision and what i'm seeing is that there are pockets of churches that are seeing explosive growth in this country and that growth is predominantly you know in your sort of 15 to 25 year olds who of of a younger generation coming through who want certainty. You know their identity is is based in the in the certainty of of the word of God and they're attracted to it.
So I think when you present that as a with a with more sort of statistics to back it up it shows that this is of interest and you know one of the surprising things for me Peter on the journey is the amount of people who are, I mean the most of the opposition I've had has been church-based opposition and
Richard Gamble:
[23:49] for people who don't have a faith.
They they love it it's it's so encouraging you know we have people we had a guy put up a sign in our office he was like this is amazing and just took loads of brochures from us just went off and told everybody about it.
So, I think when this goes up in 2027 it's going to have a major impact not only on the nation but I think it was it'll spread across the nations.
I think it's the time in a God that we're building this and I personally believe it like I spoke in the revival that's coming.
Yeah, 100 percent with you.
Another concept of this is look we have many statues of saints and churches covered with paintings of Jesus but that's focused on the person of God where this focuses on the relationship with God, because you there's no way you can look at prayer, you've an image of God and that's an image, but this is a direct link to Who God is and that's why this is something I think fairly different
Yeah, and and I think people when they hear of the title eternal wall of answered prayer often think that we are sort of promoting a what I would call a supermarket God.
You present your list and you get all the things well you know that has definitely not been my experience over the last 20 years trying to build this and so you're gonna have a whole range of stories in there and some of them are immediate wows, you know, we had one come in yesterday of a person with a brain aneurysm that got healed and you read it like, wow.
This is just amazing, but then other stories are stories of people who've waited 50 years for God to answer their prayer and then other stories are you know this is what I prayed but the answer was no.
And this is how God helped me through my through the suffering of that answer.
And what people, I think, will be surprised about, and you've absolutely hit the nail on the head, is this is about relationship.
It's about having a relationship. And we want to really encourage people to share loads of stories that then paint that picture.
And, you know, a million is a huge number.
I mean, again, my naivety.
I just went, oh, let's just do a million.
That sounds good I mean if we put if we put a million Lego bricks on top of each other it would reach into the stratosphere that's how big a million is, so a million stores is a lot, but for people who come whether they visit or whether they visit online if somebody's in Dallas and they go onto the database they may ask the question, well does god answer prayer in Dallas and they'll be able to search through the database and find stories from the place that they live wherever they are in the world.
They've only got to find one story that they believe in and it's going to rock their world and that's what we're trying to achieve right that's our way of making hope visible.
Think people the term unanswered prayer makes people come up with an idea that God chooses to ignore prayer yet the flip side is which I know I'm sure will come across the educational center is that that unanswered prayer means prayer that God has said wait or has not said yes or no there only is one of two answers this is binary it's yes or no in terms of answer it's never a ignore.
Yeah, I think there is yeah.
I totally agree, I don't really bide for the the philosophy or theology of unanswered prayer.
I think it is a, I think it is a comfort for many people to not press into God and to stop praying.
I don't want to be glib about that.
I've had many, many times where God has not answered prayer in the way that I would like, and that does cause pain.
So I know that a lot of people would swap all those answered prayers that they have had for the one to keep their loved one with them.
I get that.
but I think God is I think god is less interested in the moment when the prayer is answered or isn't answered and more interested in the relationship and the journey that we that we travel.
And that's the message that we've got to get out to the nation, because as you've touched on you know the church is largely on mute in this country.
It's been put on mute by by different strategies and we've got to break open to that to say that actually our relationship's available for everybody.
I heard somebody saying it was a very interesting comment, they said you know in relation to the guy who was healed at the pool of best said a is that the right way to say it, and they said you know if that happened in the modern day journalists would be all over, interviewing the 1,990 people who didn't get healed and say well how did you feel about that, And that's the trap, I think, on an answer prayer is that instead of people going, wow, that's amazing.
God did that.
They go, yeah, but why didn't he do this? And why didn't he do that?
We're not getting involved in that.
We are very simply going, we're just going to tell you loads of stories. I'm going to tell you loads of stories of the amazing things that he's done. And, you know, we're having those stories fly.
And I've got two stories about God helping people to move jeeps out of sand dunes. I mean, that's just ridiculous.
I never thought we'd get that.
But it's incredible to see them come in.
And it will be, I think, an absolute treasure trove for people once we're up and running.
Well, people will learn that God is creative, if nothing else.
But at the top of the website, there's a tagline, making hope visible, which is a really interesting idea, because hope, according to the world's thinking, is kind of that expectation or desire for something to happen.
And it's not really rooted in reality as such.
We could unpack the whole concept, but what do you mean by making hope visible?
Cause hope as maybe a feeling is something that's hidden, but you want to put this on one of the largest monuments in the world.
So what do you mean making hope visible?
I suppose, I suppose the best way, let me describe it like this, is if I can describe it in a single story, I was diagnosed 30-odd years ago with a disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis, which causes extreme curvature of the back, and met with the doctor, and he basically said, you know, it's going to move up your back, and as it moves up, as it gets to the top, I mean, these are his words, he went, you're screwed.
And I just went out of that, out of that surgery going, I was quite angry and I was like I'm not gonna have those words over my life.
I know that he's an expert.
he's trying to do his best, but i'm not gonna let that overall what the word of God says about me.
Now I spent a good 15 to 20 years praying to be healed and I was healed.
So, we often live in a culture where fear-mongering despair.
You know bad news which we touched on the beginning is is all that's ever broadcast, so I'm imagining somebody who maybe is diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, and loses hope and they whether they're digitally visiting or physically visiting find my story and then that gives them hope that there is a there is an alternative, that the facts that they've been presented with are not the truth.
They're the facts but they're not necessarily the truth, and so it hopefully moves them into a dynamic of like there's an alternative here I can pray.
And that way, we are stacking together a million bricks to actually declare to the nations that there's a whole load of hope here.
There's a whole load of evidence that can change your mindset and your paradigm that you're currently operating in.
Does that make sense?
Oh, it does.
And I think it's a concept which sometimes, well, many Christians struggle with, but the world 100% struggles. And there's a verse in the New Testament that's well-known, often read at weddings and written by Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth, which is just west of Athens.
And it's 1 Corinthians 13, 13.
It says, now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the grace of these is love. I think people have an understanding.
All those three concepts are utterly under attack.
And people are questioning what it means.
But hope is faith and love, people maybe understand, because there's a worldly understanding of what they are.
But it's interesting, this term hope, that it's one of those three, I think, which people maybe struggle to grasp and understand.
Because in Christianity, in the Bible, it's rooted on absolute, and that is God.
where in the world it's shifting sands and therefore people don't have that foundation or root so they don't have any hope in anything.
Yeah, and I, you know, my journey in this impossible journey to build a national landmark and we are hey listen we're starting in march we're going to make a big big announcement next year.
I've had to constantly at times on a daily basis recalibrate my mind and my soul and my spirit, because you get a barrage of you can't do it, it ain't going to happen, you're never going to raise the money, you'll never get the stories, you'll never get the planning permission, no architect's ever going to want to design this, and you know the list is massive, but where I get my hope from is I look at the stories where God has done things on the journey that no man could do.
And that hope then causes me to pray for the next obstacle to overcome and that hope then over time transforms into faith which is the conviction that it's going to happen.
And so we are I think going to be a catalyst for literally millions of people to begin that hope journey which we trust will transform to a faith and a conviction that God can.
And this is all another word that comes into mind is thankfulness. And I think we often take things without giving thanks. And the Bible is full of stories.
I mean, the lepers, when Jesus healed 10 lepers and one came back and thanked Jesus. I think we are often guilty of a lack of gratitude.
And I know that's often not talked about in a worldly context.
You can have write down your your thoughts of gratitude each day, your journaling all of that.
Well it was written in the bible a long time ago this concept of thankfulness and such a public monument of gratefulness I think it'll be extremely powerful
Yeah, and I think it's it's something that doesn't naturally sit in our culture.
And if you look at Israel, you know, with their thanksgiving.
Their remembrance of the Passover, you know, that thread runs through the Bible and you know I wrote a book simply called Remember which just looks at the way that the importance of that remembrance and thankfulness and appreciation of what God has done and continually revisiting that.
And the importance of that and we we are in this sort of like throwaway society which I think has actually influenced Christianity where people are praying God is answering and half the time they don't even notice he's answered and if they do they They just go, well, that's great, and then move on to the next one.
So there are many layers, I think, to what we're trying to achieve here.
And I just and I hope even even the act, if you like, the the the process of Christians going, oh, I wonder what break I shall have.
I mean, I'm hearing of loads of people going, oh, I don't I don't know if I've got to answer my prayer.
Then they they spend 20 minutes thinking about it and suddenly they get a great list and they're thankful and it restores their faith they renews them.
So, hope some of your listeners will do that for us that'd be amazing.
No, definitely go to the website and see have a think of how God has intervened in in your life and whether it's big or small we are called to to give glory to God and respond to that.
And the Bible is it's actually for one other term in the Bible is there are a number of cases whenever a prophet or the angel comes says the Lord has answered your prayer and I kind of think we live in a society where we would say which prayer, because we just come with our shopping list and you talked about the concept of pressing in and because we don't focus on one issue or a number of issues we kind of well we pray that I say move on to something else.
And there's this idea of actually holding on to something you need or believe in and you don't let go as Jacob you don't let go until you get an answer.
Yeah there's a great song out at the moment called don't stop praying by Matthew west and it's great challenge but again that's the short term is, you know, I've you mentioned it's a bit of a Noah project when you look at Noah most of his time was spent waiting.
You know he had very little action to be truthful most of the time he's just banging about waiting for god to do the next thing and but again as i said that's the process and the journey of going deeper with god if god just said yes all the time we we'd never learn about him we'd never learn his ways which is more precious than any answer and more precious than than gold and silver I think there's a film with Jim Carrey isn't there when he's got Bruce Almighty that's it and he just says yes all the time it's a disaster and you know i'd probably be easier to get answered prayers but i'm, God loves us so much to hold back those answers at times so that we really get to know him better.
And we often draw closer to him in the valleys than we do on the top of the mountain.
Yeah.
And also the idea of prayer being public and private.
We think in the UK it's something, private prayer.
You go to other churches and it's very public with everyone praying at once.
You've got different concepts or ideas, but I think we often forget that actually in the UK, we did have national days of prayer, certainly during Second World War.
I think there were six or seven days called for prayer.
One of the first was the evacuation at Dunkirk.
And I think something like this, this concept, this wall of answered prayer can point us towards, again, the act of calling the nation to prayer, because we've a lot to pray about in our nation.
Yeah, yeah, that's very good.
That's a very good point.
And encouraging people to pray big prayers.
We've just, I don't want to advertise a competing podcast, but I will give it a go.
We're in the middle of a podcast called When We Prayed, which is capturing what actually happened on the seven times that the King of England called the nation to pray during the Second World War.
And some of the stories are incredible.
the Dunkirk story that you point out I think is particularly poignant because the reality was Churchill was told we'd get 30 000 soldiers off the king off the beaches.
The king called the nation to pray, there's records of over a million people praying in churches and then we see a number of miracles.
Hitler changes his mind makes one of the worst military decisions in history.
We see we see bizarre weather patterns that causes planes to not be able to take off and yet you know by the sea that the the sea is described like glass and all of those we have incredible immunity of soldiers where they're shot down, they all lie down in the sand, get up and see their silhouettes in bullets, but they're unharmed.
I mean, some incredible things happen.
But that story of Dunkirk, two generations on, has been lost.
You know, it's the film by Christopher Nolan doesn't even mention prayer.
It's all put down to the courage of men on boats, which, again, I believe is part of the answer to prayer, that men were so courageous to do that.
And we've put out a video about this. And then you get loads of people going, no, no, no, it wasn't that.
Well, God wasn't involved, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And unless we go well hang on a second if God wasn't involved then why did the whole nation, have a day of thanksgiving to God only a few days afterwards, because they knew it was it was a move of the divine.
But two generations later we've forgotten it, and I and and you see that of course in the Bible where they forget the things that God has done you know as they escape from Egypt.
So, part of our role at Eternal War is to capture all those stories of answered prayer through history.
So we are capturing stories from 500 BC, 500 AD, sorry, not BC, 500 AD, all the way through to the present day.
You know we are grabbing stories of people being raised from the dead in the north of Scotland you know some incredible stories.
And and we believe that we can demonstrate to people and we're going to do the same in countries all over the world but demonstrate to people that actually god's been active he's been active all this time it's just been forgotten.
Let me finish off just on how people can be involved.
They go to the website.
They can have a think.
When they finish this, sit and have a think about, actually, you've prayed and how God has answered. Even if you don't click on that link, that's a very important endeavor.
But people can also donate.
They can play a part financially.
They can maybe even send the website to maybe church leaders.
Because it's not just the individual.
It's about actually churches getting behind.
So just maybe touch on some of those to leave people with action points they can take away.
Yeah.
Well, first point then, we're a broad church.
We want to have, you know, the vast majority, I won't say all, but the vast majority of the church believes that you can pray and God can answer.
So we had 400 church leaders on the land praying together, an incredible show of unity.
The more churches we have across the world involved in this the better secondly, we need finance I'm pleased to say that we're in we're in really good shape so we'll be signing contracts very soon to begin the building but we still need more, so please get on board and help us.
18 000 people have done so far an incredible crowdfunded national landmark, but more precious than those two is your actual story.
And you can do that by video by audio you can do that by written word and just go online and I would say you know if you're in England if you're in the UK sorry have a cup of tea if you're in the states maybe a coffee would be better and just spend, give us 20 minutes of your life, to just think about what God has done and you will not be discouraged.
And then share those stories with us and those stories will then be shared around the globe for perpetuity and people will read your stories over time in this century, in the next century, maybe beyond and you are going to help people find the god who answers and what greater privilege is there than that in life completely.
So, I looking forward to this make sure the viewers listeners are are part of it the eternal wall of answered prayer which I think will not just be a physical monument, but actually will be a spiritual monument to the nation.
So Richard thank you for coming on, and I mean a slightly different focus and podcast but it's essential that this is successful and is built and that I will certainly want to be there to see it when they're the ribbon is cut and to see what God has done to bring it together so thank you so much for coming on and sharing the story of the wall of answer prayer
Thanks very much for your time peter.
Thanks for reading Hearts of Oak Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it.
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Raheem Kassam - Populism, MAGA, and Trump: Insights from Media and the Campaign trail

Populism, MAGA, and Trump: Insights from Media and the Campaign Trail 🎙️
Welcome to the Spotlight Episode on Populism, MAGA, and Trump🎙️
In this electrifying episode, we dive deep into the heart of American populism, exploring the dynamics of the MAGA movement and the indomitable figure of Donald Trump as seen through the lens of media and the campaign trail.
 
Join us as we unpack:
The Evolution of MAGA: From its inception to its current state, how has the MAGA movement influenced American politics, drawing parallels with historical populist movements like the Tea Party?
Trump's Media Strategy: An analysis of how Trump has utilized media, both traditional and social, to shape public opinion and maintain a strong connection with his base, even as critics claim his rhetoric has grown darker and more divisive.
The 2024 Campaign Landscape: With recent polls showing a tight race, what strategies are Trump and his camp deploying, and how does this impact the broader political discourse?
Populism in the Media: A look at how media outlets, from conservative talk shows to liberal news networks, cover populism, and the role of figures like Steve Bannon in amplifying the MAGA message.
Public Sentiment and the X Factor: Insights from real-time reactions on X, reflecting the pulse of the public on these pivotal issues.
Connect with Raheem
website:       https://raheemkassam.com/Substack:     https://raheemkassam.substack.com/Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@Raheem𝕏:                 https://x.com/RaheemKassamInterview recorded 19.10.24*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                        x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/Transcript:
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello, Hearts of Oak. Thank you so much for joining us once again.
And it is wonderful to have a brand new guest, a name which certainly the War Room Posse will know absolutely very well.
And that's Raheem Kassam. Raheem, thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
I woke up especially early for you as well on a Saturday morning of all things.
If anybody knows my Friday nights, it's quite difficult.
You don't look too worse for wear.
So all good.
But if obviously people aren't following you maybe on, might be some of the UK side but Raheem Kassam obviously is on Twitter X he is former editor-in-chief of National Pulse and we'll touch on some of those articles thenationalpulse.com former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News in London, former senior advisor to the one and only Nigel Farage and I think a good friend of his now and And together with Steve Bannon and Jason Miller, they co-hosted War Room back in the day.
So lots to talk about.
But Raheem, I mean, eight years ago, you were in the race to become UKIP leader.
And I remember your campaign launch in the Westminster Arms, that picture of you behind the bar pulling a pint.
And maybe just touch on that a little bit.
How you kind of got involved with UKIP with Nigel, the political scene there before over stateside.
Yeah, do you know what's funny? I find myself telling this story more and more, and I don't know if it's a sign of people having interest or just getting old and repetitive.
And I was actually telling it last night. I'll give you the brief version.
I mean, I was always fascinated by politics.
I remember watching the first Gulf War on television.
Obviously, we were all you know, aghast at 9-11.
And there were just these sort of major flashpoints in my life that I thought, you know, I kind of feel that I need to do something in that world. And especially.
Well, unfortunately, I found myself a little bit of a Blairite in the early Blair years.
I was a kid and I fell for the sort of the things can only get better mantra.
That was the prime Minister for the American audience from the late 90s, which was very much sort of a Clintonian figure, a third wave figure in British politics.
And I did get involved.
I got involved straight off to college, off to university, by shadowing my local member of parliament around and just kind of knocking on doors and understanding the issues and finding out at a kind of local level that most of good, worthwhile politics is actually local and not national.
And so naturally, I gravitated to the national, just being useless like that.
Started to work a little bit with Britain's Conservative Party and very, very quickly realized that it was no such thing as conservative.
And when the David Cameron Conservative Party in 2010 got into coalition government with Liberal Democrat Party and handed over so many things to the left, I just sort of threw my hands up and said, you know, I can't do this in good faith.
I can't be a part of that.
And I did something that they call defecting.
And I left.
And I say defecting not because I was, you know, an elected member or anything, but I was on the Conservative Party's youth board at the time, Conservative Future.
And so it caused a little bit of sort of internal physios.
I remember getting prodded in the chest quite angrily at Tory conference and told that, you know, I'd never work in politics again and so forth.
Little did they know.
Well, I showed them.
And then, I mean, I kept bumping into this jovial smoking chap outside lots of Westminster pubs, and we would often talk politics, and we would often talk about women, and we would talk about all sorts of things.
And that person turned out to be Nigel Farage.
So we made friends.
He asked me to come and work for him, and the rest, I suppose, is history.
And task is from I mean kind of from Hammersmith to the white house or from using the tube to using Trump force one it's certainly a change in gear.
How kind of how and when did you think you wanted to put your energy into the US and not the UK was there a specific moment or was that just a general drift there.
There are a lot of moments actually I mean I think 9-11 got me, you know, really, really first trying to understand the US, trying to understand why somebody would do that, trying to understand what the American reaction was.
I stayed up, I think, for three days straight, you know, just in my little box room in Uxbridge in West London.
And I had a 17-inch CRT Sanyo TV propped up on a coffee table and just stared at it, you know, and couldn't wrap my head around it, really.
And so, you know, I did a lot of reading and a lot of learning.
And, you know, this is a pre-YouTube world, so I'm going to the library and checking books out and trying to, you know, the old-fashioned way of figuring things out.
And my parents were never really particularly political, so it's not like I could sort of turn to them easily and go, 'oh you know this thing happened what what does it mean.'
I think a lot of the world felt that way at that point in time I certainly talking to a lot of my friends now in New York where I go you know probably for 10 days every month at the moment they certainly say that they felt like that at the time also just completely lost.
You know the the rules-based order right that the Bannon always talks about was just I mean in ash right it was in ash it was falling in ash from the sky with bodies littered around it.
And you know not to be to be too graphic about it but that's how it it jarred so much and I was still in school I was still in what they call high school over here at the time in secondary school and and for us, I mean, our teachers had no idea what to tell us or what to say about it.
And so that probably was a major flashpoint where I thought, hmm, you know, having knowledge of and being involved in U.S. Politics seems quite important from a global level.
I studied it at university, studied U.S. Politics in large part in my course at the University of Westminster.
And I never really planned to get involved in US politics or media until one day, I think this was 2013, my phone rings.
I'm actually sitting in the house of a friend who went on to be the Conservative Party's operations director.
We're sitting in his house. I think it's a Saturday night and we're just having a dinner.
And my phone rings, and I don't know the number, and I pick it up: I said: hello. And the voice down the other end of the phone goes hey you don't know who this is but my name is Stephen K. Bannon and I'm the executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network.
And I was like okay, I mean at first I thought this might be like a sales call. I was like okay I'm Mr. Bannon how can I help you.
He says well we're opening a London bureau for Breitbart do you know it?
I was like vaguely I don't, you know, read it all that much, but I know of it.
And he said, everybody tells me I should hire you to be my London editor.
Up here at the time, I was making about £65,000 a year blogging from my bedroom.
So I thought that was a great gig.
And I sort of said to him, you know, thanks, but I'm not that interested. He said, look, just meet me next week.
We'll chat.
We did. He offered me 35 000 a year to which I said: see you mate, I'm not doing that.
We spent sort of the next four months negotiating back and forth and I say negotiating back and forth.
It was more him going 45 and me going nah 55.
Nah.
He finally ended up on 65 plus a staff plus an office and I was like right fine, I'm in.
and that was the moment.
Steve can drive a hard bargain he's a businessman.
Yeah, but I think I in fairness to him I don't think he knew the lay of the land in the UK I think he thought he would sort of grab somebody just out of college who wasn't earning anything and whatever and and we had already kind of, you know, I'd already developed several news websites at the time and built a little brand and a little following, so he had to pay for it.
And that drew me in right.
That drew me into the US world because, of course, every morning then we would have a Breitbart News radio show and...
So for 10 a.m. my time, I would be on live with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people across America.
And so immediately your cadence changes, the words you use change, you start speaking in their language to try and get them to understand what's going on.
And you're trying to explain like concepts like Brexit, which at the time didn't even exist as a word.
You know, we didn't even call it Brexit back then.
We just called leaving it, leaving the EU or getting Britain out, or independence. Brexit was far later as a common term.
And then, of course, you would get invited to all this stuff in the US, and how it is, the scale of it is just all so...
It draws you in.
It really sucks you in.
And I would visit DC, and I would think to myself, oh, I'd love to live there one day.
And let me tell you something. I bloody hate it here.
I bloody hate it here.
But, you know, I was supposed to be here after 2016 because he called me up when he went to, still speaking of Bannon, called me up when he went into the Trump campaign and he said, where are you?
I said, I'm in DC. I'm on vacation.
I'm hanging out with some of my mates.
And he says, good, stay there.
I said, what do you mean stay there?
I've got to fly back tomorrow.
He goes, no, no, no, no, stay there.
I need you to do something for me.
I said, what is it?
He goes I can't tell you but you'll find out tomorrow on the front page of the New York times, so that sounds really really ominous is that, I mean you know what's funny at the time I suppose not that funny but what's what's interesting at the time I thought oh my goodness is he getting arrested or something.
Turns out he's going to work for the Trump campaign and he wanted me to take over the radio show.
So I took over the Breitbart news radio show, you know, got my visa and everything sorted out. Stayed, I thought I'd stay for about a year and then you know life draws you in.
You make friends and girlfriends and you know buy things and you know plant your roots by accident really and now it's been about nine years sitting here in this same room on capitol hill.
I mean, you have a unique perspective as a Brit who's there, really understanding the UK scene and the US scene.
I mean, obviously, Nigel crosses over, but he doesn't live in the US.
I mean, the only person that I kind of think who is such a deep understanding both sides is maybe Seb Gorka.
But tell us what that's like, because are you, you're no longer an outsider, are you?
You're, yeah how do you kind of fit in and your perspective is something fairly unique in the US media certainly?
Look I'm just a loud mouth, I always have been, and so when you ask me how I fit in?
Not well really anywhere.
I mean you can talk to some of our mutual friends like Jason Miller as an example or even Steve and they'll all tell you, yeah Rahim has a really sharp mind for politics, but he's bloody annoying.
And he rubs people up the wrong way.
And he doesn't really just, you know, I have no charm when it comes to what I believe in, right?
I couldn't run for anything.
I learned that a long time ago.
You made reference to the aborted UKIP leadership election campaign. I was two weeks into that campaign and I thought to myself, I hate this.
I will be terrible at it.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm out.
I don't want to do it you might.
You Have lasted less than Diane James, fewer days.
I think that you know the right way to do things in life is to not pretend right and I think if a lot of politicians, actually acted on their instincts, on their gut level instincts about what they do, they wouldn't do half the bad shit they do.
And so that was my moment where I thought to myself I can continue this on, I could probably win if I really pull the stops out, and I can be miserable for the rest of my life.
Or I can pull out, do something I like doing, and be miserable for the rest of my life.
So I chose the latter, and I don't regret that at all.
But yeah, no, I wouldn't say I fit in very well at all.
This doesn't, I hope this doesn't sound sad, but I sort of barely leave the house anymore.
You know, if I do leave the house, it's sort of to take a train or a plane somewhere for an event or a meeting or a speech, or if I get really antsy or bored or whatever, I like to take the train up.
I only live a few minutes here from, from union station in DC.
So, just get the train up to New York and I sit at a nice pub for the weekend or something see some friends very quiet sort of things, but it's not that thing anymore where you know you get all these major conferences and conventions and all of this stuff and a lot of people still find that useful and still find it, you know, helpful to run around and shake hands and exchange business cards.
I'm much more reclusive than ever.
I sit at home, I read a lot, I like to keep a very close-knit group of friends, because you know the old adage if you want a friend in DC get a dog.
It's really not a town where you do want to trust people and make and make you know long-lasting friendships or relationships that, you know, I've got a few luckily thankfully.
Steve being one of those Nigel being another it's that's a weird thing, that's a weird thing, when your best friends in the world are people like Steve Bannon and I don't say that as in like they're people I work with on a daily basis they're just my mates like we just call up and shoot the shit every so often.
You know I spent last Christmas at Steve's house with him because I couldn't make it back to England in time and I don't think politics came up more than once over like a week-long period.
It was football he hates soccer, I love soccer, it was him trying to show me American football. Can't stand it, there was a lot of food, you know, those sorts of things.
So, if anything I've sort of become more of a political socialite at this point.
But it's weird, yeah, if I ever have to watch another NFL game again, I don't know what I will do.
I'd lose the will to live.
But apologies to the posse. But when you met Steve and Nigel there, what comes across is they're authentic individuals.
They actually care about it.
They wear their hearts in the sleeve.
And, I mean, both of them, I probably actually know Steve better than I do. I do Nigel.
But both of them what you see is what you get and sometimes you see the public persona then you meet them in private they're just very different.
Actually there isn't much difference that they are who they are.
And that's possibly one of the reasons why they've been so successful and maybe makes them so dangerous and that's why they've both been targeted so much.
yeah, I think that's right. I mean there there are little things I think that people don't get to see with both of them.
Just sort of almost softer sides, you know, that they would both hate me telling the audience, but genuinely caring sides.
You know, you see the look in, I've seen the look in both of their eyes when I've disappointed them, you know, and it's not anger and it's not resentment.
It's that sort of fatherly disappointment. Why did you say that?
Sometimes live on air, I would say things that Steve would just look at me like, oh dear.
But it has gone the other way as well, believe me.
Yeah, they are extremely authentic characters.
And I think the same about myself sometimes as well.
It's like, why am I drawn to those people?
Because I do that too, right?
I wear my heart and my politics and everything on my sleeve.
I say whatever pops into my head and deal with the consequences later.
I certainly tweet whatever comes into my head and deal with the consequences later.
And I think at the end of the day as well, when you look at their private lives, they are people who have a genuine joie de vivre. They are actually life-loving people.
They cling on to every moment, and they want people around them to enjoy those moments too.
They're also people who want to impart the wisdom of the hard lessons they've learned.
Right when Steve first, when I first met Steve he said to me look you know this pub at four o'clock every afternoon thing is not going to work for you in the long term.
He says you need to knuckle down be a monk for three years, bury your head in books.
Learn, learn, learn, and then you get to you know express yourself in different ways and live life in different ways, but you know, put together that base of knowledge.
I completely ignored all of it of course and proceeded to go to the pub at four o'clock every day and and still do it, but it kind of,
I mean, I've got a stack of books now it's so weird actually now I think about it.
Behind the camera here I have a stack of books up against the wall and now when I think about it that is exactly how Steve's stack of books used to being his old Bryant park New York apartment.
It's just books some books stacked up against the wall no bookshelf just a mess and you know everything sort of half read dog-eared thrown aside, like this, don't like this, and those guys really taught me all of that.
Kind of just knuckle down as hard as you can learn as much and you know without them without their influence and things like that I would have never published the first book No Go Zones, which was a bestseller and you know I think really changed a lot of the conversation on migration in the Western world.
After that book came out, Angela Merkel started being honest about the concept of a no-go zone, of a no-go area, as she called it.
And, of course, now we all accept that these things are relatively commonplace.
But at the time, that was no-go zones were no-go zones.
I want to touch on that later.
And, of course, your other book on Enoch Powell is also The Greatest Prime Minister Britain ever had.
Okay, so U.S. election, 18 days out, as we currently record, I think, 16 days by the time this comes out on Monday.
And not just the most important day of most people's lifetimes in the US, but actually worldwide, because the impact on freedoms for all of us and where
America lead others, others follow.
And the last thing we want to be doing, what we have been doing is following a decrepit individual.
And now comrade Kamala could be the next option on that, and that should fill anyone with fear.
But what is your kind of what's your assessment?
Obviously you write about this in the national pulse and your finger is on the pulse In terms of understanding, but what's kind of your assessment generally and it will pick up me in some of them just two and a half weeks out?
Yeah, look so just so people understand my method when it comes to this stuff I just call and text everyone I know as much as possible right what's going on what are you hearing where are you going what's the reception what are the internal campaign numbers please.
No, you don't want to tell me, I'll go ask someone else.
They want to tell me, I'll go and ask someone else.
Basically, I'll just bug my way into amassing information.
I mean, that is the job of a journalist, really, is just to bother your way into knowledge. The reason that just to draw...
I'm doing the weave, by the way, here, like Trump does, the story weave.
Just to draw you away from the question for a second, the journalists that people loathe, which is, I understand most of them, the reason they are not good journalists is they don't do their jobs.
They make it up.
They have an opinion, and then they ascribe current events to fit whatever their opinion is.
The job of a good and real journalist, and there are some people like, in fact, I'll say something that might surprise people, but there are some Guardian reporters like Hugo Lowell, who I think are just excellent at their jobs.
Now, I'm really good at gatekeeping information that I don't want getting out there.
And someone like Hugo is really good at extracting it from people like me.
So, I get to really see how I come across to other people, because I'm always doing that and digging for info.
And that's how you get to understand a campaign. That's how you get to where I was in May, where I was saying something is going dreadfully wrong with the Trump campaign, there is no ground game.
Susie and Chris, who are at the head of the campaign, had sort of checked out for the summer, almost putting their feet up, thinking that they were going to run easy against Biden, win easy against Biden, and then of course made the cataclysmic campaign error of accepting that early debate and getting Biden out of the race.
Now, at first, it seemed a lot worse than it was.
But the more people have seen Kamala Harris, the less they like her.
And the more she gets out there, I think the more votes she loses, frankly.
The campaign turned at the end of August, I and others embarked upon a bit of a pressure campaign to bring other people in.
So they brought people in from the PAC, the political action committee that sort of runs parallel to the campaign.
For those who aren't sort of aware of how that works, it's like an outside group that does a lot of the campaigning.
But technically, legally speaking, the campaign of the PACs can't talk directly to each other.
So, instead of doing that, they shifted people from the PAC into the campaign, and then brought on, you know, old Margar Stalwarts like Corey Lewandowski.
And since then, you've seen a big uptick again, not just in, you know, Trump's polling numbers, but his own, you know, his own, I guess, vivaciousness about the campaign.
He's in two or three places every day at the moment. It's got that 2016 energy to it.
And I think, you know, to touch wood, I think we are on a winning course right now.
I will say Trump will win despite his campaign leadership, not because of his campaign leadership.
And it will also win because she has just become,
I mean, she's become almost as unpopular as Hillary Clinton.
And I say almost because America got to know Hillary Clinton really well for decades and decades.
If they got to know Kamala as well as they knew Hillary, she would be half as popular if that than Hillary Clinton.
You know, she is just a fundamentally unlikable person.
We see that play out this week where, you know, she was the subject of mockery at a large scale New York gala, right?
The Al Smith dinner.
His great speech by Trump.
The whole thing, I mean the host gets up at the beginning and it's like why is Kamala Harris not here?
And for for that to happen to her. I mean her team, this is the problem about having a team that is is mostly young and inexperienced.
Is that they think everything happens on TikTok.
They forget that actually most high propensity voters are getting their news in older fashioned ways.
And to age a lot of people here, one of the older fashioned ways now is still like Facebook, right?
But it's also broadcast TV and it's also local TV and it's also newspapers.
And yes, they are dwindling and falling and whatever, but the older, higher propensity voter still wants that element.
They still want the masthead, right?
They still want to see the logo of the news organization at the top of the thing they're reading.
They don't necessarily want that 15-second clip of some nose-ringed purple hair woman who thinks abortion is an alternative to having a personality.
So I think Trump nicks it.
If you want to go state by state, we can do that too. I'm not confident about Nevada, and I'm not confident about Wisconsin.
The rest, I'm pretty happy about.
One, just a sidestep, one of the dangers I've seen of the U.S. Political scene is the industry that kind of feeds on it.
I think when I talked to Terry Giles, who was very close to Ben Carson whenever he ran, and chatting about what the campaign was like for his involvement on that, and the amount of money that just disappears on consultants everywhere consulting on something.
And it is an industry in the light that Britain have no idea, ours is very different.
And is that one of the probably people will say whatever you want them to say there, you're right, there is kind of out of Uni and you go into job you get paid to consult on stuff that you actually have no world life experience and you'll say whatever has to be said and if you're candid losers hey you'll just find another one.
That seems to be one of the failures, I think, of the U.S. Political scene as someone from afar watching.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
I mean, if I were to be able to give one piece of advice to the American body politic writ large, it is repeal Citizens United. You know, repeal the idea that corporations are people in a political sense and that they can give of limitless amounts of money to politics, to PACs, and so on and so forth.
You know, a lot of politicians, and I think Matt Gaetz popularized it, I know a lot of people have said it.
Politicians should be made to wear the logos of their sponsors, like a race car, like a race car driver.
And you have to have patches that say Pfizer and Exxon and all of this stuff.
I actually think that if you're not going to get big money out of politics, then that's what you should do with it.
But we're not even at the point of having that conversation over here yet.
You're still talking about Nancy Pelosi making massive stock trades on a day-to-day basis, and everyone knows she's doing it.
Everybody knows it's insider trading and everybody in this town is just sort of an open joke.
You know and the but the part of the joke is not Nancy Pelosi the part of the joke is the American public that that Nancy is fleecing by pretending to be a representative of theirs in any way shape or form, but actually just enriching herself at it.
And I think if you get that corporate money out of politics and if you and if you police things like that a lot more you will get a far more representative form of government.
The real threat to democracy is not Donald Trump or anything like that it's corporate America and time and time again corporate money has corrupted.
It's corrupted movements, it's corrupted the tea party, it's corrupted it corrupted Brexit in a lot of ways and we saw what happened with Brexit after the people voted for a certain thing.
Britain's migration is still at record highs.
Why, because the corporate lobby continues to lobby for cheap migrant imported labour. And that was the point of Brexit.
There's no point in doing Brexit unless you actually control your own borders.
You can tell I get very frustrated by this, because I see the sorts of cash that flies around here.
And I don't want to get anybody in trouble or make it awkward for you at all.
But I get myself in trouble with this a lot because I call out people on our own side too about this stuff.
And about a year ago, I ran a story about how Matt Schlapp and the American Conservative Union were taking money from the New Venture Fund.
Well, the New Venture Fund is a Soros left-wing Democrat fund that push money around politics to fuel things like criminal justice reform and DEI policies and things like that. Listen, I'm a reporter.
I reported the news.
And of course, Matt gets angry at me and Steve gets angry at me and that's friendly fire.
Why are you doing that?
I say, why are they taking the money in the first instance?
So somehow I'm to blame for bringing it into light.
And I just, I don't have any allegiance to organizations, institutions, and people that I think are purchasable.
I find that to be the lowest form. Money is the lowest form of doing politics.
No, completely.
You mentioned the speech that Trump gave a couple of days ago at that Catholic event, and I saw the emcee pointing out that Kamala wasn't there.
And you watched Trump's speech, and I've seen him speak at CPAS, saw him at Pennsylvania rally, saw a North Carolina rally, and there's nothing like it.
I mean, if you come from UK politics and you come across this, you're just in awe of, the camera light action type of thing but I what I mean you watch trump speak and his energy his passion you, however many times they're trying to actually try and assassinate him and he's got this boundless energy and he's, they're a joy to watch speaking for an hour and a half.
And I mean is it it seems like he just gets better and better and there's no end to it he's never pushed back, never pushed down.
Tell me about your thoughts on that and the energy he has on that campaign trail.
Well, as George Galloway once said to Saddam Hussein, I salute his indefatigability.
And I suppose I'm George and Trump is Saddam in that analogy.
He is.
I mean, Look, I've travelled with him on his plane. I've interviewed him.
I've hung out socially at Mar-a-Lago probably two dozen times.
I've seen him at his best, but I've also seen him tired.
I think you hang around with him long enough, you see him tired.
They're the same tell-tale signs as well as any of us, really, but you see it in Bannon, you see it in Nigel, where a door will close.
If a car door, for instance, closes, and you're just sort of sitting next to Nigel and he'll just go, oh, and all the exhaustion you'll see just like wash over him.
And they all have the trick in that world. And this is why I would not be good at it.
The trick in that world is to hold it all in and just deal with it and just man up and plow through and plow through.
And then once you can get to wherever you are, private bedtime, whatever, you just let it all go.
I can't do that.
I need to work very hard and then rest very hard and then work very hard and then rest very hard.
These men, these locomotives of populism, right?
They just keep chugging.
They just keep going.
They just keep going. And what's their fuel, right?
Their fuel, especially for Donald Trump.
Are the people standing in front of him, right?
It gets to the point now at the rallies where he recognizes people in the crowd who he's seen years ago, perhaps, at an event.
He goes, oh, I know you. I saw you at this thing.
We took a picture together.
You know who was also very good at that? Enoch Powell.
Enoch Powell, I read several stories about him recognizing people from 18 years prior, and just picking up the conversation where they left off 18 years prior.
And it's like that moment in Butler, right, where Trump walks up onto the stage and he goes, as I was saying, and that was an important moment for several reasons because it wasn't just, you know, obviously making comedy out of tragedy there in that moment, very important, very important to bring people's spirits back up and to let them know that you're still there and you're still fighting and you're going to continue regardless.
But it was also to personalize that moment right you were all here with me you know four weeks ago whatever five weeks ago when when it happened, we're all here again today.
And you see the same thing I got to host the radio show with Steve so much back in the day that was a call-in radio show and the lines would light up, the board would light up, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Every single morning as soon as they knew Steve was hosting the show, because they all wanted to talk to him.
But more importantly, he wanted to talk to all of them.
He would make it very clear, I'm going to get to every single one of you callers. Don't hang up.
I know you might have to wait a little bit.
I want to talk to everyone and give everyone their time, their airtime, and treat them respectfully and listen to them.
The same thing as Nigel going out in public.
And we've seen the videos of the milkshakes getting thrown on him, and those are unfortunately the hazards of being a populist because you actually do want to go and hang out with ordinary people.
You want to go to the pub. You want to stand in the beer garden.
You want to have a smoke with them.
You want to give them proper time and attention.
That, without that, you cannot be a populist.
You cannot book read populism.
This is a major problem we have on our side at the moment is that much of the MAGA movement, much of the post-Brexit movement are these, are these academic types who have sort of come along and gone, yeah, it's very interesting.
And, but you know, you can't, you can't converse with them outside the pub.
They're not willing to understand the ordinary person.
They're certainly not going and walking the streets of Bradford and watching how demographic shift is occurring and how the mass rape of young white girls occurred in the UK under the police's nose in those communities.
They're not interested in doing these things.
And I think in as much as the left doesn't understand, the corporate left, the Marxist left in a lot of senses, there is a populist left.
But in as much as the establishment doesn't understand populism, we also have to be very watchful that our own side continues to understand populism.
We cannot hand it back to the academics who, you know, the Alan Skeds of the world who founded the original UK Independence Party, the academics who founded the Alternative for Deutschland Party.
You know, we're very grateful that those things happened and that those guys, you know, had their involvement to get those things off the ground.
But these cannot be turned into bookish movements.
They are you know for want of a better term they are street movements they are they are movements of ordinary people. Yeah, I like to rant.
The academics looking down at those with passion who actually believe and there's a confusion, they think they like that intellectually, but they're not sure where that passion...
Passion this is where the party's going wrong, right?
The conservative party in Britain wants to do pseudo-populism. It just wants to be able to sort of tweet images, of you know England's green and pleasant land and say we will bring down migration if re-elected in five years time.
And you go, well you were in office for the last 15 years and you doubled it and tripled it, and quadrupled it you know last year I think what was it 1.1 million new visas issued for for foreigners going into the united kingdom a population of about 60 odd million right there but but realistically far higher now likely and and these academic types the Tories that you meet at the tory conferences and things like that.
If you know with their wet little handshakes will come up to you and go well I certainly think we could we could bring down migration a smidgen um you know we could we could we could certainly shave one percent off the tax rate.
It's like, no, you don't understand.
You know, we tub thumping populists want to completely change the way the system works. I'm not interested in your little salami slicing incrementalism.
We are revolutionaries in a very real sense.
I know immigration being a huge issue across Europe and the US and one of the two, immigration and the economy, the two big issues for the U.S. Election. But you mentioned your book, which looked at those no-go areas, how Sharia law is impacting or is coming to a neighbourhood near you.
That's something the UK, that's something I know living in London, I'm sure when you look back, does America get that clash? They get the immigration, but one of the big problems of mass immigration is when Islam comes in and then wants to be dominant, wants that superiority, wants to impose itself, especially in the legal system, on the food system, financial system.
Is that part of the US understanding or they still think this is just a European issue that is far away for them?
It was certainly a much hotter conversation topic, you know, in a post 9-11 world.
It has definitely faded away in between.
And, you know, Americans sort of looked on at the, you know, this drip of terror attacks across Europe.
You know, somebody got macheted in Paris and Stockholm and Copenhagen and Berlin.
And, you know, a truck crashed into a Christmas festival.
And they sort of made it, I said it in that way, because they sort of made it like a mundane.
You know, this is the end of the news hour type story.
You know, three people were killed today as a man shouting Allahu Akbar drove into Berlin.
Anyway, next up, and it's like, you have normalized this, which something should never like that be normalized.
You know, people should not have to fear going to a Christmas market.
You should not have to erect these bollards up everywhere to stop cars running people over.
This is not the mark of a civilized society and it's not the mark of a civilized immigration system.
And I'm very upfront about it.
These people are barbarians and they should not be let into the Western world.
And we should be far more, I'll use a dirty word, discriminatory about who comes into the Western world.
And my parents did it the right way.
I was telling somebody last night, the difference was when we were growing up, they told us to integrate to assimilate we got sent to a Christian school.
We said Christian prayers growing up even though I was raised in a Muslim family, they were cool with it, because it meant that we would be a better part of British society.
And now of course you walk around places, I mean I'd use Bradford as an example, but yeah, I mean why not use why not use London as an example.
You know, if you start moving outside of Mayfair and Westminster you will find pockets where the the signage on the street is in Bengali and is in Urdu and you know Tower Hamlets is a great example, you know, look for ramen.
You know all the stories anyway, but but people who don't really need to go and look those things up.
Because you know I wrote, I actually have copies right by my feet here.
I actually wrote that in 2016 and 17, and I, the publisher and I kind of went back and forth on the cover jacket and the subtitle.
I didn't like how Sharia law is coming to a neighbourhood near you because Sharia is law.
And I wanted how Sharia is coming to a neighbourhood near you.
And they said, nobody knows what that is.
I said, well, they're about to find out.
Because in places like Hamtramck in Michigan, and of course, immediately after October 7th, and indeed on the anniversary of October 7th, they're now starting to see this back in their communities again.
And fearing it like they did post 9-11. It's actually, they're not like us.
They're not interested in being like us.
They are a ghettoized enclave of people who often will speak different languages.
I write in this book, one of the things I think doesn't stand out about this enough, and I wish I'd stressed it more, was when I was going around all of these neighbourhoods, from Europe to the US, I noticed one thing.
I don't know why I noticed it.
It just jumped out at me.
All of these all these apartment buildings that migrants are crammed into.
They all have huge satellite dishes on the balconies and I asked everybody in those neighbourhoods like what is going on here?
Yeah, well they don't speak English so they are trying to get foreign language tv so they all have these massive salad dishes.
And then when I went to Hamtramark and Dearborn same thing.
And I started to look it up and I was reading local forums internet forums of people and it was exactly the same thing.
People were discussing, oh, how do I get this Bengali TV station?
Well, you have to have this satellite and all that.
They're not interested in learning the language.
They're not interested in contributing in any reasonable way.
I've actually had conversations since after this book came out with people in those types of neighbourhoods, where they say, oh, I had a cab driver in New York about a month ago, and he was just railing about the Western world and all sorts of nasty things.
And I said, why are you even here?
He says, being here for me is like being on a building site.
I go to work, and at the end of the day, I'm going to go home.
And home for him was Egypt, I think, or something like that.
And I just think, what have we gotten ourselves into here where these people are in our midst and they hate us.
They don't just hate us a little bit, they really, really, really, hate us.
They hate the world around them, it's amazing.
I think when when I first got the tube one time to Mile End early when I came and thought I stood there for a couple minutes and thought where am I.
So, I think that's when it hit me.
Hey, I want us just two other things, we'll drop in, one is, so looking at those swing states and it seems as though the more rallies Kamala does the better it really is, because you kind of look at Trump you think he's got phenomenal speech writers, but I'm sure Kamala has good speech writers and it still doesn't work for her.
So, he brings he brings his personality you said calling people out and engaging, but what about those you wrote recently about Arizona about Trumping up there obviously there's a lot of work being done in Pennsylvania, a lot being done there.
What are your thoughts there? Because the more Kamala speaks, the more it must disappoint any potential Kamala voter.
Yeah.
Sorry. I didn't, I didn't really follow the question there.
I mean, yes. I mean, she's, she's repulsive.
She's repulsive to her own base.
It's, you know, their first instinct was right.
Their first instinct was to hide her away and not do interviews.
And we kind of goaded her into doing it. And did you see the Brett bear interview on Fox?
I've seen it. Yes.
I mean, so I've talked to some, some liberal friends about it and they say, well, it was the right thing to do and I think it showed she was brave.
I said: whoa whoa whoa, she tanked.
Yeah
It was a car crash like just say it.
If Trump has a bad debate or a bad night I say it.
You know, he didn't exactly, you know, light the room on fire in that debate with Kamala Harris.
He got through it, it was probably what I said at the time it's probably a score draw, but which is probably going to be the Man United match I'm going to watch in about 10 minutes, but so I'm used to it.
He, they have this inability to understand or rather to accept the situation that they're in.
You know, I'm a realist as often as I possibly can be.
You go to war with the army you have not the army you want, and this this was their problem right.
Actually you can make the case pretty well that Biden would have won Pennsylvania in this election.
That case can be quite easily made.
It comes down to union workers, you know, Scranton Joe, he's known him for a long time.
They've actually, it's their fault that they do this, but they trust him.
You know, a lot of them trust him.
They just don't feel that way about Kamala.
Sorry if I missed a question in this.
No, no, no, no.
I just want to get your thoughts. I mean, very last point on a recent article you've done.
I think it might have been yesterday as we're recording now this exclusive, Bannon prison statement, Biden, Harris are illegally holding me past my release date.
It was a really interesting piece, and I actually saw it whenever Mo had posted it.
It does, he is the one of the biggest threats because of the juggernaut he has built with War Room and being 100 America first in MAGA.
He obviously will get out at the end of the month, but just talk to me about that that piece about how he actually should be released early, and yet they refuse to because they must keep him away as long as possible.
Yeah.
By the way, he would want me to say this.
And I've talked to him almost every day that he's been in there.
And for those who are worried and concerned, he's doing fine.
He may even come out a little ripped.
He promised he wouldn't.
He promised he was just going to read.
Yeah, but the books are so big he's basically having to bench them.
He would want me to say this right, the juggernaut that you refer to is not is not the War Room apparatus it's the war room audience, right.
Like that's the juggernaut and here's the proof is in the pudding here's how you know, he's did the same thing at Breitbart, right.
It's audience led, it's people led ,it's grassroots.
He's just the guy who's kind of conducting the orchestra, the musicians are the ordinary American's out there and in a UK sense the ordinary Britons out there who are doing the heavy lifting in their communities every day.
You know, who are building these families and teaching their kids the right values.
Who who are maybe.
Maybe low information voters in the sense that they don't get to spend hours a day at their computer researching any given topic.
You know that's why I do what I do is to act as a kind of information service point for the MAGA movement.
For populist nationalists all around the world and he would want me to remind people that they are, they are functionally the juggernaut.
He was eligible for early release under the First Step Act, which was a bipartisan piece of legislation signed into law by Donald Trump in 2018.
And the First Step Act basically was a criminal justice reform type deal where if you're a nonviolent criminal, very low likely re-offender, that you could shave time off your sentence and you could do it by enrolling in certain programs, behaving certain ways, or just by the very nature of the supposed crime that you've committed, right?
If you're not perceived to be a violent threat in any way, halfway house, home detention, you can serve out the last sort of 30 days of your sentence that way.
And Steve is eligible for that.
He is actually kind of the ideal candidate for the first step act in this scenario, because A, there's no risk of him.
Committing contempt of Congress again, unless they, you know, put a phony committee together again in charge him with that.
And also, they know where he lives.
I mean, the whole world knows where he lives. He's right there.
And he's literally right next to the Supreme Court every single day without fail.
They can check up on him if they like, if he tries to abscond.
But they've said no. I shouldn't misreport it.
They haven't said no. They haven't said anything.
Right, they filed this thing 75 odd days ago this petition for him to be released early and so many different mechanisms by which that could take place and both the DC court and the board of prisons basically said yeah we'll get back to you.
And his lawyers really haven't heard all that much since.
It is incumbent upon every person who knows this story and is listening to this to send this to everyone possible and go, you know, those guys talk about weaponization of government.
Donald Trump's going to lock up his enemies, blah, blah, blah.
We all know the riposte to that, you know, Bannon and Navarro.
We hear it all the time. It goes further than that.
They are now breaking the law.
You know, this is an illegal detention at this point.
The First Step act is law, that they are breaking to keep this man detained unlawfully, right?
And nobody wants to talk about it. CNN won't cover this.
Politico won't cover this.
And I know because I sent it to all of them.
You know, yesterday when we broke the story, I was like, hey, you talk about norms.
You talk about weaponization.
You make this allegation about Trump all the time.
How about you report this, sorry, it's a Friday afternoon, there's nobody in the office, we'll talk to you on Monday.
It's the same thing as the Board of Prisons is doing, we'll get back to you.
It's so far beyond a disgrace that I pray to God, that when Trump gets back in the White House, that there isn't this 2016 mentality of, you know, we can reform some of these things.
If we just send some nice Bush era conservatives into these departments and get, you know, get these people on board, we can sell them.
This is like the civil service in the UK.
They're not interested in being reformed.
You have to just get rid of them.
You have to fire them and you have to take the licks of firing them.
You may have court cases, you may have lawsuits, you may have settlements, you may have retribution from their side.
You may have people running in front of television cameras and going, oh, I got treated badly and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, whatever.
You're bad at your job, you're a corrupt human being, you're out on your ear and you're never coming back.
We have to take that approach. Otherwise, Trump will just be a lame duck president from day one. You cannot put rhinos back in the administration.
And I think Steve will speak more about that when he gets out.
He's due for release at the end of October.
He should be released before that, quite frankly.
But I think one of his first concerns after getting Trump over the line, after helping get Trump over the line, will be, right, what does the admin actually look like?
Because that, I think, is even more concerning than November 5th itself.
And burn it to the ground and build as rebuilders America first.
Raheem, thank you so much for joining us, lead editor in Chief of the National Pulse.
Thanks for getting up so early and enjoy Man U getting their answers kicked.
Well, thank you.
Thanks for having me

Brandon Straka - Red, White, and Rethinking: New Perspectives and Voices from the WalkAway Movement

Welcome to Hearts of Oak. Our guest today is Brandon Straka, once a committed Democrat, now leads a campaign encouraging others to question their political affiliations. Join us as he shares his transformative journey, sparked by the 2016 election, and how it led to the creation of a community for those feeling politically disillusioned. We'll explore the power of personal stories in challenging political narratives and discuss the urgent need for voter engagement in the face of potential authoritarianism. Tune in for a conversation that could challenge your views and inspire a deeper understanding of political change in America. *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.Connect with Brandon:Website | Brandon Straka𝕏 | Brandon Straka #WalkAway (@BrandonStraka) / X
The #WalkAway Campaign I Patriots Fighting for America I Home
Interview recorded 16.10.24
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Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
Hello, Hearts of Oak.
Thank you so much for joining us once again.
And it's great to have Brandon Straka back with us once again.
Brandon, thank you so much for your time.
Good to be here.
Great to be with you and had a great conversation with you just the end of last week on War Room. and obviously heading up the campaign, the WalkAway campaign.
People can find you at Brandon Straka on X Twitter, however you want to call it.
But it's the walkaway campaign, which is intriguing in this current election climate.
I know you've just released a video on that.
I don't want to delve into that and the engagement you've had with people on the ground.
But maybe you, I mean, you personally, I'm curious to engage with Brandon himself, someone who's walked away and our political allegiance often becomes part of our identity.
And whether you're wherever position you are whatever party you're engaging with that often is part of you in terms of what you stand for or in terms of what your family your heritage whatever has brought you there and you were very much in the democrat pigeonhole.
I mean tell us about that walking away personally before we get onto the campaign Itself.
About my experience as a democrat?
Yeah, your experience walking away what impact it had on you personally?
Yeah, you know, a lot of people know I was a lifelong Democrat, two-time Obama voter, a Hillary Clinton supporter.
And I walked away from the Democratic Party shortly after Donald Trump got elected in 2016.
So, I actually voted for Hillary in 2016.
And my WalkAway journey really began with the election of Trump and just feeling like something was really wrong with my side of the aisle, you know, it just seemed like there was this mass panic, and terror and fear and, and anxiety.
And the media kept, you know, alleging that all of these different things were going to happen that never really came to fruition.
And so I started going like, what is going on?
And did a deep dive about, you know, the media and their, their analysis and their reporting of Trump and his supporters.
And basically what I came to realize was that, you know, I'd been being lied to and deceived by the media that I'd been trusting for so long.
And then I started speaking out about that and posting about it and asking questions.
And I thought it was a very positive thing because I know how I felt and I knew how a lot of my friends and fellow liberals were feeling.
And I sort of thought like, you know, ultimately, even if people are feeling disappointed that Hillary lost, this is still good news because, you know, we're being deceived about why we need to be terrified about Donald Trump.
But what I didn't expect was that when I started speaking out about that, that I would be so viciously and savagely attacked and turned on and have people cut me off and unfriend me and, you know, everything that you can imagine.
So, it really turned my life upside down throughout the year 2017, I lost about 90% of my friends and the life that I thought that I knew.
And, you know, and also in the midst of all of that, I was having my entire belief system turned upside down and inside out.
And that in itself is a pretty disruptive and jarring thing for a person to go through.
So I think to go through something like that and lose your friends at the same time is it's pretty, you know, it's pretty upending to a person's life.
But ultimately, it's what kind of led to me starting walk away, because by the time I lost most of my friends, you know, I just thought to myself, it's really it's a shame that there isn't, you know, some sort of network or a community or, you know, support system for people who who get turned on like this, and abandoned like this, when they decide to leave the Democratic Party.
So, we'll get on to WalkAway six years in, and it's been a phenomenal success on those personal stories which have really connected with me personally.
And to me, that's politically, it's the individual stories of why you walked away.
It's not the machine of the entity itself, but it's the individual and where they have their personal journey.
Tell me a bit more about you and what it meant for walking away from that, the criticism you faced, but that kind of internal struggle, maybe, which you felt, and why you call yourself a liberal and what you call yourself now.
Well, I called myself a liberal, I guess, because the reason why I became a liberal in the first place or I felt pulled toward liberalism is because my belief was that, you know, liberalism was about wanting more equity, equality, opportunity, that people who are liberals were against racism, sexism, you know, that they were for the betterment of mankind and the planet.
And our, the oh my God, why can't I think of the word, the world around us?
I can't think of the word right now.
Climate change, ecology, I don't know the planet, but, you know, what, what I began to see was that, they actually.
Liberalism became kind of everything that it claimed to fight against.
So, you know, it's, like they to be a liberal meant that you had to be on board with hating white people or or men or, you know, that everything suddenly was about engaging in exactly the behaviors that, you know, I was I'm against.
And so that to me started to feel like something was really wrong.
And, you know, I'd say it was around 2015.
You know, all these incidents started to happen.
Like I remember one of the things that started a couple of the things that started to wake me up were.
I think around 2015 or 16, I was living in New York city and I, I was sitting in a park having my lunch one day and this guy approached me and he happened to be Hispanic, but he was probably just sort of a mentally unwell homeless person or something. But basically, he kind of like stuck his hand in my face and said that, you know, give me some money, give me some money.
And I was like, no, I don't have any money to give you.
And then he said you're a privileged white, you're a privileged white piece of, you know.
S.h.i.t and and then he hit m he actually physically struck me and I was really shocked and I kind of you know I just was like what just happened, so I went on social media and I just shared the story of what just happened I was like you know this guy came up to me and he hit me and he was demanding money.
And when I didn't give it to him, he brought up my race and said that I was privileged.
And then he physically struck me and the post went, you know, kind of semi viral because, you know, I wasn't, I didn't have a big following at the time, but it started getting shared a lot.
And what I noticed was all these liberal people were jumping in the comments and saying that they didn't believe me and saying, they were like, well, you must, you must be leaving out part of the story and then a lot of people were saying you must have provoked him somehow and you're leaving that part of the story out and it was one of my first real like experiences seeing how the left refuses to hold anybody accountable.
If they're non-Caucasian or you know or if they fit into one of their kind of victim identity boxes and the fact that I'm white means that I'm a liar and that I'm not credible.
And that if I'm in any way portraying anybody who's non-Caucasian in a way that's unflattering, it's because I'm lying or because I provoked the situation, but I'm not owning up to that or something.
And I was like, this is psychotic.
I'm not making a big deal out of it.
I didn't go crying on social media, but I did share the story.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, I am the victim in the story.
I mean, I was physically assaulted by a stranger in New York City, but I'm being made to feel like it was my fault because I'm white.
And then I started to see that kind of stuff happening more and more too with the LGBT community because I'm a gay man.
But once the Supreme Court decided that marriage equality –.
It was the law of the land in the U.S. It was like overnight.
Suddenly we started hearing from these new identity groups like gender queer and gender fluid and non-binary people in this sort of like radical trans.
You know, transgender sect of the LGBT community.
And those people started becoming more loud and more vocal and attacking people within the community, saying that if you're a gay male or a white gay male, it means that you're privileged and you're on the top of the LGBTQ privilege hierarchy and you're oppressing the neo trans.
And I'm like, what the hell is going on?
And so I started to see these sort of like bizarre rumblings from within the left. And that to me felt nothing like why I became a liberal in the first place.
So, I mean, those were some of the kind of the initial things that started to push me away.
And today I identify as a conservative today, but I think I identify as a conservative because, you know, I'm so used to existing within the two party system of this country.
And a lot of people will say, well, there's a difference between a conservative and a Republican.
And I agree with that.
I think that's true.
But I've seen a lot of things, I guess, in the last two or three years that have, I mean, not just disappointed me, but I think maybe even to some degree devastated me about conservatives.
And so in a way, to be honest with you, I'm kind of on the brink of finding myself to be kind of politically homeless, I think, once again.
I think after I get through this election, I have to do a deep dive emotionally and kind of figure out where do I really belong?
Because I'm finding a lot of problems on both sides.
I mean, certainly in the UK, I find that I'll be very socially conservative and it's intriguing.
And I've met a number of friends.
We would have different outlook or different worldviews or different ways of maybe engaging on varying topics.
But it's often that we can agree to disagree.
There is no anger or hatred that actually the individual, the human being, is important and has intrinsic value.
And therefore, hey, if we see things slightly differently.
And to me, that's kind of a norm.
And that's how I've always accepted on the conservative side in the UK.
And on the other side, on the liberal side, on the left side, it seems to be if you don't align with what I think that I hit you.
And I've been perplexed by that anger that maybe individuals face, where I've never seen that on the right.
And growing up in London, a very mixed city, and it's fine.
You agree to disagree.
You kind of embrace someone.
And, hey, that's fine.
I mean, how do you see it coming from the left and maybe acceptance on the right?
Yeah.
Oh, well, I think, you know, for the most part, the acceptance, I think, has been great.
You know, I would say that when I started WalkAway, which was May of 2018, you know, it's been overwhelmingly conservatives.
And I'd say even, you know, MAGA people who have really uplifted WalkAway, supported WalkAway, allowed the organization to thrive, you know, kept us going all of these years and gotten behind me. And I haven't found it to be terribly conditional.
I'd say that the vast majority of people who support me and support WalkAway don't care about my sexual orientation.
Or I'd say that even some people, I think that they actually find it to be a plus of sorts, because I do a lot of events and a lot of speaking engagements and I always stick around afterwards and take pictures with people and hugs and handshakes and things.
And, you know, I have people all the time that approach me and say, you know, I have a gay son or grandson or my daughter or, you know, my neighbor, my coworker. And, you know, I so appreciate what you're doing because a lot of my LGBT friends or family or whatever think that because I support Trump that I don't support the LGBT community.
And so a lot of people are very grateful that, you know, I'm out there putting myself out there and I think putting kind of a new face on what it means to be gay and Republican or gay and conservative.
And so in that way, you know, I think it almost has been helpful with me with a lot a lot of people as well.
Now, there are, you know, a small minority of people who, you know, make the sexual orientation thing an issue and it becomes a negative for them.
Yeah.
I'd say in a way that's, you know, it seems kind of like from another time.
But I think that it's such a minute portion of the base that to me, it's not even really worth focusing on.
You know, it's always disappointing.
I mean, especially when you've got, you know, sometimes I very occasionally I'll get a message or an email from someone saying, you know, I love the work you do.
I love the impact you're having, but I just can't get on board with your lifestyle.
So, you know, and I'm just like, well, then just don't think about it.
I don't know.
I don't know. And by the way, my lifestyle is working 24 seven.
That that is what my lifestyle is.
I am.
All I do is work.
All I do is try to grow my movement, my organization, fundraise, keep things going, travel. I go to colleges.
I do video like that's my lifestyle.
I mean, the truth is not that you care or anyone care, but I'm not even dating anybody. Like I don't even have a love life, so I'm like the fact that I happen to be a gay man I don't even know why you're thinking about that because I have no love life so why don't you just stop thinking about it if it bothers you, because you know there's nothing to think about but I don't know.
Get that you take something and you drive it forward and that becomes who you are as an organization or an entity or a movement.
But, I mean, so six years in, May 2018, you put that video up.
That really went viral and that launched the WalkAway.
So six and a half years later, we find ourselves an election, which to me as a Brit, and I find my guest hosting in the war room talking about the US election, but it is so important.
It's not just an American election.
It is a worldwide election in terms of a huge range of issues that we find ourselves in.
But tell us about the WalkAway movement for this election, because it is so essential.
It is so important.
And I think this election will define not only where America stands, but where we stand worldwide in terms of freedom.
Oh, I mean, yeah, it's I'm I'm trying to keep a level head, I guess, as best as possible going into this election, because the truth is, I like I think the vast majority of people, who are paying attention to politics in this country.
I'm having pretty massive, you know, election anxiety.
And for me personally, you know, I think there's so much at stake for all of us, everybody. But if you're somebody who's been through what I've been through for the last three and a half years, almost four years, being targeted by the Department of Justice, by the FBI, having your life turned upside down, being just brutally stomped by the full might of the federal government.
The idea that we could be subscribing to four more years of that or possibly even worse.
I mean, it strikes levels of anxiety in me that are like indescribable.
I mean, quite frankly.
So to me, there's, there's so much at stake that it's like, it's not hyperbolic for me to say that.
I, don't know where we go. If Kamala Harris ends up getting elected and becoming our president, I don't know how we overcome that or recover from that.
And I don't know what four, four more years of this type of type of extremist Democrat leadership does to our country as a whole.
But, I know that it's a possibility and I know that if she does get elected, that, you know, I'm going to keep working.
I'm going to keep doing everything I can for as long as I can to try to be out there on the front lines of turning things around and trying to recover from the situation.
But you know, for the time being, I just have to hope for the best because nobody really knows. And it really is a nail biter.
I mean, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen on November 5th or the days or, God forbid, the weeks following.
I mean, they're already preparing us for saying that we may not know the election results for weeks.
So I don't know.
And I feel utterly powerless as a Brit watching what's happening across the pond and thinking, this is so important for the world at large, for the right for us to speak freely on a range of issues.
And America, you need to get together. You need to get out.
You need to get out the vote.
You need to be praying for Trump.
You need to do absolutely everything.
There's nothing else that matters over the next two and a half weeks, but actually getting out the vote and making sure that happens.
But, Tammy, you put out a recent video.
I think the text was, how did America, once thriving nation, fail in a not so distant dystopian future?
Got tyrants, teachers of captured society, how America was destroyed from within.
You put that out.
I think it'll last maybe there or two.
Tell us about tell us about that and what you're putting out and how you are engaging with the WalkAway movement with the voters to show that actually you can leave the democrats.
Actually it is important you walk away if you have a belief system if you have a worldview if you have something that you hold dear in terms of what america means you can you can WalkAway tell us about that latest video and how that is coaxing people to leave the democrats.
Yeah so we it hasn't even been out for 24 hours yet so yeah we just I just released that within within the last 24 hour period but it's you know before i got involved in the world of politics and before I started theWalkAway campaign.
I had a background as,an actor, I would say, actor writer, with kind of, I would say that I kind of gravitated toward the medium of filmmaking and things like that.
And so I I'm very much a creative person, at heart, much more than I am a politician or a pundit as far as I'm concerned.
And if I, you know, if I could just make my living only doing creative projects, that's pretty much what I would do.
But, you know, since I feel like I have this privilege of having the organization in the platform, I like to sort of integrate into what we do kind of art pieces and I think interesting and creative ways to try to make people think or see a situation rather than just doing like a traditional sort of, you know, political video or a political message or just, you know, sitting in my car, yelling all of my opinions into my iPhone or, or whatever.
So, in this latest one, we made a, when I say we, I have a very small team, that assists me with, you know, graphic design editing, you know, we all kind of work together, just a couple of us, but we came up with this idea to make this sort of like dystopian future short.
It's only five minutes or something, and people really should watch it.
I think it's really, really good. But basically, kind of the concept of it is that it takes place sometime in the nondescript, but not too far off future.
After America has fallen, the country has gone down.
And essentially like a, you know, perhaps like a future civilization has sort of unearthed this film learning how America fell, how did it happen?
And so in this video, it's shot in the style of like an old kind of 1950s educational film, which we were able to kind of justify that concept by saying, well, you know, the country fell.
And so, you know, we lost our prosperity and our progress and everything.
So we're almost kind of like, you know, this future civilization sort of starting from scratch so they don't even have the technology that we have today so that's why it looks kind of like old-timey but anyway through the through this medium of kind of this old-timey looking film there.
We're explaining the four steps that tyrants use to destroy free nations and to take over.
And so basically, you know, step one is the infiltration of the press and the media, television shows, things like that.
And then step two is essentially, you know, infiltrate the education system and turn young people against their parents and against their country.
Step three is take over one of America's major political parties.
And then step four is to basically eradicate anyone from the government who objects to the regime and install people who are infinitely loyal to the establishment.
But we use these really interesting images of people like Mark Zuckerberg or the women from The View or AOC or Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden.
We show all these images of basically how they fall into this this plan.
And it's very entertaining and I think it's very jarring.
I mean, people have watched it and said they think it's very disturbing.
One person told me they thought it was one of the most powerful, kind of portrayals of what could happen if we continue down the path that we're on.
So I would highly recommend everybody watch it. It's on my, Brandon Strzok and WalkAway campaign X account.
It's on my Facebook account.
It's on our YouTube channel, but it's being severely, suppressed on you.
I mean, I don't even think it's gotten 2000 views on YouTube, which is insane.
Because we're at something like 600,000 views on X or something.
But if you go to the WalkAway Campaign YouTube channel, it's there and it's called Got Tyrants, How America Fell.
Well, people can, it's one of the many intriguing situations we find ourselves in this election that Elon Musk is the free speech champion on Twitter on X.
And we find that in the UK as you do stateside.
But, I mean, what were the specific, there are a whole range of issues.
And the left seems to have moved away from a working class party that supports the underdog and those who are not part of the high echelons of society.
The left seems to have moved away towards an ideology, a woke ideology, of pushing an LGBT agenda across the board, irrespective of what happens, especially in the schooling system, pushing open borders, pushing the dismantling of what the American dream is about.
I mean, when you look at it personally, how do you see that as the trigger point?
We all have a trigger point of what changes us politically.
And you've touched on that at the beginning.
But the immigration issue, I guess the sexualization of children that we've seen pushed on the schooling system, the free money for everyone, the massive debt that's been ramped up.
I mean, for you personally, what kind of those issues fitted in with you saying, this just isn't working?
Well, primarily for me, it was the betrayal of the media.
I mean, the realization that I had been lied to and deceived by the media that I believed that I could trust.
I mean, that to me was first and foremost and primarily the number one thing that shocked me awake.
But then I think as it pertains to like cultural issues, certainly matters.
Well, so, you know, LGBT stuff is close to my heart because I, for better or for worse, am a part of that community.
And so I think that the fear mongering around Trump and his supporters as it pertains to LGBT people, that was a big thing for me.
Because I know that so many people who happen to be gay or lesbian or whatever, they, They they don't realize that they're being lied to by the Democrats and by the media.
And so they're kind of suspended in a perpetual state of fear and this belief that they have no option to be anything but a Democrat and no option to do anything except for believe the stories they're being told by the Democrats. And it's so manipulative and exploitative.
But another thing to our race issues, I have a real issue with that. And I think we saw that in 2020 more than anything when George Floyd and the whole Black Lives Matter debacle, you know, just took siege, I think, on our country and our culture.
To me, it was 100 percent the most detrimental thing in terms of racial relations that's happened in my lifetime.
And and I think it really fundamentally changed the way that we all feel about each other on no matter what side of the aisle you're on, even if you're on the left.
And even if you're buying into the big lie about George Floyd and the big lie about police brutality and things like that, I think that it forever changed the way all of us feel about each other in terms of race relations in a way that is very negative.
And and I think it'll take us a very long time to move past that so I mean it completely.
I think eroded and destroyed so much decades of progress that we made on the issue of race in this country and you know people don't really talk about it they they just sort of they know better, because we also you know exist in the state of cancel culture that if you tell the truth about how you feel about race relations you know you put yourself in the line of fire to lose everything, but if people were being honest and felt safe to tell the truth about how they were feeling they would tell you that you know they fundamentally don't feel the same anymore about racial progress as they used to and that you know.
I think people are now more skeptical more suspicious more mistrusting have negative feelings about each other about race that they didn't have before 2020.
So, you know, it's things like that, that to me are just really kind of heartbreaking and devastating about how the left's just completely dishonest and duplicitous and really kind of authoritarian demands that they want to place on all of us about their ideology.
It's been completely to the detriment of us unifying with one another or coming together as a country or coming together as a people it's been nothing but destructive.
Yeah, because in London, and I found it different living in London compared to living in Ireland, very different culture, concept of blogging. But people just get on and colour or sexuality doesn't really come into it.
And you all feel as though you're a Londoner, you live here.
And maybe in somewhere like New York, maybe that kind of still happens.
That mixing up of ideas and colour and belief systems and everyone just gets on.
I find it so strange how the left have taken this divide and rule, I guess, idea and ruled it out worldwide to say, well, this is why we're different, instead of saying, well, what actually unites us, what connects us, What makes us come together and make a nation important?
And yet the left are intrinsically, I guess, engaged on coming up with what breaks us apart. And it seems to be such a destructive ideology.
Yeah.
Well, in addition to that, I would also add that in order to try to make their point or force their point forward, They actually engage in just about every behavior that they're alleging to be fighting against on behalf of these different, you know, so they'll tell you that, you know, well, we're standing up for black people because black people are silenced and their voices are oppressed and, you know, they're not allowed to have the same opportunities as other people.
OK, but then to fight for that cause, they're saying that if you're white, you need to shut up. You're not allowed to have an opinion.
This is your time to sit down, be quiet and do what you're told.
And so, I mean, it's exactly the same oppressive, authoritarian, abusive and kind of subjugating behavior that they're claiming to fight against on behalf of these other people.
And what's really interesting to me, and I think probably that thing more than anything, is what really...
Created all these negative feelings in me in the post like George Floyd cultural era is I just you know, I've been told so many times in the last four years that, you know, it's time for a reckoning with white people and, you know, that it's time for white people to have tough conversations.
They don't say it like that.
They just say this is a time for tough conversations.
But what's interesting is that it's not a two way street.
If you try to have a tough conversation with either a black liberal or a white liberal who's arguing on behalf of the black ideology.
And you say well let's have a tough conversation about the reality of police brutality crime statistics and how the things that you're alleging are happening are actually incredibly rare in fact so rare that most of the time you guys have to make up hate crime hoaxes to try to push this narrative forward.
I mean, every camera conceivable went running when Jussie Smollett claimed that he was the victim of anti-black MAGA hatred.
But the whole thing had to be manufactured and made up because it happens so infrequently that you can't find a real example of it actually taking place.
But you don't want to have that tough conversation. You don't want to be on the receiving end of the tough conversation.
You just want to be dishing out and doling out the tough conversation, which is most mostly a pile of lies and false assertions and fabrications.
And you want me to just sit there and you want to force feed it down my throat because we're now living in this era that, you know, it's allegedly the time for white people to just shut up and take it. And so it's I don't know.
It's just it's very interesting to me how on the one hand, they'll claim that, you know, we're trying to better the world by fighting against oppression and silencing people's voices and all this stuff.
But those are exactly the tactics that they use to try to force their agenda forward.
I think utter BS is the term without that. But tell me about the personal videos, because I've watched a number of them of high profile individuals and just general public people in the public getting sick and tired of actually had enough of voting for the Democrat Party and saying actually enough is nothing. Want to vote differently but tell us about those personal stories because
Right, so you know from, the beginning WalkAway has been a testimonial campaign from the moment that I launched it six and a half years ago and so at this point we've acquired tens of thousands of written and video testimonials people sharing their stories about why they're walking away from the democrat party.
And it's very unfortunate because we started as a Facebook group and Facebook banned us in January of 2021 with no explanation, no opportunity for recourse, no ability to appeal.
And we were truly never given a reason why.
And we know for a fact that we did not violate any terms of service with Facebook because the only thing we posted in the WalkAway group was the testimonials and real stories of people and some promotional posts about if we did events or fundraising or selling merch or things like that.
So there was no reason to get rid of us. But when they did that, they deleted tens of thousands of WalkAway stories.
Now, we still have a lot on our YouTube channel and we've launched a new Facebook group where we're slowly building back And getting more and more stories.
But yeah.
These stories are all different people Black, brown, white, straight, gay, old, young, fat, thin, everything in between every type of person coming together just speaking up and sharing their stories and it's been incredibly powerful.
And I think through the virality of these stories, you know, more and more people learn about the WalkAway movement they learn about the reasons why they should walk away if they're still hanging on to their allegiance to the left and then people feel inspired to join our movement and share their own story.
And, you know, the, the stories, each one is different and the reasons for each one is different, but there's a common theme of each one, which is betrayal that at some point or another, someone had an awakening to the realization that they're being lied to and betrayed by the Democrats.
And, you know, whatever it is, the catalyst that caused that is different for every person. But, the result is the same that once they see that betrayal, they can't unsee it.
And then, you know, ultimately people end up, not being able to go back and not being able to support any longer.
I mean, for you, it's a normal thinking through of where you fit politically and whether or not you want to reject where you're being.
And no one's done this.
I mean, have you sat and thought, why is no one actually done videos of this?
This ideology is bankrupt and I need to walk away not necessarily that you embrace trump or you embrace republican ideology but actually where I am in terms of political ideology isn't working and I need to walk away.
I find it intriguing that you've come up with this idea of just walking away from your political belief system that no one else has come up with before.
Well, yeah.
And yes, I agree.
I mean, I think the idea was a really good one.
And I think it was needed.
Again, I would say that I think what I bring to the table in the conservative movement is fresh, creative ideas that tend to resonate with people, I think, in a unique and interesting way.
You know I've had a lot of success in the last six and a half years, but I don't think that I've had a lot of success, because I'm you know some brilliant political strategist or you know some like poli-sci prodigy or something like that.
It's not like I think the reason why I resonated so much with people is, because I'm a genuine and authentic person who came into the conservative movement with a lot of creativity and ideas that I think are unique.
And that I think is what has resonated with people so much about me and what I do.
And the idea for testimonials, to me, it just felt like the most logical thing.
We're all sort of having this common experience, but nobody's really talking about it.
And, and you know what, to be honest with you, you know, in this January, in just a few months, I will be 10 months or excuse me, I will be 10 years sober.
And I began my journey of sobriety, you know, in AA.
And so I, bet probably subconsciously I was even inspired by AA, you know, just like going to meetings and having people, you know, sit around in a circle, sharing their personal accounts and their feelings and their experiences and kind of supporting each other. And probably subconsciously, I thought to myself, why don't we just have a digital version of that for people leaving the Democratic Party?
I don't know if I've ever considered that, but I'm sure that probably was a big part in what inspired me to do that.
I will say that what kind of bothers me at the beginning of this conversation, I told you that a lot of things have disappointed me and devastated me about the conservative side of the aisle and kind of led me to this place where part of me feels like I have to kind of have a little bit of self exploration after the election to figure out how I feel about a lot of things.
But one thing that bothers me about the conservative side of the aisle is that when somebody comes in and has good ideas and unique ideas, rather than everybody just getting behind that person and supporting them, which a lot of people have gotten behind me and supported me.
But a lot of people on the right have actually, rather than getting behind me and supporting me, I'd say tried to kind of co-opt what I was doing and try to kind of take it and make it their own.
You know, seeing the success of it and seeing that there's potential there for fundraising or attention or media opportunities or what have you.
They said, well, I'm going to make this WalkAway thing about me, you know, and I'm going to.
So it started getting kind of broken apart and fragmented.
You know, all these different groups started saying, well, we're the we're the black WalkAway and we're the Latino WalkAway and we're the Chinese WalkAway, you know, and and doing their own thing.
And then and I'm even seeing in these last months leading up to the election, all of these different organizations and groups saying, oh, we're going to do testimonial videos about people leaving the Democrats and supporting Trump.
And I'm like, that's WalkAway.
I mean, you're literally we're already doing that, you know, but it's unfortunate that, you know, a lot of people on the right will they'll take a good idea.
And rather than just get behind it and say, you know what, you had a great idea. You're doing a great job executing it.
Let's just further amplify and lift up what you're doing.
They want to reach in and pull it apart.
And it's just it's very frustrating.
And not only frustrating, but it does a great disservice to all of us because all it does is sort of dilute the success of this thing that was happening.
And then ultimately, it may end up costing us the election.
You know, I mean, maybe we won't win in two or three weeks.
And maybe we would have won if we could have just reached more people to get them to WalkAway.
But instead, you know, all of these like powerful influencers and organizations on the right, rather than just getting behind what I was doing, decided to try to for their own benefit, their own fundraising their own attention just kind of grab a piece of it and pull it in for themselves and, I don't know, I'm not the only person this has happened to it's happened to a lot of people I think on the right but it's an ugly side of politics and and ultimately one that I think is really detrimental to our success.
And wherever you go, everyone wants to make it about themselves instead of actually go to the country.
And that is a struggle that I think we all face here in the UK as well as the US.
Yeah.
Just my final thought with you is on Robert Kennedy Jr.
Joining the election. because someone who's so ingrained on the left coming on board with trump because he says actually we've got a much bigger chance of doing what we need to do in saving the country in terms of health in terms of removing the the chains of I guess the lobbying industry especially in terms of farm and food but that's intriguing.
How have you seen that from someone who maybe would have very much been in the Kennedy camp prior or maybe even currently how have you seen that coming together and how do you think that will impact the upcoming election?
Think it's a really positive thing I you know I think JFK or excuse me RFK jr dropping out I think brought a surge of momentum back into MAGA that was really needed.
And I think on top of that, there's this interesting alliance that's forming where you've got two different people that were two different groups of people that were behind two different candidates for very different reasons.
And they're finding common ground with each other while not necessarily seeding or relenting any of their own personal ground.
And there's like this amazing opportunity, I think, to learn from one another and ask each other a lot of questions and and kind of grow and grow. I think what it means to be MAGA and I think grow what it means to be Maha.
And I think also it's a huge relief in a lot of ways that after eight years of MAGA people being branded racists and bigots and Nazis and deplorable, horrible people, and that any sort of political disagreement or discourse is always so vitriolic and just vicious and so savage.
That we're now kind of coming together with this other group for which we're not necessarily, you know, directly politically aligned, but that we're able to civilly engage with one another and have discussions and debates and opportunities to learn from each other in a way that's really productive that we haven't really experienced in eight years.
And I think that feels really inspiring and like relieving to people in this way that, okay, this does still exist, doesn't really exist very much with the political left, but there is this sort of middle group that is kind of, you know.
Joining forces with us again, without necessarily ceding their own ground and that we're able to find overlap with one another and, and then engage civilly with each other on the things that we don't agree on.
I think that's the way forward for the country, 100 and Brandon thank you so much for your time I'm intrigued by what you've set up jealous of your success.
It's exciting to see how you're bringing people from all walks together and for the the viewers and listeners make sure you're following at Brandon Straka on X on twitter and #WalkAway.
Make sure and look at those videos and spread them far and wide because think at those personal stories that really will connect with people, and affect how people vote in weeks, only weeks to come to the most important election of, certainly my lifetime, and I think many of our viewers.
So Brandon, thank you for joining us and sharing what you're doing with the walkway campaignThank you so much, it was great being with you here today.
 
 

Bill Walton - Meritocracy, Media, and American Values: A Critical Discussion

Welcome to "Hearts of Oak," where we engage with the titans of thought, the mavericks of media, and the architects of America's future. In today's episode, host Peter welcomes a guest whose life story reads like a blueprint for success in multiple arenas: from the stages of New York to the boardrooms of finance, and now to the forefront of media and political discourse. 
Our guest transitioned from a budding theater enthusiast to a titan in finance, steering a company from $600 million to a colossal $9 billion in assets. But it's his latest venture into the world of media that has us captivated. With a platform dedicated to fostering in-depth, unfiltered conversations with leading thinkers, he's not just another voice in the crowded media landscape; he's a clarion call for a return to meritocratic values and a deeper dive into the issues that shape our society.
In this episode, we'll explore how a background in finance fuels a passion for media, why he believes alternative voices are crucial for democracy, and how he's tackling the elephant in the room—divisiveness in American politics. From the implications of recent books like "The Israel Test" to the very real fears about electoral integrity, this conversation promises to be as enlightening as it is engaging.
Join us as we delve into the mind of a man who not only watches the world turn but actively shapes its discourse, aiming to bridge the gap between the political elite and the everyday American. This is not just an interview; it's a window into understanding the complexities of our times through the lens of one who's been there, done that, and is now determined to change the narrative. 
Tune in for "The Maverick's Microphone," where every dialogue is a journey towards a clearer, more united future for America.Connect with Bill Walton
 The Bill Walton Show | Money Culture PowerThe Bill Walton Show | SubstackThe Bill Walton Show Podcast Series – Apple PodcastsThe Bill Walton Show - YouTubeConnect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/
 
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello, Hearts of Oak.
Thank you so much for joining us with a brand new guest stateside, and that is Bill Walton. Bill, thank you so much for your time today.
Great to be here.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the Bill Walton Show and everything that you've put out over maybe the last six or so years, and we'll delve into that.
But just for a UK audience, I know the war room posse, the US audience will know you well, but delving into your background, you serve as chairman of Allied Capital Corporation, and you built that from 600 million in assets to 9 billion.
And by the time you left in 2009, you founded Rush River Entertainment.
You've been leader and board member of many organizations, including Heritage Foundation, CPAC, CNP.
And you were very involved in the Trump transition team heading up the economic, I think, agenda, the federal economic agencies looking at that.
You've got phenomenal and that doesn't do justice.
But I see you as a media figure, and I think many of your viewers may also, your extensive background in leadership, executive, investor, entrepreneur, and now media. Maybe I can ask you about that step from your background where I guess the world was your oyster.
You could pick anything in those different sectors that you were involved in. But what led you to start the Bill Walton Show?
Well, it's a combination of things you know as you mentioned.
I've got a background in in in theater the arts and film and I not not me people many people know this, but I was I tried to be an actor in New York when I was 22, 23 years old and after about a year of doing that I'd done well on my on my business my business test.
Maybe I guess what they call it, I don't remember what they call it now, but anyway.
I decided that maybe after several auditions where I wasn't quite right for the part, maybe I should try something else.
I went into finance at about age 24 and then ended up on Wall Street and ended up knowing a lot about investments, finance, and ended up leading Allied Capital Corporation, which was, you mentioned, $9, $10 billion of private equity investments and commercial real estate and small business lending.
Along the way, I got to know a lot of people, a lot of smart, interesting people.
As you mentioned, I served on many boards. I thought, gee, wouldn't it be great to create a show where I could just talk with these smart people, bring out things in an extended conversation where people could hear things that they may not hear, and certainly on cable.
Now, since I started out, there are a lot more podcasts that are going for, you know, longer durations.
None of us are quite a Joe Rogan length, but anyway, so anyway, that was the spark, and it's been a boutique effort for a while, and just in this last, I took the summer off, and I'm just back and have hired a PR firm, AJ Rice, who's an amazing young man.
I think you You also work with him as well.
Now we're beginning to get the word out about the show.
This just this past Monday, we put out a show with George Gilder, the famous futurist, economist, and social thinker. And we talked about his book, The Israel Test, which is...
He wrote it 25 years ago, but he extensively updated it, and it bears just uncannily on what's going on with the Middle East now.
And his theory, and I quite agree with it, is it's not just anti-Semitism that's at the heart of the hatred of Israel, but it's the hate of talent, of meritocracy, of high achievement.
And if you look at Jews as a race or a class and you look at Israel as a country, they punch way above their weight.
I mean, something like half of the top 10 market cap companies now were formed by Jews.
And then just pulling the camera back a little bit, looking at a wider lens, there's a war on meritocracy throughout society now, in the West in particular.
And with the obsession with DEI or equity, you know, we're really taking talent.
We're really undervaluing talent in America and in Europe.
And long term, it's the high talent people that make everything happen.
And we ought to be celebrating that rather than denigrating it.
So anyway, Peter, that's kind of my winding path to why I started the show.
But, you know, how often do you get to talk with George Gilter one-on-one about one of his books?
And that's rewarding in and of itself.
And I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about it.
And I think he provides a point of view other people don't get. So, that's why I'm in the podcast business. I don't recommend doing this for money, though.
Okay.
I would have a private conversation with you to say, absolutely, this is not going to fill your bank account.
I've learned.
My wife tells me that regularly.
Yeah.
But can I, I mean, you've got, with such a background in, and varied in finance and business, engaging the political activism, and then in the media, it's, in one way, it's hard to assess who to bring on.
There's so many issues.
Do you see it as issue-based?
Do you see it as individuals that you follow to have on?
I mean, where do you go to decide, I guess, the topics that should be covered?
Because people will look to you as a leader and what they hear you bring, they will take that on board and as a responsibility.
So how do you kind of assess what you cover and who to bring on?
Boy, that is the question.
And you have the same issue in your show, I'm sure.
How do you figure out what's going to be really interesting?
You know, the fact of the matter is we're also an entertainment business.
So you have to come up with, you know, it's great to have a charismatic guest.
It's great to have a topic that's interesting, but also entertaining.
It's great to have somebody on that's talking about you know the big issues we face right now and what we have to do about it.
And I aim the show at whenever I can in a line of action so that we don't just complain about things, but we we think about what we can what we can actually make happen as regular people, and you know, us regular people and all I've had, I guess a career that would put me you know kind of in the the establishment.
I'm a far from it I grew up you know I should say like Kamala I grew up in a middle-class family did
Did you have a nice lawn.
In Indianapolis and we had a very nice lawn but we had a lot of oak trees and acorns and my father was an army captain and he made me pick up the acorns out of the gravel driveway every fall.
So anyway, that's the background.
You know, I'm firmly rooted in sort of middle-class Indiana. And, you know, that's the class of people that seems to be most under attack, both here in America and in the UK and in Europe.
With so many guests on, you get a perspective on a range of issues.
And I want to ask you for your thoughts on the current political climate with only weeks to go.
Three weeks out from the presidential election there stateside, but what do you see as the big threats you get an insight into people's minds on a range of issues that all feed into the the climate and the culture issues that the U.S. and worldwide face.
Kind of how, with talking to different people and assessing the different issues, if you could put your finger on a number of them or a single one that is a threat to the U.S., to the American dream, to the freedoms, what would that be?
Well, I think the first thing is that America has never been more divided since the Civil War, and maybe even it's more toxic than even during the Civil War, because that was almost a single issue conflict.
And what we have now in the United States are two sides, two opposing groups who really hate each other. And it's quite emotional, runs quite deep.
And I guess the biggest concern I have with this election coming up is I think whoever wins, the other side is not going to accept the outcome.
And we've got Jamie Raskin here in Maryland, who's a Democrat congressman.
I think he was on the J6 committee who said, look, if Trump wins the election, we're not going to let him take his seat on Inauguration Day.
And when you've got sitting Democrat congressmen, presumably responsible statesmen, if I can use that word, saying things like that, you know you've got a big problem.
And I think on the other side, most of us have been with Trump for a long time.
I worked for him, as you mentioned, in the 2016 transition team.
I headed up all the financial related agencies, writing the plans for those agencies when he became president.
Just as a sidebar, I'd like to say he used every one of them, but Donald's not really a plan guy, so it didn't exactly happen.
But the point is, those of us who've been with Trump are deeply suspicious.
That's putting it mildly of what happened in 2020.
I mean, what did we have, 15, 20 million more votes that came in? At the time, the whole country was shut down, and 50%, 60% of the ballots were mail-in, and we've discovered massive amounts of issues with those.
And put the voting machines aside, and whether they're hooked up to the internet, there are just plenty, and I know plenty of people that have gone into these individual states, Nevada, Georgia, whatever, to take a look at it.
And they're all convinced that there were, if not fraud, at least manipulation of the outcome.
And so we're looking at that and we're all worried that, gee, even if Donald Trump has 55, 60 percent of American voters, and I think the numbers are that high, we still may not win.
And so we're approaching, what are we, 25 days out from the election?
And so that's big issue, number one.
And, you know, I think the world hinges on the outcome of this election because if Kamala Harris ends up as president, God help what's going on in Israel and the Middle East.
You know, the Ukraine thing has got to resolve itself, I think, through some sort of satisfactory negotiation.
but there's no indication that Biden-Harris would have any inclination to try to bring this thing to an end.
So the election is number one, and people have never felt more hatred towards the other side.
And I don't know quite how we get out of this toxic mess, but nevertheless, we have to.
I mean, you look at, I've had the privilege of being at three Trump rallies and having a picture with a man himself as well.
And my background in politics, I've never seen at a political event like a Trump rally.
The enthusiasm, the passion, there is something there.
It's great.
It is.
But then the media are beginning to wake up.
They're beginning to recognize that Kamala is not the great leader that they all want.
They're mocking her for being a drunk, for her performance in media.
I mean, how does that play, how you see the media?
Because the media on the left, it is Trump derangement syndrome, but they're realizing we don't want Kamala either.
And it's a weird situation they find themselves in.
Well, the more Kamala, remember, she was roundly criticized for not getting out and letting herself be interviewed or being seen by the voters.
Well, she is now getting out, and the more she shows up on a Howard Stern or, you know, the other talk shows, I think it was Colbert was the other night, the worse she does. Her numbers go down the more people see her, and, you know, people notice that she fails in answer any of the questions substantively.
I can't remember, and I try not to watch her too much.
It's too painful, but I can't remember a substantive policy answer that she's given Americans about why she would be any different from Joe Biden, and she can't even explain why what Joe Biden did was successful.
I mean, the thing we need to keep in mind is that the Democrats never had an economic growth agenda.
They started at a day one climate change.
They wanted to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, gasoline.
They loved high gasoline prices because people would drive less.
The regulatory regime has kicked in with all the climate-related regulations.
And then they had a government-wide approach towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And I don't think it would be interesting to do an AI search of Joe Biden's speeches of the last three and a half years to see before the election season how often he mentioned economic growth.
I doubt if he did at all.
That's just not where they've been.
Now they're trying to pivot, show that they've been doing something for the American people, and they can't do it.
There's no evidence.
Then the other thing is true is that people still are worried to talk to pollsters about saying there are for Donald Trump.
And one of the polls I find kind of interesting is, I can't remember who does it.
It's probably worth promoting it.
I'll try to come up with that. But he asks people not who they're going to vote for, but he says, well, I know you may not want to tell me how you're going to vote, but how's your neighbor going to vote?
And when people start talking about how their neighbors are voting, Trump is of the overwhelming favorite when people are talking about the sentiment of people around them.
And, you know, I'm in the D.C. area, and you can feel the Democrats getting nervous. And, you know, I have a very interesting insight into this.
My dentist, who's on our side, we talk about politics all the time, is dentist to all of the leading Democrat operatives in Northwest Washington.
And they're all sitting in the dentist chair, and they're talking about having to leave the country if Trump wins.
They're getting very scared, and that's just in the last month or so.
So they're worried.
Both sides are worried, and I can't remember a political time that it was more fraught.
You're very brave talking to your dentist about politics.
I wouldn't even dare go there.
Well, that's, well, yeah, we.
Very dangerous topic for someone with a drill in your mind.
And he's a volatile, he's a volatile Italian.
And he starts talking to me and making these points.
And I say, Vince, Vince, okay.
I'm with you.
Is it that, I mean you look at what policies and you talk about a dearth of economic policies but kamala basically is putting forward that Trump is really dangerous so vote for her it's not that she's anything it's that she's not the other person, but it's the economy and the the border it's mass immigration that's a mass immigration affected the UK in the last election it affected Europe in the parliamentary elections.
European part across Europe and is the number one or number two issue in America for this election and the democrats don't seem to be addressing either of those and to me they can't win if they don't address the two biggest topics that people have.
I completely agree and they're not addressing it because the great replacement theory is the great replacement fact and it's very obvious now that this immigration that's been, I won't even call it immigration, the flood of people that have been allowed to come into the United States.
And we're also seeing a lot of people coming across the Canadian border.
That's up something like 50 times the number that came across just a few years ago.
So it's both borders.
They're wide open.
And we're ending up with towns that have 4,000 people in them pre-invasion.
Now they have 2,000 additional Haitians in the mix.
And whether they're illegal or they've just been imported, it doesn't really matter.
The point is it's a massive cultural change.
They're dependent on government services.
They come here for government services, and they vote for that. And so it's interesting.
They're trying to move a lot of these people into the red states to maybe hope to tip the balance there.
And, you know, you can tell you, you see what's happened in Europe.
I mean, what's happened with the, with the Islamic immigration and the way Brussels is absolutely turned the other, a blind eye to how much it's changing their culture.
You know, forget the economy, but the culture of, of these countries is precious. And, and you degrade your culture at great risk.
And I think we're seeing that we've already seen it in Europe and we're seeing it in the United States, same issue.
And Brussels, 30% Islamic.
Paris, 15%. London, 12%, 13%. So we are seeing massive changes in our major cities.
And a part of it is because Europe doesn't know what it stands for. It's lost sense of national identity and chipped away at the nation state.
America seems to have a unified understanding of what it means to be American, which is under attack.
And you see people when they become an American citizen, there is pride in taking on that new identity, that new role.
And that's been a thread throughout the US history.
It still seems to be there. Is that a fair assessment?
You may not think it's as strong and that's fair enough, but you still do have that understanding of what it means to be an American citizen.
I think it's become even stronger among the people that would be voting for Donald Trump and want to preserve American exceptionalism.
And remember, the exceptionalism isn't based on military might or the size of the economy.
It's based on the fact we're rooted in our constitution and all the rights and protections that it provides.
And, you know, the American idea is alive and well, and I think people have become even more aware of how valuable it is and how we need to save it.
So in one sense, in terms of making people aware of how special America is, it's more true than ever.
We can't take it for granted.
And the other thing, I'm vice chairman of CPAC. Matt Schlapps, our chairman.
And we had Matt on a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah, Matt is – yeah, I had Matt on my show a couple of weeks ago with Mercedes.
And Mercedes and Matt, that's the – I highly recommend you get them both on together.
They're really good.
Anyway, we do – we have our CPAC conferences, not just here in the United States, but we have them in Japan, Brazil, I'm trying to think – Italy. You know, we're trying to think of the number.
We've had Hungary.
And what we're seeing is people are saying, they come up to us and say, you know, it's important that America stays America.
We're counting on America to preserve all the ideals and, and you know, virtues that make life worth living.
And so that you've got, you've got to win in America because we're counting on you.
And so that, you know, brings us back to our conversation about this election.
It's not important just to the United States.
It's important to the free world.
And a CPAC exceptional job over in Mexico as well.
And we talked earlier on about our mutual friend, Robert Malone, and seems to be traveling all over to different CPAC events.
But that's exciting because my fear is that America may withdraw in presenting the freedoms that are the American dream.
And in CPAC, I see that still burning brightly and willing to take it to the world.
And sometimes my concern is America may be inward focused.
But actually, that is an outward evangelism of the truths and dreams and freedoms that America have.
And I think that is vital to continue.
Well, I don't think we'll become inward focused in all those things that matter in terms of exporting or sharing our values and wanting to make that crystal clear about what we stand for.
I do think we'll be more inward focused when it comes to military adventurism.
I mean, I can't think of a war America has successfully executed since World War II.
And then at World War II, we had an awful lot of help even then to win that one.
So we're not very good at this going into countries and trying to bring about regime change. In fact, we've been a catastrophe.
And I think we've got a new modesty among a lot of us that say, well, gee, we want to be engaged in the world, but not that way.
And I think that would be a very good thing and not have us, you know, the defense contract.
The military-industrial complex is real, and it is very much alive and well when you look at the way the Ukraine war has been prosecuted.
And, you know, I think we'll probably see that dialed back when Trump becomes president.
And you talk the military industrial complex the other two big other players in terms of, I guess, lobbying or big pharma and food and of course with the Maha announcement with Bobby Kennedy which was a genius announcement and I kind of think you want a campaign you want to make the public aware, but you don't want to let the cat out the bag with these lobbying groups because they're going to fear that focusing on what they do. I mean, how do you see that?
Because to me, it's phenomenal that Trump is willing to go after those industries that are causing damage to American health and American outlook.
But I wonder if he's, for want of a better word, pissed them off too much.
That's a very tough one.
You know, I think the campaign has been smart to underplay a lot of that there.
And in particular with this idea, I mean, most of the Democrats here are terrified that the Republicans are going to do to them what they did to the Republicans with the lawfare.
You know, I can think of hundreds, if not a couple thousand people who worked in the Trump administration that have been victims of lawfare.
We've got to be careful not to emphasize that.
And I, in fact, don't think Trump will pursue that as president.
But the food industry has created an obesity epidemic in the United States, which is just shameful.
And the pharmaceutical industry, same thing.
I mean, the dependence on pharmaceutical drugs is overwhelming, and I think Kennedy coming in, we might have something that focuses on health instead of expensive drug treatments and get back to a food supply that is stable.
You know, the food system, I don't know if you've had Brooke Miller on your show, American Cattlemen.
Yeah, we've had Brooke,
Brooke's great, yes.
You know, that's a real phenomena.
And there's a cartel of four beef processors in the United States that are controlling this.
And that's alarming.
That's a problem.
And that's something else we need to wear of.
But you're right.
You can't.
I think Trump's already got every single lobbyist in Washington lining up against him because their self-interest depends on him losing.
So he's got that to fight.
But I still think we're going to push through and win.
I believe that there's no alternative but Trump, that patriotism, and wanting the best for Americans, which seems to be a bad issue from the left.
But in terms of media, kind of finishing off on this, that we had 2016, which Fox was the driver with the big name behind Trump.
And then 2020 that changed you know the rise of alternative media and you obviously were in the mix in that very much part of that and then Newsmax away in on tv and 2024 that's just built where the alternative media is this juggernaut.
How do you how do you see that working because for the first time it's not necessarily just cable news it's actually a plethora of many, podcasts and organizations that are putting the information out, which is uncontrollable, I guess, to the left, which scares them so much.
But how do you see that the role of media playing in terms of getting the message out to the voters?
Well, there's still, I mean, the problem we have is that the alternative media that we're part of and many others, we're doing a fantastic job.
And also not just the podcast world, but the print world. Apps like Substack have got very, very interesting writing going on and lots of research and lots of analysis about what is true.
The problem is that I think Rasmussen And one of them, I know one of the pollsters I know said that, you know, the problem is that only 8% of Americans talk about politics in any given week.
And so for getting the word out to the people like us who are passionately engaged in this, you know, it's a war, I think we're doing a fabulous job.
But it's the casual, it's what Rush Limbaugh called the low information voter that we have to, I still think we have to worry about.
And the media, the view, people like that still have a real impact on culture.
Interestingly, the Taylor Swift endorsement didn't seem to help.
The only thing that seemed to hurt was her own sales, which cheered me up a bit.
But I think we still got to fight because the casual voter is still getting information from the usual sources.
I believe.
And I've seen Trump on many small, not smaller podcasts, actually, but podcasts more for the Gen Z, for a different audience.
And it's been, he said it was his son that got him onto a number of podcasts.
And you kind of see an individual in Trump that's willing to go and change.
Did you see him with Patrick Bet David?
No, I haven't seen that one. No, no.
Oh, it's great.
I mean, this is Trump's element.
He's on fire.
I mean, he does great with these guys.
And yeah, I'm really happy he's doing that.
And as I said, for those of us that are engaged and maybe even just people casually, he might be getting the word out that way.
But I think that was a very smart move.
And whoever told him to do it gave him the right advice.
I've enjoyed that.
Bill, I love having you on.
I have huge, respect for the work that you're doing in your name synonymous with, with media now and getting the message out.
So, it is a real honor having you on and appreciate you sharing with our audience your thoughts on a range of issues.
Well, I'm thrilled To be on your show.
I mean, you're doing a very good job getting the truth out.
And so I'm happy to do a, maybe we'll do a home and away.
And when you, I'd love to get you in studio here sometime when you're next in the States and we can get into the other side, because you asked about my podcast.
I've got a lot of curiosity.
I want to find out where you think Europe is going to end up, and I think that bears, it's a tremendous problem, and I'm worried about America going the way of Europe.
I think with many Americans, I've tried to be a warning to certainly the issue of demographics of mass immigration and abandoning the nation state and abandoning Christianity and what that will mean the transition stuff with ketamine?
It goes on and on so, but no, I hope that we can be a warning to the US and change our ways or else we will end up like Europe.
But thank you for your time Bill.
Okay.
Thank you.

The Week According To . . . Laurence Fox

We are delighted to have on Laurence Fox this week where we discuss critical challenges of our time, from the disconcerting lack of clarity in our political leadership to the encroaching threats on free speech, the evolving cultural fabric of our society, and the controversial aspects of immigration and mental health policies. Expect an unflinching dialogue that seeks not only to address these issues but to galvanize a movement towards preserving our democratic essence and cultural heritage.
Laurence Fox is an English actor, musician, broadcaster, and leader of The Reclaim Party. Laurence graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2001. He debuted as a screen actor in 2001’s The Hole, directed by Nick Hamm. He is likely best known in the entertainment world for his 10 year stint as James Hathaway in the TV show Lewis. In 2020, Fox criticized both the George Floyd riots, and the COVID vaccine mandates, coming from the Conservative point of view. He then founded the Reclaim Party, from which he unsuccessfully ran for mayor. Since this, he has been ever-present in the media, denouncing political correctness. 
Connect with Laurence and Reclaim Party...𝕏                  x.com/LozzaFox    @LozzaFox                     x.com/TheReclaimParty   @TheReclaimParty                     reclaimparty.co.uk
Interview recorded  11.10.24
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Links to topics...less coherent Kamalahttps://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1844643655463624888 it is this simple.https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1842836756950827228two tierhttps://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1844416001657668033uniparty  https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1844360684966199686tommyhttps://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1843689900429746375climate change https://x.com/BBCSport/status/1844428462418809209disgracehttps://x.com/AFpost/status/1844431411979354202meanwhile https://x.com/KidRock/status/1844508598950559807civilised societies https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1844126566613410288 preacher burning dollarshttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/10/sadiq-khan-tfl-advert-tube-islamic-preacher-burning-dollar/drug dealing quacks https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1843636190525972507treasonhttps://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1843272005308870759

Major (Ret) Russ Cooper - The Patriot Pilot: Charting a Course for Canada's Future through C3RF

Welcome to Hearts of Oak, where we explore the stories of individuals who embody the spirit of resilience and advocacy. Today, we're privileged to have on the show Major (Ret.) Russ Cooper, a man whose life has soared through the skies as a fighter pilot and now navigates the contentious terrain of civil liberties in Canada. From his distinguished service in the Persian Gulf War to his subsequent career at Air Canada, Major Cooper's perspective from the cockpit offered him unique insights into the world. But it was upon retiring that he found himself drawn into a different kind of battle—one for the soul and freedom of his country. Join us as we delve into Major Cooper's journey from the air to activism, sparked by his concerns over Motion M-103 and the perceived threats to Canadian values of unity and free speech. His fight has led him to co-found the Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, an organization championing individual rights amidst what he sees as a growing tide of restrictive legislation. Today's episode is not just about one man's fight; it's about understanding the challenges to our freedoms and the call to action for every citizen to stand up for the principles that define us. Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation that touches on the heart of what it means to be Canadian.
Interview recorded 9.10.2024
Connect with Russ and C3RF...Major (Ret.) Russ Cooper:https://www.canadiancitizens.org/
Canadian Citizens For Charter Rights And Freedoms (C3RF) is a group of Canadians whose mission is to educate Canadians about threats to their Charter Rights, advocate to protect Charter Rights and Freedoms, and propose countering legislation and regulatory frameworks especially focused on freedom of expression.
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Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello, Hearts of Oak.
Thank you so much for joining us once again with a brand new guest over in Canada, and that is Major Retired Russ Cooper.
Russ, thank you so much for giving us your time today.
Oh, thank you, Peter.
It's a real honour to join you, today.
Great to have you on, and thanks to the one and only Valerie Price for connecting us, as she does with many, many people.
And it's always good to have someone like that working in the background, isn't it?
Well, I tell you, it's amazing what she does.
She gets a lot of people started in the area of civil liberties, and she's responsible for my start.
I started, I guess, popping off writing this and writing that, and it was her and her website that gave me a public profile and got me going way back in, what was it, 2016.
And that probably story could be retold by many, many people that we have all bumped into worldwide.
But before we get in, CanadianCitizens.org is the website, and that is the organization you founded and are present of, Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, or C3RF.
All the links will be in the description.
And we want to talk about the work that really came together, I think, on the Islamophobia bill back in 2017.
So, we'll get into all of that. But your background is fascinating to me as a private pilot, as someone I look at your career with a little bit of envy.
Your background, fighter pilot in the Canadian Air Force, retired commercial pilot.
Maybe tell us a little bit about that background, which I could do a whole podcast on, but we won't.
Tell me a little bit about that background before we get on to how you got involved in activism.
Well the civil aviation background was it flowed out of my military background flying.
My last fighter tour was on cf-18s.
Oh f-18s
Yes, modern era fighter and I had the opportunity, the honor really to fight for Canada in combat during the first Persian gulf war.
I was there with our 439 tiger squadron a squadron of cf-18s that participated in that that particular conflict and out of that I came back home from Germany, went into a ground job and then in 1997 retired from the military after about 29 years of service and then began looking for a job.
I was still fairly young at the time, I was 45, and wound up in civil aviation initially flying training business jet pilots and and flying business jets from Bombardier Aerospace.
From there, I spent a couple of years there, three, four years, and then applied to Air Canada and got picked up by Air Canada at the salty age of 48.
I remember going into my first meeting with my class, and everybody was coming up to me asking if I was the instructor.
So, I was kind of a late start, a late bloomer when it came to Air Canada.
I proceeded to fly for Air Canada and started out with DC-9s, the old DC-9. Loved that airplane.
Then Airbus A320s and then wound up on the 777, which was just a magnificent aircraft that we took all over the world.
Take a trip, Toronto to Beijing, Toronto, Hong Kong.
Toronto, San Diego, our Asian destinations would go over the polar, over the north pole on the other side down through Siberia and Mongolia and to into china.
It was just an amazing amazing job very glad I had the opportunity to do it, but things being as they were we had 2002, 2003, the company went bankrupt on me and I had to drop out of Air Canada.
I took a leave of absence for about five years.
And then as I was on leave of absence, I picked up an engineering billet for an avionics firm in Montreal.
And basically from there, with my flying background, I got into a position as an engineering flight test pilot.
And so that's where I wound up my flying career, my aviation.
I spent about 40 years, 40 years plus in aviation.
I always think there must be no greater office than a flight deck at 40,000 feet.
How beautiful.
The view is, yeah, the view is wonderful up there, yeah.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of interesting sites up in the concrete, particularly at 777.
Wow.
Well, I would love to delve deeper into that. But I want to get on to the current fight that we have across the Western world for the right to criticize, the right to offend, the right to disagree, which seems to be fast disappearing.
So you're in aviation 40 years.
Then, Probably politics wasn't really something you're engaged in.
How did you end up starting an organization that would pull people together to fight the government on Islamophobia legislation, in effect?
Well, it was kind of a sidestep.
But when I look back on it, not really.
It was kind of a natural progression there.
I was, when I was a fighter pilot, an officer in the Air Force, I guess there's no other way to describe me, but as a true patriot, I love my country.
And when I went into a combat tour, I did so gladly.
I stepped up because I really felt that Canada was a country worth fighting for.
It had values that were not only worth protecting, but projecting.
And in that particular case, we're involved with kicking a tyrant out of a country that didn't want him.
And I thought, yeah, this is a good place for me to be.
So I'm a bit of a bit of a patriot that way.
And then there's another tyrant in Trudeau.
Well, I tell you, we can talk about that for for the whole show, too.
I mean, getting back to my sojourn into civil liberties, it wasn't that much of a step, as I say, because when I – back in 2016, 2017, I was fully retired.
I was going to kick back and enjoy the grandkids. You know, it was time for me to enjoy my golden years.
But all of a sudden, we had these funny narratives coming out of Ottawa.
And all of a sudden, 2016, 2017, they came up with a motion, M103.
And the motion, its underlying premise was the fact that Canadians are systemically racist.
The Canadians are religious discriminators, especially when it comes to Islam and Muslims.
The narrative was, I found extremely insulting, and it is not, they were describing a Canada that I knew did not exist, because over the course of my 40 years, I've been across the country.
I've been around the world, I've seen Canadians of all sorts and stripes work together to do great things.
This is a great country, and we've got great people, and I took offense to, you know, our own leaders telling us that there was, we were debased.
We were, and then that narrative just kept going.
And we were, we were a post-national state.
We had no core values.
Then we were genocidal, you know, with the way that we treated our indigenous populations.
It just went on and on and on.
And I, just could not, as a patriot, I just could not sit back and tolerate that.
I felt compelled.
I was compelled.
I had to sit down and start writing.
What I did was I started writing letters to all the MPs, the members of parliament in Canada, telling them that this is my take.
This is my evidence.
You know, this M103 is wrong.
All it's going to do is show favor to one religion over others. others, it's going to shield that religion from criticism and fair debate and comment.
I said, this is not fair at all.
I mean, if you want to have put something in place that says you can't discriminate against Muslims, fine, I'm all for that.
We shouldn't discriminate against anybody.
But when you start homing in on one religion and creating favor to that religion, all it's going to do is divide.
And that's exactly what it's done.
So that's where it started.
I started writing a few.
When we talk about Valerie, Valerie Price, I don't know how she got a hold of me, but she got a hold of me, and I needed someplace to publish the stuff that I was writing, because I was just writing nonstop, and she gave me her website, and I started posting on her website, and that attracted a couple of folks.
We had less than a dozen got together, and we formed C3RF, Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms, And I think it's a pretty good name because we represent Canadian citizens.
We're not politicians.
We're not lawyers.
We're not this race or that religion or anything.
We are Canadian citizens.
And I think that that's the secret of Canada is that everyone unites under the banner of civic nationalism.
We don't unite under a banner of this tribe or that clan.
No, we all believe we have a common belief.
Not like Trudeau said, we have no core values. We have no beliefs.
We do have common beliefs, and they include things like respect for individual rights and freedoms and basically what the Canadian citizen sees in the Charter.
And I say that specifically because Canadian citizens see a certain intent in that Charter.
They see fundamental rights and freedoms that are supposed to be protected by Canadians, by their representatives, and it's that intent that somehow over the years since the Charter was formed in 1982 has evaporated.
Our politicians, our judges, our legal class, they all seem to forget about the intent.
If anything, they take that intent and ignore it, that intent that there are certain fundamental freedoms, that's Section 2 of the Charter, free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to assemble and associate.
There are fundamental freedoms that are called fundamental for a reason because the intent was to protect and preserve them.
And that intent has been ignored.
And I think that's a travesty.
So us Canadian citizens, I think we have to do something about that.
Do you think those freedoms are being taken for granted?
Do the people think that, well, previous generations have had certain freedoms therefore it's automatically assumed they will continue.
Do you think that's part of the reason why not just Canada but many nations in the west have got ourselves into the predicament, because we've just sat back and assumed it will continue?
Well, yes I think that's a very valid point.
I think you know you go back in time a little bit I grew up in the 50s and 60s as a kid and I remember back then how things were and you know things changed a lot starting in the 60s when we started having the sexual revolution we had the whole the whole thing the whole kind of culture that underpinned, you know, our our western liberal democracies kind of faded away.
People let it go and um and and I think as as a result, we left ourselves open to be taken advantage of by other narratives, other ideologies that we are told are equivalent.
Now we're told that there's no one culture that's better than another.
There's equivalency across the board.
And there is no real truth, this whole thing about objective reality being an imaginary thing.
And everything under the sun is just as good as everything else under the sun.
So we lost that, I guess, that Judeo-Christian ethic, I guess you could call it.
We let that slip away.
And as that slipped away, the vacuum was filled by other ideologies, other ideas that basically took us away from the strength that we did have and the belief we had in a strong and free Canada, in my case.
And we let that slide. So I think that's a valid point.
There's another side to this, and the other side is that actually certain people, certain individuals who have these other ideas or have stepped into the vacuum and purposely and deliberately confused and confounded Canadians and Canadian society with a lot of ideas that don't really belong in a Western liberal democracy.
And we see those ideas thriving now, and they're crazy.
Some of them are just so off the wall that I go, we go back to motion M103 where this Islamophobia came up and the damage that caused in dividing the nation.
But we also have other things that came across the board.
In about the same timeframe, in 2016, we had Bill C-16 in Canada, which was the gender identity and expression bill all of a sudden our our legislators actually told us that if we didn't identify people the way they wanted to be identified as instead of a male or a female they had to be identified as I don't know a puppy dog or a kitten or something like that.
We you know then we could be taken to task we could be taken to a human rights tribunal.
We could be put under the under the the microscope we could be examined we could be punished if we didn't allow our speech to be compelled.
Certainly this was totally, totally against, you know, our right to free speech as per Section 2 of the Charter.
When you're telling people they have to speak a certain way and think a certain way, you are out of bounds.
And we still have that bill, and it's still thriving.
It's now impacted our school system where our children are being taught thought that, you know, they weren't born a boy or a girl.
God may have made a mistake, and you're not really a boy.
You're not really a girl.
How confusing is that for a little kid?
And that drives me around a bit because I got six grandkids, five girls.
And I look at that kind of influence on their upbringing, and, you know, that's not going to smirk.
And I think the majority of Canadians feel like I do.
And I think a lot are just a little bit scared to pop their head above the parapet and say, this is wrong.
No, this is not going to stand. It's wrong.
Well, that compelled speech, I guess that was where Jordan Peterson came to fame over his pushback.
And we're now seeing compelled speech everywhere, having teacher in Ireland recently and on and on.
And he's been one of the biggest figures highlighting this.
But I want to talk to you about kind of the political engagement and also the engagement of the public.
But the issue on the Islamophobia, it's a toxic, dangerous term, as dangerous as the term racism is.
Whenever you use Islamophobic or racist, then immediately it shuts down debate.
And the argument is one because no one wants to think of themselves as someone who hates someone else.
Immediately you pull back, but it's also a huge topic to wade into the issue of engaging on Islam and Islam's position and the freedoms we have to critique any ideology or religion.
So tell me about that because I think maybe when you look back you might think could have picked an easier one, a less inflammatory one, but this is a big issue.
But tell me how that came together, how people came together, how you engaged with the political process in trying to stop that.
Well, it was kind of amazing because it came from nowhere.
And I started writing my letters, my website postings, and I started, we started a petition and that kind of cranked along slowly.
And then all of a sudden, things just changed gear.
I mean, it was like shifting gears in a car.
It was just all of a sudden we were in high speed mode, because people started to pick up on the conversation that was coming out of the press as they covered the Conservative Party who came forward and said, no, we don't think this is a good idea.
We'd like to change the motion to read instead of concentrating on Islamophobia.
They wanted to concentrate on discrimination against Muslims, Jews, Christians, basically everybody, all the religions.
They wanted to make it across the board an equal thing.
That caught the attention of the public, and from that point on, we saw our petition numbers just crank over, you know, just accelerated.
And there were other petitions on board.
In total, I think there were over 200,000 signatures on two or three petitions, ours included, that they just couldn't ignore.
But they went for it anyway.
This was a slam dunk.
You know, the Liberals, they came out with this.
It was a slam dunk deal for them, and they were going to put this through come hell or high water.
And they did, but there was a lot, a lot of people caught, or it caught the attention of a lot of people. So, much so that one member of Parliament, Trost was his name.
He was a conservative.
He reported on his Facebook page that in the few days prior to the actual vote in 2017, he reported that the parliamentary offices had received over 800,000 emails, most of which were against the motion.
They had never seen anything like that.
Over almost 900,000 emails, people saying, no, this is nuts.
Don't do it.
And they did it anyway.
But because there was always, I think, the plan to introduce this motion and open up this Islamophobia gateway.
That eventually there were various funds that were put in place behind it.
They said it was a non-binding motion.
It wouldn't make any differences, but it opened up the doors for a lot of millions and millions of dollars of funding for things like fighting Islamophobia, racism, and everything else.
It became an industry.
It did, and that, what you described, reflects where a lot of us are in or the public servants are no longer servants they have become masters and they simply take in public consultation to tick a box.
It used to be there would be dialogue now it seems to be politicians always know better and we must submit or comply.
Is that how you've kind of seen us in Canada on this issue and the wider issue of free speech?
Well, yes.
And I think the proof is in the pudding.
And we saw that, I think, in spades with the advent of the COVID pandemic.
Because here you saw, there were a lot of questions.
People were wondering just what the heck is going on here?
You know, we've got to stay six feet apart.
We've got to, you know, some poor soul would pop their head above the parapet and say, why six feet?
And then they would immediately get slammed back down into their pod where they belonged.
And you couldn't even ask questions about, you know, like this is an experimental vaccine.
Are there any long-term studies?
Well, you can't ask that question.
I mean, who are you and how do you deserve the right to ask such a question?
So, yes, there was a, I call it an untethering.
Our public service, our politicians, our judiciary, Sherry, they became untethered.
Or maybe the better way to explain it is they had become untethered quite a while ago, but this whole COVID pandemic made everything so crystal clear that they had no intention, no intention of doing what was best for the population.
As a matter of fact, they purposely and deliberately told us we had a safe and effective vaccine when they knew when they were told by their contracts with organizations like Pfizer that it's not, we don't know if it's safe and effective.
We've got no long-term studies.
It's right in the contract.
So we can't guarantee anything down the road that there won't be adverse events that, you know, that might come aboard.
They knew it wasn't safe and effective, and they lied to us, and they were totally untethered with their responsibility to serve the public that they were sworn to serve.
Yeah.
And then, again, I guess the other proof in the pudding there is we talk about Canadian citizens taking notice and finally having enough.
We had Freedom Convoy 2022.
That was a seminal Canadian event that no one wants to admit it in the political class, but that protest was a one-off in Canadian history.
And it went on to spark similar protests around the world, New Zealand, Australia. Basically, all the Western world picked up on it.
They're still driving tractors down highways in Holland and Ireland.
And again, people, I guess we should thank our politicians and our judiciary for doing such a poor job and representing us because it's so poor that we can see it.
And it's crystal clear that we've got a problem.
And one other thing we talk about, you know, this worldwide event, you know, people standing up across the world, right?
They are standing up, I think, against – when we look at the restrictions that are being placed upon people in Canada, we're seeing the same thing happen in Ireland, in Britain, and across the West, in the United States. It's as though our Western leadership is in lockstep.
I'll give you an example.
In the UK in 2021, your government came up with something called the Countering Disinformation Act, or the Countering Disinformation Unit.
Unit, I think.
Countering Disinformation Unit or something, yes.
It was the Disinformation Unit.
When they did that, they coordinated those activities with Canada, Australia, United States, and 20 other.
They had bi-laterals with 20 other nations to do the same thing.
And basically what this disinformation unit was all about was taking a look at any information that they could determine, misinformation, disinformation, and quash it, find it, get it off the Internet.
And you had your legislation come forward as a result. So we are dealing with legislation that comes out of that initiative in 2024 now called the Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act.
Basically it's all the same. So across the board we're seeing all these nations.
I think it started with Germany in 2016, 2017 with their internet bill in Germany. And now you see all the Western nations basically replicating that legislation.
People may be standing up in unison against this oppression that we're facing when it comes to our speech, but I think they're doing so because they are going up against a unified oppressor in the form of our Western liberal, so-called liberal governments.
Oh, yeah.
And we'll get on this now, the online harms bill, because we have the online safety bill in the UK. Europe has the DSA, Digital Services Act.
I think Switzerland have similar legislation.
I think the US have COSA, Kids Online Safety, which I think that will be used in this way.
But we see it and you realize how clever the other side is.
They talk about protecting children.
They talk about safety, stopping harm.
These are terms that keep coming up and no one can argue against that and that's the difficulty.
What has been the pushback like in Canada because in the UK parliament collapsed completely in adoration of this bill.
There were maybe might have been a dozen politicians who were against it, but everyone got sucked into this mantra that we must protect children online and this is the way to do it.
What political pushback has there been on this legislation in Canada?
Initially, none.
And it was very much the same case as your experience in Europe.
But what happened was this whole bit about, you know, protecting children online, non-consensual postings online, that was the Trojan horse that was rolled out and presented to the public.
And, you know, this is how they presented it back in February when when our Justice Minister Virani presented it to the Canadian public, this is going to address these very evil things that were happening on the internet.
And no one can argue with that.
But the fact is, is that these are issues that are either already out of bounds in our criminal code or can be addressed through current laws, criminal codes, with modifications here and there.
So, having an online harms act to deal with these things is not really even the best way to go.
Because what they've done is they've included all these other add-ons to the bill. For example, they've constructed a whole new bureaucracy in the form of a digital safety commission. And this commission has powers that are unbelievable.
They can actually, they're not constrained by rules of evidence.
They're not constrained by rules of reasonable search and seizure.
They can walk into an organization, into a company, into a social media place and start collecting files and data without due process.
They can take an anonymous complaint against an individual and with that anonymous anonymous complaint.
They can they can investigate the the the evil wrongdoer the other the person who who said something hurtful or get this might say something hurtful in the future.
This is this is really a pre-crime bill it's It's Orwellian. It's 1984.
It's even worse than 1984.
George Orwell couldn't have envisaged such an oppressive bill.
It's incredible.
And it just goes on and on.
I mean, they just take the charter and they shred it.
They shred Section 1 Limitations Clause to show evidence, to have proof of the need to relieve someone of the rights.
They do away totally with a section two freedom of speech. It's gone you can't even think about anything that might be hurtful.
Gone is section seven and uh section eight search and seizure due process.
I mean the whole chart all the fundamental freedoms are stripped and this is a good thing.
So, I think you talk about you know what's the reaction initially we had a couple of folks, Michael Geist, is is one we have some communications experts that commented on it a few articles here and there with the national post a favorite of ours is is Barbara K.
She stood up and she said this to quote her she said this bill must be stopped.
It's in no uncertain terms she's a iconic Canadian author and a very famous national post columnist she She came forward and said that. So there has been some pushback.
I think we're starting to get to recognition across the board.
I saw this thing happening with Motion M-103.
We've kicked off our own petition in this, but this time we're doing a House of Commons petition.
You have the same thing in the UK where your parliamentary house, a member of it can sponsor a petition.
And if it gets over a certain number of signatures, they have to deal with it.
That's what we've done.
And we've had the good fortune of having the member of parliament, Cathay Wagantall, from the Conservative Party, sponsor our petition.
It's out there now as petition 5160. If you want to take a look at it, just Google petition 5160. And you'll see a pop-up as the number one choice and go ahead and sign it.
And so we are very fortunate to have a miss Wagantall sponsor our petition has just kicked off a few days ago and I got a feeling that this is going to be another another motion demo or three thing where people once they once they start catching on to just what this bill entails and how many any rights they lose, they're going to be furious, absolutely furious.
The politic, because you look at Trudeau when he had a very bad, not disastrous enough general election, and he was weakened, and yet this seems to be continually pushed through.
You've got the Conservatives seemingly with a Conservative leader now in Pierre Paul, I can't pronounce his surname. Paul-Yves.
Paul-Yves. Forgive my French. in Pierre.
So that seems to be, and Maxime Bernier has been pushing many issues extremely well, but hasn't had that political traction electorally.
So there are things happening, and I've certainly seen a number of Pierre's speeches doing very well.
How does that all fit together with a weakened Trudeau and possibly an actual conservative Conservative Party?
Well, I think we're seeing it now.
I think we're seeing the Liberal Party is really on the ropes, not only with this particular issue and the stripping of our Canadian Charter of Freedoms and Rights. He's in the locking stock. He's for scandal.
I mentioned earlier in this discussion how the Liberal Party; they put these funds together to fight Islamophobia, fight racism, but they put other funds together that basically are in the budget, but they don't have any particular thing assigned to them to be spent on.
They're just for Islamophobia.
They're for racism.
They have big ones for capital infrastructure, $35 billion fund for capital infrastructure.
It could be anything, LRTs or whatever, you know, just whatever you want to go in there and request.
They also have huge funds for greening, the greening of the new green deal type thing.
And the latest, I guess, scandal is the fact that 330 million of these green fund dollars have gone have slipped off the have slipped into the ethosphere and and wound up in in companies that are headed by by liberals or friends of liberals and so it's kind of embarrassing.
And so we see a weakened liberal party a weakened Trudeau and uh at the same time I don't think coincidentally you're seeing a rising Pierre polio he is becoming now.
He's becoming more forceful as he garners more public opinion on his side.
As his polling numbers go up, he is becoming more and more brave in asserting conservative values that have been kind of, you know, kept under the covers for many, many years now.
So he is being emboldened.
And that is a very good thing to see.
Up until now, I think the only politician who's really been pushing these issues, these attacks on our freedoms and our rights, is, as you say, Maxime Bernier.
But he's a voice in the wind.
He's got a lot of good ideas, but he does not get a lot of press play.
He is not popular with the press.
If anything, they denigrate him.
They insult him.
They say he's far right, he's extreme, he's a white nationalist, Christian nationalist.
You know, anybody that's kind of just to the right of – you know, Marx in Canada, it's a tell of a hundred these days, you know, like there is no, there is no right left.
It's just, you got your right thinkers, and you got your wrong thinkers in Canada.
And if you're a conservative who believes in conservative values, family values, well, you're, you're, you're on the wrong end of the narrative there, but it is starting to change.
I love having Maxime on a great interview with him and love following him from afar, complete common sense, able to put forward a position and doesn't give up and engaging.
But I mean, you look at the political landscape, you think of Canada as more to the left.
You kind of, it seems to be it's kind of 60-40 or two-thirds, one-third. So it does seem as though any conservative leader has an uphill battle.
I don't know whether that kind of mix is in the population or whether it's more media pushed or whether it's kind of just traditionally being politically the stronger party has been the left.
I don't know kind of where all that fits together because it does seem worldwide on the left there is a lack of patriotism a self-loathing of the nation state of history and that's why we've got to the position we are in.
I think you hit the nail on the head there.
It is true that Canada is very much a left-leaning nation.
We've kind of lost that whole concentration on that Judaeo-Christian ethic is evaporated and the vacuum has been filled by people I wouldn't say you know people are necessarily of left persuasion.
I think a lot of people get uh they just fall into line i mean Canada is a country that
Has that kind of tendency to lean to the left. I mean, it's kind of baked into our history.
It's the old Garrison mentality, you know, like Canada is the great white north.
You know, we're always cold here.
It's freezing.
It's like the Arctic. You know, you've got to band together, help each other out, you know, to get to the winter side thing.
And that, you know, you end up with this Garrison mentality that can really take hold of the national fabric.
There's another aspect to this, though, and that, you know, along with having that Garrison mentality, you know, that we also have this pioneering spirit.
You know, we have the Voyageur that, you know, launched off from Upper and Lower Canada into the hinterland and canoes to trap and trade with the indigenous population, to build up the nation on the basis of going out and exploring, then we have that.
Actually, you see that very much so in the West. And the West is kind of that, was built on that, with that pioneering spirit in mind.
And you can see that divide in Canada.
You know, you've got your Laurentian folk who basically, Central Canada, who basically have the power, have the political power, run the country,
The Western folk, the more pioneering type, I guess, who provide all the resources, work, and money for Central Canada to use as they see fit. It's an arrangement that is wearing thin.
And this recent last nine years under the Liberal government with all the division that has been brought on board, I'd say Canada's in for a rough time when it comes to keeping itself together and keeping itself unified.
And we're seeing, especially when you have this east-west divide, you're looking at the central Canadians wanting to quash fossil fuels, and you look at the west who need fossil fuels.
It's the basis of their prosperity.
It's in everything that they do and they build.
Fossil fuels are a big part of that.
So you're creating a divide here that is ultimately capable of splitting the nation.
We used to say French-English, but I think the East-West, that divide is much more pronounced.
So it's an interesting time.
No, it is.
And I know that the diversity, inclusion, the multiculturalism, that is a battle we're all facing.
But it seems like Canada is, and there is a fight for identity and what it means for the nation state.
And Canada seems to be maybe even a little bit more than the UK.
I could be wrong, but seems to be in a state of confusion of what it means to be itself.
Mass immigration changed Canada a lot.
Toronto is a complete melting pot. Well, as is London.
So this is not on Canada, not on the UK.
We're in the same boat.
But is that a fair assessment that there is a struggle at the moment for Canada as a nation to understand what it means to be Canadian? Because that seemed to be chipped away.
And there's a struggle to understand what those values mean.
Yes, that's very true.
And what we're seeing now is we're importing, we're bringing people in at record rates.
It's our population kind of jumped 2 million in a couple of years there, just over the past couple of years, it's incredible.
It's to the point where we can't handle the infrastructure, can't handle this, the newcomers that are coming at us.
So we're having housing crises, we're having inflation, we're having all these problems as a result of basically it's self-inflicted immigration policies that are really killing us that we could change tomorrow, we could change overnight.
But our betters, our political betters don't seem to want to do that.
They have another agenda in mind and it is wreaking havoc on our unity as well because the problem on the unity side is the fact that we're bringing these people in and we're encouraging them to maintain their old cultures.
We're bending over backwards to let them do things the way they want to do them. And as a result, we're basically importing a whole bunch of tribes with no unifying message to unite them that underpins their presence in Canada.
The only thing that can unify people like this of diverse backgrounds is to have a common understanding that everybody signs up to.
And up until now, that common understanding in a Western liberal democracy has always been individual rights and freedoms.
You know, if you concentrate on giving on servicing individual rights and freedoms, well, then all of a sudden all the tribes go away.
Because okay you can have your tribe you can you can worship the way you want to worship but
Underlying all that is an understanding and a respect for individual rights and freedoms so that you respect what the other person wants to worship or do with his life.
And this whole aspect of allowing people to, as much as possible, live their own lives the way they want and realize their own life dreams.
In the States, I think they do that when they say in their constitution that they talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In Canada, we have life, liberty, and the security of the person.
I think that's a mistake on our part, because I think the pursuit of happiness really homes in on that whole idea of people being unencumbered to live their lives without being bothered by governments and being told what to do, which is the case in Canada right now.
We've let that unifying philosophy slip out of our fingers and it's playing havoc right now is what it's doing.
So we here at C3RF, we like to think that we are in the business of educating, of letting people know that, you know, there's a history to Canada.
And it does really concentrate on individual rights and freedoms.
And we really need to get back there because it's the only way we're going to unify a nation and all these various tribes that are landing on our shores.
It's, you know, it's the way we have to go if we're going to survive as a nation, I think.
Okay, so just to finish off with, there'll be Canadians watching, there'll be individuals watching, and they want to know what part they can play.
They go to the website canadiancitizens.org, they're on the screen.
What part are you asking citizens to play as you fight back against this online harms bill?
Well, we'd really love for Canadians to take a look at our House of Commons petition and sign up.
They can go to our website at www.canadiancitizens.org in the take action heading in the banner up top.
You can click on that. It'll drop down. You'll see say no to Bill C-63.
Click on that and you'll have the whole explanation and the bill at your disposal.
Or you could go to, you know, Google petition 5160 with a space between petition and 5160.
Petition 5160, you'll see petition pop up as one of the top choices.
Click on that and go ahead and sign the petition. We really have to get this. We really have to let our members of parliament know that we're taking this very, very seriously. obviously, because from what I can see, this is the final nail in the coffin that they're burying free speech in.
This is the final nail.
If they bring this bill on board, then basically, speech in Canada is going to be chilled like it is going to be the Arctic of the Great White North. It's going to be unbelievably hard to have an opinion that doesn't meet muster with our betters.
So please take a look at our website, canadiancitizens.org, petition 5160, and sign it.
Well, thank you so much for your time, Major Russ Cooper.
It's fantastic to talk to you, to meet you, and to hear of the work that Canadian Citizens for Charter Rights and Freedoms are doing, the vital work and the fight back for free speech.
So thank you so much for your time today in sharing what you're doing.
And the viewers and listeners can be part of that by going to the website, sign up and see by signing the petition, and what else you can do. So, thank you so much for your time today.
Well, thank you.
It's been an honor, Peter and thanks very much for the opportunity.
It's been great.

Chris Farrell - Challenging the System: Judicial Watch's Role in Combatting Corruption Across Administrations

Show Notes and Transcript
Welcome to Hearts of Oak, where today we're diving into the intricate world of government oversight with none other than Chris Farrell, the head of investigations at Judicial Watch. Join us as we explore Chris's remarkable 25-year journey at the helm of this influential watchdog organization, and his relentless pursuit of transparency and accountability.Chris Farrell isn't just a name; he's a force in the quest to keep government operations open and honest. With a background in military intelligence, his transition to Judicial Watch marked the beginning of an era where the Freedom of Information Act became a sword against corruption. In this episode, Chris will unpack how Judicial Watch has evolved, facing both the consistencies and the ever-changing landscape of political oversight. We'll touch on the legal battles fought, the costs associated with seeking truth, and the organization's unwavering commitment to debunking misleading narratives.From election integrity to the media's portrayal of Judicial Watch's efforts, Chris will shed light on how these battles are fought on multiple fronts. We'll also delve into his view on the ideological divide concerning election accountability and why issues like economic stability and immigration are at the forefront of the upcoming election.
 Judicial Watch is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. Through its educational endeavours, Judicial Watch advocates high standards of ethics and morality in our nation’s public life and seeks to ensure that political and judicial officials do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American people. Judicial Watch fulfils its educational mission through litigation, investigations, and public outreach
Connect with Judicial Watch...WEBSITE            judicialwatch.org𝕏                        x.com/JudicialWatch @JudicialWatch
Interview recorded 03.10.24
Connect with Hearts of Oak...𝕏                         x.com/HeartsofOakUKWEBSITE            heartsofoak.orgPODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.comSOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connectSHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com and follow him on 𝕏 x.com/TheBoschFawstin
Transcript
(Hearts of Oak)
Hearts of Oak, thank you so much for joining us once again.
I'm delighted to have Chris Farrell, who I think I met maybe two years ago when I was stateside and I had the privilege of being on his show, on Watch.
Obviously, Chris has been with Judicial Watch as their head of investigations for 99.
So it's your 25th anniversary, Chris.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
(Chris Farrell)
That's right.
25 years.
And thank you for having me on.
I appreciate it.
Folks at No Judicial Watch, we're a government watchdog group.
We try to uncover the operations of government and then inform and educate the public about what their government is or is not doing to them or for them.
We try to uncover corruption and we try to hold public officials accountable. That's our mission.
And so I've been here for 25 years.
Before that, in my misspent youth, I was an army intelligence officer focusing mostly on counter espionage investigations, some double agent operations, and also commanding the Army's surveillance team, which we used to do physical, technical, and aerial surveillance for counter-espionage investigations and also for human intelligence collection work.
And so we won the Cold War.
This is all many, many moons ago.
And I decided to leave the intelligence world.
I was a contractor for a while to defense and intelligence agencies, but then in 99 I came to judicial watch and as the saying goes the rest is history.
Well, I guess and people obviously if they're not following half our audiences UK if you're not watching judicial watch you need to watch them.
The freedom of information or foyer as you call them.
We we know them in both countries well, that seek to hold government to account and seek to get answers to those questions they do not want to answer.
But people can obviously get on judicialwatch.org and at Judicial Watch on Twitter and X.
I mean, what led you to Judicial Watch?
Because I guess someone in the military background, it is staying in the private sector, contracting, maybe being in pundit work, so on the media. What led you to actually become part of Judicial Watch?
Back in 98, 99, I was watching the work they were doing.
So, I was just an ordinary private citizen looking at what was going on.
This was sort of the crest of the Clinton scandals.
And then the Clintons had made an art of monetizing their government service.
So, there was a lot of corruption going on.
I looked at the organization, thought they were doing great work, and I used my intelligence skills, my background as a case officer, to identify and approach and pitch the leadership and say, hey, you need me.
And it worked. And here I am.
Were you politically attuned back then?
I was.
I was really a committed conservative, not so much partisan in the sense of being rabidly a party operative or faithful.
I really, in general, frankly, I kind of loathe political parties.
I find them to be probably half of whatever problem we have is the party structure and the party activities and the party egos.
So, I was more philosophically conservative and small C conservative and decided that, you know, there had to be some kind of reform.
We could not continue doing what was going on in our government.
And I was going to try to fight for some accountability and some transparency.
And as my colleague, Paul Orfanides, who's our director of litigation here, likes to say, you know, let's sue the bastards.
And so that appealed to me, and it made sense.
No, I've kind of followed Paul's work, and we've had Tom Fitton on before, and giving the overview of what Judicial Watch do.
Now, I get the work that Judicial Watch do, it doesn't come for free.
I mean, when you get in the legal sphere, in the UK it's expensive, in America it's horrendously expensive and ruinously expensive.
I mean, tell us about that and actually using the system, the legal system, against the system, the government or politics.
Right.
Well, we're very fortunate that our Freedom of Information Act law allows anyone, and I mean that literally anyone, to file a request with any of the executive, agencies of the government and ask questions about public policy matters, decisions.
The commitment of funds.
And so we've really refined that to a science.
We have it down in a way that allows us to make very aggressive use of those laws to get records and documents. Because as you well know, particularly when it comes to politicians.
People lie and records don't.
So we can get records and documents and create a record, get the history of what has occurred.
And then we can have an argument about policy and you can have your opinion and I can have mine.
But in the end, if I pull out the records and documents and show them to you and say, well, here's where the money went or here's where the approval to do something or to decide something.
Here's the documentation of it. it kind of deflates a lot of the hyperbolic rhetoric and the hysterical claims, because you have the record, you have the document.
And so we do that a lot. And we sue the government a lot to compel them to answer our requests.
We also file constitutional claims where there's been some grievous wrong or where some government official has been just out of control with their behavior and actions.
They've abused their office. And then we'll sue those officials as well.
There's a crazy example. Just the other day, we had an argument in the Supreme Court of the state of Minnesota, where all of the teachers, the teachers union and the state had entered into a contract.
And for whatever crazy reason, they had agreed to make the contract racist.
I mean that literally.
So under their definition, if you were a person of color and you were a teacher, you couldn't be fired.
If there were layoffs, you could not be laid off.
If you were, I guess, a person not of color, whatever that means, according to their lexicon, well, then you were the first to be fired or the first to be laid off.
And this to me is just blatant racism.
You're making hiring and firing decisions based on skin pigmentation.
It's insanity.
We fought a civil war over this.
Anyway, so that's an example of lunacy that we feel compelled to challenge and we have in Minnesota.
Again, just an argument in the Supreme Court of Minnesota just this past Tuesday.
Wow.
I want to get on to the current political climate in the US.
But I mean, how have you seen your work change over 25 years with all different administrations, all different government officials, some better than others?
How have you seen your work?
Is it you're focused on actually highlighting injustice and exposing corruption and showing wrongdoing?
Or does it change with different administrations?
Well, there's sort of a core set of things that we always look at.
So, we're always looking for reckless expenditures of money and abuse of power or authority or position.
Those things sort of never change. It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat.
You sometimes compare it to, you know, a couple of eight-year-olds fighting over the controls of the Xbox.
You know, they each want to play the game and who's ever in charge.
So there's a certain level of bad behavior, regardless of what your party affiliation is.
But there are some things that are really just crazed, right?
Just really abuses. I think the big lesson, though, over time is that the government has become more and more ingenious on how to obfuscate, hide, lie, mislead the public.
And then on the other side of that same coin, we now see really radical moves to censor people.
And I know that you have your own very sad experiences in the UK with respect to thought control and psychological conditioning of people and what you can or cannot say, which you, in fact, I know I've seen video where a person standing quietly on a street has been arrested because they were silently praying, which I thought was insane.
Orwell's warning in 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. And that's what we see, obviously, here in the United States, also you in the UK.
But the government going around dictating what can and cannot be said or posted or put on social media.
There's a guy who put up a funny meme, a joke about Hillary Clinton and the election in In 2016, he's sitting in prison.
Wow.
Well, it's crazy. And we have our online safety bill.
Europe have the same legislation and it will come to the US because this seems to be a worldwide desire to control any speech that doesn't fit into whatever current government of the day.
So, and I know on with you, Chris, discussing that in the UK and yeah, it's the free speech restrictions are not just a UK issue.
And I mean, because when you look at your first and second amendments, when you look at the protection that gives you the right to defend yourself, I guess those only work if you have the political will, but even more the judicial will.
Actually, if the courts actually back you up, because if the courts don't back you up, then you're left holding a bit of paper, which is the Constitution, which gives you the right, but if it's not backed up.
And America's walking a very fine line on this issue.
Indeed, yeah. Yeah, the presumption was that the persons in authority or in power would act and behave honestly, and that judges would uphold the rule of law, even if they didn't like it, even if their personal opinion was one way or the other.
They would look at what the law said, or they would look at what the founders intended in the Constitution.
And we could have a discussion about how that isn't what they really meant, or, you know, when it comes to the Second Amendment, they were talking about muskets.
They weren't talking about AR-15s or I've heard all the arguments, right?
But there is a remedy, a lawful remedy to that, which is rather than running to the courts and having a government attorney in a black robe issue an edict, the real solution is go into the legislature and craft a law, get it passed from a bill into a law, and then have the executive sign off on it and exercise the legislative process in order to create a law and not just get frustrated, because you don't like it and then dream up some lawsuit and drop it in front of a friendly judge and get them to sign off on it and issue an edict that affects the entire country.
Well, more and more and more, or we've seen that sort of judicial activism in the United States where, again, lawyers in black robes, government attorneys in black robes, they all draw their paycheck from the U.S. Treasury.
They're not some, you know, they're not up on Mount Olympus, up on high, you know, making decisions.
They're right in the middle of the game.
And three quarters of them are government bureaucrats who come out of one government agency or another.
So they're all sort of political operatives.
And this practice is really corrosive.
It is undermining the public's faith in government.
And it's had a very negative net effect, particularly over the last, I'd say, decade.
12 to 16 years it's it's really been it was bad but now it's crazy.
See that from far away from across the pond.
What is it like, I mean your high profile figure judicial watch is a very well-known organization.
I can imagine government officials getting information from judicial watch and thinking, oh no they're just a pain in the ass.
And that doggedness that I think judicial watch have shown in not walking away from a fight, but always up for it.
That I mean that puts you in the crosshairs of a whole range media, judicial, political, I guess you have had to face attacks from all different angles.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So what's interesting is that, you know, I proudly say that we're equal opportunity offenders.
We have upset everyone, left, right, and center, because we're going to be intellectually honest.
If we're going to ask for travel records about what a president is spending flying around the country or around the world, we're going to ask it of Republicans and Democrats alike.
Not everybody likes that.
Well, tough, right?
We have to be even-handed.
We have to be faithful and truthful to what our mission is.
I once was giving a talk to a group of Francophone African delegates who would come here to the United States.
It's all the former French colonies, obviously. I was explaining what we did.
One gentleman burst out in laughter.
And he said, I apologize.
I'm not laughing at you.
I'm just laughing Because if I tried this in my home country, they would throw me in jail And they probably would.
So, yeah, there are challenges.
There are people who don't want to hear what we have to say.
We have social media, like, you know, TikTok, I think, banned us.
Because we say things, here's the irony.
This isn't just our opinion.
We've sued.
We've used the federal court process to get government records and documents.
These aren't our records.
This is what the United States government or some state government has said.
This is their material.
And they try to run away from it and pretend it isn't their work.
Or they're stenographers in the press.
They're not even reporters.
They're just taking dictation.
You know, they say, well, you know, that just simply can't be true.
I mean, we found 113 illegal aliens that voted in the District of Columbia, here in the nation's capital, voted in the last election.
And we have the registrar of the elections telling us this.
So we promote it.
And we have an entire army of fact checkers running around saying, oh, it isn't true. It's not our work.
The election people told us that the 113 illegals voted.
So, I mean, this is just a small example.
I could go on for literally hours.
I love it the way you use government information against them.
That's what's so beautiful about the work the Judicial Watch do.
Right, right.
This is all their own stuff, you know.
It's so good.
Can I, so we are a month out from the election.
We've just had the VP debate with Jerry Vance and Tim Waltz on, was it CNN it was on, I think?
I mean, looking at that and then the wider election, what are your thoughts on this?
And we'll pick up on a couple of the separate issues, I think.
But yeah, what are your general thoughts just days after that debate?
Well, of course, CBS humiliated themselves yet again.
They promised not to fact check.
And right out of the box, what did they do?
Oh, no, Mr. Vance, what you said isn't true. So, I mean, it shows them for what they are, right?
It's a very unpleasant, but I think revelatory example of them exposing their inner bias.
They can't help themselves.
They're so far off the charts in their manic hatred of Trump and all things on the conservative side of the spectrum that they just, they go on and on.
So that just reveals itself.
What I'm most interested in, of course, is the conduct of the election.
Our Constitution says we have an election day, period, not an election week or an election season or an election month.
And we, the country, the United States, when they go to bed on Tuesday night, the 5th of November, or perhaps into the wee hours, maybe by 2 a.m. On Wednesday, the American public needs to know who the president is.
Period.
This routine where we all are going to count votes for the next week because they may have been postmarked and then somebody else, they didn't sign the mail-in ballot and all this double talk and rigmarole.
Nobody doesn't know when the election is. Nobody doesn't know what they're supposed to do if they're interested in casting their vote.
To play this ridiculous game where there's this never-ending opportunity, I want to be very careful.
So the F word, fraud, has a very specific legal meaning.
It's not just that word.
It's also more euphemistically irregularities, right?
Where all the normal procedures and processes are not followed.
And so you have judges in Pennsylvania saying, well, if the ballot is mailed in and it's not dated and they didn't sign it, well, we can still count it even though it's a week late.
That's craziness.
So we need to have an answer on election night or the wee hours of the next morning.
Judicial Watch has been successful at removing 4 million false and inaccurate registrations from the voting rolls in several different states.
In Los Angeles County, county alone, there were 1.5 million false, inaccurate registrations on the voting rolls.
When you have that level of voting rolls being essentially dirty, It's an invitation for mischief.
It's an invitation for manipulation and gamesmanship.
We can't have it. And so we've been very successful at forcing people to do their jobs and make sure that the voting rolls are true, accurate, and correct.
And if you've died, if you've moved away, if you're a felon, those are reasons not to be on the voting roll.
And the registrars have an obligation to make sure that that is correct.
Yeah, in the UK we don't usually let dead people vote, but I know in the U.S it is...
We have a special voodoo you know kind of undead voting patterns which is very, very troubling.
I've seen that. Well I'm praying looking forward to Trump winning his third term so that in that phrase you get where I sit on on this issue, but we I mean you look at it.
I've been involved in all different elections in the UK, European, parliamentary, local, and it's a rush to get the votes in.
There are what we call paper.
I could hold up a bit of paper for the US viewers.
You put an X with a pen, with a black pen.
But it's, I mean, at what point has it been a long slide in the U.S. In terms of actually this integrity of elections slipping, slipping, because it just didn't start in 2020. It's been happening before then.
Yeah.
So way back in 2000, I'd been at Judicial Watch for about a year, there was a 2000 election that was hotly contested between Al Gore, you'll remember, and Bush the Younger.
Was that the Florida votes they were counting or something?
Right.
And you know the people that caused all that castronation in Florida?
Listen, watch.
We're the ones who did it.
We knew that it was hotly debated.
Yeah.
My colleague, Paul Orfanides, and I, we filed 67 Florida Sunshine Act requests.
So Florida has a state-level open records law that they call the Sunshine Act.
And Paul Orfanides did some research and realized that a ballot in the state of Florida is counted as a public record.
And so we, there's 67 counties in Florida.
So we filed 67 requests since really counties administer the election.
And we asked for access to all the ballots.
And you may remember people were looking at hanging chads and dimpled ballots.
There was much controversy over the actual ballots themselves and whether they were accurate and truthful or whether it was a shenanigans.
So we hired an auditing firm, accountants, and we audited the entire election.
We did sample auditing and we got access to all those ballots.
Now, when all the big news media companies saw what we were doing, I think they were a little jealous.
They jumped in behind us.
And so when the New York Times and ABC and CBS and CNN all show up and suddenly say, me too, we want to see the ballots, we kind of got pushed out of the way just by the weight of the media interests.
But that entire thing was actually created by Judicial Watch because we wanted to know what was going on with those ballots and were they being accurately counted and what is a hanging chad and what is a dimpled ballot and how could that happen? And so our audit said that Bush won by about 800 popular votes. And sure enough, when everything was said and done, the official government tally
Confirmed what we had concluded that bush had won by a very very narrow margin maybe eight or nine hundred votes that's it.
I mean and it is the issues that are important but the issues mean nothing if you're doing the election integrity to back that up.
Right
Look at it and in the UK as in the vast majority of European countries and I know you've done a lot of work in in Hungary so you'll have a an idea of some of the election issues and political issues across Europe, but it is a single country decides and you will have some variations but by and large single country in America it's not just at the federal level.
It's not just the state level, it's the county level, and it means there's so many moving parts to it.
Yeah.
Which actually is a beautiful thing.
It makes stealing an election more difficult, unless you have activist judges and crazed governors like Gavin Newsom, who mailed out ballots to every street address in California.
Talk about asking for irregularities and manipulations of the voting process.
But if people are honest and they stick by the written law and they don't do weird things like like in Wisconsin, where the people administering the election had a meeting.
They're all wearing their little COVID masks sitting there. And they say, we know that we're violating the law, but this is an emergency.
We have to do it anyway.
They flaunted it.
They bragged how they were, they knew that everything that they were doing was not within the scope of the law, and they just didn't give a damn.
They're going to do it anyway.
And was any of that overturned or reject it? No. It was accepted as, oh, well, you know, it's COVID.
So, you know, we don't have to pay attention to the laws and the constitution anymore.
We have to have an exception to everything and we're going to keep counting ballots until we get a number that beats Trump.
I mean, that's really the unspoken part of the irregularities that were going on.
I mean, is it Trump Contrangement syndrome that's just turbocharged this left lunacy, really.
Yeah, just yesterday, the prosecutor, and he's a disgraced prosecutor, I want to be clear. Jack Smith is a clown.
He went after the governor of Virginia.
A few years back, maybe it's 10 or 12 years ago, he went after the governor of Virginia on sort of his own political jihad and ended up removing the sitting governor of Virginia.
And then when the case was appealed, Jack Smith was reversed nine to nothing.
A unanimous Supreme Court said that his entire case was a fraud.
It was a lie.
And he had already removed the Governor of Virginia.
Where does he go to get his reputation back?
Where does he go to get his life back?
But Jack Smith, I mean, you would think that an attorney who had a nine to nothing Supreme Court reject everything he was doing, you would think he'd go move on to do something else in life.
But he's a hatchet man. He's a political operative who's called in to do this kind of dirty work.
And now he's doing it against Trump.
So 30 days before an election, what does he do?
He releases another set of pleadings with all kinds of wild, reckless claims.
And of course, look, just because he puts it in a pleading doesn't mean it's true.
This is not evidence, right?
It's just a claim before a court with with no foundation, with no proof. It's simply, we did interviews and we think this is true.
And he dumps this into the public record a month before the election. If that's that election interference, if that isn't the Department of Justice putting its thumb on the scale and trying to unduly, unlawfully influence an election, I don't know what is.
I mean, how did this become a left-right issue?
Because you would think that you sit and talk to a citizen whatever political persuasion they are and they want to know their vote counts and yet we have this crazy situation in the States where election integrity is called into question.
And it's the left that seem to want to have as many dead people or immigrants vote where it's those in the.
Right that seem to want a fair election.
So only those who are able to vote can vote.
How has this become a left-right issue?
So the left, the people on the left, they are, this is my view, sort of a political philosophy here, but they are, the left are creatures of the state.
They love big government, big programs, big tax dollar, you know, supplements, entitlement payments.
They never saw a program or a project or a government initiative or a government agency that they didn't love.
That's their ecosystem.
They swim around in this environment where they love to use and manipulate the levers of state.
Right.
All the organs of the state, a good Soviet term, they love utilizing that to maximum effect.
That's where they're coming from. On the right, you find a lot of people who are small government people.
They're strict constitutionalists.
They don't believe in never-ending government programs and subsidies and all those sorts of things.
A lot of people on the right will show up to do their government service, whether they're members of Congress or they serve on some county commission, and they do their bit, and then they go home.
They go back to running their business or being part of their community in some way. They don't stay in the statist ecosystem.
And so they're just not oriented.
They don't think and believe and act in the way that folks on the left do.
So of course, The left knows how to use all the different levers of the state, all the agencies, all the tactics and techniques of big government to achieve their ends.
And folks on the right, they're not thinking about it that way.
I've gone out and talked to people who are interested in voting.
And I've said, look, I've got about 24 years of voting, you know, verification and certification experience.
You guys, speaking to people on the right, you guys are great at having your rally a day or two after the election's been lost and protesting.
Right.
All your equal opposite numbers on the left, they've gone and studied all the rules and regulations, all the laws.
They know every single official in the voting chain.
They've met with them.
They've lobbied them. If there's something that goes wrong with the election, they know exactly what paragraph to cite to file their claim, to challenge a vote.
That's their ecosystem.
That's where they live.
And the folks on the right just kind of show up to complain.
It's a very different mentality, and it needs to be addressed directly.
I mean, is it naivety?
Because I guess if you go back a generation, you had a strong church that was vocal, that actually believed what the Bible taught, which is very different today.
You had a legal system that did understand right and wrong. You had individuals engaged maybe at the at the local level, at the community level.
You had an education system that that worked a heck of a lot better than it does the moment, so maybe conservatives just sat back and it's that false sense of security on the left have been realizing they need to burn this down or maybe conservatives have thought actually it's fairly good, and I think it will just continue.
I mean, is that just naivety that's meant conservatives have been asleep on watch?
They have.
And the other thing that's very disturbing is that there's been various polling done that shows the number of committed Christians, self-identifying believers, who do not vote.
They just don't show up.
It's something like 40%. So if 40% of the committed Christians in the country bothered to show up and just vote, what a difference that would make.
There's also, this is unpleasant to say, but it's truthful, so you kind of have to, you got to admit it, is that there's a lot of cowardly pastors as well.
They're afraid, oh, I'm going to lose my nonprofit status as a church if I express a political opinion.
That's a lot of garbage. That isn't true.
You can comment on things that objectively, that morally are objectively right or wrong and let people draw their own conclusion.
Killing children is bad.
It is wrong, objectively, period.
Now, you have a candidate that supports killing children, and then you have one that doesn't.
Pick.
This is not tough stuff, right?
It really isn't.
But there's some pastors who are kind of afraid of their own shadow or they don't want to get out of their comfort zone.
And that's an enormous disservice, really.
And I don't mean that just politically.
I mean that spiritually.
It's a horrible disservice.
They have an obligation to shepherd their flock and to educate and inform and enlighten.
And if they're not doing that, something's very, very wrong.
We see exactly the same in the UK.
I've had numerous conversations with pastors who will agree with you behind closed doors, but publicly it's a fear of man more than the fear of God.
And that puts the church in a dangerous situation.
What has it been like with Judicial Watch?
Camping on these issues and you personally heading up those investigations and campaigns, how does that fit in with the church?
Because in a way, you're highlighting injustices that the church should really be doing.
It should be their job.
And yet you're having to do it as a private organization as opposed to the body of Christ doing it.
Yeah, I mean, so we have a role, and it is a decidedly nonpartisan, nonsectarian, you know, the organization Judicial Watch politically is nonpartisan.
We're philosophically conservative and unapologetic about that.
And likewise, you know, persons of faith or persons who decide no, that they're not, we don't even go there, right?
But we do talk about things that are objectively disordered and things that you can prove to be morally true or false.
And I've done this innumerable times with people.
I don't care what they believe or don't believe, but you can't materially cooperate with evil.
And you can get there in a secular way or you can get there through faith.
Personally, for me, it's through faith.
But I'm willing to engage with anyone and discuss the morals of this.
Years ago, I taught a journalism law class at a university here.
And there's a lot of moral relativism and a lot of, well, you know, that's just how they feel or what they think.
So the way I would try to break through and explain that there is objectively right or wrong is, and a couple of students in particular would be very vociferous in their objection to me talking about right and wrong and good and evil.
And I'd say, well, okay, tell me how rape is good.
Go ahead.
You have the floor.
It shuts down.
No one in their right mind is going to defend that or explain that somehow it is good.
And so there are ways to demonstrate to people that we really do have to make a choice and we have to stand on what we believe.
And if you're a person of faith, frankly, it should be very easy.
We have a wonderful instruction book.
It's called the Bible.
I recommend it to people.
But let's say you reject that and you say, no, no, no. I don't believe all that.
That's just mythology, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay. Well, there's still ways to prove things.
The example I gave you about asking a question on rape or the people that are wrapped up in this crazed, radical gender ideology, you know, they can say whatever they want to say.
And if they say that they believe in science, okay, well, there's chromosomes, right?
It's either XX or XY.
That's it.
You can talk about it endlessly.
You can discuss your dysphoria or whatever other psychological condition you may or may not have.
But the science says the chromosomes show up as XX or XY. And that is it.
So we are able to give examples.
We are able to prove things.
We are able to, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way.
What I'm trying to do is give people encouragement, right?
I want your viewers and listeners to say, wait a minute, maybe there is something I can do.
Maybe I can share my faith or my beliefs with people.
Maybe I can engage with my neighbor, or I can do something with a family member.
I don't know.
Each of us has a way to go forward positively.
What I'm saying and what we've been talking about, my goal and objective is to provide, encouragement and courage to people to go make a difference you don't have to go off and lead you know some big movement you can do it in your very own community.
Everyone can play their part and it's interesting what some of the issues the pro-life issue you can say we're all made in the image of God therefore every life has value or you can look at some of the the scientific background ground of the repercussions of abortion or what actually is life. And so there are all different ways of tackling this issue.
But Chris, I 100% agree that if you look at the Gospels, you see how Jesus lived.
You pick up the Bible, look at the Psalms or Proverbs, and you can see guidelines live.
And the Bible is packed full of that from Genesis to Revelation.
You can't get a better manual in the current chaos than picking up a Bible.
Can I just finish with the issues in this election? It seems that, well, it's the economy, stupid, but that's always been a bread and butter, what people are feeling in their pocket with the paycheck, with the cost.
And And that's had a dramatic change in terms of inflation and chipping away. And the other side is an open border.
I mean, a government's one of their primary duties has to be to protect the citizens.
And you can't protect if you don't control who comes in.
Are those issues still immigration and the economy?
Are those still the two main issues that you think will decide this election?
Absolutely.
Undoubtedly.
They are dominant above all else, I think.
There's also, I think, a third issue that people are sensitive to.
They may not be sort of dissecting it down to specific policies, but there's, generally speaking, there is great unease with wars around the world.
And so obviously Israel is under attack.
Israel is under attack from every angle and is in a precarious position. They're fighting back, and I applaud them for fighting back.
They should.
I have no criticism whatsoever of how Israel has defended itself since October 7th.
I know there's all sorts of people lined up ready to call them names.
You know, don't start wars you can't win, right?
You're going to start a war, you're going to get a reaction from it.
And so just because you're losing doesn't mean you can now, you know, scream, oh, you're being mean to me.
Well, you know, they didn't need to come across that fence on October 7th.
So, now Now they're going to get the reaction from that and all that comes from that. And the other thing is Ukraine.
So we have a wide open southern border with, who knows, 16, 18, 20 million people come in in the last three and a half, almost four years.
So, we're going to spend $180 billion to support Ukraine's border, and we're not going to do a damn thing about our own southern border?
People have a hard time trying to balance that out.
They don't get that.
And I think, you know, without being too controversial, Ukraine is an incredibly corrupt environment.
And Mr. Zelensky is not Churchill, right?
So, again, unpleasant things to talk about, but that's what we have to wrestle with. These are the big questions in front of the American public.
And do you think that.
I mean, the voters seem looking at even polling over the last couple of days and obviously Kamala Hyena Harris had her bounce whenever she got stuck in.
That seems to be dropping away.
I just, I mean, well, she was the border czar, so everything that's happened is on her.
People will see through that inability to understand.
Was it Trump that said about it? He said, oh, Biden has become this way. Harris was born this way, looking this way.
You get those one-liners, you think, oh, genius.
But I think the public will see through them.
And I've even seen quite a lot of clips on CNN and MSNBC see and commentators beginning to call Harris out for what she is, which is just completely out of her depth.
She has not held an actual real press conference since she was anointed by the general secretariat of the central committee.
Since the party decided, without a single vote being cast, the leadership of the party decided that she's the new candidate, right?
So that goes back to the summer.
Now we're getting into the fall now and a month out. And she has not sat in a room with 50 or 100 reporters and said, OK, what do you got?
Let's go. Let me answer some questions for you.
Trump does it every day. And she's hiding and people know that people know, or they have reason to believe that she's not, well-equipped.
That's a good word to use. And even Putin finds her laugh fascinating.
That was so good.
But Chris, she does have to practice her accent.
So come on, she's busy doing that.
She has every, every couple of days, depending upon who she's talking to, she develops a a new dialect, a new accent for the listening audience.
It's quite remarkable.
It really is.
Chris, we find ourselves in strange times, one month out from not only one of the most important elections in the US, but I think for Europe, for the UK, and worldwide, because since the Second World War, we've relied on America being a strong country that speaks truth and has military might to actually back that up.
And at the moment, maybe the US military have got more rainbow laces than actually weapons to fight back.
So it is a key election.
I think it is so important even for the U.K audience to hear what is happening.
So, thank you for giving us your overview of that and touching upon some areas that Judicial Watch is involved.
So, I appreciate your time Chris, so thank you very much
Peter, Thank you very much, it's a pleasure being on with you.