Transcription
I'm there to celebrate the 50 years of Saturday Night Live. I'm part of their history. They're part of mine.
And so they were kind enough to include me into these festivities and we're all there in our tuxedos. But then towards the end of the night, we get into a cramped area where we have to all walk on stage. It's very nice. They they invite everybody for one final bow as it were. And uh who anyone anyone has ever been a cast member, anyone who's ever hosted the show. Unfortunately, the show's been on well fortunately it's been on for 50 years, but unfortunately everybody in the audience was actually a cast member who hosted the show. So, we all make our way onto the stage.
I find myself being jostled and I'm right behind Dairo and I bump into him and he turns around and he has that, you know, that particular expression which was just like, "How can you support that schmuck?" He gave me that look like and and he was about to really go at me and uh, you know, and I just literally there's an interesting thing you could just you can just um choose to not have conflict and I just said, "I love you." And he like and so he gave me that look like and I no no no no I really love you and I touched him and I said no I love you man and he Hello. Okay. Okay. And I think it diffused that situation.
Um, you know, I'm not always going to be at my best, but at that moment, I was. Um, and that was what needed to happen. You know, the cancel culture, we're not going to win. And when I say we, I mean we as a society, we're not going to get anywhere by just this the battle, you know? We're going to have to find some common ground and we're going to have to, you know, we're going to have to have people who are uh willing to take responsibility for their own actions and how they um how they're willing to treat other people. And I at that moment I was in a you know in a good place. I'm not always going to be in that good place, but um it was what was needed at that time. And I hope I can uh channel that more often.
Well, I mean, it was beautiful. You gave that anecdote at a you know fundraiser in Irvine for that you you know were helping us out with. I thought it's very comports very well with our ethos at Epoch Times like how we approach you know basically doing journalism like we're always you know trying to reach people basically with ideas that in many cases they may not even may not be ready for and that's very difficult in this day and age.
>> Especially the way the press is viewed now.
I mean, look at today's news news. You wake up to the New York Times piece about um, you know, Donald Trump having the uh royal Saudi prince who's according to an intelligence um report said that he was responsible for the murder of a uh of a journalist Kosigible and who's actually also was also working for Qatar being paid by Qatar which is complicates it but nevertheless that's a real um something that that a question that should be asked.
However, my my question is uh and and this there he also they also asked about the business dealings of the Trump administration, the Trump family with the royal Saudi family and if they think that's appropriate. These are all good questions and that whether good or bad, they're questions that need to be asked by a free press. However, my comment is why wasn't that asked or why aren't these same questions asked under the previous administration? Where is the objectivity for the press? You have to be able to ask difficult questions of every administration and the administration, anybody in power must must take that and must take that in. Um and so we do have um a lack of belief and faith in today's media and and uh and institutions in general.
And you know, case in point, actually I saw uh Matt or FA I don't know if I might be butchering his name right now, but he he has this habit of putting together these kind of incredible montages of media malfeasants basically, which I really appreciate him for. And today he published something earlier which was basically how the media explained the whole uh Kyle Writtenhouse situation. Of course Kyle Writtenhouse was acquitted of of murder. In fact, he was, you know, self he had come to help people and and and you know, basically defend and it was but the way he was portrayed in the media, I actually think of it as one of the most terrible examples of media malfeasance and again Orf as he goes on uh on on X, you know, just kind of laid showed exactly what people said and they, you know, there's people and here's the problem, right? To this day, there's people that believe that it was unfair. I mean, the the case is meticulously documented and you can see what the reality was, but there's a whole lot of people in society today that kind of believe that he got away with murder something like this, right?
>> Don't trust your eyes and ears. Trust what the big brother tells you.
The media really made black, white, white, black in that situation. It's in a very I mean this happens often but this is in a very extreme way where it really was the situation was kind of was the opposite of was being portrayed and it was kind of obviously opposite if you were to look at the video you know evidence and so forth.
And and but the evidence doesn't change the opinion because it's tribal in nature and I'll just go to say like what Nam Shsky in his the manufacturer of consent he describes the uh mainstream media or media in general as a giant wrecking ball just going through just crushing and just destroying things and moving forward and it never stops. But also more importantly or as importantly, it never goes back to look at the wreckage in its wake. It just continues to move forward. And so you have this um extreme form of um tribalism. Now whereas the tribe is uh is illogical because it has no empathy or no and we saw it in the murder of the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk where the assassin was somehow so wrapped up into this tribal uh tribalism for his particular side that he just had no empathy. He cared more about the gun that was missing that his he was going to upset his grandfather by not being able to recover the gun than he cared about the murder of this young young this incredible young man and a young father and a young husband. Uh and and so there's a complete lack of empathy on one side for anybody outside your particular tribe and then there's an insane amount too much uh I would say pathological uh empathy for people in your tribe. I mean, the idea that like, you know, it's it's uh for somebody who is a a criminal and someone who's um you would have like for someone who's in the country illegally, has been trafficked people like this Garcia guy and the idea that that he is this father and he's been stolen. It's like we need to look at things as best as we can. We need to have a press that is going to attempt and it's impossible to be completely objective, but they must try.
>> Truth seeking, right? To genuine truth seeking with the knowledge that you can't necessarily get all of it every time and in fact in some cases very hard to get at it but the question is are you trying?
My friend had dinner with the the editor-in-chief of the New York Times a few years back and he said, "Is objectivity something that you're concerned about?" And his answer was, "I believe it is my moral imperative to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States again." So what does that mean? And And I it just kind of goes to show the difference and you could see it in the headlines. The same the same situation of the former administration, the Biden administration and the same situation and the headlines are much more uh jarringly tribal in in favor of the previous administration. So that's a um I think that's very telling uh of where we're at now to where I mean, it's almost I would say not almost but it is approaching uh what the former Soviet Union had and that's why like my friend like Ilia Baskin who was from the Soviet Union and knew what it was like. I don't know why your country why you guys would go and want that but you are approaching it and that you can't see it's communism that that is what's happening that you can't see that is an incredible horrible thing that you are approaching. And so what happened was that he would tell you that um Nam Shsky would tell you that uh the Soviet Union people knew the Pravda the and TAS the you know the the government mouthpieces no one believed it. They knew it was just you know garbage that what the government wanted and and so where did they go for truth? Where did they they find out what's really happening in their society and it was it was person to person. What did you hear? What do you know? And that's exactly what happened and I think exponentially it it um it happened during COVID when you knew you couldn't believe the New York Times and the Washington Post anymore and who did you know you had to go so you went to like who's saying what and that's where podcast exploded because well Joe Rogan's saying something and I believe that more than I believe the New York Times and when they colored when the CNN colored his face to make him look really sick. I mean, who how come nobody got fired over that? When Gupta went on Joe Rogan, he he would not admit and wouldn't give in and to the fact that this actually happened. He just was seemed slightly disappointed, which is not what needs to happen. If we're going to have uh this system of just two political parties, we need two normal, sane political parties. But for the Democratic party to not come out and admit that the Biden administration in fact did uh day one with Facebook, with Google, with Instagram, uh with the tech companies uh censor Americans, day one within the first 24 hours of the Biden administration that they don't come out and say that that is egregious and that is government censorship and that is wrong. For them for not one uh Democratic senator or congressman to come out and admit that that's wrong is a stunning indictment of where we're at. Whereas the tribal party system seems to uh be the only thing that's important and and this and and maintaining that and returning that to power is more important than any objectivity or truth or what's best for society. And and I think that's a dangerous place. That's uh is setting up uh something approaching authoritarian dictatorship or uh some version of uh Chinese style social credit system. It's definitely an encroachment on that. And I think that Donald Trump, for better or worse, in all his piccadillos, was a um resounding rejection of uh of wanting a continuation of uh a system that was just lying about everything.
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You know, it's interesting that you say there was this, you know, people didn't people understood that Pravda was was, you know, not the truth. And I I've always assumed that. And of course, you know, but I also realized the thing that to me the biggest lesson of COVID in a way was kind of the opposite was that actually a lot of people do believe it.
>> Yes. And I didn't because because I generally I at least I think in many ways I was sort of a bit immune to that. Not everything but I'm always just have this natural skeptical sort of disposition.
>> Right. Right.
>> Well the people do that's the difference and Nam Shsky talks about that is that that that's how much more insidious uh propaganda is in a so-called when our in a free society because people do believe the New York Times. They're likely more likely to believe the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post and they'll take that uh as as truth. Whereas I think COVID helped melt that or at least got people a lot of people to question it.
And that was the the breakdown in people who you know the 80 million Americans who said we're not taking that shot. That was a uh I mean for the pressure that people were under I mean firing you know frontline workers and nurses and doctors who refused to administer or refuse to take that shot. Um these are people who risk their lives in during COVID. uh for them to be fired was a a stunning um indictment on that on the Biden administration and and thankfully uh that um those workers a lot of them have been rehired have have been compensated and you know the um you know if you don't have a choice that's how I got into this um attack was was was pretty basic I mean if if you the last refuge of your own freedom is your body, your body autonomy. If the government can make you take any uh and inject something an experimental gene therapy or anything into your body against your will, then the government uh is now able to do any form of atrocity. Once they break that barrier, there's nothing they can't do.
>> So, that was a a delineating line between abject uh authoritarianism and tyranny. And the United States and enough people said, "No, we're not doing it." And that's why I think that it collapsed.
>> So, was there some specific moment? I mean, you know, you've been very successful comedian, actor, um,
>> uh, now author, but there's a number of people in Hollywood who think of you perhaps like Robert Dairo did, was thinking of you that day.
Maybe maybe even many, I don't know, but but was there some I mean, you you had to make some decision at some point.
>> Yeah. You you're either you're either with the Liberal Party and you like, you know, you take a like um Mark Ruffalo, he could say whatever he wants against Trump and he'll still get work as an actor, but if you if an actor like me or says anything or even questions or dares question the uh the tribe of uh of Democrats, uh that's it. You're out. You're out of uh of Hollywood. Did you know that before you started you opened your big mouth?
>> Um, well, not to this extent.
I mean, when Hillary Clinton lost the election and um and I tweeted, "I haven't seen the Democrats this angry since we freed the slaves." That was a um something that went everywhere.
And then um yeah, they didn't like that. I remember my old boss at Saturday Night Live, Lauren Michaels, would say that the the Democrats are more sensitive and they don't have as quite the sense of humor to take um to laugh at themselves as Republicans. Um, and I think he was right, but I didn't take that advice. I will say that um, objective truth, I was naive. I believed that um, when I met people, parents who knew that their kids were fine and actually as young as young uh, children, they were actually meeting the markers or exceeding them. And then they got a series of shots that was required to go to school. And then the kids were never the same again. Never. This thing about autism, people don't talk about like severe autism. I'm talking about head banging where they have to wear helmets where they're still in diapers at 18. This is something you don't see. The idea that they're just these cute, you know, um really eccentric children, that is not what I witnessed. What I saw was headbanging. I saw 19-year-old kids who had lifelong problems.
And you know were still in diapers with horrible gut issues and uh violent.
>> Uh and and so and they parents I chose to believe them and I still believe them that their kids were fine and then all of a sudden we're not fine. So this um uh the idea that you can just go back and and not know that uh and ignore it. I felt um
>> basically you had people close to you that this a family that hap this happened to?
I saw them. I saw them. I mean, I was I mean, so I got involved in this many, many years ago because what happened was the pharmaceutical industry actually works with like Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, they have their publicists and they have their people and they literally write the um what they want for legislation and give it to the medical boards of different states like the state of California. And then that goes right to the legislation. And here's the thing about pharma. Pharma, I mean, you take a look at that one drug, vaccines. It's the only drug that's never evergreen. It never becomes generic. It's the one drug, the only drug made where you, if there's something wrong with it, you can't sue. If you get injured by it, you can't sue for damages. It is a and it's in it class of its own. Almost like it's uh
>> Well, you can't sue the company. You can sue HHS. You can't sue them either. You can't sue them in a court of law. You have to go to what they call a special magistrate. And then there's no reporters allowed. Uh and then it takes maybe 10 years to um for them for any um for any sort of uh financial recoupment of what these lifelong illnesses for these u families who have to deal with. And then the you know it affects their income. They have to have at least one parent stay home and it's lifelong. Um and then some a lot of those get kicked out get kicked out but there's been over $5 billion paid out by this system. Um they call the vaccine adverse effects reporting system which goes into um this special uh magistrate. So it it is a a system and it was given out under the Reagan administration in 19 1986 called the Child Vaccine Safety Act which Reagan did not want to sign but didn't feel comfortable with signing but did. And what the manufacturers of these drugs were supposed to do was every 6 months report to Congress and make sure that they that the safety standards were there which they've never done. And and so you have um uh a system of an incredible amount of wealth made by a small group of companies uh that are fleecing the American public. And if you go now to a statistic from 2013, and this is by the National Institutes of Health, 54% of American children suffer from at least one one chronic illness. Whether it's asthma, childhood diabetes, childhood obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, peanut allergies, these are something unheard of just a few short decades ago.
This experience, right, of knowing, understanding something different than the grand narrative was, right? Um, is that what I guess, you know, made you vocal during?
>> Well, I mean, they asked me I mean, the people asked me um to testify on their behalf and if you're famous, you just, you know, more eyeballs go to you.
>> And so I did and that was it. Boom.
I mean, that was it for me starring in movies. Um, and uh the the idea of telling the truth um in an age of authoritarianism, in an age of lies is a courageous act. And you know, I'm not saying that I'm courageous. I'm think of me when I think of real courage, I think of the just driving by the uh in any major city, the cemeteries of uh people who gave their what Lincoln describes the last full measure of devotion for this great land and um that is a sacrifice. I mean, the fact that I'll never make Duce Bigalow four, five, and six, I think is fine. Um, but it is I mean, it's a bummer. It does happen and um, you know, show business wrong or right, they don't want any controversy. You know, they they don't want you being mouthy or or anything and and that that makes sense. But I do think that at a certain point if we're going to have um a society and if we're going to have uh uh continue to have a free society, it's going to require people to step up and be courageous and you know, this country still allows that. It is our first amendment, right? Does it make you free of consequences? No. You just, you know, you can ask Jimmy Kimmel, who was temporarily fired and or, you know, you can ask people um who speak up. I mean, it's it's going to cost you. But the thing about it is really depressing was I knew Charlton H. Now, Charlton H was a conservative and a gun rights advocate. And I thought that was I thought the gun rights part was kind of crazy. Now I realize it's not crazy. That's the only thing that kept us out of tyranny. The fact that you know Americans have at least 400 million guns at least.
So um, but I remember him being a really good really good American loving America and I remember him this is a guy who marched with Martin Luther King early like 1961.
Before it was, you know, cause celebrity. I mean with Marlon Brando. I mean, these I mean, these guys were realized that what where where the country needed to go. Said we need to have u equal rights. We needed to to have a a society that didn't you know didn't judge people based on the color of their skin. And he was there and then years later just rejected be uh by the liberal intelligencia because he just happened to be a conservative. And I think that's shameful. I think that's a rot in the soul of Hollywood. And I think today's blacklisting of conservatives is the same thing. I think it's uh at its core um it is adding to its destruction. And I think you we are seeing Hollywood completely dismantle itself. You will not see these studios, those lots, Sony lot, uh the Fox lot, Warner Brothers lot, those places, uh in 5 years will just be real estate. You will not have those stages anymore. And I think it's their own decline. I think uh I think the Actors Guild didn't help and the Writer's Guild didn't help after the pandemic having a strike. I thought that was just completely irresponsible and stupid. Um and and then um people realize, hey, we'll find entertainment something else. There'll be more entertainment on Instagram. As a matter of fact, I think that I think more people watch Instagram and and like do this. That's funny. That, you know, or this, I don't know which way it goes. Um, so I think you're going to see uh you're seeing right now a rejection of of Hollywood and you're seeing it's an you're seeing an implosion of it. What will replace it? I don't know. I mean, I think what replaced the news, individual people talking like Joe Rogan, uh, the biggest of those independent media and everybody else. I mean, when they talk about the print, you know, the press, the free press, the founding fathers, they didn't want to talk about media. No media existed. They meant just the the idea that you could print something. I mean, a physical press that made a newspaper. That's what they meant by it. It wasn't like CBS News or ABC or any of that. And that in essence what was was got out during the pandemic during the squelching of um of voices and you had individual people. What do you think? What do you say? And I think that was I think that's continued. You know, I mean Teo Vaughn has a bigger audience than the New York Times. He's just a guy talking a comedian on a mic. Joe Rogan a comedian. uh a really amazing wrestler and an expert on MMA. He's the biggest he's our Walter >> Kronhite.
How did that happen? Well, because of the um just like the legislator, the legislation that we have, the senators and Congress, they no longer write laws anymore. They've abdicated their lawmaking abilities and they just would rather not do it and let the president uh rule by executive order because it's safer for them. In the same way, the media now has uh abdicated their objectivity and their willingness to just tell news as it is and they're sucked into this tribalism and that is a detriment. And that's why, you know, this ever shrinking CNN audience, the ever shrinking New York Times audience, who is it for? Owned by a billionaire um who um doesn't have the same laws as the average American? Doesn't pay taxes. So, you have the very very top not paying any taxes. They're just borrowing money, very little, low interest rates on all their stock and they live off that. Very much like um Getty, same thing. You never kept buying art and art and art, kept buying all this. Never didn't have to pay taxes. So, who pays taxes? The donkeys, the middle class, 42% of Americans. You pay nothing. And then there's the super rich and then there's all of us in the middle. And how long is that going to last? How long are they going to continue to fleece these tax donkeys before people go, "Hey, I don't want to play this game anymore." That's an interesting one. I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. But I would say it's not going to be indefinite. Sping your mind does come at a price. Would you step out and risk yourself? I mean, Oprah Winfrey will tell you when she supported Obama, she knew that was going to cost her millions of dollars. But I I do think there does come a time where you have to put your head above uh out of the foxhole. I think cou have to there's a time for courage and there's a time when you know that your society's under attack and that's the thing you know people use the term nationalism very loosely.
Like n it's very he's nationalist. Well, there's a necessity for nationalism if your nation is under attack. If it's if it's letting in 10 million people over the border at least that that's that's an invasion. If you're you know your government is censoring journalists and and outspoken people questioning the government policy that is uh you you need to be a nationalist to stand up for your nation. The idea of nationalism when it, you know, my opinion when it's dangerous and not just my opinion is when it's an expansion when it expands its borders in the name of nationalism, then I think that's dangerous. But I think it was it was important to be a pro-American nationalist last election for sure.
You know, you talk about this actually in your book a little bit that you know, people sometimes assume that you're the character the characters that you play. If you're an actor and you're prominent, a lot of people see you, they assume. And I think I think that I I actually I wasn't to be perfectly honest, I wasn't a Deuce Bigalow fan.
>> I can understand that. And just no.
>> If you accidentally watch it.
>> But I would but but I >> No, no, exactly. And no, but I I mean I had no idea for starters that you have such a depth to you. I because you and I didn't sit down and think about it either, right? But I you just it's interesting how we assume things.
Comedy is I mean I find the comedians to be pretty smart, but the idea is not to appear smarter than everybody else. Here's what you never hear. Let's go see that comedian this weekend. He's really smart, you know, is he funny or not? I mean, but you can use comedy to subvert people to your point of view. When I can say, you know, to an audience during the pandemic, like, you know, hey, this is a scary time because, you know, the government's telling you what's happening. Like, oh no, there's an another announcement here. This guy's parachute didn't open and he died of COVID. People are going to see and hopefully they'll laugh. And if you can laugh at it, that is when authoritarianism collapses. Is when it's no longer frightening to people. COVID, it got to the point where you could laugh at it. When um Gavin, Governor Gavin Nuome said, "Mask up between bites." If you didn't laugh at that or see the ridiculousness of it, then you're captured. And there's nothing there's nothing I can say to help you. And there's going to be a large people, a large section of society that's going to be captured by that. Um, you saw that that was garbage. And enough Americans, we don't need all Americans to get healthy. There's some that are not going to do it. They don't care. But we need enough of them to get healthy so that we don't collapse as a nation. Also, we need enough to realize the government's lying to us to make some changes. And whether I mean, believe me, you know, I I say this in in my standup act, God is a terrible casting agent. He doesn't and but if you look at King David, he's a murderer, an adulterer, a man who coveted another man's wife. But God said, "That's my guy. That's who I want." And so you can go down the line and and like truthfully, if we're going to get We're not China. In China, they give you one party. They tell you who to vote for. That's it. We're we're America. We got freedom. We got two parties. Can we at least vote for the other party, you know, keep the other one in check. And so there was enough people who said had had enough of it. And if you go back to the founding of our great nation, we didn't get 100% of the colonist support.
>> Mhm.
>> Basically a third, no, I don't think more than 5% ever showed up on the battle line with Washington. And his biggest problem really wasn't really the Germans who were fighting, you know, the mercenary Germans that were fighting um for the British. you. Well, his problem was keeping them there, colonists, farmers.
>> Mhm.
>> Uh, turkey hunters to keep them there. And, uh, and I don't think he ever had more than 5%, 3 to 5%. So, you had 30% who were with roughly 30% that were with for the revolution. You had 30% who were loyalists to the crown and uh, and England. And then you had um, a third that were ambivalent. But a third at the height, we never had more than a third. A third was enough to defeat the greatest superpower the world had ever known up until that point. Now that is astounding. And so roughly we had a third of Americans who said called on COVID and said we're not going along with it. And that was enough to make this whole thing collapse. That was enough to get people, you know, like I would perform and go travel around America and, you know, certain states were open, certain states you were closed. Like in California, you know, Gavin Newsome, he would close churches but kept open strip clubs, which I appreciated. And he kept open the liquor stores and the weed stores. It's like what? And then closed private businesses. He said like if you had more than a thousand people performed, then you had to they had to bring their vaccine cards. So I said, "Okay, just sell 999 tickets. I'm not going to force anybody to do anything." And so it's like it's like the Bruce Springsteen's new movie. I'd love to go see it, but I'm not vaccinated. You know, on Broadway, you couldn't go see Bruce Springsteen, who's a great guy and a really an amazing American and a musician who I'll never not like. I'll always like him. However, I didn't go see his show on Broadway because you had to be vaccinated. You have to have your vaccine card. That is a form of coercion that uh you know I mean you got to go back to like that's something out of the 1940s where uh you know the Japanese internment an American citizen all of a sudden you weren't. So you always have to be aware historically that you're an American citizen until you're not because these Japanese people had everything taken away from them and they were thrown into camps. These were American citizens. So that's something we need to be aware of. And I think you know under COVID we're able to see um your business, your small business, your restaurant shut, shuttered, your ability to make money, your ability to take care of your family was stopped. Yes, they did go up and print money and all this stuff, but at the the same time it was uh at the taxpayers's expense to devaluating all of our money. So, where do we go from here? What what what's next? Enough Americans are awake and aware of the potentiality for this country to become authoritarian. And I I think that that's uh something that they should be aware of. I mean, while I support, you know, the deportation of people who have committed crimes uh or here um illegally, but there are people here that are illegal that are working that are part of the economy. And I think there needs to be if you've been here for 5 years, 7 years working a job, there needs to be some uh accommodation made for you. I think that's just I mean, taking away somebody's nanny is not something that Americans want or like. And I think that even the president mentioned that 6 months ago and I I hope that we while I I abhore what ICE being attacked uh these are just government people. They're doing their job. I think also we have to be aware of what's actually happening in society and that's not a popular decision. I was booed for saying that. I mean the big issue right people have is when you have people that are participating in the system and not making a lot of money and paying their taxes basically having a large population that's outside the system making you know less.
And need the the you know employers needing to pay less that drives everything down. That that is is not good for our economy um and where's our economy going to go? I mean, the replacement of workers now with robotics with AI high. I mean, okay, that's going to happen, but who's going to be able to afford to buy those products? You know, this is made in China. There's 150 uh million workers who know how to make um incredible products that um okay, but if we don't have made in America, who's going to buy the Apple phone? And and are we going to head towards uh you know what most of humanity has been? Very few rich people and a lot of poor people.
Mhm.
So the United States, you know, if you look at 1955 was the um the peak of uh I I think the peak of American power worldwide and also um, you know, you're also dealing with the fact that you know, Europe was destroyed and uh Germany was rebuilding and by the Marshall Plan and Japan was rebuilding by the Marshall Plan and you had about 55% unionization uh over 50% in 1955. So you had a real working class and and literally half of Americans were really, you know, kicking butt and and participating in the system at a high level. And then you see um, you know, now both parents have to work and you're seeing a um uh a tougher America, a less uh prosperous America. You drive through like I did through West Texas and you see town after town after town of shuttered businesses and these places are struggling. Now AI coming in is that going to uh give enough jobs for people? We need to we discuss we at some point in America decided to stop making stuff. Stop being some sort of manufacturer base and those jobs were gone. But what replaced it? I mean, it's just we can't just be a financial system or we also can't just be a system that takes care of sick people. I mean, the uh health care jobs are very plentiful because we have a population that's very sick. So, I mean, where are we going? Um, if we don't get enough Americans healthy, uh, it doesn't matter Democrat, Republican, we will collapse. Our health care system is at a breaking point. If we continue to go the direction we're going in 10 years, I believe we'll be unsustainable. And you just have to look at the numbers. I mean, you know, Robert Kennedy, uh, who's a very good man, you know, talks about like, well, they want to give OMIC ompic as a way for every American. Well, it's $1,500. So, if you give it to every person who is obese, and unfortunately, it's around 40% in America. That that it's it's a trillion dollars. We can't afford to do that. So, how are we going to break this system? We have to get just like the 30% of Americans that u supported the revolution, we need to get 30% of Americans at least to get healthy, to get as healthy as possible to not become part of the medical uh industrial complex of illness of just treating symptoms. If we don't do that, then it doesn't matter who you vote for. We're just going to have to continue to print money and it's going to be completely siphoned off to the medical industrial complex and also to the insurance.
So that's okay. That's super interesting because I know that you know free speech has been a center point of your let's say advocacy, right? Um, and uh, you know, I explored that extensively on this show. And and but for you, you it's like it's like you're making a point of saying, "I need to help Americans, 30% of Americans figure out >> those basic health realities. Health care as opposed to medical care or disease care, some guests have said." Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. How do you think it's going? I think it's we're in a really tough place because Congress can't legislate now because the Senate, you need um unless it's a money bill, you need 60 senators to go along with it. You're not going to get 60 senators to vote for anything. So, what what HHS is doing is the only thing they can do. They can cajole these uh giant food conglomerates to stop making stuff, making people sick. And they're coming they're going to be coming out with a new food guidelines. I remember uh Bobby Kennedy Jr. was the HHS was just talking about that. So that seems that seems like a very positive.
>> If you go by the food pyramid you were going to be obese. Absolutely. And um, you know, we've been lied to since the early '70s when the sugar it was just it's easy to do the Edward Bernay who's the godfather of uh of uh propaganda.
>> Wrote the book.
>> Wrote the book on it and was able to figure out how to manipulate the public into doing things against their best interest by appealing to their desires as opposed to what.
>> Good for them.
>> But he said it was it was for the good of society. Well, he believed capitalism required uh consumerism that was um kind of a quiet consumer. Just keep him buying stuff and in the capitalist society, they'll be happy. And he didn't mean that in I mean he genuinely believed that.
However, um the manipulation of by approaching things by people's desires is exactly what's happening in our political sphere. We are appealing to people's fears and their desires more than they're feeling to their their logic of what's best for them. And if you look at Franklin Delan Roosevelt, President Roosevelt really believed that an informed populace that the that the American people are good people and if they just get >> unfiltered correct information, they're going to make the right choice. And I believe him exactly. And yet you what we've gone now is we have uh our political leaders.
don't really believe that, and they feel like they have to give them tailored information so that they're going to do what they want, or or do what, uh. And so it's just the term was the 19th-century Englishman. I forget his name. He said he could describe people and citizens as the, um, the herd, bewildered herd.
Mhm. Our leaders see us as cattle. Bewildered herd. Not a smart herd. Not a smart herd of cattle. They're trying to figure out. And no, bewildered, confused, not knowing what's happening, scared, and, uh, and that's how we're treated and and, uh, you know, spoon-fed information. Uh, what I believe, you need to be honest with the American population. You need to be the American citizen. You got to tell them what's really happening. This cannot, this cannot continue. We can't stay $37 trillion in debt. Either we're going to blow up the system, which, you know, Dr. David Martin talks about how they're just going to zap the system and blame China, Iran, Russia, or somebody and just start over, which is going to cause mayhem. And who knows what that, what that's going to be like for a long period of time. But we cannot continue to just print money forever, uh, and just, uh, and pass those, uh, the debt on to our, our great-grandchildren. That's an unsustainable system to continue to have our, our population unhealthy. I mean, the Chinese must love it. Their greatest enemy, the biggest superpower the world has ever known, the United States of America, now has a sick population. We had more people, higher percentage of people die in America of COVID because they were unhealthy and overweight than any other country in the world. And if, if that's not a wake-up call, if people don't come to their senses and take personal responsibility, and that's what needs to happen. We must take personal responsibility for our own bodies, for our own freedom, for our own. We must be courageous about that, or we're not going to continue.
And that's what when I went to Berkeley, which there was a riot last week, and I was supposed to go with Charlie Kirk, and I asked him over the summer, I said, "Let's do another university." It was so fun, you know, and it was fun because you had people challenging us. To be a vibrant society, we must be able to be challenged. We got to challenge ourselves. And as the great Andrew Doyle says, we must challenge our certainties. We must, because we must. We can't have a firm foundational belief system that's unchallenged. Then it'll be static. I mean, to, to continue to be creative, to continue to innovate, to continue to be a vibrant culture, we must allow these challenges. So, when I, I said, "Charlie, let's go. Let me, I'm going to go to the craziest place." And he said, "Well, let's go to Berkeley." And so, we went. I mean, he was murdered in front of his children. And, um, I'm not quite sure how to filter that. There seems to be such a disease in our culture and a lack of the most basic human dignity, compassion for this man. And what happened after it exposed so much ugliness in our culture that I don't think it's always been there. I think we're at a, uh, we're at a point where somehow that is accepted by a large group of, uh, the populace. So I went alone after his murder, and I went with, um, his mentor Frank Turk. And, um, uh, there was a group of people at Berkeley who rioted outside and set off tear gas and devices that sounded like gunfire.
Uh, threw things, spit at people, and the police and the Berkeley, uh, the University of Cal Berkeley, to their great shame, did not prevent those people from, uh, interfering. And I include the Berkeley police in that, uh, they did not allow a corridor to get everybody in there. And that's very shameful because that is 1964. That was the free speech movement in universities. And it wasn't for just one side, it was all sides. So for them to fall so deeply off that precipice against, um, and, and to fall into an abyss of censorship is shameful and, um, unfortunate. Um, but it exposes where we're at, at least. And I think I'd rather have it out in the open. That's why free speech is so important. And the idea of censoring, I mean, the Democrats, you know, during the election, Tim Walls said, you know, that doesn't, free speech doesn't include hate speech. Okay. Well, then who gets to decide what hate speech is? And then, and then the government's always going to decide hate speech that, uh, or to limit speech that helps and supports what the government is trying to accomplish, which is to squelch dissent of people who are not going along with their policies. Democrat or Republican, it's the same. Um, so it was disappointing, but at the same time, I was booed and encouraged by the students, Turning Point USA students at Berkeley chapter who showed up, over a thousand.
You know, to come kind of full circle here in our conversation. Um, the thing that I've, when I've been discussing the Charlie Kirk's murder and the whole situation, he personified this kind of person that would try to reach out with love, even to people that clearly didn't disagree. It didn't mean he would agree. It didn't mean he would validate, but it, but he had this particular approach of not treating that other person as an enemy, but just someone that was perhaps mistaken. Um, and it, it reminds me of, of, you know, again, this anecdote you have with Robert De Niro, how to, how to approach things when you have extremes. You know, there's this concept, the principle of mutual inhibition, mutual, mutual generation, and mutual inhibition. You have one extreme breeds another extreme.
We're seeing a lot of this kind of thing, this in society. I wonder if the only way through it, because I believe as you do, that most people are actually good, and there's a lot more good than evil or bad.
Yeah. Out there. It's just that you can kind of forget that, and you can kind of imagine that it's not like that, and you can forget that the person who's, you know, furious right now about something, or got caught up in a, uh, some sort of social contagion or whatever, is actually probably, in most cases, sometimes they might be that really bad person, but in most cases, they're not. They're just kind of mistaken. And I agree, there's a humanity there we need to appeal to. And it's just like when you're driving.
But you did, like, you, my point is, your example is, you did it like it worked. I, it's just, it was instinctive at that moment, and I, I was like, at a place in my life, and I, I really, I think you have to come from, I mean, it, it has to be, what does this person need right now? And at that moment, that person needed some love and some reassurance and, and humanity.
Mhm. You know, when you're driving in your car, it's an interesting thing that happens sometimes. There's no, you want to merge, you know, and there's a big line of, they won't let you in. It's like, just because it's, they just see the blinker and go. But if you put your hand out, people realize something.
Oh, that's right. There's a human being inside there.
Mhm. And so sometimes, in our worst moments, we must remember there's a human being inside there. And never forget that, because every human being is deserving of being treated with dignity by the very virtue of them being human.
And that is something we must never forget, or all sorts of depravity can fall to our society.
And, um, whereas, you know, there's always going to be the potential for abuse. There's always going to be a potential for a society to, to do these drastic measures, whether it's during COVID and closing of businesses and churches, or whether it's the Japanese internment, or, you know, or, um, whether it's the, uh, drinking fountains of, uh, and, you know, the National Guard having to come out to let this one black student attend the University of Alabama.
Mhm. There's always going to be that potentiality. But in this great country, and it's an amazing experiment in freedom, which is unique in world history, like the United, the United States and the, you know, the, the our First Amendment. Whereas you take a look at the French and the, um, the difference between the French and the, uh, is it the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which is I think 1787, and then it went to, by 1791, it was over. It went back to cutting off people's heads again. Whereas the American Revolution was very particular and very special because we, we didn't just abolish everything that was that happened before. We kept the property rights. We kept basically everything good stuff about England. And, um, that's an incredible system here that it would be that this, um, is not an accident that the United States, you know, people all over the world look to our free speech as a beacon for, uh, freedom. All over the world, people look to this. So it is, uh, not just important for the United States, but in all its imperfections, and it'll always have the potentiality to do something, but because of that free speech, which was, I, I love that they put that before guns. They could have easily, the Founding Fathers, guns first. But they said, they realized, and George Washington specifically realized, there's something way that was more important than guns was something, there was another weapon, the weapon of our words.
Mhm. To, to enshrine and to continue our freedom to question our government without, um, uh, the government, the being able to imprison you or murder you.
But even deeper than words, you know, freedom of your soul, right? The freedom of conscience. I mean, that's, that's me embellishing a tiny bit here.
But yes, but also because freedom works both ways. Freedom of speech, like the other day when I was, um, last week at, uh, the University of Cal Berkeley, the thing about freedom of speech is, is it, it works. It's, it's bookended. It's not only the ability someone to speak their mind. It's also the freedom of someone to listen to it.
For someone to can hear that. And they, they can take that information and that speech, and then they can interpret that how they want. And that's why hearing bad ideas is just as important as hearing the good ideas, because then you could decide, I don't want that. And the idea that the government's going to be their, you know, the citizen's nanny to protect them from some sort of speech that that could, could, uh, endanger them, I think that's something that is, um, abhorrent and, and something that is, uh, goes against what, you know, Franklin Roosevelt thought of Americans. These are good people. Give them the information, and they're going to make the right choice always. And Americans are really good people. And yes, we could be inflamed, and we could be tribal, but we can also meet people in the middle, and we can move away from that tribleness. And in that moment with Robert De Niro, it was just a simple gesture of saying, of appealing to somebody and saying, "Look, whatever you're feeling about it is not going to interfere, and I'm not going to feel that way about you. I love you." And that's powerful. And I think at the end of the day, if we can really take that Christian ethic of, um, of showing that light, it will always, it'll always, um, overpower darkness.
Well, Rob Schneider, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you, Yan. Thanks for having me.