Yesterday during a conversation with actor Russell Crowe. Joe Rogan made a point that, well, I think it's fair to say most Americans can agree with about the epidemic of political corruption. We're trying to say that you're either red or that you're blue. Right. The idea that you can split all of us into two camps is kind of nuts. [00:00:20] It's nuts, you know? Yeah, it's nuts. In this country in particular. I don't know about Australian politics, but we only have two parties, and they're both essentially financed by enormous corporations. So it's a it's a ruse. The whole thing's a ruse. And you have different social issues on each side that come up and and then [00:00:38] it becomes this, you're with us or against us, right versus left. But it's it's going nowhere good. - Nowhere good. - No. We're good now, Jake. We have data to back this up and we'll get to that. But first, your $0.02. I mean, this is the essence of my book. Justice is coming. [00:00:55] Yes. It's all a ruse. It's all theater. And mainly Sharon. I'm so excited that others have begun to figure out, yeah, they're just getting you to fight so that they can rob the place blind. So let's tell them about the great American robbery. [00:01:11] Let's do that. Rogan is right. Special interest groups fund both parties. Take crypto, for example. After the 2024 election, CNN reported this. The cryptocurrency industry's leading super PACs plowed 131 million into [00:01:27] congressional races this election cycle to help elect dozens of pro crypto lawmakers. While individual billionaires with crypto interests, they spent millions to help return Donald Trump to the white House. Crypto super PACs spent heavily on Republicans as well as key Democrats. [00:01:45] How about the banking and real estate industry? According to Open Secrets, they've donated nearly the exact same amount to congressional Republicans and Democrats since 1990, topping $4.5 $5 billion total. I mean, just look at it. It's even split just about money to Congress from the financial insurance [00:02:03] real estate industry. That is what the graph shows. The defense industry also poured money into candidates on both sides of the aisle, with contributions exceeding $300 million. So the corruption is definitely bipartisan, and the American people know this. 84% of respondents in a Pew Research [00:02:23] poll agree special interest groups and lobbyists have too much to say in what happens in politics. And that is true for both Republicans and Democrats. So yeah, this is no surprise to you, Jenkin. [00:02:39] You've been talking about this for gosh, I don't know how many. I don't want to age you, but probably decades at this point. But this has been going on for so long. Why now? You know why now? Are people waking up? Will it matter? Will it make a difference? Yeah. [00:02:54] So, I think it will eventually make a difference. I think the revolution has begun. We literally do a show called The Revolution now at 8:00 eastern, right after The Young Turks. That's 6 to 8, every day, and, [00:03:09] and I now, see it not just on the left, but also on the right and the middle. Right. So Rogan, backed Trump this summer and before he backed Bernie, I think it's fair to say that Rogan's independent. It's also fair to say that he maybe these days leans a little. [00:03:26] Right. Maybe a lot. Right. In some of the instances. And we certainly disagree with him on some of the culture war issues. ET cetera. But it it's super refreshing and it's wonderful to hear that he gets it. The whole thing is a play, guys. And by the way, the people who put on the play is chapter five of my book. [00:03:44] That's mainstream media. I called it The Matrix. And so now it's funny because some others on the right also call it the matrix Because it's the matrix, because corporate media tells you and it's the most important arm of corporate rule. [00:04:00] It's the number one shield and weapon that they have. They'll tell you no, money in politics is not that big a deal. That's why they almost never talk about it. So when legislation is being discussed, there's money being poured in by the hundreds of millions of dollars. [00:04:17] In fact, later in today's show, we're going to have a discussion about the Big Pharma, which is one of the biggest lobbying groups in the whole country, that the drug companies, of course, they spent $3.6 billion lobbying [00:04:33] over the last three decades. You think they spent $3.6 billion for their health? No. They're buying up all of our politicians. That's why we have these preposterous laws that say we're not allowed to negotiate drug prices, that a company can set the price, and that's it. [00:04:51] You got to pay it. You don't have a choice. That's not capitalism. That's not the free market. No, this is corporatism. Corporations have completely taken over, and they have this faux battle between the Democrats and the Republicans, usually about culture war issues. [00:05:07] That's how they divide you and get you to fight. The people on your left or the people on your right, when in. Of course, you know what I'm going to say? You should be looking up. Look up the rando on your left doesn't have any like. And even if the right wing is right about antifa, like, oh, my God, [00:05:22] there's a dude in Portland. And he protests too hard. And he did something. He did graffiti or antifa. You think that brother had enough power to rig the whole system or a guy on the right? Oh, that guy's racist and he's terrible. [00:05:37] The brother is living in a rental in the middle of Nebraska. He doesn't have any power. The guy who came in across the border a minute ago barely has a dollar in his pocket. He doesn't have any power. The guys with the power. The guys with the money. Up top. Up top. The donors. [00:05:53] So, Sharon, I think that the Great Awakening began with Epstein and Israel, right when Trump came in after saying, oh, we're gonna release Epstein, we're gonna release the Epstein files. And he came in and was like, I'm just kidding. I'm a liar. Just like everyone else. I'm protecting the elites just like everyone else. [00:06:10] I'm the establishment just like everyone else. I'm going to screw you. And no lube on Epstein. Period. Period. I'm never going to give it what you want. I was lying all the way, and I'm going to protect the guilty. Okay? So then he goes, and then on Israel, I'm going to give them [00:06:26] whatever they want, okay? He was so good to me. They give me a lot of money. So now I take your money. And I give it to Israel. And slowly the right wing started to wake up. Right. And we're going to talk about this more in the show later with Rogan versus Shapiro. [00:06:41] And but that's just the tip of the iceberg, guys. So that's a foreign government that's influencing our politics and other foreign governments try to. Israel is by far the best at it, but big Pharma is ten times the size of the Israeli lobby. So that's why they have these enormous monopolies. [00:07:00] They used to have patents that lasted five years. Now they last 12 years. For a lot of these drugs, we're not allowed to negotiate prices. They have complete control over the market. They make they make us pay at least four times as much as other developed nations. [00:07:16] Why are we paying four times what Canada is? Or in a lot of cases, eight times 100 times what Canada, Germany and France are paying? So it's a robbery. It's nothing but a robbery. And all of this is super obvious here. I'll give you more facts because I can't stop. [00:07:33] I mean, this is the the number one issue in the country by a landslide, right? Which is that we don't control our own government. We need to get American sovereignty back. Not just in the case of foreign policy, but also super importantly in domestic [00:07:48] policy and helping the average American. So represent us to the study. A couple of years back, they looked at a five year period. The top 200 corporations gave $5.8 billion in lobbying, campaign contributions, etc.. That's a lot of money, $5.8 billion, right? [00:08:04] You know how much those same companies got back in that same time period, $4.4 trillion. So it's a great return on investment. They give the politicians a dollar, then the politicians give them $1,000 back because it's not the politicians money, it's our money. [00:08:22] And so they're literally robbing us blind to to give to their donors. I can go on and on. Princeton and Northwestern did a study. They studied 20 years, over 2000 bills. You know, what percentage affect the bottom 90%? That's almost all of us. 90% of the country has on public [00:08:40] policy bills that pass 0%. We have no effect at all. That's not a democracy. And in the midst of all this, Sharon. Mainstream media is like. I don't see it. [00:08:56] What what what money in politics. Are you saying Israel has undue influence? You're an anti-Semite, are you? Big pharma having too much influence? No, they're just trying to innovate. Oh, you guys sound conspiratorial. You think the politicians just work for their donors? [00:09:12] Oh, that's a very naughty thing to say about the beloved politicians. Come on, man. If you did real news, you would do like us. All you do is talk about the donors because they're 100% in charge of our government. So if they're 100% in charge. [00:09:29] And I mean, now you got me really hyped up. I was having a good, relatively good Friday. So, nothing's going to change. If they are the league owners, they make the rules. They have all the money. They have the police, the courts, they have everything that we don't [00:09:47] that 90% you were talking about. It's never going to change. We have little spurts, this little spurt in New York with Mamdani. Right. But we all know what's going to happen to him. And I don't hate I hate to be this glass half empty type of person. I'm generally like, I'll never give up. I will never give up. [00:10:03] That's generally my attitude. But when you put it like that, we already don't have a democracy. And how the hell do we fight to get it back? So good news. I have the answer. But first, a couple of things that you mentioned there. Look, Mamdani is actually is the least affected. [00:10:20] Why? Because he's an he's an executive there. He's the mayor of the city, right? So he doesn't have to deal with Congress. Congress is nearly 100% corrupt. So now he's going to have to deal with local politicians. And they also get campaign contributions. But it's a little bit easier to deal with. [00:10:39] And since he's the executive, he has a little bit more power than an average guy would in a legislature. Right? So? So he's got a halfway shot at doing something interesting. Now, on the other hand, if you're a legislator, so, for example, [00:10:56] progressives under Biden, they said, okay, well, you know, we're going to try to get $15 minimum wage. We're going to try to get a little bit of the Green New Deal in. And they had a laundry list of things that we wanted. Almost none of them made it in. And I kept saying to every progressive that went in, for God's sake, [00:11:15] you got to start with money in politics. Because if you don't start with money in politics and you don't fix that, you're not going to be able to win on any other issue. And no one listened. Okay. And part of the reason they don't listen is because, number one, when they get [00:11:33] into Congress, they get a giant heads. And so they're like, oh, I am a congressperson. I don't listen to anyone anymore. Okay, so that's .1.2. More importantly is if they talk about money in politics, they have to talk about how their colleagues are corrupt. [00:11:49] Because why do look, that bar graph we just showed you about, the party contributions between 1990 and 2024 that shows you everything you need to know, because when the Democrats tell you, oh, it's those Republicans [00:12:07] that are getting paid off by the donors, and they work for the Koch brothers, and they're terrible, right? They're getting the same exact amount of money and usually from the same exact donors. Same thing for the Republicans. Oh, we're the populist. We're going to look out for the average guy. So why does nothing ever change no matter who's the president? [00:12:23] You're like Biden, you like Trump, and nothing changes because they've given an equal amount to both parties and they have them under complete lockdown. So that's why those corporate politicians. And what's a corporate politician? People who take corporate PAC money, and that's about 98% of Congress. [00:12:42] So they own 98% of Congress. That's why nothing ever good happens for us, because they're not our representatives. So I know what you're thinking. For God's sake, where's the good news? Okay. So. Okay, so there's. Yeah, I read your mind. There's two things that we can do, right? [00:13:01] Number one, you can change a party completely from the top. So all we have to do is win the Democratic primary in 2028. Our candidate, a clean, honest, smart, strong candidate. I know finding one is tough, but it's a country of 330 million people. [00:13:19] We don't have to just pick politicians. We pick the right guy and he can change the whole party overnight. See, that's when the media will go, oh, that's so naive. You can't do that. Really? Because I saw Trump do it. I saw Trump do it with my own eyes. We all saw it. So they're lying to you? Yes, One guy can change the entire party. [00:13:36] So if the populist candidate wins the 2028 primary, he goes, that's it. We're not taking corporate PAC money in the primaries anymore. The most honest candidate, the one that's going to serve the voters, is the person who's most likely to win in a primary where there's no corporate PAC money. [00:13:52] And that person will be a fighter. That person is more likely to help you with policies. Now, is that enough? No. But then that person not only can clean up their own party, not only can pass some bills around the edges on money and politics, but to me the most important thing is they could use the bully pulpit [00:14:10] to push for the one thing that will solve all this and we'll get our democracy back. And it's not an exaggeration, guys, because the thing that I'm going to suggest is super powerful. It's also very difficult. It's an amendment. Constitutional amendments go above the Supreme Court. [00:14:25] The Supreme Court is who legalized bribery in decisions in 76, 78. And then, of course, in Citizens United. And again, this is the whole thesis of my book. Justice is Coming. Check it out and you get the whole full story. And you see the almost a CSI, a crime scene of how they stole [00:14:43] our democracy from us. It was a plan. They executed the plan and it worked brilliantly. Now we've got to reverse that plan. The way that we reverse it is by going above the Supreme Court and getting an amendment. But now you say, well, wait a minute. The amendments are so hard, you got to get two thirds of either [00:15:00] Congress or the states to agree, and three quarters of the states to ratify. Three quarters of the states. How are you going to get anybody to agree to that when we're such a split country? Well, Sharon, there's one thing we are not split on. Over 90% of Americans hate money in politics. So you ask a Republican voter or Democratic voter, [00:15:17] are you in favor of that corruption where our politicians take donor money? Or do you want to end that corruption? And the answer is overwhelming. We want that amendment, and we can't get it without a big enough spotlight because corporate media hates amendments, hates change, loves the status quo. [00:15:35] So how do you get past the corporate media with a guy with a giant bully pulpit? The president must be covered. They can't be like, oh, the president wants a constitutional amendment, but we're not going to talk about it, right? And once you start that process and you shine that spotlight, people are [00:15:50] going to love that amendment and there's going to be a giant push for it. They will play the tape of me saying this now, although they should go back to 2011 when I started Wolf Pack and get all of these tapes of me saying this because it's going to happen, but we got to pick the right guy in the primary in 2028. [00:16:10] Okay, I think everything it sounds like it could actually work. It actually what you said, you actually convinced me. At first I was kind of rolling my eyes and I was getting a little restless. But then when you brought it home. Yeah, sure, we can all get behind that. But then I remembered that they keep starting these pockets of culture wars, [00:16:26] and it works, and it distracts people and maybe they get off of this amendment thing. So I'm almost there. I'm almost there. But, Sharon, one last quick thing. So I hear you. And there's I mean get passing amendment is difficult. [00:16:42] Enormously difficult under any circumstance. Right. And Wolfpack started now 14 years ago. And we got to pass it only five states and then they started rolling them back, etc.. Pelosi and McConnell put a hurting on Wolfpack. To be honest, they're the corporate leaders [00:16:58] of their parties throughout those years. And they're like, no, we love money in politics. So they they stopped that movement in a lot of ways. That's why we need someone at the very top that you can't stop because the president's microphone is too large to stop. He can push through anything as long as it's popular enough. [00:17:16] And money in politics is definitely popular enough. So the last piece of hope, to address your concerns, Sharon, is the culture wars have been ripping us to shreds for decades now, right? But now not only have some on the left like us realized, [00:17:32] oh, wait, the whole point is to divide us. Don't don't feed into it. Don't feed the trolls. Right? But now even some on the right have begun to recognize it. So are there still plenty of people saying, I hate Muslims, I hate this, I hate that Jews, trans whatever. Sure, of course that still exists. [00:17:50] But there is now an awakening where a faction of the right are going. Oh, the culture wars. That's how they're screwing us. I'm now seeing more and more tons of independents and more and more right wingers online going, oh, get off the culture wars. [00:18:05] I got it. It's it's a bag of squirrels. It's meant to distract us. Look at the actual robbery. That's the distraction. Look at the robbery. So if we can get everybody to look at the robbery at the same time, that's our only chance of stopping it. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. [00:18:22] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.