Transcript for Pelosi Vs. The Populist Music Star with Winston Marshall

I, Charlie, thanks for having me on your show.

Well, I was invited to talk about the issue of populism, populism, of course, is something that's been, in my opinion, a big phenomenon, particularly from 2008, you could probably go further back still, but since the 2008 crash and the combination of social media becoming a big thing, populism has been a worldwide phenomenon. It's something I care about a lot. I particularly care about how ordinary people are written off as populist as baskets of deplorable as your viewers will remember. I think that's all part of the same phenomenon. And I wanted to talk Defend populism. So I agreed to go along. It's a pretty politically incorrect topic I note. If you to defend populism in certain circles is a taboo about a week before the Oxford Union debate. I was informed that Pelosi was my opposition. I didn't know exactly what position she'd take. I didn't know whether she understood what the Oxford Union debate really was. I had a kind of there would be a, you know, you could imagine going in would she be on the, would it be the cliche version of populism as we've heard time and time again, or would it be a more robust attack on populism, which I think that there are intellectually and good attacks on populism that worth engaging in. But I didn't know. And also, of course, learning that Pelosi was my opposition. I mean, is there anyone who personifies the elite that the populist movement in America is against better or more so than Nancy Pelosi? So, of course, that change what I was going to say, I had to address some of her hypocrisies. And so you get the speech that I made. And I mean, I can color in a little bit more about what happens.

Well, it starts, so the Oxford Union debate people who don't know. It's something that's been going on for 200 years. The students come together to debate issues. Some of them, it's kind of academic. They don't necessarily believe in what they're arguing, but they'll make the position. And usually the people who are in the Oxford Union, the students end up being politicians. walk around the rooms of the Oxford Union as we were guided through, we see photographs of Boris Johnson and other various later to become prime ministers. Excuse my English, that was terrible phrase there. And so you have these students who are a lot of them end up being successful politicians in The even the boxes that you see in the video were donated, I think, by Churchill, I think they were actually used in Parliament at one point. So there's some prestige to doing it. And I have friends who have done it, I've done very well. Constantine Kisson did a very famous Oxford Union debate against wokeism. As wokeism gone too far, I'm sure your viewers will remember that from last year. Hello, see, I didn't know, as I said what I'd expect. We were all to have dinner beforehand, and I would say, and it's important to add new ones to this thing. She was very nice. We had dinner with her husband, some of the students, some of the other people debating, and actually, I was directly next to her chief of staff. This was a really interesting insight, because Firstly, they were clueless about what the debate was. They hadn't given it any prep. I think she's done the whole day meeting various politicians and political activists. All of whom would have no one would have criticized her. But the insight was interesting was that talking to her team, they would use words like equity without blinking. They would have dogmatic positions on the environment that they would just dish out without second thought. And even at one point, I brought up RFK. And the immediate kickback from the Chief of Staff was, what's his real agenda? Why is he really running? Now, RFK, sorry, yeah, RFK Jr is worth bringing up because I consider him a populist for him. The elite is the pharmaceutical. industry big farmer it's lobbyists in DC and that's that's his elite that he's been targeting as well as democratic and well I guess the uni party elite see this part of that is in his rhetoric or in his in his discourse So, firstly, I got a sense coming into this bubble of a people, now his, but he's the biggest takeaway. They were so convinced that this election was democracy itself on the table, that if Trump was to win this election and they never used the word Trump, they couldn't even say his name, like Voldemort, he who must not be named, they couldn't say his name, but they talked about Trump without using his name in such a way that any one to even challenge it was like they'd never heard the other side of the argument it was like they'd never they couldn't even engage with maybe something that Trump had got right it was they were convinced that they had to defeat Trump to save democracy. And this is, I'm sure your viewers and yourself will have been paying post attention to this. They've literally been undermining democracy in order to, in their mind, save democracy. The famous example, as I mentioned in my speech, is taking our or trying to take off Trump from the ballot in both Maine and Colorado. And all of this, and I talk about how they undermine free speech, all in the name of democracy, of course, democracy about free speech, Charlie. It's not democracy. So that was a very interesting insight. But the nuance I want to give to it is they were actually very nice. Nancy did photographs with us. They were very courteous and very courteous of all the students. They did photographs. There was no air. There was no arrogance. I know I say that because I've seen in the perspective there's a real dislike of what Pelosi represents and and I really dislike a lot of her politics and a lot of her political hypocrisies but it's important to remember these people are human too and it's an interesting in a way I mean I'm curious for super quick essentially so nice that you give any stock tips There's a good question. And I actually avoided bringing up the stock tips in my speech for a reason. I wanted to get her just on her political hypocrisy of which there are many, so many of the facts.

I'm actually rather surprised that our steamed opposition congressman Pelosi is on that side of the motion. I thought the left was supposed to be anti elite. I thought the left was supposed to be anti establishment. Today, particularly in America, the globalists left have become the establishment. I suppose for Ms. Pelosi to have taken this side of motion should be arguing herself out of a job.

Well, it's really worth watching her speech and full, although it's kind of a hate watch. It's very frustrating. So firstly, she cannot find democracy as you rightly point out. She tries to, but she seems that she goes on a long ramble about all the things that are key to democracy, like free speech, free media, a lot of things that I happen to think Democrats have been deliberately undermining. But she hasn't, isn't able to define democracy as representative, you know, the, I can't imagine you remember the exact Oxford English dictionary definition of democracy, but representative government, she, she isn't able to do that. Her video or rather her speech is pretty shocking if you, if you watch it. Firstly, She uses the word ethno-nationalist five times, and the cherry on top is a new word she'd created called ethnic negativity. And she does this deliberately. It's the same as calling everyone racist. Now, this, in my opinion, is Demagogery. Demagogery, of course, we are told Trump is a Demagog, playing to the prejudice of ordinary people. But in her speech, Pelosi is practicing Demagogery, and I'll explain. Demagogery, Plan to the prejudices in this case, Pelosi's Plan to the prejudices. of ordinary progressive Americans, of even the elites. The prejudice is that if you are a transporter, if you are a maga, if you are even conservative, or would dare consider voting Republican, you must be a racist, you must be an ethno nationalist. That is a prejudice, a prejudice that is so obviously ridiculous, not least because of CNN's poll last month. when they showed that the black vote for Trump has gone from something like 12% to something like 28% that Hispanic vote for Trump has gone up to 48%. So unless Pelosi thinks these are ethno-nationalists, this whole argument is ridiculous, but it's a continuation of Hillary's deplorable, it's it's it's writing off half the country as racist and everyone's fed up with that dialogue. So, but that's not the worst thing in her speech, by the way. The worst thing is she says she uses the word block. She says that these people who, I guess, don't vote Democrat are blocked. She's the word blocked from making good decisions and choosing democratic policy by and she uses a quote here. God. gaze and guns. Well, more specifically, it's a model of words, but essentially she's saying God and their culture. Yes, she thinks that God and the culture of half of Americans is stopping them from voting Democrat. Why is so frustrating for me, or frustrating about hearing that, is that she is completely unreconstructed from 2016? When Trump won, instead of some much much needed self-reflection about why he won, why their policy wasn't working. She still is of the assumption that people are too uneducated, that too stupid. This is another thing we hear all the time, and she said it in the speech, the uneducated, as if they're not smart enough, they're not educated enough to see the correct choices between them. It's such arrogance, and it's really succinctly, I don't know.

US corporations spent over $2 billion a year lobbying in DC. Two-thirds of Congress received funding from pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer alone spent $11 million in 2021. They made over $10 billion in profit. No wonder then that 66% of Americans think the economy is rigged against them for the rich and the powerful. And by the way, we used to have a word for when big business and big government were in cohorts. And I think any students here of early 20th century Italian history know what I'm talking about.

Yeah. Well, so the point I'm trying to make here, I'm sure everyone's already picked up on, is that, well, how can if you're supposed to represent the people? How exactly are you supposed to represent the people? And also take money from these giant corporations. These corporations wouldn't give you money if it wouldn't pay off. So how can you represent the people and simultaneously these corporations? It's impossible. And I have to add, it's important. No, it's that half of Congress are also in the pocket of the gun lobby. So this isn't just a democratic problem. I think it's left and right. And I really think that the populist movement, which we've seen, isn't a right-wing populist movement. It's at the moment appears right. Well, yes.

I will respond to that. Can we just go to the left wing populism point? Because I think it's an important place. Yes, please. Bernie was the left wing populist movement, and he was snubbed out by the elite DNC, the elites in the DNC. And they were very successful in getting rid of them, and it's very important to note that 25% of Bernie supporters did not support Hillary, and half of that 25% voted for Trump. So the point being is that the populist movement isn't a left-right thing, it's an up-down thing. And it was the case that they got rid of burning. But I would say that there was Occupy Wall Street was a left wing populist movement. You can actually go back all the way to 1999 and the battle for the Seattle, which was that very much the start of the left wing populist movement. And it was actually anti globalization. So there's aspects of that. movement that have come across the right wing population. Because there's a lot of people, whether they think that these solutions are left or right wing economically, they might agree on what the problem is, which is what the populism, which comes to answering your second question about the good aspects and the negative aspects of populism. I address some of the negative aspects of populism. I make the point in my speech that All political movements, whether they are populist or not, a susceptible to violence who could forget the insurrection of June and July 2020 at the Portland Federal Court House, something I challenged Pelosi on. I didn't mention my speech. that one of the common attacks on populism is that it's against pluralism, it's against pluralistic society. But then I would say that all political movements are a danger to pluralism. And the very recent example of that is the 2023, I think it was 20, I might immediately earlier this year, when the Supreme Court judged, that Harvard were breaking a constitution by not allowing or by how they treated Asian applicants to their universities. And that's democratic. policy, that's democratic ideology, that certain groups should be treated differently. And that's not populist. So my point being that all political movements have the ability of the tyranny of the majority to use detectables language. What is populism at its best? Well, in simple terms, and again, this is what I argue in my speech. What is the point in universal suffrage in not to keep elites in check? What is the point in universal suffrage is that if not to keep our political leaders accountable. I'm not against elites. We need someone to run countries. We need someone to run businesses. I'm not against people being wealthy. A lot of the time, maybe even most of the time, they've earned that money and it's fair enough that there's theirs. But we want a fair society. We want everyone to feel like they can play. and they can be a part of society and that's why we even have democracy, I think. So even though technically or semantically populism is not equal to democracy, I would say that they're pretty damn close.

Yeah, absolutely. And not only that, I think it's Biden is the biggest recipient of dark billionaire money in American politics today. What happened after 2016 is that, and it's continuing today, the Democrats seem to have given up on the fact that they can persuade people and they've mobilized all of the institution, which they run. So that's everything from the media mainstream media, the perfect example of that is how they snuffed out. No one reported on the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was but a month before the 20, 20 presidential election. The only people to do so with a New York post. And that's just a one example of how the mainstream media not only show their contempt for democracy, but also the people. But that story continues with... how we have everything we saw through the Twitter files about how big tech are responding. So all of tech was mobilized against the people. We only have an insight really apart from a little bit here and there into what happened to Twitter because of Elon Musk's purchase of the company. We saw through the Twitter files then continued how intelligence were contacting big Twitter and others to try and snuff out stories, snuff out anyone who went against government narrative on COVID. That was one example, but also we saw exposed Matt Tybe did a fantastic explosion of the Hamilton 68 project and and Russia gates. How they had to bring into question the legitimacy of 2016 victory. So they, and that's not just the start of it.

Well you'd be better equipped to answer that for your great country country of course that I love very deeply. I think what one thing that can be done is to stop being politically correct, stop worrying about telling the uncomfortable truths And that even means addressing mistakes made on whatever side you happen to be on, right? Or left, populist or anti-populist. I think a bit more honesty would go a long way. But honestly, the real problem lies with the blinkered worldview of these elites who are desperately clinging to power. And I'm not sure exactly what can be done for people like Madden Pelosi. I don't think that they are prepared to engage. We saw only last week she recommended that Biden not get on stage with Trump for the debates before the election. These people don't even want discourse. There's no honor or dignity in that. And it's very frustrating. I just hope that the new generation of young people Oh, I tell you one thing, it's very important when we see corruption like we see in these elites. It's tempting to become anti that. And of course, I'm against that. But we don't want to become what they are. We want to be the example that they're not, which means engaging with political imponents, which means it's whenever possible the best or having good faith conversations with people who might have completely different visions of the future. And finding common ground because I think the populist of right and left in your country in mind often agree on what the problems are. I know this what I'm talking about seems very idyllistic and and utopian, but what can I possibly say?

Well, we got absolutely worked in the room. I think we lost like something, 170 to 60. You could tell that the room, there's at one point she starts during my speech. She starts ranting about January, 6th in the room, applaud her. That's not to say the one people in the room who were on my side at the end of the debate, maybe a dozen young lads, maybe some of them listened to your podcast, Charlie, came up and were great for that. I said, the uncomfortable stuff. But if you look at the response online, it's been pretty impressive. I've had the displeasure of viral moments before, and I would say that this one has been almost 100% positive Because I think there's truth and what I'm saying, I think that people are resonating with the basics of my argument and there hasn't really been a huge attack on the content of what my saying from from the other side and maybe it's it's you know, it's been covered in alternative media, but And I've done Peas Morgan and Rogan mentioned it and you're talking about it, but it's been completely ignored in mainstream media despite its massive morality online. That tells us a lot about what's going on in mainstream media, at least. But I guess, yeah, I think that's, well, I think it's been a positive moment anyway.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on Charlie. And congratulations on your new child. I thank you. I send blessings to you and your wife. Thank you.