Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
The Establishment’s Desperate Demands That Nobody Engage With RFK Jr. Plus: Does Cuba Have the Right to Host Chinese Bases on Its Soil?
Video Transcript
June 22, 2023
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Good evening. It's Wednesday, June 21st. Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube. 

Tonight, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is consistently receiving between 15% and 20% among Democratic voters, while Marianne Williamson is receiving 6 to 8%. That's close to one-third of the Democratic Party electorate, which, before the campaign is even underway, is saying they intend to support a candidate other than Joe Biden. Nonetheless, the explicit position of the Democratic Party and its operatives – and MSNBC personalities – is that Joe Biden is already the Democratic nominee and that he will not even consider debating any Democrat running against him for the nomination. But this insistence of ignoring RFK extends far beyond the Democratic primary. It includes the liberal corporate media outlets. 

Last week, RFK sat down for a remarkable 4-hour discussion with America's most popular podcast host, Joe Rogan. Their discussion was wide-ranging, though mostly focused on what RFK argues are the decades of lies about the help from the health policy establishment about vaccines, including the COVID vaccine, as well as – and this is crucial – the extent to which the health regulatory agencies, including the NIH and the CDC, have been completely captured by industry interest. In other words, the government agencies that are supposed to exert oversight of the pharmaceutical industry are instead controlled by that industry's richest and most powerful corporations.  

As part of that discussion, Rogan and RFK discussed a physician named Peter Hotez – or Prof. Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., as he calls himself – who became one of the leading stars of liberal cable TV and social media during the COVID pandemic. Over the last several years, Hotez expressed some truly alarming and ultimately false views, including demanding for months that everyone has the supreme moral duty to stay at home in order to stop COVID only for a densely packed street protest movement to emerge months later that he liked ideologically – the Post-George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests – at which point he urged everyone to participate. He also equated skepticism over vaccines to terrorism and depicted it as a “Kremlin plot” and thus urged highly militaristic and despotic efforts on the part of the U.S. government to, in his words, aggressively suppress such ideas. Hotez also relentlessly mocked the notion that COVID came from the Wuhan lab – and he still does that even while the most elite scientific units in the Department of Energy and the FBI now believe a lab leak is the most probable cause of the COVID pandemic. 

During that interview with Rogan, RFK said that Professor Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., was one of the most dishonest people in public life in the U.S. and that he had repeatedly requested that Hotez debate him. But Hotez – while giving countless adoring, uncritical interviews to MSNBC, CNN and even TMZ – refused to respond to RFK his debate request. 

After that program, Rogan offered to donate $100,000 to a charity of Hotez, his choice, If he would simply debate RFK in Rogan's programs about all the differences they have on these rather crucial issues. Others jumped on board this call for debate, including Elon Musk, and soon the amount reached was over $1 million to be donated to a charity of Hotez, his choice, simply for appearing for this debate. 

One would think that a debate between a highly informed environmental lawyer who spent decades suing corporate polluters and health agencies RFK and one of the most influential and beloved COVID preachers in liberal media, Professor Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., would be of great value for the country. It would be yet immediately people who call themselves journalists – those who should most seek debate on the most consequential policy debates – instead intervened and began demanding that Hotez not lower himself to debating RFK. They published articles and cable monologues on why Hotez should not put himself in a position where his views would face critical scrutiny and accountability, even though those views have long been intended to influence American public opinion and foreign policy. 

Watching journalists try to stop debates is like watching them become the leading advocates for censorship, which, in turn, is like watching a cardiologist extoll the virtues of cigarette smoking. It is completely contrary to the values that are supposed to define journalism. Yet it is as unsurprising as it is repugnant to watch these employees of media corporations do exactly that. 

Why are liberal establishment loyalists so eager to ensure that nobody engages with or debates RFK, Jr? And why are they particularly desperate that the pieties and orthodoxies they peddled to the public about COVID and lockdowns and the pandemic's origin and vaccines never be openly debates? We'll examine those reasons tonight.

 Then, a major leak of top-secret information occurred again, this time to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that U.S. intelligence has discovered that the governments of Cuba and China have agreed to have a Chinese military base station on Cuban soil. That raises this question: Does Cuba, a sovereign country, have the right to host the Chinese military on its soil if it wishes to do so? When it comes to Russia, the position of the U.S. government, especially those who support endless proxy war in Ukraine, is that Russia has no say of any kind over what happens in Ukraine - if the Zelenskyy government wants to host U.S. military and intelligence officials on its soil, if wants to be part of NATO, if it even allows the U.S. to change its government as it did in 2014, then that is no business of Russia's. Russia has no right to object to what the Kyiv government does on the other side of its border.

So, does this same reasoning apply to Cuba, the United States, and for that matter, the U.S. is currently encircling China with multiple military bases in multiple countries, including some that have nuclear-tipped warheads and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers? If the U.S. is justified in regarding Chinese bases in Cuba as deeply threatening and provocative – and many are calling for the Biden administration to take aggressive action to expel China from Cuba – does China have the same right when it comes to U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines and Australia? Does Russia have the same right regarding a massive NATO new presence on the other side of its border in Ukraine? 

We'll examine those vital foreign policy principles tonight – or whether there are any identifiable principles at all in play. 

As a reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form. You can follow us on Spotify, Apple and all major podcasting platforms. Follow us there. The episode is available 12 hours after they first broadcast, live, here on Rumble. And you can rate and review each episode. It helps the visibility of the program.

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 

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Game of Thrones Actor Liam Cunningham on Gaza Activism and UK Censorship; Journalist Zaid Jilani on Mamdani, Epstein, the State of the Dems and More
System Update #484

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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There are times when we cannot cover everything that is going on that we think deserves attention, and one of the ways we try to rectify that is to bring on guests who we believe are highly informed, engaging and provocative. We have two guests tonight for you who are most certainly all of those things. 

The first is Liam Cunningham, who is the long-time working Irish actor likely best known for his central role as Davod Seaworth in the HBO hit series, Game of Thrones; but for our purposes he is also a very passionate political activist and analyst who has spent decades involved in political activism, in the last two years focused like many people, on the Israeli destruction of Gaza. 

Right after that, we’ll talk to the very independent, heterodox and cantankerous journalist – which I mean in the most flattering way – Zaid Jilani. He was my colleague for years at the Intercept until he left for all the right reasons. We're going to talk about a wide range of topics with him, including the fallout from the DOJ's announcement that it's closing the Epstein investigation with no further disclosures, the state of the race for New York City mayor, where Zohran Mamdani's primary win has sent a lot of people, especially the city's richest, into full meltdown mode. 

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The Interview: Liam Cunningham 

Liam Cunningham is an award-winning Irish actor, as I said, best known for his role in HBO's series Game of Thrones. Various outlets, including The Irish Times, have called him one of Ireland's greatest actors. He's been a political activist for decades, but recently he helped to organize and became a spokesperson for the "Freedom Flotilla,” in which Greta Thunberg and other colleagues were arrested and deported by the Israeli government for attempting to deliver aid to the people of Gaza when the IDF was blockading it. I've followed his work for some time, especially his political work and we are delighted to have him for his debut appearance. Hope it's not the last on the show. 

G. Greenwald: Liam, it's great to see you. I know it's so late in Dublin. I really appreciate your staying up to talk with us. 

Liam Cunningham: No, that's fine. It's way past my bedtime, but an absolute yes. For you, sir, anything. 

G. Greenwald: I appreciate that. All right. So, let's begin with what I just mentioned, which is the role that you played in kind of helping to organize and becoming a very well-known spokesperson for the boat that was intended to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as a way of circumventing the IDF's blockade of food, water, medicine and the like.

I think a lot of people didn't realize at the time what an actually dangerous and courageous mission it was. I remember in 2011, a very similar flotilla attempted essentially the same thing to deliver food to the people of Gaza when there was a blockade there and the IDF actually attacked that ship and killed 10 people on board. You had Nobel Prize winners, holocaust survivors and the IDF just didn't care. They violently attacked it. What was the impetus for your involvement in this particular action, even knowing how dangerous and provocative it might be?

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Trump Mocks Concerns About Epstein; Trump Continues Biden's Policy of Arming Ukraine; Trump and Lula Exchange Barbs Over Brazil
System Update #483

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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 Much of the MAGA world was in turmoil, confusion and anger yesterday –understandably so – after the Trump DOJ announced it was closing the Epstein files and its investigation with no further disclosures of any kind. After all this happened, some attempt was made to try and pin the blame or isolate the blame for all of this on Attorney General Pam Bondi. Yet, Donald Trump himself, today, when asked about all of this, went much further than anyone else when meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House again: President Trump actually mocked and angrily dismissed any concerns over the Epstein matter and how it was handled. 

On our second segment, one of the uniting views of Trump supporters over the last four years has been opposition to the Biden administration's policy of arming, funding, and fueling Ukraine in its war against Russia. Yesterday, however, at the same meeting with Netanyahu, Trump announced that he would continue the Biden policy that he had spent so many years criticizing by now providing defensive arms at least to Ukraine, and he did so based on the longstanding neocon/liberal view that Putin is completely untrustworthy and therefore Russia must be thought because of Putin. That's what Trump himself said. 

Then, we’ll comment on Trump’s lengthy tweet attacking Brazil for its ongoing prosecution of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, during the BRICS Summit being held in Rio de Janeiro. This was something we were going to cover last night and didn't have time to, but we will tonight. Brazil's President Lula da Silva quickly responded, very defiantly, by basically telling Trump to mind his own business. 

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Last night, we covered quite extensively the decision by the Trump Justice Department, not even six months into the administration, to completely shut down and close and stop all investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, as well as announcing that there will be no further disclosures of any documents of any kind, that whatever they've released so far, which has basically been nothing – not basically, has been nothing – is all you're going to get. 

This is a blatant betrayal of multiple promises made by key Trump officials over the last four years, before they were in the White House, but was also a complete 180 in terms of what key Trump influencers and pundits had been saying, including several pundits who are now running the FBI, such as Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, as well as the Justice Department, including Pam Bondi. 

We even showed you an interview that Alina Habba, the Trump attorney who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, appointed by Donald Trump, did with Pierce Morgan while she was in the government, just in February, where she claimed they have a whole bunch of very incriminating lists with shocking names. She said there's video and there are all kinds of documents that are shocking, in her words, and she said they're going to be released over time because we've gone long enough where people who do these sorts of things, including are involved in the Epstein scandal, have no accountability. She said that is ending with the Trump administration. There's going to be accountability. 

Yesterday, the Trump Justice Department said, “No, there's nothing here. We looked. There's no such thing as a client list.” We know we've been promising and that JD Vance repeatedly said, “Where's the client list?” Donald Trump Jr. said, “Anyone hiding the client lists is a scumbag.” Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi accused Biden officials of basically covering up predatory pedophilia by refusing to release the Jeffrey Epstein client list. Now, they're saying there's no client list, that thing we've been talking about and accusing Biden officials of hiding and promising to disclose, that doesn't exist. 

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Trump DOJ: There's Nothing to the Epstein Story; State Dept: Syria's Al-Qaeda are No Longer "Terrorists"
System Update #482

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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One of the most significant scandals among MAGA pundits and operatives within pro-Trump discourse generally over the last four years has been the one involving Jeffrey Epstein. 

Now, in less than five months, the DOJ announced today, the one under Pam Bondi, that they are closing the investigation, given the certainty that they say they have that Epstein had no client list. There's no such thing as an Epstein client list, he never tried to blackmail anyone and no powerful people were involved whatsoever with his sexual abuse of minors. They also say that he undoubtedly killed himself: there's no question about that. 

All of this is such a blatant betrayal of what was promised all of these years, such that all but the most blindly loyal Trump followers – like the real cult numbers, a lot of them almost certainly paid to be that – are reacting with understandable confusion and anger over what happened today and over the last several months. We'll delve into all of this and what this means. 

Then, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the group that al-Golani once led, long known as al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, is no longer officially a designated terrorist group. This is al-Qaeda. We'll explore what all of this shows about the utterly vacant and manipulated propaganda terms, terrorist and terrorism. 

As a note, we did not have enough time, so we’ll talk about President Trump’s tweet attacking Brazil and its government, on the day of the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, some other time soon.

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Earlier today, the Justice Department issued a statement, essentially announcing that they no longer consider any of the questions surrounding what had long been the Epstein scandal to be worthwhile investigation; that essentially all of these questions have been answered, that there's really nothing to look into. 

You can read the Justice Department's statement here.

They're saying this client list that most Trump supporters, I would say, have been accusing the U.S. government, of hiding to protect all the powerful people on this list, now, that they're in power – people like Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, now they're in charge – they're saying, no, actually there is no client list at all. There's at least no incriminating client list, whatever that means. 

I don't know if there is a client list or not, but according to them, there's no incriminating client list. I don't know how you can have a client list that's not incriminating: to be a client of Jeffrey Epstein seems inherently incriminating. They seem to have said what the White House briefing said today when asked about this, because as we'll show you, Pam Bondi went on Fox News and was asked, “Are you going to release the client list?” And she said, “It's sitting on my desk for review.” 

Trump had strongly suggested he would order it released. Now they're saying, “You know what? There is no client list.” 

So, all these claims that Jeffrey Epstein had recordings of prominent individuals who he invited to his island, who had sex with minors, evidently, there's no incriminating material of any kind that would implicate any powerful person. Just not there, they checked. They checked the storage closets, they looked under the beds, just couldn't find anything. All the stuff they had been claiming was there for years, screaming and pounding the table on podcasts, making a lot of money over it, too, accusing Biden officials of hiding this all for corrupt ends, just not there. They looked, couldn't find it. 

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