Watch the full episode here: 

https://rumble.com/v3cpfp0-system-update-show-138.html

Good evening. It's Monday, August 28. 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. 

As many of you know, we were traveling last week to attend the Republican presidential primary where we interviewed several people as well. I made several podcast appearances last week on a large podcast, you can look for that, but we are now back in our studio and we'll be on for the entire week and the weeks to come at our regularly scheduled time. 

Now, tonight, I am not surprised that Nikki Haley turned in a competent and forceful performance at the first Republican presidential debate held last week in Milwaukee. Haley is a shrewd and effective politician. That's how she got elected to three terms in the House representing South Carolina and then became that state's first female governor in 2010, reelected in 2014, and then weaseled her way into becoming Trump's ambassador to the United Nations for about a year and a half – despite explicitly advocating the exact warmongering neoconservative ideology that Trump insisted he intended to vanquish. Nikki Haley is ambitious, calculating and deeply careerist – and she says whatever powerful people want to hear in order to help advance her political career. And at that, she's quite skillful. But being an effective and calculating politician does not mean one is an honest politician or a good person, or that one will exercise power for any ends other than ones that are malignant and destructive. 

All one needs to do to understand Nikki Haley's actual ideology and her actual agenda, as is true of most politicians, is simply look at who is most important in financing and promoting her campaign. When one does that, the picture is anything but ambiguous. When Haley left the Trump administration after just two years, she immediately converted herself from what she had spent her entire adult life being – a debt-ridden, barely middle-class political official – to someone who, in less than three years after leaving, amassed a vast personal fortune of at least $8 million solely by speaking to and offering various services for pro-war, neocon and corporatist groups. 

Haley's candidacy seems to be based largely on two – and only two goals: 1) cheerleading the signature policies of the Biden administration's foreign policy, namely fueling the war against Russia and Ukraine, with no end in sight and with hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ money, and 2) encircling China in order to promote a decades-long Cold War that will serve corporate donors in the military-industrial class. 

Domestically, she tosses in a few culture war bromides and clichés to excite conservatives but what she's really doing is championing the agenda of the big corporate donor class that finances her campaign and is desperate to win back control of the Republican Party and making it as it was prior to Donald Trump's election in 2016. For example, at the same time that she insists that endless sums of money be sent to President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians, she wants to cut the Social Security of Americans who aren't nearly as wealthy as she is. Haley is now being promoted by some of the nation's worst but most influential voices, and it is therefore vital to look at who and what she really is. 

Then, as is true of Julian Assange’s wife and his brother, his father – the Australian citizen, John Shipton – has been traveling the world attempting to drum up support for his son, both among world leaders and populations around the globe. Assange's father last week and this week is traveling in Brazil and we were able to meet with him for an in-studio interview, which we filmed yesterday. 

The persecution of Assange by the U.S. security state and the British government is certainly something this audience is well familiar with. We have reported on it extensively and will continue to do so, given that we agree with the consensus view of every press freedom and civil liberties group in the West that the attempt to imprison Assange for WikiLeaks publication of true and authentic documents in 2010, the attempt to imprison him for life as punishment for that, is the single greatest threat to press freedom. 

Assange’s father is as smart and sophisticated as the WikiLeaks founder himself is. I didn't know that until I met him for the first time yesterday, and he provided some genuinely fascinating and new insights about recent developments in this case, including the reason the Australian Government has finally become very vocal in demanding the return of its citizen; why The Biden administration is under more pressure than ever to find an exit out of the crisis that it created and what solutions are now not just possible but plausible in finally, obtaining freedom for Julian Assange. We were honored to meet Assange’s father for the first time and are excited to show you what we think is a very illuminating and even news-making interview about the case of this brave pioneer of transparency in confronting the evils of the U.S. security state. 

As a reminder, a few program notes.

We are encouraging our audience to download the Rumble app, which works both on your phone and your smart TV and will help you follow our show and other shows and enable notifications. Last week, for example, we were live on the air at various times other than our normally scheduled ones and if we're a little late, you don't have to wait: you'll be automatically notified whenever our show begins. That helps both our show and Rumble as a platform that we think deserves a lot of attention. We actually did an interview last week in person with the Rumble CEO about various confrontations that Rumble has pursued in defense of free speech that really proves the authenticity of its cause. So, I hope you'll check out that interview and understand why Rumble is important to promote. 

As another reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form. You can find each episode 12 hours after our live show here, on Rumble, across all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple. If you follow, rate review the show on those platforms, it really helps boost this show's visibility. 

Finally, if you want to support what we do here as an independent journalist, you can simply sign up as a member of our Locals community. The red button to do so is right below the video player here on the Rumble page. Members of our Locals community have access to show transcripts daily delivered to your inbox, a day after the show airs. Each Tuesday and Thursday, we have a live interactive show with our subscribers where we hear your feedback, take your critiques and comment on or listen to your suggestions for topics and for guests. To obtain access to all that, simply sign up as a member of our community. 

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