Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. 

To read more about Episode 249, visit the main episode page.

Michael Moore [00:00:14] Hello. This is Rumble with Michael Moore. I’m Michael Moore. Welcome, everyone. So much going on right now. So much to dive into. But I’m going to make this one today a little personal. Before we get into that, I want to talk about something I saw in the news yesterday just to lead us off here. So we have, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., we have a number of memorials. There is the Lincoln Memorial. There’s the Washington Monument. There’s the Vietnam Memorial, the World War II memorial. There’s the Martin Luther King Memorial, the FDR Memorial — you get the gist, right? And there’s this Korean War memorial that got put up after the Vietnam Memorial because people were like, “Hey, what about Korea?” And then people were like, “Yeah, what about Korea?” I mean, it was a three year war we were in. Let’s see ’50, ’51, ’52 oh it’s about more than three years. But nobody really knows or remembers what that was about or what the point was. I mean, here we were, just a little over four years after the end of the World War II, and we were in another war. What must that have felt like? World War II took so much out of everybody — certainly if you lived in Europe. But, you know, here in this country, we were in the war from the end of ’41 till the summer of ’45. Now, all of a sudden, in June of 1950, we’re in something called the Korean War because the communists from North Korea, with the help of the Chinese, were invading — they wanted the whole Korean Peninsula to be one way, and preferably they wanted the communist way. And we didn’t want that. And so we went to war with them. And in the end, it was a stalemate, and nobody won the war. A line was drawn. Top half was North Korea, the bottom half of South Korea. Both were dictatorships. We supported the dictatorship of the South. And why? I don’t know. I don’t know. What I do know is the beginning of a number of wars after World War II, where we essentially did not bomb, kill, invade people who were white. So from the last few months of World War II, where we were fighting the Japanese, then less than five years later, we’re fighting the Koreans, and then a whole bunch of little things after that, going into the Dominican Republic and of course, eventually Vietnam. But what was interesting about this report is that what they’ve done is now they’ve expanded the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., and they’ve added a wall not too dissimilar from the Vietnam War Memorial Wall. Where in, with Vietnam, they list all the names of American troops who died in Vietnam. And they have to keep adding names because people are still dying from Agent Orange, other ailments caused by the war. But it’s up around 59,000+ on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Now, they’ve done the same thing with the Korean Memorial — they put all the names of the American dead, but not just the American dead, they’ve put the names of the Koreans who fought with Americans. They’ve got their names on this wall. And this new memorial is paid for entirely by the South Korean government. As, what they said, as a way to thank the American people for the sacrifice they made. But, well, while I thought that was a good idea in terms of acknowledging the Korean dead, if we really were against war, all of us, we’d want to put the names up of all the dead regardless of what side you’re on — especially when it’s a war that is just a crazy war. A war that merely makes no sense. I would put World War I as one of those wars, certainly Vietnam — wars that have nothing to do with our self-defense. In other words, nobody is picking up a gun to defend my life, your life, their life. I’m talking about wars where we travel hundreds if not thousands of miles because they have something we want. And we use to try to give a fake reason like, oh, it’s because they’re communists or, you know, they’re Muslim terrorists or whatever we would come up with. And so the American people get snookered into these wars that have nothing to do with the safety and the preservation of this country. But what would it look like if the Vietnam War Memorial had the name of all the date of Southeast Asia — Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, all the people we killed? What would that wall look like? I mean, if you’ve been to this very powerful Vietnam War memorial with its nearly 60,000 names, it’s… wow. What would a wall with 4 million look like? 4 million dead in these Southeast Asian countries from the time of our involvement. Maybe you should put the — the French were conducting the war before us, maybe put the people up there that they killed. What a statement against war, wouldn’t that be? If the wall had to go for a mile. Or a square mile. Name after name after name of the human beings who are killed — for what reason? No Vietnamese ever attacked us, ever killed one of us here where we’re living, didn’t try to undo or destroy our country. Someday, maybe. Maybe when we reach a point where we oppose all war, all forms of violence, using weapons to kill other human beings. We eradicate it in the same way we decided to eradicate smallpox, or the plague. What if we took the same attitude? It’d be pretty powerful, wouldn’t it? Maybe. Someday. 

Michael Moore [00:07:35] Before we get going here on what I want to share with you, I want to thank our underwriters for today’s episode. I’d like to thank our longtime supporter and underwriter, Stamps.com. For over 20 years, millions of people have relied on Stamps.com to save them time and money by making shipping and mailing quick and easy and cost effective. And of course, my crew and I are no exception. We use Stamps.com on all our film productions because we are traveling, we are moving fast, we are on the run and it’s very convenient. Stamps.com gives all of us access to all the U.S. Postal Service services and also UPS — all their shipping services. And you can do it right from your computer. All you need is your regular computer and your printer. No special supplies are needed, no equipment. You’re up and running in minutes and you’re printing off official postage for any letter, any package, anywhere you want to send it in the world. And you can get discounts that you can’t find anywhere else, up to 30% off from the Postal Service and 86% off from UPS. So stop wasting your time and start saving your money when you use Stamps.com to mail and ship. Sign up with a promo code: MOORE, for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage, and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts or any of that stuff. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone, the little microphone that’s at the top of the page, and enter the code: MOORE, and you are all set to be part of Stamps.com, and it’s a wonderful way to thank them for supporting my voice and the work that we do. 

[00:09:25] I also want to thank our wonderful underwriter, Moink. Now I know that not all of you who listen to this podcast eat meat, but for those that do Moink — that’s moo plus oink, get it? — it’s a meat subscription company and it’s making a big difference in helping the small American family farm stay financially independent from big agriculture. Moink delivers grass fed and grass finished beef and lamb, pastured pork and chicken, and wild caught Alaskan salmon direct to your doorstep, all of it sourced from, you guessed it, small American family farms. Plus, all the animals are raised outdoors, they eat grass, there’s no growth hormones, no antibiotics. None of them are confined in these prison buildings, these cages, nothing — no sketchy growing practices whatsoever with Moink. Now, when you shop at your local supermarket, the unfortunate truth is you don’t always have that choice. But with Moink, you have total control over the quality and the source of your food every single time. So help keep American family farming going by signing up here at MoinkBox.com/rumble. And if you do this right now, listeners of this podcast get free filet mignon in every order for a year. That’s one year of the best filet mignon that you’ll ever taste. But this is only for a limited time. So Moinkbox.com/rumble, and I just want to thank them again for being strong supporters of this podcast and my voice. It’s much, much appreciated. 

[00:11:20] Finally, I also want to let you know that this episode of Rumble with Michael Moore is sponsored by BetterHelp. I don’t have to tell you that life at times can be overwhelming. And when we are overwhelmed, it’s easy, in the effort to catch up or to clear things off our plates, to put off taking care of ourselves, both physically and, just as importantly, mentally. This happens. And if we put this off too long, suddenly we’re burned out. That’s where BetterHelp comes in — talking with someone that can help you figure out what’s causing the stress and the depression in your life. BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy, and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. And if you’re a listener to this podcast here, Rumble, you get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp. That’s BetterHelp.com/rumble. Go to BetterHelp.com/rumble for 10% off your first month. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s needed now more than ever. And thank you, BetterHelp, for being an underwriter and a supporter of this podcast. 

Michael Moore [00:13:03] What I wanted to talk to you about tonight on this episode of Rumble as I said, it was kind of personal and it took place this past Thursday night during the eighth hearing of the January 6 committee on the attack on Capitol Hill. And I, like millions of you, watch this. More shocking information, videotape, audio. Some of it stunning. The actual effort. It wasn’t rhetoric that they wanted to kill Mike Pence for not doing Trump’s bidding to overturn the election. They literally wanted to kill Mike Pence. And we saw and heard things last Thursday that were shocking, gruesome, horrific. I know some of you are saying, “oh, Mike, it’s not really shocking. That’s who they are.” Yes, I know. But it’s always a little different, isn’t it, if you actually have to listen to the tape, we actually have to watch it with your own two eyes? It was really something. And I know a lot of you, I heard from a lot of you during and after it writing me saying, “this surely will put Trump away in prison.” Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. He’s gotten away quite a bit in his lifetime. I’m not so sure why that would change now, but it could. This is some damning evidence that this committee has developed. I can’t believe a group of Democrats has put together a hearing that is this coherent and full of facts and proof of what Trump and his henchmen were truly up to. They had no intention of letting Joe Biden in the White House. And I know it sounds weird. You think, “what were they thinking?” Well, that’s what they were thinking. They had a plan. They conspired to do this. And when it came time to have to raise their hand, those who testified were all Republicans, were all people that worked with Trump, people that loved him, people that supported him, people that were his own children, people that were anchors on Fox News. One by one they asked the White House attorney on Thursday night, “was there anyone in the White House who agreed with Trump that this election could be stopped, the the counting of the ballots could be stopped, that Biden could be stopped from taking his rightful seat in the Oval Office?” And Cipriani, Trump’s attorney there in the White House, said, “no, not one of us believe that could happen. Not one of us believe the election was stolen.” These are all hard-core Republican Trumpsters. Wow. 

[00:16:16] So I’m watching it and my phone dings — this is Thursday night here while we’re watching this hearing — and it was a text from my friend Dan Kildee, who is the Congressman from Flint, Michigan, someone I’ve known since I guess he was a teenager in high school. I was a few years older. I had run for Board of Education in 1972 and got elected. And then he ran a few years later for the Flint Board of Education and got elected. So we’ve been friends, known each other a long time. I knew his uncle — he used to be the Congressman from Flint, Dale Kildee. And if you’ve listened to this podcast you know, because I had Dan on after the January 6 uprising, and we discussed what happened during a time when Dan and a dozen or so other members of Congress were hiding in the gallery of the United States House of Representatives. So you may be familiar with the story, but here we are now, just a year and a half from this horrific incident, watching the the hearing and here’s Dan Kildee, my friend, and the Congressman from Flint texting me. And essentially I’m going to read you the conversation that we had in text form on this past Thursday night. 

[00:17:53] Dan writes, “Hey Mike, here’s a screenshot from January 6 of last year when you and I were talking on our cell phones during the attack. As I’m watching this hearing right now, I’m reminded of the question I asked you on the phone while we were hiding out in the gallery, not knowing if we would soon die. I asked you about the National Guard.” 

[00:18:26] And then he has the screenshot of that conversation. And it starts with me saying, “Hey, I’m watching on TV right now the mob of thousands who are trying to get into the Capitol building.” And then I write, “the Capitol Police seem to have not anticipated this.” 

[00:18:48] And then Dan writes, this is back from January 6, he writes to me a question, “Can you see if the National Guard is here yet?” 

[00:19:06] I looked at this, I remember seeing this come on my screen on January 6, 2021. Here he is, a member of Congress, in the Capitol building, I’m sitting in New York watching this on television, and he’s asking me if I can see if the National Guard is here yet. He doesn’t know. None of them know. They had hoped by now, and this is a good hour, hour and a half into this, and they’re wondering where’s the National Guard? Maybe I can tell them because, you know, I’m watching TV. I’m like, Oh my God, they can’t see what’s going on outside or out in the hallway inside the Capitol building. And I typed back, “Not yet. It doesn’t look like there’s any National Guard.” And I added, “But the Senate, they just shut down. They shut down the floor and they have all left.” And I’m thinking, what’s he still doing there? Why are his fellow members — they’re crouched down on the floor because any minute now these traitors are about to break in. 

[00:20:56]  I read this the screengrab from a year and a half ago here this past Thursday, and I just wrote to him, you know, while we’re watching the the hearing, “Yes, it was chilling. It’s chilling,” I wrote, “still to this day.”

[00:21:16] He wrote back, “It is.” 

[00:21:22] I said, “Dan, think about this. I mean, you were calling me. You’re the member of Congress and you were calling me, a civilian who’s 300 miles away, to ask me if the National Guard had arrived at the Capitol to rescue you and the other members of Congress from possible death. And the picture on my TV screen was all I had to go on. It was only way I could answer you — what I’m watching on TV, and there was no National Guard anywhere in sight. There was nothing in sight — no National Guard, Army, police force — that had arrived to remove these individuals and to protect you. All I saw on TV,” I wrote him on Thursday night, “was just more traitors trying to get into the Capitol and exact their revenge.” 

[00:22:37] He wrote back, “It’s still, to this day, unbelievable.”

[00:22:47] We both sort of went quiet here on our texting. It’s hard to think back to that moment. I really, truly felt that one of my best friends was going to be seriously hurt. That was the optimistic view. But then a moment of levity on Thursday night. The panel shows a picture of Senator Hawley from Missouri. The right wing nut case. And it’s a picture of him as he was walking into the Capitol building, putting up his fist, pumping up his fist in solidarity with the traitors who are trying to break down the fences and get into the Capitol building. And he’s all like, “Yeah, yeah!” And then they said, “But not long after that, Senator Hawley, not realizing that a mob like this isn’t really going to get picky about whose heads are going to take off…” And all of a sudden, they’re just showing this hallway. It’s like a blank hallway and you’re wondering, why are they showing this? And all of a sudden, through the hallway runs, Senator Hawley of Missouri. He’s running. He’s running for his life. This mob that he had just encouraged — “Yeah. Come on in!” — now, apparently they were after him because, of course, they were after anybody who was a member of Congress. They were after Mike Pence. They didn’t care what your party was or whatever, they were out for blood, they were sent there by Trump, and they were going to exact their revenge. And they were going to stop the vote count. And all of a sudden they show Hawley running from them. 

[00:24:54] And I texted Dan back, I said, “Well, now I have to say, that was my favorite moment of the night watching traitor Hawley run for his life after igniting the mob.” 

[00:25:10] And then he wrote, “Yeah. It’s just that I’m so angry. That little punk.” And then he says, “And I hate, I hate it, that it makes me feel that way.” 

[00:25:31] That’s the way we were raised. Those of us that had the good Irish Catholic parents. You did not want to feel this kind of hate inside of you, even toward somebody who had just ignited the mob. You didn’t want to see him hurt. Poor guy was running for his life. And I know a lot of people will sit there like “Mike, okay, cut the Christian shit here. We wish they’d got him.” I get it. I get it. But see Dan is very self-aware. And if you’re a person like that, when all of a sudden there’s a rage inside of you and you hate what you’re seeing, and you hate any individual who would be a collaborator with those trying to bring down the country, it doesn’t make you feel good. It should make you feel really bad. And this is what he was expressing to me. “I hate that it makes me feel this way.”

[00:26:41] A few minutes later, I write to him listening to the police radio on the Secret Service radio. The back and forth right now between the Secret Service agents that were there with Pence trying to keep him alive. And one of the officers said that the Secret Service were busy calling their families and saying their goodbyes. They believed that this possibly was the end of their lives because it was their job to protect the Vice President of the United States. Trump had put out his order. Trump had let all of them know how disappointed he was in Pence for turning on him, that Pence was the true traitor. And when they heard that up on Capitol Hill, all of those who had busted in, they just started chanting, “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Let’s find him. Let’s get him.”

[00:27:45] “Chilling,” I wrote to Dan, “It remains chilling.”

[00:27:51] He said, “I know. Listening to them, wanting to call their loved ones to say goodbye. That really got to me. I remember making that same call.”

[00:28:04] And I said to him, “That’s right. I remember too. You were calling your kids. In fact, we hung up for a few minutes from me so that you could call them. And I just remember the sick feeling in my gut. And now tonight, watching this, I’m on fire,” I write to him. I wrote to him, “One of the reasons I really do love this country is that I know and I trust that millions of my fellow Americans, men and women, kids, anybody who just watched what we just watched here on Thursday night. Right now, I think they’re in a rage. They’re not depressed. They’re not sad. They are disgusted and they are revolted and they will not let this lie. Dan,” I wrote, “watch this sleeping dog rise. And I don’t usually feel this way. But in my rage tonight I’m a blooming optimist. People are going to make sure that they’re going to vote this November. Every one of these traitors out. Every one of them. That should be our mission right now. It’s all right here. They’ve already said this is probably going to be one of the most-watched television shows of the summer. Tens of millions are watching with us right now.” 

[00:29:56] Dan wrote back, “I pray you’re right. This has to make a difference.”

[00:30:04] And at that moment, on Thursday night, the television screen switched to footage of Dan and Congresswomen Jayapal and the others, Congressman Crow, all the others who were hiding up there in the balcony. And now they’re banging at the doors of the balcony — their trying to get in to the House gallery with nothing but blood on their minds. And on the screen there as we watched it said, “Minute 88.” That’s the caption. That’s all said: “Minute 88”. 

[00:30:55] I was quiet. Dan was quiet. We weren’t texting back and forth. I’m watching him from a year and a half ago in the moments before possibly he would be killed. And in this moment, a few nights ago, I just wanted to write him. I wanted to tell him something. 

[00:31:29] And so the next thing I wrote was, “I love you, Dan. And I’m grateful you are still with us.” 

[00:31:51] I don’t know if I’d ever told them that. All these years since I’ve known him. We go way back to the 1970s. “I love you, Dan.” And there was nothing came up on the screen for a minute or so. 

[00:32:14] And then he wrote back, “I love you, buddy. It helps,” he says, “that you were there for me in that moment, Mike.” 

[00:32:28] And I wrote back, “Yeah, but I was shaking. I remember thinking I wished I had had some some kind of superpower or I could just beam myself down in there, into that gallery, into that House gallery where I have sat many times watching Congress. The last time I sat there was the night of Trump’s first impeachment.” I sat there in the front row, in that very row where they were crouched down, hiding from the attackers. My sister Veronica, my friend and producer Basel, we sat there and we watched the United States Congress impeach this bastard. “But that wasn’t the only time in my life I’d sat there,” I wrote to him. “I sat in that gallery right where you were on the floor providing cover for others who were on the floor of that gallery, of that balcony, I sat right there in that seat that you were all crouching under, I sat there in that very seat in the summer of 1965, and I watched in person Congress pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” I was 11 years old. My mom had no idea what was going on in Congress that day. We were just there. Family trip to our nation’s capital. So we might learn something. And then we sat and we watched one of the most important pieces of legislation in the 20th century in the history of the country. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 be passed. “And now,” I continued writing to him about what I remembered, “that afternoon on January 6, you and I on our cell phones, and now I was listening to gunfire. Actual gunfire through you, my friend’s mobile phone, when they fired the shot that killed the woman who was trying to make her way on to the House floor.” I listened to that shot, that gunshot, live, through my phone because he was right above that door, the guy in the gallery, right above that door where they were banging and trying to crash through it. And then she did. She crashed through it and lost her life as a result. And it took me a day or two to really kind of just realize that I didn’t watch it on TV. That I listened to it live, through Dan’s phone. 

[00:35:53] Again. Dan’s quiet. He doesn’t write back right away. And then finally this popped up on my screen Thursday night, “It’s still hard to believe that that day ever happened. Just recently,” he writes to me, “I had a guy call my congressional office and threaten to kill me at the congressional baseball game if I decided to play in it next week.” I know from him telling me this over the past year, the level of death threats that come in, not just to him but to other members, Democratic members of Congress. And then Dan writes me, “This is all due to him,” meaning Trump. “This shit,” he says, “it’s unending.”

[00:37:07] I write back, “I’m so, so sorry.”

[00:37:17] And then the last text from Thursday night from him, he writes to me and he says, “This kind of thing, it’s become part of this experience, our daily experience here. They haven’t gone away. The angry mob full of hate, bigotry, misogyny, violent. It hasn’t gone away. It has become part of this experience of being a member of Congress.” And then his final word. “Sadly.” 

Michael Moore [00:38:21] I wanted to share that with you, this text conversation from a few nights ago. What it brought up in both Dan and myself remembering being on the phone for a chunk of that afternoon. Eventually they got out of the gallery, and were whisked away to the secret location on Capitol Hill where the other members were hiding. I want to thank Dan for letting me read this conversation. When we were writing back and forth on Thursday night during the hearing, it was a private thing between us. And then I just thought maybe you’d like to hear it. Maybe you should hear it. And I asked his permission and he said, “Yes, of course.”

[00:39:23] I don’t know what’s going to happen as a result of these hearings. It’s recessed now until September. They’ve done an incredible job letting the people of this country and the world know what Trump was up to. We’ll devote some more time to all the facts and the evidence in the months to come, but for right now, know this, my friends — they haven’t gone away. You already know Trump hasn’t gone away, but the millions who support him, the well-armed millions who support him, haven’t gone away and they’re counting on our fear to make us back down, to make sure that we don’t stop the next phase of what they’re planning to do. And they are, I assure you, they are convinced that they’ve got us scared and running — or better yet, believing that there’s no real point to fighting back. The country is broken. We know it. The democracy is hanging on by a thread. And they know how a lot of us are on our side where we would just rather give up, turn our heads look the other way, get out, try to get out, or just go somewhere and mind our own business. They are so counting on that. 

[00:41:05] And they take every opportunity to remind us what a weak president we have. I don’t think he’s weak. I think he’s wrong a lot of the time and he doesn’t do what I would do. And the day before on Thursday, last Thursday, I was going to record an episode here that was an open letter, actually, to Joe Biden, as to how he has to wake the fuck up. But then he got COVID and I just — I couldn’t bring myself to, you know, I didn’t know what’s going to happen to him or whatever. As you’re listening to this, I think he’ll be on day five of his isolation. And sounds like he’s doing well and he’ll be okay. So sometime here in the next week or so I’m going to record that podcast that I didn’t want to put out while he was sick. But it has to be said, the things I have to say have to be said, because we can’t afford to lose, and we can’t afford the Supreme Court to get away with what they’ve gotten away with. We can’t afford it. We’re doomed. If we do nothing, we’re doomed. 

[00:42:33] So I wish I could leave you on with more of an upbeat idea here — well, here’s one: there’s more of us than there are of them. I say it all the time to you. It’s the truth. The majority of this country believe women should have the right to control their own bodies, and the majority of this country believes that we need some serious gun control passed. The majority of this country believes that you should be able to marry the person you love no matter what the gender is. This is madness, but we are the majority. So we do have the power to stop it, to fix it, to do it. To do it with a sense of courage and purpose. Those who wanted to stop the counting of the votes, they may live here and they may be able to prove their citizenship, but they are not us. They are not this country. And we are all going to be very active in these next few months fighting them, removing them, dealing with the Supreme Court in a way where they has to be dealt with. I’m sorry, folks, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. I know. I know. I know. We’re exhausted. There’s so much going on. We’re not all the way through COVID yet — all of this. And yet, what other choice do we have? Me personally? None. There’s no other choice. They mean business. And if we don’t… we don’t need to go there do we? Or we could just start meaning business. And one by one, we peacefully and nonviolently remove them from our United States Congress and our United States Senate. That’s what we’re going to do. 

[00:45:07] So stay tuned here to this podcast because I will be sharing with you a lot of what I know, what I’m doing, what’s going on. There is a lot of good work that’s being planned right now for the late summer and fall, and I want you to be part of this. So I will keep you informed. I will let you know what you can do in your local community. We can stop this. As I said, we have no other choice. 

[00:45:48] Thank you for listening to my podcast today. Thank you for listening to it on Substack. If you’re not a subscriber to it, please become one. You just go to MichaelMoore.com. Subscriptions are free. There’s a way to help out if you want to financially, but you don’t have to. It’s just there if you want to support our work. But there’s no paywall for any of my podcasts or anything that I write on substack. Check it out. MichaelMoore.com. If you want to leave me a voicemail, there’s a link right here on whatever platform page you’re listening to this on. Just click on the voicemail mail and you can leave up to a minute message. I listen to every voicemail. I read every email. If you want to write to me, it’s Mike@michaelmoore.com. I can’t respond to every email and voicemail, obviously, but I want you to know that I do read them. And I want your feedback. I want your ideas. I want you to be part of this. Don’t give up. Don’t give up on me. Let’s hang together, folks. All right. Come on. It’s not over yet. Feels like it sometimes, but it’s not over. My thanks to our producer and editor, Angela Vargos and to all of you who participate and listen to this. We’ll talk soon. This is Michael Moore and this is Rumble.