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To read more about Episode 257, visit the main episode page.
Michael Moore [00:00:14] Hello, everyone. This is Rumble with Michael Moore. I’m Michael Moore. And dammit, I’ve got Covid. Oh, damn. I’m I, I, you know, I’m just in a state of shock and a bit like I’ve held this thing off for almost three years, right? I mean, the first time I remember hearing about Covid was… I think it was December of 2019. Is that right? Yeah. I decided to start this podcast and I think our first one was around December 19th and we just, you know, heard a little bit about it. Maybe there was one case in the state of Washington I can’t remember now. I’m sort of in a bit of a fog here, but… [coughing] hang on a sec [coughing] —
[00:01:07] Sorry you have to listen to that in your earbuds. My editor will try to take out a lot of this, but I said, “look, we’ll be doing this all night if we try to cut every cough or every piece of dehydration that’s going on inside me.” So I’ll try to keep this brief and not too gross sounding. But as I was saying, I followed all the rules, obeyed the doctors, the scientists, everybody. I have four different shots in me, the first two vaccines and then the two booster shots since then. And I was just getting ready here a couple weeks ago, I set up an appointment to get the new booster for the a new variant, which — see I don’t know. You know, this coronavirus is a living thing, right? It is life as they say. It has no right to life. And I think it somehow figured out I was going to go get that new variant because my doctor told me a couple of months ago, he said with this new BA.5 — remember it was BA.4, BA.5 — he says, “This is the one that’s going to nail you. This is going to get you because it’s getting everybody because it’s so contagious. So vastly contagious.” But it’s weaker in the sense because it’s it is, you know, like you make a Xerox copy of a copy and then you make a copy of it and you make a copy of that copy. You know how that looks after four or five times of making the copy. So. So it’s weak. And that’s why this new variant, not as many people are dying. Not as many people end up in the hospital… [coughing]
Michael Moore [00:03:06] There’s no more phlegm that comes up now. It’s just this damn dry cough, which I just attribute, I guess, to probably I’m just dehydrated still, but anyway, sorry. So that’s the good news, I guess, is that and he said, “but it’s so contagious. It’s getting everybody who, like you, have held off from getting Covid for these nearly three years.” And so I said, “Wow. So, like, how contagious is it?” And he made some sort of dry comment of, “Well, look at it this way. If there’s oxygen or CO2 in the room, there’s COVID in the room.”
Speaker 2 [00:03:50] So I went into like even, you know, I had already been in a lot of this lockdown here over these three years. I haven’t flown on a plane in three years. I have not been to a play in three years. I’ve not been to a concert in three years. All I should say, you know, I was walking by this theater a couple of months ago and on the marquee it said Jackson Browne was playing inside. And I was like, “Oh man!” And it said, “Sold out.” And so I went up to the box office and I said, “Hey, is there any chance I could just buy a ticket where I don’t sit in the theater, but you could put me by an open exit door or someplace where there’s fresh air coming in?” And the woman was very nice. She recognized me and she said, “Hey, let me I’ll see if we can, you know, if we can set something up for you.” I said, “Yeah, no, I’ll pay, too. I just… Man, this would lift my spirits to hear Jackson Browne.” And she came back and this guy says, “Yeah, just follow me.” And he took me into the back, back, back of the theater by the exit door that went out to the alley or whatever. And then he just he cracked it open. He said, “Just sit here. It’s secure, you know, head toward the crack here in the door and you just get nothing but fresh air.” I said, “Oh my God.” And of course I’m double masked anyways, right? Because I follow the rules. So, you know, if he were to ask me to wash my hands, I would have washed my hands. So… Oh my God, it was so beautiful.
Michael Moore [00:05:27] Anyways, where was I? Before I get too far into this Covid story, I want to thank my underwriters who, you know, help pay the bills here, and pay the staff and everything, and I’ve not had a podcast the last couple of weeks, so, you know, they have been so supportive though. And I just said, “I’m not going to be able to do this till I’ve got some energy in me.” And I waited till I got about a quarter tank of gas in my tank today. So you’re going to hear a few of them here today, but I just want you to know that I’m very grateful to them for supporting my voice here on this podcast and always sticking with me here.
[00:06:13] So first of all, let me just say that this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Life, as we know, as I’m alluding to here in today’s episode, life can be overwhelming. And while we often associate the feeling of being burned out with work, the truth is, is that any role that we have in our lives can cause those feelings. And talking with someone can help you figure out the root of what’s causing your stress in your life. And that’s where BetterHelp comes in. 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 Rumble listeners, all of you listening to this today, you get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp and you go to betterhelp.com/rumble for 10% off your first month. You know, we talk a lot about mental health these days and especially in these last three years, what we’ve all gone through and I’m happy that there’s a service like this that can help people and I’m grateful to them for supporting my voice here on this podcast.
[00:07:34] Next up also, I’m really excited to introduce a new underwriter to Rumble with Michael Moore, and that underwriter is Trade Coffee. If you love drinking coffee every morning, you have to check out Trade Coffee. Trade Coffee is an incredible coffee subscription service that partners with the nation’s top-rated independent roasters to send you coffee that they know you’ll love fresh to your home on your preferred schedule. And the best part, you’re supporting a small local business in the process. It’s win win. Trade makes it easy and convenient. You don’t need any special equipment. They’ll send you ground coffee or whole beans. Either way, this service is essentially to fit. However, you already make your coffee at home. We have a classic drip pot in the Rumble podcast room here, and this month we’re making coffee from Sparrows — that’s a roaster in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it’s their Colombia Coffee for Peace. That’s the name of this particular coffee that they make. Columbia Coffee for Peace. It’s a medium roast with hints of a sort of a tart cherry. You know, Michigan’s a big cherry state. Next month, we’re going to try a nutty and sweet roast called Hell Yeah. From Drink Coffee, Do Stuff. That’s the actual name of the business. And that’s a roaster that’s located out in Lake Tahoe. But if what we drink here at Rumble isn’t up your alley, don’t worry. Trade will have whatever it is that you like. So upgrade your coffee today with Trade Coffee and let them take the guesswork out of finding your perfect cup. That’s drinktrade.com/rumble and you’ll get $30 off your subscription to the best coffees in the country. Again, drinktrade.com/rumble. Thank you Trade Coffee for supporting this podcast and supporting my voice. It’s much, much appreciated.
Michael Moore [00:09:30] All right. Oh, Jackson Browne. When I said I was out for a walk, I mean, I don’t want to dignify the word ‘walk.’ I mean, I just needed some fresh air because I’ve been so holed up in this apartment. I’ve been taking some vitamin D because there’s been no sunlight on my skin for these three years. And so anyway, so I tested negative for Covid a couple of weeks ago, but I had the symptoms. And then a couple of days later I tested positive. And then now confirmed I have Covid. And I’m talking like there’s somebody here in the room. That’s the other thing too. You know, my producer and editor and all the people I work with, the people I generally work with as we’re planning the next film or the next TV thing — there’s been nobody here. Everything’s been by remote. In fact, I had come to New York because we were going to start doing some pre-thinking here for the the next film project. This is back in, you know, February of 2020, and we’d just come off the tour with Bernie. I’d gone out with Bernie to the very early primary and what are they called? Geez, I’m like in this COVID fog. I’m in like one of those 1930 Sherlock Holmes films, you know, where there’s just nothing but a fog over the bog — what do they call it? The moors. Yes. That’s what my brain is like right now. Anyways, whatever those other things they have besides primaries and…
[00:11:16] So I went with Bernie and I asked my sister if she’d like to come along. And she did. And then I asked Basel — you know, our longtime producer for movies and who started this podcast with me — if he’d like to come. And so he said, “Yeah.” So the three of us basically got on the bus or the minivan or whatever, and, you know, we’d be in Iowa where we’d hit six or seven cities a day. And, you know, Bernie, of course, draws huge crowds. And he also he’d have great rock bands play or Cornel West would be there or Naomi Klein or AOC. So, you know, these people all draw wonderful, huge crowds. And so each night — and essentially all day and then there’d be the big one at night maybe in some basketball arena — we’re working the line. You know, I’m shaking hands, I’m doing selfies, you know, I’m like in contact with thousands of people in the first two months that COVID has hit our shores. Yet we didn’t really know — well we knew it was around, and Nick, one of my editors here on this podcast and all around good guy, he was with us and Donald — you guys all remember Donald Borenstein. He was with us out on the road because we did do some taping and a little bit of filming and Nick… We were riding around and Nick is wearing a mask. He’s wearing a mask in January, okay? Remember the lockdown’s not till March, but this guy wasn’t messing around. It was like, what do you know that we don’t know? Where are you from?
[00:12:58] He was just laughing. He said, “No, I just think why not be safe?” Of course, why not be safe? So, you know, months later — April, May, June — my sister and I and Basel, we were all talking and I said, “Do you remember when we got off the road with Bernie before Super Tuesday and came back to get to work on the next movie? Did you guys feel well when that ended with Bernie?” I mean, I don’t mean mentally well, because obviously we were sad because, you know, we wanted Bernie to be the next president. But my sister said, “No, no, I was sick as soon as I went home, completely exhausted. I couldn’t — I literally couldn’t move.” I said, “Wow. What about you, Basel?” He said, “Well, yeah, I had kind of like a flu. It wasn’t the flu, but it felt like the flu.” I’m like, wow. See, by this time again, we’re now in the spring. So now we know somewhat about Covid. I said, “Do you know what happened to me? The first three nights I’m back from the Bernie tour, I wake up every night with my shirt soaked. I mean, soaked. Like it was thoroughly wet from sweat.” And my sister said, “You had a fever.” I said, “Yeah, clearly. I didn’t think that at the time. I just thought, oh, we’ve got the heat on.” You know how these New York buildings are with heat in the winter and spring. [coughing] And I have some water here [coughing]… I said, “I think we all might have got Covid?” So I called the doctor, and the doctor said, “Well, that’s so many months ago. There’s no way to really know now.” So we all kind of figured we got it because we didn’t get it. None of us for these almost three years. And to the best of my knowledge, I know my sister hasn’t got it, and I don’t think Basel’s gotten it — and I probably have already violated the HIPPA laws and revealed too much about Basel’s condition here [laughing].
[00:15:12] And then I got it. I got it a couple weeks ago, and I’m like, Damn! I’ve been so good. And I’ve not been around — I’ve not eaten in an indoor restaurant, you know? I’ve sat outside with, you know, a few times with friends. But I’ve not done anything. I’ve not been around people, like I said. And I thought I was going to get rewarded. And now I said to the doctor this week, I said, “What was the point of denying myself human contact for so long of putting my movie on hold, of putting, you know…” He says, “Well, you know, actually, everything you did has kept you alive and it’s going to keep you alive now because you didn’t have to suffer through like — geez, what is the number of? Some awful number here in New York where like one out of — in that first year — one out of 300 New Yorkers died. I mean it was huge, it was like, right? It’s in the thousands. No. I mean the thousands and thousands of New Yorkers. And he said, “So you didn’t get that Covid. You got vaccinated right away.” Well, you know, to be honest, I got vaccinated in February. I waited a month or two. I waited December and January. I didn’t get it. And of course, I was going to get it. I was going to get it. But, you know, is it weird that I didn’t want to be first in line? Not that I wanted somebody else to be my guinea pig, but it’s why I’ve always understood why on some level why people haven’t gotten vaccinated, even though I have pleaded with people to get vaccinated. And that there were these unnecessary fears but, you know, people would say, “Mike, you know…” — and these are not right wingers. These are people on the left saying,” Mike, you know. Come on. Trust the government here? That’s what we’re going to do now? We’re going to trust the pharmaceutical companies? Pfizer. Come on, Mike.” And I’m like, “Yeah, no, I know. But we got to know — you can’t just have a blanket thing for everything. You got to, you know, just because we don’t like these corporations I mean, the pharmaceutical companies, they actually do make drugs that we need. And these drugs have saved lives. That’s the last good thing I’ll ever say about them.” You know, when I made my film Sicko, I ran into these pharma reps, they were at some convention or whatever when I was on my book tour or something. And they were like, “Wow, we were really surprised that you didn’t go after us, you know, you went after the insurance companies.” I said, “Well, yeah, but the main reason is we actually do need medicine. So, you know, you are providing a service to society and becoming filthy rich off people’s pain and suffering. Yeah, but we do need that. We don’t need health insurance that is a private company that is set up to make a profit — because the way they make the profit is by providing as little service as possible.” And that’s why when you go in and they deny you going to see a specialist or whatever, because of course, they’re not going to make a profit if they pay for everything that gets you well. It’s better to actually have you sick and stay sick because that’s where the money is. Money is not in the cure. Okay, enough of the sermon. You already know all this yourselves already.
[00:19:03] And so getting off on that now… I can’t remember where I was. Anyway, so. Oh, yeah. So I got the vaccine in February, whenever the vaccine started, I waited a couple of months. Clearly there was not a mass die off and this was a good thing. And I trust Dr. Fauci and I don’t think Biden would do anything to harm or cause the death of people in this country. And so, you know, I just thought the smart thing to do was to do this. And I’m sorry for the people that haven’t done it. I’m sorry for the misinformation they’ve spread. I’m sorry for the 1,060,000 Americans who’ve died and millions more around the world because either they bought into something that wasn’t true, or they led and went with their fears instead of just being rational and thinking this thing out. And we’ve lost a lot of people because of this, and someday we’ll have a discussion about it. But, you know, I don’t think — you know, we all got these shots when we were babies and we got shots before we went to school. The idea was we don’t want to go to school as kids and infect, or get infected by other people. And so — I think it was the month I was born was some of the first Polio shots that were given out. And this was a horrible thing in the generation just before mine: Polio. And then it wasn’t because of medicine, because of science. And I’m saying all this because I believe that I’m probably alive here through Covid because I believed in science. Because I wore a mask, because I washed my hands and because I isolated myself from situations where I wouldn’t be around a lot of people. And to be honest, again, I have to say, that — I need some more water, here [drinking water]. I have to say that the first year of Covid, when I really essentially locked myself into my apartment here in New York and, you know, the whole city got quiet. No traffic on the streets. It was really weird because you’re so used to New York like the noise. It’s just always there. And you’re just — your brain accepts it after a point and you don’t even notice it. But to have it that quiet. And there was already so much noise in my life for like the last 20 or 30 years. I mean, it was just like, you know, I never really had much of… Much quiet time. You know, busy making my films, writing my books, doing our TV series, all that stuff. And then just the other stuff I do just to try and help out, you know, politically or help out in, you know, places where I’m from, like Flint, Michigan. And so there’s never much quiet in my life. And then it got quiet there the first months of Covid, and I found myself really appreciating it and thinking, “Oh, this is so nice.” And the phone didn’t ring. And, you know, and I’m living by myself and the apartment building got quiet. And I remember one day I was calling down to the downstairs, the front desk there in the building. I said, “Hey, why is it so quiet?” He said, “Because everybody’s left New York.” He said, “I think two thirds of the building is gone.” “Where’d they go?” He said, “Most people have gone to live with family elsewhere in the country.” At that point, I think people thought they were just going to go for a few weeks maybe. What had Trump promised us? Easter. So This’ll all be over by Easter. That wasn’t the case.
[00:23:22] And I decided to take that time, that quiet time, and do some things I just haven’t done in a long time. I started doing some writing and I started writing things I had never written. I started writing a play. I started writing a fiction film. I started writing poems. I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t admit that. Don’t ask me to read any of these poems — they’re pandemic poems so they stay with me. But my point is this, that I tried to make the best of a bad situation. And, yes, it was lonely. And I still am lonely in that sense because I have not reemerged. This hit me while I was still being very careful and somewhat isolated. And here I am talking to you now. And I promised myself I wouldn’t go on too long because my energy has not come back. Here’s the good news, though — the symptoms started going away. The coughing I’m still doing. I don’t even want to say the word because I’ll start to cough [coughing]…
Speaker 2 [00:24:35] But believe me it sounds worse than it is. But you know how when you’ve coughed for two weeks? It’s hard. It’s almost like a spasmodic response. But, you know, I haven’t gotten any long Covid — knock on wood here. I can smell things. I can taste things. My hair hasn’t fallen out. Thank God. To all of that, apologies and certainly sympathy to all of you, any of you who’ve had to suffer through any of that. But I haven’t had to check into a hospital. I’m alive. And each day it gets better. Each day I’ve done a couple of home tests this week that were positive, but the doctor said that you could be negative now, it’s just that sometimes after you’re no longer contagious there’s still a remnant then that home test shows it’s positive. But if it shows as negative and just, you know, take one every couple of days if you want, but once it shows negative, there’s no false negative here usually with these once you are no longer contagious. So that’s what I’m hoping for here in the next, you know, day or so that the next test will show that.
Michael Moore [00:25:59] And I want to stop again here to thank a couple of more underwriters who’ve been very patient these last couple of weeks since I’ve been off the air here. Stamps.com. A huge thank you to them. They’re a long time supporter of this podcast. Stamps.com. Fall now is upon us and my friends, the holiday season is just around the corner, which means for many of you, this may mean a sudden influx of shipping needs, be it care packages for college students, holiday cards or customer orders for those of you who are small business owners. Stamps.com is the one stop shop for all your shipping and mailing needs. It’s essentially a 24/7 Post Office that you can access from anywhere. You don’t have to wait in lines. There’s no traffic. All you need is a computer and a printer. You can even schedule a package pick-up through Stamps.com on their dashboard. And the best part, they offer major discounts on both United States Postal Service and UPS rates — up to 86% off. So get ahead of the holiday chaos this year. Get started with Stamps.com today. And if you sign up with a promo code MOORE you get a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale. No long term commitments at all. No contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page and enter the code: MOORE.
[00:27:20] And last but not least, today, a shout out to Calm. It’s a little ironic to be shouting out to Calm, but, you know, everybody knows Calm. And I’d like to thank them for being an underwriter on this week’s episode. Calm is the number one mental wellness app. You can reduce stress and anxiety through their guided meditations. You can improve your focus with curated music tracks, and you can rest and recharge with Calm’s imaginative sleep stories for children and adults. There’s even a new what they call ‘daily movement sessions’ designed to relax your body and uplift your mind, which I’m telling you is really helpful if you’re stuck sitting at a desk all day in front of a computer or you’re stuck at home like I am right now recovering from Covid. So if you go to Calm.com/rumble, you’ll get a special offer of 40% off a Calm premium subscription and new content to this is added every single week. Over 100 million people around the world use Calm to stress less, sleep more, and live a happier and healthier life. So again, for the listeners of this show, my podcast, go to Calm.com/rumble for 40% off unlimited access to Calm’s entire library. That’s Calm.com/rumble. And thank you Calm for supporting this episode of Rumble. I truly appreciate it.
Michael Moore [00:28:51] All right. So back to my Covid horror story, which is not really a horror story. And now by this point, you’re probably wondering, so wait a minute, this whole Tsunami of Truth, Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truths that you write every day — how have you done this if you’ve got Covid? It’s so funny because it’s like literally a couple of days before I got Covid — I think this was my last podcast to you, right? So this is like a couple weeks ago, I said, that, you know, I was going to start this daily thing. There’s 44-days till the election or something, and I’m going to do 44 of these, one a day, and I want you to pass them around. I want you to think about it, and I want you to get involved because we can solidly win both houses of Congress and not let these people take over. And then two days later, I get Covid. There is some kind of conspiracy theory I need to latch onto around this, right? So, yes. So I have written all of these — well certainly the first half of them were written in bed. And, you know, with all my coughing and wheezing and, you know, and just generally being exhausted. I think any of you who’ve had Covid know what I’m talking about. And now I get up and move around the house a little bit. And what I’ve been writing you every day while I’ve been here in my sick bed. This is really important to me. I mean, my whole plan was to spend October and the first week of November, really on the road visiting the battleground states, the states where we’re trying to elect Senators. We’ve got to — we can’t get by with 50/50 anymore. And in fact, 52 won’t be good enough for me. We need 54, 55 Democrats in the Senate — two of them just to offset Sinema and Manchin. But, you know, I worked all summer long on a lot of things, laying the groundwork, helping out people in different localities, being on the phone, participating in local meetings, giving pep talks through Zoom to, you know, get people involved in this Roevember, as I call it, election season. And then just as I’m ready to hit the road, this happens. So not knowing I was going to get Covid, I came up with this idea that I would put something on my Substack every day and it would be not long and it would just be a short thing to give you information, facts, things you could share with people, to let them know that we are going to win this and how we’re going to win it and what each of us need to do.
[00:32:00] But the time I spend on it each day and the incredible assistance that I’ve had from Angela, Angela Vargos, who is both the producer of this podcast and the editor of it, she’s also the editor of my written Substack, my blog, my columns that I put out there on Substack. And she’s just an all around, good, smart, decent person and helps me with a lot of great thinking about what do we need to do next? What’s the next thing we need to deal with? How can we help the election? So I just wanted to say that publicly. And, you know, because she’s the editor, I can guarantee you she’s gonna try to cut this out. I’m going to also guarantee the fact that you are actually listening to this means that I’m still the boss of me. And I’m sure I know she’s laughing right now when she’s listening. She doesn’t listen to this because I’m just recording this here, sitting in a very comfortable La-Z-Boy. By the way, do we have them as underwriters? I want to say something about La-Z-Boy. Anyways. I’m just saying all this because I know maybe the next podcast we’ll talk about the tsunami that I believe is going to happen on November 8th. It’s already happening now because early voting has started in a number of states. And I’ve got that on my Substack. And you can see if your state’s one of them. Vote early. Vote early or vote by absentee — what we call used to call absentee. Now it’s mail-in voting. So it’s important to get people to vote. It’s important to get the nonvoters to vote. You’re not going to convince a single Trump voter to change their vote. That ship has sailed.
[00:33:45] I probably should stop because I feel my body kind of shutting down. It doesn’t have a lot of gas in the tank these days. But I am not going to stop. And I don’t care how tired or exhausted I feel, whatever. We’ve got, what we’ve got now? 20, 22 days till November 8th. Every ounce of energy that I can expend, every moment I have is being spent on this election. And so stay tuned for both the Midterm Daily Tsunami of Truth and I will continue to have that here sent to you via email every day. And I will do another podcast here this week as I am feeling more and more recovered, and I have some other ideas up my sleeve. We all have a mission in front of us. The power is in our hands, so it’s up to us to use it and to put aside our cynicism and our despair, because there are more of us than there are of them. And in the end, I believe good does usually prevail. Not always. Sometimes it takes a long time. But I’m very optimistic about our chances here in three weeks. And I hope you are, too. But optimism alone cannot win an election, and hope certainly will never win an election. It actually takes work. Not a lot of work. If everybody listening to this just got one or two more people to vote that maybe weren’t going to vote, we’ll be in good shape.
[00:35:37] That’s it for today. Thank you, Angela, for all your great work on this podcast and on the Substack and thank you listeners for letting me thank four underwriters today in this, because I’ve been off the clock here and I appreciate the patience of the people who put up the money for this. And I appreciate all of you wondering what had happened to me. I’m okay. And I would tell you if I wasn’t. I feel very fortunate. And again, I believe that my belief in science is what kept me safe and healthy for this long and has gotten me through it this quick without side effects or other serious problems. I’ll be talking to you soon. Be well. Take care. Drink lots of water.