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To read more about Episode 260, visit the main episode page.

MUSIC: “Thank You” — Dido

Michael Moore [00:00:29] This is Rumble with Michael Moore and I am Michael Moore. Welcome, everyone. I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving Day today. Today actually is one of these Thanksgivings that have occurred in my lifetime. I’ve been invited to a few people’s homes for dinner today, tonight, but I decided that I was going to spend this day by myself. And I’m going to do it again tomorrow. I’m going to take two days to reflect, restore. I’ll let you know how it goes. But I think I’m going to make it two days and do it today and tomorrow. And I guess what I wanted to say to you here on Thanksgiving and what I would do is give some thanks to various people or groups or things that I just want to acknowledge. Things, you know, currently in my life, your life, other people’s lives, maybe things from the past that I’m grateful for. I love the word gratitude. I love that word. I love what it means. And we probably, all of us, don’t show it enough to the people who do even sometimes the smallest things for us or with us and what they mean to us in our lives and the gratitude that we have for that. There’s a certain weight to that word. Gratitude. It’s better than just ‘thanks.’ Or ‘I really appreciate it.’ I have a deep gratitude to so many people and entities and groups. And I know I don’t probably express enough either. I mean, right away when I start thinking about this, I think of you, all of you listening to me. I mean, there are so many people that listen to this podcast. I mean, I’m just stunned by the fact that on any given week, there’s anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 people that listen to this. And I’m so grateful that you’d want to spend a few minutes, half hour, sometimes longer with me. And I wish it could be a mutual thing — that’s why I have that voicemail where you can literally call me here on this podcast page and leave a voicemail. Now, of course, I don’t have the time to respond to everybody. That’s the bad part of it. It’s like, you know, when I tell you that I read all my emails, I mean, I really do. You can verify this with any family member or friend, because there are some days, especially during this election, I spent two, three, even sometimes 4 hours reading the volume, the volume of mail that came in to me. So grateful to hear people’s ideas, their thoughts, their constructive criticisms. All of that is just been incredible. And so for those of you who’ve done that, who’ve written to me, I can’t thank you enough. And the things that you say to me are so moving, I have to print it out because I’m like, You’re going to forget this and you need to reread this letter from this individual six months from now. Six years from now. And so I print a lot of them. Sometimes I’ll hang one or two up on the bulletin board. I tagged one on my front door, on the inside of my front door so that I would see it every time I leave the apartment, and remind myself of things that maybe I forget, things that I need to be reminded of, things that fill my soul with joy, with peace, with love, with gratitude. And there isn’t a day that goes by where there is not a brand new idea or two or five that come from you and I go, “Wow, that is a great idea. That is what we should be doing.” It’s very powerful. And sometimes I think you’ve probably seen me act on your suggestions, your ideas. I don’t always get a chance to thank you publicly for that, but I want you to know that you have an impact on me, and it’s much appreciated. And those of you who feel comforted by the things I have to say, the things that I’ve written, if in any way it’s helped to bring you out of your temporary despair over what’s going on in the world that we’re living in — Wow. It means so much to hear that. This is a harsh world we live in. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Life is hard. Sometimes just getting through the day. Getting through the life. Getting through the marriage. Getting through school. And so we try to find different paths, different ways to pull it off. And the things that you’ve shared with me about your lives, ways that you have found that work to end the despair, rise above the sadness — very powerful. And I encourage you to share it with others in your life. And I can tell you that I’ve shared your ideas with others in my life. And I’m very grateful for that. And I guess of the things I’m thankful for today on this Thanksgiving Day, that’s the first thing that came to mind to just to start with thanking you. And thank you for giving me those couple of hours every day where I get to listen to you. It is much appreciated. 

[00:06:58] So before we continue, I want to thank the underwriter for today’s episode of Rumble, and that’s National Geographic Documentary Films and Picturehouse and their new film, The Territory. The Territory is a documentary that provides an immersive look at the tireless fight of the indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against the encroaching deforestation brought about by farmers and illegal settlers in the Brazilian Amazon. With awe-inspiring cinematography, showcasing the titular landscape and with richly textured sound design, this film takes audiences deep into the Uru-eu-wau-wau community and provides unprecedented access to the farmers and settlers illegally burning and clearing the protected indigenous land. Partially shot by the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, the film relies on verité footage captured over three years as the community risks their lives to set up their own news media team in the hopes of exposing the truth. Don’t miss The Territory, my friends. It’s available to stream on Disney Plus starting on December 2nd. 

[00:08:11] I’d also like to thank our other underwriter, and this episode today is being brought to you by BetterHelp. So my friends, when life gets stressful or overwhelming, it’s helpful to have someone to talk to about it to help you navigate through it. BetterHelp online therapy can help you find that person from the comfort of your own home. As the world’s largest therapy service, BetterHelp has matched 3 million people with professionally licensed and vetted therapists who are available 100% online. Plus, it’s affordable. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to match with a therapist. If things aren’t clicking, you can easily switch to a new therapist anytime. It couldn’t be simpler. There’s no waiting rooms, no traffic, no endless searching for the right therapist. You can learn more and save 10% off your first month at BetterHelp by going to betterhelp.com/rumble. That’s betterhelp.com/rumble. Thank you, BetterHelp for supporting this podcast and supporting my voice. 

[00:09:16] Okay. So. Where did we leave off on my list of people I wanted to thank today? I want to thank everybody out there who’s a teacher. And I want to do it in a way that doesn’t sound like a cliche, because, first of all, talk about a hard job. I mean, but what you do and the responsibility that is on your shoulders to make sure we don’t end up in an Idiocracy. A movie that has just felt even more and more prophetic as we’ve gone through these last few years. But we can’t risk having even one generation be in a place where they just don’t know what the hell’s going on. And they don’t know how to work their way out of the box. And teachers, this is your job. It is your duty. You’ve chosen to do it. I can’t thank you enough for that. You know, whenever somebody stops me on the street and introduces themselves to me and then I’ll say, “You know what do you do?” Or they’ll just mention it themselves that they’re a teacher. And my first response always to anybody who tells me that they’re a teacher is, “Thank you for your service to our country.” And I know we’re supposed to say that to veterans or people who are in the military or whatever — and I do, and I’m always grateful to that. And I know what it means. I know what it meant being born nine years after World War II. My dad and all his brothers being in that war, one of them killed. So for those of you teachers who are helping to guide young people and educate them and get them to read books, and get them to be critical thinkers, challenge them to challenge you. The teachers who do that, you are preserving the democracy. And I thank you for that. And I do. And when I say I thank you for your service to our country. If we didn’t have you and those of you who are really… Who go that extra mile, as bad a shape as we think we’re in, we’d be in much worse shape right now. 

[00:11:47] And the teachers that I had, I was so lucky from the get-go. Mrs. Clay, my kindergarten teacher. Oh my God. I went to Catholic school for eight years in grade school. St John’s Grade School, Davison, Michigan. And man, so many — those nuns were great. They were smart and they were funny and they were loving. And I know we make a lot of jokes about the nuns who got the ruler out and cracked you over the knuckles an all that. Well, that was maybe 20% of them. The other 80% were not that way. We had the singing nun, we had the hippie nun, you know, we had the nun that left being a nun and went and married the priest in the parish, you know, which was cool. And then they went and spent the rest of their life working with the poor in downtown Flint. You know, kept their vows of poverty, essentially, to continue doing the work they were doing as a priest and a nun. It’s very powerful. Very powerful to have those experiences. We had a couple of hippie priests over the years. The hippie priest was the priest, you know, when you had the lineup and go to confession in the — back in the days when the parish would have two priests. You had the older, more conservative priest, who your penance would be just, you know, you’d have to say ten rosaries or something. And the hippie priest would just say, “Go out and do good. Have a nice day.” So you tried to get the hippie priest to tell your sins, too. But all of those teachers at St John’s. And then in high school, the debate teacher, that was one of the greatest things I ever took. And it wasn’t just an after school activity, was a class. The drama teacher, the same thing. Drama was a class, not an after school extracurricular thing. Theater was treated in the public school I went to with that kind of respect. My government teachers. Oh, my God. They were fantastic. The Vietnam War was going on. I entered high school just a few months after Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Such a powerful time and to have these incredible government teachers kind of guide us through this. I remember the day after the Kent State murders. Kent State campus in Ohio, the National Guard gunned down unarmed students. Some of whom weren’t even part of the protest. I was so affected by this. I got out my notebook, spiral, you know, notebook. And he’s teaching the government class. And I just started — at that point in the war, I think we’d lost maybe 30,000 or so soldiers and maybe a million or two Vietnamese, Southeast Asians — and I just started drawing little crosses like that you’d put in a cemetery. And every now and then a Star of David or a you know, the quarter moon or whatever for the Muslim faith. Page after page was essentially a large cemetery of the dead. I’m just talking about the American dead, not the grotesque number of Vietnamese that we slaughtered. And I just wasn’t paying any attention to the teacher and I just kept drawing cross after cross after cross after cross after cross after cross after cross. My goal was to get up to 30,000 crosses in this spiral notebook. At one point he stopped me and he said, “Mike, what are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to draw a cross or one of the other religious symbols for every boy we’ve sent over there to die for no reason. And now we’ve killed students here in the U.S. who are protesting, trying to stop that war.” And, of course, instead of punishing me because he was such a good government teacher, he said, “That’s incredible. Just keep doing it.” It took me three or four days of me sitting in that class and at home at night drawing, creating the cemetery book for the dead. And at the end I, on the last page, I put now times this by… 30,000 times whatever I put that would equal the 2 million Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians that we killed. My English teachers, oh my God. One of them wrote me last week, Oh my God, she was incredible. I can mention her name, right? She was Miss Beagenie. They had not invented Ms. yet. So she was reading the Tsunami Substacks here from the election. Her and Mr. Hardy — the writing skills I have are, in large part, greatly in debt to them. So I’m grateful to my teachers, all of them, for being supportive of me and teaching me things I didn’t know and getting me to read books I didn’t know anything about. And to all of you who are teachers who do that on this Thanksgiving Day, I offer you great, great thanks and gratitude. 

[00:17:55] I was thinking today that I want to thank Joe Biden. I didn’t want Joe Biden to be president. I was out there working for Bernie, going to different states. And, you know, those are my politics. That’s who I wanted in the White House. And when it came time and when we had to vote between Biden and Trump, I don’t have to explain to you who I voted for. But I did so not hoping that, you know, much would come of it other than he wouldn’t be Trump and, you know, he wouldn’t be cruel like Trump would be. And so we’re going to now enter an era of having a leader that wasn’t cruel to its citizens. But I have to tell you, I’ve just been so amazed at the things that Biden has pulled off. And believe me, you’ve heard it from me, I’m full of criticism, too. I don’t appreciate a lot of what’s happened. I don’t like what he decided to necessarily go for of what we could get through and passed as legislation and the things that he just dropped. There’s so many things we need strong leadership to fight for, to get a Senate elected that is going to pass these things. To get rid of the filibuster. To get rid of — you know, to have a real democracy. But there have been these things that Biden has done and one of them happened last week. And I want to point this out, because on this Thanksgiving Day, I want to think about, and remember those who have stood bravely for peace. And I don’t know what it is about Biden — it could just be that he’s had these incredible losses and tragedies in his life. That he gave up a son, lost a son who was in the Reserves or the National Guard or whatever in Delaware while he was Attorney General and went over to Iraq and Afghanistan, and ended up with brain cancer, as a lot of our soldiers have ended up with various diseases from the way we were doing things over there, and died. But a week or so ago, all of a sudden, bulletins on all the newscasts and breaking news — Russia, Putin, had fired a missile into Poland, had fired rockets into Poland. And, of course, Poland is a NATO country. And we were immediately reminded of Article V in the NATO constitution: an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all NATO members. How many times have we had to listen to that? And that we are to go to war if any member of NATO is attacked. And all of a sudden they start the various political — some political leaders, some crazies, pundits, columnists — started beating the drum for war. Putting this on Putin and Russia and all this. And even though Putin and Russia said, “we had nothing to do with this,” of course, they are a bunch of friggin liars. And the press kept asking Biden, “What are you going to do? What are you going to do about this? They fired a rocket at Poland.” Let’s just be honest, folks. There are many things I’d be willing to give my life for. Poland isn’t one of them. I also want to believe that we’ve come far enough since World War II that we’ve learned how to talk to the “enemy” and negotiate some sort of settlement that we may not be exactly happy with, but we’re not going to get into a war anymore. No more war. That’s it. That’s got to be the position unless I mean, unless we’re actually attacked and we have to defend ourselves, truly defend ourselves. That I understand. That’s not what this was. This was one, one missile fired, I don’t know what was it a half a mile, two miles into Poland? And sadly, it killed two Polish people. “Russia did it!” And finally, when they nail Biden down to give us an answer — like what answer? Like when are we going to war with Russia? There is no war with Russia. The war with Russia, that’s only one war, probably only one battle, and that’s the end of most of the world. Yet people talk about that like it’s a possibility. And Biden said, “Well. Let’s just hold on, everybody. Let’s just get the facts. Let’s see what happened. We’re going to investigate this.” “Investigate this? God damn it. Putin fired a missile. At a NATO member.” “Now let’s just…” “There goes Sleepy Joe again. Not moving fast enough.” Well, you know, the end of the story, right? Of course. He slowed it all down. He would refuse to participate in the saber rattling, the rhetoric of “let’s punish Russia. There has to be a response.” And then he had all the national security agencies look at the satellite footage, look at a whole bunch of things, and then come to the truth that Russia did not fire a rocket into Poland. It was a rocket from Ukraine. Not that Ukraine was attacking Poland, they were firing anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles to blow up the missile while it’s on its way into Ukraine, because, of course, the Russians were bombing the civilian population and killing many Ukrainians and they’re trying to stop it. They’re trying to defend themselves. But in defending themselves, a missile went awry and ended up in Poland and killing two Poles. Because Biden, unlike if we had had a different kind of president, was in no rush to be the big man with the big gun, by slowing it all down and by getting to the truth, there was no military conflict between NATO and Russia. I want to thank Joe Biden here on Thanksgiving Day for not doing what others wanted him to do, what they would do themselves, and to once again be rational and reasonable and slow to make sure that we did not blow up this world. Thank you, President Biden. 

[00:25:38] Is it wrong to thank Liz Cheney? I know. I know. You know, she stands for so many things that are so bad. But I’ve always loved this kind of question — if a person does nine bad things but the 10th thing they do is remarkable, what do you do with that? She did something remarkable this year. She not only opposed what her party was doing, what Trump was doing, she then joined in with the other party to participate in and conduct an investigation. Wow. I mean, and everything she said, every wrap up she would give on that January 6th panel was so brilliant. I know a lot of you agree with me, but we can’t really say it out loud, right? Because it’s Liz Cheney. I mean, her dad, jeez. Much of what we blame W for — it was her dad’s idea. So it’s Thanksgiving, we’re supposed to love our enemies, right? I mean, ultimately, that is the way we end hate and war and violence. So I give thanks to Liz Cheney on this day for what she did this year. And I think that she might have depressed enough thousands of Republicans there voting — they either stayed home or they voted for the Democrat on the ballot, or they voted, but they wouldn’t vote for the goofy, nutty Republican who was an election denier. She did that. And I think if we’re decent people, we have to acknowledge it. And thank her for it. 

[00:27:47] Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci yesterday gave his last report to the country. He’s all done now. He’s retiring. I think he’s still going to be involved some ways, but, man, thank you. A million Americans died. Millions around the world died. And you jumped right in, in spite of the fact that Trump hated you. We thought Trump would fire you any day. Like you were that close. And you just kept it going. I’m sorry for the people that don’t understand you or don’t understand vaccines and were too afraid and took a position that I don’t understand. A lot of lives were saved. There are people alive today because of Dr. Fauci. I think they and I and I hope most of you thank him for that. Please don’t write me letters about how this vaccine has killed over a million people or whatever you’re going to say. I believe in science. Not nutty conspiracies. You are absolutely right to question everything, especially the pharmaceutical companies, so I do not fault you for that. But I worry how many people listened to you and now are dead because they didn’t get the vaccine, they didn’t get the booster. Somehow you’re going to have to live with that. Don’t write me, please. 

[00:29:27] I want to thank all the people that help us laugh. You know, this has been such a great time for comedy. You know, with Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, they’re not necessarily everybody’s comedian that, you know, there’s things that they say that you won’t agree with, that you don’t like, you don’t think it’s funny — I get it. That’s okay. But there’s just so many — Trevor, Noah. I mean, I’m going to leave people out now, but we’ve needed all of us a good laugh right now. And we’ve got that thanks to these comedians on TV. I thank them for that. I’ve needed it. I’ve appreciated it. I’ve only done James Corden’s show once, I did that last year and it was such a pleasure. Sorry to see him go. Thank you, all of you — Jimmy Fallon. And just again, I’m leaving people out, but thank you. 

[00:30:30] I’d like to thank my next door neighbors in Michigan and in New York. I live around good people. I love having them as neighbors. You know who you are, I’m not going to ‘out’ you to a few million people here, but thank you for being my neighbor. It’s nice to see you. Things feel a little less alone because I know the good you do and the good people that you are. And it’s nice to be able to share the floor of the building with you. Thank you for that. 

[00:31:10] I’d like to thank whoever invented the pickle. I still — this is like, for 40 years now — this is my favorite food. I love a dill pickle. I found a German dill pickle now that is very low in sodium. It’s probably one of the least healthy things about pickles is that there’s a very high sodium content. But there’s this German one. You know, whenever I feel like a snack, I just grab a pickle. And the other thing I like is Greek yogurt. Where did this come from? How come Greek yogurt wasn’t around when we were growing up? Or, you know, it seems like a fairly new thing in the last 10, 15 years. I don’t know. Is it the texture that I like? Is it the taste? Is it the — I don’t know what it is. Put a little fruit in it and man… It’s not ice cream, but, you know, ice cream is if anything, if we need proof of God’s existence, I would say ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate are right up there because no human could have invented any of these things. I love shredded wheat. Is that weird? I love shredded wheat. I had a good friend and she would take the old school shredded wheat, you know, the big biscuit like things. And she would just crush it in her hand and it would fall into the bowl. And I thought, “Wow. That not just looks cool, I’ll bet you that adds something to the taste of it.” So I asked her if she would do a few bowls for me of this kind of crushing mechanism, this thing that she would do with her hand. And it was cool to watch and then it was cool to eat. And now that’s what I do. To this day, I still eat my crushed, shredded wheat the way that she did that. And, you know, I’m grateful for these kind of, these moments. I’m grateful for the good food that we get to nourish ourselves with and take care of ourselves with it. 

[00:33:17] I’m grateful for the TV shows in the last year or so that have dealt with class. It’s rare that we see a story that acknowledges class. The divide, the real divide in this country between the haves and the have nots. And there have been two particular shows — one was called Maid, about a young woman with a young child who basically cleans people’s houses. And it was so powerful. It was a Netflix show, and it was based on a nonfiction book by a woman who had actually lived this life, Stephanie Land. But the writer for the show, the main writer for the show, Molly Smith Metzl. She was the writer and the creator of the show. The great John Wells, producer and director, gave us everything from E.R. to so many incredible series over four decades. But Molly was the driving force behind this show, if you ever get a chance to see it on Netflix. Powerful, powerful stuff. And if you grew up in the working class, you will watch this and you will realize really how rare it is that we see images of ourselves on television, stories about our real lives, of those who grew up in the working class that we had many people still have. White Lotus created by written by directed by Mike White. Wow. The first season — they’re a couple of weeks into the second season now, but the first season — about the wealthy people that go to this resort in Hawaii and then the people that work at the resort, it’s sort of an upstairs, downstairs, Downton Abbey kind of thing. But don’t even think — it’s not even that at all. This really goes at it. Of the wealthy, how they are to the help. Man. It’s on HBO. If you don’t have HBO, figure out a way to watch it, if you can. By now, maybe they’ve got it on Amazon or whatever. White Lotus. The White Lotus. It’s the name of the resort. I’m grateful to anybody who will tell the stories of working people, the working class, and especially the dominant group that is the working class, and that’s women. Women, young people, people of color are paid the least, and are treated often like crap and have a struggle to get by from week to week, month to month. There’s been some incredible shows, streaming series, telling stories of their lives. And it’s been very powerful. And I’m grateful to everybody who has worked on shows like that and will continue to do more of that for all of us. 

[00:36:40] Well, I know I’ve gone a bit too long here with my list of people and things to think. That’s probably triggered a lot of ideas in your heads of who you’d like to thank. So drop me a note. I’d love to hear to whom you’d like to express your gratitude. You can write me at mike@michaelmoore.com. Or you can leave a voicemail here on the podcast page. Or you can do your own podcast. You could write your own blog, you can share it with others. It’s a good day to do that. Maybe it’s just a day where there’s just one person in your life or one person from your past that you want to let them know that you haven’t forgotten them, that they’ve had an incredible impact on your life. And on this day, you want to thank them. It’s a good idea. And I’m privileged to be able to take this time to tell you about the things that I’m grateful for in my life. There’s so much more and there’s so much work left to do. So let’s do that work. Let’s do it together. Let’s have fun doing it. Let’s be good to each other. Let’s thank those who are really putting themselves out there to try to fix this country, to make it a better place, to try to save this planet and the people on it — all living things on it. 

[00:38:04] I want to thank my producer and my editor, Angela Vargos, who stood with me during the entire election season here to get out the vote. Much, much gratitude to Angela for the work that she did on both this podcast and my Substack. Be sure to sign up for both of them if you haven’t, you know everything’s free here. Substack is free. You can just go to my website michaelmoore.com. It’s right there. It’ll ask you if you want to be a paid subscriber, which you’re welcome to do. All of that goes to help the work that we’re doing, both in terms of paying staff, doing research and everything else that’s involved with running an operation like this. So thank you if you’re a paid subscriber. If you’d like to give a gift subscription to my Substack that would be great. Please do that. It’s a good way to expose other people to some of the things that we’re all talking about here on my Substack. Just go to any one of my Substacks or the last one here you’ll see a button that says “Gift subscription.” That’d be cool. Thank you for that. And so until we talk again, I’ll have another Substack or two out finishing up through this election, which isn’t really over yet. So look for that in the coming days. In the meantime, be good to yourself and to others and enjoy this day as best you can. Be well. Thank you. This is Michael Moore and this is Rumble. 

MUSIC: “Thank Someone” — Amy Grant and John Hiatt