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To read more about Episode 289, visit the main episode page.

MIchael Moore [00:00:01] Whoa! What a week it has been. All over the map. I know it’s hard to keep up. Sometimes it takes your breath away. Sometimes you have a hard time just breathing through the whole thing. So many things this week, the Supreme Court keeping everybody on tenterhooks regarding the abortion ruling. Not over yet. But they’re scared now, and that’s a good thing. They know the country is against them. The vast, vast majority of the country is against them. And how are they going to keep their religious jihad going against us? It’s going to be very hard. They know it. That’s a good thing. The last few weeks of all these mass shootings to now a week of just random shootings of young people who have made an honest mistake — they rang the wrong doorbell, they pulled in the wrong driveway, their basketball went in to the next door neighbor’s yard. And for this, they’re all shot. It’s like… The level of violence and the belief that the gun rules the country, I think people are going to rise up. I think they’ve had enough of this. I don’t want to sound too overly optimistic here, but you can’t keep the country together this much longer without people saying I’ve had it. So. That’s been going on. DeSantis still wanting to fight with Disney, suggesting they maybe will build a prison next door to Disney World. Just, you know, one piece of crazy from DeSantis after another and the former president. And then what we’re going to talk about today, not only what happened a few days ago with Fox News. But the stunning thing that happened overnight here in the last 12 hours or so and some of you have heard about it, some of you haven’t. So I’m going to tell you about it. If you haven’t heard it, if you have heard it, I’m going to lay it out in terms of what this all means. But boy, oh, boy. Wow. There are just some days, aren’t there, where you just think, “Well, here’s something I’ve never seen before.” And especially after you get to a certain age, it’s like you think you’ve kind of seen everything and yet no. No, no. What happened here in the early morning hours today? Mind blowing. I’m going to get into it here right after I thank the underwriters but don’t go anywhere because this has been a whoppa-alooza. Wow. 

[00:03:22] So before we get started, let me just do a quick thank you here to the underwriters who helped keep my voice going on this podcast. And first up is a huge thank you to our long time Rumble with Michael Moore supporter and that is Shopify. As Rumble listeners know, Shopify is the Commerce platform that helped me launch my online shop here, The Moore Store. Actually their whole ethos is to make starting and running your own shop, your own little shop, whatever it is, whether it’s online, whether it is a brick and mortar store, to make it as simple as possible. And they have a whole swath of tools to help you do just that. Tools that were once reserved for big business, but now Shopify makes them accessible to all. You can manage orders, shipping, payments, even create and customize your own online shop all in one place without having to learn any new skills in design or coding or whatever. Plus, Shopify also offers 24-7 help and an extensive business course library. So sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/rumble. And that’s all lowercase with “rumble.” Go to Shopify.com/rumble to take your business to the next level today. Shopify.com/rumble. 

[00:04:50] And next up today I want to thank Moink. Moink, you’ve been with us here for a long time and I know that not all Rumble listeners eat meat, but for those that do, if you’re anything like me, it’s important to you to know exactly where your meat is coming from and how the animals were treated. Moink — that’s “moo” plus “oink.” “Moo” for cow, “oink” for pig, Moink, is a meat subscription service that sources all their meat from small family farms across America. You choose whatever meat you want and boom, you’re suddenly getting grass fed beef and lamb, pastured pork and chicken and sustainable wild caught Alaskan salmon delivered straight to your door. You can really taste the difference, too. And I can tell you it feels good to know that you are helping rural America stay independent from big agriculture in the process. So keep American farming going by signing up at Moinkbox.com/rumble right now and listeners of this podcast get — are you ready? — free bacon in your first box. That’s right I said the two best words in the English language: free and bacon. It is, my friends, the best bacon you’ll ever taste, but it’s only for a limited time. So Moinkbox.com/rumble. That’s Moinkbox.com/rumble. And thank you, again, Moink for supporting this podcast and supporting my voice. 

[00:06:30] So… Beatles, over to you. 

[ MUSIC: “Birthday” — The Beatles ]

MIchael Moore [00:06:57] It’s my birthday. And I got to tell you, I woke up, as I’m sure many of you did this morning, to well in my case, to the biggest birthday present ever. And of course, I’d like to believe it was meant just for me, but I do realize that it obviously is meant for all of us. In case you don’t know, and this is the first time you’re hearing this, I’ll just report what has happened while you were asleep last night. At 12:01 this morning, the Fox News Channel voluntarily took itself permanently off the air, calling their network and I’m quoting here, “One of the worst frauds ever perpetrated on the American people.” This just blew my mind. Well, of course, it took just four days of unmitigated, nonstop public outrage and backlash over Fox News escaping being put on trial, and having it all come out in court on the witness stand and getting away with — even though the largest fine ever being paid by a media company for lying, it still wasn’t enough. And still left the News Corp., the owner of Fox News, intact. The settlement was reached late on Tuesday afternoon between Dominion voting systems — they are the voting machine people that Fox had gone after and accusing them of rigging the election. So they filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News. And then on Tuesday, like literally minutes before the opening arguments, they’d already picked the jury, seated the jury all set to go, the judge announced that an agreement had been reached for Fox to fork over nearly $800 million to Dominion. But, as we all know, it did not require the hosts and the executives and the owner of Fox News to issue a public statement of apology or admit on air that they lied profusely about the 2020 election being stolen by Dominion and the Democrats — plus Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, two of the three Biden granddaughters and the Venezuelans. 

[00:09:44] Well, this announcement of a settlement on Tuesday did not sit well with the American people. Nearly 70% of those polled by Thursday said that they felt the court’s acceptance of this settlement did not settle the true damage done to our democracy. Forget about Dominion, our democracy, and that this massive fine that they are having to pay to Dominion, the American people are saying that this shouldn’t go to Dominion. This money should go to the American people. “They wrecked all trust in our elections,” said Rocco de Lorenzo, a truck driver and former Fox News viewer from Breezewood, Pennsylvania. He goes on to say, “Now I don’t know what to believe or who to believe. My faith is gone and it will be a long time before I vote again.” The sentiment was echoed throughout the country. Cynthia Le Main of Beaver Creek, Wisconsin, told Reuters that she would settle for “nothing less than the heads of Fox News or a reasonable facsimile thereof.” Oh, she means the actual heads, oh. “The heads of the heads of Fox News, or a reasonable facsimile thereof,” quote “hoisted on stakes lining the 14th Street bridge over the Potomac River leading into Washington, D.C.” She said, “They tried to destroy our country and maybe they succeeded. $800 billion for Dominion. What about $800 trillion for the rest of us? Nearly 30 years of nonstop lies that have divided this country, and they just get away with it? I think every American,” Cynthia says, “I think every American deserves a settlement check of their own. At least $10,000 for each of us.”. 

[00:11:55] Actually, that sounds pretty good. Well, anyways, this volatile anger and a demand for justice, real justice was echoed through all 50 states this week, including the island territory of Guam, which has already filed petitions to secede from the United States. I did this on, I think Thursday or Friday. And by Friday, of course, millions of Americans canceled any cable TV subscription they had that included Fox News — with most Americans, though, keeping only the basic stations of ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS, plus their sports packages, of course, and that network that drops two naked people off in a jungle each week to see if they can find their way out without any shoes, clothes, condoms or insect repellent. 

[00:12:55] Now, although the $800 million settlement was only a dent in Fox News as $4 billion of cash they have on hand, the News Corp’s stock plummeted by week’s end. Thousands of angry protesters surrounded their headquarters on the Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Fox had already barricaded the building and protected it with its own private army. I didn’t know they had one — I guess that makes sense, doesn’t it? They had already barricaded and they were protecting their building there, it’s right there in Rockefeller Center, with its own private army and an arsenal of tanks, bazookas and rocket launchers, one of which, by the way, accidentally went off yesterday on Saturday and hit NBC across the street there at 30 Rock. Fortunately, no casualties were reported as the network was playing old episodes of Dateline: To Catch a Predator on a continuous loop. So good, nobody got hurt there. Well, anyways, all of this appeared too much for Fox execs to handle. And from what I understand last night, overnight, the News Corp began transferring all of its cash to overseas accounts and shifting its assets to an undisclosed location in the Cayman Islands. 

[00:14:27] But, my friends, the big stunning kahuna came just one minute after midnight last night when Rupert Murdoch’s head appeared on screen on the Fox News Channel and announced he was pulling the plug on his, quote, “propaganda network.” Wow. Murdoch went on to explain, quote, I’m quoting him now, “We are not a news network.” He said, “this is not and never has been journalism. I came to this country.” I should be doing this in an Australian accent, right? I’m not good at accents. “I came to this country knowing that a certain percentage of its citizens were just stone-cold stupid and filled with such hatred for facts, science and people of color. We knew we would make a killing here. And we did. We are the most-watched cable channel.” That’s right. Not the most watched cable news channel. The most watched cable channel in America. And then going back to quoting this, I’m quoting Murdoch here, “We made trillions. That really,” Murdoch said, “says more about you than it does about us mates. Thank you, America. And now to show our true remorse, here are your favorite spewers of lies with their heartfelt apologies.” And then the screen goes from Murdoch to one after another — like videotaped confessions from all of their anchors, their hosts, the whole cavalcade of them. One after… He started with Tucker Carlson, he begins the first line from Tucker Carlson is and I’m quoting, “My fellow Americans, I’m a dick.” Wow. Like he just starts off with that and then he goes on to explain all his dickish behavior over the years he’s been on Fox. And then chastises the viewers by saying, “well, what did you think? I started on MSNBC. I came from MSNBC to Fox. And you accepted me just like that. No thinking required.” He’s just went on just blasting the viewers for being idiots — which is so weird because he’s such an idiot. And then he angrily tore off his bow tie, tossed it over his shoulder and said, quote, “So long, suckers.” And got up out of his chair and left. Wow. I mean, really, you know, most of us were asleep, so we didn’t get to see this. But let me just go… 

[00:17:51] So after him came Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity comes on, he’s sobbing and apologizing again profusely for everything that he has said and done on the air. He didn’t believe any of it he said. He was just trying to make a living. He knew that the bigger the lies got, the bigger his paycheck got. And that he’s probably not that much different than most people when presented with a chance to make a hell of a lot of money. And then he just keeps sobbing and sobbing and then he holds up what looks like a photo, but they pixilated it. But for like a split second, you can see it looks like essentially — it’s a photo of him fellating Bill O’Reilly, but you can’t really see because of they kind of blurted it out. And then he just collapses in the chair crying and they have to like cut away from him and all of a sudden then they just start running one after the other of these Fox News anchors apologizing, trying to justify what they did, rationalizing it. Maria Bartiromo, Judge Jeanine Pirro, all of them, just one after the other. Greg, whatever that guy’s name is. 

[00:19:30] And then Rudy, Rudy comes out with his lawyer friend, Sydney. I forgot her last name. The ones that were on during and after the election with all their lies, all their you know, they’d gone to this county in Michigan where I lived and convinced them to let them take one of the Dominion voting machines so they could do a forensic analysis of it. I mean, this is like, as you remember, this stuff is just so crazy. End of 2020, all of 2021. And so anyway, so it goes on and on. Of course, for some weird reason, Rudy and Sidney then, in their sorrow, just hold each other and they start making out and then their makeup starts running down their faces and it’s really weird. And then all of a sudden they cut to Roger Ailes. Now Roger Ailes has passed away. This is the founder and lifetime president for life, as he called himself, of Fox News, and also a serial woman abuser at Fox. And it’s a hologram of him that he must have recorded before his death. And it’s Roger Ailes on the screen admitting the ruse from the very beginning — it was all set up this way to fool people, get ratings and make a ton of money for themselves. And weird to see all the others — they did apologize, but not Roger Ailes. So I guess he I don’t know. I don’t know what the deal was there. But they wanted to show him at least admitting that he was the ringleader of this whole thing and was doing this on behalf of Rupert Murdoch.

[00:21:30] And then Murdoch comes back on the screen and announces, I mean, this blew my mind. Murdoch announces, and he’s live on the air now and it’s about I don’t know, 10-15 minutes after midnight at this point, that he’s going to donate the News Corp building there on Rockefeller Center to the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, so that the building and he’s set up a fund to fund whoever the ACLU hires, and the building is to become a national fact checking headquarters, to fact check the media. And it’s to be staffed only by actual journalists, researchers, social scientists and nonpartisan watchdogs to make sure, as he said, “no media is ever again able to get away with what we got away with.” End quote. Wow. I’m like, you know, I’m like this — I can’t believe that. I mean, this is actually happening. And then… And then Murdoch, he’s wrapping up and he’s saying, “Now, before our screen goes permanently dark,’ he says, “about 12 hours from now, which will be around 12:45 p.m…” He said 12:45 p.m. So the noon hour here on on Sunday, that’s when they’re going to go permanently dark. “But for these next 12 hours” — and by the way, just to throw this in, because this is why I thought this was a birthday present to me today, I was born at 12:45 p.m. in the noon hour. Just in time for lunch on this day. [laughs] And so it’s going to go off the air at the moment of my birth, some some umpteen years ago. 

[00:23:37] So. Okay, just allow me the the personal pleasure of hearing that even though I know, I know, I know they weren’t doing this for me, they were doing this for all of us, thank God. But he announces that, “so for these next 12 hours, the Fox News Channel will run a nonstop scroll of the estimated 132 million lies that we have told over our 27 year history since we began on October 7th, 1996.” Now, of course, you know, if you weren’t up in the middle of the night or you weren’t watching this until noon today, you didn’t get to see any of this. But don’t worry, the great media watchdog organization called Media Matters, Media Matters for America, they have archived this entire 12 hour scroll of their 132 million lies. And so if you want to view it later, you can go to MediaMatters.org. You won’t want to watch the whole thing, but, you know, it’s just so it’s so revolting. And you want to throw up when you realize that they got away with this for this long and so many millions of Americans bought into it. And then we became what we became. Wow. Well, anyway, so, Murdoch’s wrapping up, he’s concluding his final sentences here and as he’s finishing his confession and his — I would have to say — quite sincere apologies, he said, and I’m quoting, “The only honorable thing left for me to do, is to do what the samurai of old did to restore their dignity.” End quote. And with that, I swear to God, folks, you probably already heard about this by now. With that, Murdoch pulls out a long sword, places it just below his chest, and falls on it. What? Unbelievable — I mean, well, fortunately — and I mean this sincerely — fortunately, due to his age and condition, his hand slipped. And the sword fell. And Rupert, he was uninjured and they immediately carried him off the set. And from what we’ve heard and you again probably already heard this, he is believed to have already arrived on Jeffrey Epstein’s island, where he intends to live out his days. This is according to his spokesperson, “Rupert Murdoch intends to live out his days on the island with Lou Dobbs, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves and the MyPillow guy.” And then it goes on to add, “plus an assortment of Australian crime figures and his son Lachlan,” who had been running essentially Fox News for him, “and the cast of the Five.” This is this weird show — you probably never heard of it — that’s on Fox. They have these five talking heads go over the news of the day. I mean, I can’t remember any of their names. Nobody ever will. They’re gone. They’re on the island with Rupert. Gone. All of them. Fox News Channel. Gone. I mean, seriously, friends. Wow. Friggin incredible. I mean, I never thought I’d live to see this day, to see such a thing. And on my birthday. Yes! 

[00:27:35] Oh, man. Well, Rupert, if you hear this, thank you. It is the best birthday present ever. And congratulations, America. I’m sure that we’ll each be getting that $10,000 check from Fox in the mail real soon. Of course, we’ll believe it when we see it. Personally, I’m demanding that my check be delivered by those clowns from Fox and Friends. 

[00:28:12] What a day, man. That’s it. I’m going to go celebrate. My thanks to my producer and editor, Angela Vargos, and everybody, all of my listeners here on my podcast, to the subscribers of my Substack, which, again, remember, everybody should subscribe. It’s free. Thank you for being part of this. Thank you for surviving all these years of Fox News. They will not be missed and we will all do a better job of making sure that liars do not control our country, our democracy in the future. That job is up to all of us. Be well, my friends. Enjoy the day and we’ll talk again real soon. 

[ MUSIC: “Birthday” — The Beatles ]