News/Commentary

Russell Brand crushes MSNBC to network analyst’s face: ‘Propagandist nut-crackery’

March 4, 2023 | | Print Article

English comedian and viral podcaster, Russell Brand, absolutely obliterated MSNBC while appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO show Friday, calling the network “propagandist nut-crackery” right in front of MSNBC analyst John Heilemann.

Brand and Heilemann were guests on “Real Time” and it was a wild ride of a show. It started when the topic of revelations from Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News was broached.

The English firebrand took exception to Fox News being singled out as radical. He hammered all of the cable news networks as corporate “mouthpieces” and propagandists. He laughed off the notion that some are less biased and lacking in integrity than others.

“It is disingenuous to claim that the biases that are exhibited on Fox News are any different from the biases exhibited on MSNBC,” Brand asserted. “It’s difficult to suggest that these corporations exist as anything other than mouthpieces for their affiliate owners in Black Rock and Vanguard.”

Brand recounted his MSNBC appearance where he “hijacked” the “Morning Joe” show in 2013.

“We have to take responsibility for our own perspective,” Brand told Heilemann, and later added, “I’ve been on that MSNBC, mate. It was propagandist nut-crackery.”

“It wasn’t morning. There was no one called Joe there. No one could concentrate. They didn’t understand the basic tenets of journalism,” Brand proclaimed as Maher laughed himself sick over the statement.

“No one was willing to stick up for genuine American heroes like Edward Snowden, no one was willing to talk about Julian Assange and what he suffered trying to bring real journalism to the American people and I think to sit within the castle of MSNBC throwing rocks at Fox News is ludicrous. Make MSNBC better. Make MSNBC great again!” Brand declared in a nod to former President Trump.

Heilemann got his fur up and challenged Brand over his claim, “I’d like to hear a specific example—approval—specific example of an MSNBC correspondent or anchor, being on television saying something they knew was false and were saying behind the scenes to people this is, ‘I’m about to go out’ and ‘we know, that we know that the election wasn’t stolen, but I will go I will go out on television and say the opposite.'”

“I think it’s a false equivalency,” Maher said, agreeing with Heilemann, who went on to say Brand doesn’t “actually know anything about any of these organizations.”

“You’ve been on MSNBC once, big f*cking deal,” he said.

Brand pointed out that he was referring to “biases.”

“Do you want an example? The ludicrous, outrageous criticisms of Joe Rogan around ivermectin, who were deliberately referring to it as a horse medicine when they knew it was an effective medicine,” he blasted.

The Englishman was extremely dismissive of Heilemann’s MSNBC defense. He doubled down by highlighting the uselessness of arguing over which corporate news network is winning the propaganda rat race.

“We need new political systems that legitimately represent ordinary Americans so that we can overcome cultural differences and bickering about which propagandist network is the worst is not going to save a single American life, not improve the life of a single American child, not going to improve America’s standing in the world, and the world needs a strong America, I’ll tell you that,” he admonished.

Brand also ripped the pharmaceutical industry and the military-industrial complex while he was at it on the show.

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