Russell Brand’s searing rant about ‘propagandist’ MSNBC goes viral
Russell Brand blasted leftist news network MSNBC for its “propagandist nut-crackery” in a searing rant Saturday, which has gone viral.
The popular podcaster was met with wild applause on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Saturday when he accused fellow guest John Heilemann, a political analyst for MSNBC and NBC, of hypocrisy for attacking rival outlets.
“I have to say that it’s disingenuous to claim that the biases that are exhibited on Fox News are any different than the biases exhibited on MSNBC,” Brand, 47, told Heilemann.
“I’ve been on that MSNBC, mate — it was propagandist nut-crackery on there.”
Brand then recalled his 2013 appearance on “Morning Joe,” which previously went viral for Brand’s disbelief at the inanity of the questioning and treating him like an “extraterrestrial” while referring to him as Willy.
“Is this what you all do for a living?” he mocked the interviewers at the time, asking: “What’s wrong with your manners?”
On Saturday, he told Heilemann that “it was absurd the way they carried on.”
“I don’t know what it was — it wasn’t the morning, there was no one called Joe there, no one could concentrate [and] they didn’t understand the basic tenets of journalism,” he said with disbelief.
“I think to sit within the castle of MSNBC throwing rocks at Fox News is ludicrous. Make MSNBC better!”
Heilemann accused the comedian of not having a “single actual fact” because he didn’t “actually know anything about any of these organizations you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been on MSNBC once — big f—ing deal!” he said.
Brand shot back: “My darling, it was more than enough. It was such a carry-on!”
Defending his network, Heilemann asked for a “specific example of an MSNBC correspondent or anchor being on television saying something they knew was false.”
Brand noted the “ludicrous, outrageous criticism of Joe Rogan around Ivermectin” and “deliberately referring to it as a horse medicine when they know this is an effective medicine.”
And “what of Rachel Maddow turning up on the TV saying, ‘If you take this vaccine, you’re not gonna get it’ when it hadn’t been clinically trialed for transmission?” he asked.
“You have to listen,” Brand told Heilemann, with one clip viewed nearly 12 million times on Twitter.
“Do you think you can improve America by determinedly and avowedly condemning Fox News without acknowledging that you’re participating in the same game?”
“Bickering about which propagandists 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 standing in the world — and the world needs a strong America, I’ll tell you that,” he said to cheers and applause.
“So you have an obligation — a duty! — not to condemn these people.”
