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To read more about Episode 242, visit the main episode page. 

Michael Moore [00:00:40] I’d like to talk to those of you who have kids. I’m just wondering… This last Wednesday, the day after the Texas children’s massacre, did you let your kids go to school the day after that? Did you take them to school? Did you drop them off? Did you walk them to the bus stop? Or walk them to school? Less than 24 hours after 19 dead children and two dead teachers and 17 others who were injured, did you take your child to school? I mean, I guess you have to, right? They’ve got to go to school. But I can’t imagine what that was like for you. There must have been the deepest, sickest feeling in your gut. Not even a full day after this massacre you have to make a decision to trust our government, our government-run schools, our society, that your kids are going to be okay. They’re going to be safe, nothing’s going to happen. And you have to watch them leave the door, get on the bus, or you drop them off, they open the car door, they turn around, wave goodbye and they walk into the school. And, you know, because this thought goes through your head — not the first time it’s gone through your head, but this past Wednesday, the day after this horrific tragedy, you wondered, “is this the last time I’ll see her? Did I just say goodbye to him for the last time?” And then they walked in the school door. Was that the right thing to do? Well, what else are we going to do? How are we going to get back to normal? How are we going to live? And they’ve got to go to school. They’ve missed enough school over the last 2+ years. Did you take them to school on Thursday? Did it feel a little better? “Couple days later, nothing’s going to happen. What could happen?” Friday. Did they go to school on Friday? Some schools didn’t have school on Friday because of the holiday weekend. 

Michael Moore [00:04:11] This week was another sick celebration of the American way. And today, on my podcast, I want to talk about a couple of things just briefly. I want to ask you a question. I want to share with you some… I guess the only way to put it is some very sad and bad news, but I’m going to share it with you because you’re my listeners, I’ve promised to always be honest and truthful with you, and I believe you can handle it. I believe you and I can do something maybe about it. But first we have to acknowledge and we have to know that there’s something very awful that has to be said. And then finally, before I leave you here in just a little bit, I actually want to give you a piece of amazing hope. Not fake hope. Not hopium. Real hope. A way out. It may not succeed, but I think we all know we have to try. I need to thank our underwriters who make this podcast possible so that I can have my voice heard to all of you and around the world so I’m going to do that here in a second, very quickly. But I think before I do that, I just want to ask you that first question. 

Michael Moore [00:05:49] What’s your number? What’s your number? You know what I mean. What’s the number do you think it will take for you or I or the vast American public to rise up and say, “that’s it. We’re putting an end to this right now. Not a month from now, not the midterms. Now.” How many? What’s the number? What’s the number of dead children that it will take before we act? There’s got to be a number. There’s got to be a number that’s just so outrageous, so grotesque, where all of a sudden, everybody in this country, nearly everybody, will take to the streets, will create such an uproar nonviolently… But such a massive uproar, the likes of which have never been seen in this country or anywhere around the world, and we will not shut up and we will not leave the streets and we will not relent until this stops. What’s the number? What’s the number before we all collectively agree, “That’s it. That’s enough.” We already know the number isn’t 12. That was the number of kids killed at Columbine, 12 plus a teacher, 13 dead there. 13 wasn’t enough, nope. 20 killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. 20 is not enough. Those kids, also an AR-15 used by the killer at point blank range — couldn’t identify a number of the bodies. Faces were gone. The head’s — half the head was gone. Explosive firearm, the AR-15 and the kind of ammunition it uses. If you fire at point blank range, it just blows off, blows away, whatever is right in front of it. What would it take? What if you actually saw the crime scene photos? What if the parents had an open casket funeral like Emmett Till’s mother did back in 1955 when he was brutally murdered by white supremacists down south? What would it take? How many dead children with their heads and faces blown off, how many would it take before the American people would just say, “Enough. Enough! No more. This ends now.” And we all just stop what we’re doing until it’s ended. What will it take? What’s your number? 100? 100 dead kids? 100 dead kids with their heads and faces blown off — would that do it? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. How about 500? 500 little children massacred, laying in so many pools of blood, the pool becomes a lake of blood. Again, you can’t identify them. It took them 12 to 24 hours, whatever — those kids laying on the floor dead for a long time because they couldn’t identify them. And they wouldn’t allow the parents to identify them just by the clothes that they wore to school that day, there had to be actual DNA evidence because they were missing their face. Their bodies were so exploded. And so the parents had to go home and get a toothbrush or a hairbrush or something that would have DNA. And it took them a long time. A very long time while the kids, their lifeless bodies laying there in now dried blood all over the place because they couldn’t identify who was who. They knew who was missing so they could pretty much start to put together the names, but they didn’t know which body was which. The same thing happened at Sandy Hook. Same thing has happened at a number of these mass shootings. They don’t show you the scene. They don’t show you the crime scene photos because they know. They know if you saw what this really looked like… Now multiply it times 100. Multiply it by 500. Multiply it by — how about 1000? Is that your number? Is that my number? 1000? A thousand dead kids in one day, faces gone, skulls gone, their innards spilled out all over the classroom floor. A thousand — would that be enough? Do we care enough? How much do we love our guns? I know we love our guns more than we love our children, that’s an undisputed fact. The Second Amendment is supreme over anything, no matter how many of these kids in each of these shootings. But is it? Is it really? No matter how many, Mike? Really? 100, 500, 1000 — what would it take? What about 10,000? 10,000 dead children piled now, bodies piled on top of each other. It would take weeks to identify who they were because they wouldn’t have a head or a face or anything to tell us who they were. What’s your number, America? What’s the number of dead children that it will take for us to be a different America? That’s my question today. 

Michael Moore [00:12:09] And I’ll be back here just as soon as I thank our underwriters and we’ll get into this, and we’ll talk about a couple of things. I promise not to keep you long — I can’t go that long with this anyways, because I’m still so distraught, so full of grief. I’ve spent 20-25 years of my life on this particular issue in addition to other things, I know, but this issue — you know I tried to stop this after Columbine. I made a film in the hopes that it would do something. And I look back now and I just think, “How naive. How naive. Where did you think you were living?” And to this point, it just feels like such a failure. Because what has it stopped? It’s only gotten worse. I feel this so deeply in my soul. I want to share this with you, and I want us to come up with an answer, and I want your number. I want to know the country I live in. And I want this to stop. 

Michael Moore [00:13:15] And I have to switch gears for a second to thank these two underwriters. First of all, I want to give a big thanks to Calm. Calm is the number one mental wellness app. It has all the tools you need to help you wind down. They’ve got a big selection of curated music playlists designed to help you either focus or relax, depending on what it is that you need. And Calm has a series of imaginative sleep stories, both for children and adults to help you power down at night and drift off into sleep naturally. There’s new content every week that’s added on to Calm — it’s one of the many reasons that over 100 million people around the world use this app to help reduce stress and anxiety. Basically, if you want to stay focused, stress less and sleep more, get Calm. So for those of you who are listeners of my podcast here, Calm is offering an exclusive offer of 40% off a Calm premium subscription. So you go to calm.com/rumble. Go to calm.com/rumble for 40% off for unlimited access to Calm’s entire library. That’s calm.com/rumble. 

Michael Moore [00:14:33] Also this podcast is being sponsored and underwritten by BetterHelp. Thank you BetterHelp for joining us here on Rumble and supporting us in our work and my voice. It’s much appreciated in a time like this. Living through the pandemic, as you know, the isolation of these lockdowns for the past two years has really revealed how crucial it is that we take care of ourselves physically and yes, also definitely mentally. Yet so often, while we’re quick to act when our toothaches or, you know, we get the sniffles, we put off taking care of our mental health. That’s where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp online therapy makes professional therapy accessible, affordable, and convenient for everyone. So anyone who is struggling can get help anytime, anywhere. When you sign up, BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist in less than 48-hrs. And if it’s not a good fit, they make it easy and free to change therapists. And your sessions are done securely online from the comfort of your own home right on your own couch. And the best part? Financial aid is available. So visit betterhelp.com/rumble and join the over 2 million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. In fact, so many people now have been using BetterHelp that they’re recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. And here’s a special offer for those of you who are Rumble listeners. You get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/rumble. That’s betterhelp.com/rumble to get your 10% off your first month of therapy. Don’t put it off. It’s something so many of us need. I encourage you to take advantage of it. 

Michael Moore [00:16:50] Let me say what I’ve said for the last 20 years — that the NRA actually has it half right when they say, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Hmm. Yeah, that’s right a gun can’t fire it itself, but it’s not that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” — actually, they should say, “Guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people.” Because we are the only ones that do it on this scale. I mean, just consider this one statistic — we have 40,000 gun deaths in this country every year. We have close to 400 mass shootings every year. There’s only 365 days in the year. So that’s more than once a day, we have a mass shooting in this country. And a mass shooting is defined by the FBI as four people that are shot at one time in a public setting like a school or a church or a supermarket. Nobody comes even close to us. Nobody does this. And you know what? They’re not better people. And just as President Biden said last week, they have the same mental health issues that we have with people in their countries. Their kids watch violent movies. They play violent video games. They have broken homes. They have all this same stuff. And yet they don’t kill each other the way we kill each other. 40,000 a year that are dead here in this country. In Canada it’s something like 700 a year. And of those, 160 of them are homicides. So in other words, people that are murdered with a gun in Canada is 160. We’re ten times bigger than Canada. So if we were like Canada, that would mean we’d have about 1600 gun murders a year. Canada has, in addition to the 160 homicides they have, I don’t know, something like 550 or 570 suicides. That’s how polite they are in Canada, right? When you think about it, instead of they’re distraught, going out and killing a whole bunch of other people, they just kill themselves. I mean, how sad is that? 570 suicides in Canada each year. In this country, 20,000 gun suicides. This is so beyond the pale, my friends. And you know it. I know it. 

Michael Moore [00:19:59] And I think if we’re ever going to stop this, the first thing we have to do is admit the problem and define it properly. Not just that we’ve got too many guns. By the way, we have too many guns — nearly 400 million of them in our homes. We need less guns and we need laws that are going to truly give us less guns. Yes, I support the ghost gun law and the background check and all that, but that will not put a dent in this problem until we change as a society in the massive ways we’ve had to make changes where we went from being a vicious racist country to being a, you know, less vicious, racist country. But we got better. We did things along the way. We said, you know, women should vote. Of course! We didn’t allow that for the first, I don’t know, 120+ years, until we did. That took a massive change in thinking from men because in order to get that amendment to the Constitution passed, only men could vote on it. Only men could decide whether women could vote. That must’ve looked like the biggest challenge ever to women. How are we going to get all these male legislatures in an all-male Congress — there was one woman from Wyoming in there — how are we going to get them to vote for this? It must have looked impossible. We need to admit that this is a nation that was founded in genocide and built on the backs of slaves, and the way that we pulled that off was behind the barrel of a gun. Lots of guns. Lots of murder of the Native people. And lots of murder and enforced slavery from the African human beings. They were kidnaped and brought here. Raped. Lynched. Shot. Whipped. That’s how we built America, folks. If you can’t say that, if you just can’t admit step one of our 12 step program here, if you can’t do that, we’re never going to get anywhere. We’re never really going to change. We’re never going to become a less violent people because we are a very violent people. I’m sorry to have to put it out there like that, but, you know, it’s the truth. Why is our president even talking about he’d send troops to Taiwan to fight the Chinese? No, you’re not going to do that. We don’t approve of that. We, the American people, we’ve had it up to here with war. That’s it. That is it. And yet we still talk about this country, that country, whatever — we have no right to be involving ourselves in any acts of violence elsewhere. It’s not just war, though. It’s like, you know, a couple of decades ago, the Violence Against Women Act was passed. And then during the… well, really starting with Bush and then Obama getting blocked and then Trump, there’s no more act called the Violence Against Women Act. It’s gone. What country would get rid of a law that specifically is intended to protect a gender that is abused physically, mentally, all kinds of ways in order to keep power in men’s hands? What’s that? Who would do that? We would do that. We did do it. 

Michael Moore [00:24:15] Why is it always a guy that commits these mass murders? I mean, yes, there’s been one or two women that have committed a mass slaying. But go ahead, name their names right now if you can. I’ll give you a minute. No, I won’t give you a minute. You can’t do it. It doesn’t exist. It’s always a guy. Even before they know who the shooter is… I remember watching CNN the night that the Las Vegas shooting, the guy up there on the top floor of the hotel spraying bullets with his machine gun on the crowd watching the concert down below, this free concert, killing what, 60 people? Another 800 injured. And the announcer on CNN said, “There’s a man up there near the top of the hotel firing down on the crowd.” I mean, how did you know it was a man? Why did you say it was a man? Well, because we know it’s a man. What woman goes up to the top floor of a hotel with a machine gun and sprays bullets down on the thousands of people below? Look, I’m not a self-hating man here. I’m not saying that women don’t commit crimes or do bad things or any of that. I’m just saying, I know the world I live in. Let’s just shut up and admit it. In addition to this being a racial issue, because so many of these mass killings have to do with race, even when they don’t outwardly have to do with race, they have to do with race because white America is armed to the teeth. The majority of these guns in this country are owned by white people and they live in the suburbs and they live in rural areas. It’s not what you’ve been led to believe, the narrative that’s told about the inner city and all this. And of course, there’s awful violence in the inner cities of this country. And yes, there’s gangs and all of that. But you know, I said last week to somebody with this constant drumbeat of the story on the evening news — “black people and guns,” and “guns in the city,” and “guns and shootings” and this and that and whatever. How is it that this white supremacist kid walks into the supermarket in Buffalo, targets only black people — only black people died — and you’re telling me after I’ve watched every night at 11:00, “Tonight, breaking news on the south side of wherever, a black guy with a gun. A black child is accidentally shot, when a black guy fired a gun.” I’m not saying these things don’t happen, but I’m just saying there’s a friggin drumbeat. And so now we’re in a black supermarket in Buffalo and nobody has a gun on them. Nobody pulls out a gun and starts to shoot at this white kid. Because if they did have a gun on them, do you think they would have pulled it out and shot this guy? Absolutely. So how come I’m told one thing about the black community, but then when something like this happens… They’re not the one with the big arsenals of guns. The black inner city high schools don’t have mass slayings. It’s us, folks. Admit it. White America started this problem when it started killing off the Native people, kidnapping the Africans to come here, and killing them when they got here, if necessary, or even if it wasn’t necessary — just for fun. That is who we are. 

Michael Moore [00:28:27] 15 of the 19 children in Uvalde, Texas were girls. I want to say this again. 15 of the 19 murdered children this past week were girls. Coincidence? If you look back at these mass shootings, you would be stunned to see the percentage of the dead are women or girls. Not all of them, I’m not saying that. But if we ever decided we wanted to do — you know, our laws prohibit the CDC from doing any kind of clinical investigation of what is going on here mentally, mental health wise, with why we have so much of this, why these young men do this, why it is all men, virtually all men who are the shooters. And why are usually, not always, but usually though a majority of the victims female? I’m gonna say it one more time. Is it just an accident that 15 of the 19 this week, this past week, who died were girls? I’m sorry if this is making anybody uncomfortable, me bringing this up. But it has to be brought up because there is a racial element to this, there is a gender element to this. This is the American way and it’s been this way for a very long time. And it’s part and parcel of the attitudes that we’ve had about how we treat women, how we treat people of color, especially black Americans. And we never really want to talk about the real underlying issue, which is how we, as white people, benefit. How we live by the fruits of the white supremacist. Oh, no, we’re not white supremacists. We’re talking about those other white people. But in fact, every time you or I drive down the road, we get a pass because we’re white. You walk into the department store, a security guard is not following you around. Don’t lie to me. It’s never happened to you. Never happened to me. We have so much privilege as white people, we can’t even find the way to acknowledge it. 

Michael Moore [00:31:09] And we’re manipulated by fear. Constant fear. That’s why so many white people have guns. Fear of a black planet. You know it. Black people know it. You know it too, admit it. In the way that we’re, you know, “the terrorists are coming. Somebody is coming. Somebody’s over there. Somebody’s going to hurt me.” You know, the rest of the world knows this about us. I have a film festival each year, and one year I invited this Norwegian film and then the director came and he told the audience that each scene was filmed in Norwegian and then again in English so they could distribute it around the world. I said, “Wow, that’s a commitment. So essentially you made two films, one in Norwegian and one in English.” I said, “Well, do you mean English, English or  did you have a special version just for America?” And he didn’t want to answer it. He did not want to insult the audience there in Michigan. And he said, “Well, actually, yes, the one you saw tonight was what we call the American version.” I said, “the American version? How would that differ from the British version or the Australian version that’s in English? How does it differ from the French or the German or the Italian or the, you know, Brazilian, the Chinese version of this?” And again he was… You could just look on his face, he did not want to tell the truth. He said, “Well, there’s a scene in the movie you saw tonight that isn’t in the rest of the world. The scene’s not in their version of the movie, nor did it happen in the story” — the film was based on a real life story — “it didn’t happen in the story.” I said, “You’re kidding me? What special scene did you put in there for us Americans?” And he goes, “Well, you know that scene where they’re on the raft in the ocean and a large shark comes out of the water and bites off a piece of the raft and bites somebody’s leg and it’s total terror? That didn’t happen in the story and we didn’t put it in around the rest of the world for the version of the film.” I said, “Well, why us? Why? Because we have Shark Week? Okay, I get it. There’s no Shark Week in France. And on French TV. They don’t have that. I got it.” “No,” he said, “it’s more because what we know about you.” And he said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a very frightened people.” “What? What do you mean?” “You are easily manipulated, as Americans, by fear. The terrorists, the way you responded to 9/11. You know, we have terrorism. We had, in Norway, the children’s summer camp where the Nazi went on the little island where the kids were and killed a whole bunch of them. You know, France, they have terrorists. Germany. England. But we don’t respond the way you respond. You responded to 9/11 by willingly, voluntarily giving up some of your fundamental rights as Americans. And in doing so, you let the terrorists win. The very thing you say you don’t want to do. But because you’re afraid, you just give up your rights, you allow all sorts of things to happen to people, especially in this case of people of Arab descent or Muslims or whatever. And we don’t respond that way. I mean,” he says, “we’re not perfect. We have a lot of things wrong with us. I’m not trying to point the finger at America. I’m just saying, as a filmmaker, I knew if I put that scene in, you would jump out of your seats. You know, we’re surrounded by saltwater. We have sharks everywhere in Norway. In France. In Brazil. Everywhere there are sharks. But you Americans have this weird thing where you are easily manipulated with fear.” Wow. It hit me, and it really hit me like a shovel to the head when he said that and the audience, I just looked at the audience and they’re just like speechless because he had our number. He got it. He got who we were. That’s why we have 400 million guns in our homes. Who the hell, in a nation of 300 million, would have 400 million guns in their home? What other country would even come close to that? Because we’re afraid. We were afraid of the Native people. We were afraid of the slaves that we kidnaped, the enslaved human beings. Constantly afraid and we become violent because we believe we have to protect ourselves. We’re such an ignorant people, aren’t we, my friends? We repeat dumb stuff all the time. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” Oh, God. Do you have any idea what we look like to the rest of the world when we talk like this? By the way, just to give you one example of the stupidity of that statement — if you remember Gabby Giffords and the people in the Safeway parking lot in Tucson that were killed back in, I think, what was it? 2011. And the congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, and survived. There was a guy there who saw this going on, a guy outside the Safeway, and he had a gun, a legal gun that he was allowed to carry. He had a gun, and he leapt into action, pulled out his gun and was getting ready to fire. And then I don’t know if somebody said, “don’t shoot,” or whatever, but he was going to shoot the guy with the gun, except the guy with the gun was one of the victims who had picked up, once they tackled the killer and got his gun away, the guy took the gun to keep it away from the killer. But the good guy with the gun was going to kill him. And that guy is alive only because — I don’t know what happened or the guy just thought, “I should wait a second to make sure that’s the killer. The guy with a gun.”. 

Michael Moore [00:38:12] Life is not a movie. We love our guns, though. We love them. We love our guns. And we love our Second Amendment. And we love them more than our children. And can we say that? Will we admit that? “Well, I don’t, of course. So, no, not me. No, no, no, no.” “Me neither!” Right. Okay. Except we continue to live in this country and we don’t do anything about it. We let this go on and on and on. If you think I’m wrong about this, then tell me, where is the rage? Where is the uprising? Where are the parents who by the millions will collectively say next week, “we’ve decided we’re boycotting our schools, we’re not sending our children to our schools.” The teachers unions say, “we are not going to risk the lives of our teachers anymore. We are boycotting this until these laws are passed, until we change as a people, and until these Republicans — the party of death and violence — is thrown out.” Would we do that? Would we take that kind of action? How many? What’s our number? How many have to die before we do something about this? You can’t look away. I heard earlier today that a couple of the parents are thinking of having an open casket. God bless you if you have the courage to do that. I don’t know what you’re going through right now. God bless you. But if you do that, I will support you. I will give you everything I’ve got in terms of my love. So that you can show America. But this is who we are. It won’t just be your dead child in that casket, it will be a large friggin mirror. To the 330 million people in this country who know… who know that we are wrong. And we’ve allowed this to go on for too long. 

Michael Moore [00:40:38] So the second thing I wanted to say to you here is that — I don’t want to say this because I don’t want it to be true, and I think that we can… we can obviously change, but it won’t happen on its own. And there will be another mass shooting this week, next week. There’ll be one today, as there is on average, one or more a day in this country. That will happen today, right after you’re done listening to this, somewhere across America there will be a shooting where four people are shot. And it’ll happen again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. And then there will be a mass shooting like Buffalo, like Uvalde, Texas in the next week, ten days, two weeks. We may be in for a very bloody summer. Because a lot of people who are on the edge, I mean, on the edge, the literal edge before the pandemic, the pandemic has pushed them now to the point where they’re falling over that edge. And we have no system in place to help them. And we have so many guns easily available to them and so much ammunition to where they can fire away all summer long. This is going to get much worse. And I didn’t want to say that, but, you know, we know, it’s true. And not saying it or not thinking it doesn’t make it go away. It should give us all the impetus that we need to stand up, get busy, join an organization, form a neighborhood group — do whatever it is we have to do to stop this. Yes, to get these laws passed, but also to change ourselves and our communities. It can happen. It can happen. And I want to tell you, and this is the good news I wanted to leave you with — that we’ve changed before. You know, a lot of people lost their lives in the Civil War so that the enslavement of human beings would end. A lot of people marched and died and fought for civil rights. People are still working on this today to stop voter suppression. There’s a lot going on to not be the way America was founded, where black people were 3/5 of a human. I can cite so many examples. Yes, women did eventually win the right to vote. On and on and on, it gets a bit better. And that’s true not just in this country, but around the world. Anybody my age or even younger never thought Mandela would get out of prison, never thought the Berlin Wall would come down, never thought any of a number of things. Who thought that there would be dozens, hundreds of Starbucks and Amazon warehouses and places like that unionizing this year? I mean, things do get better when people act. The Germans were a violent, vicious, horrific people. They slaughtered millions. And now they’re — what is it 77 years after World War II ended? — they’re some of the most peaceful people on Earth. As are the Japanese. Think of culturally, politically, how they had to just change because the other way wasn’t really working and there were just enough good people left at the end of the war to say, “we got to live differently. We’ve got to do this differently.” That’s what we’ve got to do right now. We’ve got to stop the war on ourselves. We’ve got to stop the war on our children. That’s the war we have to stop. The Germans did it, the Japanese did it, the British did it. Remember, they used to have an empire? Awful people. And then they decided after a period of time here, let’s stop this. And it ended. I’m not saying there isn’t criticism of the Germans or the Japanese or the British. Obviously, there certainly is of us. But things can get better. Things do change. Remember when you first heard they were going to pass a law prohibiting smoking in bars? Did you ever think that would happen? Boom. Law gets passed. All of a sudden…I don’t know what the percentage was of American adults who smoked, but I’ll bet you it was, at some point, close to 50%. Now what is it? I can’t name a friend that smokes. Honest to God, I can’t. I’m trying to think right now. Okay. I know one person that will sneak an occasional cigarette, but they’re not smoking a pack a day, or three packs a day like they used to. That changed. Things change. People can make those changes. Whole societies can make those changes. 

Michael Moore [00:46:26] I mean, there are some specific laws that I would like to see passed, ones that are not being discussed right now. I’m talking about real legislation, about removing literally millions of guns from the homes and the streets of this country, bringing back the ban on assault weapons, all of this stuff that we can do. And you know what else we need, and I think this got proven this week in Texas in that town, we need good police. We don’t need a bunch of Ding Dongs running around with all their militarized equipment. They’re there for crime scene cleanup, they’re never there to protect or defend or prevent crime. Can we please just start hiring police who are smart and brave, and not racist? Can we do that? Oh, wow. How much better things would be if we did that right? And pay them more. The ones who will risk their lives for us — pay them more. They deserve everything that we can do for them if they’re willing to give up their lives for us. Please, people, absolutely, right? Those cops in Texas, the fact that they hid, that they hid out in the hallway — they’re right outside the hallway, outside the classroom. 19 police out in that hallway for an hour. Not going in. Child after child dying or laying there bleeding to death. We need to reform what we call “law enforcement” in this country. And we need police who believe in real justice, the real justice, and who understand that really, the real criminals are the ones in the suits and the ties, the ones that have made life so miserable for so many people in this country. Just start with the real estate industry that is guaranteed now that if you’re listening to me right now, I’m going to tell you something that maybe you haven’t told your parents or other adults, but you’ve been thinking it all this past year with what’s happened to housing prices in your 20s now, in your 30s, your 40s. This is the thought that’s been in your head for the last year, “I’m never going to own a home. I’m never going to own my own home.” The rich have gotten richer during this pandemic, and the young, the working class, the poor people of color, so many women who don’t make what men make — all of this stuff has just gotten worse. And they’re going to keep dishing it out to us, my friends, until we stand up for ourselves. Until we say, “No, sorry. The democracy and equality and income equality equity is more important than you and your five mansions. Sorry, we are taking our country back nonviolently. We don’t need violence because we… As long as there’s a ballot box, we have the numbers. There’s more of us than there are of you. And we are happy, and we are sad to admit that yes, this great nation of ours was founded in genocide, and was built on the backs of enslaved human beings. That’s the truth. We admit it and we will fix the results of this because we’re still living with the results of it. Hang in there, my friends. As tough as this seems, as daunting as the challenge may be, as grief stricken as we all are over the events of the past couple of weeks from Buffalo to Texas to every place else, to the tragedies that await us in the next days or weeks, do not despair. Do not give up. Don’t let those in power get away with this. This is our country. These are our children. And you know, the rest of the world, as mad as many of them may be at us, they’re pulling for us too. Because they know the planet’s not going to survive if we keep messing it up. So we’re all in this together, folks, regardless where you live, who you are. How many more dead children will it take? Please scream your answer. That the number is zero. Never again. No longer. Enough. I will dedicate myself to this. And I will not relent until we become a better America. 

Michael Moore [00:52:07] Thank you, my friends, for listening today. Thank you to my producer and editor, Angela Vargos. Thanks to everybody who’s had a hand in this. Thanks to the underwriters. My name is Michael Moore and this podcast is called Rumble. Take care.