Grubstakers - Episode 249: Russ Weiner, Michael Savage, & Rockstar Energy feat. Felix Biederman

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

This episode we down some energy drink and dive into the legacy of Michael Savage, and the footnote of Rockstar Energy Drink, his son Russell Weiner. Featuring our special guest from Chapo Trap House, Felix Biederman. The lads were having so much fun that the audio get's a little bit crispy here and there, but it just goes to show you how spicy the show and the subject is this time around. Don't forget to check out Sean and Yogi's Twitter/Instagram for more info about their live shows in Seattle and Portland, and feel free to support us on our Patreon.

We find people that basically can't make enough to eat before they go into the fields. I don't believe that. I think that you're looking at other places that are not Central Romana. People actually who focus on and who like getting an orgasm never get one. Pull up your socks and figure out what you're going to do. Any chance we'll ever get to be a completely red state? Oh, yeah. Well, the cute face always upsets me. But more upsets me.

Listen, Blue Ivy is six years old. Beyonce says she tried to outbid me on a painting. Everybody in Atlanta right now at the Louis Vuitton store, if you black, don't go to Louis Vuitton today. In five, four, three, two today in fun that's why you need to take a meeting with Kanye West Bernard Arnault welcome to Grubstakers the podcast about billionaires my name is Sean P McCarthy and I'm joined today by my fellow energy drink connoisseurs Yogi Poliwal, Andy Palmer, Steve Jeffries uh so today's episode is about Russell Wiener he's the

billionaire founder of Rockstar Energy Drinks. And it just so happens that his father is named Michael Wiener, better known as Michael Savage, one of the most colorful and controversial right-wing talk radio hosts of the last 40 years. And to discuss these two paragons of the American dream,

we are very honored to be joined by one of the funniest podcasters around, Felix Biederman from Chapo Trap House. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm a, no, I'm, I love Michael Savage. Like I'm, so we were talking about him so much before and re going, going back into him

has been an amazing experience for me. Like you're right. He has more character than any other right wing pundit I can think of. Yeah, we were saying before that his like so like every other radio conservative radio host it's like Hannity where it's like

he's the most charismatic scab construction worker who like makes his way up. It's Limbaugh who's like oh yeah I'm just like a fat pill head but like I've always wanted to be a radio guy because it's the coolest thing to do in like 1957 when I came of age. I can just right place, right time,

I can get into this. And then you have Michael Wiener, Michael Savage, who has an insane childhood, gets fucked by Allen Ginsberg, gets obsessed with herbs and roots. And his life and his son's life it's like if a conservative an american conservative made the wall because it's like it's

like there are so many stages and weird traumas and shit but it's like because it's america like your dad doesn't die in the war like americans don't die in the war your dad is fighting the battle of being gay and losing like every day all the time i very much appreciate michael savage like you know he keeps the radio wars alive he just like recently had a tweet before limbaugh died mocking him for dying of cancer and complaining about it on the air i love when he's yeah when he said like man up when it's your time, it's your time. And it's like, A, an awesome thing to say

because Michael Savage in his novels, he's like, I'm fighting against a demon inside me. He's telling me to be gay. But also, it's also like, yeah, I mean, kind of. For Limbo, Limbo is one of the worst pieces of shit.

Yeah. American radio and like just no pity for anyone. Like, clearly, this not not like a Michael Savage isn't a true believer either, but he thinks he is like he has to believe this shit. So he like so he isn't just like running through every bathhouse in the world. That's what he thinks. He has to do this or he's not doing that. But Limbaugh is just like a salesman. He's just this comeback, and he'll say whatever about black people,

about single mothers, about anyone. And the second, at the end of a very long, comfortable life, he's like, oh, I'm scared. Goodbye. And it's like, yeah, no, stay consistent. And at least Michael Savage is like, yeah, don't be a fucking bitch, dude. Yeah, the tweet is,

Limbaugh's crying about his cancer on air. Worst 15 minutes in radio history. Spilled a large coffee all over counter and floor. And then all caps. I promise my audience this, I will not drag you down with me. Best wishes Rush, but stop and leave the stage

with dignity. I love him. Now do you think that the first lines of Howl by Allen Ginsberg were about Michael's habit? But so before we kind of get into the biographies of both Michael W weiner and his son

russ weiner i did just want to ask you felix um you know like growing up did you have any let's say memories or notable experiences about michael savage or listening to that program i have a really embarrassing memory sure when i was like um 12 or 13 i was like a budding like message board little lib and like everyone like it's kind of like how it is today where like people are going to post like shit that Michael Savage says you can get mad at it like

I would have never heard him anyway I would have heard like man cow but like sure man cow never my mom would like be switching by like radio stations when I was like in the car with her and like man cow would come on and we would even then be like, oh, what an idiot. Man Cow's a loser.

But Michael Savage, he was always saying things that were so above and beyond what anyone else would say. And now, obviously, I'm like, this is the greatest man who's ever lived. But back then, I'm like,

this is disgusting. I hate this guy. He's such a rotten person, which he is. I still, you know, back then, I'm like, this is disgusting. I hate this guy. Like, he's such a rotten person, which he is. I still think he's like a rotten person, but an amazing person. But anyway, so the, like, corner store near my house

started stalking Rockstar. And I, like, told the, like, guy behind the counter that they, I was like, hey, just so you know, like, this is the company of, like, the most evil man in the world. And it's very embarrassing that I did that. But that is my main Michael Savage memory.

Yeah, I was kind of the same way. I was an annoying liberal kid, and I had this idea, oh, I want to hear both sides. So I would listen to Limbaugh, and I would listen to Savage. And Savage was always so incredible to me, because as far as I can tell, he's the only political pundit who regularly had the dump button hit on him on the radio.

Because he would just get so lathered up in these homophobic rants and then the last 15 seconds would just be like dump dead air. I would give anything for the dump tape. So when he was on MSNBC used to be great yes msnbc canceled

phil donahue and pat buchanan because they both agreed that we shouldn't go to war of the rock and they're like fuck you get out of here and they're like you know who's awesome this jewish guy who like will sue anyone who says he's Jewish. He had a show for three months. For some insane reason, they gave him collars. Idiotic, yeah. That is just, man, that is like, I'm going to have Johnny Cash play at my venue in 1975 and we're just going to leave just a bowl of heroin in front of him.

I mean, he can have as much as he wants or as little, but it's just there for him. And so, yeah, he told a caller to get AIDS and die. And even in 2003, they were like, okay, we can't do this. You're fired. Yeah, we have that audio drop. Some of the listeners might have heard it.

But yeah, I do remember that at the time. Yes, he lost his job for telling somebody he described as a sodomite to go get AIDS and die. I love that word. Let's go to a caller. If you have an airline horror story, give me a ring right here on the Savage Nation. Go ahead, please. Did you have a worse case than this one?

Hey, Michael Savage. Pleasure to speak with you today. I was flying out of LaGuardia, and there was two undercover security guards. Yeah. Somebody was smoking in the bathroom. Someone was smoking in the bathroom. Unbelievable. And what happened?

Half hour into the flight, I need to suggest that Don and Mike take your... Because your teeth are real bad. All right, all right. So you're one of those sodomists. Yeah. Are you a sodomite? Yes, I am. Oh, you're one of the sodomites.

You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig? You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage? You got nothing to do today? Go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis. Okay, we have another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse.

He's angry at me. Give me another one. Put another sodomite on. No more calls. I don't care. Let's go to the next scene. I don't care about these bums. They mean nothing to me. Next scene. On to the next scene on the Savage Nation. And they immediately go to commercial.

If you see the video, it's like immediately somebody grilling sausages. There's a commercial for 4th of July or some shit. It's like the next segment is some sort of sausage grilling thing, so Savage had that on the brain. For like two seconds, and they're like, commercial, commercial.

And amazing that they made it live. There's no reason to do that. It's like they were setting him up to fail. Oh yeah. The thing I love, I to like a bit of michael savage in preparation for this and it is amazing because he's like death grips it's like he wasn't as big as like other people still a pretty big act but like now everyone everyone in that space

is trying to be michael savage like every like zoomer with with an internet show, every edgy conservative wants to be him. But it's not like, it's like, okay, you went to Duke or something. You're not him. You didn't live his life. You haven't felt his pain.

I wanted to ask you guys that listened to him then, do you think the modern conservative pundit is trying to encapsulate what Michael Savage did? They're trying to get that real raw emotion he was dude he was like no it's like you can never be michael savage because he's

like even if you fully believe that shit which i think like a lot of people are doing this now too you're still like you're believing it because like a combination of like when you got on the internet and like whatever happens in your adolescence and blah, blah, blah. But for him, it's like, no, this is,

I'm like fighting demons. It's interesting. Like seeing like, uh, people like JD Vance who are like trying to do that. Like Michael Savage is like Amadeus compared to this guy where it's like so natural. And you know,

the JD Vance is like trying to go in through experiments of like hinting at the 14 words in his Senate run. But you know, like a guy like this is just like, he can't even stop himself if he wanted to. No, he like, the thing that's insane about that clip is like, I'm used to Savage like building up, but it shows why he's the best because he wasn't even fully into getting pissed.

Right, right. He just like hair trigger, like from the hip, because he wasn't even fully into getting pissed. Right. He just, like, hair trigger, like, from the hip. He's like, get AIDS! And, like, if J.D. Vance was going to tell someone to get AIDS, he would, like, have to spend an entire day, like, doing junkie tricks. Yeah, just working himself. Yeah, it's a rocky montage of him training to say, get AIDS! I saw, like, J.D. Vance had something today where it's like,

Alex Jones is more reliable than Rachel Maddow and that just sort of like encapsulated why he sucks because it's like the people who listen to Alex Jones don't listen to him because he's like a good journalist they think he's like funny and like cool they think it's like cool that he freaks out

all the time you're not like oh who's a better journalist, him or Rachel Maddow? Like, that's so fucking stupid. Like he just funny. He fundamentally doesn't get it. I mean that there are like two ways to go,

right? It's like, you're either, you either like, you're like Drake and you can always like find the median of the moment and like figure out what the meta is and roll with it and be the perfect medium point where you get the maximum amount of people. Or you can be

a breakthrough and capture enough of that sound but enough of your own thing to set out a different course. But the third thing is the most rare where it's like you create something entirely new. And that's Michael Savage. He's Death Grips. And that's Michael Savage.

He's Death Grips. He's a true original. Yeah. The one other bit I remember from my childhood is I was listening to him and he was playing audio of like the sound effect of somebody urinating, basically. And he would go, oh, Allen Ginsberg's grave. Timothy Leary. All the red diaper doper babies. oh, Allen Ginsberg's grave. Timothy Larry, all the red diaper doper babies.

It's so great for him because that would be an amazing bit if it was just like, if he was just like, okay, my dad was like a watchmaker and I like was a shoe salesman until someone like heard me say something really racist and like I got a job on radio. But it like you were that right exactly you you like fucked all those guys he worked he worked for timothy leary he would made love to alan ginsburg he probably fucked

timothy leary yeah and it's like yeah so it's just like that kind of like real raw passion has to have maybe a psychosexual element that is just like missing from all these like button up, let's say like new Republicans who are trying to be Trump and they see some consultant, they're like, how do we appeal to these people that Michael Savage and Donald Trump can talk to? And it's like,

no, you have to have like, there has to be something going on in your head. Yeah. You can't be like, it's so sad when people try to be Trump because it's like, you can try to imitate like the blood and soil shit and like the rage, but you can't get the part of him.

That's like Kristen Stewart, such a bitch. Like, because you'd never think that, like you'd never, that would never be a thought that like crossed your head. You never spend like a week being like what? He's so handsome and he's with this stupid bitch.

But like, like, what he's so handsome and he's with this stupid bitch but like like did you read the letter that savage wrote to um alan ginsburg i have like an excerpt from it here it's it's it's awesome i i i got it uh let me pull it up i like took photos i was so excited when i found it i didn't even screenshot i like took photos of my screen, but it's okay. Dear Alan, after speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walk downstairs

to the school courtyard where a little known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, and we do some old world Lower East Side finger tricks and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand i do the same for his hand i told him about our brief talk and he says i must have felt the vibes michael wiener yeah it's like this uh he was michael savage was a granola hippie i

mean he was born in brooklyn then he moves to you know uh the village or san francisco and he's like a granola hippie there in the 60s and 70s and then by like 1980 most people say he's what he is today yeah which is like you know psycho conservative well and before he was in san francisco he's in fiji oh yeah and during that time he's learning like you know asian remedies for all the aliens and then you know when he goes to san francisco he's a professor and then slowly goes into being a disc jockey but then in that time he's also selling like herbal life supplements as well yeah and there's like photos of him from conferences because before he is the shock jock character

he's just the salesman selling like hey try this herb from fiji that will help your dick be bigger or you know whatever the fuck it was and it makes sense that a guy that had to pitch to those people in conferences at one day was like fuck this noise i'm just gonna talk shit about everything i'm tired of being a button-up stooge yeah i'm gonna fucking explode it's like if billy mays at one day was like you know what fuck everything i'm gonna become a trump loving fuck the liberals conservative i love that he got his start basically in academia like he just got obsessed with like ornithology or something and uh he got a phd in natural medicine yeah he went to fiji to like study Kava Ruth and like wrote a dissertation on it and like in the article I was reading about him

it's like he was always obviously like always like a freak of a person but like around when he was at when he was in academia he would start like that he brought a gun to campus every day he would like

demand that people have lunch with him show them again yeah this is an around after the spirit when he started getting on radio is when he he's written like he's one of those guys who's like i've written 78 books and he says in like he says in a savage nation actually very trumpian i think he did have a little bit of a influence on Trump. He says, these weren't just bullshit books. These were top of the line books. It's like how to get off cocaine by taking herbs and shit. But in the most important book he wrote

is his novel that's like thinly veiled autobiography. It is basically a man's struggle with his own homosexuality oh yeah it's so funny he writes this book and like three years before he's like on national radio being like if you're gay you should fucking die because like he doesn't even like hide it like the book has it's his dad is basically in the book he's's in the book. Like at the end of the book, he dedicates it to his wife.

And he's like, oh, it would take a great woman to be with a man who's lived this exact life that is depicted in all these stories. I did all this stuff because there's a part like he talks about like fucking all these guys and like Fiji and shit. And then when he gets back, he's like trying to do wellness shit. And he goes jogging and he like hears a demon telling him to like go fuck men yeah and he breaks down and cries and not even not even tea can help him that's from that salon piece right yeah 30 minute salon piece and it really is like the expose on michael savage at that time it's written in 2003 and it's wild because you know this guy was huge he was in like uh 200 million listeners like 400 stations and the fact that none of this was known about him until 2003

is just like it's something that couldn't happen today because everything is so online you know so the fact that people went from like i like I like this conservative guy to, oh, he was in Fiji to his dad had a heart attack. He was told while jogging he's gay. Like, it just is an explosion of fucking information. And then to keep going, like, another, like, 15 years after that. Right, right. Like, everyone, like, it's like you, he didn't even hide it. Like, I guess it's just, like, he just, he's like, he didn't even hide it like i guess it's just like

he just he's like well i've written like 98 books no one's gonna find the book where it's like i'm michael savage i'm fighting the gay demon like thank you to my wife for he doesn't do tear day thing like my wife kept me from being gay i love her but like i i guess the thought process back then is like it's hard for us now to think like what was the thought process before the internet yeah but like I guess that's it it's like who's gonna find that yeah I think it's similar right now where people put out so much content like especially like the Ben Shapiro that type of conservative where like every video you watch online even if it's like a make a fucking Italian pasta there's like a shapiro suggested type of thing so the more content you have out the more people just find who

you are and for savage it was those books i'm sure there's also like a group of people like also closeted and conservative who like pick up that book and read it and he's got them now for life because they're like that's me yeah 100 yeah it's weird uh felix you were saying he uh he contacted the adl over that salon piece yeah the salon guy was like so like savage was like pretty like anti-semitic he like would go in on barbara strides and be like fucking like kike and like not like literally go like typical savage probably they had to hit the dump button on that and the guy who wrote this

was like he's like he outed him as Jewish it's very bad to out someone's Jewish when before they're ready to come out right a lot of suicides come from that but savage reported him to the ADL for outing him as Jewish.

You have to imagine the guy who worked the dump button for Savage just got carpal tunnel eventually. Oh, my God. So is this before 1998? Because that plays into his son's political career. His son ran for California State Assembly or something in 98. We'll get to that.

I did want to just mention, because he brought up the book, he claims to have written 44 books, most of them dry academic, but the titles include the 1991 book The Death of the White Male. He wrote this three-book thriller series about the white male. And you were mentioning, yeah, he wrote this three-book thriller

series about conservative talk show host Jack Hatfield, who's a conservative radio who, at various points, fantasizes about murdering his family and running away with a man. He also stops various Islamic

terrorist plots. There's a there's a group called like the hand of a law that is so awesome in your book like that it's like you're fighting your own demon yeah it's like telling you to go to bathhouses but it's like oh i have time to stop 9-11 it's such an an awesome fantasy. Yeah, I'm trying to picture him in still an academia mode. He's submitting whatever article on homeopathic medicine

to a journal. And there's reviewer tours giving him feedback or whatever. There's so much energy of these other ideas. How do you get from that to what he became I think he could like so yeah when they talked about how

he would like just act insane on campus I think because like yeah academia like sucks I've like family members who are in it and it like it just sounds awful and it's like always been awful at various junctures for like some reasons they're the same now some reasons that are different now but it's always been awful at various junctures for some reasons they're the same now, some reasons they're different now

but it's like to succeed in academia for that to be your track and to make it all the way to provost or some shit is like you have to you really have to be good at holding things in and we've seen this that is not one of his talents

someone probably his advisor is just like, you're not that guy. So the books, the three book series, thriller series on Jack Hatfield, they're called Abuse of Power, A Time for War, and Countdown to Mecca. Countdown to Mecca involves a stolen suitcase nuke

as a plot device of course but yeah so abuse of power was the first one it tells the story of a failed carjacking that reveals a government cover-up it's apparently based because he got like banned from the united kingdom for obvious reasons it's a dark plot involving british officials and a terrorist group known as the hand of a law uh the publisher described it by saying it will make 9-11 look like child's play but we do have an audio drop of him on his radio show reading from the sex scene of abuse of power so maybe we'll just play that so you can hear uh how he wrote the sex scene in abuse of power interactions between

the hero and even his friend tony because that's part of their life if they're macho men wouldn't they also have a sexual life and a sensual life would you expect them to be department store dummies no jack is with this woman late in the book and uh they're having you know they're really together okay and jack who liked to watch himself make love actually fell from the bed onto the hot radiator but like the indian fuckers who can be on a bed of nails without later showing puncture marks jack did not scorch or burn nothing visible remaining except a small soreness days later let me pause there have you ever read anything like that in a novel

it's original it's not derivative nobody that i know of has ever written a sex scene like this are you ready i'll finish her cries became veritable screams as she moaned and her eyes became glassy with passion her screaming eventually became very threatening jack tried to quiet her by putting his hand over her mouth while continuing to stroke with his loins and lips. Quiet, quiet, he tried to command hoarsely. Faisal will hear you. He reached for her t-shirt and couldn't believe himself as he pressed it

over her mouth, holding it down hard against her lips by pressing it against the sheets, one hand on each side of her face. Their hips were in perfect synchrony and she continued, her cries and screams now muffled beneath the shirt as Jack made love to her as he had never made love

before. Sarah bucked and arched and was in a world he could never see. Then it was over and they collapsed onto the bed, sweating, chest heaving. Sarah rolled toward him and snaked a hand across his chest as she nuzzled his neck. Thank you, she murmured. You don't know how long you've been wanting to do that.

She smiled, kissed his neck. It couldn't have been that long. We barely know each other. And I'll stop right there. Because my point is quite simple. Which is this. Women only on the Savage Nation. Women only. Did you find this scene upsetting?

Abusive. Offensive. Should it not have been read on radio did you use a power uh grading did you think it was inappropriate for me to read it on the air after all i am not a liberal now from a liberal you'd expect a sex scene but of course it would be written by somebody with the inability to describe lovemaking they would have to revert to the gutter they'd have to revert to the gutter. They'd have to use F words and dirty words and be like a dirty little boy, which is what you would expect

from those on the other side of the aisle with a pen in hand. It's so funny to just imagine, you go from Rush Limbaugh complaining about the spotted owl and death panels to that. Yeah, it's like I don't know how he had fewer listeners limbaugh like limbaugh's like well now it's gonna be like oh you can rap for your food stamps and

it's like okay yeah i get it yeah but like this is awesome like this is right are you uh like by the way if you're a woman did you like this is so are you uh like by the way if you're a woman did you like this this is like cool does this seem like a guy who enjoys heterosexual sex with this i like i like the i love the scene itself because it's like the woman in that scene while he's fucking her it's like it might as well be like a horse sure sure like she it's just like it's like you would write that if you were like fucking a woman and pretending she was anybody else there is like an air of like god i'm fucking good like the amount of ego in him reading his own sex scene is almost more like palpitating than the scene itself he He's so excited to be able to share this.

There's also that kind of subtle, like he never made love before. The thing in the beginning where it's like, he fell in the radiator, but there were no burn marks. Like the Indian stepping on the nails. Like, what physics are you describing here? There were burns, a soreness a few days later. Why even include that

what what what why do you give a shit it is that part is so it it's like it showed he's an artist in a way that limbaugh isn't like limbaugh limbaugh is like limbaugh is like the guy who's the best at like doing characters on the boardwalk complete philistine compared to this this is like yeah this he's like jumping around time frames in the same paragraph. Okay, so is he fucking this woman or we're going to three days ahead where it's like,

we don't know how good he's fucked the woman yet, but we're already talking about how isn't it amazing that he fell in a radiator and there's just a small bruise? Right. Why did we jump ahead like four days for that? But then the sex scene itself is so

weird. The dialogue after the sex scene, where it's like, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to do that. We've only known each other a few days. He's, man, he's... Limbaugh is just

nothing compared to him he's fucking nobody he's a loser Limbaugh could never do this there's like we didn't play it but there's a little bit before where he's talking about like you wouldn't think that I have like feelings because I'm like conservative or whatever

no I think you have too many feelings that's your problem he just reads his fucking sex scene on air I urge the listener go check out Michael Savage Abuse of Power Jack and Sarah Make Love by the Radiator because it's only got 210 views which is criminally low when you think about it

in the world of YouTube come on you gotta get this hits we need to get like zoomers into Michael Savage because it's like Westwood 1 canceled his podcast this year and I don't know Because it's like Westwood one canceled his podcast this year. Yeah. And I don't know if it's like because of low listeners or just like he said something insane again. But it's like he should be like this should be like the new thing that everyone's into.

It is something that like I mentioned since I didn't know it then I have to look at it with that 20 years lens. And it's so perfect of like, oh yeah, people were fucking animals in terms of what we're listening to on our, like people are driving, listening to Savage Reed, his fucking sex book. I'm just delivering pizzas

and listen to a guy fuck a woman in a book. Yeah. Well, it's incredible to me because it's like, it's really the shock jock era. It's incredible to me that he could get advertisers for this stuff. Yeah. Because it's like, you know really the shock jock era. It's incredible to me that he could get advertisers for this stuff because it's like,

you know, I listen to like most modern right wing pundits like Ben Shapiro. You just want to slug in the face. It's extremely unpleasant. He's an annoying, you know, warmongering little, little worm.

It was not entertaining at all. Like you, it don't enjoy, but I listened to Savage. I'm like, this rocks. Like, he's amazing.

It's like the only guy I can compare to Savage in terms of his own personal demons is Steven Crowder. Steven Crowder is like a no talent. He has nothing. It's like, dude, you're fighting so many demons. It's like your body

is trying to kill you. Once a month, you're like, oh,'m like putting on a dress to like oh would black lives matter like this it's like so you're like clearly like fighting some demons but he's never achieved like this level of artistry no no he's just because steven crowder for all his like demons he's fighting and for all his like hate he's still like he's like Drake it's like okay you're a fucking child actor you haven't really had any interesting experiences in your life but Michael Savage like he walked the earth before he died he tried

everything he tried everything to like kill that demon in his mind and he was like I can't kill it I just have to like unleash it on the world Stephen Crowder is. And he was like, I can't kill it. I just have to unleash it on the world. Steven Crowder is just like, oh, I didn't get to become as big of an actor as I could. Here's why black people are stupid. It's like, this sucks. You suck, dude.

By the way, stepping back to his MSNBC I Hope You Get AIDS thing, here's a book by Michael A. Weiner, PhD. Maximum Immunity. How to Fortify Your Natural Defenses Against Cancer, AIDS, Arthritis, Allergies, and Other Immune Deficiency Diseases.

In that book, he says that to fight AIDS, we need to give gay guys vitamin C. That's right. He would always like it when his callers called him Dr. Savage. There's just, there's no, like, it's so

I guess it's like everything, right? Like, movies are like, there's a certain level of, like, shittiness that can't quite be. But there's also, like, a very definitive, like, middle ceiling on them because everything's owned by, like, two or three shittiness that can't quite be. But there's also like a very definitive like middle ceiling on that because everything is owned by

like two or three companies and everything has to like reach the maximum amount of audience and there will never be like a level of experimentation. You're just not going to see. And you see the same thing with conservative pundits. They're all basically funded by like the same like four assholes. And it's like yeah

if you're like a Coke or like Miriam Adelson it's like, yeah, if you're a Coke or Miriam Adelson, it's like, okay, I'm not going to get too crazy here. I'm just going to have this whiny fucking Orthodox kid or Stephen Crowder or Dave Rubin. I'm not going to find a guy who's

45 and has literally gone to the other side of the world to try to find he's gone to a tribe a tribe of people and been like please do you have

a root that will keep me from having gay sex and they're like try this it's kava and he's like oh thanks it's so true though like what you're saying there because it's like michael savage is like you know he's he's a repulsive human but he's a human yeah whereas you see like a guy like shapiro like just a worm like you don't even you know they're so like cookie cutter there's no and you know again with the

movies you go like to see a movie you want you want that feeling of connecting with the human experience you're going through your life and you see this like Marvel bullshit I mean that's not the human experience and like that humanity these real personalities have been driven out of conservative punditry it's so sad

and it's like yeah like I get depressed when we watch like Marvel movies for the show yeah and I like think they're really fun episodes but like watching the movie itself makes me depressed because it's like this is such like a smoothed out experience of course makes me feel like shitty like I

just I don't it's like the it's like how you feel when you wake up after taking an Ambien but like we watch a lot of Christian movies too and I love that. Like I have the best time in the world because it's like when you see those movies and you see how they like fuck up, it's like,

that's a very human error that they made. Like there's a boom Mike visible or like there's like, there's a storyline they introduced halfway through the movie that had no introduction that had no real introduction. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Our friend, our friend Jerryerry the soldier

killed the local gay guy and it's like who are these characters and it's like you see the very human flaws and like the gulf between what they were trying to do and what they're able to do that's like that void is humanity yeah i think it's like the it's polish versus grit savage has grit you can see the flaws in his fucking face and just in his life but all these other cats they're they're so they're just safe that's really what it is it's like it's almost made for the suburbs yeah can you scare the suburbs and entertain them then then you are what we want to pay for right now which is weird because you would think that more people with grit would just be like these guys are idiots. Let me fucking do anything.

But it doesn't really exist. I don't know why. You think it's because the money people, they just don't want something that crass? Like they don't want to fund that? Yeah, because it's like Daily Wire. That's funded by the Wilkes Brothers. We did an episode about them. They're like land enclosure billionaires. They're like fracking billionaires.

But they're also, they go into Idaho and they're just they literally just put gates on public roadways and enclose it and put private security there and say hey fuck you this is ours now we know the civilian conservation corps built this trail here but this is ours now and we have more money we own the state government they're not going to do anything about it you know call the fucking local attorney general he's not going to do anything about it and You know, call the fucking local attorney general. He's not going to do anything about it. And it's like, yeah, these people are, you know, they're so evil and they fund Daily Wire as their little propaganda outlet. They don't want a guy like Savage

who's going to bring more attention to them. They want like these little like Shapiro and these other guys who are there, Michael Nolus or whatever. They're just the most boring people imaginable. They'll do your propaganda and they won't bring you unwanted attention. They want like failed actors. I've noticed so many conservative stars now are like failed actors and it's so interesting to me because i feel like the most one of the most

interesting things about like contemporary life in america and it's something there are a few things that i'm writing that i'm trying to capture this in that everyone now wants a media career. It's like such an interesting like what stage are we in that we're doing that that like everyone from like the FBI agent who is entrapping like mentally ill you know Americans to fucking

like you know like a cop who had a viral moment to like people who are in high school like everyone wants this it's fucking insane it's so like it's just such a sign of like social rot and evil

and so like even this even like this thing that's very like the Wilkes brothers you can tell they're like they sit down and they make this very evil calculation where it's like, okay, we need 35%

of the people to always vote in our way so we can have a Larry Craig type who's always going to allow us to put gates on public land and do all this shit. We're never going to get a majority of people, but we can drive a wedge if we have this we have this like media

thing that never makes money but always like activates a base keeps people involved even when they feel disillusioned and who am I gonna find for that I'm gonna find like someone who is a fail like there's always wanted a media career like a typical American who's like bitter about it and they'll just they'll ride for me for change in my back pocket basically. I can give one of these fucking losers

I can give them a sponsorship for a rechargeable battery company owned by veterans for like $70k a quarter. And that's nothing to me. And I can keep like doing this until you know we can buy all the land in duluth minnesota from the coast are uninhabitable

and i can repopulate the earth in my image and it's like you like i i think that people doing like michael knolls is like a failed actor and screenwriter and it's like he probably knows like you have some idea that you're like being used that you're like a stupid dupe that you're just like this you're this little like little pawn man for the for these these guys that run the world but you're still like well i have a media career now i have an audience right but like there's no there's no like human like if someone if there was like if like George Soros had been like hey Michael Knowles like

in 2005 like I want you to do like a pro-choice like shock jock show he would have done it all these guys would have gone the other way there's just they just want to be famous and Michael Savage Savage clearly always wanted to be famous and recognized as being a genius. But he's doing it because he's fighting those demons.

And because he really, before he was famous, did develop all these unique, fucked up things to say and developed his own voice. Meanwhile, these other people, I mean, I think the quality of sort of like being like a cipher, like a certain level of nothingness, it's like the dark soul

in Dark Souls. That's sort of like the evil part of humanity you need to really succeed in media. It's what makes the best interviewer in the world is always going to be like, there's a little bit of nothingness there. Like Larry King, like Howard Stern.

I'm like the biggest Howard Stern fan, but there's like a little bit of nothingness there. Oh yeah. And you, and that's fine. There's nothing like bad about that. You just, it's what makes a great actor,

but you, that's a part of all of us. There's a part of all of us that always like accommodates the people around us and figures out what people want to hear and figures out the exact right thing you need to say to someone for you to get things out of them if you're interviewing them. And everyone's always going to have it. It's part of being a human. Again, it doesn't make you evil to have. But like these guys are just all darkness.

They're all cypher. They're all the dark soul. You need the balance. They don't have the balance. Michael Savage had the balance. He had like, there's also like the search for light. In his own fucked up way

he's like searching for love. And you can hear it in his rants and craziness. Yeah. And I think like with all these other people, like what rich people are trying to do is it's just like, it's the Reagan model. Like they're trying to have all these little Reagans that they can control. We're just going to read the script and do what they want. And of course, Savage isn't going to read the script. One of my favorite Larry King interview moments is he's interviewing DJ Khaled and DJ Khaled's talking about like his come up basically.

And he's like, you know, so we did this and that. And Larry King just goes, hmm, so how'd you get all the weight? Cut the bullshit. Why are you fat? And there is an air of like King is like a child in how he interviews, which you need because a normal person will be like, I can't just ask a guy why he's fat. But Larry King's like, no, no, no, no. You have to do this. Like, what's the first thought in my head?

And right now it's this guy seems confident, but he's a fat ass and I don't know why. His interview with Morrissey is the best video online. He starts out the interview by being like, why is your band called The Smiths? None of you are named Smiths. It's the best Morrissey interview ever

because it's like anyone else would be thinking like how do I not like this guy's so temperamental how do I get him not to walk out and Larry King's like so do you like still want to kill yourself and what it like disarms Morrissey like Morris I love Morrissey but he's like such a prick and it

like totally King's like cipherness is like childlikeness like disarms Morrissey yeah because Yeah, because it doesn't matter how much of an ego you have. You notice that they're not asking me because they're being a dick. They're just genuinely curious. And so it reverts your ego into humanity where you're like,

well, okay, I guess I'll explain this to you. And that is, I think Savage has that. Yeah. I have a few quick facts here about his son and about Rockstar Energy. This is Russ Wiener, the founder of Rockstar Energy. This comes courtesy of Forbes magazine. I'll just like give a couple of facts here and then we can go back if there was anything we wanted to talk about on Michael Savage's biography himself. But it should be noted his son was born in 1970

and his full name is Russell Golden Cloud Wiener. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, he's like, you know, he was a granola hippie when he had his kid. And Russell Golden Cloud Wiener is, according to Forbes, worth $4.1 billion U.S. dollars as of September 2021. And that is because he founded Rockstar Energy in 2001. He sold it to PepsiCo for $3.85 billion in April 2020. So if you buy Rockstar Energy out there, you don't have to feel bad about supporting Michael Savage. You're just supporting the

perfectly nice corporation Pepsi, which is only engaged in privatizing water in the drought-stricken global south. So you don't have to feel bad about it anymore, at least. But yeah, Rockstar Energy, I guess for those who don't know, it's really always been a distant third in the energy drink market. First is Red Bull, second is Monster, and Rockstar Energy was third. It sold about, according to Forbes,

$851 million worth of sales in 2019. And kind of like his innovation there, he did very little. He obviously hired somebody to make all the flavors and shit. But what he figured out is Americans like soft drinks. So Red Bull comes in those tiny little cans. Rockstar comes in these big

16-ounce cans. So he just sold more soda to Americans as an energy drink, and it made him a billionaire. Do you have the thing in there about how So he just like sold more soda to Americans as an energy drink. And, uh, you know, it made him a billionaire. Did you, do you have the thing in there about how the Genesis of rockstar, the first time anyone ever saw it,

it was on Michael Savage's website as a liver cleanser. That's right. That's right. Yep. That is beautiful. That's beautiful. It's awesome. I love this story because like the dad's like a freak.

The son is like, okay, like I'm growing up rich. My dad is... Through just bearing his soul to the world and saying these awful things, I'm afforded a very comfortable, upper-class American lifestyle.

But my passion's business. I don't have the demons my dad does because I'm like, even if you are Michael Savage, it's like everyone rich is like like you're raising your kids with a certain level of like softness and comfort and it is beautiful that Michael Savage with all his demons

is like incorporating like his son clearly is like yeah I just I need like I need this billion dollar business idea and his dad's like I'll help like it's like a Jewish dad's still a Jewish dad they're still going to support their number one boy it's beautiful and from that salon piece uh on michael savage savage says that i was raised on neglect anger and hate he writes in the savage nation oh i couldn't tell so you had a normal life

but growing up with little parental approval or praise was a good thing he says frankly that's why i'm driven the way i am and with russ's son he does have his mom who for the most part seems relatively normal yeah she definitely drives the like we couldn't we couldn't find the video but uh somebody uh on your replies twitter uh felix was saying that there's a video or there was a video of michael savage and his wife leaving some restaurant in san francisco and getting confronted by a reporter and apparently Michael Savage's wife screamed something at this reporter to the effect of go back

to communist China you're communist dude that's a ride or die it really is I'm trying to find an evil woman like that on this like 15th anniversary of the Savage show his wife comes on this is his second wife, Janet, who we're talking about. And

Michael Savage is like, Janet, what do you think of the show? And she's like, oh, well, can I be honest? Michael Savage goes, you can be honest. I won't get mad, I promise. And Janet very quickly just goes, yep, quick to anger, quick to forgive. And that's such a telling line about Michael Savage himself that he will explode

on you for like an hour but then in 30 seconds be like okay so anyway what are we going to do for dinner tonight that's what I love about him is like I've met guys like him all throughout my life like there's like a certain level of like you know in Game of Thrones

like the Targaryen family madness all Jewish men have it we all get it. When we get older, it all shows up in some way. And for most of us, it's like you cry at a baseball game for some stupid-ass reason.

You get really into doing alternate history. What if Michael Dukakis was actually really good? And my dad did it. We all do it. Just overly obsessed with something. like what if Michael Dukakis was actually really good. And you know, my dad did it like we all do it. Sure. Just overly obsessed with something.

And a part of that is just like hair trick. I don't know why that is, but it's, it's never like violent. It's just like very emotional. And then it's like within 20 minutes, it's like, have you noticed that a like to pop belly isn't as good as anybody?

But yeah, no, it's like if you notice that uh like potbelly isn't as good as anybody but yeah no i think that's why i have like a special like cultural affinity to him even though he'll like sue me if i'm like he's a jewish man of course uh it is yeah quick to anger quick to forgive and i think that's probably for young russ that's probably what it was like it was oh certainly russ was like oh you, certainly. Russ was like, oh, you know, I'm going to some bullshit California school. I had to read the Combahee River Collective Manifesto or something.

And he's like, what the fuck? You're making a shit on the American flag. You're going to kill me. You're going to grow up to be a sodomite and you're going to fucking put AIDS in me. You fucking... And then like 20 minutes a son of mine. And you're going to fucking put AIDS in me. You fucking. And then like 20 minutes later, it's like, so any girls in school? I think like during that rant, Janet's the background just like shaking her head like silently.

Just like, don't. It's not that work. And that's why Russ is so just a business prone. He's like, I'm going to make a fuckload of money. Yeah. Instead of be a psychopath always because he's got a little bit of the balance. Some quick facts on Michael Savage. Born March 31st, 1942. He's 5'3", which makes sense.

Yeah, no. I didn't know that. I figured like 5'6", but like, dude, they used to make him small back then. They really did. Another thing, Felix's replies, because you had that tweet and there was a lot of great stuff,

a lot of replies in there, but apparently Donald Trump was on the phone with him, and Donald Trump made fun of short people, and Michael Savage told him he was going too far. I love all the shit that Michael Savage says about everyone.

It's like, hey, you can't control me. I couldn't find any pictures of Savage and Trump together. That would be fun because you can't take that away from Trump. He is tall. There's one of Trump, Savage, and Michael Savage

and his son. I'll see if I can find it. There's like a foot difference. Easily. Trump's like 6'3". He's pretty tall. Trump could have been like a lineman. I think so. Imagine Savage next to his son. Oh, is his son big?

His son is 6'0". I know Baron's huge, but I was like, what's Russ's size? Oh yeah, here it is. something. Baron. Oh, no, I know Baron's huge, but I was like, what's Russ's size? Oh yeah, here it is. All right. Yeah. I don't know.

Maybe it looks like he's standing on his tip. Yeah, he's standing on his tip because he's wearing lifts. Yeah, that's the son, Russ,

and some other business man. He's wearing a Sarkozy. That's how, that's how like, that's like, that's balls by Michael Savage because it's like Trump only hangs out with guys who are

tall. That's his stupid thing is that he just loves tall men. And so it's like if he goes there, Michael Savage is going to be at everyone's belt line. But it's like, no, I got to go there. I have to go there. His thing with Trump is he tried to get Trump to protect wildlife. He was one of those conservatives who's like, no, I got to go there. I have to go there. His thing with Trump is he tried to get Trump to protect wildlife.

He was one of those conservatives who's like, no, we have to protect elephants. Even though your sons kill them. Literally, your son's favorite thing to do is kill those things. And he never succeeded. He never got Trump to protect wildlife. Never. But he was like, no, this is, it's like,

it is, I compared Michael Savage to Keitel and Bad Lieutenant just like emotionally. But that is like, that's him going to the church. That's him putting the guys on the bus. Like all this shit I've said

and done and like birthing another like evil billionaire into the world. I can undo it if I like save one elephant's life and he can't do it. He can't.

No ability to. Like the second he tells Trump it's just out his ears. Trump's like what? Right. There's nothing there. Yeah who's that guy again? The demons coming into play there. The demons stop? Do the demons want to like Him fighting them I mean. Oh yeah no I think it's like

I mean like according to him it would be like hey i'm like when he talked to trump he's like hey like conservation and conservative like come from the same brute like we you know teddy roosevelt like protected this wildlife blah blah blah but i really do think it's like i need to like i need to leave like something good on the marker all right because like a guy that tortured like knows that he's bad you know what i mean they're self-aware yeah he like he knows that he's kind of a piece of shit like you don't feel that bad all the time and you don't know it's kind of impossible because there is like like from the the salon piece uh we've been referring

to here uh one of his he grew up in the the Bronx and he went to Jamaica High School, Queens. Some guy said that he was on the short side and he was intense, a fast talker and always hatching some scheme or other. The fellow I knew was a natural comic and as reliable as a clock, which doesn't really make sense but it's also kind of like, yeah, he's the pretty standard person if you know what I mean. And then so after college or after high school he went to queen's college to get a biology degree and within this is as wiener was also something of a dreamer and he had hoped to follow in the footsteps of his hero

the naturalist charles darwin and so he would go to oahu hawaii where he'd get a master's degree in anthropology and botany and then after that in 1960s, like we've mentioned through 70s, he traveled to Tongo, Fiji, and other South Pacific island nations to study traditional herbal medicine. Around this time, he would marry his wife, Janet, but he had been divorced from Carol Eli. He was married to her for three years and then got a divorce and married this lady, Janet. Oh, I wonder why. Just knowing this guy's personality, I have no idea why he would go through a divorce and so like during that time in fiji's when he may or may not have fucked alan ginsburg he probably fucked him let's be honest there's supposed to be a photo of them skinny dipping

yes right there's a photo of them skinny dipping in fiji which thinking about 1970s photo technology and the fact that someone's like hey they're skinny dipping let me take a photo is you just must have been in just fucking gay orgies at the time um it's i'll put it this way like i don't think many people like traveled across the world and met alan ginsburg and were like oh i'm into this guy and like didn't fuck him you know what i mean like it's like that wasn't a thing you you didn't like go up to that line and be like all right see good to meet you. It's not like meeting a podcaster. You have to get the full experience. It's like when people would do Doug Walker's shitty bits to him.

And you'd have to be like, yeah. So then in 74 he goes to San Francisco. His family lives in Fairfax. And Savage on his show would describe it as unfair facts. Oh, damn. Hometown of Taliban rat boy, John Walker Lind.

And then he made trips to San Francisco and started hanging out with North Beach literary scene. Apparently also, we mentioned it earlier, but around, when he married his current wife, Janet, Timothy Leary hired him to work on the Hitchcock Cattle Company estate in Millbrook, New York. Apparently, Leary hired him because Savage did not use LSD. And I guess, you know, whatever he was doing up there. He wasn't cool, man. He was probably making LSD for the CIA or whatever. But yeah, it is just kind of like a weird, again, psychosexual thing where it's like he seems to hate Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary a lot

for, you know, being ex-boyfriends or whatever the case might have been. He hates them in a way, like, it's because there are other people from the hippie movement. And like, how many of Savage's listeners would even know who Allen Ginsberg is? I don't know, yeah. Probably none of them. It How many of Savage's listeners would even know who Allen Ginsberg is?

I don't know. Savage's listeners were like the typical conservative radio listenership. It's like some of the people who voted for Reagan on the Upper East Side probably know who he is.

It's like some Missouri pig people who have a golf course where it's like no sagging your pants. One of those signs up in every bar they go to. And it's like they probably don't know who that is. It's truck drivers.

That's like the I'd say the biggest characteristic difference between conservative radio and conservative media now is the class component of the audience. Because there's truck drivers and shit that would listen to Limbaugh and stuff, and it's like they don't know either. So it's like for him, mainly.

They'll know who Timothy Leary is because Timothy Leary is a big cultural figure, but Ginsburg, not as much. And it's like you could talk about Abbie Hoffman. You could talk about the Weather Underground. He did talk about these guys, but it wasn't like a personal hatred in the same way. These were people who he had,

let's just say, some type of relationship with. Right, right. And just a classic huckster is how the salon piece paints him at this time, where he's like carrying a gun all the time, forcing people to get dinners with him, and then like writing books about the benefits of herbal remedies and then also selling them. So it's not even like, you know, the books, I think in the beginning are a vessel for the things that he's trying to sell. And then the show becomes a vessel for the books like it's not

like they one necessarily goes to the other but you can't fact check everything no one's going to listen to hundreds of hours of radio show read all of the books and then check all the ingredients and that is what begins him being like fuck this leftist world that is san francisco and the granolas i'm going to become the most aggressive radio host. And in this, it talks about a poet that knew Ginsburg that said that Michael Savage had dreamed of becoming a standup comic in the mold of Lenny Bruce. And they talked of doing a comedy routine together. And that's like, you know, when you come to the modern day conservative p pundits they're failed actors michael savage is a bit of a failed comic he would never become that guy but he was

fucking perfect i just i think he could have been like i honestly think he could have been very good yeah i i like because there's clearly like some level of like he is one with his emotions when he's performing he is a performer right certainly no he's performing. He is a performer. Right. Certainly. No, he, I think that he's definitely an outstanding performer, but in San Francisco in the seventies for him to do what he was trying to do,

people were like, this isn't it, man, but he perfected it. Yeah. He went, fuck that noise. I know this is good.

He bombed for 10 years. That's 10,000 hours. I, here's what I, kind of inspirational. What I think is so interesting about this article is that one of the guys who knew him, who's like,000 hours kind of inspirational what I think is so interesting about this article is that one of the guys who knew him was like oh Michael's a piece of shit

very interesting this guy named Stephen Schwartz Stephen Schwartz for people who are neocon watchers like me Stephen Schwartz is yes yet another former trot former SDS who became a founder of FDD, Foundation

for Defense of Democracy. And I found it very interesting. I found it very interesting because this is sort of about Jewish boomer identity crisis. And for Savage, I think it's very conspicuous that all his books, all his works pre-politics

are about cleansing. They're about purging they're about breaking addictions right and it's like he wants to wash away this stain of like sort of like frou-frou like middle class radicalism through a cleanse yeah he wants to fight his own d he wants to cleanse his demons he wants to get sober from this he through the act of reduction he is going to become the man he is supposed to be and that then you have a guy who kind of feels the same thing. This guy, Stephen Schwartz, who thinks he's so different from Michael Savage, who thinks he's so much better than him.

And he is doing this through addition. He's like, no, what if I take Trotskyism and I add all these elements, and boom, I have neoconservatism. And it's like, I'm normal now I'm not like screaming and crying on the radio I'm not like fighting demons but it's like no you are the demon like even the whole rock star

will clean your liver it screams to the purging of like the badness inside of you because that market of there's shit inside of you that's bad and I can get it out is a trillion dollar industry.

Like, you know, there's nothing about that. But that's the generational shift. Because Michael Savage's like things are you have to cleanse, you have to purge, you have to reduce. You have to break down everything around you. You have to take the oils that surround your body

and break them down and wash them off. And then you can be you. Right. And you is correct. But the son who's making things for millennials and like Xers and shit, it's like, no, you're like,

fuck, you need new things. You're like, you're basically like you're operating at half capacity. You don't have to run out. You don't have to green. You fucking bitch. Like,

you know, you need, you need new things. Like you, you suck. And you always have to keep adding new things. You suck and you always have to keep adding new things. If you don't drink all this soda,

good luck getting a promotion. Good luck being good at sports. By the way, just a note, in 2013, according to this Politico article after Janet Weiner testified to the Senate about the safety of Rockstar, they say FDA last year reported 40 illnesses and five deaths linked to monster energy and 13 illnesses and two lasting disabilities linked to

Rockstar energy. Imagine if you were like, I don't want to like, I'm going to bet that the guy who got disabled from rockstar was a veteran because those are like i know i know i knew like veterans back when i lived in the midwest and it's like they love that was a group of people that loved rockstar me and my friends me and my friends we were monster boys you know i'm still a monster boy yeah because you're a veteran you're fucking with rockstar and it's like imagine you're in like 5th Special Forces

or some shit and you survive like you were like in SWAT Valley like 20 years ago. You're like, you've done all this shit and it's like you get back there's like nothing physically wrong with you. And then you're just like, you're in the VFW like in a wheelchair and they're like, oh, I and you're like, not exactly.

Not really isn't what happened. I wanted to just say a couple things about Rockstar because it is so funny that he was selling this as a cleansing juice on his website or whatever. So he sold it to Pepsi in April 2020. Pepsi has apparently changed the formula probably to make it kill people less. There's on Wikipedia, the last time I looked this up,

I don't know if it's still there, there's a sentence to the effect of, there have been numerous fan complaints about Pepsi changing the formula and making the flavor worth and then it says Citation Needed. I'm like, Russ Wiener wrote that shit. I mean, to prepare for this

episode, I got some Rockstars and they didn't taste that. I mean, I'm also a Monster Boy. They did not taste up to snuff in my estimation i i did i used to like in a pinch i drank it i remember when i was like 20 me and my friends were like you know the it was like we're gonna listen to taiga and like drink as much energy soda as possible and like smoke camel crushes and shit and it was like at the time I was like ooh this is pretty fun because it's like it tastes a little bit different from Monster.

But like I do want to try it again. I do want to because I do feel like yeah that's the final thing is that Russ is making something for his audience where it's like no this may kill you but it's like you're going to be a rock star. He's like no we like, no, we can give people diabetes

over the course of 40 years. We can't instantly kill them. No. And then just a couple other things. Rockstar Original was named the worst energy drink by Men's Health Magazine for having 280 calories due to 67.5 grams of sugar. And then from eatthis.com, they quote Jessica Mason,

who's the founder of Kitchen Habit. She says, quote, a large can of Rockstar contains as much as 59 grams of sugar, which is the equivalent of 15 teaspoons. Oh, my. Yeah. And like 275 milligrams of caffeine. Like Bang should probably be taken off the market. Bang's 300. Bang's $300.

It's not that much further ahead. I looked at Janet Weiner's statement to the Senate Commerce Committee and she says that ounce for ounce actually, Rockstar doesn't have as much caffeine as Starbucks Pike Place Blend. I actually have a theory about the whole

Pepsi ruining the Rockstar brand because I used to drink Rockstar juice when I worked at a grocery store. I remember that shit. I went on a road trip recently and I tried it and it was disgusting. And I was like, this is fucking weird. So I looked at pissedoffreviews.com on Rockstar and everyone is like, the new formula sucks. It's terrible. But for me, the reason Pepsi spent the money they spent on Rockstar is because Red Bull is its own thing.

But I think Coke owns Monster. And Pepsi wants their foot in the door on energy drinks, but Pepsi's not going to prop up Rockstar. They're going to probably take the flavors and put it in some Mountain Dew energy drink. Absolutely. And so to do that, they have to whittle down the Rockstar fans by

poisoning the well, if you will, here. And it's kind of genius because, yeah, why would you buy a company and then make them more profitable? You already own it. Who gives a fuck? By the way, one last note. In 2013, after the Senate investigation into energy drinks, Rockstar hired

the Podesta Group to lobby. Yes! Dude, coming together. Coming together. I love this. Rockstar tried to heal division. That's right. They really did.

Obama divided. The Obungler divided us. Rockstar was trying to bring us together. That's right. Rockstar, obviously, savage family project. Yeah. 100%. Now owned by Pepsi.

Wicked in its own way. Red Bull, it is from the Netherlands. We're going to assume it was founded by descendants of the founders of the Dutch East India Company. How could you not, of course, assume that? It would be cool if Monster was like, we just... And I know, no listeners correct me. No one tell me like, oh, it's like, yeah, it's owned by Coke. Yeah, I know it is.

What if that was the one where it's like, oh, no, this is like made and bottled in like Rejava. It's like community owned. It's like the one good one. That would be awesome. I would love because it's like, man, I've bought so much Monster in my life. I fucking love Monster. It's delicious. It's so good. Handpick the Monster plants that they

lovingly grow. Monster is funding and arming armed feminists battle groups in Rojava. The basest thing possible.

It would be so cool and that's like that's like why Turkey wants that territory. It's like we need like we have this like that territory. It's like, we need, like we have this, like we have all this public debt. Like we have this high unemployment.

Like no one's buying our textiles. We need monster. Right. Like we need monster. We need like the monster plants that grow in Kurdistan. I thought it might be interesting. I have the photo of a back of a monster can. I think this is the old ingredients,

but I'll just see if I can pronounce all the ingredients. By the way, the leaf, it's that M shape. The ingredients in a Rockstar are the triple-filtered carbonate water, sucrose, glucose, citric acid, taurine, natural and artificial flavors, sodium citrate, caffeine,

caramel color, benzoic acid, sorbic acid, L-carnitine, insotol, niansamide, calcium pantheonite, milk thistle extract, guarana seed extract, panix ginseng root extract, riboflavin, peroxidine, hydrochloridide. Natural ingredients. Yeah, and cyanocobalamin. So those are the ingredients in a Rockstar until up until Pepsi changed the flavor. We were extracting like 70% of those ingredients

in Afghanistan. That's what we were doing over there. We were making Rockstar. God damn, that's so much shit. That's why the British BBC was freaking out because they just drank nothing but Rockstar over there. god damn that's so much shit that's that's why the british made it bbc was freaking out because they just drank nothing but rockstar over there that is i don't know if that's true but it feels true yeah they're like they're so fucked up that they're like no this is the good energy

this is the worst one they know that the taliban's gonna like burn all the rockstar i was i was in the UK and that was probably the most unhappy I've ever been on tour. I love Manchester. Manchester's awesome. London is the most unhappy I've ever been. London's fucking evil, dude. I felt awful

all the time over there and their flavors of Coke Zero, it's like this fucked up raspberry flavor. Oh, man. That is a place without God. Hell is just... I don't believe hell is like fire and brimstones. That's like a modern invention.

It's a place without God. It's London. Hell is London. It's the worst fucking place I've ever been. I've been to some hopeless places in America. I've been to... Even Trump could America. I've been to, you know, even Trump could not bring the jobs back to these places. It didn't feel as bad as London feels fucking

bad. I think it kind of goes back to what we're saying about the pundits. It's too polished. It's too sterile. You know what I think about? It's like if you've ever been to a lens crafters, they have that sterile room where it's like, we're not scientists but we're making glasses. And anytime I'm in a place like that i'm just kind of like you i don't know what this needs to be but it doesn't have to be this clean you guys can fucking

relax no you need germs you need germs exactly well in 2015 uh roberto saviano who's the author of gomorrah he's like he's hunted by the mafia because he uh he wrote these very accurate books about the drug trade but in 2015 he said london is now the global money laundering center for the drug trade what yeah yeah and so that's like you know i was hsbc yes it was very confusing to me i was like why are the british so much angrier about anybody else about us withdrawing from afghanistan it's like yeah because london finance is like propped up by the drug trade and laundering that money. Oh, yeah. I mean, you just kind of notice when you look at as many

money laundering cases as we've done here, it always comes back to London. Specifically the city. Yeah. Whenever I'm on the Upper East Side, I like it because there's a

familiar evil, a very American american evil you know where it's like oh these are all like mummies who voted for reagan and like reluctantly voted for trump like it's an evil place but it's like it's like it's like if a guy in a dracula costume came out to scare you and was like and it's like i see people there and it's like man even if you did profit from 9-11 like you're just a fucking old man yeah and like they're and like every time I'm in the Upper East Side I do see like at least one thing that's like eyes wide shut evil like just like in the corner of your eye like I last time I was there I saw like there was a girl in like a wedding dress sitting in front of like a store with like clothes scaffolding

like on her knees crying and her friend just standing over her and I was like what the fuck I don't see this happen anywhere but it's like I guess for me I'm like well this is American evil I know what it is

even when I don't know what it is I know what it is and it's like I't know what it is I know what it is and it's like I understand it. This like sort of bad feeling I get I kind of like it. Her friend's just waiting

for her to stop. Yeah. But like I guess in London it's just like I'm not English. So when I felt very evil I was like

even though it's like you know it's the same thing. It's like the British. They're all laundering money and profiting off 9-11 and shit. I guess I just... Our evil feels better to us. It's like the British

office versus the American office. It's different but the same. Just a couple other things on Michael Savage. Then we start his son here. First off, I guess he got his start by, he was trying to write these right-wing books, and then he just sent a demo tape of himself

to 250 radio stations of him just screaming in his bedroom. That's right. And yeah, finally he found one that would take him on. And for those who don't listen, he has a lot of catchphrases. He calls Rush Limbaugh hush bimbo because he always refers to the red diaper doper babies he refers to turd world nations instead of third world nations the intro talks about how the michael savage so show contains adult content adult language and psychological nudity

and then like i remember reading about this at the time uh when he would like he would do live shows like you know like 2004 2005 like around the time of the you know just after the iraq war started he would at his live shows play the video of nick burr getting beheaded with like the screams and everything oh Oh my god. One of the most horrifying videos I've ever seen. You're a veteran truck driver. It's like a Fallujah bed or something. Oh my god.

In 2016 Michael Savage said on the topic of Muslims they say oh there's a billion of them I say so let's kill 100 million of them. Then there will be 900 million of them. I mean, would you rather die? Would you

rather us die than them? And, you know, in addition to like the thing that he got in a lot of trouble for where he, you know, talked about autism being fake. He also talked about like, oh, that's the one he got in trouble for. It is crazy that like, oh, that's the one he got in trouble for. It is crazy that like in 2006, like you could say that.

You could just be like, we need to kill like just like 10% of Muslims. And it's like, yeah, you could still like, yeah, like fucking like, yeah, brisk iced tea will still advertise on your show. And yeah, so he got in trouble for saying autism is fake. The kids are just 99% of the time, the kids are just brats who need to be told to cut it out. And then in 2014, he also said PTSD among veterans is fake. That's right, yeah. He said, quote, everyone has depression in their life,

but if the whole nation is told boo-hoo-hoo, come and get a medication, come and get treatment, talk about mental illness, you know what you wind up with? You wind up with Obama in the White House and liars in every phase of the government. That's what you wind up with you wind up with obama in the white house and liars in every phase of the government that's what you wind up with it's a weak sick nation a weak sick broken nation and you need men like me to save the country he's never been in the military you need men to stand up and say stop crying like a baby over everything no wonder we're being laughed at around the world no wonder wonder ISIS can defeat our military

unquote. He's an incredible mind, Michael Savage. That's, man, someone needs to stand up and say something. I love him. I can't, yeah, it's like

I used to get so mad about, I was like, this guy's disgusting and now it's like no he's dude he's just him you just gotta let him be him he should get on Patreon my idea I want to do like a series of interviews

where I like first I want to interview Judge Joe Brown my favorite guy in the world him in Buckbreaking was so good. He was so good in that movie. He was involved in the Martin Luther King assassination trial. The trial where they found there was a conspiracy. Judge Joe Brown, you can see videos of him talking about it.

Yeah. I wish our subreddit still existed because I want to do an interview with him that's like four hours long where I don't challenge anything. And I also want to do that with Michael Savage. I want to do just like interview like old guys who like, they're the last guys who like believe their type of conservatism. Yeah.

It's like, talk about how like the U S military needs men like you. Yeah. Just go ahead. I'm not going to interrupt. I'm not going to challenge anything. Let's, let's hear about it.

The Nixon tapes. So Michael Savage, the guy we were talking about for this entire hour, this is the dude who raises Russ Wiener, the billionaire we're actually covering today. But boy, his dad is a fucking cornucopia of information. I love that guy. But to go on to Russ Wiener's childhood, we got some more from Sean. Yeah, so like Russ Wiener is actually mostly kind of avoided the press, unsurprisingly. But, you know, he finally granted, I believe, his first interview, like since his political campaign to Forbes magazine in 2014. He grants it to Abram Brown of Forbes magazine. The guy writes a hit piece on him.

But, you know, it's like it's kind of the theme with Russ Wiener and Michael Wiener and apparently his grandfather because, you know, Michael Savage talks about his father abusing him. It's basically all like father, like son, like grandfather. Like, just a quote from this 2014 piece about Russ Wiener from Forbes magazine.

Quote, one former executive says Wiener pays his lieutenants well and has to given how difficult he is to work with. A few managers recall such legends as the groom reduced to tears on his wedding weekend after a call from Wiener and the executive forced to fire people on Christmas Eve to please the boss. Quote, character assassination, says Wiener. Rockstar is a Jewish company. Christmas Eve is another day like my family is one of those jewish families who enjoys christmas it's still just another day yeah i'm doing emails on christmas it's not a religious day for me you're grinding

when everyone else is celebrating yeah it's kind of funny like we've talked about a lot on this podcast like forbes most billionaires they'll give a self-made score like out of 10 and so like the basic story of how russ wiener got the money to found rockstar is he took a 50 000 mortgage on his condo and then it's like oh how do you get that condo nobody will tell you right fucking dad bought him his condo his dad like screamed at him about about like the nba being being the professional thug league and cried on a phone call for 45 minutes and was like,

anyway, Russie, you just graduated UCLA. You need a place to stay. Buy you a condo. But yeah, Forbes gives Russell Wiener an 8 out of 10 self-made score. Good for him. But yeah, one former employee says, quote, Russ is a very Russell Wiener, an 8 out of 10 self-made score. Good for him. One former

employee says, quote, Russ is a very hard guy to work for, and without the right guys, the company can't grow well. The 2014 Forbes article speculates about why Rockstar was a distant third place. There's a few different reasons, but one of it is the guy's a fucking psychopath.

You wouldn't want to work for this person and so the interview continues just one other excerpt before I start like the actual chronological the interviewer Abram Brown meets him on his 161 foot yacht the blind date

in Manhattan it was soon after rechristened rock star and later it was crushed by a bridge in Miami. He meets Wiener, his parents, his girlfriend, and a 10-person crew in Manhattan's Chelsea Piers for a week's vacation. And then Russ Wiener

says, quote, I get very depressed going out in Manhattan because there wasn't any Rockstar anywhere. You can't find it. Same, dude. Yeah, it's true. Not because it was sold out, but because it's seldom sold at all. His larger competitors, Red Bull and Monster,

have utterly swamped his brand. Wiener blames the stores. Quote, they're saying they don't need anything more. His rivals' unyielding grip on the market, quote, it's hard for us to break through, and brand loyalty that seems out of his control. Quote, how do you shift someone from one thing to basically the same thing? Quote, you get more than a faint out of his control. Quote, how do you shift someone from one thing to basically the same thing?

Quote, you get more than a faint sense of victimhood. Just a tip for our listeners. If you're in Manhattan and looking for a rock star, you have to go to a Target. Yes. That's right. Yeah, none of the bodegas have them. No, well, they can't afford the shelf space.

They listen to me. Like, dude, all that time ago, that guy contacted all the other bodega owners and it's like this is the most evil man in the world you can't have rockstar it worked i changed the world but it is like i mean it is incredible to me like how much the same person these all are where it's like every problem with rockstar like why you can't find in manhattan is somebody else's fault yeah he's at this time running the company and it's always somebody else's fault. And he literally, he sounds

like his dad too where it's like it's hard not to develop a victim complex. Right, right, right. To say that in a business publication. But yeah, Russell Goldencloud Weiner is born 1970 in California. He went to Redwood High School in Marin County.

And then, like, you know, another thing we've noticed, all these fucking billionaires have their own, like, childhood entrepreneur bullshit story. Russ Wiener's is he founded his own yard service company when he was eight years old. As a teenager at 15 years old, Wiener also worked at a Wendy's drive-thru window. And that's like, you know,

they have to have something of them working in their lives before it's like, yeah, my dad gave me a loan and I like bought a flavor from like a guy who designed them for Sky Vodka, basically. It would be awesome being like a young Russ Weiner working at the Wendy's drive-thru when your dad comes in. Right, right.

Russ-y. Yeah. Your dad comes in and like orders like lobster bits to like prove some stupid point like tries to go through the window to fight the cashier five three standing out there he would fit through actually right yeah he would get it he would just it would be like those sable videos i like when they're jumping through like right a window uh but yeah so r Russ Wiener, after apparently the only job he's ever had at a Wendy's drive-thru window,

he gets a degree in poli-sci from San Diego State. He hawked spring break trips to Cancun and Honolulu to high school students. And then at age 28, he followed his talk radio bomb-thrower father into conservative politics and made a doomed run for the California State Assembly seat. And I believe, Andy, you had a bit of research on his 1998 run for California State Assembly.

Yes, yeah. The best source I got on it was smartvoter.org, run by the League of Women Voters. If you go to smartvoter.org, you'll get redirected. I guess the main website isn't there anymore, but if you go to smartvoter.org

slash 1998 June slash CA state vote Weiner R, they still have his campaign information page. It says here, this information is provided by the candidates. We've got biographical highlights, party, Republican, occupation, consultant, producer.

And then third bullet point, Redwood High School. Fourth bullet point, San Diego State University, BA political science. Fifth, co-founder of the Paul Revere Society with radio talk show host Michael Savage. So he's basically name dropping his own father as though he's not his father. Right. Like he's just friends with a famous man. Top priorities of elected and bilingual education. Promote intensive English courses.

Save Prop 13. Keep a cap on property taxes. And environment. Protect old growth. Redwood Forest. Key a cap on property taxes. And Environment Protect Old Growth Redwood Forest. Key endorsements. First one. Radio talk show host Michael Savage. Second.

Shannon Reeves. President of Oakland NAACP. How did that happen? I tried to find out. I couldn't find anything. Third endorsement, my mom. That's, I mean, like the NAACP, I mean, like this is. Russ has always tried to like stop the division in America.

Yeah. I'm going to run a racist campaign but get endorsed by the local NAACP. That's like, no, dude, he's trying. He's fucking trying. It's possible the guy, Shannon Reeves, was like an old college friend or something. Yeah, something like that, yeah. The Paul Revere Society

is just, I looked at that a little bit, and it's basically just Savage's slush fund. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they actually got, the IRS sued them for tax evasion. Yeah, in his, And they actually got, um, they, the IRS sued them for, uh, tax evasion.

Yeah. In, in his, um, apparently during the debate, he waved his, um, his Paul Revere society card,

the card for this society that he created his dad with his dad. And then in 2006, it lost its, uh, tax exempt status. Yeah. And according to this blog post in the daily cause, which, uh, was written by someone named Jewy. tax-exempt status. And according to this blog post in the Daily Kos, which was

written by someone named Jewy, I don't know why, but it's still up with a disclaimer that the editorial or that it was not edited by people on the Daily Kos, but it cites actual

non-profit tax returns. The expenses that they list include $1,948 in rental cars, $10,181 in bank fees, $3,699 in entertainment, $7,500 for security service, $85,154 in fundraising solicitations. Oh, great. $8,653 for internet

services. Internet costs $8,000. Yeah, yeah. $19,984 in office expenses. $4,500 for telephone service. $9,000 in outside services. $520 in travel, $13,000 in postage, and $3,000 in storage. How much are you mailing? $13,000?

Yeah. policy papers on smartvoter.org, which is a very, it's his policy paper on traffic. It's about four sentences. Highway 101, widen from Santa Rosa to San Rafael, light rail system, yes. Oh, all right. Okay, all right.

Yeah. More progressive. More ferry terminals. That's how he got the NAACP endorsement. More ferry terminals, alright. More ferry terminals. That's how he got the NAACP endorsement. More ferry terminals, nice. And then, by the way, the capitalization is all over the place on his official

campaign literature. And then his education policy paper, again, bilingual education eliminate, promote intensive English courses, give immigrant children a real chance to succeed in America. One language, one nation, unity.

Teachers, higher standards and higher pay, parental rights. Yes. School districts, keep them locally controlled. That's in bold. Stop the dumbing down of our children. Kids need to spend their time learning, reading, writing arithmetic, not the agendas of special interest. So

he actually won the Republican primary. I'm sorry to keep throwing numbers, but the vote count here is great. So there were three candidates. One was Pastor Peter Romanowski. He got 5,018 votes. The second place, this guy Sullivan, he got 5,018 votes. The second place,

this guy Sullivan, he got 13,958 votes. And then Weiner got 13,963 votes. You won by five. It's a savage nation, baby. Oh, yeah. And then he lost in the general.

And Michael Savage blamed anti-Semitism. Right. What a great family. Yeah, apparently he got 30.5% of the vote in this run in the general election. And later he would donate, I think,

he tried to donate a bunch of money to Gavin Newsom, Russ Wiener did, and Gavin Newsom had to return the donation because of inflammatory comments he had made during his 1998 run. But yeah, like, so according to Forbes magazine, the campaign did catch the eye of

Michael Savage's friend Maurice Kanbar, who is the founder of Sky Vodka. He quickly hired Russ Wiener to work for Sky Vodka after this loss here. And he says, oh yeah, Russ Wiener says to Forbes, quote, he saw I had the guts to stand up with the American flag and people cursing my name.

And we do like, so the general story is like, basically Russ Wiener is working for Sky Vodka from, I think, like, 99 to 2001 or so. Forbes says, Wiener suggested that Sky develop its own energy drink. Maurice Kanbar was not that interested. So Wiener quits, and then, quoting from Forbes, his breakthrough was thinking cheaper and bigger.

A 16-ounce can, usually reserved for beer, at $2, the price of an 8-ounce Red Bull and other rivals. Before taking out the $50,000 mortgage on his condo, Wiener rented a computer at Kinko's where he designed the logo and engaged flavor companies, which worked for free, he claims, because of his connection to Canbar, to develop recipes.

He went through 700 varieties before finding one slightly sweeter than Red Bull but packing the same punch, 80 milligrams of caffeine. And it's, you know, I mean it's funny like occasionally you'll hear him referred to as the inventor of Rockstar. Literally he just went through the Rolodex of Sky Vodka like contacts and was like

yeah send me your flavors. I will pick one i like and use my dad's money to launch this company the other thing i read was that his the brain of rockstar would feature the concept of fast recovery time of those who lead a very exhausting life from being an athlete to a rock star the company has a very clear image of its target audience uh and the basically the main thing is i'll a cheaper Red Bull. I think that I can convince Americans that a Red Bull that's cheaper would work. And he wasn't wrong.

A Las Vegas-based energy drink that appeals to the rock star in you. Yeah, that's going to work. Yeah, and as we mentioned earlier, the 60-ounce cans. There's more of it. I think Americans will actually respond to that. Right. No, he's Michael Bloomberg's arch nemesis

by the way I've got one last thing from his campaign that I forgot to mention on campaign contact information he lists his website as www.goldfever.com slash belly slash assembly slash rust dot htm

which now if you go to Gold Fever, it's a hair extensions website. Oh. But yeah. We sold the website. With a pretty lady. But in 1998. Less racist but more slaves.

It's like a how to make websites website with links to learn HTML. Well, he was helping people. He's always tried to help people. That's right. He's good to his core. Yeah, no, he's, yeah. He doesn't have the demons his dad has

and he legitimately, they both want to make the world better. Have they made the world better? No. Are they trying? Sort of. One is. Dude, he at least taught people how to make websites. That's more trying? Sort of. One is. Dude, he at least taught people how to make websites.

That's more than a lot of people have done. So we have audio of Russ Wiener calling his father's show on the morning of September 11th. It's about three minutes long. Maybe just over. And we think we'll just play all of it. Because, I mean, it does give you a window into both of their mindsets.

And this is like right around the time he first launched rockstar russ on the savage nation welcome hello dad how are you uh... you feel today i on my on the line is this russ savage son of michael savage a different generation with a different perspective how did how do you see this well tell you right now when i ran for california state assembly three years

ago at the end of my campaign after i lost i I won the primary, then lost the general election in a liberal area, I wrote a poem, and it basically went like this, is that liberals will lay in the sun until they get skin cancer, they'll eat fatty foods until they have a heart attack, they'll drink until they have liver cancer, and they'll vote liberal until the country is gone. People don't react until it's too late. This is on 9-11. That's human nature, and that's the liberal nature. It's a tragedy, but we knew it was coming. The conservative movement always knew this day was going to come,

but we prayed it wouldn't come this fast. That's the reality of this. We all knew it was going to happen. We just prayed it wouldn't happen. What is it that you would do as a young man? You've not fought in a war. You weren't in Pearl Harbor. Neither was I.

What would you do today? Well, I did. I thought about going out on the side of the freeways and holding up an American flag. We all want to do, but we can't do that. Everyone has emotions of hate and anger right now. Now, you have a friend who works for a major financial brokerage. Tell us about that, will you, Russ? Morgan Stanley had, I think, 50 floors of one of the buildings.

Everyone in there is gone. And Merrill Lynch, I think, occupied 50 to some other crazy amount of floors in another building. Where? In the World Trade Center? They were in that building, 50 floors? Each, at least, and they're both gone off the earth. And now how do you rebuild something when there could have been trillions of dollars of money we don't even know about and records? And it's unfathomable how deep this really gets. But instead of focusing on this, we've got to talk about what people should do right now to stick together.

I think immediately everyone should have a contact of at least 200 people that they can call and set an emergency meeting place in their local area in case things get bad. We don't know what could happen. There could be bombs in every city waiting to go off. We have no idea, truthfully. No one wants to talk about that reality. But the truth is that there could be 50 bombs. There could be anthrax waiting to be dropped in rivers. We don't know what could go on.

And if anyone thinks you're nuts for even thinking about this, then tell them to go to hell. But you have to talk to the people that have any brains on their shoulders, which is one-third of the country, and get a network together of all your close friends and people you can trust that can talk and be ready in case things go down, because it could go down really badly, and it could happen any time. And you raise a very, very important point, Russ.

We have been trying to stop the flood of illegals into this country. We know that many of the terrorists came in through Mexico and through Canada. We've been screaming about it for six years on the radio. We've been called racist. We've been called every name under the sun. We were right all along, Russ. The problem is that the leadership never, ever accepted what I was saying. Never.

The conservatives that listen to you need to tell their liberal friends they caused this problem. But they're stupid and they're foolishness and trusting everyone like they're a stupid five-year-old, that everyone is fair and nice in the world. Idiots. They're nothing short of fools. And from now on, if you ever hear someone talk up openly the wrong way about America, they either be, I can't tell you

what should happen to these people, but they should be ridiculed in public and told them, don't forget what happened this day in America. That's what it has to do. Yes, it's a time for us to come together as Americans. Borders, language, culture. Borders, language, culture. Borders, language, culture. I've been trying to warn the people that we are a nation.

Perhaps we will still come together as a nation. God bless America. God bless you, Russ. I will see you after the show. Keep up the fight, Michael. We all count on you every day. What a beautiful relationship they have. There's so much great there.

First of all, he mentions anthrax before the anthrax attack. That's right. Cool. Good job, buddy. But I also like that he says only one-third of the country has brains, which perfectly matches his california vote total i do love how they're clearly it's 9-11 and they're like this proves i was right the whole time this is the day to yell at your liberal friends yeah about how you were right and they were wrong i like yeah he's like basically implying you should like kill your friends they're like they like bad mouth america you should kill

them and he's like but we like we're gonna come together one language one culture i love when he's like well what do you think your generation should do military wise well i thought about it i thought about going and holding up the american flag as if that's like a bold move on 9-11 to really really uh empower the masses. But then he said, well, you can't do that. And it's like tons of people did that. A whole bunch of people definitely did that. And neither one of them called each other son

or father. Thank you. I'll see you later, Michael. I'll see you later at home where you live still with me. He called him Russ Savage. That's the best part. Not like, oh yeah, he has a different last name. where you live still with me he called him russ savage yeah that's the best part like not like oh yeah he has a different last name but there is a bit of believing in the the egos that they both portray like he doesn't he can't call his dad dad because that would like destroy the image

of him even though everyone knows that it's his his son and father relationship there but yeah so uh around the same year 2001 as we as we mentioned, he launched his Rockstar Energy with a $50,000 mortgage on his condo. He apparently like he would drive around San Francisco in an old limo in which he painted the Rockstar logo. And it's like, again, this is what we see again and again with these billionaires. He had, through his father, he had the connection to Canbar over at Sky Vodka that we mentioned, Maurice Canbar. Through Canbar, he had through his father he had the connection uh to can bar over at sky vodka that we mentioned maurice can bar uh through can bar he had connections to beverage distributors right so using his connections with can bar he brought on southern wine and spirits to distribute the

drink apparently dr pepper uh joined as well he brought in about 2.8 million in the first year so he did you know did well but it's just one of those things where it's like, yeah, if your dad wasn't a fucking millionaire talk show host, this never would have happened. Apparently, according to Forbes, he kept his inner circle close, first hiring friends with a little beverage experience.

Russ Wiener says, quote, this company was like a fraternity. He recalls fondly. It even had a house mother. His mother, Janet, became CFO, even though her finance background consisted mostly of once running an herb store. She says, quote, I've always worked for myself. We work well together.

We have a really good harmony. Yeah, he made his mother CFO and gave her 15% of the company. And he owned the other 85%. From this one article, I found that after he came up with the idea in 2001, it took him seven years to get a hold of a good market. In 2008, he would have 14% of the share in the United States. So it still would take seven years, even with all of these connections and leg ups, for him to actually turn this into owning just 15% of the U.S. market,

which is really, I mean, it's not nothing, but it's so tiny compared to the amount of leg ups he had. Yeah, apparently, like, again, from this 2014 Forbes piece, like, Rockstar was like, you know, a rocket for its first, like, six years. It was bringing in a lot of revenue. But then, like, it started to decline. Say,

quote, Rockstar has been stuck in an orbit that Wieners can't seem to blast out of, a major reason he has starved the company of resources. Like he refuses to spend money on advertising or anything, basically. And Wiener realizes that, sort of, quote, looking back, it's so easy to say spend more on marketing or investing in your brand. The more you spend, the more you return later, he recites. I would rather save my money.

When I actually got real money, I put it in the bank. Basically, the reason he got his ass kicked by Monster and Red Bull is he just didn't spend any money on advertising. Monster, yeah. Monster plastered that shit everywhere. Oh, yeah. Monster was sponsoring concerts, Red Bull, everything. They were everywhere.

Yeah, Red Bull had their concert at X Games. Yeah, yeah. They were hosting it and shit. They were like, build your own airplane and crash it and then jump out of a giant balloon. The other thing that's tough about Rockstar is when you look up Rockstar

specifically for this episode, Savage, so many of the articles are from people that are actual rock musicians to the video game company Rockstar like it's too generic of a name to pin anything to but that's also why advertising it is a little tough but then there's that

like shop boy song in like 2007 or 10 called party like a rock star and then Rockstar just took that for their own slogan yeah they just threw that on the can yeah party like a rock star this is. Right. And then rock star just took that for their own slogan. Yeah. They just threw that on the can. Yeah. Party like a rock star. This is us. But they could have like,

they could have like done so much with that. Oh yeah. No. Yeah. We're just going to take this. Yeah. And that's like rock star could have given them a hundred grand, which they would have happily taken.

And then they're in the video or the concerts promoting it. But after that song, just about is you see a departure from like the athlete and the like you know uh rock star that's being fueled by it and more just like put it in video games put it wherever we don't care whatever's willing to fucking have us let's let's let's throw our fucking brain on it because uh it's the like comedy club mentality of like whatever's cheap just do fucking them my friend uh my friend uh keith buckley is the lead singer of Every Time I Die. And he showed us this picture once of the last Warped Tour.

They were drinking this shit called Monster Tour water. I've heard about this, yeah. And it's like, yeah, dude, they're in everything. They're everywhere. They're making sure you see it. They're making sure every E-Tid fan sees it. They're making, yeah, it's going to be a part of your life. Rockstar never did that. I think that for savage to come up with this idea i mean sorry for wiener

come up with this idea at vodka you see the marriage of red bull and alcohol to where it's not even like they don't they don't fucking do anything they're in bars so that makes it so you're going to sell your product forever and for i think wiener is like we should just do that because if we can get our energy drink in a bar we're fucking made and he didn't really do that because i think there needs to be a pairing with sky vodka for that to occur that just never materializes yeah until pepsi buys them and now they're fucking worth when i was worth a billion dollars well yeah and you can't go into a bar and order like a vodka rock star right right right yeah i mean it's so funny because like again this original 2014 forbes piece is like i mean it's so funny because like again this original

2014 forbes piece is like i mean it's a hit piece but it's accurate but then he sells the company to pepsi in like april 2020 and has another interview with forbes where he's like you know it's just the right time for me i've been working 24 hours a day seven days a week and it's like everything in this piece is like wiener isn't a fan of long-term planning. He hates to schedule meetings, making appointments, only a few days, if not a couple hours ahead of time. That's like most of what you do at a company, by the way, is just do meetings.

So it's like, what else is he doing? Right, right. Exactly. Russ Wiener says, quote, it's very, very hard for me to focus on the future. With business, you can't do that. If you look too far ahead, you're going to lose in the here and now. He's still beating out

balls. Yes, he did beat out balls. Balls, never really. Wrong place, wrong time. Not enough kids were gamers. It was still like a loser thing. To be a PC gamer was the biggest loser thing. I know because I was one.

It just wasn't cool. It wasn't like in Europe where it's like Bass Hunter had a song called Dota and he kind of made it cool. It was a little bit cool because it's like Bass Hunter against Bozy. He's playing Dota. But here? Nah. He didn't want to do that.

Balls just missed the window of like paying pewdiepie to drink one on camera or something yeah yeah yeah all of this did happen just right before youtube really hits its stride where you could give an idiot fucking cases of something they're like y'all drink this on air i don't care yeah um because if that if this all happened in like 2012 to now you would see probably three to seven more energy drink brands that are just randomly popping up. Because I could find nothing on how Rockstar is actually manufactured. Like there's no real information how they make this poison water. At least not on the internet.

Afghanistan. All unions. Right, right. But it shows. The warlords with the dancing boys. It shows the profit margin where it's like yeah just write guarana on the side and fucking give it a cool logo and anyone will drink it if it's cheaper than the competition cia gave rockstar to their afghan warlords contacts like yeah these

will help you with your little afghan the taliban's opening fucking lockers and like oh it's just rockstar in here. We thought they'd have Monster. Inspecting the new equipment. Yeah, the thing they left out of the infographic was they got 50,000 Toyotas and then 500 million cases of Rockstar energy. Just all marked up by somebody who got a contract from Dick Cheney or whatever. Yeah, Rockstar, that's $10 a bottle.

That's probably how it is, right? All the troops really, they probably really just want Monster. That's really what... Because it's like Red Bull, Red Bull's... That's number one, right? Yeah, Red Bull's one.

Number one, because it was here first, it's basically, for a lot of people, they synonymize Red Bull with energy drink. Probably the best looking can. But then like Monster, dude, in the middle of the country, we're riding for Monster. My favorite thing, dude,

my friend, he lived like six hours north of Minneapolis. He didn't live there. His parents were farmers. They were like six hours north in fucking, even for people who know Minnesota,

north of Bemidji right like for what bemidji is to the twin cities their fucking town was uh bemidji to bemidji it was fucking nothing and like our favorite thing to do we would drive up there because like they would need you need help when like it's negative 40 that far north like bring the cows in and we were like 20 21 and it's like dude we just drive up uh fucking drinking all these monster rehabs that was the best shit in the world I love that that was the

best that was the best we listened to like 2013 Deezus and Mero yeah yeah right that was a great time just fucking adrenaline to your fucking max and doing the most mundane things that's it's weird because i i'm not surprised at the lack of attention that kids are facing now because for the last like 15 years it's just been take 800 milligrams of caffeine and go to your office job

like of course people are just fucking batshit right now oh yeah like i got introduced to monster like studying for a physics ap test and this guy joseph was like oh man you know great way to study monster energy drink it gets me so i was like well i gotta i gotta try this out joseph's great and then like monster is like it has been my go-to when i'm on tour and it's like if you're on tour for like a month even if like i generally keep like decent habits on tour. I don't drink really. And like my other advice is like drug wise, like I try not to like overdo it, you know. And still, though, like if you're doing it for a month, like going to a different place like every day or every other day, like fucks you up a little bit.

Yeah. And it's like, dude, I just drank one fucking Monster before the show. I'm ready. It's good for you. The Guarana just takes carry. Yeah, they have the best Guarana. The Red Bull Guarana isn't as good. I've tried everything. Monster's the best.

No, if people want to know the secret to my success, it's two sugar-free Monsters every single morning. Yeah, so we got we can bank on like 10 more years of Andy and the Patreon. That's a little much. Felix is telling me.

Even for me, that's a lot of monster. Here's the thing though. When I have a Red Bull, that's when I'm like, okay, that was a weird heartbeat. Like, it shouldn't be doing that. though it's when i have a red bull that's when i'm like okay that was a weird heartbeat like i shouldn't be doing that because it's like withdrawal oh yeah it's like you went from like black tar to like half a per right right you're like you're taking your same fix but it's like oh i don't like feel as much right right it's like no we want the real stuff right yeah you need to put the right engine oil in you and now it's the two rocks.

I'm going to LA in a couple weeks. I'm always fucked up landing. That specific jet lag. It's just a West Coast. It's going to Germany, not as bad for me. Going to LA always ruins me. I can still find

anywhere in the country, monster. I can't wait. Dude, I'm going. That's right. I can't wait. Dude, I'm going to feel fucked up. I'm going to take one monster rehab. I'm good to go. I'm good to go into those meetings and be like, Mr. Singer, Mr. Geffen, I was walking with you.

And they're like, a monster man, just like us. Yeah, you know what the symbol means, right? But yeah, I mean, it's weird to say about a guy worth like 4.1 billion, but he could have made more money. He certainly could have made more money for people who worked at his company. But he was just like fucking lazy, a huge asshole to work for and extremely tight fisted. So like as of 2014, according to Forbes, Monster's revenue was about three and a half times larger than Rockstar's. And then, you know, Red Bull was even like a little bit more than that.

And so Forbes quotes some executives at Rockstar who spoke on background. Other executives didn't groove on the same vibe as Wiener and complained about Wiener's control and tight fistedness. Quote, he just doesn't give us any marketing money, size one ex-lieutenant. It's tough to compete when you don't have a marketing budget, and Red Bill does. Rockstar spends an estimated 4% of its sales on advertising and marketing, while Monster shells out about 8%.

Wiener targets a tiny audience via sponsorships of extreme athletes like BMX rider TJ Yonk Ellis and skier Alex Alkai Bellamare. Television, radio, internet ads? Not a chance. We don't have an advertising agency, Bo Sweener. Everything we do is on our own.

And it's just like, he could have just made himself more money by spending more on marketing and advertising. Yeah, there is so many ways you could see how he could have like he could have made like 30 billion dollars of course if it was like yeah like make streamers drink it like yeah streamers are cheap oh yeah you give yeah like give a streamer like 70 000 but he's also in that age where he's just slightly too old to know that the amount of people because he's like you know he's enamored by his

dad who obviously had the like fucking 200 million listeners or whatever so those numbers don't impress him but in the internet world people will buy anything a streamer's fucking talking it doesn't fucking matter he's what 51 yeah I believe so yeah born 1970

he got 5 billion dollars subtract like you know, let's say 40% of all the taxes. Brings him down to 10%. You know, he can only spend like $100 million a year if he wants to live to 80. I mean, yeah.

That sucks. Yeah. I couldn't imagine. Yeah, maybe when i was like 22 i could have done that sure not now no no you can't get a new plane every year you have to spend at least 1 million dollars a day that's not rock star living you know yeah that's not that's really not living like a rock star so he's like now his thing is like flip, like he'll like real estate. Yeah. Like the mansion that like Tiger got repossessed in between his comeback.

He's like, okay, I'm going to like flip that for like $3 million more. Yeah. Like since selling to, uh, since selling to Pepsi, as of like two weeks ago,

according to the real deal.com, he paid more than 35 million for two waterfront properties in Miami beach. Uh, yeah, $35 million for two waterfront properties in Miami Beach. Yeah, he paid like $17 million for 511 Pine Tree Drive and $18.1 million. He's still not working, but working. Right. I mean, it's just this idea

that you have to be doing something. And you know it's his dad being like, well, what are you going to do now? Right. I guess I'll just buy houses. Yeah, his job is just finding new houses for himself. Yeah. Yeah. I love that, too.

He's buying like beachfront property in Miami. Like, yeah, that's a good investment. You're really smart. But yeah, so just a couple more things from this 2014 Forbes article. Wiener has, Rockstar has lost plenty thanks to Wiener's irascibility. Not long after starting a distribution deal with Coca-Cola

in 2005 when his sales were $215 million, he was unhappy with the relationship. Quote, they were focusing on vitamin water. They kept trying to make their own energy drinks, Wiener recalls. We'd fight with each other, scream with each other, scream at each other, unquote. One former Rockstar executive says that

Wiener's promotions were another source of irritation. Quote, Russ likes to use beautiful models and Coca-Cola didn't appreciate that much. Wiener denies the advertising was a problem. Coke won't comment. The relationship unraveled in 2009 and Rockstar signed a new distribution deal

with PepsiCo. You can look up online. A lot of the advertising for Monster is literally just Russ Wiener's dumb face and then surrounded by a bunch of attractive women in bikinis. If you're trying to market energy drinks to females, that's not really going to help you that much.

I also like the logo of Rockstar, the double R's that are backwards. Do you guys remember that tracksuit brand that was like two women sitting back to back that was hot for like 10 years the Rockstar logo looks basically the same that's a cool logo I saw someone rocking it like

two months ago and there was kids looking at them like what the fuck are you wearing because they don't have any context for how hot that was. That was the shit back then. I wish I was like five years younger. I'd wear a t-shirt with that on. I think the new thing now is to wear huge t-shirts.

I've never really had the body type to do that. But like, dude, if that's five years younger, yeah. Huge t-shirts with gigantic logos are kind of in right now. Yeah. I'd be going to fucking Moodering and Bushwick wearing that. Let's go. The funny thing too that like the executive clearly isn't saying but

is still kind of saying it's like yeah the advertising strategy under Russ was get Russ laid. You know what's awesome is that the Bane guy is like he's fully doing that. Like Bain's only advertising is advertising on some conservative stuff and then mostly

they're disgusting leather skin CEO who wears a Bain chain hanging out with Instagram models. Yeah. But yeah, so he loses the Coca-Cola deal through his own idiocy and sales

immediately plunge after they get the new distribution deal uh but i just like you know this uh this one uh um this other thing from the forbes article contrasts so well with his quote about like i was working 24 hours a day for for 20 years uh he says, Wiener usually operates as an absentee landlord through a cascade of emails and phone calls from his homes in California and Florida, which he shares with four white poodle cocker spaniel mixes. He once described an executive

vice president's job as, quote, gets what I want done. All sales agreements with major rock star customers like 7-Eleven and Walmart require his approval. When a snowboarder asked for $1 million in sponsorship cash, Wiener personally axed the deal. And it's just like, yeah, he just sits at home and calls people

and sends email while they're doing the actual job of running Rockstar and apparently schedules everything last minute. And then he's like, yeah, I was just grinding for 20 straight years. And whenever he does make a personal decision in the company, it's always like the wrong decision.

And this guy has an 8 out of a 10 on forks. Yeah. Or just like this guy, he fucking did it himself. No, I mean like we've learned like the Vanderbilts get like a fucking 6 out of 10. Do you know the stuff about his wife? Russ Wiener's wife? Yeah, yeah.

I didn't really have that no his wife has some like bullshit like wellness charter school oh yeah and she was on the news because she like sent an email that was like if you get the vaccine you're fucking fired and then she like then she she like they like interviewed her and she like looks she's like one of those women who like just looks like fillers with a pair of eyes. Like we were talking about kind of. She was on the news and she was like,

no, no, I was saying that anyone can get the vaccine but they have to get it in summer. Oh, what? Fucking rocks. Perfect family. Yeah, perfect family. I bet fucking Michael loves her. I bet Janet hates her.

Janet probably is disgusting. What she did to her face, gross. And then the closing paragraph of this Forbes article. If Rockstar, this is written in 2014, if Rockstar stays in a rut, Wiener will probably blame it on somebody else, just as he has with everything else that's gone wrong. At the company, his election lost 16 years ago

in a swap he made as a kid that he still regrets. And then they quote, he quotes Russ Weter, saying to a Forbes magazine interviewer, I traded a Willie McCovey error card for two Fernando Valenzuela rookie cards, he recalls, referring to the first baseman who then played for the San Diego Padres and the LA Dodgers pitcher. That was the first time I got

screwed on a deal. He's like the anti-Trump. He remembers every fuck up. It's not the art, it's like the art of the victim. He's perfected it. But yeah, so

as I mentioned, he sells to Pepsi April 2020. He tells Forbes at that time, it shows the American dream is still alive and well. It shows Pepsi has faith in the future and they believe in what we created. It is a bright light in the middle of this hell storm. He sold for 3.85 billion.

It's like, so like during Corona, it's like, hey, the world's like fucked up right now like yeah during corona it's like hey the world's like fucked up right now but like i was able to sell the worst the worst energy drink company uh oh my god what a great person it's wonderful he says it's quote it's perfect timing in my life right now i'll have enough money to do pretty much whatever i want in life and not put my nose to the grindstone oh Oh, finally, finally. Finally, you can, like, you've had it too hard for too long.

Finally. I was running this business 24 hours a day for the past 20 years. I was never not working, unquote. And at that time, he said it's too early to think of his next steps, but the mother, Janet, who, again, was the CFO and owned 15%, he says his next steps, but the mother, Janet, who again was the CFO and owned 15%,

he says his mother will, quote, devote her life to helping animals through animal rescues and protecting wildlife. This fits in with the family's Yakok Organic, which Wiener launched in late 2017 as a natural alternative to Rockstar. Profits go towards protecting endangered species and the environment.

What's wild is Michael Savage is the poorest member in his family now, I think. Yeah, I know. His mom's got the money from this. Son, obviously a billionaire. I think he's got a daughter who might not have made any money. He doesn't have a daughter, yeah. But in terms of rich people in his family, he's now number three. Just like Rockstar.

Wow. Synchronicity. That's a point in his favor. So the mom made like so 10% of 5 billion. She made like 600 something million dollars. She's loaded.

Michael probably made a decent penny from all his shit, but not like that. I saw a net worth for Michael Savage by 18 million, which is like for a radio host and for what he was. That's good if you're was. Damn. That's good if you're a fucking loser.

That's what I made my first year of media. I got an equity stake in Genius when I was doing those annotations. He's worth 18 million because he spent like 10 million on lawyers fighting to get allowed into the United Kingdom. People sued him for forcing him to have dinner when he was

brandishing a gun in his face. It is cool that a guy like that got to make $18 million. That's the American way, baby. That's the real... Fuck Russ.

Like, the real American dream is that you are like, in any place you've ever been, you're the most fucked up guy. It doesn't matter if you're on, like, the Lower East Side

of New York in the 40s. It doesn't matter if you're in Fiji. It doesn't matter if you're on the lower east side of New York in the 40s. It doesn't matter if you're in Fiji. It doesn't matter if you're at Berkeley. It doesn't matter if you're in the stratosphere of conservative radio show hosts. You're the most fucked up one. Any room you've ever been in, no one's been more mentally

ill than you. And you, 18 million dollars. Dude, good work. You're the man. Instead of the smartest guy in the room. Yeah. The most fucked up guy in the room. And it's interesting with like, you know, Michael Savage himself, like, you know, so I

guess Russ Wiener, now that he's sold out, he's like trying to flip properties in Miami or wherever. But like Michael Savage like got, as we mentioned earlier, he got his Westwood One show cancelled in like the early 2021 and it's just something where like, what did you say he was like 70 something now?

How old is he? Yeah, 79. 79. So he's almost 80. But it's like a guy like that, he doesn't even care about the money. He just wants to talk to people and have somebody give a shit. So it's like after all this life he's lived, he's back where we are.

He's just going to be launching his own fucking podcast because he wants somebody to pay attention to him. It's very impressive that he managed to get a podcast canceled. I will say to him right now, Michael, I will listen to you. Call Felix personally. I would be his friend.

I don't care. Yeah, he's bad. Okay. I've worked in media for six years. How many bad people do you think? People I didn't even know how bad they were. And it's like, dude, I mean, he knows he's bad.

This is you making amends for the damage you did to Rockstar Energy. Yes! I just like him saving the elephants. I'm like, I need to... All the bad stuff I said about your son's business. Reserve access. Yeah. There's like, as I mentioned, Felix had a great thread on Twitter.

I was just reading some of the replies to it. Jacob Ockra writes, there's an amazing episode where Michael Savage starts a whole bit by complaining that white people are too deferential to the Asian staff of Japanese restaurants. And then he pivots to talking about how he is the world's foremost expert on seafood at tone loke underscore baker michael savage's old website used to be 90 percent al-qaeda video and 10 singular pictures of pictures of his dog a singular character uh then borvis uh underscore savage's best bit is claiming he spoke to a citizen of country x who wants the u.s to bomb it so he would say quote spoke to my iranian friend today and they say

bomb we want you to invade us oh yeah then uh panzer time at panzer time on twitter I remember one episode where he complained about the newspapers not having the right kind of rubber band on them anymore like the old ways and then he segued to talking about how he wanted to put

a confessional in his living room with a wax figure of himself in the priest booth that's fucking hard I know man his wife should buy that for him his wife could get the best wax figurine of her husband made now

clearly she's been like you know she's like yeah you know, she's like, yeah, I know you can be like annoying and he's like the most hateful man in the world. But like he's my husband. I love him. Like they've, dude, they're strong. Like Rush Limbaugh got married and divorced like seven times. Michael Savage, he had a right there. He, dude, he's like, he's like fucking little Dirk in India.

How they like people try to do a home invasion and they like busted back with ARS. That's Michael Savage and his wife. And like, you know, his, you know, even that salon piece, there are people that are like,

well, he was like kind of a decent, nice guy. The people that worked at the radio station, they'd be like, he'd sometimes be like a friendly guy. And then every now and then he would just explode on the most random things. And it's kind of like,

um, comedians that love, uh, Brody Stevens, like his material was okay. But when he would just explode on the most random things. And it's kind of like comedians that love Brody Stevens. Like his material was okay, but when he would bomb, how mad he would get would just be fucking funnier than anything. Michael Savage has a similar thing where it's just like, these fucking rubber bands.

It's like a car crash. You can't look away. You're like, I can't stop looking at this. I mean, this episode was supposed to be about Russ and we spend most of it on fucking michael savage rightfully so he's a fucking enigma yeah fuck russ yeah russ sucks russ didn't do anything dude it's like boomers versus gen x it's like i was supposed to talk about a gen x guy and it's like yeah what do you want he like sucks right right his dad is the coolest man alive. Yeah, it's like just by being a singular

individual, he got his son all this money and all these connections which allowed his son to meet the people who pitched the flavors to Sky Vodka and be like, I like the taste of this. I'm a genius. I'll take my dad's money and market it using my connections that I got from my

dad. And now I'm a billionaire and that's just like you know it is the American dream but it's like yeah the fucking kid is not that interesting in that story he's not no he's not even like the most interesting energy drink company founder and it's not like a really interesting bunch it's like this really is like

that the dad recorded tapes of him screaming in the bedroom like he was like sending out demo tapes of him screaming in the bedroom. He was sending out demo tapes of him being racist and that led to this. That's the real story here. That's the real thing that's amazing. It led to a 100

page document on commerce.senate.gov. The statement of Janet Weiner to the Senate Commerce Committee. It's 15 pages of her statement with images for comparison, followed by 85 pages of citations about how the FDA said that Rockstar is actually not bad for you. Yeah, and because of some of this stuff that Andy's bringing up, I think that originally Savage had, like, drink Rockstar, it's good.

But then since there were lawsuits and stuff and conflict of interest, he had to be like, I've never promoted it. I'm completely separate from the company. I don't even know what Rockstar is. I only have $18 million. Yeah, I mean, Savage really was Rupert Pupkin, where he was just in his basement recording tapes of him screaming about whatever. It's just like he was like, well, if I do about the border and the death of white males, then I guess there is much more marketability in that than just like... What is his slogan? Borders, cultural, culture. Language borders culture.

Language border. It's so perfect. Yes. Language borders culture. It's so perfect. He repeats it a few times in that 9-11 thing. But it's such a... A lot of people say Trump's stole from them. I think Michael Savage definitely has a case that Trump stole from him. Because it's like short slogans, outbursts that are ludicrous,

but also understandable. The man's a savant. He really knows what he's doing. Well, Felix, I very much want to thank you for being here with us. My absolute pleasure. It was so much fun. I guess, just in closing, any closing thoughts on either Michael or his son? And also,

I'm sure they know about Chappo Trap House, but anything you want to plug or just let the people know where they can find you? Oh, yeah. No. Chappo still exists. I'm still doing it i really much enjoyed uh your guys's afghanistan episodes have been great by the way thank you thank you loved them thank you um we we actually we have some pretty cool shit coming up in the next couple months

we're we're trying to do like more shit for the patreon we see that like yes we see street fight does like 50 tiers of shit they like like work way harder than us, honestly. We're going to be doing more shit. Like I have a pretty interesting episode with Jack Wagner and T from Champagne Sharks. That'll be, I'm going to do at the end of the month. Matt and Will both have some really cool shit plans. So we're definitely going to be doing more with that. Check out Hell of Presidents

that Matt and Chris Wade are doing. It's a great show about the history of the American presidency. Very good. I had a great time. Thank you guys so much for having me. And the future Michael Savage crossover. I think I'm looking forward to that. I hope he's in the news again. I mean, we'll see.

Russ Wiener is just going to be a boring property flipper, losing money on his $4 billion. If you just put it in an S& sp500 index fund he would make more money yeah he's just gonna like lose a bunch of money when like a neck the hurricane comes next year wouldn't wait said he wanted to wave american flag on 9-11 but he didn't but he couldn't yes michael like they should like man nick should have Mike on come down he should yeah like why not that'd be like you know

if you could get Nick or Nick Sam Hyde and Michael Savage just like unite the fucking Trident like let's see all of the personality types but no I've you know what I'm very curious to watch what Michael Savage does

with his with his podcast. So check out his Patreon feed. He'll show you the rare beheading videos for $15 a month. He'll send them to your door. Well, hey, thank you for listening to Grubstakers. Check us out on Patreon. We always appreciate the support and we love you. I'm Sean P. McCarthy.

I'm Yogi Poyle. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Steve Jeffers. I'm Felix B. McCarthy. I'm Yogi Poliwal. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Steve Jeffers. I'm Felix Biederman. All right. Have a good night. Thanks for listening. Hey, everyone.

Thanks for listening to our episode. Sean McCarthy and Yogi Poliwal here. We're going to be doing some dates in Seattle and Portland coming up. In Portland, it's going to be September 16th at 8 p.m. at the Siren Theater. And in Seattle, it's going to be September 17th and 18th at the Rendezvous Theater. I have a few more dates on the 24th and 8 p.m. at the Siren Theater. And in Seattle, it's going to be September 17th and 18th at the Rendezvous Theater. I have a few more dates on the 24th and 25th. But overall, check out our calendar dates on our Instagrams and on our Twitters and come out and check us out in Portland, Seattle. Yeah. Please come see us do stand up. If you thought I wasn't funny on

this episode, just wait until you see me bomb at stand up. But at least in stand up, they can heckle you live. It's not like they're yelling at their desk how much they hate you. And if you don't like my politics,

come kill me. You gotta buy a ticket though. It'll save me half a ride so that works out for me too. Alright,

thanks.