The Midterms Breakdown + Russell Brand Found Guilty - Off the Fence

So at the moment, when you talk to ordinary Americans, particularly those who voted for Trump, who were not normally Trump voters or Republican voters, there is a sense of frustration. And there is a sense that this presidency hasn't been what they actually voted for. And you can see right now what's actually happened. I think the story of so far, I think there's two major stories so far of the midterms. Number one is the flipping of Texas, which is just a huge, huge, huge story. And number two, the rise of John Ossoff, the Georgian senator. Because you and I, KK, we watched his speech. We watched him deliver.

We watched what he was talking about. And I have to say, it was a barnstorming speech. It's a great orator. He looks like somebody who could actually really galvanise the centre and centre-right, possibly, if this trend continues, to vote Democrat. So it's really interesting to see what the next two years are going to be. Well, just on that, before the guys jump in, the Calciots for the next Democratic nominee, he absolutely shot up in that, as you can see. So he is now at 26%. He was actually, I believe, a little bit higher than that at one point. And on the Republican side, you know, I talked about the recriminations.

One of the things that is happening is one of the Republicans who's actually been willing to talk publicly about corruption, the need to make sure that there's no stock trading by politicians, et cetera, is Ron DeSantis, who's gone from basically zero to, yes, he's behind J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, but he is absolutely shot up as a result. Because, as I mentioned in my introduction, even if you talk to right-wing voters and even right-wing commentators, the corruption within the Trump administration, the fact that Susie Wilde's daughters are making millions, allegedly, from lobbying and all sorts of other things that people will bring up, that was a big issue, including for Trump's own voters as well.

And so the fact that Ron DeSantis is doing so well is an indicator of the fact that the entire administration is now losing support with their own base. I think that's right. And also, it's so clear why this happened. I mean, we can look at the exit polls, the question of, I'm going to try not to knock over my own laptop here. We've all seen those exit polls. We see that the cost of living was the primary concern. we see how many people are concerned about corruption and also the sense that the iran war certainly underpins the price at the pump people have realized the sort of grand folly of this and that it's now having huge domestic political consequences for trump but there's also a broader sense in which he has forgotten who put him in the white house in the first place those kind of forgotten men and women of flyover country of the rust belt who took a chance at him in 2016 and the fact that what made his movement so potent originally was it fused their kind of economic concerns, de-industrialisation, the fact that the bread and butter issues weren't being attended to, even by the parties that would like to think of themselves as looking after the working class, i.e. the Democrats.

But also there was this immigration dimension, the fact that there was this immigration dimension, Their concerns about the influx of people at the southern border and elsewhere was just being totally dismissed. And also the cultural question, the fact that they were being condescended to that there was this new liberal left elite who had some pretty kooky views and didn't have much time for the more traditional values of people across America. That would all sort of start to break down. You had Trump going into this election having effectively ceded the economic ground to the Democrats, not that they've got any answers to what is ailing Americans but by dint of broadly speaking opposing the Iran war and being able to highlight just how difficult things are getting out there that ground was given to them and then in the meantime you've not only got the corruption which is clearly filtered through but also just the absurdity of you know Trump continuing to cycle through swatches about you know what the curtains are going to look like in the presidential ballroom meanwhile people are really struggling out there And a sense that even though this is by no means a vindication of the Democrats in their curious ideologies, all the open borders, greenism, all the nonsense they've been marinating themselves in over the past few years, it's so obvious to me that the failures of the Trump administration basically handed states which historically have been deep red to the Democrats in a way that could so easily have been avoided.

if he had just focused on that domestic agenda rather than getting himself into all of these entanglements I don't think we would be here and what's fascinating is it's infuriated sections of all of the key aspects that you would need to piece that coalition together the MAGA base has broken down over the issue of Iran as well as some other issues as well the kind of floating voter is now being repelled because of the cost of living concerns and even the pre-trump republican based deep red states places like kansas what have you which i think the last time they had a democrat wizard of oz was still in the cinemas uh shows you just how lethal all of those mistakes and blunders the ira more to the fore have been for him i would say that your guys analysis is considerably more nuanced than what we're hearing not just from podcast istan who i had a quick look and it seems to be a lot of chat about the zionists in iran and i also listened this morning to the bbc for their analysis i couldn't quite believe it but they they framed it as completely catastrophic is sort of historically catastrophic, which is neither true, which I'll explain why, and certainly not impartial as the BBC is supposed to be. At one point, the commentator,

I forget her name, said, wouldn't it be amazing if he gets impeached as a consequence? But before I get to what happens next, I think it's interesting. I've been trying to work out exactly why what happened, what happened, what happened, happened. The vice president, have you guys seen his uh tweet he he talks about he claims four things he says it's he he he wants to listen to the people to his voters and they want an end to the war a focus on cost of living and inflation to put america first and change the relationship with israel now that actually he's got he claims the sort of the best pollsters on the on the job but that actually contradicts

to go further. I wonder if anyone had any opinions of what I've just said before I sort of launch

i think uh in my view the idea that you can divorce domestic economics from foreign policy in this instance is just very hard to say. Now, I agree with you, Winston. J.D. Vance did a very long tweet, which was essentially, we've got four problems in America. The first is Israel. The second is Israel. The third is Israel. And the fourth also happens to be Israel. And it's now very clear. There's been this big question over J.D. Vance and his association with Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson has been very, very active in undermining Trump both before the election when he, you know, there's no evidence to support this, but he claimed that Trump was about to nuke Iran because Bibi wants him to. And now here only yesterday he did a tweet with the words, the great betrayal showing all the times that Trump promised something and then didn't do it. But I think it's becoming very, very clear to a lot of people that the reason J.D. Vance refused to distance himself from Tucker Carlson is that Tucker Carlson is the mouthpiece of J.D. Vance. He says all the things that J.D. Vance doesn't want to be pinned as saying, and he is clearly the wing of the Republican Party that is persuaded that, you know, the big problem America faces is its relationship with Israel.

There are other people who are making different sorts of arguments, and that is now the source of the infighting within the party.

for the republicans so talarico being branded talafrico because of the fact that as with all democrats it's there's no end of absurd quotes that he's issued over the years you know there are six genders god is non-binary the american flag is a complicated symbol all of this was thrown at him and it just looked like changing the subject because those more fundamental issues of the economy where everything is going feel like they're getting away from the republicans and

to i suppose shift the conversation slightly i think one if we're talking about the democrats the democratic side of this and the new figures that have emerged through this obviously on top of john ossoff and james talariko have already mentioned abdul al-sayed in michigan is clearly worth a mention him triumphing in the senators race there is a really significant development not least because i think you can most gently describe it he's got a very clear history of islamist apologism it's quite clear that various members of his family from egypt were involved in the Muslim Brotherhood, including his own mother, at least that's according to his half-sister.

He claims to be estranged from her, but nevertheless, that's there. After the Ayatollah Khomeini was assassinated earlier this year, there was this leaked internal call that El-Sahid was having with his campaign staff saying that he was going to keep entirely quiet about it because there are a lot of people in Dearborn who will be sad today. Dearborn, of course, being America's first and only, as I understand it, Arab-majority city, and it was the city... A couple of people on Trigger Norbitry were sad about it as well. Exactly. And a rare point of unity between Francis and Dearborn, Michigan there.

And those were the voters who put him over the top in the primary. It was a very close primary. And those places, Dearborn and also Hamtramck, places like that, were the difference for him. Earlier this year, there was an attack on a synagogue in Michigan by a Lebanese national. And his response was to say that hurt people hurt people. So there is this sense in which maybe Tallarico is a little bit of a reminder of the slightly more cartoonish wokedom and identity politics of the Democrats previously. In the form of El Saeed, I think we see the new bays that the Democratic Party is in where kind of cultural politics is concerned, which is that they have sort of maintained a lot of the woke stuff.

that's just a given but bolted onto it now is this sort of islamo leftist jihadi sheik almost that seems to at the very least um forms takes the form of making excuses for or turning a blind eye to islamist extremism and that's something which is uh we're more accustomed to it in europe i think is a grim and brave new world for america to be entering into Yeah, I think there's a sort of irony here, which is that Trump has brought net migration or south border crossings down to zero. The fentanyl crisis is like massively down, which is completely linked to that problem. And he's deported between 10 and 15% of Biden's illegals, of which I think there's 10 to 15 million. Now, that actually is pretty low if think about how many Biden brought into the country, but it's still a lot of people that he's managed to deport. And yet at this election, you have this Abdul El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian students, and he's linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. He seems like an Islamist. He doesn't seem like a particularly nice chap. There's a viral video of him this week with a Scottish Sky News journal.

I don't know if you saw this, and he's holding the shoulders of the journalists almost. I mean, you just don't touch journalists. I've never seen that before where someone touches. Anyway, all this to say that Trump actually seems to be doing pretty well on some measures on sorting out the immigration issue. And yet the result has been nine more Somalis like Ilhan Omar elected to the Senate or Congress. And you're kind of like, have a mismatch there which as constant i think is right is lessons to be learned about what what that means in britain and the sort of the politics of immigration there's one detail i will bring up though constantine which is that actually of republican voters they largely in this same nbc exit poll agree with the uh the idea that u.s made the right decision in taking military action against Iran. So again, that doesn't include people who didn't vote and so are not including this. But voters, there's still people, still some of MAGA do think it was the right decision to make. So that all to say is to me, is that I'll make one more point here actually, is that inflation is actually, it's absolutely the case that food and gas prices are up, but inflation is at uh a better position as far as if i've got my facts right here then it was certainly under

biden um or at least the rate inflation is it's not nearly as bad as it was under biden um so actually might be worth getting uh uh your ai uh guys who are they called venice ai um to check where the current inflation rate is and how that compares to biden but um we can but you've got to remember that inflation is a cumulative thing, right? So if you've had a terrible period of inflation under the previous presidency, and then on top of that, you continue to have inflation under the current presidency, people don't go, oh, you know, my prices went up by, just for the sake of argument, 20% under Joe Biden, and now they've only gone up by another 10% under President Trump. That still feels like, well, it doesn't feel like your prices have still gone up by 30%, right no it's much less than that but yeah and of course it is these are numbers i'm using for the sake of ease of calculation um go ahead if i could just finish the point which is that although i absolutely it's clear that the cost of living is the issue and i and i agree that people right to feel like that's the problem it's clearly a problem it's a massive problem at the same time there are wins here that it i feel like it might have been that trump did a bad job of selling

what he was doing to the american public and selling what and so that's a i would see that as a failure of trump in the in the things he has achieved he has not done a good job at all of selling it to the american public but i still think that these failures are legitimate that's That's the point I wanted to make. That's very interesting. And the one thing I would add on your point about the Iran war, there is no doubt that a portion of the American right in particular, and there'll be some people on the left, by the way, as well, who feel that the slogan is Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, and which I think we probably all agree with.

but at the same time there is the feeling that while the decision to go to war is you know theoretically the correct one actually the way it was prosecuted was terrible this is something we just had uh we recorded an interview with sam harris yesterday uh and i sort of said to him sam isn't it ironic that trump whom you hate has been undone by a policy which you actually support and that's kind of what happened there but Trump's but Sam's rather point was it's the right war it just wasn't done right and there is a lot of that there's also by the way you know I think coming back to the conversation about you know Bibi Netanyahu who's tricked America or has

can i correct one detail on immigration so i said 10 to 15 percent of illegals deported it's actually five to ten percent it's actually lower sorry yeah not because of everything going on in the news and the concerns both francis and i have about the direction of economic travel we've been buying quite a bit of gold our gold dealer is the pure gold company whether you're looking to diversify your investments protect your savings or just gain the security of owning a real physical asset, we highly recommend the Pure Gold Company. So if you're in the UK and you want to protect your savings with physical gold, scan the QR code on the screen right now,

click the link in the description, or go to pure-gold.co.otf to get your free copy of their Guide to Buying Gold. And remember, do your own research. The price of gold can go up as well as down, and past performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance. That site again is pure-gold.co.otf. So on the Iran war, it was always obvious that this was going to be hung around Trump's neck. The question was, was it going to be a medal or an albatross? And that's proven to be an albatross. And we'll have arguments for decades to come as to whether or not it could have been prosecuted differently. That will rage on. But the fact of the matter is, it's got him up to this point. And I think we've spoken a lot about the kind of MAGA base, the really active people the really engaged people the people who are going to be following uh jd vance's tweets and tucker carlson's post-match analysis with a fine tooth comb we've also got to think about the voters broadly speaking and this is the thing about trump he has always been an incredibly polarizing figure there were a lot of people who voted for him oftentimes with their hands holding their nose and what were the arguments they would always make they'd be like yeah he's a bit crazy

sometimes or he says things i don't agree with but isn't the economy doing and he hasn't got us into any new wars and he's getting on top of immigration that would often be what you would hear it's worth remembering that a lot of voters who backed him will have voted for democrats previously will have been independent or will have been a more kind of classical style republican who wouldn't have liked a lot of what he was doing but nevertheless on those three issues you would hear people say on balance it's been good problem with the iran war is it knocks out the economic argument and and it knocks out the no new wars argument so what are you left with um so all of these things are interconnected it's pretty clear the public have made those connections as well and i i feel like going forward the one thing that um the republicans would really screw up by doing is focusing too much on what is the argument what is the narrative forming amongst the most kind of active aspects of their base when if they're going to get back towards um having a viable presidential run in two years time if they're going to get back towards actually taking political power again then they're going to have to look at actually what just americans writ large are

thinking and they're not obsessing over israel to be perfectly frank they can see how foreign policy is impacted upon domestic policy obviously but some of the arguments that are being waged on the kind of online right at the moment i think are pretty divorced from where most people on. Shall we move on to talking about the future here? Because this is another dimension of this we actually haven't addressed, but it's very important. Because if you are one of those voters who voted against the Republicans, let's say, on the basis that the cost of living is too high, et cetera, et cetera. The fact of the matter I don't think we see any evidence that the Democrats have policies that are actually going to address this. And so that vote of frustration is perfectly understandable. Whether it delivers any results is an interesting thing, is one thing I would put on the table for our discussion.

The other thing is one of the big challenges, and I remember talking about this with Coleman Hughes on his podcast, is if the Democrats get both the House and the Senate, if you remember in the past, they've been able to impeach Trump, but they were never able to remove him because it takes a vote in the Senate to actually do that. Well, now they control both houses. And the question is, is Trump going to spend the next two years in all sorts of investigations, impeachment hearings, et cetera? Not least because even his supporters, many of them now readily admit that he has given a lot of ammunition to people who want to prosecute him, members of his family, members of his administration on the basis of corruption and all sorts of other nefarious activity.

And the reality is, I suspect, is once the Democrats start digging, there is going to be no shortage of information that supports the idea that Trump or his people have committed all sorts of offenses while in office. And so you will potentially have simultaneously Democrats controlling both houses of Congress without necessarily addressing the concerns that people voted on the basis of and also spending a lot of time trying to basically get Trump out of office or paralyze his presidency. And so you may have not only a lame duck presidency, but a sort of lame duck that has been chased, hunted down endlessly by hunters, whose only focus is the lame duck and not the economy and not the reality of people's lives.

Well, what's going to happen at the federal level is the because he still has his veto and this isn't an addressing your impeachment. this is just addressing general legislation the democrats are going to keep putting forward proposals which they know are going to get vetoed by trump but for them it's just their way of signaling what they're about so come the next presidential they can be like this is my this is my legislative record but at the state level you've already there's a funny thing that happened was that the AI companies' value just massive plummet because at the state level, they're going to start working against AI companies.

Now, I know Francis said people, you know, average person on the street really cares about data centers, but this same poll, this NBC poll, it suggests it's really largely a Democrat. It's largely an issue for those on the left, less so those on the right. Winston, may I throw some facts in on this? Because I actually, while we were talking, looked this up. So I looked this up with Venice AI, and I said, because my understanding was opposition to data centers is actually a bilateral issue. And the answer is mostly yes. Majorities of both parties oppose new data centers in their area, though Democrats oppose them more strongly.

A Gallup poll in March found that 71% of Americans opposed data centers in their local area, including 75% of Democrats, 74% of Independents, and 63% of Republicans. The intensity gap, yes, 56% of Democrats strongly oppose them, 39% of Republicans. So there is a discrepancy, but the fact of the matter is a significant chunk of Americans do not want data centers in particular in their backyard. Sorry, Winston, carry on. No, no, yeah, I think I...

apart from Peter Thiel, probably still like what Trump is up to because of his acts in AI, but the Maha group, the swing voters, the people who worry about Woke, that coalition probably does seem to have broken down. But the idea that this is over and over for Trump, well, he can still make decisions when it comes to foreign policy and that's probably what the next two years are going to be about it's he he's gonna he can still act in that domain and i think in a way he doesn't have i mean not sure what he had to lose but he he what is he bound by now he he doesn't does he Do you think he cares about who wins the next presidential election? I would hope so, but he might not. He might be like, well, I don't really care what happens next. I'm just going to do what I think is best for my legacy and for me. And so you might just see him maybe

sort of free. Now he doesn't have to worry about any midterms. He doesn't have to worry about the next election. He might feel liberated in a weird sort of way. I mean, is that a crazy thing to suggest? No, no. You know when you went like, oh, I don't care what you sort of, what anyone on things, and it's just about my legacy. I'm like, yeah, that's probably how he's always been in one sense. But one of the things that I think that nobody really addresses when it comes to politics, or certainly not as much as we should, is we can talk about policies, we can talk about stats, we can talk about data, but it's kind of like a band. You need a great front man.

And who is that front man going to be? Because a great front man can unite a political party. Think about, for instance, Tony Blair. United Labour drove them on and they became the political force of a generation. And he was a singular political talent. The same with Trump, by the way. Disagree, agree, it doesn't matter. He was a political force of nature. And one of the things that the Republicans are going to have to tackle now is who is going to lead them post-Trump. because that is going to be a very very difficult it's going to be incredibly difficult to follow somebody who has that sheer force of personality and i'm looking over at the democrats and look it's one speech and a week is a long time in politics but i was impressed with ossoff i really was a lot of the times you look at the democrats they seem to be kind of like outside who seems us to be deeply unpleasant all the democratic socialists of america are frankly a bunch of fruitcakes but this guy actually seemed to be one of the few people at the moment who's capable of grabbing the center and look a week is a long time other people are going to emerge but it's about for me the people the person at the front the person who can unify a party it's looking like

the democrats might have that possibly who is going to be that for the republicans well with with the democrats they also have james tallarico who uh interestingly went on rogan actually came across very well a lot of people felt uh went on diary ceo so he did podcasts where there's not necessarily uh natural alignment between their audience and him but he went in there and tried to persuade. There are other people within the Democrats. So I think, you know, falling in love with John Ossoff off the back of one speech. And look, prediction markets, I agree with you, Francis. Kalshi certainly seems to show that John Ossoff is the front runner by a long way. But I think we've got to keep in mind there's two years to go. And during those two years, a lot can change what's interesting on the republican side of this is as i mentioned ron desantis if you actually travel around the united states one of the things you see is the difference between desantis and perhaps other people within the republican party is florida is actually incredibly well run and so it's less about what he says and the bombastic nature of his presentation which is not i don't think doesn't come naturally to him it's just an incredibly

well-run state and that perhaps can can stand him in good stead although you know he told the i saw a clip of de santos uh talking about uh the last time when he ran against trump in the primaries and he said i had this voter come up to me i think he said in in i iowa somewhere like ohio maybe at the primaries, and he said to me, I think you're going to be the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. You are able to be that figure for our nation. And if Trump wasn't on the ballot, I'd vote for you. And so anyone who's run against a figure like Trump so far has faced that reality, which is he just inspires a love and adulation from a certain section of America that can't be beaten with anything, including being someone who's run the state incredibly well.

But it's very clear from his response to this election, the fact that obviously his term as governor of Florida is over, that he is going to be one of the people challenging for the presidency two years from now. And then, of course, you have J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. And the interesting thing to me, this is kind of going into the weeds, but I've always thought this was interesting. uh it was very clear from the outset that jd vance was against the iran war and i don't think it's remotely an accident that trump made him america's chief negotiator in the resolving that conflict because to me that is kind of a way of saying well you don't want to be involved in this but you will be tied to this and so jd vance has to simultaneously continue to signal to the portion of his electorate that he thinks is uh there and growing which is uh you know the the more isolationist wing of American politics, but at the same time, he may well find that the albatross of this conflict, however it's settled, is actually hanging not only around Trump's neck, but also around his own. And Marco Rubio, then he's got his own issues. It'll be fascinating to see how all of this plays out over the next couple of years. Gentlemen, shall we move on to the other

story of this week, which was a bombshell announcement in the UK that Russell Brand has been found guilty of both rape and sexual assault. Tom, take it away. Yes, so he was found guilty at Suffolk Crown Court, one count of rape, three counts of sexual assault, some of these cases going back many decades. And it really draws to a close what has been a saga that's been going on over the past three years in terms of what the public have known about but in terms of anyone who might have been in and around russell brand in and around the comedy industry in and around the uh entertainment industry in britain a lot of these allegations or at least the uh the very bad smell around brand was a pretty open secret so in about 2023 there was this big investigation by both the times newspaper and the dispatches documentary it's worth pointing out that these um now guilty verdicts do not relate to any of the stories that were in that specifically this is actually people who have come forward since 2023 um who have lodged these um complaints and ultimately culminated in this conviction um but that was certainly something that set the ball rolling led more people to come forward led more people to reckon that they might actually get justice at this point i think everyone will

have noticed that there has been a striking reaction online which i think broadly speaking falls into two camps one of which is people asking as they asked after jimmy savile asked as they asked after various prolific sex offenders are exposed in the entertainment industry as to why this person was essentially allowed to operate for so long russell brand of course before he sort of glow up on the crank right was the darling of the guardian newspaper he guest edited the new statesman in 2013 he made huge waves in the 2015 election where he first said he didn't want people to vote then he backs ed milliband etc etc so there's been that aspect to the backlash and then there's also been this response from dare i say it the sort of newer fans of russell brand since he became kind of maga adjacent since he became uh more On the sort of conspiratorial, cranky fringe of politics, always been quite cranky, to be fair, but more on the right, shall we say, who are just like flatly refusing to believe that these convictions are sound, often, I dare say, about wanting to get into the details too much, without looking properly at the evidence, which I think was pretty clear. And no wonder the jury reached the verdicts that they did. But yeah, a huge, huge story. He's awaiting sentencing that will happen next week. He's been remanded in custody.

um and we uh wait to see what happens next but as is ever the case particularly when you're dealing with someone as culturally significant as russell brand it's also instantly become a factor in the cultural with people falling into broadly speaking one of those two tribes one of the interesting things with uh with brand is people always go well how did he get away with it and why do people continue to work with him in show business you know all aspects of show business, most people don't make that much money. They don't generate that much money. They don't generate that much money for their agencies. It's essentially just a pyramid with the people at the very top, probably the 1%, 0.5% generating the vast majority of the revenue. If you look at podcasting, it's pretty much the same. It's pretty much all aspects of show business and media.

And what Brand was exceptionally talented at was generating revenue, was galvanizing a fan base. He was somebody who was incredibly talented. He was very, very charming. He was somebody who people felt that they liked, they knew. And he got chance after chance after chance because he was good at what he did. He was very good at bringing listeners, for instance, to Radio 2, the BBC Radio 2. And when you have the BBC, which always has to justify, essentially, because it is a publicly funded service, it has to justify, you know, the service that it puts on and the fact that it spends public money.

They are always going to be looking for that talent that can do that. unfortunately for the BBC and for lots of outlets now there are going to be very serious questions put to them as to actually how much they knew about this particular individual how much they knew of his behavior what actually happened on their premises and also how do we move on from this and you're looking at the BBC right now and you're thinking to and they're probably thinking to themselves and other people are thinking as well how many scandals can this organization withstand well to your point about you know how much they knew the fact of the matter is that the fact that russell brand was a sexual predator was extremely well known in on the british

but why are you saying you don't know i don't understand why are you saying you don't know when he's just been found guilty because if you look at the look i've read some of the transcripts it's like horrifying i'm saying i'm not in any way excusing it but if you look at what evidence it was it was it was not forensic or video so it's it's women saying things fine do you think jimmy savile was a pedophile uh i do i do think that never found guilty never found guilty there's no evidence no forensic evidence and it is also worth saying that if we were talking about with with the example of the grooming gangs as well and you're right to bring it up winston because the uh the lack of concern about the industrial All-scale rape of the most vulnerable girls in society, the complete memory-holing of that, ignoring that, it makes it so hard to stomach when you suddenly have the believe the victim crowd pop up in relation to this case. You're absolutely right about that.

The difficulty is that if we were going to go down this line of like we are going to question the soundness of a conviction unless there's kind of video or DNA evidence or what have you, then that would imply that it would be illegitimate or unsound to say pursue historic grooming gang cases as well. And there's many cases like this which do not really come down to the fact that there are clear cut witnesses, really do not come down to the fact that there's CCTV that can be accessed. That doesn't mean that someone can't be convicted, of course. And also, if we're looking at this case in particular, woman five, as she's referred to in a lot of the reporting, who the complaint of rape against Brand is the one that he's been found guilty of.

There is, in terms of the witness testimony, there is quite a lot of it. I think there were eight individuals who said that she told them about this encounter immediately after it had happened. Back in 2009, there was also a nurse at a sexual health clinic who says that she came in because she was concerned that she had contracted some sort of venereal disease from Bram because, unbeknownst to her, he had taken the condom off as well during the rape that he's now been found guilty of, and that she had told her what had happened at the time as well. so in terms of even though this is uh testimony um this is still evidence under our system of course and there i suppose there's a there is a fair bit more of it than some people not saying you went sort of been letting on you know even though the uh as you said there's nothing as definitive as cccv or dna or what have you but if we are to hold by the standard that we're questioning those convictions unless we have the smoking gun as it were then even going after historic grooming gang cases would therefore be questionable and illegitimate i suppose I just want to reiterate I am not doubting that he was a philanderer I am not doubting that he

was a dastard he even said he was I it look it doesn't sound it doesn't sound good but I'm saying that there's some things that happened in this case that for jurisprudence sake are like a bit weird and i'm also saying that there's a i'm frustrated to if this is justice been served great but i'm frustrated when we have such horrific failures in our justice system to see that when they bloody want to they can actually they can actually serve justice and that that's my that's my um take i i uh seeing the what i did see the transcripts it's it's not pretty stuff i I'm not, just to reiterate, I'm not, I don't feel like I'm in a position, I'm certainly not in a position, I'm certainly not rather defending it.

I'm sort of making a different point. All right. Well, on that happy note, that is it for Off the Fence this week, and we will see you back here next week. Take care and see you soon.