GREG GUTFELD: Let a real court, not that of public opinion, decide the fate of Russell Brand

Yes. Yeah. Thank you, very, very kind. Well, control yourself. There’s only one, but thank you for being here tonight because we’re about to have a difficult conversation. Wow, if I had a dollar for every time I hear this from my urologist, but truth be told, this one is tough. So first, let’s say this.

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All right. Well, I’m glad you all stayed. Now I have to start by pointing out that Russell Brand and I are friends. Do I know him well? No. When I lived in London, I knew him. His reputation was as famous as Winston Churchill, Benny Hill and tooth decay. There was a time when we hated each other.

RUSSELL BRAND ACCUSED OF RAPE AND SEXUAL ABUSE OF 4 WOMEN; COMEDIAN DENIES “SERIOUS CRIMINAL ALLEGATIONS”

BRAND RUSSELL, 2014: Greg Gutfeld vibrates with hatred like a human being… Greg is a bit of a pig and a bit sarcastic… You are a stupid sausage. You steal oxygen, and you waste time… Your name, your strange facial orifice resembles caving in the anus and above all, you abuse, you espouse hatred, your emptiness, your bath which echoes your spirit.

It doesn’t look like an anus. But little by little, this changed. He participated in the show. We talked, we corresponded. Hell, we even exchanged skincare tips. So today, yes, I would say we are friends, and I won’t move away from that because it’s easy to be friends when times are good. So I want to talk about patience and not judging someone in the court of public opinion, because that’s part of this story. If you’re sitting where I’m sitting, you know, on a pile of money, you have to ask yourself: How do we report this story accurately? How can we do him justice? And I’m talking about real justice, not social justice. How to avoid the trial of Twitter, now called X? How can we evaluate these allegations since until now the courts have never been contacted to investigate? You see what I mean.

The media compares Brand to Harvey Weinstein because both stories were initially reported fiercely by journalists. But you should never make a comparison based on a single variable. It’s like saying Tom Brady and OJ are the same because they both play football or comparing Hillary Clinton to Jack the Ripper just because they murder people, but you see how it works. This isn’t a report, it’s a bombshell. And it’s just further proof that we live in an age where investigative reporting is dried like airplane glue inside Hunter’s nostrils, speak of the devil. Have we seen this kind of meticulous digging for sources and stories involving Hunter or the Steele dossier, Epstein’s client list or just about any story these days? Yet today we’re seeing some of the most in-depth journalism in living memory, all of this energy devoted to a guy named Russell Brand, not Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden or Bill Clinton. And Clinton’s charity seems darker than Brian Stelter’s feet. Because you know, yeah. Shadow.

POLICE PROBING MARK RUSSELL’S SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS AS RED FLAGS EMERGE FROM COMEDIAN’S PAST

And of course this is happening now, not ten years ago when the events would have happened, and I get it, people have their reasons to wait, but the timing is impeccable, and I reject conspiracies, but it seems like the most compelling critics of those in power are in the firing line. Literally, if you’re RFK Jr. I wonder if Brand had swung left instead of right, would this have become a story. In England, it all started with journalists suddenly looking everywhere for accusers against Brand. There are four accusers who have not been publicly identified and one alleged rape. None went to the cops. Then the producers asked an actress to portray a victim in an interview filled with dramatic background music. The story of course went viral, but Rose McGowan, the founder of the MeToo movement, has now raised an objection.

ROSE MCGOWAN: This is a concerted effort to circumvent journalistic rules that have always been in place, such as having to publicly state who you are and what your name is in order to charge. I didn’t make these rules. These are the rules. Those were the rules. So something very strange is happening… You must declare it officially. It has always been so. That’s not what I did. It didn’t make me happy that I had to do it. It didn’t make the others happy to have to do it either. But to accuse blindly and anonymously, none of these high profile media outlets would have ever allowed this to be published before. So I have to ask why? Why now? What is the real narrative they are offering?

It took courage, which is rarer in Hollywood than an original idea. But look, people don’t go to the police for their own reasons. And one of the main reasons will always be the so-called gray area. The hard-to-pin down region known as provable facts. Cops hate gray areas, but the media loves them more than Joe Biden loves a freshly bathed child. For gray areas, give them narrative freedom. They can do whatever they want, with stories like those celebrating Brand’s excessive promiscuity, for example, which for years they found simply hilarious and certainly not worth pursuing.

YOUTUBE DEMONETIZES RUSSELL BRAND AFTER ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, CITING HIS HARMFUL “OFF-PLATFORM BEHAVIOR”

Everyone claims his behavior was an open secret, which is strange because if it’s out in the open, it’s not a secret. But at the same time, a woman says she went to a rape clinic after meeting Brand. This is reported as corroborated. So where is the truth? I don’t know, but that’s not the point. We neither. You see, we don’t need to jump to any conclusions now, we don’t need to convict Brand, and we don’t need to convict the accusers, because the presumption of innocence should be taken as seriously as the accusations. And the best way to do that is to try these cases in a real court, not in the court of public opinion, because that court has ruined more lives than drugs and alcohol combined.

Look, to state the obvious, I’m not Russell Brand, I’m not even an off-brand. I am far too small and too simple to have been a womanizer. Most of the sex I had was because I was a roadie for KajaGooGoo. Underrated group. But like any public person, there is always a risk that knives will come out. Luckily, I only paid foreign prostitutes to stop peeing on me. But it’s about learning and following the facts. Because sure, we had Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly, but we also had Kevin Spacey, Johnny Depp, and the Duke lacrosse team. So let’s remember how often the media gets it wrong.

And you know what? Maybe I am too, but at least I’m willing to acknowledge it and wait for the truth.

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