(TMU) — Lee Camp recently sat down with former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura to discuss his experience at MSNBC among other things. It turns out, Ventura’s political views were so repulsive to the network that he was paid millions of dollars to not only accept that his show, Jesse Ventura’s America, would be cancelled, but to “keep quiet” for the next three years.

What outlandish views could possibly be so unpopular at MSNBC to warrant a multi-million dollar payoff? “They got rid of me because I opposed the invasion of Iraq,” Ventura told Redacted Tonight’s Lee Camp.

Ventura went on to explain the deal:

“I was handcuffed because I signed a contract for three years and I couldn’t do any cable television, I couldn’t do any satellite TV, no news shows. I was handcuffed with tape and I had to honor the contract.

But the part I laughed about you was you said, “Boy how do you get a job where they pay you a million dollars to keep quiet?” and I had to inform you that it was closer to ten times that.. to keep quiet.”

You read that right. MSNBC spent more money attempting to silence Jesse Ventura for three years than Russia supposedly spent on Facebook ads to influence American politics and because MSNBC effectively “owned” Ventura during that time, he “basically couldn’t talk to anyone.”

According to Tech Crunch, “the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads,” and the Nation reports that the IRA spent “just $73,711” between 2015 and 2017. According to Facebook themselves, the social media giant “found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017.”

As Lee Camp so succinctly put it, “That goes to show how much the corporate media does not want people to be against war.”

So what did Jesse do with his multi-million dollar paycheck and instructions to stay silent? “I then bought my home in Mexico and I almost named it ‘Casa MSNBC,’” Ventura joked. And then he wound up on RT.

While many mainstream news consumers remain skeptical of the network, an increasing number of those who once worked for the big networks but found it hard to stomach the narratives being fed to them or were fired after refusing to parrot those narratives, have found themselves at RT.

According to Camp:

“There is no place on the American networks that you’re allowed to be against war and speak about these issues. And that’s why you and I have a show here.”

Speaking of his short lived time with MSNBC, Ventura explained, “Every day I got told I would be talking about the Lacey Peterson murder. And that was coming from on high, and I kept refusing to do it.” Oddly enough, that’s exactly what critics of RT assume happens at the network.

After dropping the bombshell about his multimillion dollar payoff from a mainstream outlet that millions of Americans trust to bring them important and objective news, Ventura and Camp went on to discuss some of the many other issues currently plaguing the country.

Of U.S. foreign policy, the Iran nuclear deal, and the inability of the United States to stick to the deals it makes with countries like Iran, Ventura suggested one simply “talk to the Native Americans” to get a sense of just how trustworthy the government can be. “Why would anyone trust the deals that America is signing,” Camp rightly asked.

Ventura went on to add that the U.S. has literally “no credibility” and questioned the “humanitarian reasons” the U.S. finds itself in countries like Syria. “I ain’t never seen a missile deliver food, medicine, blankets. They blow up and kill things. That’s all they do. You cannot equate that to ‘humanitarian’.”

With Congress seemingly ignoring the fact that they have no clue what the Pentagon is doing, how many civilians are being killed by U.S. bombs and where the missing $21 trillion went, is it safe to assume the military industrial complex has taken over?

“Yeah,” Ventura says. “Our entire economy is a war based economy. We have to be at war to keep the economy machine moving.”

When our biggest export is war and mainstream media is on the side of the Democrat and Republican backed war machine, it’s no wonder we can’t make headway on climate change, solve our education shortfalls, or offer our very own citizens decent and affordable—or even free—healthcare all the while our for-profit prisons reach capacity, militarized police fill the streets, and mass shootings occur daily.

Watch the full video below:

By Emma Fiala | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com