On this episode of Thick & Thin, the boys are joined by Kyle to discuss the latest in the Julian Assange saga, the drone war in Yemen, and much more. Also, we have a special guest on the show this week, our friend and long-time friend Mikey Revell. Mikey has been a long time friend of the show and has been with us since the early days of Thick and Thin. He's been with the show since the very beginning and has always been a good friend of ours and we had a great time talking about a wide range of topics including: Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, drone strikes, and so much more! Enjoy and spread the word to your friends and family about this episode and this podcast to see if they agree with our thoughts and opinions on it! Also, if you like the show, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms so we can keep bringing you quality, high quality content! Peace, Blessings, Cheers! -Jon Sorrentino and God Bless! Jon and Kyle -The Best Fiends Podcasts: Jon and Mikey The Besties Podcast: Jon & Mikey's Podcast: Kyle's podcast: The Dark Side of the Internet: , Jon's podcast, & Caitlyn's podcast and Hosts: & Jon's blog: . Jon & Kyle's new book, The Deep State Podcast: Deep State Conspiracy Theories: The Truth or Fiction? (featuring the Deep State's Deep State s Deep State? , and the deep state s Deep state's Deep state s deep state's deep state? . . . and more! . . , & much more!! Jon s podcast: Deep state is a podcast about the Deep state, deep state, and more. Jon talks about deep state conspiracies, and the dark side of it all! , with a little bit of everything in between! Kyle s thoughts on all of it. , Jon s thoughts, and a lot more! (and more! ) Tom s podcast, with much more... Thank you, Jon and Jon s first ever podcast, Jon's thoughts on that! (and much more , including the rest of the good stuff too! ) - Jon s new book
00:00:11.000Yeah, the lowdown on this, though, is I was supposed to get this dry-cleaned.
00:00:15.000When I was in Tennessee for Politicon, which was just a few days ago, and then even when I got here, I was like, I gotta get this dry clean, go on Rogan's show.
00:00:22.000Of course I didn't, but it doesn't look too wrinkly.
00:00:47.000Before that, we were talking about Snowden, and that shows you that they do not mess around when they feel like you're uncovering their BS. Yeah.
00:00:55.000Now, what are they trying to get from Julian Assange?
00:01:11.000But then he pissed off the Democrats because he leaked on the DNC and he showed what was going on with Hillary behind the scenes and how the primary was basically rigged against Bernie Sanders.
00:01:19.000So Democrats used to like him, now Democrats hate him.
00:01:22.000And Trump used to like him when he was getting this information on Hillary.
00:01:26.000But they hate him as well because Trump has basically been...
00:02:04.000And so he released that, and then that's why they were coming after him and throwing the book at him because, you know, just like with Mike Revell previously, Daniel Ellsberg actually is who I'm thinking of, just like with Daniel Ellsberg when he showed what we were doing in Vietnam and how we were killing civilians.
00:02:18.000They do not want you to expose their war crimes.
00:02:20.000They will throw the book at you and act like you're a spy, you're working for a foreign country, you're a traitor, because they want to keep that stuff under wraps because it really embarrasses them and it really shows what U.S. Empire is doing around the world.
00:02:31.000That was that collateral murder video?
00:02:44.000Yeah, well, unfortunately, what you see is it becomes very partisan.
00:02:47.000So when Obama is doing drone strikes and killing 90% innocent people, unfortunately, partisan Democrats don't talk about it.
00:02:56.000Now that Trump has increased drone strikes by 432% over Obama, with still a tremendously high civilian death rate, now, you know, maybe some Democrats will talk about it, but Republicans certainly don't talk about it.
00:03:18.000And see, that's the problem is, people get mad now that Trump is at the helm of this stuff, but all of these things now, it's precedent.
00:03:26.000He's not doing anything that wasn't established beforehand.
00:03:28.000Can I ask you this, though, when you say Trump is doing it, who is exactly making the call?
00:03:34.000Do they bring this call to Trump and they say, hey, you know, we're going to bomb Yemen, we're going to do this with drones, and does he have to sign off on each individual attack?
00:03:42.000That's a great question, and the short answer is, I don't know.
00:03:45.000I wouldn't be surprised if Trump was directly involved in some of these instances.
00:03:49.000I know that his first military raid as president that he approved ended up killing a nine-year-old American girl.
00:03:54.000It was Anwar Al-Awlaki's daughter, I believe.
00:03:58.000But I also do think that there is this, what you can call the deep state.
00:04:02.000I know people think that's like a conspiratorial term, but it's really not.
00:04:04.000All that's saying is that the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, these are people who are in these positions of power, and they're there throughout all these different administrations.
00:04:19.000And so when you have a kill list, and when you have people at the CIA, and the Pentagon, by the way, a lot of them are calling the shots.
00:04:25.000And maybe they just need an okay every now and then from President Trump.
00:04:29.000But yeah, I mean, I think that there's, it's not just one person making all the decisions.
00:04:34.000I think that the President does play a role.
00:04:36.000But I also think it's generals, I think it's people at the CIA. And I think it's this complex web of people who are all kind of involved in this thing that ends up being drastically negative.
00:04:46.000Yeah, drastically negative, to put it mildly, right?
00:04:48.000When you're talking about 90% civilian casualties with drone strikes, that's such a disturbing thing that this continues, that no one says, hey, this is grossly ineffective and horrific in its consequences, you know?
00:05:03.000Yeah, what they do is, you know, they give everybody a false choice.
00:05:06.000They make it seem like, hey, listen, man, if we're not doing these all-out ground invasions and we're not doing, like, war-war with boots on the ground, well, what do you want us to do?
00:05:15.000We've got to go after these bad people.
00:05:16.000So this is, like, the soft power option, if you will.
00:05:19.000And my response to that has always been...
00:05:21.000Yeah, but you do have to follow the Constitution, and the way our system is supposed to work is you can't have the President just declare war and just go and do it.
00:05:31.000So if you wanted to do a drone war, okay, but you got to get a declaration of war, tell me exactly which countries you're going to be doing the bombing in, why you're doing the bombing in those countries, and get an approval through Congress.
00:05:41.000So if you were to come to me and say, hey man, there's an Al-Qaeda cell that's very active in Pakistan or whatever, so we want to approve a drone war, Have Congress vote on it, see what happens, and then move from there.
00:05:53.000But what we're doing now is, it's just baked into the cake that we violate U.S. law, we violate the Constitution, and we violate international law with all these bombings.
00:06:01.000Because as of right now, we're bombing at least eight different countries, and we also have a shadow war going on in Africa.
00:06:09.000So the Intercept reported on this, I don't know as much on this off the top of my head, but Jamie, if you wouldn't mind please pulling up an article from the Intercept.
00:06:17.000There's a shadow war going on in Africa where we're building military bases all over Africa, and the idea is I think that we have these bases where the drones fly out of and they can go to the Middle East and they can bomb there.
00:06:30.000Is this also in response to the fact that China is essentially moving into large parts of Africa to extract minerals and natural resources?
00:06:38.000Yes, and this is actually super interesting because the China thing, they're doing this Belt and Road Initiative.
00:06:44.000And basically, this is like their version of empire through debt.
00:06:49.000Okay, so what they do is they'll go into, like they just made a deal with Iraq.
00:06:52.000We spent trillions of dollars in Iraq, did an illegal and offensive war.
00:06:55.000China swoops in and they go, hey, listen...
00:07:10.000They turn around and they say, okay, well then you can get a certain percentage of our oil sales or whatever it might be.
00:07:15.000And it's funny because there's been this evolution when it comes to empires.
00:07:19.000So it used to be back in the day, you just kind of...
00:07:21.000Go up on somebody's shores and say, mine, I'm taking it, and you do it by force.
00:07:25.000Then the U.S. evolved from that, and what the U.S. does is it's this cute little trick where we say, no, no, no, we're not going to control you directly.
00:07:32.000What we will do is take somebody from your native land, prop them up as a dictator, And then they will allow U.S. corporate interests to go in there and kind of exploit the natural resources.
00:07:41.000But it's intelligent because you're saying, no, no, we're not in there ourselves, like the British did in India, for example, where they just showed up and they're like, it's ours.
00:07:48.000There was a British presence there very clearly.
00:07:50.000We have people from their native lands take control, but we exploit stuff from them and extract stuff from them.
00:07:56.000So China took that one step further, where it's like, okay, no, we're actually going to provide you with You know, material well-being.
00:08:02.000We're going to give you a solid infrastructure.
00:08:03.000And then it's like, you look at it more like a business deal than an expansion of empire.
00:08:08.000And honestly, this is one of the weird benefits of having an authoritarian-like system like China does, is they can make a decision on a dime.
00:08:15.000You could just have the Communist Party just go, yeah, we'll do this because this is the best way to do it.
00:08:32.000You want a system like that, but in many ways it provides a strategic disadvantage, at least when you're talking about imperialism.
00:08:38.000So here's the article from The Intercept.
00:08:40.000U.S. Special Operations numbers surge in Africa's shadow wars.
00:08:45.000The most dramatic growth in deployment of American elite troops of any region of the globe over the past decade, according to newly released numbers, Africa.
00:09:22.000How you really do have a deep state, if you will, kind of making decisions, and the president just kind of goes along with it.
00:09:28.000And we're all sitting around here acting like, hey man, maybe instead of doing that, we could actually, I don't know, use some of our tax dollars to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, which gets a grade of D+. But are they doing it because they see a threat?
00:09:42.000Like exclusive, U.S. has more military operations in Africa than the Middle East.
00:09:48.000Now, is it possible because they see a threat?
00:09:52.000I think that's the rationalization that they use, but I think it has more to do with power and control.
00:09:58.000And when you're the world's sole superpower, you don't want to cede that ground to anybody else.
00:10:02.000And so the benefits that come along with that, in their mind, is they can rationalize jacking natural resources from all over the world by saying, no, listen, you'd rather have us in this position than you would Russia, than you would China.
00:11:30.000I mean, that's been a thing that's been known for a long time, that they'll jack patents and intellectual property, and they have this whole economy that's kind of thriving off technology that's made elsewhere.
00:11:42.000But also, I would argue that it's probably the case with the U.S., too, that this kind of distinction between Corporations in the state is largely a veneer because you have such control of our political process because of big money from corporations flowing into the system.
00:11:57.000So I think that a lot of these decisions that are made even when it comes to foreign policy are directly in relation to how it will impact those corporations.
00:12:05.000Like the thing that I remember was a light bulb moment for me back in the day when I first learned about it was the banana wars.
00:12:13.000Back in the day, I think it was in the late 1800s, but don't quote me on that, we just went into South America and started toppling governments because we wanted to jack their bananas.
00:12:23.000And it was literally for, I think, the Chiquita Banana Company that we did that.
00:12:27.000Yeah, so when you look at that, you go, Okay, well that kind of distinction between corporation and government is not even really a thing here.
00:12:34.000It's like this veneer that's in between the two, but really it's the powerful moneyed interests and the elites that kind of run everything and they're married at the hip, whether they're in the government or whether they're in corporations.
00:12:47.000Again, I'm more than happy to be fact-checked on this, but I remember the first time I read about this, it had to be in college, the Banana Wars.
00:13:06.000Oh my god, they killed people for salt.
00:13:08.000It was very important back in the day because they didn't have refrigerators.
00:13:11.000So in order to preserve things and keep them from being infected by bacteria, they would pour salt all over their meat and salt all over their fish, and that's how they preserved things.
00:13:38.000We have been used to that for quite a while.
00:13:39.000And it's interesting because what just happened with Syria and Trump, that was fascinating, is at first he said, oh, we're getting out of Syria, we're getting out of northern Syria.
00:13:46.000Everybody went crazy and said, oh my God, what about the Kurds?
00:13:48.000And then we come to find out like three or four days later that he's like, well, no, we're actually taking these troops from northern Syria to Moving them over into Western Iraq, and they're going to be doing the same thing that they've been doing from Western Iraq, and then Trump had the nerve to go out there and say, and we've secured the oil.
00:14:46.000We're allowed to do that because we say we're allowed to do that.
00:14:48.000We're like, what are you talking about?
00:14:49.000But we're going to do that to a sovereign country, Syria, as we pretend like we care so deeply about Syrian civilians and that's why we're there to protect them?
00:14:57.000Like, no, we're there to jack their oil.
00:14:58.000That's what we're trying to do and control the region.
00:15:01.000It's so disturbing when it's that transparent.
00:15:05.000Well, that's what I was just about to say next is that some people make the argument that, well, at least there's no tap dancing bullshit.
00:15:12.000Whereas with all the other presidents, they have this fake holier-than-thou attitude where they really can put a happy face on a disgusting thing like Empire.
00:15:23.000Where Trump is, and I think it's fair to say, he's too stupid to really go through the tap dance.
00:15:28.000And so people are like, hey, there it is.
00:15:30.000It's like, it's right in front of our face.
00:15:31.000But what's interesting about him is he says both things at the same time.
00:15:35.000Like, he has the political instincts enough to know that people think war is generally bad.
00:15:42.000So he always goes out there and he talks about how he thinks war is generally bad.
00:15:45.000And we got to get our troops out of the Middle East.
00:16:18.000It's actually, politically, it comes across sometimes as a positive because nobody follows up with it and the media doesn't do their job and say, wait, we didn't actually get out of there.
00:16:27.000So it comes across as a positive politically because he's still doing the head fakes towards non-intervention which people agree with, but it's business as usual behind the scenes.
00:16:35.000How much time do you think he actually spends on any of these things?
00:17:21.000And there was a story that was reported before he became president.
00:17:24.000I think it was after he got the Republican nomination.
00:17:26.000There was this interesting story that it wasn't discussed too much, but I thought it was fascinating because the Trump team apparently approached John Kasich, who's just like kind of a standard establishment Republican.
00:17:35.000He was the governor of maybe in Ohio, but I'm not sure.
00:17:39.000It was one of those states over there.
00:17:41.000So he approached John Kasich and basically said to him behind the scenes, hey, listen, man.
00:17:46.000If I end up winning this election, I want you to kind of like be my vice president, run the day-to-day at the White House, dot all the I's, cross all the T's, do all the work like that, and I want to go around the country and keep doing rallies and rile up everybody.
00:18:24.000He took all these deeply establishment figures, Steve Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs, Stephen, I'm forgetting his name, Cohen something, Cohen, Cohen, another guy from Goldman Sachs.
00:18:34.000He had all these just career insiders, brought them into his administration, whether it's with the economy or with foreign policy, John Bolton, deep neoconservative.
00:18:42.000He said he believed in the opposite philosophy, but then he puts John Bolton in power because he wants the system to keep running as it is and run smoothly while he goes around and just...
00:18:52.000You know, makes the name for himself and talks about how amazing and tremendous this country is and what an amazing job we're doing.
00:18:58.000So it's funny because he has two different personas.
00:19:01.000One of them is, I'm going to pretend to be the anti-establishment guy and rally people up nonstop and be a politician and be good at it.
00:19:07.000And then the other thing is, behind the scenes, he's like, guys, just keep everything running and hold it together with duct tape if you have to before I get out of here.
00:19:15.000At the same time, he's acting like the most anti-establishment president of all time when he's on the campaign trail.
00:19:19.000He's also the most deeply pro-establishment candidate or president in terms of what he's actually doing.
00:19:25.000So it's a fascinating dynamic that's going on right now.
00:19:31.000And listen, man, and other people on the left might disagree with me on this, but I think he's fucking brilliant at it.
00:19:35.000I think he's brilliant at this part of it, where he really does have a way, like, he broke every single political rule that ever existed when he ran for president, and he won.
00:19:47.000That tells you that the rules are nonsense.
00:19:49.000The problem is, who is he running against?
00:19:51.000I don't think that would have worked if he was running against Obama.
00:19:53.000I think Hillary is such a deeply flawed candidate, and so many people despised her, and during the Me Too era, her creepy fucking husband is just looming in the distance like Nosferatu.
00:20:07.000I mean, how many women have come out and accused that guy of sexual assault and rape, and he's still hovering?
00:20:15.000I mean, he's still around, and that's always going to haunt her.
00:20:26.000Remember when the story broke of Trump on video saying, I grab him by the pussy, I don't even wait, and everybody blew up, and all the mainstream media talking heads were like, oh my god, it's over.
00:20:37.000What did Trump do with that next debate?
00:20:39.000This was actually low-key political brilliance.
00:20:41.000Instead of doing what every other politician would have done, which is basically kind of give in a little bit and be like, alright, you got me.
00:20:46.000What he did, he leased a short apology video real quick, got out of the way, then the next night was a debate.
00:20:52.000At the debate show, he brought like eight Bill Clinton accusers, put them in the audience, and then he goes out there on stage and when he's asked the question, the first thing he says is, listen, I'm not proud of what I said.
00:21:03.000It wasn't a good thing what I said, but what I did was just words.
00:21:07.000What Bill Clinton did was actions, folks.
00:21:36.000And you see with every single scandal that Trump's involved in, you see how incredibly pathetic and ineffectual and weak the Democrats are at marketing and strategizing, and you see how good he is because he is, no matter what it is, he's going to flip it.
00:22:19.000Again, goes right back on the offense, and he goes out there and says, I have every right as president to investigate corruption, and Joe Biden is incredibly corrupt, and all I'm doing is I'm, you know, trying to figure out, why was Hunter Biden getting $50,000 from an energy company?
00:22:33.000He doesn't know anything about energy!
00:22:36.000And so now, again, the conversation isn't, man, Trump shouldn't have been doing that.
00:22:40.000The conversation is, okay, sure, maybe Trump shouldn't have been doing that, but goddamn, Joe Biden's son and Joe Biden's family is really corrupt, aren't they?
00:22:57.000Okay, so this one, I'll give you what the Democrats say and I'll give you what the Republicans say.
00:23:01.000The Democrats say, hey man, that's a misleading video because yes, it's true, Biden was holding a billion dollar subsidy over the head of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor, but Biden wanted to get rid of the corrupt prosecutor and bring in a non-corrupt prosecutor.
00:23:15.000That's why he was doing what he did and holding that subsidy over their head.
00:23:18.000And they say, the prosecutor that eventually came into place actually investigated the Biden family more.
00:23:24.000So that's why the Democrats say you're kind of misleading by putting this out there.
00:23:29.000The argument that Trump is making is, well, no, you're holding a billion dollar subsidy over the head of a foreign government and saying you have to listen to us and do X, Y, and Z. That's problematic in and of itself.
00:23:44.000We know that the only reason Hunter Biden was getting paid $50,000 a month, and actually now people are saying it's not $50,000, it's $83,000 a month, is because his last name is Biden.
00:23:54.000$83,000 a month is a lot of fucking money.
00:23:57.000And this is where I think, like, Democrats are silly, because they always find the weakest anti-Trump argument possible, and now they're put in a position where they have to try to say, like, oh, the Bidens did nothing wrong at all, and Trump is all bad.
00:24:08.000And bottom line, nobody's gonna believe that the Bidens did nothing wrong when you're getting $83,000 a month, and you don't know anything about natural gas.
00:24:15.000What was the justification for the $83,000?
00:24:17.000I don't even know what they give as the justification.
00:24:20.000I mean, the only thing I heard from, I think it was Ted Lieu, he's a Democratic congressman, was, you know, hey man, people sit on boards and there was nothing wrong there.
00:24:30.000But here's the thing, and this is, again, why the Democrats drive me crazy, is like...
00:24:33.000They picked the weakest of all anti-Trump arguments.
00:24:35.000So they wanted to use this as like, oh, we're going to try to impeach him over this, and this is going to be the thing that we're going to hang our hat on.
00:24:41.000And Nancy Pelosi even said, we're going to limit the scope of the impeachment investigation to only this, only the Ukraine phone call.
00:24:46.000And then somebody like me, I'm sitting there and I'm pulling my hair out because I can actually give you like three or four super legitimate things that are impeachment worthy.
00:24:55.000Not that I think it strategically makes sense, and we can get into that if you want to, but like the one that drives me crazy is...
00:25:02.000Donald Trump has a hotel in Washington DC that he owns, okay?
00:25:05.000He took $300,000 through that hotel from the Saudi government.
00:25:09.000So they're funneling him money through his hotel in DC. And then Donald Trump turns around and gives a multi-billion dollar weapons deal to the Saudi government as they're committing a genocide in Yemen.
00:25:19.000We know they're committing a genocide in Yemen.
00:25:39.000Okay, so what they did is they had these little retreats at the hotel, and Saudi Arabia would pay for U.S. veterans to go and stay at these hotels.
00:25:49.000I don't know if it's tours of the capital or whatever it is, but they'd pay for these veteran groups to go to the hotel.
00:25:54.000But then, of course, you look at it and you go...
00:26:00.000And the speculation is, well, of course they overpaid on purpose, but furthermore, even if they didn't, Jimmy Carter had to sell his peanut farm when he was president because the idea was, hey, we're not even saying you're doing anything corrupt, but just the fact that you have this personal private business,
00:26:16.000it is theoretically possible that foreign governments want to give you money through your peanut farm So you have to sell it because just the existence of it enough is enough to say it violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which is just a fancy way of saying that the president can't be corrupt and take money from foreign governments.
00:26:40.000Well, that's what they say is it's for, I guess, the meals in the hotel rooms and whatnot.
00:26:44.000I hate to say it this way, but that's not a lot of money to someone like him.
00:26:48.000Well, you know, but then what I always think about when people make that point is you have to flip it.
00:26:52.000What would we be saying if it was the Clinton Foundation getting $300,000 from the Saudi government and then Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State approving a weapons deal to Saudi Arabia?
00:27:01.000And the fact of the matter is, that actually is almost exactly like what happened with the Clinton Foundation because Bill Clinton was going around and giving speeches at all these, you know, Gulf dictatorships and then he was getting, you know, $500,000 a pop or whatever it was and then Hillary Clinton was approving weapons deals as Secretary of State.
00:27:32.000In my opinion, those speeches are a transparent bribe.
00:27:37.000So do you think, though, that a president should be able to have private businesses that foreign governments can pay him any amount of money?
00:28:19.000Out of $300,000, it's not that much profit.
00:28:22.000With $500,000 a speech, that's one talk for one hour, and it costs nothing for him.
00:28:30.000And he's making a half a million dollars, and he did it over and over and over and over and over again.
00:28:34.000And it was all under the guise of the Clinton Foundation is doing this great charitable work all across the country and all across the world.
00:28:43.000And that, to me, was more transparently disgusting.
00:28:46.000Yeah, so I understand why you would say that, but I also think that...
00:29:52.000Through their businesses, and they say, oh, there's nothing to see here, there's no problem.
00:29:55.000But then you dig into the specifics, and yet again, you see so many sketchy things, like Jared Kushner got, like, millions of dollars from Israeli banks.
00:30:04.000And then this is the guy who they say, it's okay, he's going to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.
00:30:08.000One of the sides is giving him millions of dollars.
00:30:10.000You think that's going to be a fair peace deal?
00:30:12.000It's going to be the most lopsided peace deal in history.
00:30:15.000And this is the problem is that, and again, for the Trump example, it's just that he kind of rips the mask off and shows you what everybody's doing.
00:30:22.000But it's not like it didn't happen with Bill Clinton.
00:30:24.000It's not like, like with Barack Obama, it was Wall Street appointed his entire administration.
00:30:29.000I believe he got a list from Citigroup.
00:30:31.000To, you know, put people in his cabinet.
00:30:34.000And it's like, this is the way the system functions.
00:30:36.000And my opinion is, you shouldn't be taking money from foreign governments.
00:30:40.000You shouldn't be taking money from corporations.
00:30:43.000Because you're going to be biased in favor of those countries.
00:30:47.000Like, look at what happened with Jamal Khashoggi and Trump.
00:31:11.000But this, again, look at the difference between how they talk about stuff like this when it's a U.S. ally versus when it's not a U.S. ally.
00:31:18.000When it's a U.S. ally like Saudi Arabia that does it, there's nothing to see here.
00:31:21.000But if you get a similar story coming out of Iran, for example, who's not a U.S. ally, or they love to go after Maduro, and I'm not saying he's a good guy, but they go after Maduro because he's not a U.S. ally.
00:31:30.000So they could harp away on all the negative things about him, but we're not having a conversation about Jamal Khashoggi.
00:31:35.000We're not having a conversation about people being beheaded in the public square.
00:32:06.000I mean, it would have been cleaner if they just made him have some sort of heart attack or an accident or something along those lines.
00:32:14.000If there was plausible deniability in any way.
00:32:16.000The way they did it, it's almost like this guy wanted them to do it a certain way.
00:32:21.000He wanted them to chop this guy up and put him in bags and deliver him out of the country in suitcases and shit or whatever the fuck they did, however they got rid of him.
00:32:32.000It's such a disturbing decision that they made.
00:32:35.000Yeah, and they know they're going to get away with it, and again, this is what happens.
00:33:37.000The unit established in 2009 is charged with apprehending sorcerers and reversing the detrimental effects of their spells in the Gulf country.
00:34:47.000And it's funny because there's actually, when you actually look at the textbook definition of a lot of these terms, they have multiple meanings.
00:34:51.000So classical liberal, in some instances, means just like libertarian, because that's what it used to mean back in the day.
00:34:58.000But in today's day and age, like you said, it could mean you're kind of right-leaning.
00:35:34.000And I don't like labels, period, because they're so amorphous.
00:35:37.000And people can say, you can ask people, like, did you know, for example, in the Democratic primary in 2016, self-described conservative Democrats supported Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, even though Bernie Sanders is literally further to the left than Hillary Clinton.
00:35:51.000So again, that just shows people don't know labels.
00:35:54.000When you say conservative Democrats, though, maybe they're just not into interventional foreign policy.
00:36:06.000Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which advocates civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on economic freedom.
00:38:20.000The problem with that, I mean, there's a lot of problems with that, but the problem with that clearly is that when there has been regulation for long periods of time and you just step back, you're going to have a massive period of chaos until things do settle.
00:38:32.000If you do let the market decide, I would imagine there's going to be a period when the deregulation takes place.
00:38:39.000There's going to be a lot of people that get fucked over.
00:38:42.000I mean, we actually have quite a bit of evidence on this front because we've run this experiment like a thousand times in U.S. history alone, but as a general rule, whenever you do market deregulation and whenever you cut taxes for the very wealthy, there's what's called a boom-bust cycle,
00:38:58.000which means everything takes off, everything seems like it's wonderful, the good times seem like they're never going to end.
00:39:03.000They called it the roaring 20s because it was like, oh my god, the market is soaring, everything's going so well, and then it was followed by the Great Depression.
00:39:09.000And then you saw it again, actually, in the end of the Clinton years, because Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, which was a very important piece of regulation.
00:39:16.000And then under the Bush years as well, he further deregulated and cut taxes for the rich.
00:39:50.000And you could sell stuff that's cut with substances that could end up killing you.
00:39:54.000I mean, this is actually what happened.
00:39:55.000In Prohibition, during Prohibition, they used to make alcohol in bathtubs and cut it with substances that were very dangerous.
00:40:02.000And so every now and then there would be a bad batch of alcohol and people would die because the way they made the alcohol had no regulation and no standards.
00:41:25.000And John Norris, he got a job initially as a game warden because, you know, he grew up in the outdoors and fishing and hunting and things like that, and he wanted to be a game warden.
00:41:35.000Well, along the way, they started finding these Mexican grow-ops, these cartel grow-ops.
00:41:51.000So if you have 100 acres on public land that you've decided to take the water from this creek and send it down there and it kills a bunch of fish, it's just a misdemeanor for the guys growing the drugs.
00:42:06.000And now 80% of all the illegal marijuana that's being grown and sold in the United States, a rough estimate, is coming from these cartel grow-ops, and a lot of them are using these pesticides that are very fucking dangerous.
00:42:21.000See, it's because they could just do it.
00:42:22.000They could just set up shop and, you know, they go to the National Forest, they go to public lands, they hike in with, like, fucking tubes, like, hoses and shit on their back so they can revert these creeks or divert these creeks, rather.
00:42:33.000And they set up these grow-ups and they bring guns and they fucking set up shop.
00:42:38.000And so these guys, these game wardens became like a paramilitary operation.
00:42:54.000Yeah, and I think that we have this weird gray area situation in the United States right now, where certain states have legalized it for recreational use, certain states have it for medical use, but at the federal level, it's still illegal.
00:43:08.000Right, and if it became legal, then these cartel operations would have to go out of business.
00:43:51.000When you go to, in California at least, say if you've got a cold and you want to buy some strong over-the-counter cold meds, you have to give your driver's license.
00:44:02.000The reason being is because people used to just buy everything off the shelf, throw it into a basket, bring it up to the counter, and they would use that stuff to make meth with.
00:44:27.000Plant-based meth is the next frontier of Afghanistan's drug trade.
00:44:32.000Investigators have uncovered a burgeoning local trade in the production of methamphetamine using a mountain shrub.
00:44:40.000See, like, now, let me ask you this question, because I'm a little torn on this next one, but I'm of the belief that if you, like, let's say you legalize lower-level uppers or amphetamines, okay?
00:44:52.000So let's say you have a more benign version of all of these kinds of drugs that are legal and available.
00:45:02.000So do you think that, because I think that would...
00:45:05.000Not fully eliminate the market for the much harder stuff, but it would, I think, eliminate a majority of that market because if somebody goes and gets a more safer alternative, that might not be a strong, but you can go get a safer alternative or get a bunch of a safer alternative, then, yeah,
00:45:21.000why wouldn't you choose that over doing like Crocodile, the one that melts off your skin if you do it for like a year?
00:46:07.000Well, the open desk drawer, somebody focused in on it, and they realized, this is like years later, they realized that it's all filled with Sudafed.
00:46:16.000And Sudafed is, again, the active ingredient One of the ingredients in Sudafed is the active ingredient in meth.
00:46:24.000And so apparently people take Sudafed.
00:46:27.000And if you take that stuff, it gives you like a little bit of a buzz.
00:46:31.000And if you take large doses of Sudafed, it's essentially like taking, like he's microdosing.
00:46:55.000It says, The desk drawer full of Sudafed, including boxes in New York purchased in the UK, indicate that the legal limits of purchase are being circumvented, and that the then-candidate Trump was abusing Sudafed for its high, rather than its decongestant effect.
00:47:13.000Now, I want to take it a step further because I don't know if you watched this video I sent you a while ago, but I was absolutely floored by the contrast between the speech Trump gave at CPAC this year and then the speech Trump gave at the UN this year.
00:47:28.000The CPAC one, Joe, totally off script, bouncing off the walls, an hour and 30 minutes, hands moving all over the place.
00:48:01.000Pacman had, David Pacman had an episode where he was concentrating on this alleged drug use by Trump, and he showed the contrast of him sniffing at the debates with Hillary Clinton.
00:48:15.000And he did a, yeah, this whole conglomeration of all of his sniffing moments.
00:48:23.000And let me just say, in Trump's defense, if I was president, I'd be taking some shit too, because that's a tough job.
00:48:29.000And also, don't lie, when he does a rally and he's high as balls on an upper, they're entertaining.
00:48:35.000And I'm the first one on the left to admit, his Twitter feed, I feel bad sometimes because he genuinely makes me laugh.
00:48:42.000I'll never forget the morning I woke up and I go on Twitter, which is part of my morning routine, and the first words I see are from the President of the United States.
00:48:49.000And it says, Washed up psycho Bette Midler.
00:48:54.000And I just saw that first part of the tweet and I broke down laughing.
00:49:16.000Well, his Trumpisms, like the little side things that he always does makes me laugh, like the all caps randomly, or sometimes he'll capitalize letters for no reason in the tweet.
00:49:24.000Well, it was great when he was the fucking host of The Apprentice.
00:49:35.000Yeah, I mean, I'm curious what percentage of the population is like my mom who really values the idea of somebody kind of being buttoned down and presidential and very professional sounding.
00:49:45.000Because that used to be the model and that used to help you in the 1980s and 1990s.
00:49:50.000But I genuinely feel like in today's day and age, we've kind of evolved out of that.
00:49:54.000And you're not going to get another Mitt Romney-style politician who's like a robot who's really on script.
00:49:58.000You're going to get either a left-wing version or a right-wing version of somebody who's really kind of shooting from the hip and has no filter.
00:50:05.000Because that no-filter-ism comes across as just so much more genuine, even if he sounds fucking crazy when he talks.
00:50:51.000So with Trump, they're like, okay, at least I know what that is.
00:50:54.000That's a crazy guy who's on speed, and he wants to make a lot of money, and he doesn't want to yell at Saudi Arabia because he's making money off of them.
00:52:12.000And then they also say, and this turned out to be totally debunked and not true, oh, there's an army of Russian trolls that are trying to help Tulsi Gabbard win the election.
00:52:19.000And, Joe, but this is the thing that they pull out.
00:52:21.000For anybody who's on the left and anti-war, this is what they pull out.
00:52:42.000So when I sit there and I explain, hey, here's why Medicare for All is the way to go, and here's why a public option is nonsense, and here's why our current system is terrible, they want to defend the status quo, but they cannot defend the status quo using arguments, so they have to just lump me off and put me to the side and say, well, he shouldn't even be allowed in the conversation because he's a Russian asset,
00:52:59.000But the thing is, the reason why their argument holds some weight at all is because of the IRA, the Internet Research Agency, and the work they've done that was exposed.
00:53:09.000The Russian stuff, where they're making all of these different Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, and they're using them to start...
00:53:18.000To start wars, like essentially, to start arguments with people about anything and everything, to slander people, to support people, you know, to say, you know, as a black woman, I could never support Hillary Clinton, and then they make these arguments, and it's not really a black woman's account.
00:53:34.000It's a Russian, and it's part of this Russian research agency that Renee DiResta exposed.
00:53:40.000Have you ever paid attention to any of her work?
00:53:42.000No, I haven't, but I'm very skeptical on this point because they always make it seem like if that didn't happen, that we'd all be hunky-dory holding hands and getting along.
00:54:09.000They have jobs, and they have mortgages, and they have children, and they have hobbies, and they have friends, and they're doing all kinds of shit when they have their time off.
00:54:18.000They don't have enough time to truly research.
00:54:22.000Was Ted Cruz involved in the Kennedy assassination?
00:55:33.000It's all just starting fights and causing these arguments.
00:55:38.000And they're doing this to try to, even if it's 1% or 10%, If they can disrupt democracy by 4%, 5% here or there, it's incredibly effective.
00:55:50.000If they can get a narrative going and they can sustain that narrative, a bullshit narrative, just through coming up with these fake things, it has an effect.
00:56:01.000If it's 1%, if it's 2%, if they can get a meme past people and you start spreading it through Facebook.
00:56:09.000And a lot of them, she said, she looked over 100,000 memes and she's like, some of them were fucking hilarious.
00:56:15.000And you're reading these and you're laughing and you realize, well, they're making these things to make people laugh and also to try to get a point across.
00:56:22.000And that point is to, you know, to try to paint Hillary Clinton as a this or paint Joe Biden as a that or paint, you know, and what they're doing is they're Starting these groups, and these groups will argue against other groups,
00:56:37.000and people just kind of go along like sheep, and they don't even know who's behind the whole thing.
00:56:42.000They really think this Black Lives Matter group is like African Americans that are tired of police brutality, but it's not.
00:56:50.000It's these guys in Russia that are just starting shit.
00:56:55.000I hear you, but at the same time, the thing that has kind of shocked me is the degree to which this is relied upon and used as the scapegoat to not talk about sometimes things that are very real issues.
00:57:12.000With Bernie Sanders, there was this Russian troll farm meme created of Bernie Sanders.
00:57:16.000It's like, he's rainbow colored and he's doing a pose where he's showing his bicep or whatever.
00:57:21.000And that was then used by mainstream media to say, why is Russia trying to prop up Bernie Sanders?
00:57:28.000Why is he trying to prop up Bernie Sanders?
00:57:30.000So they try to make it seem like, oh, Bernie's like a Russian puppet and a Russian asset.
00:57:33.000And if you support him, well, you've just been duped to support him.
00:57:37.000And so it's kind of used as this catch-all thing where it's like, If I try to bring up a real issue, they say, well, Russia wants you to talk about that.
00:57:49.000Part of the whole dispute is you see something like that and then people say, why does Russia want Bernie Sanders to be president?
00:57:57.000Why are they pumping up Bernie Sanders?
00:57:58.000And then this becomes even a more confusing argument.
00:58:02.000Like, if they do do something like that and they create these funny memes and try to prop up Bernie Sanders and then the argument comes in, like, why does Russia want Bernie Sanders to win?
00:58:31.000And if you listen to Sam Harris's podcast with Diresta or the podcast that I did with her, and when she goes into depth about this, you know, understanding this and how much time she spent researching this IRA, this Internet Research Agency in Russia and all the work that they do.
00:58:48.000We have people working 24 hours a day on this shit, and they're doing it specifically under the behest of the government to try to fuck with democracy.
00:58:57.000I just think we have to be really careful, point taken, I just think we have to be really careful to make sure that that doesn't distract us from focusing on issues that really do matter, because oftentimes I've seen that's invoked to kind of shut up the talk about real issues.
00:59:12.000And I'd also add on top of that as well, the dirty little secret that we never talk about in this country is that We actually are doing the exact same thing.
01:00:34.000But, like, that's just not what dominates political culture in today's America.
01:00:39.000Because you just have this dumbed-down conversation where the entire conversation is about stuff like this, or the entire conversation is about the individual cult of personality aspect of politics.
01:00:51.000And that's just really upsetting to a guy like me because...
01:00:54.000If we actually have that conversation on policy, I think there's so much more agreement in this country than people realize.
01:01:02.000And oftentimes what I say is, if you and I sit here and have a conversation, we agree on something.
01:01:07.000It's a pretty damn good bet that that's a solid position that a lot of people agree with.
01:01:12.000But if two politicians in Washington, D.C. agree on something, look out.
01:01:16.000Because oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes, they're agreeing to screw you.
01:01:20.000And that's what just happened with, again, this was about a year or so ago, there was all these headlines, bipartisan consensus and agreement on a piece of legislation.
01:01:28.000It was all like flowery, happy language.
01:01:30.000They agreed to further deregulate Wall Street, which again is the thing that led to the subprime mortgage crisis in the Great Recession.
01:01:37.000And this is what you get agreement on between Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C. Every now and then you'll get two good things like, you know, Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul coming together, Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee to agree.
01:01:48.000War is bad and we shouldn't aid a genocide in Yemen.
01:02:06.000We would be so much better off if, and this is an idea that I've been pushing for a while now, imagine we had a law where every time we had to vote in a presidential election, the people got to vote directly on the top three issues impacting the country, and that became law.
01:02:21.000So let's say in the next presidential election, one of the questions is, so it's a national direct ballot initiative law, and one of the questions could be, should marijuana be legal, taxed, and regulated at a federal level, yes or no?
01:02:31.000And then the American people vote on it, and whatever we say, that becomes law.
01:02:34.000So then it would be, you know, be like 65% in favor of it.
01:02:39.000And you can go down the list, and you can have the three most important issues.
01:02:41.000And that's a way, Joe, I think, to circumvent the corruption in Washington, D.C. I mean, one way is you can fight to get money out of politics so there's not as much corruption.
01:02:49.000I think that's honestly a longer and harder fight.
01:02:52.000But if you do this national direct ballot initiative law, I really think that that could impact this country for the better.
01:02:58.000And it's an idea, unfortunately, nobody's really talking about it yet.
01:04:22.000There's got to be someone who could advise, someone who has an objective perspective on foreign policy, maybe someone who's in the military, who's got boots on the ground, who can tell you, okay, here's the problems with pulling out, and here's the pros of pulling out,
01:04:59.000Presidents came and went and they were like, you know, I don't know, I really don't think we should be doing this, and they would be talked into staying and increasing troop levels by the generals.
01:05:08.000Now this is not taking a shot at the generals, this is just me saying that when that's your field of expertise, yeah, that's what you're gonna say.
01:05:14.000Oh, just let us stay there another five months, let us stay there another year.
01:05:17.000Joe, we're at the point now where nobody even bothers to define what victory would mean in Afghanistan, what victory would mean in Iraq.
01:06:18.000Eisenhower, a Republican president, when leaving office, warned everybody, look out for the military-industrial complex because people will want to do war because war is a business.
01:06:27.000So you can actually become very wealthy if you're perpetually in a state of war.
01:06:32.000I mean, look how much, again, the defense industry in this country, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton, there are jobs tied to the defense industry in every state in this country.
01:06:40.000That makes it so hard, because even if you're nominally anti-war as a politician, you can still say, well, hey, listen, man, I agree, but I don't want the jobs in my district to go away.
01:06:52.000Because if you're a politician, that's the last thing you ever want to do.
01:06:54.000And have that against you when your opponent is, you know, saying, listen, this asshole pulled out, and this is why you lost all these jobs, and this is why the economy's in this shitter.
01:07:20.000I love the idea, and I really do think that, even though I take your point, that it's not like the people are always right, but I would say they're way more likely to be right than a bunch of corrupt asshole politicians.
01:07:31.000Right, but then you've got to wonder if the corrupt asshole politicians are going to make these propaganda campaigns to support whatever idea would suit them.
01:08:12.000That's what I'm saying, is they have all these tricks up their sleeves.
01:08:14.000Well, Ohio was the dirtiest one, right, Jamie?
01:08:17.000What was the deal with Ohio where they were trying to make it legal?
01:08:19.000When I was here, I don't remember the exact thing, but what I was hearing was that they had it tied up so that only, like, four businesses could do it for, like, forever or something like that.
01:08:27.000I don't know if it was forever, forever, but, like, for a long, long time.
01:08:30.000Imagine that, like, you could, it's legal, but you have to buy it from me.
01:09:03.000You and I both know that the reason that came about is because whoever was in charge of the business that was getting that contract knew the person in government, probably funneled the money for his campaign.
01:09:14.000And honestly, Joe, that's the root of all the problems.
01:09:16.000The root of all the problems is the money in politics.
01:09:21.000It's the billionaires paying the politicians.
01:09:22.000And if we can have this thing called clean elections, which just means that every election is publicly financed, then in a situation like that you would actually see elections run on competing ideas and philosophies and you wouldn't see elections run on competing special interests.
01:09:36.000Because right now, you could say, okay, Democrats.
01:12:24.000What was even worse is there was somebody who was found not guilty on something.
01:12:29.000They were wrongfully imprisoned, found not guilty on something when it came back up.
01:12:34.000And then Kamala Harris didn't let him out and kept him in on the technicality and said, oh, your paperwork wasn't filed in the proper time frame or whatever it was.
01:13:12.000Well, look at the Steve Mnuchin thing.
01:13:14.000This is one that we've known for a while.
01:13:15.000So Steve Mnuchin was part of Goldman Sachs.
01:13:17.000He was also the head of One West Bank here in California.
01:13:20.000And what happened was, during the subprime mortgage crisis and the Great Recession, they were illegally foreclosing on people early and kicking them out of their homes in violation of the law.
01:13:29.000And so Kamala Harris, you know, it was recommended by her own office, you gotta prosecute this guy.
01:14:44.000I'm going to order us a coffee if you'd like one.
01:14:46.000There's something wrong with our coffee machine.
01:14:49.000So anyway, Steve Mnuchin and Goldman Sachs, it was found that in the lead-up to the subprime mortgage crisis and the Great Recession, here's what they would do, Joe.
01:14:57.000They would sell to unsuspecting clients these packages, these packages of subprime mortgages, but they were rated AAA. And they would sell them these packages saying, hey man, listen, this is a great long-term investment.
01:15:09.000At the same time Goldman Sachs was doing that, They would turn around and bet on those packages that they just sold as if they were awesome.
01:15:16.000They would bet on those packages to fail.
01:15:47.000And the thing is, it's Democrats and Republicans who are propping them up.
01:15:50.000The Wall Street bailout costs $14 trillion.
01:15:52.000Why is it we could spend money on that, but we can't have an infrastructure deal that gives our country an A-plus infrastructure?
01:15:58.000I want us to have the number one infrastructure in the world.
01:16:00.000You had Elon Musk on not too long ago.
01:16:02.000He's working on this thing called the Hyperloop.
01:16:04.000The Hyperloop is supposed to be the future of travel where you kind of get in a pod and it's vacuum powered and you can go from New York to LA in like three hours or whatever it is on the ground.
01:16:12.000Why don't we have that everywhere in this country?
01:16:14.000Why don't we have bridges that are fixed?
01:18:41.000If you're a famous person, you already have a problem being insulated from regular folks.
01:18:46.000You don't have the same sort of financial problems regular people have.
01:18:49.000And then you insulate yourself further when people are always trying to get pictures with you and talk to you and they don't let you just be yourself.
01:19:43.000But, like, at the same time, there's some insane fact, like, I think it's 76% of global emissions are emitted by, like, 100 companies.
01:19:52.000So, really, it's not people that are the problems, it's the companies, and they need to be regulated, and we can fix that moving forward.
01:19:59.000That's a giant, giant percentage of the problem.
01:20:02.000The little individual steps that people do to minimize their impact on the carbon emissions and the carbon footprint, it's very small in comparison to corporations.
01:23:18.000When he saw the very first, when Oppenheimer saw the very first explosion, the test explosion, he said, I am become death, destroyer of worlds.
01:23:49.000Yeah, it was on CNN. I didn't see that either, but allow me to say this, Joe, and I might get some shit for this, but I don't care.
01:23:54.000This is the one very narrow area where I'd give Trump credit because there's this part of Trump where it's just anti-Obamaism in its most raw form.
01:24:05.000Whatever Obama did, I want to do the opposite.
01:24:08.000And so Obama, well Trump said he said it to him, so I don't know if he actually did, but Obama really wasn't able to get much movement with North Korea, and so Trump felt like, well if I can get some sort of peace deal it would be tremendous, and it'd be amazing, and I would one-up Obama.
01:24:40.000And by the way, the South Koreans are actually leading the way on that, and they deserve a tremendous amount of credit, and they like the idea that we're not escalating with them.
01:24:48.000So this is a very rare area, a narrow area, where I want to give them credit.
01:24:52.000But the thing that drives me crazy, Joe, is I feel like the media, and the Democrats too, and definitely the Republicans, establishment Republicans...
01:25:00.000They're trying to push him in a more hawkish direction, which makes no sense because it's like here we all admit, oh my god, this guy's kind of thin-skinned and he's kind of crazy and he kind of, you know, flies off the handle and we don't really trust him with a nuclear weapon, but you want him to be more hawkish and more aggressive with Kim Jong-un and more standoffish?
01:25:18.000Like, they got mad when he announced we're going to stop our military exercises, which are, you know, very antagonistic and done right by North Korea and is done to let them know, like...
01:25:46.000You don't need to get anything from them.
01:25:47.000North Korea, and this is going to blow some people's minds, they are not in any way, shape, or form an offensive threat against the United States.
01:25:54.000There is a 0% chance that they would, unprovoked, offensively, launch an attack against LA, or New York, or Nebraska, or anywhere.
01:26:02.000In fact, we know, and it's admitted as much, when you go to the Pentagon, They know he's actually strategically just acting in a defensive way and he wants nuclear weapons as a deterrent to U.S. aggression because this is exactly what happened with Libya where we told Gaddafi after he saw what we did to Saddam Hussein and then we told Gaddafi like give up your nukes and he was like Take him.
01:27:15.000Back because we wanted to arm the Mujahideen, because they were fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, so we wanted to arm jihadists then, and of course that became the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
01:27:27.000And so that's why, I don't know if you ever saw this, but there are newspapers from the UK, The Independent, the newspaper The Independent, calling Osama bin Laden a freedom fighter.
01:29:59.000It does look kind of weird, that's for sure.
01:30:00.000But it's funny that, like, at a moment like that, his thought process was like, I have to try to make this as, you know, as amazing as it is, but he feels like he has to go above and beyond to do so, that it can't just be on its own, like, okay, you got the head of ISIS. Congrats.
01:30:28.000Yeah, but I mean, when Trump is out of office and has a heart attack from all the meth, I think Mike Pence is going to be the guy that writes the book.
01:30:38.000So Mike Pence, a lot of people don't know this about Mike Pence, but he credits his career to Rush Limbaugh because he became a talk radio host and he was so inspired by Rush Limbaugh.
01:30:57.000But, yeah, I think he's going to be super loyal to Trump even after.
01:31:02.000The other thing that's interesting about the Trump era is, even though he knows how to do relentless offense and not stop attacking Democrats and not stop making his case, what you're finding now is that even the other Republicans are struggling to keep up.
01:31:14.000As much as Trump wants to defend himself, other Republicans are now shying away from doing it.
01:31:26.000Like, I think there's basically a 0% chance he'll get impeached in the sense that he actually gets out of office.
01:31:32.000You think he'll get impeached, but you don't think he'll be removed from office?
01:31:35.000I think, I actually don't even know if he'll get impeached, so I don't even know if it could get through the House, but there is a chance it gets through the House, I'll put that at 50-50, so he can get impeached through the House, but he needs, you need 20 Republican votes in the Senate to get him out of office, and that's not happening.
01:31:54.000I would argue probably not for 99.9% of things.
01:31:57.000Maybe there's some unforeseen scenario that I can't think of at the moment that for some reason would make them flip on him, but he can almost do anything and get away with it.
01:32:06.000What's fascinating is how Democrats are so invested in the idea of him being removed that they're saying it as if it was a fact.
01:33:09.000See, that's the problem in the Trump era is that Trump's a dingbat and everybody knows it, but he's not pretending to be holier than thou.
01:33:15.000Whereas a guy like Keith Olbermann is pretending to be holier than thou.
01:33:19.000And he puts on this, you know, this smug act and he starts yelling at everybody and it's like, you know that you don't even want to be yelling right now.
01:33:54.000And that's why, Joe, I think that my show is growing is because, you know, it's so easy to be anti-Trump, but you have to be anti-Trump with intelligent reasons.
01:34:05.000And so my arguments against him are always policy-based.
01:34:16.000They don't understand how much of a self-own this is and how this actually pushes people to the right.
01:34:20.000But whenever you say something's going to happen that has not happened, I mean, goddamn, with something as important as removing the president from office, boy, you gotta be right about that.
01:34:31.000There will be no day of reckoning on that, and I promise you.
01:34:33.000And I know that because, remember the whole Russiagate thing?
01:34:36.000The first time I was on the podcast, I did a rant about the Russiagate thing where I predicted they're not gonna get him on collusion.
01:36:21.000And they're trying to push this narrative as if they're echo chambers, whether it's their blogs or their Twitter groups where they have these banned groups where they ban people that haven't even interacted with them.
01:36:33.000And they're interacting with people in this bubble and they believe that this is how the world thinks.
01:36:38.000That's how you get something like that Rotten Tomatoes review of Dave Chappelle's where it got 0% by 5 woke critics.
01:36:46.000Then they release it to the general public.
01:37:03.000And then even if you didn't like it, you're going to say you loved it.
01:37:06.000Yeah, and the other thing is, they act like he's always been politically incorrect.
01:37:12.000Look at Chappelle's show, which was, you know, I was in high school, we all watched the Chappelle's show, and I thought it was like the most brilliant thing ever.
01:37:19.000And the idea that he ever crosses some sort of a line...
01:38:28.000What's more terrifying than anything is that some people are resisting it, and it's become politicized, and some people are just buying whole hog into anything that gets said that supports climate change or supports the concept of climate change.
01:38:46.000And that we've gotten into this thing where it's an ideologically based sort of subject.
01:38:55.000Because I would love to have the chance to do that.
01:38:59.000So what I would say to them is, first of all, there's a lot of issues that you care about that this will impact.
01:39:04.000So there was a report that came out about a year ago which found that basically large swaths of the Middle East will be uninhabitable at a certain point because it would just be too hot for human beings to live there.
01:39:15.000Well, we were talking about that yesterday.
01:39:16.000They have Saudi Arabia in summer, where a lot of people from Saudi Arabia come over to L.A. during the summer because our summer ain't shit compared to theirs.
01:39:24.000And that's the thing is, you think there's a refugee crisis when it comes to what's happening in South America.
01:39:30.000You think there's a refugee crisis in Europe when it came to what happened in Syria and Iraq.
01:39:36.000So if you're somebody who fancies yourself against immigration or a hardliner on immigration or against helping refugees or whatever it might be, just think about what happens when you multiply what's happening now by a thousand.
01:39:50.000Because that's what's going to happen at some point.
01:40:27.000When we talk about the Green New Deal, we're highlighting the fact that, yes, we're going to move towards renewable and green technology.
01:40:33.000Yes, that's going to be a large part of what we're doing, but the whole point, guys, is millions and millions of jobs created for regular people.
01:40:40.000The whole point is to improve this country, to fix this country, to try to make it so that our infrastructure is better than the rest of the world.
01:40:47.000What if instead of looking at this as like, oh my god, this is going to be such a drain on the economy and what's going to happen to the deficit?
01:40:55.000How about you look at this like an economic opportunity?
01:40:57.000Because what's going to happen in the future, Joe?
01:40:59.000There's inevitable patents that are waiting to be had for all these green and renewable technologies.
01:41:04.000We could lead the world on that front, or we could lag behind Russia.
01:41:19.000What do you do to get these industries to innovate and to pump a shitload of money into green technology?
01:41:26.000It has to do with government contracts.
01:41:28.000It has to do with, I mean, first and foremost, before we even do the right thing, you have to stop doing the wrong thing, which is stop giving $4 billion a year every year as a subsidy to ExxonMobil.
01:41:37.000And they hilariously say, oh, they need this money because it's for research and development.
01:42:05.000Then everybody would talk about how it's a wonderful thing and how we're finally leading the world and in our rightful place.
01:42:10.000I find it hilarious that guys like Trump and guys like Joe Biden, by the way, love to say, like, there's nothing this country can't do.
01:42:16.000And then in the next sentence, they go on to tell you a thousand things that they think we can't do and that we shouldn't do and we shouldn't even try.
01:42:22.000Well, what technologies have you heard, if any, that...
01:42:26.000Are being even proposed to mitigate global warming or climate change?
01:42:49.000Thorium is basically, the way it's been described to me is nuclear energy without the downside of like it could melt down and destroy everything.
01:42:56.000That's the way it's been described to me.
01:43:05.000Well, the thorium story that everybody got pissed over was because they were trying to make it seem like it was right around the corner or they had the plans and it just wasn't and those people were full of shit.
01:43:13.000But that doesn't mean thorium is bad and totally off the table.
01:43:16.000It just means that that specific car they were talking about was nonsense.
01:43:19.000But if you have thorium reactors, it's basically like meltdown proof nuclear facility.
01:43:44.000Old technology that they can't really shut down.
01:43:46.000But they've mitigated a lot of those issues, apparently.
01:43:48.000When you talk to people that are pro-nuclear, when they talk about the future of nuclear power, they're like, look, we have systems that have all this redundancy in place.
01:44:42.000And solar is a big one, particularly in places like Los Angeles.
01:44:45.000But with solar, you also need batteries.
01:44:47.000And the battery technology apparently is not as good as would need to be in place in order to power an entire city like L.A. Even though we have sun almost every day of the year.
01:44:58.000You know, like bright sun, very few clouds almost every day of the year.
01:45:11.000Dude, you'll notice this too, and you've been there before, but you don't even realize it's impacting your mood until you come here in October, November, December, January.
01:45:22.000I noticed when I lived here, when I first lived here, when I first moved here from New York.
01:45:59.000It's like you always have money so you don't worry about money.
01:46:01.000Well, if you grew up poor and you felt the sting of poverty and you didn't know where your next meal was coming from and you had to work really hard, then when you make some money, you feel great.
01:46:11.000But if you always had money, you're spoiled.
01:46:40.000Even in a place like New York City, there's a bond that happens when everyone's collectively dealing with some shit, particularly some nature shit.
01:46:47.000Yeah, I've heard you say that you think, you know, my Northeastern people are harder.
01:46:52.000Yeah, but it's also, they're the children of more direct and recent immigrants, and the atmosphere that those immigrants have created, right?
01:47:00.000Like, my parents were second generation, right?
01:47:03.000My grandparents were first generation.
01:47:04.000They came over from Italy and Ireland.
01:48:00.000And I've heard, it's like, it's a totally different culture.
01:48:03.000In the middle of the day, they'll just drop everything they're doing, and everybody goes and eats and takes a nap and relaxes a little bit.
01:48:10.000The food is sensational, and the weather never sucks.
01:48:13.000I like the idea of that, but if you actually put me in that environment, I'm so used to going, going, going, going, going all the time that I might actually be like, this is weird and crazy.
01:48:37.000I definitely support an idea like that, but I do wonder how I'd react to that, like, big chunk of the middle of the day missing, you don't work during that middle of the day.
01:48:59.000Okay, but we have to say though, and this is incredible, right before I came in here, I looked and there's a new poll that came out of New Hampshire, a CNN poll nonetheless.
01:49:32.000Because I know people in his campaign, and they were telling me that literally the day of, by the end of the day, he was like, okay, I'm feeling much better.
01:50:47.000But the thing that's so amazing is that he's, and Killer Mike, who you also had on the podcast, who I absolutely love, he said it best.
01:50:52.000He said, this is the only candidate in my lifetime who's taking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy and trying to run it across the finish line.
01:50:59.000Yeah, Mike loves him, and I love Mike.
01:51:00.000So, I mean, I think the whole thing about him that worries people is just his health and his age.
01:51:07.000And then there's people that want to label him as a wacky socialist.
01:51:10.000But when he explains his positions outside of that whole debate environment where you only have 30 seconds to scream...
01:51:36.000We're going to abolish student loan debt.
01:51:38.000We're going to have fair wages for everybody.
01:51:39.000So nobody's working full-time and living in poverty.
01:51:42.000And when you explain this, like you just said, when you explain this to everybody, they're like, I can't believe I thought I ever disliked this guy.
01:51:49.000Well, all those things are as fucking reasonable as you can get.
01:51:52.000And if you're gonna have a community, which is essentially what a country is, right?
01:52:16.000Well, maybe we shouldn't cripple you with debt when you're 17 years old and you don't understand what the fuck you're doing and we get you involved in this ridiculous system where you can never get Out of it, even if you go bankrupt, you still owe that money forever.
01:52:29.000We're at a point right now in this country where people who have Social Security, they're on Social Security, they're getting money from their Social Security taken out because they owe student loans.
01:52:38.000If that's not the most desperate and gross fucking feeling in the world.
01:52:44.000And we have some weird, creepy coalition.
01:52:47.000I mean, there's some creepy agreement that they have with these financial institutions and these educational institutions where they're essentially financially imprisoning young kids at an early age.
01:53:02.000And people say, whoa, you shouldn't make that decision.
01:53:04.000You shouldn't make that decision and put yourself in debt like that.
01:53:16.000Your frontal lobe, you're not even a fucking real human until you're 25 years old.
01:53:20.000So let me, I want to address, because I can, some people are going to hear what I just said about, you know, Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare, and they're going to say, yeah, but how are we going to pay for it?
01:53:29.000Because that's the common one that people bring up.
01:53:31.000Now let me address that, because that's a really important question.
01:53:33.000And usually when you actually substantively address it, people go, oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense.
01:54:05.000If we just remove that, have the government at no profit margin be the single insurer, that's what a single payer means, they're the single insurer, then we actually end up saving $5 trillion over the course of 10 years.
01:54:16.000And that's not Kyle Kalinske talking, that's a detailed study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
01:55:26.000You don't say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I want to pick my fire department.
01:55:29.000Well, this is the same thing with healthcare.
01:55:31.000You're going to be able to pick your doctor, that's perfectly fine, but the idea of you'll have your choice between insurance companies, that's like saying, do you want the Irish mafia ripping you off, or the Italian mafia ripping you off, or the Jewish mafia ripping you off?
01:56:11.000And again, what the studies show is, it actually saves money.
01:56:14.000So the real question people should be asking is, how can we afford to keep having the system that we have right now?
01:56:20.000Because we pay more than the rest of the developed world, and we have 30,000 to 45,000 Americans that die every year because they don't have access to basic healthcare, and we have 500,000 people who go bankrupt as a result of medical bills.
01:56:32.000So what you're saying is that it would abolish insurance companies, essentially?
01:56:38.000So there is one caveat to that, and that caveat is what's called supplemental health insurance.
01:56:43.000So what that means is, if there's something that Joe Rogan likes that's a medical procedure that isn't scientifically proven yet, but it's still something that you like, there would be private health insurance companies that sell you supplemental insurance, which means on top of everything that you already have through Medicare for All.
01:56:57.000So if you were getting like stem cell therapy or something like that?
01:56:59.000Well, in an ideal Medicare for All system, and Bernie, believe me, has gone...
01:57:04.000So far above and beyond any criticism.
01:58:05.000But it would essentially gut the health insurance industry.
01:58:09.000It would make it so that you no longer have health insurance company CEOs making tens of millions of dollars off the backs of people while people die because they can't get health insurance.
01:58:28.000We have this issue where we have like a status quo bias where people think like well because it works how it works right now therefore the idea of addressing it and changing it seems like so overwhelming that we just kind of default to how we have it now.
01:58:44.000But the problem is we know as a matter of fact That the way we do it now is the most batshit crazy way you could possibly do it, because they research this stuff all the time, they study this stuff all the time, and every single time they look at it, the US comes dead last in the developed world when it comes to healthcare.
01:58:58.000So we finished, there was a recent study from the Commonwealth Fund, they found that they studied 11 different countries, the US is 11th out of 11 when it comes to healthcare.
01:59:06.000So every other country that does the single-payer system, which we were talking about, and there's different versions of it, there's multi-payer, there's single-payer, there's public funding of private insurance, public funding of public insurance, but bottom line is, any other way you do it, I think?
01:59:45.000I think there's a good case to make that it was a step in the right direction because anything was better than the system that we had at the time.
01:59:52.000But I would say that was just a little step on the path to what we should have, which is a Medicare for All system, where health care is a right and not a privilege.
01:59:59.000We catch up to the rest of the developed world.
02:00:01.000And again, we should go above and beyond the rest of the world.
02:00:03.000Because like in Canada, I don't think they have dental covered by it.
02:00:07.000But Bernie's bill does provide dental.
02:00:09.000So, you know, I think that this is one of those issues where when it's fully explained to people, it's kind of a no-brainer, and you can get people to realize, like, no, no, no, the system is totally screwing you right now, and we can fix it.
02:01:15.000So I don't like to make fun of it, but then when he goes out there in the debate and he starts like angrily ranting and he says, you know, we got to play the record player at night, make sure the kids hear words.
02:01:25.000It's like, that made less than no sense, man.
02:01:28.000Did you know that his people are actually, they have a plan.
02:01:33.000It's called like a limited exposure or limited visibility campaign where Joe, they are literally like hiding him from the public as much as possible.
02:01:47.000But see, and here's the thing, and this is what I was going to get to in relation to Bernie.
02:01:51.000I call the support for Biden default support.
02:01:54.000So default support is people who don't necessarily follow politics that closely, but they might be a registered Democrat, and they're asked, hey, who do you support in the 2020 election?
02:02:28.000He's got people everywhere making phone calls, knocking on doors, getting involved.
02:02:32.000And so he has basically an endless well of small individual donor support and an army of people on the ground, whereas Joe Biden is doing so bad that he went back on his pledge like, oh, I won't take super PAC money.
02:02:45.000Now he's saying, well, if somebody were to make a super pack and it were to help me out, what do you want me to tell you?
02:02:50.000Because he raised $9 million in the last quarter.
02:03:04.000Well, yeah, because Joe, he's an amazing candidate who's just trying to get the U.S. to have social democracy, and he's a guy who I know, because his record shows it, he's going to fight for all of us.
02:03:12.000Even if you don't agree with him, and even if you dislike him, I understand that.
02:03:14.000You might be somebody who's right-leaning, he's too far left for you.
02:03:17.000But what everybody has to say, and they know it's true, is that he's incredibly honest, and he's actually going to fight for you every step of the way.
02:03:31.000I really, really agree with this whole – the exoneration of student loan debt.
02:03:38.000That to me is a giant factor in a lot of poor decision-making that a lot of young people make because they're fucked because they have this massive debt hanging over their head.
02:03:47.000It's a huge source of stress and I think it's a rigged system.
02:04:32.000And that's one of the things that people despise about the concept of socialism, is that it's going to somehow or another by making sure that no one makes any more money than anybody else, which is like the most extreme...
02:04:43.000Well, that's like authoritarian communism.
02:05:20.000And if I fire back at Ben and I go, okay, Ben, then let's implement that style of capitalism, he'll switch it and say, no, no, no, there's socialists, so we can't do that.
02:05:27.000We have a giant problem in this country with this whole right-left shit.
02:05:31.000And this is what I was trying to say earlier when we were talking about the concept of classical liberals, because most people don't even know what the fuck that means.
02:05:41.000I just think that to have groups of people that think in certain ways, the problem with ideologies, whether it's left-leaning or right-leaning, is it makes you automatically predisposed to ignore or to refute the concepts that are on the other side.
02:06:22.000But also, I would just advise people, don't get too lost in the noise, because we can think that that's something that's overwhelming and we can't defeat it.
02:06:29.000And we can also think that, you know, for example, the whole Russiagate thing on the Democratic side, that became such a fundamentalist religion and you couldn't deviate from the line at all.
02:06:37.000Well, it became something that was exciting.
02:06:39.000So they wanted it to be true, and people would believe it and argue for it, even though the things weren't adding up, and I was trying to point out where it's wrong.
02:06:47.000But what I would say is, at the end of the day, people should actually be...
02:06:50.000Relatively happy about the fact that I think the strongest divide in the country is not right versus left.
02:06:56.000The strongest divide in the country, I've called it populist versus elitist.
02:07:00.000So you have elitists in the Democratic Party, you have elitists in the Republican Party, and you have the people.
02:07:05.000And the people, we're so much more in agreement than people give us credit for.
02:07:41.000We're so ingrained in this idea of left versus right, Democrat versus Republican.
02:07:47.000And this is the choices that we've always had with the occasional independent, the occasional, you know, Ross Perot jumps into the race and throws a monkey wrench into everything.
02:07:56.000But other than that, or maybe to a minor extent, Gary Johnson.
02:08:01.000But do you think there's room for other parties at this juncture?
02:08:32.000We came to the conclusion that as much as we want it to be true, as much as we'd like to start a third party and have it work and take off, there is such a gigantic systemic bias against that happening that you really do have ultimately the choice of Republican or Democrat.
02:08:50.000We have to try to reform the Democratic Party.
02:08:52.000And there are people on the right who can try to reform the Republican Party.
02:08:55.000Like, if you're somebody on the right and you agree more with Ron Paul and you're more libertarian, you want to end the wars, you want to legalize drugs, I hope those people take over the Republican Party.
02:09:03.000And you have people who are against corporate welfare and whatnot in that party.
02:09:07.000So what we really need to do is, because it's just the nature of our system, because there's such a bias against third parties, what we really need to do is...
02:09:33.000So, really, and again, I don't want this to be the answer, but just factually speaking, it is the answer that we have to try to overtake, you know, the corrupt elements within the system and bring about change that way, because that's the only way I think it will really work.
02:09:46.000Well, the only way it's going to really work is if what you were talking about with voting on very specific issues, because If you – most of the things that are problems are not benefiting people.
02:09:58.000They're benefiting the people that are in positions of power and positions where they can influence the way policy is dictated because they've contributed to campaigns and because they've got this sort of revolving door thing going on with – We're good to go.
02:10:48.000And if we got a chance to vote on most of these ideas instead of voting on politicians and then the politicians implement these ideas to benefit themselves and benefit the special interest groups that got them into place, then things would be much better.
02:11:02.000Okay, you have no idea how happy I am that you just said that because, Jamie, it's official, I sold Joe Rogan on my idea.
02:11:13.000Because I trust, and I have no problem saying this, some people will come after me for it, I don't care, but I trust, if somebody's watching this and they're right-leaning and they have their opinions and whatnot, I actually trust that person more on the issues...
02:11:24.000Then I trust Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.
02:11:29.000And I do not agree with these nominally on-the-left politicians, these Democratic politicians, because I think they're elitist, and I think they're corrupt, and I don't think they're looking out for our best interests, but I think that somebody who disagrees with me ideologically, who might be watching this right now, they have more common sense, and they're not bought.
02:11:46.000There's so much more agreement than we think.
02:11:49.000And so if you actually give people that option where you say, no, no, no, you're going to directly vote on this, then I think we're going to see, honestly, I think over 80% of the time, the more reasonable position we'll win.
02:12:00.000Every now and then you'll get one that for whatever reason there might be misinformation or whatever and it's overwhelming and then they'll lose.
02:12:05.000But getting it right 80% of the time is a hell of a lot better than what we have right now, which is amazing, Joe, because Congress routinely polls around 20% favorability.
02:12:14.000This is a body that we could just elect them and then you poll a month later, hey, what do you think of Congress?
02:12:40.000Between three and five, I think, makes the most sense because it's something where everybody will pay attention to it and we could talk about it a lot, you know what I mean?
02:12:46.000That seems like a very realistic system of reform.
02:12:58.000Now, I also think that at the same time, you do have to try to get a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics so that we kind of get to the root of the corruption.
02:13:06.000But I also think that this direct democracy idea is a great idea because you do get to go right around the corruption, and you can actually kind of circumvent a lot of the problems that are brought about as a result of it.
02:13:15.000What a difficult task that is, though, to get the money out of politics because it's so big.
02:13:20.000It's such a giant part of how all this shit gets done.
02:13:24.000And once a system gets entangled and, like, deeply rooted...
02:13:42.000There were like three or four court decisions over the years, starting in the late 1970s, that kind of culminated with Citizens United in the modern era and McCutcheon in the modern era.
02:13:52.000And what people do is they wrongly think like Citizens United and McCutcheon were the biggest problem.
02:13:57.000But no, they actually shot a dead horse because the previous court cases set the precedent of money equaling speech.
02:14:03.000This is the legal theory that's now operating around the country is that money equals speech.
02:14:07.000So if you're an outside group and you want to spend on an election, hey man, it's your free speech.
02:14:12.000If you're a billionaire and you want to dump $50 million into an election to say keep my taxes as low as possible, that's free speech and you have every right to do that.
02:14:21.000So that's the legal theory that we now operate under and that has basically legalized bribery.
02:14:26.000You can't give money directly to a politician and say I want you to do X because that's called a quid pro quo.
02:17:40.000And again, this gets back to the whole populist versus elitist thing.
02:17:44.000I think Trump was probably the most effective, what I would call a fake populist of all time, is that he was giving this image of a populist, this image that he's going to fight for the working man, and then as we already described earlier, You know, the status quo just kind of continued chugging along as it is.
02:18:08.000They don't like people who have no filter.
02:18:10.000They don't like people who really, like, I actually think your average American would be much better at running the government than any of these schmucks who are there right now who are massively wealthy and massively corrupt.
02:18:21.000As long as they didn't also become corrupt.
02:18:24.000Yeah, and that's the important point about why you need systemic reform, is that any normal person can become a part of the problem because the system will beat you down.
02:19:19.000It fills in blanks, and like I said, I think you're the most reasonable guy that's doing this in terms of doing political commentary on YouTube and on the internet.