The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1337 - Dan Crenshaw

00:00:03.000 Yeah, this one is from Goggins.

00:00:06.000 David Goggins gave me this one.

00:00:08.000 That's his coin?

00:00:09.000 Yeah, he's got his own coin.

00:00:10.000 You need a Dan Crenshaw coin, bro.

00:00:12.000 I do.

00:00:12.000 This is kind of a big coin.

00:00:14.000 It's a fat one.

00:00:15.000 It's not one you can really carry in your pocket.

00:00:16.000 No.

00:00:17.000 So it stays on the desk.

00:00:18.000 He's really trying to outdo everybody else's coin.

00:00:20.000 That's David Coggins. 1.00

00:00:23.000 The uncommon amongst uncommon men, even with your fucking coins. 1.00

00:00:28.000 Dude, Jesus. 1.00

00:00:30.000 That coin's not going to be that big.

00:00:31.000 I'm still working on it.

00:00:32.000 Are you going to get a coin?

00:00:33.000 For real?

00:00:33.000 We are, yeah.

00:00:34.000 We're way behind the power curve on this.

00:00:36.000 We need one.

00:00:37.000 It's all about, you know, you've got to get the right symbology in there.

00:00:39.000 You've got the right amount of Texas, the right amount of seal, the right amount of Congress.

00:00:43.000 You've got to pack that into the right symbology.

00:00:47.000 Test different ingredients, try it over and over again until you get the bacon right.

00:00:51.000 Basically.

00:00:52.000 Well, thanks for being here, man.

00:00:53.000 I appreciate it.

00:00:54.000 I'm glad to be here.

00:00:55.000 This is pretty cool.

00:00:56.000 You rose to prominence through a joke.

00:00:58.000 Isn't that strange?

00:00:59.000 Yeah, I mean, a form of a joke, yeah.

00:01:01.000 Yeah, Saturday Night Live.

00:01:02.000 Yeah.

00:01:03.000 That was a weird moment, and I was like, ooh.

00:01:05.000 It was...

00:01:06.000 You handled it really well, though.

00:01:07.000 Well, thank you.

00:01:09.000 When that happened, it was a Saturday night, obviously, Saturday Night Live, and we heard about it the next morning.

00:01:16.000 I got a lot of texts, and...

00:01:19.000 Everybody's like, oh, hey, man, you made it.

00:01:21.000 There's a bunch of seals, too.

00:01:23.000 So the seal community is not prone to righteous indignation kind of reaction.

00:01:30.000 They were more likely in private to just double down and make fun of me more, which I love about them.

00:01:36.000 Right.

00:01:37.000 We're good to go.

00:01:57.000 It did not dawn upon me how big of a deal this was going to be.

00:02:01.000 At the time, it felt more like an annoyance.

00:02:04.000 It felt more like, okay, I've got to come up with a statement.

00:02:07.000 I'm seeing people really upset about this, but I'm not going to lie to them and tell them that I'm emotionally upset, like I'm emotionally triggered by this.

00:02:15.000 That would be a false reaction on my part.

00:02:19.000 So we crafted, I think, the right statement, which was, listen, like, it's offensive doesn't mean I'm offended.

00:02:26.000 And you don't have to choose to be offended here.

00:02:29.000 And as just a general rule, we should try hard not to offend people and try hard not to be offended.

00:02:35.000 Okay, there, that's it.

00:02:36.000 I'm not going to demand some apology and kind of stand on my high horse and play this aggrieved victim role, which is the expected role to play these days.

00:02:47.000 We don't want to do that.

00:02:49.000 Well, good for you.

00:02:50.000 Good for you for not doing it.

00:02:51.000 It's refreshing.

00:02:52.000 Yeah, but the joke was kind of funny. 0.98

00:02:55.000 I mean, I have to admit, he said you looked like a bad guy in a porno film. 0.59

00:02:58.000 That was not the offensive part.

00:03:00.000 What was the offensive part?

00:03:02.000 Yeah, that part was funny.

00:03:03.000 Now, it drew a lot of questions. 0.94

00:03:05.000 He called me a hitman and a porno. 0.96

00:03:07.000 Right. 0.98

00:03:07.000 And so the obvious question is, what kind of porno is this? 0.98

00:03:11.000 Right? 0.98

00:03:12.000 That's the next thing that goes through your head. 0.85

00:03:14.000 What kind of porno has a hitman? 0.85

00:03:15.000 Right, right.

00:03:16.000 And like, what's the role of that?

00:03:18.000 I mean, there's just, your mind goes to all sorts of directions.

00:03:20.000 That part wasn't.

00:03:21.000 The offensive part was he lost his eye in the war or whatever.

00:03:25.000 That's what set people off.

00:03:26.000 That was very dismissive.

00:03:28.000 Yeah.

00:03:30.000 After having gone on the show and seeing how they do things and how carefully scripted it actually is, it's unclear to me, and it always will be, and nobody will ever come out with the actual truth on this, on how that mistake got made.

00:03:45.000 I think probably...

00:03:47.000 Pete, Dave, if I'm just giving him total benefit of the doubt, and also after having met him and just having a general rule that we should try to give some people some space and assume that they're not the evil people that we might assume they are, he probably just kind of looked at the line and didn't feel like finishing it and just said,

00:04:07.000 whatever.

00:04:09.000 But that caught, and that created this, you know, what actually was a pretty offensive comment.

00:04:17.000 But, you know, did he mean it?

00:04:18.000 We'll never really know.

00:04:20.000 Now, I'll back up and say the whole premise of that joke was ill-intentioned.

00:04:23.000 I mean, they said as much, right?

00:04:25.000 They said, look at these gross people. 1.00

00:04:27.000 We don't like them. 0.95

00:04:28.000 And just to appear somewhat fair, we'll make fun of one Democrat.

00:04:32.000 I mean, they did say that.

00:04:33.000 So the thrust of the entire skit was obviously not well-intentioned, but I'm not sure he meant to be as deeply insulting as it turned out to be. 0.95

00:04:42.000 Yeah, he could have said the same thing, that you're an American hero, but you look like a hitman in a porno film. 0.96

00:04:48.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:04:48.000 It would have been funny. 0.98

00:04:49.000 Yeah.

00:04:49.000 And it would have been okay.

00:04:50.000 Yeah, it's the whatever.

00:04:52.000 It's that part.

00:04:53.000 He's no Joe Rogan.

00:04:54.000 He was just trying to be funny, man.

00:04:55.000 That's all it was. 0.99

00:04:56.000 You know, people look so deeply into why comics do things, but the majority of the reason why they say offensive shit is because they think it's going to work. 0.98

00:05:04.000 That's why. 0.97

00:05:05.000 They find a thing.

00:05:06.000 It's not like they harbor some deep resentment or anger towards any protected class or anything like that.

00:05:13.000 This is like what people who are non-comics look into it.

00:05:16.000 Guarantee 100%.

00:05:17.000 Like, this is gonna work.

00:05:19.000 That's all it is.

00:05:19.000 This is gonna get a laugh.

00:05:20.000 That's all it is.

00:05:22.000 100%.

00:05:22.000 And there's other things you talk about that are important to you that you're trying to figure out how to make funny.

00:05:27.000 But for the most part, especially on something like Saturday Night Live, where they're all kind of competing to be funny together.

00:05:32.000 I mean, that's a very weird show.

00:05:34.000 It is.

00:05:35.000 It was cool being behind the scenes and watching how it all takes place.

00:05:40.000 You know, they come up with these wacky ideas.

00:05:42.000 They test them out.

00:05:43.000 The writers go try it out.

00:05:45.000 They They see how it goes.

00:05:47.000 They change some things.

00:05:47.000 They'll do it in front of an audience.

00:05:48.000 They'll see how the audience reacts, and they'll go with that.

00:05:52.000 It was fun.

00:05:53.000 It was fun to be a part of.

00:05:54.000 It was fun to actually have my input on the comedy.

00:05:57.000 What was great about it, though, is that you came back after that, and he apologized to you, and you accepted it graciously.

00:06:03.000 But it also got...

00:06:05.000 I mean, it was great for you, because it got people to know who you are.

00:06:08.000 And then I started paying attention to you after that.

00:06:11.000 I started watching some interviews and watching some speeches and different things.

00:06:15.000 And I found you to be a very reasonable right-wing guy, which I think we need way more of in this world.

00:06:21.000 You know, it's like, and this polarization of left versus right, it just seems, it's so toxic right now, that when you can find people that are reasonable and intelligent and think along logical lines that you could easily follow and go,

00:06:36.000 oh, okay, maybe I agree or disagree with this guy, but I see where he's coming from.

00:06:40.000 Yeah, and what you're getting at is a problem in politics is politicians and political leaders, I think, forgot to explain why we believe what we believe.

00:06:49.000 And that's pretty important.

00:06:51.000 You know, I think too often talking points are relied upon.

00:06:55.000 And it's not that those talking points are false necessarily, but they're not persuasive because you haven't gone a couple layers deep.

00:07:03.000 Again, I think you talk about this a lot.

00:07:05.000 Why are podcasts so popular?

00:07:07.000 They're popular because people want to hear a little bit more information.

00:07:10.000 They want to get a deeper understanding of why you think what you think.

00:07:12.000 People are ready to hear that.

00:07:14.000 They're ready for some nuance.

00:07:17.000 That being said, being in politics, you wouldn't think that we're getting any closer to nuanced conversations.

00:07:25.000 I think political conversations on podcasts are opening up a whole new door where you understand people like Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang or Bernie Sanders, the people that I've had on this podcast.

00:07:37.000 One of the things that I've talked to people about, they said, I didn't know that Bernie was like a normal person.

00:07:41.000 You hear him talk, and it's always in these very quick sound bites on television.

00:07:46.000 He's always yelling about wealth or race or something. 0.99

00:07:49.000 He looks like a madman. 0.94

00:07:51.000 But then you sit down and talk to him in a long-form conversation. 0.98

00:07:54.000 You let him expand on his thoughts.

00:07:55.000 You go, oh, he's a reasonable guy.

00:07:58.000 These are his principles.

00:07:59.000 These are his ideas, and he's not a cartoon.

00:08:02.000 Yeah, I mean, on a personal level, most people in Congress are not exactly who you think they are.

00:08:07.000 They are just people.

00:08:09.000 They make jokes.

00:08:10.000 Of course.

00:08:11.000 We make small talk in the elevator.

00:08:13.000 These things happen.

00:08:16.000 Bernie in particular, he's on the Senate side.

00:08:18.000 I don't really interact with him at all.

00:08:20.000 Tulsi Gabbard, I know you mentioned her.

00:08:22.000 We do have good conversations.

00:08:25.000 That does happen.

00:08:27.000 We disagree vigorously on lots of things.

00:08:29.000 What do you guys disagree on?

00:08:31.000 Trevor Burrus Well, most things, I would say.

00:08:36.000 One thing she's quite outspoken about is our involvement overseas.

00:08:42.000 She's much more of an isolationist than I am.

00:08:47.000 What I remind people when we're talking about that particular subject, why do we keep troops in Syria?

00:08:52.000 Why do we keep troops in Iraq?

00:08:53.000 Why do we keep troops in Afghanistan?

00:08:55.000 Isn't the war over?

00:08:57.000 Why don't we bring the boys back home?

00:08:59.000 And the answer is this is not a conventional war.

00:09:02.000 This is not something where you sign a peace treaty with a uniformed army.

00:09:06.000 It is a different situation.

00:09:10.000 We send guys like me over there so that they don't come here.

00:09:12.000 We send guys like me over there so that we keep pressure on them and prevent them from having the operational space and timing to commit another 9-11.

00:09:20.000 You have to understand that these people over there wake up every single day trying to plan another 9-11.

00:09:25.000 It is what they do.

00:09:27.000 And we've already seen an increase in ISIS activity just from the drawdown that we already did have in Syria.

00:09:33.000 So, you know, that's a fair disagreement.

00:09:35.000 Again, but she's a really cool person.

00:09:37.000 And I brought up Tulsi just specifically because we do talk.

00:09:41.000 And I just like her as a person.

00:09:44.000 We just disagree on things.

00:09:45.000 But there's a respect there.

00:09:47.000 To play devil's advocate, some would say that the reason why they want to plot another 9-11 is because we're over there.

00:09:53.000 Yeah, I disagree with that.

00:09:55.000 So let's look at the Osama bin Laden example. 0.74

00:09:58.000 What exactly did we do to this guy?

00:10:00.000 You know?

00:10:01.000 Well, we helped him, right?

00:10:02.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:10:03.000 Back when he was fighting against the Soviets with the Mujahideen?

00:10:05.000 Exactly.

00:10:06.000 He was a Mujahideen fighter.

00:10:08.000 We helped him fight the Soviets.

00:10:10.000 We protected Saudi Arabia from invasion from Saddam Hussein.

00:10:13.000 That's his homeland.

00:10:14.000 And yet he hated us.

00:10:15.000 And when we left, we never occupied Saudi Arabia.

00:10:18.000 We left when they asked us to leave after we defended them.

00:10:21.000 And prevented another invasion from Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait.

00:10:25.000 What is it we did to make this guy so mad?

00:10:28.000 And the answer is we didn't do anything, objectively speaking.

00:10:31.000 He hates us because of our Western ideology.

00:10:33.000 He hates us because he hates us.

00:10:36.000 And it's hard for us to understand because it's not logical.

00:10:39.000 But it is the truth.

00:10:41.000 And it's the prime example of why this is a long-term fight.

00:10:49.000 And it's not likely to go away anytime soon.

00:10:52.000 And the last thing I would say, the world is a very small place.

00:10:55.000 When we pretend to ignore things going on in the Middle East, we can pretend that they won't come here. 1.00

00:11:01.000 But the reality is that's a 12-hour flight.

00:11:04.000 And the speed of information travels even faster.

00:11:07.000 When we were seeing a lot of attacks in the US and in Europe, when ISIS was at its peak strength, that was because they were able to radicalize online.

00:11:17.000 Notice that they've stopped having that power and it's because we actually took the fight to them.

00:11:23.000 Well, there certainly are some conflicts between their ideology and Western ideology and Western values, but why is it that they're dedicating their entire life to try to take down America?

00:11:38.000 This is always the question for us.

00:11:40.000 It is a question.

00:11:41.000 You almost have to ask them exactly why, right?

00:11:44.000 But at its core, we are infidels. 0.98

00:11:47.000 At its core, they're taking an extreme view of Islamic fundamentalism and believing that we are infidels that must be destroyed. 0.97

00:11:54.000 I mean, that's at its core.

00:11:57.000 It's less political reasons and a little bit more emotional reasoning.

00:12:00.000 There has to be some part of it because of our policies and some part of it because of our actions and I'm not so sure that we should always assume that it's our fault.

00:12:09.000 I think that's a common theme in politics these days where anything bad happening must be America's fault.

00:12:18.000 It must be decisions we made.

00:12:19.000 I mean, maybe, but let's objectively make the case if that's true.

00:12:23.000 I think there's an automatic assumption and it's not self-evident to me.

00:12:27.000 But if we're in, what are we in?

00:12:28.000 A hundred and how many countries do we have bases in?

00:12:31.000 What's the number?

00:12:31.000 Do you know?

00:12:32.000 It's a lot.

00:12:33.000 It's definitely over a hundred.

00:12:35.000 Yeah, and if you were one of the people that is in one of those countries and you had to deal with that and you saw like the drone attacks in Yemen that have killed people and wedding parties and the kind of shit that we hope never happens again but has happened in the past,

00:12:51.000 you can kind of understand why there would be a hatred against the number one superpower in the world.

00:12:56.000 Well, opinions in these countries are not homogenous, right?

00:13:02.000 They're vastly diverse.

00:13:03.000 There's millions of people in Yemen probably begging for us to come there.

00:13:07.000 Same with Iraq. 0.66

00:13:08.000 The Iraqis did not want us leaving.

00:13:09.000 They knew this would go badly.

00:13:11.000 But, again, not all Iraqis, right?

00:13:14.000 It's the ones who understood.

00:13:15.000 Right.

00:13:15.000 I mean, it just depends on who you talk to.

00:13:17.000 So, again, everything is more complex than a simple...

00:13:23.000 Black and white scenario where America's bad or good.

00:13:25.000 It's always more complex than that.

00:13:27.000 So you feel like if we did pull out of all these countries, particularly pull out of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and all the bases that we have over there, that it would be very similar to what's going on in Iraq, what happened in Libya. 0.61

00:13:39.000 There's a power vacuum.

00:13:40.000 The vacuum gets filled by bad guys.

00:13:43.000 It'll 100% happen that way.

00:13:45.000 There's not a doubt in my mind.

00:13:47.000 There's not a doubt in any expert's minds who's looking at this.

00:13:49.000 I would also say, when we have a base somewhere, that is at the discretion of that local government.

00:13:58.000 There's no cases here, except in the case of Syria.

00:14:02.000 Where their local government, Bashar al-Assad, doesn't want us there.

00:14:06.000 That's the only case that I can think of, that we don't have an agreement, a status of forces agreement with the government there.

00:14:15.000 So I don't think it's quite right to paint it as some kind of imperialistic occupation.

00:14:19.000 That's just not how we do things.

00:14:22.000 Yeah.

00:14:24.000 You're right over there?

00:14:24.000 Yeah, I'm just making sure the sound is off.

00:14:27.000 Good for you before anything actually did happen.

00:14:30.000 Now, do you think that this is a political ploy, that this is a popular thing to say because so many people that have a cursory understanding of foreign policy, they look at our military bases overseas and they say,

00:14:45.000 hey, let's bring those people back. 1.00

00:14:47.000 Let's end these wars.

00:14:48.000 Let's stop spending this money.

00:14:49.000 But You're not the only one that's told me this, and particularly not the only one that's told me this that has a military background, saying it's virtually impossible to prevent any of this stuff without having bases over there.

00:15:01.000 That's 100% right.

00:15:02.000 Yeah.

00:15:03.000 I mean, you need that relationship with the host nation, of course, that you want to partner with.

00:15:08.000 And that's generally what we do, especially in the special operations community.

00:15:10.000 When we're in 100 plus countries, we're there to partner with them.

00:15:14.000 We're not there doing our own thing.

00:15:16.000 We're there partnering and training and equipping and enhancing their capabilities.

00:15:21.000 So that's part of what we're doing.

00:15:22.000 And the other part is just knowledge.

00:15:24.000 We want to know what's happening.

00:15:26.000 If we don't know what's happening, why do we have embassies everywhere?

00:15:29.000 Part of that is just relationships and knowledge and understanding of what's going on because we can't look at it from afar and actually get it.

00:15:36.000 It just doesn't work that way.

00:15:38.000 So, and again, I think it is reactionary to just assume that we have bad intentions all the time and that everything is America's fault.

00:15:47.000 I hear that constantly.

00:15:50.000 Mostly coming from the left, but that isolationist sentiment certainly comes from the right as well.

00:15:54.000 And it's a reaction.

00:15:57.000 It's a reaction to the Iraq War and some of the mistakes we made there.

00:16:00.000 It's a reaction to Vietnam. 0.93

00:16:01.000 That's never left the American psyche in many ways.

00:16:05.000 But these matters are complex.

00:16:08.000 And they deserve complex reasoning and analysis and a little nuanced understanding, and I just think that's how we should look at it.

00:16:15.000 We don't say that we're always right.

00:16:16.000 That's not what I'm saying.

00:16:19.000 No one gets really educated on it.

00:16:22.000 It's not like there's a cursory...

00:16:24.000 You know, examination of this that's given to the American person, like, when they sign up to register to vote.

00:16:30.000 It's like, you know, say, okay, before you vote, let's explain to you what's going on, and this is why there's bases here, and this is why we do this.

00:16:38.000 I mean, not even as a real simple explanation of these things.

00:16:43.000 It's just have to go searching for it or you have to rely on political pundits who usually have a bias one way or the other.

00:16:50.000 It's MSNBC or it's Fox News and you don't know where the reality is.

00:16:56.000 You can apply that.

00:16:57.000 It's not just our foreign policy.

00:16:59.000 It's every issue.

00:17:00.000 Why are things the way they are?

00:17:02.000 It's a really good question to ask when we're trying to find the solutions for the things we don't like.

00:17:07.000 The first question we should ask is why are things the way they are?

00:17:10.000 And that question really gets manipulated on any issue.

00:17:16.000 And it is unfortunate.

00:17:18.000 How do we fix that?

00:17:18.000 I don't know.

00:17:19.000 My message when high school kids are asking me how do they get involved in politics and what I tell them is it's okay not to know things, first of all, and it's okay not to choose a side just yet.

00:17:30.000 Because there's nothing wrong with your ignorance on the why behind this issue.

00:17:34.000 There's nothing wrong with that. 0.92

00:17:36.000 You're young.

00:17:36.000 You don't have the experiences yet.

00:17:37.000 It's fine.

00:17:38.000 But there is something wrong with having a very strong opinion on that when you don't actually understand it.

00:17:43.000 That's what creates the animosity.

00:17:46.000 That's what creates the divisiveness.

00:17:48.000 Because once you're emotionally attached to an opinion, it's not easy to remove yourself from that.

00:17:54.000 It takes a massive amount of, I think, humility, which is an attribute we all aspire to but maybe don't have exactly.

00:18:04.000 And it's hard.

00:18:05.000 And so it's okay not to know and to ask questions and to just wonder and to think, maybe what I'm hearing isn't exactly the whole truth.

00:18:12.000 Maybe I'll look into it before I start posting on social media about how awful that situation is or whatever it is.

00:18:18.000 People love to know, you know, even if they don't.

00:18:21.000 They love to be the person that has the information.

00:18:23.000 And one of the things that social media has done is allowed this sort of text-based debate format where people can shut people down wrong and say this.

00:18:31.000 The problem with that is this and this.

00:18:33.000 And everybody wants to be correct about things because they're married to these ideas.

00:18:38.000 If these ideas succeed, they succeed.

00:18:40.000 If they get a zinger off on someone...

00:18:42.000 In some sort of online political debate, they walk around like a peacock strutting.

00:18:47.000 They won.

00:18:48.000 They got one in.

00:18:49.000 And for many people, this is like the only form of competition they participate in, which I think is a real problem in our culture.

00:18:55.000 Human beings desire competition, especially men.

00:19:00.000 And when they shy away from it, they usually become secretly, quietly angry.

00:19:06.000 And they harbor resentment and bitterness and they never understand the feeling of losing and getting better.

00:19:14.000 The feeling of failing and improving.

00:19:17.000 The feeling of not knowing something and then learning something.

00:19:21.000 These things are critical and to pretend that you know something when you don't.

00:19:24.000 It's a terrible way to go about your life.

00:19:27.000 Yeah, I mean, that's a very good point on the competitive aspects of things.

00:19:31.000 You obviously compete a lot.

00:19:33.000 I've competed a lot in my life, and I can't imagine a world where that didn't happen.

00:19:37.000 And I can't imagine a world where I didn't have to suffer as a kid through some losses in my soccer game.

00:19:43.000 And my parents didn't say, well, you deserve to win.

00:19:46.000 They said, well, you lost.

00:19:47.000 So that's what happens.

00:19:50.000 And guess what?

00:19:50.000 Welcome to life.

00:19:51.000 Yeah, I mean, we still love you, but you fucking lost. 0.99

00:19:54.000 That's life. 0.99

00:19:55.000 That's real.

00:19:56.000 Should have trained harder.

00:19:57.000 It's the idea that they're doing that with these little kids, man.

00:20:00.000 When my daughter was three, she had a soccer game where there was no winners, no losers. 0.99

00:20:04.000 Like, the other team fucking won. 0.97

00:20:06.000 I watched. 0.99

00:20:07.000 The ball went in the goal.

00:20:08.000 Everybody was cheering.

00:20:09.000 Like, what are we doing?

00:20:11.000 We're not keeping score?

00:20:12.000 This is bananas.

00:20:14.000 You're going to, you know, it's soft times.

00:20:17.000 This is what we're living in.

00:20:19.000 Soft times create soft people.

00:20:21.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:20:22.000 And we talked about this before the show.

00:20:25.000 I'm writing a whole book on this, actually.

00:20:27.000 I'm glad.

00:20:28.000 And it's about outrage culture.

00:20:30.000 It's about becoming too soft.

00:20:32.000 But I try to make it a...

00:20:37.000 Yeah.

00:20:53.000 Yeah, we need to hear those things over and over again.

00:20:56.000 You know, sometimes you forget them.

00:20:57.000 Sometimes they just need to be cemented in your psyche.

00:20:59.000 And competition doesn't mean being mean.

00:21:02.000 It doesn't mean people, they're associating it and equating it with either violence or aggression or toxic masculinity.

00:21:12.000 There's all these words they kept throwing around for people feeling bad because they lost.

00:21:17.000 But that feeling of feeling bad because you lost something is extremely valuable in your life.

00:21:22.000 And I don't want to say it hardens you because it doesn't harden you emotionally.

00:21:25.000 You still are the same amount of emotional availability.

00:21:28.000 But you get, if you're accustomed to it, and I always tell people, young men, get involved in martial arts.

00:21:35.000 Especially jujitsu.

00:21:36.000 Because you can do it, you're not going to get brain damage. 0.99

00:21:38.000 You get strangled a bunch, you get your ass kicked all the time, and it teaches you humiliating. 0.99

00:21:43.000 It teaches you humility and then you learn after that that you can get better and then eventually you become the hammer instead of being the nail. 0.99

00:21:50.000 And that's something you can actually apply to your real life.

00:21:54.000 You can understand that these lessons of failure and humility and humiliation and just getting pummeled, like all that stuff pays off ultimately if you just keep showing up.

00:22:05.000 And that's analogous to life.

00:22:07.000 In life, if you can just keep showing up and keep working hard, you're going to have setbacks.

00:22:12.000 But don't let them define you, and you can move forward. 0.98

00:22:14.000 But if you don't, if you're just like, the world's toxic, we need to nerf everything, and everyone needs a safe space, well, we're just going to make a whole island full of pussies. 0.97

00:22:25.000 And we're in danger of doing that. 0.93

00:22:27.000 Yeah, we're definitely in danger of doing it if it hasn't already happened in many ways.

00:22:31.000 And like what you're saying is intuitively true, that hardship creates a stronger mind.

00:22:36.000 Yeah.

00:22:36.000 Lessons.

00:22:37.000 But it's not just intuitively true.

00:22:39.000 This is in data.

00:22:40.000 This is in science as well.

00:22:43.000 And in a lot of psychological research.

00:22:46.000 And we know it to be true.

00:22:48.000 The reason I like – I love the – I think?

00:23:09.000 I agree with you.

00:23:29.000 But that's the point, right?

00:23:30.000 Like you would never wish that upon somebody you like.

00:23:33.000 And that's an important truth I think we have to tell ourselves.

00:23:36.000 When you were in the military, is this something that they taught you or is it something that you learned through example?

00:23:44.000 Yeah, I think learn through experience.

00:23:46.000 So, you know, the reason BUDS, so BUDS is basic underwater demolition slash SEAL training.

00:23:52.000 It is our six-month trial by fire selection process that we go to become a SEAL. It's the very first thing you do.

00:24:00.000 And it's where you see all the infamous footage of G.I. Jane and Hell Week and all that stuff.

00:24:05.000 That's all first phase and buds.

00:24:08.000 I like how you brought up G.I. Jane.

00:24:11.000 Yeah.

00:24:11.000 It's almost hilarious.

00:24:12.000 Yeah.

00:24:13.000 It's probably the wrong example in hindsight.

00:24:16.000 But it's a I've got all the Navy SEAL movies on the military.

00:24:19.000 Because I can't think of any other movies that show buds.

00:24:22.000 Now that you bring it up.

00:24:24.000 Actually, Lone Survivor, the first intro, I think, has some buds.

00:24:27.000 Anyway, find it on YouTube.

00:24:29.000 Most people know what I'm talking about.

00:24:32.000 G.I. Jane is not a realistic movie.

00:24:33.000 It's one of the least realistic movies in every single aspect about the SEAL teams.

00:24:38.000 But the point is that there's not just a hardening of the mind that occurs from Hell Week.

00:24:45.000 It's an increase in confidence in a pretty excessive way.

00:24:49.000 If I can push my limits this far, imagine what else I can do.

00:24:53.000 And you continue to push those limits.

00:24:56.000 I mean, even after Hell Week, you do it when you're kind of what I would describe as controlled drowning in second phase, where we learn to be super calm underwater under the worst conditions, meaning you can't breathe and you're about to pass out.

00:25:11.000 And you're still going to go through procedures in a very specific way.

00:25:14.000 You have to learn that calming and you've pushed another limit and you've pushed another limit.

00:25:20.000 So by the time we do get to combat...

00:25:24.000 We have already suffered so badly in training that the combat doesn't feel all that bad, and we're ready to get your eye blown out of your head like I did.

00:25:35.000 You're ready for that.

00:25:36.000 You understand it, and it's not surprising.

00:25:39.000 You don't react in an emotional way when it does happen because you've allowed yourself to be hardened and you've told yourself the right story about that combat.

00:25:48.000 What is a traumatic experience?

00:25:50.000 It really is.

00:25:52.000 I broke my leg the first time through.

00:25:53.000 I had to do it again.

00:25:55.000 How'd you break your leg?

00:25:56.000 Just a stress fracture that turned into a fracture and just snapped while we were running with the boats on our heads.

00:26:02.000 So we run with these 200 or 300 pound boats on our heads.

00:26:04.000 They're basically the kind of boats you use in river rafting.

00:26:08.000 But we run everywhere with them.

00:26:10.000 Some estimates maybe up to 200 miles in just Hell Week alone.

00:26:14.000 So...

00:26:15.000 It's one of the reasons older guys, 25 and older, have a hard time getting through both.

00:26:20.000 Older guys, 25?

00:26:21.000 That's hilarious.

00:26:22.000 Yeah, because your body just breaks more.

00:26:26.000 Early 20s are probably the prime time.

00:26:28.000 Your muscles are developed about that time.

00:26:30.000 Your bone structure can still handle the just immense amount of punishment that it's taking.

00:26:35.000 And, you know, except for mine.

00:26:37.000 We called it, you know, and then we'd make fun of each other and say, oh, nice weak jeans you have there.

00:26:40.000 That's why you broke.

00:26:42.000 So your leg broke and how much time did you need before you went back to do it again?

00:26:46.000 Six months.

00:26:47.000 I was rolled three classes.

00:26:48.000 Which bone?

00:26:50.000 A left tibia.

00:26:51.000 Oh, okay.

00:26:52.000 That's a big one.

00:26:53.000 Yeah, it hurt.

00:26:56.000 That's a dangerous one to break, too.

00:26:58.000 There's not a lot of blood flow there.

00:26:59.000 It's amazing that you got back in there six months later. 0.94

00:27:01.000 A lot of times, I know a guy who broke his leg, and he was fucked up for a good solid couple years. 0.83

00:27:08.000 Yeah, and it was a risk because we weren't sure. 0.92

00:27:13.000 Frankly, the command was getting impatient.

00:27:15.000 They're like, we're not going to let you heal anymore.

00:27:16.000 Six months is it.

00:27:18.000 So go for it.

00:27:20.000 And, you know, it's not like a compound fracture either.

00:27:24.000 This is a crack in the bone.

00:27:26.000 So maybe in any case, it worked out just fine.

00:27:29.000 But it's a risky thing because I knew it broke, right?

00:27:32.000 I mean, I felt it.

00:27:33.000 I rounded a corner and my adrenaline kind of took me through the rest of that run.

00:27:36.000 Then we sit down for lunch.

00:27:38.000 And I couldn't get back up from that seat.

00:27:41.000 The adrenaline had worn off.

00:27:42.000 There was something badly wrong there.

00:27:45.000 And there's always this question that the instructors will ask, are you hurt or are you injured?

00:27:49.000 Because there's a difference.

00:27:51.000 And if you're just hurt, because everybody here is hurt, if you're just hurt, then you're just quitting.

00:27:55.000 If you're injured, okay, we might give you another chance.

00:27:58.000 Isn't that interesting?

00:27:59.000 For the average person, that's such an alien thought.

00:28:03.000 It's an alien question.

00:28:04.000 Are you hurt or are you injured?

00:28:06.000 It is, but there's a difference.

00:28:08.000 There is a difference, yeah.

00:28:10.000 Now, do they have any courses where they explain to you how your mind works and how to overcome questions and doubts that creep into your head?

00:28:20.000 Or they're teaching you through fire?

00:28:24.000 Right.

00:28:24.000 And we wouldn't want those courses, frankly.

00:28:27.000 So when you see all those online people, what you've got to do is you've got to face your fears and understand who you are and say, it's going to be okay.

00:28:35.000 Does that drive you crazy?

00:28:37.000 No, it doesn't drive me crazy.

00:28:38.000 I don't mind that somebody's trying to do that.

00:28:41.000 I say that we wouldn't do it because the point is that you're already that person.

00:28:48.000 Mm-hmm.

00:28:48.000 You're a SEAL before you got there, okay?

00:28:51.000 We're just making you prove it.

00:28:53.000 But you are already that guy, okay?

00:28:55.000 Because you never had a choice.

00:28:57.000 And there's another chapter in my book, I call it No Plan B. You go through this with No Plan B. If you ever thought for a second that, oh, maybe I can make it through BUDS. Like, maybe I'll make it through Hell Week.

00:29:06.000 I hope I do.

00:29:07.000 You're not going to make it.

00:29:09.000 There's a choice there.

00:29:10.000 You're telling yourself that you actually have a choice.

00:29:13.000 I think that's with everything.

00:29:14.000 Yeah, it is with everything.

00:29:15.000 Again, this is an extreme example, but it certainly applies to everything.

00:29:21.000 It replied to my run for Congress.

00:29:23.000 I didn't plan anything after the primary on March 6th.

00:29:27.000 They just didn't.

00:29:28.000 Now, you could argue that that was probably not a great idea.

00:29:31.000 Maybe you should have had some kind of backup.

00:29:33.000 Well, it worked.

00:29:34.000 But it was more of a mental state than it was like a don't have a backup plan.

00:29:38.000 I'm not saying don't have contingencies in your life.

00:29:40.000 I'm just saying only you know when you've actually decided to quit, right?

00:29:44.000 Because it's one thing to be like, I have tried to be an artist for so long and I'm just not good at it.

00:29:49.000 And then you quit.

00:29:49.000 Well, is it really quitting or is it just...

00:29:51.000 Facing reality that you're just not good at being an artist.

00:29:54.000 So it's different.

00:29:55.000 You have to distinguish between those two things.

00:29:57.000 But you know.

00:29:58.000 You know if you quit because you actually quit.

00:30:00.000 You gave up on yourself.

00:30:02.000 And nobody can really judge that for you.

00:30:05.000 And I think that's an important lesson.

00:30:07.000 And that's how you make it through buds because you never had a choice.

00:30:10.000 Yeah, I don't think there's a way you can get through what I've heard described while having a plan B. Like, I hope I get through this.

00:30:17.000 But if I don't, I'm going to open this pizza place with my cousin.

00:30:22.000 I always talk about it like bandwidth.

00:30:24.000 And I would say to people...

00:30:25.000 If you want to really do something, let's pretend you have a certain amount of juice.

00:30:32.000 Your juice is 100, and when it's fully on, you have 100. Well, if you take 30 of it, and you put it towards this, and another 20, and you put it towards that, well, guess what?

00:30:41.000 You think you're all in, but you're really only 50% in.

00:30:44.000 Because you've got all this 50% of your juice is...

00:30:47.000 On all these different things.

00:30:48.000 You've got to be 100% involved in what you're trying to do at your best.

00:30:52.000 If you're not, like for fighting, that's a big one.

00:30:55.000 When I tell guys, there's a lot of guys that I know that are kind of one foot in, one foot out.

00:31:00.000 I'm like, get out.

00:31:01.000 Get out. 1.00

00:31:01.000 Because there's a fucking animal out there. 1.00

00:31:03.000 There's some Mike Tyson when he was 20 years old, and he's going to rearrange your liver. 1.00

00:31:07.000 Don't do it.

00:31:08.000 Get out now.

00:31:09.000 Because there's people that are all in.

00:31:10.000 And when you're half in, those people that are all in, you become their highlight reel.

00:31:15.000 That's probably good advice.

00:31:16.000 It's the best advice.

00:31:19.000 You see it.

00:31:20.000 You see guys that are starting to think, well, maybe one more fight. 1.00

00:31:23.000 Like, fuck. 1.00

00:31:24.000 Stop. 1.00

00:31:24.000 Just stop now. 1.00

00:31:26.000 Don't do it.

00:31:26.000 That's how you get hurt.

00:31:27.000 Yeah.

00:31:28.000 It's an interesting thing because of this world where there are so many people that are teaching lessons, that are teaching, you know, what you got.

00:31:35.000 But then there's real ones like Jocko.

00:31:38.000 You know, like, when a guy like Jocko says something, everybody listens, because he's done it. 1.00

00:31:43.000 Like, this is real shit. 0.99

00:31:45.000 And, you know, you see his watch every morning on his Instagram, 4.30 in the morning. 1.00

00:31:49.000 So annoying.

00:31:50.000 He's up.

00:31:50.000 It's very annoying.

00:31:52.000 When you wake up at 8, you feel good about yourself.

00:31:53.000 We're not all morning people, Jocko.

00:31:55.000 He's not either.

00:31:56.000 Guess what?

00:31:57.000 He's not a morning person either.

00:31:58.000 He'd like to sleep in. 0.99

00:31:59.000 But he gets up and he fucking gets after it. 1.00

00:32:02.000 And that guy is fuel for fucking millions of people in this country. 1.00

00:32:05.000 He is. 0.99

00:32:05.000 He's great. 0.99

00:32:06.000 Because of his books and his videos and all the...

00:32:08.000 That video, good.

00:32:09.000 You've seen that video?

00:32:11.000 I've seen a lot of them.

00:32:12.000 I'm not sure which one you're talking about. 1.00

00:32:13.000 Fuck, man. 1.00

00:32:13.000 The one good? 1.00

00:32:14.000 I think about that when I run.

00:32:15.000 Because, like, it's talking about things going wrong.

00:32:18.000 Good.

00:32:19.000 Oh, yeah.

00:32:19.000 Chance to get better.

00:32:20.000 Good.

00:32:21.000 Everything fell apart.

00:32:22.000 Good.

00:32:22.000 You're welcoming the failure.

00:32:23.000 You're welcoming the failure.

00:32:25.000 I was on his podcast a while back, and I hadn't gotten to his book yet, and I was like, Jocko, I'm so sorry.

00:32:32.000 I haven't read your book yet.

00:32:33.000 He's like, it's fine.

00:32:34.000 It's one lesson you have to know.

00:32:37.000 Everything is your fault.

00:32:38.000 It's extreme ownership.

00:32:39.000 He's like, everything we learn in the teams.

00:32:40.000 I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I know that.

00:32:41.000 Because you taught it to me.

00:32:43.000 He was the head of trade when I went through, and he just crushed us.

00:32:48.000 Yeah.

00:32:49.000 I'm sure.

00:32:50.000 I'm sure.

00:32:51.000 Every training op was...

00:32:56.000 There's people in this life that are born to crush things.

00:32:59.000 That guy's born...

00:33:00.000 He's put here to crush things.

00:33:01.000 He rolled with my friend John, my friend John Dudley, who's a professional archery coach and a bow hunter.

00:33:08.000 And he wanted to learn jiu-jitsu.

00:33:09.000 So he started taking some classes and then he rolled with Jocko.

00:33:13.000 And Jocko literally broke his neck.

00:33:14.000 He broke a bone in his neck.

00:33:17.000 And he didn't even mean to.

00:33:18.000 Broke the other guy's neck, just to be clear.

00:33:20.000 Yes, he broke a bone in John's neck.

00:33:23.000 He's got something in the back of his throat that still tickles him to this day.

00:33:26.000 None of this surprises me that Jocko broke somebody's neck. 0.99

00:33:29.000 I told him, I'm like, don't fucking roll with that gorilla. 1.00

00:33:32.000 What are you crazy? 1.00

00:33:34.000 The guy's 5'10", he weighs 240 pounds. 1.00

00:33:36.000 Don't fucking roll with him. 1.00

00:33:38.000 He's a terrifying person. 1.00

00:33:39.000 Built for jujitsu.

00:33:40.000 Built to snap things off.

00:33:42.000 That's what he's built for.

00:33:43.000 That's exactly right.

00:33:44.000 But people like that that, you know, have real lessons because of real success and real failure in life and a real understanding of what it takes to motivate people, what it takes to be a leader.

00:33:57.000 I think those guys are extremely valuable, but they get... 0.96

00:34:00.000 Watered down by so many people that are out there giving lessons and making a career out of being a motivational speaker when you just want to grab them and go, what the fuck have you done?

00:34:11.000 What have you done other than motivate people?

00:34:13.000 And with words, you're like collecting words out in the field and jumbling them together.

00:34:19.000 You're like a word harvester and you're putting them together, but they're not really coming from a real place.

00:34:25.000 Yeah.

00:34:26.000 And then the question is, are they successful?

00:34:28.000 Maybe they are.

00:34:30.000 But you're right.

00:34:30.000 If you're not backing it up with, I think, real experience and a real story to frame the argument that you're trying to make, and maybe the argument's the same as the other guy that you're talking about.

00:34:41.000 It doesn't really have the experience.

00:34:42.000 But if it's going to be powerful and meaningful to somebody, I think it does have to come from a place of experience.

00:34:47.000 Well, it's one of the reasons why I really like politicians that have served.

00:34:53.000 I think it's so critical when you're talking about sending people overseas to have an honest understanding of what that really means and to have been there.

00:35:00.000 It's one of the reasons why I really like Tulsi, and it's one of the reasons why I really like you.

00:35:03.000 I think that it is a giant factor. 0.91

00:35:06.000 I mean, I don't want it to be mandatory, but goddamn, when people start talking about going to war and they have no understanding personally about what that means, it bothers me. 0.94

00:35:15.000 Yeah, and it's going to war or not going to war. 0.96

00:35:18.000 Yes, or not going to war.

00:35:19.000 Both opinions.

00:35:20.000 Because, again, what me and Tulsi really disagree on fundamentally, I think on a deeper level, is whether our troops out there are victims or not.

00:35:27.000 And I think there's a common misunderstanding that our troops don't want to be there, that our troops are being victimized by our bad political decisions.

00:35:38.000 And that's, to me, as one of those people who voluntarily goes out there, which is, by the way, everybody, because everybody volunteers to do it.

00:35:46.000 You know, that's a deeply problematic opinion, because it's just not true.

00:35:50.000 You know, the truth is that we want to be there.

00:35:53.000 We want to be serving.

00:35:54.000 Have you ever debated her on this and had her clarify her positions?

00:35:59.000 No.

00:36:00.000 We talk a lot, but...

00:36:02.000 It'd be interesting to have you guys sit down and talk about it.

00:36:05.000 Yeah.

00:36:06.000 Again, I like Tulsi.

00:36:09.000 That's also nice, too, that you guys have these differing political philosophies, but yet you can be friendly with each other. 0.96

00:36:16.000 Because in today's day and age, I mean, I don't know what the fuck happened. 0.89

00:36:20.000 Somewhere around 2016, when Trump won, everybody went haywire. 0.95

00:36:23.000 And now you're either with us or against us.

00:36:25.000 You can't talk to Republicans.

00:36:26.000 And if you do, you're a bad person.

00:36:29.000 And you're part of the problem. 1.00

00:36:30.000 And you're probably a white nationalist. 0.96

00:36:32.000 And, like, it's just...

00:36:33.000 It's the most divided I can remember ever this country being.

00:36:37.000 Yeah, it's insane.

00:36:40.000 Now, on Capitol Hill, it's a little less – I think behind closed doors, people do talk to each other quite a bit.

00:36:47.000 And I think it would be good if the American people understood that that's actually what happens.

00:36:51.000 So we do debate vigorously in public.

00:36:54.000 And some of us don't talk to each other, just to be clear.

00:36:57.000 Why don't you guys know a reality show?

00:36:58.000 Not everybody.

00:36:59.000 Yeah, wouldn't that be...

00:37:00.000 Well, we kind of do, right?

00:37:01.000 We're both Capitol Hill.

00:37:01.000 I mean, between...

00:37:02.000 We kind of do.

00:37:04.000 I mean, I put so much of what I do every day out on social media, as other members of Congress do sometimes.

00:37:10.000 Well, it's a new thing, right?

00:37:11.000 Yeah.

00:37:11.000 And it's a great way for people to get to know you.

00:37:13.000 I think there's a lot of value in that.

00:37:15.000 You know, the old political way of thinking is don't say too much, because you'll get crucified for it.

00:37:22.000 And stick to your talking points, because there's just...

00:37:24.000 There was...

00:37:25.000 For a long time, there's still...

00:37:27.000 There's still this argument to be made that there's no reward for being open and honest about things, for having that nuanced conversation.

00:37:34.000 And that is still true, by the way.

00:37:36.000 I've certainly discovered it on my own.

00:37:38.000 Really?

00:37:38.000 How so?

00:37:39.000 The backlash.

00:37:40.000 I think the backlash that you'll get from certain groups of people is quick and swift and unforgiving.

00:37:48.000 And this is...

00:37:49.000 And this is why, now, again, is it worth it for me?

00:37:53.000 Yes, I think it is.

00:37:54.000 Because I'd still rather have that open conversation.

00:37:57.000 I'd rather sit with you for hours and actually get through this stuff.

00:38:00.000 I think that that backlash is just the vocal minority.

00:38:04.000 And I think there's a tremendous amount of people that are happy that you've done that and support you for doing that.

00:38:11.000 They're just not vocal about it.

00:38:12.000 I think you're probably right.

00:38:13.000 I know for sure. 0.98

00:38:15.000 Because when I talked to my buddies that, you know, when I said, hey, I'm having that Dan Crenshaw, and they go, I fucking like that guy, man.

00:38:22.000 I'm like, did you ever post on his Twitter?

00:38:23.000 No.

00:38:24.000 Did you ever post on his Instagram?

00:38:25.000 No.

00:38:26.000 There's a lot of people like that.

00:38:28.000 They just, most people are not going to comment on a YouTube video.

00:38:32.000 Most.

00:38:32.000 Right.

00:38:33.000 The vast majority. 1.00

00:38:34.000 Most people are going to watch it and go, oh, that was good, or that fucking sucked. 0.97

00:38:37.000 I have never commented on a single YouTube video. 0.98

00:38:39.000 That's it.

00:38:39.000 There you go.

00:38:39.000 That's exactly right.

00:38:40.000 I mean, I have disparaged people who comment on YouTube videos in the past, but look, I don't have a cubicle job. 0.98

00:38:45.000 People get fucking bored. 0.79

00:38:46.000 I'd probably be commenting too. 0.98

00:38:47.000 But the idea that just the people that are angry at you are the only ones that are paying attention, that it's all backlash.

00:38:56.000 I think you're just not reaping the positive aspects of it immediately.

00:39:01.000 Perspective is hugely important, and you're absolutely right.

00:39:07.000 But, you know, trying to go back to the political culture, trying to move it into this a little bit more of an open and honest, nuanced discussion, I think is important.

00:39:18.000 And we just, I want to be part of that solution.

00:39:20.000 And it's why I come on a show like this.

00:39:22.000 It's why other politicians come on shows like this.

00:39:24.000 It is moving in that direction.

00:39:25.000 And I think it's a cool thing.

00:39:27.000 I think so, too.

00:39:28.000 And I think people need to understand that there's, you know, what are the motivations behind these decisions?

00:39:34.000 Like, what's the thought process behind these decisions?

00:39:36.000 You just don't never get that on one of those panel shows where there's two people barking over each other and you've got five minutes to talk.

00:39:43.000 Less than that, you know?

00:39:44.000 And that's why on every major bill, I'll put out a video.

00:39:48.000 And I have to be conscious of how deep I can go into the policy because, again, people will just stop listening at a certain point.

00:39:53.000 So there is a – the appetite for long-form discussion isn't all that big.

00:39:58.000 But two, three minutes, five minutes?

00:40:00.000 Is this on YouTube?

00:40:01.000 I put them on YouTube.

00:40:02.000 I put them on all my social media accounts.

00:40:05.000 And on every big bill.

00:40:06.000 On every big bill that we're voting on.

00:40:08.000 And I just try to explain, why am I for this?

00:40:11.000 Why am I against this?

00:40:12.000 Here's the reasons.

00:40:13.000 Here's what the other side says.

00:40:14.000 Here's what I say about that.

00:40:16.000 And so just let me explain to you why I do what I do.

00:40:19.000 And it's turned out people really like that.

00:40:21.000 No, people love that.

00:40:22.000 And it didn't exist before.

00:40:24.000 I mean, we are the first generation that's experiencing politicians having their own channels to express themselves.

00:40:32.000 You used to have to go to NBC or CBS or what have you in order to...

00:40:37.000 And you had to be prominent enough to have a conversation with someone.

00:40:42.000 They're only going to talk to a select number of people, and the only reason why they're going to talk to those people is because they think those people would be viable in terms of the amount of numbers of people that would tune in so they could get good advertising money for it.

00:40:53.000 And that's really the market.

00:40:54.000 That's what it was all about.

00:40:56.000 We're in this new world now.

00:40:58.000 And I think it's for the better, for everybody.

00:41:00.000 It is.

00:41:01.000 It is.

00:41:01.000 I mean, like everything it's got, it's pros and cons.

00:41:04.000 What are the cons?

00:41:05.000 Well, just social media in general, I think, allows a lot of That vocal minority who's mostly angry, and it elevates that to a high extent.

00:41:17.000 And it makes us a little angrier at each other, I think.

00:41:20.000 And that's just a downside.

00:41:21.000 Now, does that mean I want to get rid of social media?

00:41:23.000 No.

00:41:24.000 What is your take on what we're seeing now with social media in terms of algorithms that sort of accentuate that hate, where they find the things that piss you off, whether you like to post about immigration or abortion and whatever it is,

00:41:39.000 and that's what you're going to find in your feed.

00:41:41.000 It puts that in front of you.

00:41:42.000 Yeah.

00:41:44.000 You know, I think my concerns with the social media companies are more the censorship issues.

00:41:49.000 I was going to get to that next.

00:41:50.000 Yeah, and that's generally what we talk about.

00:41:53.000 I haven't thought a whole lot about the algorithms and how that works.

00:41:56.000 I kind of wish they would do it differently, but they don't.

00:41:59.000 And I can't force them to do it differently.

00:42:02.000 But maybe they should recognize that it is accentuating that anger quite a bit.

00:42:07.000 And you have to ask yourself at a certain point, well, why?

00:42:11.000 Why encourage that?

00:42:13.000 It's not helpful.

00:42:15.000 Yeah.

00:42:16.000 No, it isn't helpful.

00:42:17.000 And it seems like it's only for profit.

00:42:20.000 The reason why they do it is because the more people click on things, the more advertising revenue they're going to generate.

00:42:25.000 I mean, it's not a malicious idea.

00:42:28.000 It's just the algorithms have figured out what's the best way to keep people engaged, and that's through outrage.

00:42:33.000 It's not through cuteness and adorable memes.

00:42:36.000 Yeah, it is.

00:42:36.000 And it's frustrating.

00:42:39.000 You know what tweet is going to get 50,000-plus likes.

00:42:43.000 Yeah.

00:42:44.000 It's got to be hard-hitting.

00:42:45.000 It's got to be punchy.

00:42:46.000 It's not going to be like your nuanced, thoughtful take on issue X is not going to get a ton of traction.

00:42:56.000 And so there's an incentive there.

00:42:59.000 And it's not totally the social media company's fault.

00:43:01.000 We always have to look to ourselves as a culture, I think, and be a little introspective.

00:43:06.000 And just ask ourselves, do I want to be this way?

00:43:11.000 Do I want to be that person that reacts so angrily that post comments to somebody that I would never have the guts to say to their face?

00:43:20.000 Do you really want to be that person?

00:43:22.000 We do have to ask ourselves as a culture about that.

00:43:25.000 And it's this...

00:43:27.000 It's a lot what I wrote about after the Saturday Night Live thing.

00:43:30.000 We have to get to this point, and it's a pretty low standard, where we're attacking ideas and not people, and not the intent and character of people.

00:43:38.000 And it's a low standard, frankly, as far as political discourse, but it's a good place to start.

00:43:44.000 It is a good place to start and there is a problem with the gatekeepers of social media and that these companies are all left with their policies and they might be right in terms of their business practices and David Pakman came on here and argued that and actually makes a lot of sense that in terms of like how they still shuffle money overseas and avoid taxes and they do there's a lot of right-wing business practices but My thought on that is it's

00:44:14.000 probably just compartmentalization and you're dealing with business people that have taken over some multi-billion dollar corporation.

00:44:20.000 And this is the business aspect of it, and then you've got your social engineering aspect of it.

00:44:24.000 And the social engineering aspect of it is very problematic for me.

00:44:29.000 There was an article that was written recently, and one of the guys, he was saying something about me in that, no, silencing white nationalism and keeping them off your platform is not censorship.

00:44:41.000 Which is the dumbest way to sort of boil down my position on censorship and ignore the real problems of other people deciding what someone can or can't say and what is or is not offensive.

00:44:59.000 One of the best examples is a woman named, I think it's Morgan Murphy, Megan Murphy. 0.94

00:45:04.000 Megan Murphy is her name.

00:45:05.000 She's a, what's called a trans-exclusionary, what's the word? 1.00

00:45:13.000 Exclusionary.

00:45:13.000 Trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a TERF. And she was in a debate with...

00:45:18.000 I don't blame you for not being able to remember that.

00:45:20.000 Trans-exclusionary.

00:45:21.000 But exclusionary is a weird word.

00:45:23.000 She was in a debate with people about whether or not trans women should be able to invade feminist women's spaces.

00:45:31.000 So a person who's biologically male, who becomes a female later in life, should be able to make decisions in feminist debates and... 1.00

00:45:41.000 Right.

00:45:42.000 And get into their sports and all that.

00:45:43.000 So she says...

00:45:44.000 Yes, the sports is the big one for me.

00:45:46.000 It's particularly fighting.

00:45:47.000 She says, but a man is never a woman.

00:45:51.000 This is what she says.

00:45:52.000 Okay.

00:45:53.000 So Twitter asked her to take it down.

00:45:54.000 So she takes a screenshot of that.

00:45:56.000 She takes it down, takes a screenshot of it and reposts it. 1.00

00:45:59.000 Like, fuck you. 0.99

00:46:00.000 Like, I'm going to put it back up again this way. 1.00

00:46:02.000 They ban her for life. 1.00

00:46:03.000 For life.

00:46:04.000 You know who's on Twitter with no problems?

00:46:07.000 O.J. Simpson!

00:46:09.000 O.J. Simpson murdered two people.

00:46:11.000 He fucking went to jail for armed kidnapping. 1.00

00:46:14.000 And he's on TV. He's on every day. 1.00

00:46:16.000 Hello, to the world.

00:46:17.000 He's fine.

00:46:18.000 Hamas, among other things, too.

00:46:20.000 This Megan Murphy, she says, a man is not a woman. 0.99

00:46:23.000 She's fucking correct, biologically. 0.99

00:46:26.000 She's biologically correct. 0.98

00:46:28.000 I mean, if we want to decide socially and culturally that we're going to accept this person as a woman, this is a completely different discussion.

00:46:35.000 But she's right.

00:46:36.000 She's biologically correct.

00:46:52.000 This is crazy.

00:46:54.000 It is.

00:46:55.000 But it's woke culture in its most boiled down form.

00:46:57.000 It has nothing to do with white nationalism.

00:46:59.000 It has nothing to do with race.

00:47:01.000 It has to do with a person that feels like their own particular protected group, being a feminist, being a woman, and trying to carve out rules where women are protected. 0.99

00:47:13.000 And she's saying, I don't like the fact that these trans women are entering into this space and dominating it in certain aspects. 1.00

00:47:20.000 Right.

00:47:20.000 And it's an example of this intersectional coalition that they've created coming to terms with itself.

00:47:27.000 And, you know, a lot of the feminist groups aligned with us against the Equality Act because the Equality Act would have put into real practice this Into concrete terms, biological men getting into women's sports.

00:47:40.000 Among other things, by the way.

00:47:43.000 A lot of feminist groups were finally coming out and saying, no, this is not correct. 0.99

00:47:48.000 We're a feminist group, so let's protect women, which I fully agree with. 0.89

00:47:53.000 And, but, you know, on a deeper level, it's interesting to watch that intersectional coalition just implode.

00:47:58.000 And it stems from this desire on their part to divide everybody up into three categories of oppressed, the oppressors, and then the champions of the oppressed, right?

00:48:10.000 And the woke culture is the champions, of course.

00:48:12.000 That's how they label themselves.

00:48:13.000 They label their intersectional coalition as the oppressed, and And then they have this whole other kind of intersectional coalition of oppressors. 0.94

00:48:21.000 And they connect it all with the worst of the worst, which is white supremacist Nazis.

00:48:27.000 And they say you're all connected with that somehow.

00:48:30.000 Even if you're just making a pretty bland statement about biological men and women.

00:48:36.000 Somehow that connects to this.

00:48:38.000 And this is how you see them reason their way through it.

00:48:40.000 And what that does is it undercuts Real basic arguments because you're attacking the intent of that argument, because you're connecting it with the worst of the worst, right? 0.98

00:48:51.000 We kill Nazis. 0.81

00:48:52.000 That's what our country does. 1.00

00:48:53.000 We did it.

00:48:54.000 And so if you're connecting all of these things you disagree with with that, well, you don't even have to make an argument anymore.

00:48:59.000 Yes.

00:48:59.000 And the idea that you're going to somehow or another convince people that everyone is a Nazi just because you say so, that's not going to work.

00:49:09.000 What's going to work is people are going to just – they're going to go to the other side.

00:49:13.000 You're making more Republicans with this crazy talk.

00:49:17.000 Well, I hope so.

00:49:18.000 That's really what's going on.

00:49:19.000 I mean, my friend Chris Pratt wore a t-shirt that said, don't tread on me.

00:49:22.000 I remember that. 1.00

00:49:23.000 What the fuck, man? 1.00

00:49:25.000 It's a goddamn ancient flag representing our separation from England and our want to be able to start our own country. 1.00

00:49:34.000 I mean, that's what it was. 0.98

00:49:35.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:49:36.000 And it gets to a deeper culture war.

00:49:39.000 There's many fronts on the culture wars.

00:49:41.000 This is a big one.

00:49:42.000 Is America based on bad things or good things?

00:49:45.000 Are we good, intrinsically good, or are we bad?

00:49:49.000 This is a huge fissure in the culture war right now.

00:49:53.000 And I have a lot of fear that...

00:49:58.000 That these things are boiling up and that we're destroying the few things that hold us together.

00:50:04.000 As a country, what makes us Americans, it's not ethnicity, it's not religion, it's not even really a geographic area because our geographic area has changed over time.

00:50:14.000 It is ideals.

00:50:15.000 It is ideals, and those ideals are symbolized by certain things, and that's the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag, the national anthem.

00:50:24.000 These things matter.

00:50:26.000 And I think they're very important for a culture.

00:50:29.000 And this actually all ties back into this sort of oppressor-oppressed kind of ideology.

00:50:34.000 Because if you tell people that they're oppressed, well, then they have to look for an oppressor.

00:50:37.000 And that starts small.

00:50:39.000 It starts with your parent or your boss or somebody you don't like.

00:50:42.000 Okay, it's their fault.

00:50:42.000 That's why I have something bad happen to me.

00:50:44.000 It's somebody else's fault.

00:50:45.000 And then it grows into groups.

00:50:47.000 Okay, now you get into identity politics and pitting identities against each other.

00:50:51.000 Then you're starting to blame institutions.

00:50:54.000 When we talk about Bernie Sanders, he's doing this often.

00:50:58.000 He's blaming institutions for our issues constantly.

00:51:03.000 That has morphed into blaming the entire country.

00:51:06.000 The entire country, as an American ideal, is to blame.

00:51:12.000 I think it's historically inaccurate.

00:51:15.000 I think it's inaccurate objectively.

00:51:17.000 But I just think it's dangerous.

00:51:19.000 I don't think it can go anywhere good.

00:51:20.000 Unless you just want total revolution, which I think some people do.

00:51:25.000 It tears us apart, right?

00:51:28.000 And we're getting divided along.

00:51:30.000 We're allowing the pop culture to get involved in this too, so we can't share pop culture anymore because musicians are getting involved in politics and comedians and We're losing these basic symbols that bring us together.

00:51:48.000 And then we're also losing the pop culture that kind of brings us together.

00:51:51.000 That should be something we can just share and then not talk politics, but that's been removed as well.

00:51:56.000 The culture war, it's not going a good direction.

00:52:01.000 I'm hoping that this is an adolescent stage in the development of this strange country that's an experiment in self-government.

00:52:08.000 That's what I'm thinking.

00:52:09.000 And I think this experiment in self-government, which is a completely new thing in human history, that's redefined the way the rest of the world governs itself.

00:52:17.000 I mean, that's what America really is.

00:52:19.000 Is it perfect? 1.00

00:52:20.000 Fuck no. 1.00

00:52:20.000 But humans aren't perfect. 1.00

00:52:21.000 There's not a goddamn human anywhere that's perfect. 0.96

00:52:23.000 There's not a single culture anywhere that doesn't have something that's inherently wrong with it. 0.96

00:52:28.000 It's the best system for imperfect human beings.

00:52:31.000 It's a system based on the fact, the unavoidable fact that we are imperfect.

00:52:40.000 You cannot constrain mankind's nature to the extent that progressives would like to.

00:52:45.000 There's a belief From some sort of Marxist ideology and kind of French Revolution thought that you can perfect human nature, that you can get people to be perfect eventually.

00:52:56.000 If you just give the state enough control and stop certain thoughts that are bad, keep those down, elevate these other ones, you can eventually get us to where we think we should be.

00:53:08.000 I think that's utopian.

00:53:09.000 I don't see how that's ever possible, and I think our U.S. constitutional system understands that.

00:53:15.000 You know, it's not like the founders got together and just made a bunch of stuff up, right?

00:53:19.000 They were very well versed in history.

00:53:21.000 They studied it relentlessly, and they took ideas from Jerusalem and Athens and Rome and London.

00:53:27.000 They took all these best ideas and these best practices, and they said, this is probably how we should govern.

00:53:32.000 We're first going to say why government exists.

00:53:34.000 Okay, we're going to say that in the Declaration of Independence.

00:53:36.000 When Thomas Jefferson wrote that, the Declaration of Independence wasn't just declaring its independence, it was also declaring why government exists.

00:53:45.000 And it exists to protect inalienable rights.

00:53:47.000 Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

00:53:49.000 And he gets these ideas from guys like John Locke who said, life, liberty, and property, those are inalienable rights.

00:53:55.000 And you protect rights, you can't give them to people.

00:53:58.000 But you can protect them because they're already inherent in you.

00:54:01.000 They're natural rights.

00:54:02.000 Okay, and then the Constitution told us how to govern.

00:54:05.000 It's like, how do we live together?

00:54:06.000 Well, there should be checks and balances.

00:54:08.000 You should have an emphasis on local state control because the problems are closest to the people and they should be closest to the representatives down at that level.

00:54:17.000 51% of the population shouldn't be able to tell the other 49% what to do.

00:54:21.000 We should have an electoral college so that the biggest population centers can't tell everybody else what to do. 0.99

00:54:27.000 There's important structures embedded in the Constitution that have allowed us to actually last, I think, as long as we have.

00:54:33.000 We have the oldest political – it's the oldest document in the world.

00:54:35.000 It's the oldest Constitution in the world.

00:54:37.000 So we're the youngest – one of the youngest countries, but we're the only ones that had such a longstanding Constitution.

00:54:41.000 I think that's important to realize, too. 0.72

00:54:44.000 It's very bizarre that they had the insight to realize that shit could go so sideways that they put all these checks and balances together that actually can reasonably well, in a reasonably well way, work today. 0.84

00:54:56.000 I mean, there's a lot of people that disagree with a lot of the aspects of it. 0.98

00:54:59.000 One person, one vote.

00:55:00.000 They would like that.

00:55:01.000 They don't think that representative democracy is important now because we have this ability to communicate that we didn't have. 0.98

00:55:07.000 In the 1800s, you know, you had to send a fucking pony with a letter on it in order to get your word across. 0.85

00:55:12.000 Now you can actually tweet and you could vote online if we so deem it and we made it legal. 0.94

00:55:19.000 But the Electoral College, do you feel like that, especially with things like superdelegates, do you think that that's still the way to do things and is still an effective way?

00:55:30.000 Why is that?

00:55:31.000 Because the alternative is the 51% versus the 49%. 0.95

00:55:35.000 And what that really boils down to is New York and Los Angeles telling everybody who the president should be.

00:55:43.000 But the vast majority of people don't live in New York and Los Angeles.

00:55:46.000 That's exactly the problem.

00:55:48.000 New York is like 20 million and 7, what is it, 9 million or something in New York?

00:55:51.000 And that's the issue, right?

00:55:54.000 Because you really are, you're, and when people congregate in population centers, they also tend to start to think alike.

00:56:00.000 And I just think, and on a more fundamental level, Look at the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

00:56:08.000 People always wonder what that difference is, and there's a lot of differences, of course, but a really kind of simple heuristic to think about it is the word Democrat and Republican.

00:56:16.000 One believes in a pure democracy, one believes in a republic.

00:56:19.000 I'm not saying Democrats believe in total pure democracy, but when you're saying abolish the electoral college, you are saying pure democracy.

00:56:25.000 You're saying 51% of the population can tell the other 49%.

00:56:29.000 What to do.

00:56:29.000 The Electoral College is a check and balance against that that gives those states in the middle some kind of voice that they wouldn't have otherwise had.

00:56:38.000 Why is everybody in Iowa right now?

00:56:39.000 Do you think they'd be in Iowa if we didn't have an Electoral College?

00:56:43.000 Good deer hunting there.

00:56:44.000 That's a good reason to go.

00:56:46.000 But the reality is they would only be campaigning in the big population centers.

00:56:51.000 They wouldn't bother going to the rural areas because you're going to get the most bang for your buck going to just the populated areas.

00:56:57.000 In terms of campaigning physically.

00:56:58.000 You're not campaigning physically, but also who you're accountable to.

00:57:01.000 That's the most important thing.

00:57:03.000 Who are you accountable to?

00:57:04.000 You're not going to care if you're accountable to the rural areas like you should be and to the middle of the country like you should be because if you only care about 51% of the vote, you're just going to go to those main population centers and you're only going to talk to them and you're only going to care what they think.

00:57:18.000 I don't think that's good.

00:57:19.000 That's not good for democracy, especially when we have such a wide diversity of preferences and And just styles of living across the country.

00:57:27.000 Is it still that important to be physically in a place to campaign?

00:57:31.000 To physically go to Chicago to campaign, to physically go to Iowa?

00:57:34.000 Yeah, I think people want to see you.

00:57:36.000 It was a good argument to be made that Hillary Clinton lost because she just didn't go to Wisconsin in those last days. 1.00

00:57:41.000 I think people want to get to know you.

00:57:43.000 People want to see you.

00:57:45.000 Well, the good argument with Hillary, too, is people didn't believe she had enough energy to go and campaign. 1.00

00:57:52.000 And I don't know.

00:57:53.000 I never met her.

00:57:55.000 I can't tell you what the inside look at that campaign was.

00:57:59.000 I just know it didn't work.

00:58:01.000 Yeah.

00:58:01.000 Whatever happened.

00:58:03.000 When you think about what are the problems that we're facing today in terms of...

00:58:22.000 Yeah, I think.

00:58:31.000 Sure.

00:58:37.000 Sure.

00:58:43.000 You know, there's two different philosophies here is are you just trying to get everybody to quickly spend five minutes of the day and then vote?

00:58:50.000 Well, that's what they're doing for the most part anyway, don't you think?

00:58:53.000 A lot of people?

00:58:53.000 No, if you have to actually take the time to register and go to the polls, you're going to do at least a little bit more research on what's going on, I think.

00:58:59.000 You haven't talked to my friends.

00:59:01.000 Yeah.

00:59:01.000 I'm not saying everybody.

00:59:03.000 I'm barely paying attention.

00:59:06.000 But I think you'll exponentially increase that number.

00:59:09.000 The other problem is simple election security.

00:59:12.000 And if we're worried about the Russians hacking on our elections, then I fail to see how putting everything online is also a good idea.

00:59:19.000 So that's...

00:59:21.000 We can't be worried about both things there.

00:59:24.000 And we are worried about Russians hacking our elections.

00:59:26.000 They've obviously tried.

00:59:28.000 You think they've tried hacking the results?

00:59:30.000 I mean, they've clearly tried to influence the way people interact with each other.

00:59:34.000 They did try.

00:59:34.000 They tried everything.

00:59:35.000 What did they try to do?

00:59:35.000 They did try to hack the results.

00:59:36.000 They're unsuccessful.

00:59:37.000 One of the reasons they're unsuccessful is because a lot of our election machines are air-gapped.

00:59:42.000 And they're also different every county you go to.

00:59:44.000 So it is a mess because we allow states and counties to be in charge of that.

00:59:50.000 But that also makes it highly resilient because it's so compartmentalized.

00:59:53.000 So from an intelligence operations perspective, you want things to be compartmentalized, and our election system actually meets that.

00:59:59.000 And we're working a lot with – DHS is working a lot with local authorities to even improve upon that a lot.

01:00:05.000 So I think we're going in the right direction.

01:00:07.000 So you can't hack – Dangling chads.

01:00:10.000 Remember those things?

01:00:12.000 What was it called?

01:00:14.000 It was just a hanging chad.

01:00:16.000 Just hanging?

01:00:17.000 It wasn't dangling?

01:00:18.000 It could have been both.

01:00:19.000 That's totally different.

01:00:19.000 Do you remember that?

01:00:21.000 They weren't exactly sure whether they had a vote counted.

01:00:23.000 They had to examine them.

01:00:25.000 That seems like a silly way.

01:00:28.000 If we can do banking online, why can't we vote online?

01:00:32.000 Isn't there a way to make something where it's hack-proof?

01:00:35.000 Is that possible?

01:00:36.000 It might be.

01:00:38.000 It might be.

01:00:39.000 Again, but now you're getting into a problem with identity.

01:00:43.000 You know, again, a lot of people believe you shouldn't have any voter IDs.

01:00:46.000 I think that's crazy.

01:00:47.000 I think we use IDs all the time.

01:00:49.000 I think you should have an ID to register so we know it's you.

01:00:51.000 Right, of course.

01:00:52.000 Of course.

01:00:52.000 And then you should just show your idea when you vote.

01:00:54.000 But what I'm saying is, wouldn't it be a better thing if more people voted?

01:00:58.000 Or do you think that it's better if only the people motivated to vote and participate vote the way we're doing it now, where you have to register within a certain amount of time and you have to show up at an actual polling place?

01:01:08.000 Do you think that's better?

01:01:09.000 It's not self-evident to me that by nature of more people voting, things will get better.

01:01:15.000 I'd like them to go vote.

01:01:16.000 I'd like them to put in the work and do their civic duty and to get educated and go vote.

01:01:21.000 I would like them to do that.

01:01:22.000 But that's a separate discussion from moving safeguards on our elections just to make it easier for them to do what is already quite easy.

01:01:32.000 There's this weird argument against this.

01:01:34.000 It's so hard to vote.

01:01:35.000 We're so suppressed.

01:01:37.000 There's just no evidence of that.

01:01:38.000 It's not hard, but it's not as easy as it could be if you could just register online.

01:01:42.000 Yeah, I mean, I can make a million things easier, but again, they remove safeguards that create safe elections and elections that we can have faith in, and this is a very important thing.

01:01:54.000 And I think you see this when you have this discussion with people.

01:01:56.000 They're already on edge about whether their vote really counts because, you know, some people think illegals are voting.

01:02:02.000 And again, there's not a huge amount of evidence for that either.

01:02:04.000 It does happen, but it's...

01:02:06.000 How can illegals vote? 0.93

01:02:07.000 I mean, don't they have to register?

01:02:09.000 In places where there's no voter ID, you can make it a lot easier.

01:02:14.000 Where's there no voter ID? I don't believe there is in California.

01:02:17.000 Am I right on that?

01:02:18.000 How dare you, California? 1.00

01:02:19.000 Is that true?

01:02:19.000 Let's check on that.

01:02:21.000 But it's definitely not the law of the land everywhere.

01:02:23.000 In Texas it is.

01:02:24.000 So Texas is a good example, I think, of like very – it's very easy to vote.

01:02:28.000 I just can't imagine that people don't think it's easy to vote in Texas.

01:02:31.000 If you're a senior citizen or disabled, you can mail in your ballot 30 days prior.

01:02:34.000 We have two weeks of early voting.

01:02:36.000 You can go to any election place in the county and vote from 7 a.m.

01:02:40.000 to 7 p.m.

01:02:41.000 for two weeks straight.

01:02:42.000 Hold your ballot.

01:02:43.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:02:44.000 And you just show your ID and you vote.

01:02:47.000 We feel in Texas like it's safeguarded.

01:02:50.000 We're not overly worried that our vote doesn't count because it's canceled out by some fake vote.

01:02:54.000 And it's hard to argue that there's suppression either because, again, it's so easy to vote or you can go on election day.

01:03:03.000 It's just a shame that we have so little faith in our ability to do things electronically that we're worried and that we wouldn't want people to vote online because we're worried about people hacking it.

01:03:14.000 That is a shame because I just feel like maybe if you were going to vote online, you would have to watch a five-minute video explaining people's positions on things.

01:03:33.000 Yeah, that's an interesting idea.

01:03:36.000 I'm not opposed to the videos, of course, forcing people to do things, just generally speaking, is tough.

01:03:42.000 But it still goes back to how do you even know it's the right person who's sitting there at the computer?

01:03:47.000 That's true, too.

01:03:48.000 That's the difficult part.

01:03:50.000 With your phone, you have Face ID, you know, Apple ID. You use fingerprints with other phones.

01:03:57.000 Oh, sure.

01:03:57.000 I mean, there's interesting ideas that you could look into to make this work.

01:04:02.000 But it's a pretty massive change, and it'd be a massive federal takeover of what is constitutionally a state's right to implement that.

01:04:11.000 So, you know, it's just...

01:04:12.000 And then the question is, what are we trying to fix?

01:04:15.000 What we're going to do is a massive change onto something.

01:04:18.000 What kind of improvements are we expecting and why?

01:04:20.000 And those are just good policy questions to ask.

01:04:23.000 It doesn't mean we don't have those discussions.

01:04:24.000 But there's always been an issue with voter turnout, correct?

01:04:26.000 I mean, it's a fairly insignificant number of people that actually wind up voting, right?

01:04:31.000 Yeah, but is that because – whose fault is that?

01:04:34.000 That's a good question.

01:04:35.000 It's the people who don't go to vote.

01:04:37.000 Right. 1.00

01:04:37.000 So do you think that those people, like, fuck those people? 1.00

01:04:40.000 They're just lazy and they shouldn't have a say? 1.00

01:04:43.000 No, not at all.

01:04:43.000 It's just that I just would encourage them to go vote.

01:04:46.000 Right.

01:04:47.000 Right.

01:04:48.000 But isn't it been fairly consistent, like the number of people that vote, the percentage of people that vote across the board?

01:04:54.000 Yeah, but again, it's not self-evident that that's a problem.

01:05:00.000 It's up to government now to force that into a fix.

01:05:04.000 You know, I'm not sure I see that argument.

01:05:07.000 It's not self-evident that things would all be better if we forced people to vote or made it so easy that they didn't have to think about it at all and just got on their app and voted.

01:05:14.000 So, yeah, it's an interesting question.

01:05:16.000 Do we want to increase voter turnout?

01:05:18.000 And then, yeah, sure, but how do we do it?

01:05:21.000 I think civic education is a more appropriate answer to that as opposed to making it as easy as buying something at the grocery store.

01:05:30.000 Civic education in what form?

01:05:32.000 Starting with our schools.

01:05:34.000 We don't teach a lot of civic education anymore.

01:05:37.000 And I think that's obvious from our political discourse sometimes.

01:05:41.000 It's not required like I think it should be.

01:05:44.000 I mean the basics, like where does government happen?

01:05:46.000 If you're concerned about your schools, should you go to your congressman or should you go to your mayor or who do you go to?

01:05:52.000 We don't even tell people this stuff.

01:05:53.000 It's like, no, you should get involved in your school board elections for one thing.

01:05:57.000 You know, just as an example.

01:05:59.000 There's just a lot of things that I think need to be taught before we...

01:06:03.000 So I think we're trying to solve the wrong problem when we say, well, voting's not easy enough.

01:06:06.000 I'm not so sure that we're hitting at the heart of the issue when it comes to voter turnout.

01:06:12.000 When people talk about issues in this country, there's a giant...

01:06:19.000 There's a giant divide with one thing in particular and that is mass shootings.

01:06:24.000 Mass shootings and gun control.

01:06:26.000 There's a giant divide between people that are Second Amendment advocates and people that want to round up all the assault weapons and take away all the guns and they think the guns are the problem.

01:06:37.000 When you see this pretty disturbing increase in mass shootings in this country, what is your take on it and what do you think could be done?

01:06:50.000 Well, it's awful.

01:06:51.000 They're terrorist attacks, and I think it's safer to call them that. 1.00

01:06:56.000 Depending on how you define a mass shooting, when we look at murder statistics, we're actually at a very, very low point in our history.

01:07:06.000 I mean, look at the early 90s, it was vastly more murders by gun than we have now.

01:07:12.000 Just statistically speaking...

01:07:13.000 What's that because of?

01:07:15.000 Do they know?

01:07:16.000 Well, there was a massive kind of war on crime, I think, in the 90s.

01:07:20.000 Increase in police.

01:07:22.000 You know, you have some of the crime bills that went through, which are obviously the source of a lot of debate right now in the Democrat primary.

01:07:27.000 And, yeah, it was just – there was an approach to fix that, okay?

01:07:32.000 You know, tackling gang violence, tackling all of these things.

01:07:35.000 And we live in a much, even though you wouldn't think so, because of these kind of theatrical, again, they're terrorist attacks.

01:07:42.000 I don't know what else to call them.

01:07:44.000 Because the person doing it is trying to commit terror.

01:07:47.000 And, you know, for different reasons, of course.

01:07:49.000 But at least they attach themselves to some kind of reason.

01:07:53.000 But in the end, they're angry at something.

01:07:55.000 And they're probably, you know...

01:07:58.000 Probably been taking some kind of psychotropic drugs over time and they've gotten to this point and they'll attach themselves to whatever reason they need to do this and it's awful.

01:08:07.000 So, you know, how do you fix that?

01:08:10.000 We have to understand the problem.

01:08:11.000 We have to diagnose it.

01:08:16.000 And I think we have to be realistic about what the solutions really are and what our ability to influence those outcomes really is.

01:08:24.000 And that's an emotional conversation for people.

01:08:28.000 We've been dealing with it for the last few weeks, of course.

01:08:30.000 It's front and center in the debate.

01:08:34.000 But we've got to have it.

01:08:36.000 What can be done?

01:08:41.000 Obviously, the reaction by many is to go after the tool, right?

01:08:44.000 To go after the guns.

01:08:46.000 I don't think that's the right approach.

01:08:49.000 Again, it's not clear that that would actually solve the problem.

01:08:52.000 There's two main requirements when you're looking at an approach to gun control.

01:08:58.000 It's like, does it infringe on law-abiding citizens' rights?

01:09:01.000 Number one, what's the answer to that?

01:09:03.000 And two, is it going to actually affect the outcome that we're trying to affect?

01:09:07.000 Is it going to feel good or is it going to do good?

01:09:10.000 And I think the vast majority of proposals fail both of those standards.

01:09:15.000 They definitely infringe on law-abiding citizens' rights, and they probably wouldn't even solve the problem.

01:09:21.000 An example is assault rifles.

01:09:23.000 Well, ARs.

01:09:24.000 They're called assault rifles.

01:09:26.000 Really, the reason they're in AR is because they're called Armalite.

01:09:28.000 That's a brand.

01:09:30.000 Assault rifle is not a real thing.

01:09:33.000 It's not a real definition.

01:09:35.000 But what if you banned them?

01:09:37.000 Well, rifles are responsible for less than 3% of all gun deaths.

01:09:41.000 About 2.66% of all gun deaths.

01:09:44.000 Hammers and knives, I think, are responsible for far more deaths.

01:09:48.000 Is that true?

01:09:50.000 Yes.

01:09:50.000 Hammers and knives are responsible for more deaths than rifles?

01:09:54.000 Got statistics.

01:09:54.000 Including ARs.

01:09:55.000 My bag.

01:09:56.000 Yeah.

01:09:56.000 Really?

01:09:57.000 Yeah.

01:09:57.000 Rifles account for 2.66% of gun deaths.

01:10:01.000 How many folks are killing people with hammers?

01:10:03.000 It's a good weapon, I guess.

01:10:05.000 I feel real good if somebody has a hammer.

01:10:08.000 If all you have is a hammer...

01:10:09.000 Yeah, if you have a gun, you're doing pretty well.

01:10:12.000 Even if you don't have a gun, I feel like I could stop a hammer.

01:10:15.000 Yeah, but you're a pretty good fighter. 0.99

01:10:16.000 I can't do a goddamn thing about an AR. Well, that's not true. 0.95

01:10:19.000 I can take away your AR. How close do you have to be to do that?

01:10:22.000 I just gotta reach it.

01:10:23.000 It's very easy to take away an AR. Yeah?

01:10:26.000 Yeah.

01:10:28.000 How easy?

01:10:29.000 I just need to get a hand on the barrel.

01:10:32.000 You should give out AR takeaway classes.

01:10:35.000 Yeah, I know.

01:10:36.000 I mean, I've taken those glasses.

01:10:37.000 That's why I know it's so easy.

01:10:39.000 Whoever controls the barrel of any gun controls the gun.

01:10:41.000 Right.

01:10:42.000 People don't quite realize that.

01:10:43.000 They think if they're gripping it, then they control the gun.

01:10:45.000 That's not true.

01:10:46.000 Right.

01:10:47.000 We're in the weeds now, though.

01:10:49.000 Yeah, we're good at the weeds.

01:10:49.000 We can demonstrate that afterwards.

01:10:51.000 I have a flamethrower.

01:10:54.000 Maybe grab that.

01:10:55.000 Yeah.

01:10:55.000 No rifles in here.

01:10:56.000 Is that what that...

01:10:57.000 That's Elon Musk's flamethrower.

01:10:57.000 I wasn't sure what that was.

01:10:59.000 Oh, you're going to take a picture with that later.

01:11:00.000 Okay, can I actually use it, though?

01:11:03.000 We can turn it on, as long as you don't cook the ceiling.

01:11:06.000 Okay, but I can cook anything else?

01:11:07.000 Yeah, you'll be the only one who's ever turned it on here, other than Elon.

01:11:10.000 It doesn't have to be in the room.

01:11:12.000 Yeah, it does, though.

01:11:13.000 I'll take a picture.

01:11:14.000 I'll do it in the room.

01:11:16.000 So, have you thought about this?

01:11:19.000 I mean, if you had a magic wand, and they said, hey, Dan Crenshaw, what can you do to solve this mass gun violence?

01:11:27.000 What can you do to solve these mass shootings?

01:11:29.000 Yeah.

01:11:30.000 I mean, you have to target the source of them, and it's just not an easy conversation.

01:11:34.000 And so this, let's also think about where these things started.

01:11:38.000 We're talking about the theatrical mass shootings.

01:11:40.000 There's a lot of statistics out there.

01:11:41.000 They'll say we have hundreds of them, you know, which include four or more deaths, but these are usually gang violence.

01:11:46.000 So gang violence is, it's in a category, right?

01:11:49.000 I believe there was 279 mass shootings so far this year, and some of them, they do include gang violence.

01:11:56.000 Right.

01:11:56.000 I think it's two or more.

01:11:57.000 Is that what it's deemed, mass shootings?

01:11:59.000 Yeah, it might be more. 0.92

01:12:01.000 Which is so fucking weird that we have a statistic. 0.51

01:12:04.000 Well, that doesn't count. 0.90

01:12:05.000 It's only, you know.

01:12:06.000 I mean, you've got to draw the line somewhere.

01:12:08.000 You've got to be able to, if you're going to analyze it, you have to look into that.

01:12:12.000 But I think the dramatized shootings that these guys are doing, it all started with Columbine.

01:12:19.000 And it's become this sort of copycat crime.

01:12:21.000 That has occurred over time.

01:12:22.000 And we didn't have this before that.

01:12:24.000 And I think that's interesting.

01:12:26.000 And I think it's something to take note of.

01:12:29.000 And it's not clear what you do about that.

01:12:33.000 You have to look for signs of people before they do it.

01:12:38.000 And so one bill that I'm on, which I've taken a lot of fire for because people are just, I think, misunderstand what it actually is, is the TAPS Act, which is the Threat Assessment Prevention and Safety Act.

01:12:50.000 All this does is give local law enforcement the ability to apply for grants to get training and behavioral threat assessment training and data analytical tools to identify these threats beforehand.

01:13:03.000 And people that are opposed to it, they look at it like red flag laws, right?

01:13:08.000 They combine those two quite a bit, and that's just not true.

01:13:12.000 I mean, the TAPS Act doesn't actually have anything to do with guns.

01:13:14.000 And red flag laws, depending on how they're implemented, could take someone who looks like they're erratic or who has a penchant for violence, and they would say, you do not have access to guns.

01:13:27.000 Right.

01:13:27.000 In theory, that would be how they work.

01:13:29.000 And they would fill a gap, I think.

01:13:31.000 And it depends on the state.

01:13:32.000 Some states have all the ability they need to see threatening behavior and then arrest that person.

01:13:37.000 But it depends on criminal law within that state.

01:13:40.000 So theoretically, red flag law would fill that gap.

01:13:43.000 The concern with red flag laws, obviously, is their really due process.

01:13:47.000 A lot of people hear that and they're like, okay, that means my neighbor can tell on me and they're going to cut my guns the next morning.

01:13:52.000 Well, yeah, I mean, if that's how the law was written, then yeah, you better be against that, because that's a terrible law.

01:13:57.000 And to be fair to a lot of the people who don't like red flag laws, they see how these are written in a lot of states.

01:14:03.000 I think California has one.

01:14:05.000 And they see how those are written, and they say, this doesn't protect due process.

01:14:09.000 How can we possibly be for this?

01:14:12.000 Now, on the other hand, there hasn't been any cases where there's been some obvious abuse of that law either.

01:14:18.000 So, you know, I've encouraged the conversation.

01:14:21.000 I think the conversation has to happen at the state level because every state has different criminal law.

01:14:26.000 And that's where criminal law happens.

01:14:27.000 It does not happen at the federal level.

01:14:30.000 The only other controversial approach that I've heard is putting armed police or soldiers at schools.

01:14:41.000 Which is like, that seems incredibly disturbing to me.

01:14:45.000 That you have to have people, I'm not opposed to it, but it's disturbing to me that you would have to have someone standing by ready for violence.

01:14:57.000 We have guards everywhere.

01:14:58.000 Why not our schools?

01:15:00.000 Because we've never had them before.

01:15:02.000 And it's sort of signaling that we've reached this point of impasse where we have to do something about it.

01:15:08.000 And we're not doing anything to prevent these things from happening.

01:15:10.000 What we're doing is protecting the people that are going to be there when these things happen.

01:15:15.000 Yeah, I think inner city schools have long had police presence there.

01:15:18.000 I don't think it's totally new, the idea, and I think we could rapidly get used to it.

01:15:24.000 There's a good argument to be made that gun-free zones are the first thing that are attacked, too.

01:15:28.000 So, I mean, it's a counterintuitive response to this, but it's true.

01:15:32.000 If I'm going to commit a terrible act, of course you're going to go to the place where you know nobody is caring.

01:15:37.000 Yeah, you're not going to a gun show.

01:15:38.000 Right, yeah.

01:15:40.000 Unless you're just really looking for a fight.

01:15:44.000 But there's some truth to that.

01:15:47.000 And it's just hard.

01:15:48.000 It's so hard for people to have this conversation because it's so emotional.

01:15:51.000 And there's a cultural fissure here, too.

01:15:55.000 People don't understand some people who like guns.

01:15:58.000 And there's a cultural divide there.

01:16:00.000 And I just don't like people who like guns.

01:16:03.000 We have to admit that's true.

01:16:05.000 Well, they have this idea of guns, that guns bring violence and violent people want guns.

01:16:11.000 And that's just not true.

01:16:13.000 And one of the things that people like to gloss over is how many people have defended their life and defended the lives of their loved ones with guns in this country every year.

01:16:22.000 It happens all the time.

01:16:23.000 I've got a whole list of stats and examples that I could read to you right now.

01:16:28.000 Unfortunately, one of the things that gets brought up during gun violence statistics, they talk about how many people die from firearms every year in this country.

01:16:35.000 They're also talking about people who are defending their lives and defending the lives of their loved ones.

01:16:41.000 People get their houses broken into all the time by armed criminals and they shoot those people and they live to see another day and that person dies and that is the whole reason why people don't want to get rid of guns.

01:16:53.000 And I want to bring something up along those lines.

01:16:55.000 So it's far more likely in countries like Great Britain that you'll get your house broken into while you are there.

01:17:01.000 Far more likely than in the United States.

01:17:04.000 By a good order of magnitude, actually.

01:17:07.000 So why is that?

01:17:08.000 Because they know that there is no gun in that house.

01:17:11.000 And you do that in Texas, there's a good chance there's a gun in that house.

01:17:15.000 It's probably 100%.

01:17:16.000 Yeah, even the liberals.

01:17:17.000 They get mad at you if you don't have a gun.

01:17:19.000 Hey, take one of mine. 1.00

01:17:20.000 Fuck you doing without a gun. 1.00

01:17:22.000 So that's an interesting point. 1.00

01:17:24.000 The other good statistical analysis to do is, okay, when there's high amounts of concealed carry, what does that do to crime rates?

01:17:32.000 And the correlation is there's less crime.

01:17:35.000 Now, it's not fair to say that's a causation.

01:17:37.000 That would be intellectually dishonest.

01:17:39.000 But it's an important correlation to note.

01:17:42.000 It's also important to note, okay, per capita, places like Switzerland and Israel have far, far more gun ownership than we do.

01:17:48.000 People don't realize that.

01:17:50.000 Is that true?

01:17:51.000 Yeah.

01:17:52.000 Switzerland?

01:17:52.000 I wouldn't come in here and lie to you.

01:17:54.000 I know, but I'm stunned.

01:17:55.000 It's a rhetorical question.

01:17:58.000 Now, somebody would counter-argon that and say, no, those are government weapons issued to people.

01:18:03.000 Yeah, fine, but they still are with the people.

01:18:06.000 The people have the guns, and they're at a rate higher than the United States.

01:18:10.000 I thought they were neutral over there.

01:18:12.000 Yeah, yeah, but that's how they stay neutral.

01:18:16.000 They have almost no crime.

01:18:17.000 Almost no crime.

01:18:18.000 Israel, too.

01:18:19.000 Almost no crime.

01:18:19.000 Except for the obvious issues that Israel has in general with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

01:18:24.000 But as a criminal act, they have very little crimes.

01:18:27.000 This is interesting.

01:18:28.000 So you combine that with what we know about concealed carry data here in the United States, how do you solve this problem?

01:18:36.000 The other thing to think about is, The vast majority, over 50% of all gun crime, it happens in like 2% of all counties.

01:18:45.000 So it's highly concentrated.

01:18:48.000 So as we look to solve this problem, we do have to really peel back some layers here.

01:18:52.000 Who is committing the crime?

01:18:54.000 Where is it happening?

01:18:55.000 Why is it happening?

01:18:57.000 We can detect the tools, but it's so far from self-evident that that would work.

01:19:01.000 Again, going back to ARs, they're responsible for less than 3% of gun deaths.

01:19:05.000 And also, let's say you banned them, are you actually stopping 3% of gun deaths?

01:19:09.000 No.

01:19:10.000 Because why don't they just use another gun?

01:19:12.000 Why don't they use a different weapon?

01:19:13.000 Why don't they use a truck? 0.96

01:19:15.000 If they want to kill, they can kill.

01:19:17.000 The horror that we're seeing is that they like to kill this way.

01:19:21.000 And maybe that's, like, why is that?

01:19:23.000 And again, I go back to Columbine.

01:19:25.000 It all started with that, and that's interesting.

01:19:27.000 We should look at that and, like, what is driving people to like that?

01:19:30.000 Well, I think there are a lot of people, I mean, if you look at mass shootings, a lot of these people, when you read their description, they're very disenfranchised, they're very angry, and when you're disenfranchised and very angry, there's like an archetype,

01:19:45.000 right?

01:19:46.000 There's an image that you have in your mind of shooting all these people that wronged you. 0.80

01:19:51.000 I mean, this is...

01:19:52.000 It goes back to our victimhood conversation.

01:19:53.000 Sure.

01:19:54.000 Yeah.

01:19:54.000 And blame somebody else.

01:19:55.000 Well, and then the real conversation is how many of these people are on psychotropic drugs?

01:20:00.000 And what are those drugs?

01:20:02.000 And what are the effects that those drugs have on people? 0.98

01:20:04.000 Well, when you look at the numbers, it's fucking stunning.

01:20:07.000 Whether it's anti-anxiety medications or SSRIs or amphetamines or whatever they're on that alters the chemical... 0.97

01:20:33.000 Yeah.

01:20:34.000 How many of those...

01:20:42.000 I don't know if correlation equals causation, but I do know the correlation is phenomenally high.

01:20:50.000 Yeah.

01:20:51.000 Fatherless homes, things like that.

01:20:53.000 Sure.

01:20:54.000 Abuse, bullying, incels, which is a new word.

01:20:59.000 Involuntary celibates.

01:21:00.000 Did you know about that?

01:21:01.000 Huh.

01:21:02.000 You didn't know about that?

01:21:03.000 I taught you about incels?

01:21:05.000 You just did.

01:21:05.000 Look at that.

01:21:06.000 Yeah, there's whole groups online on message boards that they can't believe they can't get laid. 1.00

01:21:12.000 And they're just going, fuck! 1.00

01:21:14.000 Involuntary celibates. 1.00

01:21:15.000 Yeah, they're just guys who can't get laid.

01:21:17.000 Yeah, that's just a fancy word for that. 1.00

01:21:18.000 Losers. 1.00

01:21:19.000 Well, let's not call them losers. 1.00

01:21:20.000 That's what makes them crazy. 0.88

01:21:21.000 If there's a game, there's winners and losers.

01:21:24.000 And that high school football...

01:21:27.000 Quarterback who's banging all the cheerleaders.

01:21:29.000 That guy's a winner. 0.98

01:21:31.000 It sucks that that's true. 0.68

01:21:34.000 It's so unfair. 0.97

01:21:35.000 Yeah, it is unfair.

01:21:36.000 I'm hoping genetic engineering fixes all that in the future.

01:21:40.000 But this is what you're dealing with a lot of times, is these guys that got a really shitty roll of the dice.

01:21:46.000 And there's no other way to describe it.

01:21:48.000 They got handed a terrible hand of cards.

01:21:51.000 And some of them are pilled up and angry and abused, and they have access to guns.

01:21:57.000 And then next thing you know, there's a mass shooting.

01:21:59.000 Right.

01:22:00.000 And then, again, going back to the victim of a conversation, maybe they weren't dealt a bad hand, but they also tell themselves the wrong story about why that is and who's to blame.

01:22:08.000 And that narrative just seeps within them and it creates this.

01:22:12.000 I mean, you're absolutely right.

01:22:14.000 When Bernie Sanders was on here, there was one thing I thought I agreed with him on, which is we have to look at the effects of these drugs and really what they are.

01:22:20.000 I don't see anything wrong with that.

01:22:22.000 Yeah.

01:22:22.000 Well, it's amazing how much blowback you get from that, and it's by people that want to look at the guns.

01:22:27.000 They just want to say, no, no, no, why are you talking about psychotropic drugs?

01:22:30.000 It's the guns.

01:22:31.000 No, I'm talking about the guns, too.

01:22:33.000 I mean, I don't necessarily think that really angry, volatile people that have criminal records should have guns.

01:22:39.000 I think they shouldn't.

01:22:40.000 Right.

01:22:40.000 And we already outlawed that.

01:22:42.000 Yes, we do.

01:22:43.000 And we probably should, you know, have some understanding of who you are before we give you a gun.

01:22:49.000 The real question is, what is that understanding?

01:22:51.000 And how do we go about doing that?

01:22:53.000 And how do we keep people from making these incredibly rigid rules?

01:22:56.000 I mean, particularly regionally, right?

01:22:58.000 If you have states that decide to have incredibly rigid rules that proclude most people from having guns.

01:23:05.000 Yeah.

01:23:05.000 That can be possible if they just devise their own tests and you're honest about your perspectives on things.

01:23:12.000 And that's the fear, and it's an honest fear to have.

01:23:15.000 What is the limit?

01:23:16.000 If you're on psychotropic drugs, should you be barred from having weapons?

01:23:19.000 Of course not.

01:23:21.000 You know, and how do you manage that?

01:23:25.000 And the way we do it now, again, you have to have committed a crime of some sort.

01:23:29.000 There's other things, too.

01:23:31.000 If you abuse medication, if you abuse medication, then I think according to federal law, you're barred from...

01:23:43.000 I think dishonorable discharge from the military, things like that.

01:23:46.000 So there's already a lot of standards that actually preclude you from buying a weapon.

01:23:51.000 And there would be a very vigorous debate on how you add more standards to that.

01:23:58.000 Dishonorable discharge keeps you from buying a weapon?

01:24:00.000 That's what I've read.

01:24:01.000 We can fact check that.

01:24:03.000 That's interesting.

01:24:03.000 I didn't know that one.

01:24:04.000 I thought you had to have a felony. 0.89

01:24:08.000 Maybe.

01:24:09.000 It makes sense.

01:24:10.000 But there's no answers.

01:24:12.000 This is the thing that I came up with.

01:24:16.000 Is there something, Jamie?

01:24:21.000 Dishonorable discharge and NFA. What's an NFA firearm?

01:24:26.000 NFA refers to the National Firearms Act, so that's what banned automatic weapons.

01:24:32.000 Based on a general court-martial conviction, a person who was convicted of a crime that is punishable by imprisonment for more than one year, including dishonorable discharge, is prohibited.

01:24:42.000 Okay, that's where we're headed from.

01:24:43.000 Yes, okay.

01:24:44.000 That's what it is.

01:24:45.000 So it is true.

01:24:46.000 So if you're imprisoned, not just a dishonorable discharge.

01:24:49.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:50.000 There's a lot of people dishonorably discharged that probably...

01:24:54.000 Not violently.

01:24:55.000 You know, they're not violent offenders.

01:24:56.000 What's disturbing talking to you, talking to Bernie, talking to Tulsi, talking to everybody is nobody has a solution.

01:25:02.000 I mean, with all the brightest minds that are thinking about this all the time, no one has one thing that makes sense.

01:25:09.000 This gets to a very deep question about what are – and I think I briefly touched on this before.

01:25:14.000 Like, why does government exist and what are we capable of solving and what needs to be solved by ourselves?

01:25:19.000 You know, there are – and what is just inherent to human nature?

01:25:23.000 And it's evil and we hate it and we don't want it to be there, but it is.

01:25:27.000 And is it appropriate for us to scream to our politicians and say, save us?

01:25:32.000 And sometimes it is.

01:25:33.000 Sometimes we can solve it.

01:25:34.000 We should try.

01:25:35.000 But we have to do it with some kind of constrained vision, as Thomas Sowell would put it, about what is possible, and then let's be reasonable about what is possible, and hit those two categories I said.

01:25:48.000 Are we infringing on the rights of everyone for the sake of doing this?

01:25:52.000 And second, is it going to actually solve the problem?

01:25:55.000 Those are very important questions, and if we don't frame the debate within those, I think we're not doing justice to the problem itself.

01:26:04.000 True, but again, no one seems to have any logical course, any logical, clear path.

01:26:12.000 Like, this is how we're going to reduce gun violence.

01:26:15.000 This is how we're going to stop mass shootings.

01:26:17.000 I mean, other than arming all these public places. 0.98

01:26:20.000 I was in Rome recently, and when you go there, it's fucking stunning.

01:26:24.000 There's military vehicles, guys with... 0.95

01:26:27.000 Guns just strapped, ready to rock, just standing by all over the place. 0.53

01:26:31.000 It didn't used to be that way.

01:26:33.000 No, it didn't.

01:26:33.000 And I was like, wow, this is a very...

01:26:37.000 It's, you know, you're trying to enjoy yourself when you're on vacation, you're checking all these ancient buildings, and then you're like, oh, fucking guns, military, tank, look at that, you know? 0.91

01:26:48.000 Yeah, and it's, I wish it wasn't that way. 0.97

01:26:51.000 Yeah, we all do.

01:26:52.000 And, but again, like, you know, you're right, we don't, we don't, we haven't come up with perfect solutions.

01:26:59.000 We have some ideas that I think would mitigate these threats, and we've discussed those at length.

01:27:04.000 But none of them seem tangible.

01:27:06.000 Everything seems like just talk.

01:27:08.000 Well, the TAPS Act that I talked about, I think, is perfectly tangible.

01:27:12.000 Again, it won't solve everything, but it mitigates something.

01:27:15.000 I think armed security at schools, I think, certainly mitigates things as far as school safety goes.

01:27:20.000 So, no, I don't think it's just talk.

01:27:23.000 I think those are tangible things, and I think they're perfectly reasonable.

01:27:28.000 People just are so reluctant to think that we need armed guards at school and I understand and I'm thinking about it myself.

01:27:35.000 Is that really what it's going to take?

01:27:37.000 Armed guards at school?

01:27:39.000 I went to high school in Bogota, Colombia, so we had armed, like, a lot of armed guards at our school.

01:27:44.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:27:45.000 You grew up over...

01:27:46.000 Your dad was a banker?

01:27:47.000 It's not foreign to me at all.

01:27:47.000 Is that what it was?

01:27:48.000 No.

01:27:48.000 Oil business?

01:27:49.000 No, oil.

01:27:50.000 He's a petroleum engineer.

01:27:51.000 Yeah.

01:27:52.000 So we moved.

01:27:52.000 My life growing up was between Houston and overseas, back and forth.

01:27:57.000 That ought to be very bizarre.

01:27:58.000 Yeah, it was fun.

01:27:59.000 I mean, I don't regret a minute of it.

01:28:02.000 It can be hard at times, moving around a lot.

01:28:04.000 How good is your Spanish?

01:28:05.000 It used to be better.

01:28:06.000 It's not bad.

01:28:07.000 I'll do an interview in Spanish.

01:28:08.000 Oh, really?

01:28:09.000 It's not bad by any means, but it's not great.

01:28:12.000 So you can go to a taqueria and hang.

01:28:14.000 I can totally hang.

01:28:15.000 I speak really well conversational Spanish.

01:28:18.000 My Spanish, it's harder when I'm talking complex policy issues because I didn't learn that kind of Spanish.

01:28:24.000 Right, right, right.

01:28:25.000 But yeah, pretty good.

01:28:28.000 One of the things that you said that you disagreed with Bernie on was lobbyists.

01:28:32.000 Yeah.

01:28:33.000 Well, I disagree with his notion that everything is attributable to some kind of corporate greed and therefore lobbyists.

01:28:39.000 It's just not the source of our problems.

01:28:41.000 It contributes to it in some ways, for sure.

01:28:43.000 These are selfish actors.

01:28:45.000 They have a role, right?

01:28:47.000 They're advocating for a specific thing.

01:28:51.000 But I think politicians like to point to them as like the bogeyman, let's just blame them for everything.

01:29:01.000 That has not been my experience.

01:29:03.000 It has not been my experience that these lobbyists have any kind of excessive control over politicians.

01:29:09.000 I just don't see that.

01:29:11.000 A corporate PAC can give you $5,000.

01:29:14.000 That's it.

01:29:15.000 I mean, in no way, shape, or form can they buy anybody off.

01:29:20.000 It's also a very transparent form of doing things.

01:29:22.000 There's this other talking point that it's all dark money.

01:29:25.000 That's just not true.

01:29:26.000 A corporate PAC is a group of people who work for a corporation.

01:29:28.000 They pool their money together.

01:29:29.000 They can't use company profits.

01:29:30.000 Just to be clear, it's just personal money.

01:29:32.000 And they have limits on what they can donate to that own PAC. And then they use that to advocate for whatever is important to that business.

01:29:39.000 Where do you work?

01:29:40.000 I'll ask you, what industry are you in?

01:29:42.000 And they'll give me whatever industry.

01:29:43.000 And I'll say, you definitely have a PAC lobbying for you on Capitol Hill.

01:29:47.000 And they'll just point out bills.

01:29:49.000 They'll say, listen, this is problematic in this one.

01:29:51.000 This would hurt our workers.

01:29:52.000 This would do this.

01:29:53.000 Put us out of business.

01:29:54.000 Don't do that.

01:29:55.000 That's it. 0.97

01:29:56.000 And so, yeah, they're selfish actors. 0.88

01:29:59.000 Don't get me wrong.

01:30:00.000 But they're advocating for their thing.

01:30:02.000 But that's also our democracy.

01:30:04.000 Individuals can donate more.

01:30:07.000 No, so an individual cap is $2,800 to a campaign, and then a couple, like you and your wife, can double that.

01:30:14.000 Okay, so it's basically the same as a pack.

01:30:16.000 It's basically the same.

01:30:17.000 It's only $5,000-ish.

01:30:20.000 Yep.

01:30:20.000 That's the maximum.

01:30:21.000 That is the maximum.

01:30:22.000 But...

01:30:23.000 There's also influence that comes with that on top of financial.

01:30:28.000 There's also influence in terms of just cronyism and people reciprocating, getting along with each other and working, you know, establishing long-term relationships where they agree on things and they make deals.

01:30:42.000 And they make deals that might not necessarily be in the best interest of people.

01:30:46.000 Deals in terms of, like, what businesses get subsidies, what businesses don't get subsidies, what things get negotiated, what don't...

01:30:53.000 Like, here's a perfect example.

01:30:55.000 That's exactly why I think we should have a less powerful government that can't be bought off like that.

01:30:59.000 Yes.

01:31:00.000 You know, if you want government...

01:31:02.000 Because cronyism certainly happens, right?

01:31:04.000 And they'll say, listen, like, there's, you know...

01:31:05.000 And who can lobby?

01:31:08.000 It's the bigger company.

01:31:09.000 So there's some agreement here.

01:31:11.000 But it's...

01:31:13.000 I think there's somewhat a misunderstanding of what's really happening.

01:31:16.000 So...

01:31:16.000 Yeah, a big business can lobby.

01:31:20.000 And then they'll ask for more regulation.

01:31:22.000 And then who does that really hurt?

01:31:24.000 It hurts their smaller competitors.

01:31:25.000 So the answer is actually, who's at fault here?

01:31:29.000 It's the fact that government's trying to excessively regulate so much.

01:31:32.000 And it creates a situation where there's no longer competition.

01:31:37.000 And that's a real problem.

01:31:39.000 Now, that excessive influence, though, again, it's hard.

01:31:44.000 It's not something I've seen because there's a lot of competition for influence.

01:31:48.000 Anybody can come to your office and they all disagree.

01:31:51.000 There's all these different interests that actually compete with one another and they represent different interests.

01:31:57.000 So it's not self-evident to me that that influence is certainly not bought.

01:32:02.000 And I don't necessarily believe it's excessive either.

01:32:07.000 It's just not what I've seen.

01:32:08.000 Maybe they just don't come to me.

01:32:12.000 I think it was Northwestern University did a study recently where they showed the public support for policies and public support for bills and how low the public support is in comparison to things that get passed.

01:32:31.000 It was things that the public absolutely wanted, like across the board, had something in the range of a 30% chance of getting passed through.

01:32:41.000 Whereas there's many things that the public absolutely did not want across the board also had a 30% chance of getting through.

01:32:48.000 And they were talking about the various influences that lead to these policies getting passed.

01:32:54.000 Now the argument is that you're electing representatives, those representatives don't do you justice and pass bills and Inact policies that would help your community and help you, then you elect them out of office.

01:33:09.000 But the damage gets done while they're there.

01:33:12.000 And the idea is that these people would then go on from there once they've established that influence and once they've helped these people get jobs in the corporate sector, get jobs that represent what they've done for those corporations while they were a representative supposedly of the people.

01:33:32.000 Yeah, I think that's a...

01:33:34.000 You'd have to really dig into what issue they're talking about and what issue is not supported by the public.

01:33:39.000 I mean, you'd have to unpack those statistics, I think, to really understand what's happening there.

01:33:44.000 But I think that's too cynical of a way to look at politicians.

01:33:49.000 I just don't feel that way about my colleagues on the left or the right.

01:33:52.000 How long have you been a congressman?

01:33:54.000 Seven months.

01:33:55.000 Maybe it's like nine months in, they start coming to you.

01:33:58.000 Maybe.

01:33:59.000 No, we meet with them.

01:34:00.000 It's just like they don't have this influence.

01:34:02.000 You know, they're not...

01:34:03.000 I mean, listen, they present – one, they generally meet with the lobbyists that they already agree with you.

01:34:10.000 And they're generally bringing up very minute things that you just would never know about if they didn't bring that to you.

01:34:18.000 Well, there's some bills that get passed, like here's one, right?

01:34:22.000 Medicaid.

01:34:22.000 Medicaid spends billions of dollars on drugs for the elderly and people that can't afford them.

01:34:28.000 Billions of dollars.

01:34:28.000 But by law, the government's not allowed to negotiate the price of those drugs.

01:34:33.000 Okay, so the price negotiations issue.

01:34:36.000 How did that happen?

01:34:39.000 Well, how did it happen?

01:34:41.000 Well, it was never a thing to begin with.

01:34:44.000 So there's an argument to be made that the government should be able to negotiate prices, right?

01:34:50.000 The question is, what is the price?

01:34:51.000 And the other thing you have to point out is there's already a strong force against the pharmaceutical industry, which is the insurance companies.

01:34:58.000 Because they have an interest in making sure that price is as low as possible.

01:35:02.000 They're fighting all the time against the pharmaceutical companies.

01:35:05.000 In the healthcare industry, all of these groups are often pitted against each other.

01:35:08.000 And then as politicians, we kind of look at all of them and we say, all right, what are your arguments?

01:35:12.000 What are your arguments?

01:35:15.000 Is what you're saying really makes sense?

01:35:16.000 And then we have to make those decisions based on the overall good, but you're going to piss everybody off when you do that.

01:35:22.000 Especially with healthcare, because a lot of these groups are pitted against each other.

01:35:25.000 So you've got insurance already pitted against pharmacy.

01:35:29.000 It becomes a pretty good question, like, what is government's role there?

01:35:32.000 Because when I first looked at this problem, I said, yeah, yeah, just negotiate it.

01:35:37.000 Well, that makes sense.

01:35:39.000 I learned a lot more.

01:35:40.000 I learned a lot more.

01:35:41.000 And it's not because I met with any lobbyists.

01:35:44.000 It has nothing to do with that.

01:35:45.000 It's because I meet with healthcare professionals and experts who know this issue really well and economists who And it's very far from self-evident that this would work, and it's far from self-evident that it would be beneficial at all and actually make a difference.

01:35:58.000 When we look at the differences in healthcare spending between us and other countries, the drug prices actually have very little to do with that.

01:36:05.000 They're able to negotiate those, but they also get last choice for medicine.

01:36:10.000 When you look at Great Britain and Canada, they're not getting the premier new drugs like we have in the United States.

01:36:16.000 We get screwed as Americans because the patent laws are not enforced in these other countries.

01:36:21.000 So our pharmaceutical companies They immediately get ripped off in other countries.

01:36:27.000 And that's a problem.

01:36:28.000 That should be something we fix.

01:36:30.000 They get ripped off in that they've done the research to create these drugs and these other companies in other countries just copy these drugs because they have socialized medicine and their obligation is to provide medicine to the people.

01:36:42.000 So their obligation is to – they don't care about these copyrights.

01:36:46.000 They just care about getting medicine to the people.

01:36:48.000 Now, some people would argue that that is in favor of the population, in favor of the people that need health care.

01:36:54.000 I would argue it's not sustainable, though.

01:36:56.000 It might make you feel good, but it's not going to do good in the long run.

01:36:58.000 But if they still profit.

01:36:59.000 Even if they're...

01:37:00.000 Well, they're profiting because they're charging...

01:37:03.000 Well, America's basically paying for this. 0.98

01:37:05.000 Right, okay.

01:37:05.000 Which is why it's important for trade agreements to say, hey, you guys have to enforce the same patent laws that we have.

01:37:12.000 Otherwise, this is not a sustainable situation.

01:37:15.000 Because eventually you don't make a profit, right?

01:37:17.000 Right.

01:37:18.000 And that's not fair for America.

01:37:20.000 So the new NAFTA deal was negotiated this way, the USMCA, addressing some of these concerns, for instance.

01:37:26.000 And that's the right thing to do.

01:37:28.000 You have to align incentives when you're talking about any policy.

01:37:33.000 We have to dig a few layers.

01:37:34.000 It's never as simple as Bernie Sanders says it is.

01:37:37.000 It never is.

01:37:38.000 He always makes it out to be so simple.

01:37:39.000 It's greed.

01:37:40.000 Everything is attributable to greed.

01:37:41.000 Everything is attributable to 1%.

01:37:43.000 They own you. 0.84

01:37:44.000 They own the lobbyists.

01:37:45.000 They own all this.

01:37:46.000 Listen, there's elements of truth in all of that, but my point is it's just not the overarching thing.

01:37:52.000 There's so much more complexities to that, and we have to have those conversations.

01:37:58.000 Instead, what we see is just very extreme talking points.

01:38:03.000 First of all, very extreme interpretations of the actual problem.

01:38:07.000 And therefore leading to very extreme solutions to that problem.

01:38:10.000 If you say the world's ending in 12 years, then why not have a Green New Deal? 1.00

01:38:14.000 You're operating off of a premise that is highly extreme.

01:38:17.000 And it's not healthy political discourse.

01:38:20.000 It's meant to animate people.

01:38:22.000 It's meant to get people upset and to have a villain.

01:38:25.000 It always comes back to the villain and the oppressor and oppressed.

01:38:29.000 It always comes back to this.

01:38:31.000 Everything somebody like Bernie Sanders says can be traced to this specific ideology where one person is to blame or one institution is to blame.

01:38:38.000 And I think that's an extremely unhealthy way to look at things and also intellectually dishonest. 0.95

01:38:43.000 I don't know the parameters of a Green New Deal, the New Green Deal, whatever the fuck it is, but you hear it all the time. 0.89

01:38:49.000 What is the idea behind this? 0.91

01:38:52.000 At its core, a complete shift to wind and solar at its core.

01:38:58.000 So an idea that if you do that, you will have zero emissions in the next 10 years.

01:39:04.000 But it's an obsession with wind and solar, which I think is interesting.

01:39:07.000 It bans nuclear.

01:39:08.000 Remember when the talking points came out from the Green New Deal? 0.62

01:39:10.000 Didn't like nuclear.

01:39:12.000 So that's how you know it's not an actual environmental plan, or at least associated with carbon emissions and climate change, because why would you ban the one reliable piece of energy that we have that has zero emissions, which is nuclear?

01:39:25.000 So you know it's not about that.

01:39:26.000 It also includes free healthcare for everybody.

01:39:28.000 It includes free college.

01:39:30.000 So it's like every socialist plan wrapped into one, and then they call it an environmental plan.

01:39:47.000 Yeah, there is.

01:39:55.000 We're good to go.

01:40:15.000 It's true, but we do have the technology to make them good, and I think we should look at ways to research more the miniaturized modular nuclear devices that are being looked at.

01:40:24.000 I want a nuclear car.

01:40:26.000 Maybe we can get you one. 1.00

01:40:27.000 That would be shit. 0.99

01:40:27.000 We don't have them yet. 0.99

01:40:28.000 Can you imagine?

01:40:29.000 You should have a nuclear car, Joe.

01:40:30.000 Why don't you have a nuclear car?

01:40:31.000 What about a nuclear flamethrower?

01:40:34.000 Now we're getting crazy.

01:40:35.000 Okay.

01:40:36.000 So the new green deal is just wind and solar.

01:40:40.000 It concentrates on just windmills and solar.

01:40:42.000 And the idea is to replace the grid with some sort of...

01:40:45.000 I mean, California, it seems like it could be possible.

01:40:47.000 Like, you could just put solar panels on everybody's roof in California.

01:40:50.000 You'd probably reduce the amount of electricity that we need from the grid radically.

01:40:56.000 Yeah, it gets complicated because you don't have sun at night.

01:40:59.000 And so this is the complication with wind and solar in general is that you need battery backup to really make this work.

01:41:06.000 And that technology just isn't there.

01:41:09.000 The theoretical- It's just not there.

01:41:11.000 I mean, people live off the grid with solar power.

01:41:15.000 To do that, but when they don't, when there is no sun, the plants shift to either natural gas or coal or something else.

01:41:22.000 But here, this is a perfect example.

01:41:24.000 Like here, this is a goofy place to live because it doesn't rain.

01:41:28.000 We have sun every day.

01:41:29.000 But not at night.

01:41:31.000 But 12 hours of sun is enough.

01:41:34.000 Well, only if you have the batteries to store it.

01:41:37.000 And we don't right now.

01:41:40.000 If you want to shift the entire energy grid to that, we do not have the massive amounts of...

01:41:46.000 There's some good data on this.

01:41:48.000 I don't have it off the top of my head, but it's massive.

01:41:50.000 There's a massive amount of batteries and farms to actually hold that.

01:41:53.000 There's an energy density problem with wind and solar.

01:41:56.000 It's a physics problem.

01:41:57.000 So the science can only go so far.

01:41:59.000 And even the theoretical limit to how much a battery can hold, which we haven't discovered yet, but it's a theoretical capacity of a battery.

01:42:08.000 It would still make it very difficult to actually do this.

01:42:11.000 And so it's just not realistic.

01:42:14.000 Also, there's other consequences to wind and solar, like massive wind turbines.

01:42:21.000 Some people don't like those things.

01:42:23.000 Massive amounts of space needed for solar, and also, where are you going to get the special materials needed for solar panels?

01:42:31.000 There's other consequences to this.

01:42:35.000 And it's not self-evident that that's the only possible way to do it.

01:42:40.000 It's not that we should shun it, okay?

01:42:42.000 Nobody's saying that.

01:42:43.000 We advocate for an all-in-above approach.

01:42:46.000 If our goal is less carbon emissions, then we need to be focusing on 100% of carbon emissions, meaning the world's carbon emissions.

01:42:53.000 The Green New Deal focuses on 15% of carbon emissions.

01:42:55.000 Basically says, let's kneecap the United States economy.

01:42:58.000 We'll destroy fossil fuels.

01:43:00.000 We'll have a utopian society full of wind and solar, even though the batteries don't exist to make that work.

01:43:04.000 But, hey, we'll make it work.

01:43:05.000 And then that solves 15% of the problem and has almost no effect on the actual climate.

01:43:11.000 So when I say 100% of the problem, what I'm saying is technological innovation, whether that's nuclear or carbon capture.

01:43:16.000 If the goal is less carbon, then let's actually focus on carbon capture.

01:43:21.000 So I just dropped a bill, Senator Cornyn did on the Senate side, called the Leading Act.

01:43:26.000 And it basically repurposes grant funds in the Department of Energy to focus on carbon capture for natural gas plants.

01:43:34.000 So we have natural gas plants in Texas that are zero emissions.

01:43:36.000 They take in natural gas, they operate the facility, they create electricity, and then they recapture that carbon and they power the facility with it.

01:43:44.000 Zero emissions.

01:43:45.000 So if our goal is zero emissions, let's do what works.

01:43:48.000 And also, by the way, that plant can keep going no matter what.

01:43:51.000 It doesn't matter what time of day it is.

01:43:52.000 I didn't know that that existed.

01:43:53.000 That's amazing.

01:43:54.000 It's called net power.

01:43:55.000 We talked about something on the podcast before just as a joke.

01:43:57.000 I was saying, why don't they just make a giant building but make an air filter?

01:44:01.000 Like a huge building the size of an air filter.

01:44:04.000 Carbon capture.

01:44:05.000 Yeah, huge air filter the size of a building.

01:44:08.000 But apparently they're doing that.

01:44:09.000 Apparently China is in the process of building things like that.

01:44:13.000 I've heard of some things in China because they have an air pollution problem that's different from carbon.

01:44:20.000 Because carbon dioxide, you're breathing it right now.

01:44:22.000 You're not polluting it necessarily.

01:44:24.000 So they've got a different problem and they're just a mess.

01:44:26.000 So that might be what they're doing.

01:44:28.000 But on the carbon capture side, it's definitely happening.

01:44:31.000 It's all the oil companies actually doing it because there's actually an interest in the oil and gas industry to reduce carbon emissions.

01:44:36.000 There's a huge interest.

01:44:38.000 I mean, they realize where the conversation is going and we should encourage that.

01:44:41.000 So there's Pretty impressive big projects going on by a lot of these folks.

01:44:47.000 So your take is that what the Green New Deal is—I mean, if I can encapsulate it—the Green New Deal is basically more of an emotional plea to people that are worried about the future and that sea, wind, and solar as being free and clean alternatives.

01:45:04.000 It's a dogmatic approach to those.

01:45:06.000 It's not based in— Makes people feel good.

01:45:09.000 It's a feel-good thing, and it really shouldn't make them feel good, just because of all the consequences I said about wind and solar.

01:45:15.000 These aren't necessarily clean by themselves.

01:45:18.000 It also involves conflict minerals, right, that you need for these batteries.

01:45:21.000 That's what I was getting at, too.

01:45:22.000 Yeah, like, where do you mine these things?

01:45:24.000 It's not in the United States.

01:45:26.000 It's not in the United States where we have child labor laws. 0.98

01:45:29.000 It's Afghanistan, it's the Congo, it's a lot of places that have these. 0.99

01:45:32.000 Good intentions often lead to bad things.

01:45:35.000 So look at the ethanol issue.

01:45:36.000 When we decided that we wanted ethanol in our gasoline, well, I think it was, I want to say it's Indonesia or Malaysia, but they cleared tons and tons of forest to make room so that they could produce the ethanol oil.

01:45:50.000 Carbon emissions there increased rapidly because of that.

01:45:54.000 All because of our good intentions.

01:45:56.000 And these incentives and these second and third order effects, they matter and we have to think about them when we're talking about policy.

01:46:02.000 And if our goal, again, if our goal is less emissions, then let's be thoughtful about how we approach that.

01:46:07.000 Let's not decide on a solution and then look for reasons to back up that solution.

01:46:12.000 Is there any other things that are on the horizon that make sense in terms of trying to mitigate all the problems that we have with carbon emissions in this country?

01:46:23.000 Is there anything else that people are working on?

01:46:26.000 I listed a lot of them.

01:46:27.000 The carbon capture technology, I think, is the most promising because it's profitable.

01:46:31.000 You can sell carbon.

01:46:32.000 There's a big market for carbon.

01:46:34.000 So they can use it in cities?

01:46:36.000 Can they use it other places other than plants, like you were talking about the natural gas plants?

01:46:40.000 Yeah, well, you want to focus something like carbon capture on the places that emit the most carbon.

01:46:46.000 That's why it's generally focused on...

01:46:48.000 The plants themselves, I think.

01:46:51.000 So something like net power just makes the most sense.

01:46:55.000 Yeah, so I think that's still the right way to go.

01:46:58.000 The other, natural gas too.

01:47:01.000 So here's another statistic.

01:47:02.000 The Department of Energy has done a study on this.

01:47:04.000 If you replaced coal-burning plants or the boilers, coal-burning boilers in China and India with natural gas, meaning we have all the natural gas in the world, by the way, in Texas.

01:47:13.000 We can export it for decades to come.

01:47:15.000 Some We're good to go.

01:47:40.000 But when you say fracking, immediately.

01:47:42.000 Red flag, right?

01:47:44.000 I saw that movie Gasland.

01:47:45.000 People are lighting their water on fire.

01:47:47.000 There's obviously consequences to natural gas extraction through fracking as well, including earthquakes.

01:47:54.000 Yeah, it's pretty rare.

01:47:55.000 All of these factors have to combine for an earthquake to actually happen.

01:47:59.000 And also the technology has progressed a huge amount.

01:48:02.000 Haven't they radically increased the amount of earthquakes in places like Oklahoma just because of fracking?

01:48:06.000 Yeah, and they decided that fracking did have something to do with that, but they've also figured out how to make sure that doesn't happen.

01:48:11.000 How do they make sure they don't drill on the ground?

01:48:13.000 I don't know the details.

01:48:14.000 There's just ways to do it.

01:48:16.000 In the early days, I think there were some problems.

01:48:18.000 The water setting on fire, that had nothing to do with fracking, as it turned out.

01:48:21.000 That was debunked.

01:48:23.000 Something else.

01:48:24.000 Some kind of methane emission that wasn't related to the fracking, if I recall, how that conversation ended up playing out.

01:48:32.000 That seems like a big factor. 0.98

01:48:34.000 I feel like we should know what the fuck that factor was. 0.98

01:48:38.000 I would say to people, fracking happens a lot. 0.98

01:48:43.000 The technology has moved on quite a bit.

01:48:47.000 It's pretty safe.

01:48:48.000 Was the problem the initial implementation of it where they weren't really dialed in?

01:48:52.000 I wouldn't argue that it was perfect.

01:48:55.000 And I know it was associated with some earthquakes, but there was a lot of other factors specific to that place.

01:49:02.000 There's not earthquakes in Texas that I'm aware of.

01:49:05.000 That's where we have in West Texas where we have most of this fracking going on. 0.86

01:49:09.000 So it's sort of like nuclear power, like the old plants.

01:49:13.000 They really didn't know what they were doing and they made some big mistakes.

01:49:16.000 I think it's probably like any technology, but I just still want to point out It caused a huge decrease in emissions.

01:49:25.000 And again, if we're looking to decrease emissions, why don't we focus on things that work?

01:49:31.000 And you have to hook people on, by people I mean the world, especially developing countries, that don't care about our dogmatic approach to wind and solar.

01:49:39.000 They never will.

01:49:41.000 But what can you do to help them get energy to keep their people out of poverty?

01:49:47.000 Because that's what they care about in a way that's reliable and cheap and market-based.

01:49:51.000 Because the only thing that's sustainable is market-based.

01:49:53.000 Sustainability is an important term here.

01:49:55.000 And I mean that not in the sense of environmental sustainability, although we are saying the same thing.

01:50:00.000 I mean it in terms of what policy will last.

01:50:03.000 And what will implode?

01:50:05.000 And it's an important question, and it's one reason I'm a Republican, because our policies, they don't feel good.

01:50:10.000 They're not based on emotional reasoning, but they are based on realistic reasoning and sustainability of that policy.

01:50:16.000 And this is a case like that.

01:50:17.000 And if you don't take into account market forces and incentives, and I think basic human nature, then we're not doing justice to the problem itself.

01:50:26.000 Now, one of the big issues that's in the news right now is the trade war with China.

01:50:32.000 I mean this is a huge issue and it's made me dive into a lot of really weird stuff with Huawei and with Chinese governments involved in various corporations and it's a hard concept to grasp for the average American citizen that The corporations in China are next to be connected to the communist government.

01:50:58.000 They work hand in hand.

01:51:01.000 They do the bidding of the government.

01:51:02.000 They work together even though they are profitable, radically profitable. 0.93

01:51:06.000 They also do things specifically at the bidding of the government, including inserting shit that can allow people to spy on people, which is why they're banning Huawei devices. 0.92

01:51:17.000 Yeah. 0.92

01:51:18.000 This is, and it all comes back to what you were talking about earlier, too, in intellectual copyright with, in terms of pharmaceutical drugs, the same thing can be said about electronics.

01:51:28.000 I mean, there's entire Apple stores in China that have nothing to do with Apple.

01:51:32.000 They don't even, they just make their own stuff and call it Apple stuff.

01:51:35.000 Thieves.

01:51:36.000 Yeah.

01:51:36.000 It's very strange, right?

01:51:38.000 Yeah.

01:51:38.000 What do you think about this sort of, like, tug of war that's going on right now that we're seeing play out publicly?

01:51:44.000 Yeah.

01:51:45.000 Well, I think the Chinese deserve every bit of it. 1.00

01:51:48.000 For all the reasons you just stated, their intellectual property theft is rampant.

01:51:52.000 And it has been for a very long time.

01:51:54.000 And we've been in this position where our business community doesn't want to bash them too bad because they want that market to be opened up.

01:52:01.000 And they'll be very conciliatory to whatever the Chinese want in order to get openings to that market.

01:52:07.000 And Trump is the first president to really say no.

01:52:11.000 Enough is enough.

01:52:13.000 I've...

01:52:15.000 I'm sorry to interrupt you, but do you think that's because he's the first person that actually has a background in business, like real big business?

01:52:21.000 That could be it.

01:52:22.000 That could be it.

01:52:23.000 I don't know why exactly, but I know he's doing it.

01:52:28.000 He's been talking about this for a very long time.

01:52:29.000 Yes, he has.

01:52:30.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:52:31.000 This isn't new to him.

01:52:32.000 Talking about this in the 90s.

01:52:33.000 He was, yeah.

01:52:34.000 And I'm not overly sympathetic to trade wars, especially with our allies.

01:52:41.000 I'm happy to see us getting to a deal with Canada and Mexico.

01:52:43.000 I don't see a point in strong-arming them.

01:52:47.000 But with China, I'm much more sympathetic to it.

01:52:49.000 And I think that should largely be bipartisan.

01:52:52.000 You don't even see Democrats slamming Trump too much for this.

01:52:55.000 But there are consequences.

01:52:57.000 And so I would like the president to be more forthright about, listen, we are going to feel some pain too because when you implement tariffs, you're affecting people's supply chains.

01:53:04.000 When you do that, you're hurting American businesses too.

01:53:07.000 There has to be a reason for that. 0.98

01:53:09.000 And the reason is the Chinese are bad actors. 1.00

01:53:11.000 And we are in sort of an economic Cold War with them.

01:53:15.000 The Chinese think in 50-year terms. 1.00

01:53:16.000 We think in 4-year terms.

01:53:18.000 They have a huge advantage in this sense.

01:53:19.000 They have a huge advantage that they can prop up their businesses and put forth their Belt and Road initiatives.

01:53:25.000 And Made in China 2025, I think, might be getting that wrong.

01:53:30.000 But...

01:53:31.000 They can manipulate public opinion to encourage those statist policies.

01:53:37.000 And there's disadvantages to that, too.

01:53:39.000 It means they're much less dynamic.

01:53:40.000 The fact that they steal everything means they'll never be competitive.

01:53:43.000 They're not truly a great...

01:53:45.000 We're good to go.

01:54:02.000 We take fights to the WTO. We actually have a good history of being successful in the WTO against the Chinese. 1.00

01:54:08.000 And we go after singular companies like Huawei.

01:54:12.000 I would like to see that.

01:54:15.000 Again, I'm sympathetic to the tariffs, but they do hurt us.

01:54:17.000 They hurt us.

01:54:18.000 There are a lot of people in my district.

01:54:19.000 Texas is a good... 0.56

01:54:37.000 It seems like a game of chicken almost.

01:54:40.000 It is.

01:54:40.000 Yeah.

01:54:44.000 It is like that.

01:54:45.000 That's so crazy.

01:54:46.000 This is how international business gets done.

01:54:48.000 It seems so bizarre to a dummy like me sitting on the sidelines going, what are these guys doing?

01:54:54.000 And there's no playbook that tells you exactly how you should go forth with this.

01:55:01.000 There just isn't.

01:55:03.000 And it makes it harder.

01:55:06.000 You've got to take a lot of things into account and have a good end goal in mind.

01:55:10.000 And I think we could do a better job of having that.

01:55:12.000 But in the end, holistically, I'm more sympathetic to being hard on the Chinese. 1.00

01:55:19.000 I'm realizing as we're talking that I never really continued my thoughts on censorship in the media and I wanted to know what you think could be done in terms of how how you could stop particularly conservative voices from being silenced on social media and what could be done do you think that like government regulation should be enacted like what what should be done to stop because there's a bunch of stuff that's gone on behind the scenes shadow banning and you know What do you think about that?

01:55:50.000 So Senator Hawley is looking at some legislation in the Senate on this, and I don't want to get into too much detail because I don't want to screw up the exact details of this, but it essentially gets at Section 230, which provides protections for internet platforms.

01:56:08.000 You can't be sued for libel.

01:56:10.000 Whatever you post on Facebook It's not Facebook's fault.

01:56:14.000 It protects them in a way.

01:56:17.000 And as it should, frankly.

01:56:19.000 Because how could it be Facebook's fault?

01:56:20.000 If you have a crazy comment on your YouTube video, is it your fault?

01:56:24.000 They were trying to enact that for a while.

01:56:26.000 They had released something saying that we had to be in charge of the comments on our page.

01:56:31.000 I remember that.

01:56:32.000 It's crazy.

01:56:33.000 Jamie and I talked about it.

01:56:34.000 I was like, we're just going to shut the comments down because otherwise we're going to go to jail. 0.99

01:56:37.000 It's just fucking crazy people are constantly posting nutty things. 0.99

01:56:42.000 Right. 0.99

01:56:42.000 And why isn't it YouTube's fault? 0.99

01:56:44.000 Why is it your fault?

01:56:44.000 Exactly.

01:56:45.000 You were going to be responsible.

01:56:46.000 Where's the blame lie?

01:56:48.000 They backed off of that, though.

01:56:50.000 As they should.

01:56:51.000 So that's that conversation.

01:56:53.000 It's the conversation of what is a platform, what is a publication?

01:56:55.000 Because you can sue the New York Times if they publish something that you don't like.

01:56:59.000 Okay, so the problem we're seeing is that Facebook and Twitter, they're acting like both.

01:57:05.000 Right.

01:57:05.000 They're trying to get the best of both worlds, where they're this open platform, but then they can also decide and act like a publisher and decide what kind of content is allowed on that platform.

01:57:15.000 And the problem is the standards they're using are utterly vague and subjective.

01:57:21.000 And then politically biased, obviously.

01:57:23.000 And so that's a real problem.

01:57:25.000 And so I think this legislation might get at kind of removing that protection and basically allowing someone to say, hey, you're being libelous.

01:57:32.000 And once that incentive is there, it's like, okay, there's a better incentive now to say we are a pure platform.

01:57:39.000 We have to have much stronger standards in the sense of clearer standards.

01:57:44.000 Maybe it's a word that you don't allow.

01:57:46.000 I don't know.

01:57:47.000 But at least be specific, because right now it's like, You know, they define hate speech in the vaguest terms possible.

01:57:52.000 Not just that.

01:57:52.000 They move the boundaries all the time.

01:57:54.000 Like, now you can get banned for life for deadnaming someone, which means, like, if I wrote something about Bruce Jenner looks cute in these heels, if I wrote that, I could get deadname banned for life from Twitter.

01:58:06.000 Like, literally, if I write Bruce Jenner looks cute in these heels in a photo of Bruce Jenner.

01:58:10.000 Oh, because he's not Bruce Jenner.

01:58:11.000 His son called him he.

01:58:12.000 Yeah.

01:58:13.000 Hilarious.

01:58:13.000 In that, uh...

01:58:14.000 Whoops.

01:58:14.000 What was it?

01:58:16.000 The Hills, when the Hills came back.

01:58:18.000 Oh, yeah?

01:58:18.000 Yeah.

01:58:19.000 His son is on.

01:58:20.000 I think he took a lot of heat for it, because he called his dad.

01:58:22.000 He said, my dad, when he became... 1.00

01:58:25.000 What the fuck? 1.00

01:58:26.000 It's his dad! 1.00

01:58:27.000 What is he supposed to say?

01:58:28.000 That's his actual dad.

01:58:29.000 I don't...

01:58:29.000 I don't know.

01:58:30.000 Oh, my God.

01:58:31.000 But that's where we've entered into this cuckoo land.

01:58:34.000 You know, you can get banned for life for dead naming, but again...

01:58:37.000 O.J. Simpson.

01:58:38.000 Hello, Twitter world.

01:58:39.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:58:40.000 Fucking kills people, and he's on there. 1.00

01:58:42.000 No violation of terms of agreement. 1.00

01:58:43.000 We looked at the terms of service.

01:58:45.000 Seems like you're fine, Mr. Simpson.

01:58:46.000 Please rant about politics in the draft.

01:58:48.000 NFL draft.

01:58:49.000 We want to hear your picks.

01:58:51.000 I don't follow him. 0.99

01:58:52.000 That's fucking awesome. 0.98

01:58:54.000 Well, Stanhope and I had an idea way back when we were hosting The Man Show. 0.96

01:58:59.000 We had this idea to have O.J. Simpson.

01:59:01.000 This was after he got acquitted.

01:59:02.000 The Man Show.

01:59:03.000 That brings back some memories.

01:59:05.000 We were going to have O.J. Simpson wrap up every episode like Mickey Rooney.

01:59:10.000 You know how Mickey Rooney sort of gives his, well, why is toothpaste always come in a tube?

01:59:14.000 You remember that?

01:59:15.000 Mickey Rooney?

01:59:16.000 Not Mickey Rooney. 1.00

01:59:17.000 What the fuck's his name? 0.99

01:59:19.000 Andy Rooney. 1.00

01:59:20.000 Andy Rooney.

01:59:20.000 Yeah, Mickey Rooney was the actor.

01:59:22.000 But Andy Rooney, we were going to have him, O.J. Simpson, just give some sort of a down-home anecdote at the end of every episode to sort of tie everything up and let you know that this fucking show is bananas. 0.99

01:59:34.000 But then the whole murderer thing. 0.98

01:59:36.000 No, the murder thing was before that.

01:59:37.000 This was way after the murder thing.

01:59:39.000 Oh, okay.

01:59:39.000 This was in like 2002. Okay.

01:59:41.000 But then, you know, Comedy Central shot it down, but now you can actually get that on Twitter.

01:59:48.000 I mean, that is what he's doing.

01:59:50.000 He's pretending like he never murdered anybody, and he's just, hello, Twitter world, and he's doing this thing.

01:59:56.000 Well, I mean, it's not clear to me that we should ban him.

02:00:00.000 Why would we?

02:00:03.000 Again, free speech is a very specifically protected thing.

02:00:07.000 It matters to us.

02:00:09.000 This is the question.

02:00:10.000 Is it free speech when it's a company that owns this platform?

02:00:15.000 Should they be allowed to create their own rules?

02:00:19.000 Because this is what Twitter's done.

02:00:20.000 This is what Facebook's done.

02:00:21.000 This is what Instagram's done.

02:00:23.000 They've created their own rules as to what is and what is not acceptable.

02:00:27.000 Yeah, that's the heart of the question.

02:00:29.000 Because we've never dealt with this.

02:00:32.000 The First Amendment was always created to protect you from government infringing on your speech.

02:00:36.000 Because we always assumed that government would be the only thing powerful enough to actually infringe on your free speech.

02:00:42.000 We forgot about this other world that we now live in.

02:00:45.000 We didn't forget about it.

02:00:46.000 We just didn't know about it.

02:00:47.000 Where there are other entities that have very, very powerful abilities to actually infringe on your free speech.

02:00:54.000 And it's But, like you said, they are private entities.

02:00:58.000 And so is it really up to government to tell the private entity?

02:01:01.000 Are we enforcing the spirit of the First Amendment?

02:01:04.000 Or are we enforcing the First Amendment according to protecting you from government?

02:01:08.000 And that's an interesting question.

02:01:10.000 Should we enforce the spirit of the First Amendment?

02:01:13.000 I certainly think we're encouraging it.

02:01:14.000 I mean, I'm definitely very vocal about encouraging it.

02:01:18.000 And I say, you don't have a...

02:01:20.000 And Google was in front of me in a hearing the other day.

02:01:23.000 I said, and it was Google, all of them were there.

02:01:26.000 I said, you don't have a legal obligation to do what I'm telling you, but I do think you have an American obligation to actually adhere to free speech standards and to adhere to the same standards that the government adheres to, which is your speech is not protected if it incites violence directly.

02:01:40.000 It's a pretty clear standard.

02:01:42.000 Everything else is entirely vague.

02:01:45.000 And it only leads to a slippery slope.

02:01:48.000 And frankly, a very dangerous situation where we're just at each other's throats even worse.

02:01:52.000 Because not only are you yelling at each other, but you're telling certain people that their opinions are just utterly unacceptable and can't be heard at all.

02:02:00.000 If you want to create civil war, that's a really quick way to do it. 0.98

02:02:03.000 When you really disenfranchise people.

02:02:05.000 And it's just so dangerous and we just shouldn't do it.

02:02:08.000 I fully agree, and I really appreciate the way you were holding their heels to the fire on that, particularly in regards to the description of people being Nazis, right?

02:02:19.000 That was you.

02:02:19.000 You were talking about Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, who were Jewish gentlemen who were being labeled Nazis by internal memos.

02:02:27.000 Was it Google?

02:02:28.000 That was Google.

02:02:29.000 Yeah.

02:02:30.000 Yeah, and it's just so intellectually dishonest.

02:02:32.000 So intellectually dishonest, and not only that, no pushback internally.

02:02:37.000 Oh, so...

02:02:38.000 I always tell people when they're complaining about something Trump said, they're like, look at the violence he's inciting.

02:02:46.000 And I say, well, you call us all Nazis. 0.97

02:02:48.000 When you call somebody a Nazi, you are calling somebody something that we agreed as Americans to bomb and kill and destroy. 0.97

02:02:56.000 So you're labeling me with a label that we all agree should be destroyed. 0.80

02:03:00.000 Like, how is that not inciting violence?

02:03:02.000 By your standards.

02:03:04.000 Most certainly is.

02:03:05.000 I mean, it's terrible.

02:03:05.000 You take away that name, you take away the word Nazi, and there's far less targets for people to be upset about.

02:03:14.000 I mean, if you just stop using that word.

02:03:16.000 Stop using the word Nazi.

02:03:17.000 And look, there are clearly real white nationalists. 0.99

02:03:20.000 I mean, we saw that in Charlottesville when those dorks showed up in tiki torches. 0.99

02:03:24.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:03:24.000 Those are real white nationalists. 0.99

02:03:27.000 There's a lot of people that are not.

02:03:29.000 Ben Shapiro is one of them.

02:03:31.000 Not even close.

02:03:33.000 Not even close.

02:03:34.000 But it's this convenient label that once you decide that someone is the other, you dehumanize them, their perspective becomes intolerable, and you can label them as being this target.

02:03:48.000 Right, right.

02:03:49.000 And they do it to Trump, too. 0.97

02:03:50.000 I mean, this continues to be said by basically everybody running for president that Trump is a white supremacist. 0.96

02:03:57.000 And white supremacist and Nazi are practically, I think, the same thing. 0.87

02:04:02.000 I think we have an understandably deep objection to anything white supremacist, as we should.

02:04:08.000 It should be condemned totally.

02:04:09.000 And when you're calling the president that, I think you're also there for, and they often call his supporters that too.

02:04:15.000 So you're calling 60-something million people who voted for him the same thing.

02:04:18.000 I just can't imagine a worse way to engage in dialogue.

02:04:21.000 And a quicker way to escalate things to just the worst possible scenario.

02:04:28.000 But it's new.

02:04:28.000 This is not something that existed 10 years ago.

02:04:31.000 People didn't run around calling everyone a Nazi.

02:04:33.000 Like, what happened?

02:04:34.000 Right.

02:04:34.000 How did the word Nazi just get tossed around like a beach ball at a concert?

02:04:39.000 Because it's so free to use now.

02:04:41.000 And people on the left are the ones who are using it.

02:04:44.000 It's not people on the right who are labeling left-wing people Nazis.

02:04:47.000 But fascists and Nazi, that word just gets thrown out without any real comprehension or any real responsibility for the actual definition of it.

02:04:57.000 Yeah, and I don't know where the origin is.

02:05:02.000 Within like 10 years, right?

02:05:04.000 It is.

02:05:04.000 And they found the word and they liked it.

02:05:06.000 They found something effective, I think.

02:05:09.000 You know, there's...

02:05:11.000 Herbert Marcuse is sort of one of the original thinkers from the new left who said that like...

02:05:17.000 The new way of progressivism needs to be dividing people up into that other, okay?

02:05:23.000 And then not only that, but labeling them and then suppressing their speech.

02:05:27.000 So this started in the 60s, okay?

02:05:29.000 This was a policy?

02:05:31.000 No, no, no, no.

02:05:31.000 Like a left-wing thinker.

02:05:33.000 Right.

02:05:34.000 But his ideas, this was a strategy that he was – Right.

02:05:39.000 An actual strategy of suppression because the goal was to take the previously oppressed and suppress the previous oppressors.

02:05:46.000 This is how they talked about it.

02:05:48.000 Enslave the slave owners? 0.99

02:05:50.000 Right.

02:05:50.000 So in a sense, this isn't new.

02:05:52.000 This is the kind of radicalism we're seeing.

02:05:55.000 It started in the 60s.

02:05:56.000 It was imbued into our universities, and now we're seeing it manifest again and amplified, I think, by social media.

02:06:02.000 Labeling somebody a Nazi is just really an old tactic.

02:06:05.000 They're just using a different word.

02:06:07.000 I don't know.

02:06:07.000 I think if we were...

02:06:09.000 I think if we looked into history, there's probably other cases where they've continued to call us Nazis.

02:06:12.000 But it's obviously extremely prevalent now.

02:06:15.000 I mean, never to this extent, right?

02:06:16.000 And I just – I don't know why that – well, it's the rise of identity politics fundamentally.

02:06:23.000 And so – and then I think there's – it's fair because the left would say, well, there was kind of a white identity politics rise and they were given some kind of voice by Donald Trump, right?

02:06:32.000 This is what they would say.

02:06:35.000 And I think that there's probably some truth to that, and that's terrible, but I think that was a reaction.

02:06:42.000 You know, we should always point out that when you do surveys of what race relations are like in America, they were much better before than they are now.

02:06:52.000 And do we really think we've gotten more racist?

02:06:54.000 You know, like, what happened?

02:06:55.000 And this is under President Obama's presidency.

02:06:57.000 And I think that identity politics...

02:07:01.000 It just came to the forefront in the last decade in a really terrible way.

02:07:05.000 And again, I think identity politics is one of the worst things we could do to each other.

02:07:09.000 When you divide people up into different groups and talk about intersectional hierarchies of victimhood, I just think it's...

02:07:18.000 It's just dividing – because fundamentally what it is is you're dividing people up, and you're saying your group is oppressed by that group, and if you vote for me, I'll give you power over that group.

02:07:27.000 And you can trace a lot of policies to that, and this all stems from Marxist ideology where it was more socioeconomic division of groups, but that has become an ideology of intersectionality, ironically put forth by a woman named Crenshaw – Really?

02:07:47.000 Yeah, Kimberly Crenshaw.

02:07:48.000 I think she came at it from a much more academic standpoint.

02:07:51.000 I think whatever her original theory of intersectionality was has been transformed quite a bit.

02:07:58.000 But yeah, I find that interesting because I'm so opposed to that.

02:08:02.000 Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't even think it's 10 years.

02:08:05.000 I think the Nazi thing is only about four or five years old.

02:08:08.000 To the extent we're seeing it, sure.

02:08:09.000 Yeah.

02:08:10.000 So strange.

02:08:11.000 And people use it so freely.

02:08:13.000 I look at people on Twitter, use it so freely.

02:08:15.000 And they use it in regards to my guests.

02:08:18.000 They use it, say that I've had Nazis on the show.

02:08:21.000 What are you talking about?

02:08:22.000 I'm like, this is crazy. 0.94

02:08:23.000 You're calling a Jewish man a Nazi.

02:08:25.000 An Orthodox Jewish guy wears a yarmulke. 0.90

02:08:27.000 You're calling him a Nazi.

02:08:28.000 Right. 1.00

02:08:29.000 Fucking bananas. 1.00

02:08:30.000 It just doesn't make any sense. 1.00

02:08:32.000 And we're shameless about it.

02:08:34.000 The shameless about these accusations, I don't understand it.

02:08:37.000 Here's something we're probably going to disagree about.

02:08:40.000 Recreational marijuana.

02:08:41.000 You're apparently not in favor.

02:08:43.000 I really thought we were going to do a whole show with Joe Rogan and you weren't going to bring up marijuana.

02:08:47.000 How's that possible?

02:08:49.000 You're not in favor of recreational marijuana.

02:08:52.000 No, I could be convinced, but I'm not there yet.

02:08:55.000 I'll convince you right now.

02:08:56.000 Spark one up.

02:08:58.000 I don't like it.

02:09:00.000 What do you like?

02:09:00.000 I just don't like it.

02:09:02.000 I like scotch.

02:09:03.000 Okay, I like that too.

02:09:04.000 We got some of that.

02:09:05.000 We've had scotch this whole time.

02:09:07.000 Well, you gave me this amazing coffee.

02:09:09.000 That's Laird Hamilton Superfood Coffee.

02:09:11.000 It's pretty damn good, right?

02:09:12.000 It's made me so coherent.

02:09:14.000 I love it, the clarity.

02:09:15.000 Yeah, it's super good.

02:09:15.000 Well, it's got turmeric.

02:09:17.000 It reduces inflammation.

02:09:18.000 It gives you yellow lips, though.

02:09:21.000 So, I'm definitely more open to just the federal legalization of medical marijuana and all the benefits that come with that.

02:09:27.000 I think the science backs that up pretty well.

02:09:30.000 On the recreational side, I'm happy to leave that to the states.

02:09:33.000 And then there's the argument of, well, the states are having trouble with some things, the banking laws, etc., because the federal government still makes it illegal.

02:09:42.000 My issue with recreational marijuana still is – and again, this is not a strong opinion I have.

02:09:48.000 This is not a hill I'm dying on by any means.

02:09:52.000 But if we're going to change it, I want to understand what the point is and what the benefits are of it recreationally.

02:09:58.000 I understand the benefits medically very well.

02:10:00.000 But I want to understand the recreational benefits, and I want to see how this data plays out in places like California and Colorado.

02:10:07.000 I want to see if there's an increased use among young people, because there's very good science that says if you use marijuana a lot under the age of 26, you're going to have cognitive issues for the rest of your life.

02:10:17.000 Along with alcohol.

02:10:18.000 Yes.

02:10:19.000 Which is legal.

02:10:20.000 And people compare those things, but my counter isn't that...

02:10:24.000 My counter is simply this.

02:10:25.000 The alcohol issue is out of the bag.

02:10:26.000 It just is.

02:10:28.000 We're never going to put that back in.

02:10:30.000 Do you think they're going to put pot back in the bag?

02:10:33.000 Well, not necessarily.

02:10:34.000 My point is this.

02:10:35.000 There's a normalization that occurs when you legalize something.

02:10:39.000 Let's say you make the age 21. What is it in California?

02:10:43.000 I think it's 21, is it?

02:10:45.000 I think it's the same as alcohol.

02:10:46.000 So let's say you make it 21. What you've done, though, is you've normalized it for teenagers.

02:10:51.000 Because you said, well, yeah, it's 21, but it's legal, so there's no issues with it.

02:10:57.000 I think that's what you're telling people.

02:10:59.000 And there's a lot of people who can just live their lives extremely productively and smoke pot a lot.

02:11:04.000 And there's a lot of people who can't.

02:11:06.000 And there's a lot of people who don't. 1.00

02:11:07.000 Those people are lazy bitches. 1.00

02:11:09.000 Well, yeah. 1.00

02:11:10.000 Let me help you out.

02:11:11.000 You can live your life.

02:11:13.000 Listen, pot's not for everybody.

02:11:15.000 And I have a lot of friends who don't smoke pot.

02:11:17.000 But pot is a tool, just like a hammer. 1.00

02:11:19.000 You could build a house with a hammer or you could hit yourself in the dick if you're fucking crazy. 1.00

02:11:23.000 Like scotch. 1.00

02:11:24.000 You could drink scotch recreationally.

02:11:26.000 You can have a couple of glasses with some friends and have a great conversation.

02:11:29.000 And it's a social lubricant.

02:11:30.000 And people enjoy it and I enjoy it.

02:11:32.000 And that's why we got a bunch of bottles of it over there.

02:11:34.000 But don't you have to drink way more scotch to get even close to the basically cognitive incoherence that you'd be with just one bite of a brownie? 0.99

02:11:43.000 You.

02:11:44.000 You would.

02:11:45.000 But not me.

02:11:46.000 I smoke pot all the time.

02:11:48.000 I could smoke pot.

02:11:49.000 I could have smoked pot before this podcast and had the exact same podcast.

02:11:53.000 I could have had several hits. 0.79

02:11:54.000 If I gave you several hits, you'd be obliterated. 0.96

02:11:57.000 And you'd be so paranoid. 0.98

02:11:59.000 You'd be freaking out.

02:12:00.000 You'd think the government's coming to get you and you're going to close down Congress.

02:12:03.000 And oh my God, the Chinese are listening to my phone. 1.00

02:12:05.000 I think that anyway.

02:12:06.000 It's just...

02:12:08.000 A lot of it is based on our own ideas and perceptions, and I had a lot of these misconceptions in my own head.

02:12:16.000 I smoked pot maybe six times or so, seven times, before I was 30 years old.

02:12:22.000 And then when I was 30, I started hanging around with a guy who smoked a lot, my friend Eddie Bravo.

02:12:26.000 We started smoking pot together and I realized like, oh, this is an incredible tool for creativity.

02:12:31.000 Like, if you use it correctly.

02:12:33.000 And yeah, it makes you paranoid.

02:12:34.000 But I think a lot of what that paranoia is, is you being acutely aware of your vulnerability and your actual real place in the cosmos and your real place in society and the real dangers of driving cars and the real dangers of being in crowds of people.

02:12:50.000 Yeah, it's...

02:12:50.000 It's a weird, uncomfortable feeling, but ultimately you get through that and you're going to be okay.

02:12:55.000 In a culture, I just don't really have a problem with what you're saying.

02:12:59.000 I'm not cultural.

02:13:01.000 I guess on a personal level, I'm just not opposed to what you're saying at all.

02:13:05.000 From a policy level, though, I just look at things differently.

02:13:08.000 When I extract myself from the personal...

02:13:11.000 I've had with pot and I look at it from a policy perspective.

02:13:15.000 What personal situations do you have?

02:13:16.000 I've tried it.

02:13:17.000 Do you get paranoid?

02:13:18.000 I don't like it.

02:13:20.000 I really don't.

02:13:21.000 Freak out?

02:13:22.000 No, I'm not a freak out kind of person.

02:13:25.000 What happened?

02:13:25.000 What didn't you like?

02:13:28.000 It's just the sensation.

02:13:30.000 Just in general, I just really didn't like it.

02:13:32.000 I don't know.

02:13:33.000 How much did you smoke?

02:13:34.000 Too much?

02:13:36.000 What?

02:13:37.000 Sorry?

02:13:38.000 I think there's something going on with my headphones.

02:13:41.000 Okay, we can gloss over this.

02:13:44.000 But here's the problem with keeping it illegal.

02:13:47.000 Criminals sell it.

02:13:48.000 I mean, this is the same problem we had during Prohibition.

02:13:50.000 This is what propped up the mob, right?

02:13:52.000 We all know this.

02:13:52.000 This is the number one problem we have with the Mexican drug cartels.

02:13:56.000 The number one problem is that there's a goddamn customer base in the United States, and they're making billions and billions of dollars selling illegal drugs. 0.99

02:14:03.000 And what's the solution to that? 0.99

02:14:05.000 I don't know.

02:14:05.000 I mean, look, I have kids.

02:14:07.000 I don't want fucking heroin to be something you could buy at 7-Eleven. 0.99

02:14:10.000 I don't want you to be able to go to a store and buy meth, you know? 0.99

02:14:13.000 But...

02:14:14.000 That gets into a whole other conversation about all drugs, right?

02:14:16.000 All drugs.

02:14:17.000 Yeah, but those are the real dangerous ones.

02:14:18.000 Pot's not that.

02:14:19.000 And when you lie to kids and tell them that pot's the real danger and you shouldn't do it, then they start going, well, maybe you're lying about heroin.

02:14:26.000 Maybe you're lying about meth.

02:14:27.000 Maybe you're just square. 1.00

02:14:28.000 Maybe you're just some loser who just wants to be stuck in a cubicle all day and you want me to be living like you. 0.98

02:14:32.000 But it does reduce productivity, I think, more than alcohol does. 0.99

02:14:38.000 Entirely dependent upon the person.

02:14:40.000 I get paranoid and I want to do more things because I don't want to be a loser.

02:14:43.000 That's what happens to me when I smoke pot.

02:14:44.000 I think it accentuates many aspects of people that are already lazy.

02:14:49.000 If you are already lazy and you have a problem with discipline, which I don't.

02:14:53.000 If you have a problem with discipline and you smoke pot, yeah.

02:14:55.000 You're going to just want to veg out, lie in the grass and stare at the clouds.

02:14:58.000 I want to get going.

02:15:00.000 I smoke pot and go to the gym.

02:15:02.000 I mean, I do it all the time.

02:15:03.000 And again, as a policymaker, though, I have to look at the whole situation.

02:15:06.000 So I see people like you and you're like, yeah, you'd be fine.

02:15:09.000 Why not?

02:15:11.000 But I do have to take into account the entirety of the situation and ask myself, well, what is the benefit to society doing this?

02:15:17.000 It makes people nicer.

02:15:19.000 It enhances the sense of community.

02:15:21.000 It makes people more aware of their surroundings, more kinder to people.

02:15:26.000 Alcohol is much more of a social lubricant.

02:15:28.000 It definitely makes it meaner, too.

02:15:30.000 But, I mean, as far as getting along with people and going out and interacting with human beings...

02:15:34.000 It's different.

02:15:35.000 It's definitely different.

02:15:35.000 It inhibits your inhibitions.

02:15:38.000 It lowers your inhibitions.

02:15:40.000 So it allows you to talk more freely with people.

02:15:43.000 Definitely encourages more sex and more terrible decision-making and driving, too.

02:15:47.000 But the thing about marijuana...

02:15:48.000 The driving is another policy problem.

02:15:50.000 Yes.

02:15:50.000 Because, like, how do you test for it?

02:15:52.000 You know, we have a very kind of clear standards on alcohol.

02:15:54.000 It's just those...

02:15:56.000 Again, I'm not dying on this hill.

02:15:59.000 I have questions, and those questions aren't answered.

02:16:02.000 I understand, but these questions oftentimes are coming from a place of propaganda.

02:16:07.000 People have this idea of what it is versus what it really is.

02:16:09.000 I don't know.

02:16:10.000 I have personal experience with this.

02:16:12.000 I'm 35, so I've grown up around this my entire life.

02:16:17.000 But how many experiences?

02:16:20.000 Again, did you do it right?

02:16:22.000 But here's the thing.

02:16:23.000 It's the same thing with alcohol, though.

02:16:24.000 You could have driven drunk and crashed your car and go, well, alcohol's bad. 1.00

02:16:28.000 Look, I drove my car into a fucking tree. 1.00

02:16:30.000 And I go, well, hey, man, I just had a couple beers with my friends. 0.99

02:16:33.000 We had a great old time.

02:16:33.000 We laughed it up and nobody got hurt.

02:16:35.000 The difference is, again, the way to measure how much too much alcohol is is well-defined.

02:16:41.000 And we also have just hundreds of years of experience as a culture with how to figure out alcohol and how to deal with it.

02:16:46.000 Well, we used to have thousands of years of experience of how to use cannabis.

02:16:50.000 But it was suppressed in the 1930s by William Randolph Hearst and Harry Anslinger.

02:16:54.000 It was more of an economic decision than it was a public health decision.

02:16:58.000 I've heard your podcast on that.

02:17:01.000 It's interesting.

02:17:02.000 Yeah, there's many, many documentaries and books written on it.

02:17:05.000 But I think that the real problem is when you make drugs illegal, only outlaw cell drugs.

02:17:10.000 You prop up illegal enterprises.

02:17:12.000 I have a guy coming in next week.

02:17:14.000 Next month, or next week rather, John Norris, who is a guy who works for the state.

02:17:21.000 He's one of those guys that has to go around and find these illegal grow-ups on public land. 0.97

02:17:26.000 And it's fucking extremely dangerous. 0.98

02:17:27.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:17:28.000 I mean, bottom line is, my position is that's a state decision.

02:17:31.000 You know, it's a state decision.

02:17:33.000 But why not federally?

02:17:33.000 Why wouldn't it be federally legal if alcohol is federally legal?

02:17:36.000 If we know that no one's dying from it.

02:17:38.000 You can't overdose on it.

02:17:40.000 I just want to see what the data comes out as from Colorado.

02:17:42.000 It's mixed right now.

02:17:43.000 I think we need a strong education program to let people know, first of all, if you have a problem with reality, if you have schizophrenia in your family, if reality is already slippery, marijuana is not for you. 0.98

02:17:55.000 And I've personally seen people that have struggled that do have an adverse reaction to marijuana and they go off the fucking rails. 0.98

02:18:02.000 It does happen. 0.99

02:18:04.000 Particularly with edibles.

02:18:05.000 Edibles in particular.

02:18:06.000 It knocks people for a loop.

02:18:08.000 But then there's other people that it doesn't do that too.

02:18:11.000 And I think the way to study that is to have actual funding and make it legal where you could look at things across the board and figure out why.

02:18:19.000 I think as far as the battles we should fight at the federal level, we've got to start with the medical side.

02:18:24.000 I think the science is clear.

02:18:26.000 Yes.

02:18:26.000 And like, so, you know, let's start.

02:18:28.000 I mean, I just...

02:18:30.000 CBD is the gateway, right?

02:18:31.000 CBD is non-psychoactive and helps so many old people with arthritis and so many people with anxiety.

02:18:36.000 It's fantastic.

02:18:37.000 Exactly.

02:18:37.000 And just, again, another reason I'm a Republican is because I believe in somewhat slower policymaking, too.

02:18:44.000 Like, these conversations have to play out in society and we don't always need to...

02:18:53.000 Solve the problem right away.

02:18:54.000 There's a reason for that.

02:18:55.000 Things must happen slowly.

02:18:56.000 So I think the medical conversation is the one we should be fighting for.

02:19:00.000 I think the recreational side is a few steps beyond that.

02:19:03.000 And then we get to that.

02:19:04.000 And we'll know more.

02:19:06.000 And I think that's why generally when people ask me that, I'm like, the medical thing is the thing to be talking about right now.

02:19:12.000 I appreciate that conservative perspective and the slow approach to things, and I understand what you're saying.

02:19:17.000 What bothers me more than anything is that American citizens who are not doing any harm to anyone could be criminals for something that's been used by human beings for thousands of years and doesn't show any real problems.

02:19:29.000 I don't think young people should drink, but I drank when I was young.

02:19:32.000 I mean, I didn't drink a lot, but I did occasionally.

02:19:34.000 I don't think young people should smoke pot.

02:19:36.000 I definitely don't encourage it.

02:19:37.000 As a matter of fact, I deeply discourage it.

02:19:40.000 And I tell people, look, there's a reason.

02:19:41.000 One of the reasons why I enjoy it is I didn't start smoking really until I was 30. And, you know, I take time off all the time.

02:19:48.000 It's not an addictive substance to me.

02:19:50.000 It's psychologically addictive to some people.

02:19:52.000 And there might be some evidence that a very, very small percentage of people, it's physically addictive.

02:19:58.000 But not like alcohol is or not like a lot of the things that we can just buy anywhere are.

02:20:03.000 Yeah, those are all fair arguments.

02:20:05.000 It's a good discussion to have.

02:20:07.000 We sort of disagree on it, but only because I just think more due diligence needs to be done.

02:20:13.000 This is not something I'm vehemently opposed to.

02:20:16.000 Well, I think anything for young kids can be a real problem, especially for young kids where their brain is still developing and they're trying to find their way through life and you give them something that severely distorts reality, whatever it is.

02:20:27.000 I wish we had that same due diligence to the way they prescribe psychotropic drugs to kids, because we don't.

02:20:33.000 We should.

02:20:34.000 It's up to parents' discretion.

02:20:35.000 So many parents are putting their kids on Ritalin and Prozac and Adderall, and you're making kids speed freaks.

02:20:42.000 As opposed to relying on cognitive behavioral therapy, which has proven to work much better.

02:20:47.000 Because you're getting at the problem.

02:20:48.000 You're questioning the untruths that you're telling yourself.

02:20:51.000 That's effectively what CBT is.

02:20:55.000 It's good practice.

02:20:56.000 Also, kids have exorbitant amounts of energy. 0.99

02:20:59.000 And you can call that hyperactive, or you could just say, oh, that kid's got a fucking great engine. 0.98

02:21:03.000 Got a lot of gas. 0.97

02:21:05.000 Just figure out a way to get this kid engaged in what they like.

02:21:08.000 I guarantee you, take that kid, put him in front of a video game. 1.00

02:21:10.000 He doesn't have any problem focusing. 0.98

02:21:12.000 What he has a problem with is shitty classes with boring subjects. 0.96

02:21:15.000 And teachers that are uninterested. 0.94

02:21:17.000 And so many people are being labeled as being problems.

02:21:21.000 Because of this.

02:21:21.000 We want to blame something else besides reality.

02:21:24.000 And that's problematic.

02:21:28.000 And you talk about looking into certain drugs.

02:21:31.000 I mean, you know, the opioid epidemic is an issue, too.

02:21:33.000 Huge, huge.

02:21:34.000 And that's a bipartisan issue.

02:21:35.000 It's just, again, it's not exactly clear.

02:21:37.000 How do you solve this?

02:21:38.000 Right.

02:21:38.000 How do you solve this?

02:21:39.000 I have a ton of experience with opioids because I've been injured so many times.

02:21:43.000 Did you ever have a problem getting off of them once you...

02:21:46.000 Oh yeah, it's devastating.

02:21:47.000 What was it like?

02:21:48.000 It's absolutely devastating.

02:21:49.000 And I never knew, this was in 2012, so I didn't know how devastating it would be because I just stopped taking them.

02:21:56.000 I don't think I'm in pain anymore.

02:21:57.000 I should probably just not take these.

02:21:59.000 And then I was in worse pain.

02:22:01.000 I was sick.

02:22:02.000 I didn't know what was wrong with me.

02:22:04.000 What was the experience like?

02:22:06.000 It's nauseous.

02:22:07.000 You can't move.

02:22:08.000 You're sick.

02:22:09.000 I don't know how to describe it. 0.98

02:22:10.000 You're just really sick.

02:22:11.000 And is your body craving the pills?

02:22:13.000 Yeah, but I didn't know that, I think.

02:22:15.000 So you're just feeling the sickness?

02:22:17.000 I'm just feeling the sickness.

02:22:17.000 I didn't quite know where it was coming from.

02:22:21.000 And then you tell your doctor, and they're like, oh yeah, you've got to wean off of that.

02:22:24.000 We didn't tell you that?

02:22:25.000 No, you didn't tell me that.

02:22:26.000 That's...

02:22:27.000 I was 28 when this happened, so my body can get over it.

02:22:32.000 You're also 28 with a strong mind who's a seal.

02:22:35.000 Right, but the age matters, just like it matters with pot, just like it matters with addiction.

02:22:41.000 When teenagers are hooked on opioids, when that one dealer gets into the system...

02:22:48.000 Like, you change that person's brain forever, and they're always addicted to it in really bad ways.

02:22:52.000 And, like, it's different the way—I'll always remember it.

02:22:56.000 Like, it's ingrained in my brain, too, but it's different because I was older.

02:22:58.000 Like, if you got an injury today, would you be—would you be reluctant to take them?

02:23:03.000 No, no.

02:23:04.000 I have faith in my ability to just act responsibly.

02:23:09.000 Like, I—yeah, you know, and so that requires a lot of things, but— And this a little bit gets to the war on drugs philosophy, like, do you just not do it because we're losing all the time?

02:23:22.000 And I actually disagree with that pretty strongly, because, yeah, you might feel like you're losing all the time, but you are mitigating it.

02:23:29.000 And supply does create demand, especially with something like opioids.

02:23:32.000 If that one dealer gets into that one high school, And gets those kids addicted at one party.

02:23:38.000 And those kids die 10, 12 years later.

02:23:41.000 And I've watched this happen.

02:23:42.000 I've been to the funerals.

02:23:43.000 And it's devastating.

02:23:45.000 And that supply, that demand was created by supply.

02:23:49.000 So, like, again, there's never a black and white to anything. 1.00

02:23:53.000 So when we say, oh, war on drugs is stupid or it's not stupid, like, no, it's complicated. 1.00

02:23:56.000 It's complicated. 1.00

02:23:57.000 And the opioid epidemic is, I think, a good indication of that.

02:24:00.000 What could be done to mitigate that other than sawing Florida off and selling it to the Russians? 0.99

02:24:05.000 Well, what did Florida do here?

02:24:06.000 Florida was a problem.

02:24:08.000 You know the whole deal with the pill mills?

02:24:10.000 There's a great documentary called the OxyContin Express.

02:24:14.000 It detailed how they had pain management centers in Florida set up right next to the doctor next door to the pharmacy that only sold opioids.

02:24:24.000 Yeah.

02:24:25.000 I didn't realize that was a Florida specific.

02:24:26.000 And they didn't have a database.

02:24:27.000 They didn't have a database.

02:24:28.000 So there's no computer database.

02:24:29.000 So if you were a doctor, I could go to you.

02:24:32.000 I could get my opioids.

02:24:34.000 Then I'd go over to Jamie.

02:24:34.000 He's a doctor.

02:24:35.000 He could hook me up.

02:24:36.000 And then I'd go down the street and get more.

02:24:38.000 And then people started selling them.

02:24:39.000 And there was an express from Florida that went up into Kentucky and Ohio and all these different states that were having giant problems.

02:24:45.000 And they found out the pills were all coming from this one area.

02:24:48.000 It was a Vanguard documentary.

02:24:50.000 Yeah.

02:24:50.000 And that stuff's been slammed down pretty hard ever since.

02:24:54.000 And the pendulum maybe has swung a little too far because now pain patients are having trouble getting the opioids they want.

02:24:59.000 They're like, ah, here's two pills for your surgery.

02:25:00.000 And you're like, really?

02:25:01.000 Right.

02:25:03.000 Some people legitimately need this stuff.

02:25:05.000 And so we've got to find that correct balance.

02:25:07.000 And again, you've always got to know why there's a problem.

02:25:11.000 There's a general policy approach.

02:25:13.000 We should always really question why the problem exists in the first place and what the characteristics of that problem are.

02:25:19.000 So a lot of people are dying.

02:25:21.000 They're not overdosing on Oxycontin.

02:25:23.000 They're overdosing from illegal forms of it or heroin that is laced with fentanyl.

02:25:29.000 So, like, how do you tackle that?

02:25:30.000 Well, fentanyl is coming through the southern border.

02:25:32.000 That's where it's coming from.

02:25:34.000 You know, we could talk about immigration, too, but what happens a lot is, you know, all these massive waves of immigrants who are turning themselves into border patrol, they're allowed to cross because the drug cartels say they can cross.

02:25:45.000 Okay, that's why they come across in organized groups.

02:25:47.000 And then they turn themselves into border patrol and they claim asylum.

02:25:50.000 They always bring a kid with them so that they know they can stay.

02:25:52.000 What's also happening is just down the road, the drug cartels are moving the fentanyl or other drugs across, especially the bulky drugs, mostly like marijuana, things like that.

02:26:01.000 Fentanyl is so small, they can just bring it through trucks, through ports of entry.

02:26:04.000 So And so we need sensors to actually detect that, and we're getting those put in place more.

02:26:11.000 And we need to secure the border, because this is where it's coming from.

02:26:13.000 And we need to deal with where it's coming from south of the border, which is China. 0.97

02:26:16.000 So the administration actually did that, and we got the Chinese to say, at least, that they'll do it. 0.93

02:26:21.000 You never know how much they're enforcing that, so we'll see.

02:26:23.000 It's so interesting when you play people clips of Obama talking about the importance of securing the border.

02:26:28.000 I like to play those clips.

02:26:29.000 It sounds just like Trump.

02:26:31.000 You play the statistics of how many people they sent back and telling people to not come over with their children.

02:26:37.000 They'll be separated from their children.

02:26:38.000 It's one of those things where people don't like that.

02:26:42.000 They don't like to see that.

02:26:44.000 It's deeply disturbing to them that Obama campaigned on this idea of protecting our border.

02:26:49.000 Because we all used to agree on it.

02:26:52.000 But it became a racial issue with Trump.

02:26:55.000 Yeah, I mean, he definitely said some things where you could attribute... 1.00

02:26:58.000 He fucked up. 0.99

02:26:58.000 Yeah, yeah, for sure. 0.99

02:26:59.000 He fucked up with the whole, someone's raping, someone's murdering. 0.99

02:27:03.000 Not going to defend Trump's rhetoric on your show, or on any show. 1.00

02:27:08.000 They contributed to it, sure.

02:27:09.000 But, again, as a pretty unemotional person, I tend to look at what is the policy.

02:27:14.000 And so I have tried my hardest to move the debate towards, when it comes to immigration, towards a matter of sustainability.

02:27:21.000 A matter of sovereignty and a matter of rule of law.

02:27:23.000 Do we have standards or do we not?

02:27:24.000 Do we believe in this idea of a managed border or do we not?

02:27:28.000 And Trump has made the Democrats so crazy that they've moved radically to the left.

02:27:34.000 And it's interesting to watch.

02:27:36.000 People always say both sides have gotten so extreme.

02:27:39.000 I always find that interesting.

02:27:40.000 And I say there's two ways to measure extremism.

02:27:43.000 One is our voting record.

02:27:44.000 Like, how often do you really vote with the other side?

02:27:47.000 And you can measure that pretty carefully, actually.

02:27:48.000 And you've probably seen a YouTube video, maybe, where you watch all over time, all the red dots and the blue dots, and they sort of mingle together in their voting records, and then they slowly, over time, move to the sides.

02:27:58.000 So both sides are responsible for that, like a lack of actual compromise, a lack of deal-making, where we say, okay, I'll vote for your stuff, you vote for my stuff.

02:28:06.000 That doesn't happen anymore.

02:28:08.000 And there's reasons for that we could get into, but there's another way to measure extremism, and it's the actual policy changes.

02:28:15.000 And so we can observe that, and in that respect, I don't think the right and conservatives have really changed our policies.

02:28:23.000 I don't think we've gotten more extreme.

02:28:25.000 Yeah.

02:28:31.000 Yeah.

02:28:48.000 And those are just some examples.

02:28:49.000 The Green New Deal. 0.60

02:28:50.000 I mean, socialism is a good word now.

02:28:52.000 So I think that on that measure, only one side has really moved to an extreme as far as policy positions go.

02:29:01.000 And to your point, look at Barack Obama, and he's not the only one.

02:29:04.000 You can look at Chuck Schumer's old comments on this stuff.

02:29:06.000 I mean, Trump could have written those statements for them.

02:29:09.000 Yeah.

02:29:10.000 Yeah.

02:29:11.000 What can be done?

02:29:12.000 The real issue is not people coming over here seeking work, good people that just want to do better for their life.

02:29:19.000 The real issue is drugs and crime.

02:29:21.000 What can be done to mitigate the effect of the Mexican drug cartels?

02:29:26.000 Because that seems to be our biggest worry.

02:29:27.000 Our biggest worry is the cartels and cartel violence.

02:29:32.000 Our biggest worry—that is a worry, but there's a—again, I go back to a matter of sustainability and sovereignty.

02:29:38.000 In terms of the amount of people that we can sustain.

02:29:40.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:29:40.000 I don't—I never—I actually never—when I talk about the immigration issue, I actually never talk about the drugs and the crimes.

02:29:47.000 I don't want to label these good people as criminals— Drug dealers, you know, that's the wrong, and most of the best majority are, but that just because you're a good person and you want nice things doesn't mean you get to move to the front of the line on an immigration policy.

02:30:01.000 It's also an important point to note for people that don't know, and it's kind of a shocking statistic, we let in more legal immigrants than any other country.

02:30:09.000 Yeah, over a million a year, I think, become citizens, and much more than that, granted visas.

02:30:17.000 And there's a perfectly reasonable debate to have about how many work visas should we have?

02:30:22.000 Should we increase it or should we decrease it?

02:30:24.000 And how does someone get over here and how do we know that they don't have a history of violent crime?

02:30:28.000 Sure.

02:30:29.000 And I advocate for a merit-based system.

02:30:31.000 What the president proposed, I think, is absolutely right.

02:30:34.000 We have the opportunity to choose the best people from the world to come here.

02:30:38.000 And if you're a refugee, we have a system for that. 0.98

02:30:40.000 And if you're an actual asylum seeker, we have a system for that. 0.94

02:30:43.000 But what we should be totally opposed to is this idea that just because you made it to walk across the border, that all of a sudden you get to cut to the front of the line.

02:30:51.000 And that's exactly what's happening right now because of the loopholes we have.

02:30:55.000 If you bring a child with you, our laws are written so that we basically can't enforce it. 0.98

02:31:00.000 We cannot enforce these laws.

02:31:02.000 And this is for a couple reasons.

02:31:04.000 One, the Flores settlement.

02:31:05.000 You might have heard that a lot.

02:31:06.000 What it means is you can't detain a child past 20 days.

02:31:11.000 So if a family comes across, or it's usually just a part of a family, because what they actually do is they split up.

02:31:18.000 We're good to go.

02:31:44.000 And then what incentive do they have to show up for that court date?

02:31:46.000 You know, and they just don't.

02:31:48.000 So, and we're talking, you know, geez, in the earlier part of this year, we had over 100,000 a month.

02:31:54.000 So it gets to a question of sustainability.

02:31:56.000 Let's say all 100,000 people are perfectly good people.

02:32:00.000 But it's a sustainability question and it's also a fairness question.

02:32:04.000 Why do they get to cut in front of the legal immigrants? 1.00

02:32:06.000 Why do they get so much more priority over all of the other people who want to be in our country around the world?

02:32:14.000 I mean, they don't have that opportunity to just walk across the border.

02:32:16.000 It's utterly unsustainable and if we value a sense of sovereignty and rule of law, which I think we should, We value the idea of having a managed system, then we have to put a stop to that.

02:32:26.000 And then have a good conversation about, well, maybe we need more workers.

02:32:29.000 Okay, well, then let's increase worker visas, if that's true. 0.98

02:32:31.000 Well, I think we show sympathy on them because they're poor people that are trying to do better for their life, whereas we look at people that are coming over from Canada And if we had 100,000 people from Canada illegally immigrating into our country every year, we would go, hey, you fucks, get back over where you are. 0.99

02:32:47.000 Like, you guys have a great country already. 0.92

02:32:49.000 You don't have the problem of a lack of opportunity in Canada the way people do in Mexico. 0.96

02:32:53.000 There's a giant disparity between North America in terms of, like, United States of America and Mexico.

02:33:01.000 The economic possibilities.

02:33:03.000 Sure.

02:33:05.000 But our laws have to be written blind to those subjective terminologies.

02:33:11.000 And that's really important.

02:33:13.000 Because otherwise, why have them?

02:33:14.000 Why even have a system at all if it's enforced based on feelings?

02:33:18.000 The best case scenario would be Mexico becomes like Canada, right? 0.99

02:33:22.000 Wouldn't that be the best case scenario?

02:33:24.000 Mexicans are not the ones... 1.00

02:33:26.000 We're having an issue.

02:33:54.000 Okay, so now we have to look at DNA testing to try and thwart this, and that is what's happening now.

02:33:59.000 And we find that a good amount of kids don't belong to these parents.

02:34:02.000 So they bring over a kid in order for them to stay.

02:34:05.000 And what will happen is, and they'll recycle that kid.

02:34:07.000 So Border Patrol often sees the same kid coming through with different adults.

02:34:11.000 And it's terrible.

02:34:13.000 And what other countries, I mean, if it's not Mexico, what are the main countries where these people are coming from?

02:34:17.000 Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador.

02:34:19.000 And, again, it seems like the only way that anyone could really truly fix that is if those countries could rise up to the level of Canada.

02:34:29.000 So they could be commensurate with the United States.

02:34:32.000 And this is what the left says we need to do, and I don't disagree with it at all.

02:34:48.000 I'm a co-sponsor on a bill that does just that.

02:34:51.000 It's a bipartisan bill.

02:34:53.000 And I think it encourages a more creative look at development in Central America.

02:34:58.000 The Bush Institute talks about this a lot, and I think it's a really good idea, which is basically economic empowerment through digital infrastructure.

02:35:06.000 So here in America, I mean, we make a lot of money just based on the gig economy.

02:35:10.000 Every individual can empower themselves and work towards that.

02:35:14.000 And that's really cool.

02:35:15.000 They don't have that opportunity down there.

02:35:17.000 And it's a lack of digital infrastructure, whether it's broadband or whatever.

02:35:21.000 So working towards investing in the right things as opposed to just, hey, here's some aid that your corrupt politicians can line their pockets with.

02:35:28.000 And we can feel good about ourselves and pat ourselves on the back and think like we're doing good for other countries, but we're really not.

02:35:33.000 Again, feel good or do good.

02:35:34.000 It's always a good question to ask.

02:35:36.000 And so I think we're working towards those solutions in Congress now.

02:35:40.000 Well, Dan, we've got to get you on your flight, so I'm going to let you go.

02:35:43.000 It's already 3.20 here.

02:35:44.000 Oh, that's sad.

02:35:45.000 That's sad.

02:35:46.000 It's been fun.

02:35:47.000 It was a great conversation.

02:35:48.000 I really appreciate it, and thank you very much for your time, man.

02:35:50.000 Thank you.

02:35:51.000 Dan Crenshaw, ladies and gentlemen.

02:35:52.000 Goodbye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 20, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1337 - Dan Crenshaw

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