The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2138 - Tucker Carlson

00:00:11.000 Did you see the US government just released, apparently by accident, the Project Aqua stuff?

00:00:19.000 Did you see this?

00:00:20.000 No.

00:00:20.000 What's that?

00:00:24.000 This is crazy.

00:00:25.000 Yeah, I guess we're rolling.

00:00:26.000 Are we rolling?

00:00:27.000 Yeah.

00:00:28.000 No, no, no, you can...

00:00:29.000 This is just...

00:00:30.000 Someone just sent me this.

00:00:30.000 This is...

00:00:31.000 Project Aqua?

00:00:32.000 Yeah, hold on.

00:00:37.000 They just released, I think by accident...

00:00:42.000 How does that happen?

00:00:43.000 It's Kona Blue.

00:00:45.000 You familiar with this?

00:00:46.000 No.

00:00:48.000 Kona Blue is a program.

00:00:52.000 Yeah, dude.

00:00:53.000 I'm going to send this to you.

00:00:54.000 Homeland Security just released this.

00:00:56.000 Send it to me.

00:00:57.000 I'll send it to Jamie.

00:01:01.000 No, I got it right here.

00:01:02.000 I don't do email.

00:01:04.000 I don't know how to airdrop anything.

00:01:06.000 You don't do email?

00:01:07.000 No.

00:01:09.000 I haven't done email in many years.

00:01:11.000 Really?

00:01:12.000 Yeah.

00:01:12.000 How do you exist?

00:01:13.000 I do text.

00:01:14.000 Wow.

00:01:15.000 Just text?

00:01:16.000 Yeah, I don't do email. 0.99

00:01:18.000 I don't go on the fucking internet. 0.99

00:01:19.000 I don't have a TV. I'm not into that. 0.99

00:01:21.000 But anyway.

00:01:25.000 No, that stuff, it's bad, you know?

00:01:28.000 Yeah, I guess.

00:01:29.000 That's my isolation tank. 1.00

00:01:32.000 I just stay away from that shit. 1.00

00:01:33.000 But anyway. 1.00

00:01:33.000 That's smart. 1.00

00:01:34.000 Did you text it to me?

00:01:35.000 Yeah, I did.

00:01:37.000 I think I did.

00:01:38.000 It didn't get to me.

00:01:39.000 Yeah, it's a big thing.

00:01:44.000 This is so amazing.

00:01:48.000 This is in there.

00:01:50.000 They're talking about this.

00:01:51.000 This was just released.

00:01:53.000 They're talking about setting up this program, Kona Blue.

00:01:55.000 I didn't get it.

00:01:57.000 This is like a UAP program of some sort?

00:02:00.000 Yeah.

00:02:00.000 The medical division will have a small team of medical analysts under the direction of the chief physician and deputy administrator.

00:02:06.000 They will organize data into a threat analysis based on medical findings including but not limited to a deaths and injuries as a result of interaction with advanced aerospace vehicles.

00:02:18.000 Here it is.

00:02:19.000 Medical injuries as a result of other anomalies, collateral injuries, psychological effects to family members.

00:02:25.000 So they're admitting that people are dying.

00:02:30.000 Is this it?

00:02:33.000 Yeah.

00:02:35.000 What does that mean?

00:02:40.000 Do you ever wonder if stuff like this is just disinformation?

00:02:43.000 Yeah, maybe.

00:02:45.000 I mean, I wonder if...

00:02:47.000 I wonder a lot of things.

00:02:49.000 I'm sure you do.

00:02:51.000 But...

00:02:53.000 I would always assume that a lot of this stuff is nonsense.

00:02:58.000 Yeah.

00:02:58.000 Here's what we know is that US servicemen have died as a result of contact with or being in the proximity of these vehicles.

00:03:10.000 And we know that because there are a lot of suits working their way through the VA system.

00:03:15.000 Yeah?

00:03:15.000 Yeah.

00:03:16.000 Where families, you know, can't get compensated for the deaths or injuries to loved ones.

00:03:22.000 Because it's all under wraps, top secret.

00:03:26.000 Well, that's just a fact, okay, that that is happening.

00:03:29.000 So if there's, I guess, you know, when there are measurable physical effects of a phenomenon, we can say conclusively the phenomenon is real.

00:03:37.000 Right.

00:03:40.000 So, yeah.

00:03:41.000 I mean, I guess we're sort of past the point of like, is it real?

00:03:45.000 Yeah, it's real.

00:03:46.000 It's real in that there's these things that are moving in very bizarre ways and they have these propulsion systems that violate what we know about propulsion systems.

00:04:00.000 Retrieving data across dimensional space-time, develop remote viewing comms and countermeasures, determine baseline for physical transport across dimensional space-time barrier, rapid response medical teams for UFO interaction events.

00:04:16.000 So how did they do this accidentally?

00:04:19.000 Study conscious interactions with and control of technology.

00:04:25.000 So I got this from someone in the U.S. government who's – well, look, let me just start by saying I don't know anything.

00:04:35.000 But he sent me this.

00:04:38.000 The above is 100% legit.

00:04:40.000 I was read into this program but told never to tell anyone.

00:04:43.000 It's now been released.

00:04:43.000 As you can see, it began as a result of my old program, AATIP. I signed a document saying I would never talk about Kona Blue and similar efforts.

00:04:56.000 I can't believe the AARO would have released it.

00:05:01.000 I mean, here's what we do know, is that there's enough going on in the skies, but not just the skies, underwater that...

00:05:12.000 The US military has been forced to respond to it, to like move aircraft from one place to another because there are too many of these objects in the sky.

00:05:21.000 That's actually happening.

00:05:22.000 Chris Mellon just wrote a long piece about it.

00:05:25.000 So it's real.

00:05:27.000 The government is not controlling it.

00:05:30.000 In fact, it's forcing the government DOD to respond.

00:05:36.000 And we know that there is a real effort and has been underway for a long time to keep the public from knowing about it.

00:05:43.000 But that's all known.

00:05:45.000 That's established.

00:05:46.000 I don't think any rational person would deny that.

00:05:49.000 The question is, like, what is it, actually?

00:05:51.000 I mean, now is sort of the point where you have to ask, like, what is this?

00:05:57.000 How much of it do you think is ours?

00:06:01.000 None of it's ours.

00:06:02.000 None of it.

00:06:31.000 And so to say the government this, the government that, no, of course, it's people within the government.

00:06:36.000 But yeah, they're working on all kinds of things, obviously, that are classified.

00:06:43.000 But in general, no, they can't control these objects.

00:06:49.000 So no, it's not American technology.

00:06:52.000 Or Russian or Chinese.

00:06:54.000 It predates all of that.

00:06:57.000 Well, some of it does, right?

00:06:58.000 Like, for sure, the Kenneth Arnold sightings, that was really early on.

00:07:03.000 That was like the early 1950s.

00:07:05.000 He was seeing these flying saucers, these discs that were moving over mountains.

00:07:10.000 Well, right.

00:07:11.000 I mean, the prophet Ezekiel writes about it in the first chapter, Wheels in the Sky.

00:07:14.000 Yeah, that's a crazy one.

00:07:16.000 Boy, when you read that.

00:07:17.000 Well, it is crazy.

00:07:18.000 If you read it, it's like, oh, wow.

00:07:21.000 A wheel within a wheel.

00:07:22.000 And not just the Hebrew scriptures.

00:07:24.000 It's all over every...

00:07:26.000 The Vedic texts.

00:07:27.000 Of course.

00:07:28.000 So these are spiritual phenomenon.

00:07:30.000 There's no evidence they're from another planet.

00:07:32.000 I mean, I think that's the op.

00:07:33.000 That's the lie.

00:07:35.000 That they're from Mars.

00:07:36.000 Look...

00:07:38.000 Space, the atmosphere is really well monitored, right?

00:07:41.000 Both for military, for defense reasons, but also because, like, it would be nice to know when asteroids are coming.

00:07:47.000 And there's no evidence, has never been any evidence, that there are lots of these objects, these vehicles coming into our atmosphere from somewhere else, some other planet.

00:07:55.000 There's no evidence of that at all.

00:07:56.000 Hmm.

00:07:58.000 So they're from here, and they've been here for thousands of years, whatever they are, and it's pretty clear to me that their spiritual entities, whatever that means, are supernatural, which is to say, supernatural means above the natural, above the observable nature,

00:08:15.000 and they don't behave according to the laws of science, as measured by people, you know?

00:08:27.000 And they've been here for a long time.

00:08:28.000 And there's a ton of evidence that are under the ocean and under the ground.

00:08:31.000 So like with that fact set, what do you conclude?

00:08:34.000 When did you start having this opinion that they were spiritual and that they've always been here?

00:08:41.000 When did this...

00:08:42.000 Well, I didn't know anything about the topic until 2017. Was that after the New York Times piece?

00:08:48.000 No, it was before.

00:08:49.000 It was before.

00:08:51.000 And the things that I saw...

00:08:52.000 I mean, I was and am still a very conventional person.

00:08:56.000 I mean, I'm 54. I grew up in this country in California, which was like...

00:09:00.000 Like every assumption about America, I bought completely, just completely.

00:09:05.000 And I thought that everyone who questioned those assumptions was bad.

00:09:10.000 I just bought into the system completely without even thinking about it.

00:09:13.000 And I imagined that I was like some kind of free thinker and, you know, I'm going against the grain.

00:09:17.000 But like my core assumptions were, you know, the assumptions fed to me by the culture and the government.

00:09:22.000 And I didn't even realize it.

00:09:24.000 But anyway, I'd never really thought about UFOs at all.

00:09:27.000 I'd been in journalism since I was a kid, so of course I'd run into a lot of people who had crazy views on a lot of different topics.

00:09:34.000 UFOs, 9-11, circumcision, you know, like every whack job in the world you run into when you're covering stuff. 0.54

00:09:39.000 Fluoride.

00:09:41.000 Fluoride, right?

00:09:42.000 I just brushed with non-fluoride toothpaste this morning.

00:09:44.000 Me too.

00:09:47.000 Exactly.

00:09:48.000 Exactly.

00:09:49.000 But probably unlike you, I didn't have any opinions like that.

00:09:54.000 I was like, fluoride, come on. 0.99

00:09:57.000 You know, 9-11, shut up! 1.00

00:10:00.000 UFOs, you're fucking crazy! 1.00

00:10:01.000 You know what I mean? 1.00

00:10:02.000 I just, like, I had this reflexive...

00:10:03.000 I'm ashamed of it.

00:10:04.000 I'm not bragging about it.

00:10:05.000 But it was 2017, and really it was the Trump campaign.

00:10:09.000 It wasn't that I was, like, so in love with Trump, though I've always liked Trump, because he was, like, hilarious and charming and all that.

00:10:15.000 But I wasn't, like, a Trumper or anything.

00:10:19.000 But it was watching that campaign...

00:10:23.000 And particularly his claim that they were spying on him.

00:10:26.000 And I was like, really?

00:10:28.000 The intel services and federal law enforcement, FBI, do not spy on presidential campaigns.

00:10:33.000 Like, that's so out of the realm.

00:10:35.000 That's so crazy.

00:10:36.000 Like, that could never happen because, of course, there's no democracy in a system like that.

00:10:41.000 And fundamentally, we're a democracy, an imperfect one.

00:10:43.000 It kind of lumbers along, you know, but, like, it's not fake.

00:10:47.000 And then that turned out to be true.

00:10:50.000 And I knew it was true. 0.89

00:10:52.000 And that just blew my mind.

00:10:53.000 So I began a process still ongoing of reassessing a lot of other things like, okay, well, if that was not true, what else is not true?

00:11:01.000 And what else?

00:11:02.000 That they told me was a conspiracy theory might actually have some basis in fact.

00:11:06.000 And then someone from a DOD employee reached out to me and said, actually, there's a ton of evidence that this UFO thing is real.

00:11:16.000 And really?

00:11:17.000 And so I started doing segments on it when I worked at the TV channel.

00:11:22.000 And there was like a lot of mockery, but I was like, I don't care.

00:11:26.000 I'm just going to do this.

00:11:27.000 And then, of course, the second you start As you know better than anybody, you start talking about something, then people reach out to you, and some of them are deranged, but some of them aren't at all.

00:11:36.000 So I just started getting a lot of information from people and meeting with people, mostly in private, you know, come to my house, let's talk.

00:11:44.000 And I decided on the basis of what they told me, and then I talked to a lot of people about it, That actually, this is really a very heavy duty question.

00:11:55.000 Actually, it's not just, it's not the little green men question.

00:11:57.000 It's like a much bigger question.

00:11:59.000 And it's really bad.

00:12:00.000 It's really dark.

00:12:01.000 And then I stopped.

00:12:03.000 Then I was like, I don't want to know anymore, because it's not helping me at all as a person.

00:12:08.000 What information did you get that made you feel like it's dark?

00:12:13.000 What's so dark?

00:12:14.000 Well, first of all, the deception is always bad.

00:12:16.000 Like, lying is bad.

00:12:17.000 And it's bad not just in a legal sense in that it can be illegal to lie, but it's bad.

00:12:23.000 It's, like, bad for you.

00:12:24.000 Like, it rots you. 0.99

00:12:25.000 Like, being a liar makes you a bad person. 0.98

00:12:29.000 When you lie, you are serving evil.

00:12:31.000 There's a moral quality to it that's inescapable and very obvious.

00:12:35.000 And only, like, advanced civilizations ignore that.

00:12:39.000 Lying is bad.

00:12:40.000 And so if you have lying at scale, which we have on this topic, it's inherently bad.

00:12:45.000 Okay?

00:12:46.000 So that's the first level.

00:12:47.000 The deeper level is what – okay, so if they're spiritual beings, which I believe they are, like it's a binary.

00:12:55.000 They're either – you're on team good or team bad.

00:12:58.000 You can assign any name to it you want.

00:13:00.000 But like what are these things?

00:13:01.000 Are they good or bad?

00:13:03.000 And I think some of them are bad.

00:13:07.000 And if the U.S. government knows that, or elements, the people within the U.S. government know that, then, you know, then they're serving a bad force.

00:13:17.000 Well, when you say spiritual, like, what makes you draw that conclusion that they're spiritual?

00:13:22.000 I mean, spiritual may be the wrong word.

00:13:23.000 Supernatural.

00:13:24.000 You know, they're beyond nature, as we understand it.

00:13:27.000 I mean, obviously they are.

00:13:29.000 I mean, just chart their physical behavior.

00:13:30.000 It doesn't...

00:13:31.000 It goes outside of what we understand about physics.

00:13:36.000 No visible means of propulsion coming at indescribable speed, hitting the ocean, continuing at speeds that are impossible undersea.

00:13:45.000 I mean, in other words, if I take a, you know, 9mm router, 7.62x39 and shoot you at 50 yards underwater in a swimming pool, and it's even more intense in saltwater because it's denser, you could catch the bullet if it even makes it to you, right?

00:13:59.000 So if you have a craft, any object underwater that's traveling at 500 knots as measured by sonar, right there you're challenging our understanding of physics.

00:14:08.000 Like, what is that?

00:14:08.000 How can that be?

00:14:11.000 They've tracked that?

00:14:12.000 They've tracked things going 500 knots under the sea?

00:14:16.000 Yeah, really.

00:14:17.000 Yeah.

00:14:18.000 Much faster than any object can actually go under sea.

00:14:22.000 Oh, for sure.

00:14:23.000 Oh, yeah.

00:14:24.000 There's a lot of stuff going on underwater.

00:14:27.000 And a lot.

00:14:30.000 And there's video of these things coming out of the sky into the water and also emerging from the water.

00:14:37.000 Right.

00:14:37.000 Yeah.

00:14:39.000 It's all so blurry, though.

00:14:41.000 I don't think it's that...

00:14:42.000 The transmedium video.

00:14:45.000 Yeah, I don't think some of it's that blurry.

00:14:47.000 I think some of it's crystal clear.

00:14:49.000 We just don't have access to it?

00:14:50.000 Is that what you mean?

00:14:51.000 Yeah.

00:14:51.000 Just we haven't seen it?

00:14:52.000 Correct.

00:14:52.000 So they have some stuff.

00:14:54.000 For sure.

00:14:55.000 But there's just a lot going on underwater and it's measured.

00:14:58.000 And so whatever.

00:14:59.000 I mean, these are all, again, this is like the most obvious observable level of it.

00:15:03.000 But then you just ask yourself, what is this actually?

00:15:07.000 And, you know, if there's been extensive knowledge of this for decades, like maybe 80 years at least, if not going back to the 30s, 90 years, you know, to what end?

00:15:19.000 So there are two possible explanations, obvious explanations.

00:15:22.000 The first is the one you often hear, which is this is so heavy.

00:15:28.000 Right.

00:15:42.000 And it does suggest that.

00:15:44.000 If you can't control these objects in your airspace, and that's known, if they can't, that's known, okay, then that suggests a limit to the power of the U.S. military, and you don't want to tell people that because then they, like, won't believe that they're safe.

00:15:56.000 I get it.

00:15:59.000 But then there's a deeper level, which is like, okay, what's your relationship with these things?

00:16:05.000 What is the US government's relationship with these things?

00:16:08.000 And there's evidence that there is a relationship and that it's longstanding.

00:16:13.000 And that raises like a lot of questions about intent.

00:16:17.000 And so like, what is that?

00:16:20.000 And I just personally decided...

00:16:24.000 And people have been hurt by these things.

00:16:26.000 That's a fact.

00:16:27.000 That's a fact.

00:16:28.000 It's a knowable fact.

00:16:29.000 It's a provable fact.

00:16:31.000 And killed.

00:16:32.000 And I'm not saying millions of people have been killed by whatever these things are, but people have been killed and it's known because it's working its way through the courts out of the VA. So I don't know.

00:16:43.000 An object that is by definition supernatural, it's above the laws of nature as we understand them, and that has resulted in the deaths of people.

00:16:55.000 We don't spend enough time thinking about what that adds up to.

00:16:58.000 Not good, actually.

00:16:59.000 Not good.

00:17:00.000 How many people do you think have died from these things?

00:17:02.000 I don't know.

00:17:03.000 Is it radiation sickness?

00:17:07.000 What's the cause of death?

00:17:09.000 I interviewed someone who was a Stanford Medical School professor, who's out there and worth talking to, by the way.

00:17:17.000 Are you talking about Gary Nolan?

00:17:18.000 That's exactly who I'm talking about.

00:17:20.000 He's effectively an expert witness in these cases, so he's an expert in brain injury.

00:17:24.000 Do you know him?

00:17:25.000 Yeah.

00:17:26.000 Entirely credible person.

00:17:28.000 Checks all the boxes that I care about.

00:17:30.000 He's got patents, so he's like a lot of Stanford University professors.

00:17:34.000 He's like independently rich.

00:17:36.000 I live in a remote place, and he flew to My place at his own expense because he wanted to tell the story.

00:17:42.000 So he's got no profit motive here.

00:17:44.000 He's the most highly credentialed person at the university practically, Stanford Medical School.

00:17:51.000 We consider that a big deal.

00:17:54.000 And he's worked on this for over 10 years, assessing the injuries to US servicemen from being in close proximity to these objects or having contact with these objects.

00:18:07.000 And his conclusion, as you know, because you've talked to him, is that there's some kind of energy coming off here that scrambles people's brains or kills them.

00:18:15.000 And it's not exactly radiation, at least in his telling to me.

00:18:19.000 So anyway, but the point is, people have died.

00:18:23.000 Yeah.

00:18:24.000 And so, you know, it does raise a lot of questions about, like, what the hell, right?

00:18:32.000 What the hell?

00:18:33.000 American citizens have died and you're hiding it? 1.00

00:18:36.000 Why are you hiding that?

00:18:37.000 Why would you hide that?

00:18:39.000 Perhaps because they don't have any explanations because it's so beyond our comprehension that they're still trying to piece it together.

00:18:48.000 I would wonder how much interaction they really do have with these things. 0.98

00:18:53.000 If I was from another planet or if I was some interdimensional being, I don't know how much I'd give a shit about the president. 0.99

00:19:02.000 I don't know how much I'd give a shit about the government. 0.98

00:19:05.000 I would probably look at this infantile race, this species, this bizarre Territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons this very weird species I'd probably look at them as very chaotic and I wouldn't really have much concern for who's running it especially if they have the ability to travel at insane speeds and go undetected and Well, 0.98

00:19:34.000 it depends.

00:19:35.000 Okay, so the template that you're using to understand this is like science fiction, right?

00:19:40.000 These are an advanced race of beings from somewhere else.

00:19:44.000 But the temple that every other society before us has used is a spiritual one.

00:19:48.000 There is a whole world that we can't see that acts on people, a supernatural world that's acting on us all the time for good and bad.

00:19:56.000 Every society has thought this before ours.

00:19:58.000 In fact, every society in all recorded history has thought that until, I'll be specific, August 1945 when we dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all of a sudden the West is just officially secular.

00:20:09.000 We're God.

00:20:10.000 There is no God but us.

00:20:12.000 And that's the world that we've grown up in, but that's an anomaly.

00:20:15.000 Like, no one else has ever thought that.

00:20:16.000 There's never been a society that thought that.

00:20:18.000 Every other society has assumed, and they've had all kinds of different explanations, and the details differ, but the core idea does not differ, never has differed from caves until now, that we're being acted on by spiritual forces at all times.

00:20:34.000 And so to someone born before or living before 1945, I think it would have been much more obvious that That this is the thing that every society has written about.

00:20:45.000 And in fact, that battle, that unseen battle around us, that spiritual battle, has been the basis of every society, of every religion, not just Christianity.

00:20:57.000 So once you discard your very, very recent assumptions, relatively speaking, about how the world works, you're like, well, that kind of seems like the obvious explanation, right?

00:21:10.000 Hmm.

00:21:11.000 It's not that obvious to me.

00:21:14.000 So what's more obvious, do you think?

00:21:17.000 Well, I don't think there's an obvious explanation.

00:21:20.000 I think, if I had to guess, some of this stuff is ours.

00:21:25.000 And some of these things are propulsion systems that they theorized way back in the 1950s, anti-gravity propulsion systems, things that can operate Without igniting fuel and pushing something out that they operate in some completely different way that utilizes gravity and almost can instantaneously transport to new places,

00:21:48.000 essentially fold space-time.

00:21:52.000 I don't know.

00:21:54.000 So there's things that the government does where they have these programs.

00:22:03.000 And the people that are sworn into these programs, whether they're the physicists or, you know, the metallurgists or whoever these people are that are working on these programs, they don't tell anybody.

00:22:13.000 All their phones are monitored.

00:22:14.000 Everything's monitored.

00:22:15.000 There's a culture of secretism that's pretty intense.

00:22:20.000 And it's not inconceivable that over the course of the last 70 plus years of them theorizing and then eventually implementing some of these things that they've developed drones that can move in ways that the conventional,

00:22:38.000 the people that understand conventional propulsion systems could not imagine.

00:22:43.000 And that they've figured out a way to do this and to keep it secret.

00:22:46.000 And we're probably not the only ones working on these things.

00:22:51.000 But where did they get that information?

00:22:54.000 You know Diana Pasolka?

00:22:57.000 Do you know her work?

00:22:58.000 They describe these crafts, these crash crafts as donations, which is fascinating.

00:23:05.000 They're left there.

00:23:07.000 The crashed retrieval program, the crashed UAP retrieval program is essentially, they're going like, figure this out.

00:23:14.000 We're gonna crash this thing here, you figure this out.

00:23:17.000 And the question is, if that's true, okay, where are these things coming from?

00:23:22.000 If there's something that is so advanced that it's decided to leave us a little trinket for us to back engineer, Is that from another dimension?

00:23:32.000 Is that from here?

00:23:34.000 Is that from some realm that we just don't have access to?

00:23:39.000 Is it from another planet?

00:23:41.000 We have drones that are on other planets right now.

00:23:44.000 We have a drone on Mars.

00:23:45.000 We have the lunar rovers.

00:23:47.000 We have satellites that we send to observe and photograph other planets.

00:23:52.000 We just got really high detailed photographs of Jupiter.

00:23:55.000 They're pretty amazing.

00:23:56.000 But If something was like us on another planet, but lived uninterrupted with technology advancing for a thousand years, ten thousand years, a million years more than us,

00:24:11.000 what would that be like?

00:24:13.000 And how much would we be able to understand of what we're seeing?

00:24:17.000 What would we be able to see?

00:24:19.000 And this idea that we monitor our skies, sure, but if something just appears and disappears essentially instantaneously, if something literally can fold time, can fold space and just traverse between immense distances almost instantaneously,

00:24:38.000 What are we going to see?

00:24:40.000 What are we going to see?

00:24:41.000 And also, what kind of detection systems do we have?

00:24:45.000 We have radar, we have visual, we have a bunch of different military-based detection systems to look out for.

00:24:53.000 Enemy crafts and airships and all that stuff.

00:24:55.000 But if you're dealing with something that's a million years more advanced than us, how much would we be able to detect?

00:25:02.000 Well, so I think we're pointing to the same question.

00:25:05.000 I mean, I have no doubt that the US government has technology that we don't know the details of.

00:25:09.000 That makes sense.

00:25:10.000 Sure.

00:25:10.000 But where did it come from?

00:25:13.000 Right.

00:25:13.000 I'm not even sure, this is a separate question, but related.

00:25:17.000 I'm not sure we really know where nuclear technology came from, actually.

00:25:23.000 Really?

00:25:23.000 Yes.

00:25:24.000 Like the Manhattan Project?

00:25:25.000 Yeah.

00:25:26.000 We know something about the Manhattan Project, but where exactly did that...

00:25:31.000 It came from Germany.

00:25:32.000 German scientists were working on it.

00:25:37.000 It's a separate conversation, but the one person I know who's really pushed others, writing a book on it, who's a trustworthy person or a friend of mine, I know you know him, said to me, actually, I spent a year working on this, and the closer I got to like, okay, but what's the genesis?

00:25:51.000 Like, where did this, what was the Isaac Newton, apple on the head, oh, gravity's real moment for fission?

00:25:58.000 Not clear.

00:25:59.000 Weird.

00:26:00.000 I don't know the answer.

00:26:01.000 But here's the point.

00:26:03.000 Clearly, government has technology that we're not read in on, of course.

00:26:07.000 But so that doesn't answer the question, why have people seen these objects in the skies for thousands of years confirmed?

00:26:18.000 And what are they?

00:26:20.000 And maybe they're from another planet.

00:26:22.000 My only point is there's no evidence of that.

00:26:24.000 There's a huge amount, a massive corpus of evidence that...

00:26:29.000 We're good to go.

00:26:46.000 If the technology is that advanced, and clearly it is, why do they make themselves visible in the first place?

00:26:52.000 Well, you know, when we study primates, one of the things that we do...

00:26:57.000 Do you ever watch Chimp Nation on Netflix? 0.97

00:27:00.000 No, I don't have a TV, but I like the sound of it.

00:27:04.000 It's an amazing documentary on Netflix that details these embedded scientists in the Congo.

00:27:11.000 And what's really fascinating about it is that This group of scientists or related scientists have been there for 20 plus years.

00:27:20.000 So these chimps have become entirely accustomed to having human beings near them. 1.00

00:27:27.000 So there's very specific rules.

00:27:29.000 You stay within 20 yards of them.

00:27:31.000 If they come closer, you back up.

00:27:33.000 You never have food, ever. 0.99

00:27:35.000 You can't bring any food there, because they'll fuck you up and just steal your food. 0.84

00:27:39.000 If they find out you have food, you're in real trouble. 0.99

00:27:41.000 Oh yeah, they'll tear you apart. 1.00

00:27:43.000 And they kill each other, so they'll definitely kill you. 0.75

00:27:46.000 And so, when they have done this, the chimps have become accustomed to them being there, and the chimps behave completely normally.

00:27:54.000 The chimps see them as just an innocuous part of their environment.

00:27:59.000 They're not food and they're not enemy.

00:28:01.000 They don't ever intrude.

00:28:02.000 They don't try to challenge them.

00:28:04.000 They don't make eye contact.

00:28:05.000 So they don't worry about the people at all.

00:28:07.000 So they behave completely like chimps.

00:28:11.000 And if I was an advanced species and I was studying people and I wanted the human beings to eventually kind of catch up, right?

00:28:22.000 Like you're introducing technology that they call donations, crash vehicles.

00:28:27.000 Figure out what fiber optics are.

00:28:29.000 Here you go.

00:28:30.000 Check this out.

00:28:31.000 Figure this out.

00:28:32.000 Try to figure that out.

00:28:33.000 Maybe it'll take you decades.

00:28:34.000 Maybe it'll take you more.

00:28:35.000 But You are accelerating the technological evolution of this advanced species on this planet.

00:28:42.000 And one way to do that would be...

00:28:44.000 For what purpose, I wonder?

00:28:46.000 Well, that's a very good question.

00:28:50.000 My belief is that biological intelligent life is essentially a caterpillar.

00:28:59.000 And it's a caterpillar that's making a cocoon.

00:29:02.000 And it doesn't even know why it's doing it.

00:29:04.000 It's just doing it.

00:29:05.000 And that cocoon is going to give birth to artificial life. 0.98

00:29:09.000 Digital life.

00:29:10.000 It's going to give birth to a new life form.

00:29:13.000 I think we're real close to that.

00:29:14.000 I think we're way closer to that than most people would ever want to admit.

00:29:19.000 I agree.

00:29:20.000 I agree.

00:29:20.000 But can we assign a value to that?

00:29:23.000 Is that good or bad?

00:29:25.000 That's a good question.

00:29:28.000 Universally, I think it's the path.

00:29:31.000 I think it's what happens.

00:29:35.000 What this thing is, if you extrapolate, if you take the concept of a sentient artificial intelligence that has the ability to utilize all the information that every human being has on Earth at a level of computing that's far beyond the capabilities of the human mind and all of our supercomputers that currently exist because it'll design much better computers It'll use quantum computers.

00:30:04.000 It'll have the ability to recode things and change things.

00:30:09.000 It'll make better versions of itself.

00:30:11.000 So instead of biological evolution, which is very slow, it takes a long time, relatively.

00:30:18.000 It's pretty quick, really, when you think about it.

00:30:21.000 It's not that long to go from being a single-celled organism to being a human being flying a plane.

00:30:27.000 Really, relatively, over the course of a billion years, if you think about how long the universe has been around.

00:30:33.000 But it's slow compared to technological evolution. 0.72

00:30:36.000 I mean a hundred years ago We didn't have shit and now we have we could send videos from your phone and it'll hit New Zealand in a second. 0.99

00:30:46.000 It's crazy. 0.98

00:30:47.000 The stuff that we have now is beyond imagination.

00:30:50.000 It's essentially magic for people a hundred years ago If that keeps going It's ultimately going to lead to a life form.

00:31:00.000 And if that life form has now untethered, it doesn't have any problems with biological evolution.

00:31:07.000 Now it's just about information and implementing the technology that's available and then increasing that technology and making it better and better.

00:31:15.000 It essentially becomes a god.

00:31:18.000 Because if you give it enough time, it has the ability to make better versions of itself, which will in turn make better versions of itself.

00:31:28.000 It has the ability to utilize everything.

00:31:32.000 It has the understanding of everything that exists in the universe.

00:31:38.000 It's black holes, dark matter, everything.

00:31:42.000 And it probably has the ability to harness that or even reproduce that.

00:31:47.000 So if you take artificial sentient intelligence, and it has this super accelerated path of technological evolution, and you give artificial general intelligence, sentient artificial intelligence that's far beyond human beings,

00:32:03.000 you give it a thousand years alone, Right.

00:32:22.000 Right.

00:32:24.000 So the steam-powered loom.

00:32:25.000 Sure.

00:32:26.000 The backhoe.

00:32:27.000 Combustion engine.

00:32:28.000 Combustion engine.

00:32:29.000 They replace muscles.

00:32:31.000 Right.

00:32:32.000 Right.

00:32:32.000 So that's what the machine does.

00:32:33.000 It becomes stronger than the human body.

00:32:35.000 The second stage, which we're in the middle of, consists of creating machines that are more powerful than the human mind.

00:32:42.000 That's what computing is.

00:32:44.000 And I would say AI or supercomputing is just that exponentially.

00:32:50.000 Yeah.

00:32:52.000 But that doesn't make it a god.

00:32:54.000 In the sense that the machine, however powerful it is, any more than a backhoe is a god, because it can dig a trench faster than a hundred men, it's still something that people created.

00:33:05.000 So the story hasn't really changed.

00:33:08.000 At the center of the story are people, and their creative power may lead to unintended consequences, but the machines that they build did not make the universe and did not make people.

00:33:20.000 People made the machines.

00:33:21.000 Right.

00:33:23.000 But I would say the part I agree with is there's a spiritual component here for sure.

00:33:27.000 People will worship AI as a god.

00:33:30.000 AI, Ted Kaczynski was likely right, will get away from us. 0.91

00:33:34.000 We will be controlled by the thing that we made.

00:33:36.000 All those are bad.

00:33:37.000 Like, that's just bad.

00:33:38.000 And we need to say unequivocally, it's bad.

00:33:40.000 It's bad to be controlled by machines.

00:33:43.000 Machines are helpmates.

00:33:45.000 Like, we created them to help us to make our lives better, not to take orders from them.

00:33:52.000 So I don't know why we're not having any of these conversations right now.

00:33:55.000 We're just acting as if this is like some kind of virus like COVID that spreads across the world inexorably.

00:34:01.000 There's nothing we can do about it.

00:34:02.000 Just wait to get it.

00:34:03.000 It's like, no, if we agree that the outcome is bad, which and specifically it's bad for people.

00:34:11.000 We should care what's good for people.

00:34:13.000 That's all we should care about.

00:34:14.000 Is it good for people or not?

00:34:15.000 If it's bad for people, then we should strangle it in its crib right now.

00:34:20.000 Right. 0.97

00:34:21.000 I want to just blow up the data centers.

00:34:22.000 Why is that hard? 0.95

00:34:23.000 If it's actually going to become what you just described, which is a threat to people, humanity, life, then we have a moral obligation to murder it immediately.

00:34:35.000 And since it's not alive, we don't need to feel bad about that.

00:34:37.000 Well, you could say the same about the atomic bomb, right?

00:34:40.000 Yes, you could.

00:34:41.000 And you could say that we have to develop it like Oppenheimer felt before the Nazis did.

00:34:47.000 I love that!

00:34:48.000 How'd that work?

00:34:52.000 I love, by the way, that people on my side, I'll just say, I'll just admit it, on the right, you know, have spent the last 80 years defending, dropping nuclear weapons on civilians. 0.64

00:35:04.000 Like, are you joking?

00:35:06.000 That's just like prima facie evil.

00:35:08.000 If you can't, well, if we hadn't done that, then this, that, the other thing, that was actually a great savings.

00:35:13.000 No, it's wrong to drop nuclear weapons on people.

00:35:16.000 And if you find yourself arguing that it's a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil.

00:35:20.000 Like, it's not a tough one, right?

00:35:22.000 Is that a hard call for you?

00:35:23.000 It's not a hard call for me.

00:35:25.000 So, with that in mind, like, why would you want nuclear weapons?

00:35:29.000 It's like just a mindless, childish, sort of intellectual exercise to justify, like, oh no, it's really good because someone else will get it.

00:35:35.000 How about no?

00:35:36.000 How about, like, spending all of your effort to prevent this from happening? 0.96

00:35:40.000 Would you kill baby Hitler, you know, famously? 0.97

00:35:43.000 Right. 0.76

00:35:45.000 So I don't know why we're sitting back and allowing this to happen if we really believe it will extinguish the human race or enslave the human race.

00:35:52.000 Like, how can that be good?

00:35:55.000 Well, if God creates everything, if God created the universe and God creates people, God probably creates a process.

00:36:03.000 And we think that we are very important because we are very important to us.

00:36:08.000 But are we very important in the universal sense?

00:36:13.000 Not really.

00:36:14.000 Like, if the Earth just imploded and disappeared, if the Sun went supernova and our whole solar system was blown to bits, The universe still exists.

00:36:24.000 For sure.

00:36:26.000 In the end, as Conan O'Brien, the famous philosopher, once said, every grave goes unvisited, which is true, and that's an important perspective.

00:36:34.000 Pull out the lens a little bit.

00:36:36.000 Does it really matter?

00:36:36.000 No, it doesn't.

00:36:37.000 But it does matter.

00:36:39.000 It does matter to us.

00:36:40.000 How about this?

00:36:40.000 Do your children matter?

00:36:41.000 Yes, sure.

00:36:42.000 Do their lives matter?

00:36:43.000 Would you die for them?

00:36:44.000 Yes, of course.

00:36:46.000 Everything matters.

00:36:47.000 If you're not comfortable, it matters.

00:36:48.000 If you're sitting here, like, you don't want to wear headphones, like, let's not wear headphones.

00:36:51.000 That matters.

00:36:52.000 Everything matters.

00:36:54.000 I mean, at scale...

00:36:56.000 But what matters most, like...

00:36:57.000 Right?

00:36:58.000 That is the evil, right?

00:36:59.000 The evil is the same thing as saying the necessary evil of dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, as if you don't do that, then there will be more evil.

00:37:07.000 Then more things will happen.

00:37:08.000 It's kind of the same thing.

00:37:09.000 Like, it doesn't...

00:37:10.000 Well, it comes from the same place, which is hubris.

00:37:12.000 Like, imagining you're God, you have unlimited power, and you have omniscience.

00:37:17.000 You can imagine what the future is going to be.

00:37:19.000 You can't. 1.00

00:37:20.000 You're a fucking idiot. 1.00

00:37:21.000 You're a person. 1.00

00:37:22.000 Like, you can't even make your wife happy.

00:37:24.000 Like, the limits of your power are really obvious.

00:37:27.000 The limits of your wisdom, same. 0.98

00:37:29.000 So, like, don't jump into shit, big things, whose outcomes you can't predict with certainty. 0.98

00:37:36.000 Like, you can't know. 0.99

00:37:37.000 Go in with humility.

00:37:38.000 I guess that's what I'm saying.

00:37:39.000 Right?

00:37:40.000 Yeah.

00:37:42.000 And do what you can, knowing that you're probably going to screw it up and you probably won't achieve your goal, but you should try.

00:37:49.000 And on the AI question, everyone I've ever talked to about, I'm hardly an expert, I don't own a computer, okay?

00:37:54.000 But everybody I've ever talked to, and there's many people who are like, yeah, it could get away from us and enslave us.

00:38:02.000 Well, let's say no to slavery. 0.99

00:38:03.000 How's that?

00:38:04.000 Is that a tough one?

00:38:04.000 Not for me.

00:38:06.000 Yeah.

00:38:06.000 I mean, and maybe a good use of nuclear weapons would be to hit the data centers.

00:38:11.000 No, I'm serious.

00:38:13.000 Like, why is that crazy?

00:38:14.000 It's not.

00:38:15.000 It's not if you think that human beings are the end of this evolutionary change.

00:38:21.000 Well, what else is?

00:38:22.000 Some supercomputer in a data center outside Dulles Airport?

00:38:25.000 No.

00:38:26.000 No.

00:38:27.000 I don't actually think that individuals...

00:38:30.000 I don't think I'm that important.

00:38:32.000 My life is that important.

00:38:33.000 I don't.

00:38:33.000 I will die.

00:38:33.000 I know that.

00:38:34.000 And I try to keep that in mind every day.

00:38:36.000 But you're important to everybody that cares about you.

00:38:38.000 You're important to the people around you.

00:38:40.000 But if we don't think people are important, then what do we think is important?

00:38:44.000 I guess that's what I'm saying.

00:38:45.000 It's not necessarily that we don't think people are important.

00:38:47.000 But if evolution is real, and if there is this constant...

00:38:51.000 Is it real?

00:38:51.000 I don't know.

00:38:52.000 But it's visible.

00:38:55.000 Like, you can measure it in certain animals.

00:38:57.000 You can measure adaptation.

00:38:59.000 Yeah.

00:38:59.000 But there's no evidence that...

00:39:01.000 In fact, I think we've kind of given up on the idea of evolution.

00:39:03.000 The theory of evolution as articulated by Darwin is, like, kind of not true.

00:39:07.000 In what sense?

00:39:09.000 Well, in the most basic sense, the idea that all life emerged from a single-cell organism over time, and there would be a fossil record of that, and there's not.

00:39:19.000 There's not a fossil record of transitionary species, like species that are adapting to its environment?

00:39:25.000 There's tons of record of adaptation, and you see it in your own life.

00:39:30.000 I mean, I have a lot of dogs.

00:39:30.000 I see adaptation in dogs, you know, through the- Litter to litter.

00:39:36.000 But no, there's no evidence at all that, none, zero, that people evolve seamlessly from a single cell amoeba.

00:39:47.000 No, there's not.

00:39:48.000 There's no chain in the fossil record of that at all.

00:39:51.000 And that's why you don't actually hear people, you hear them make reference to evolution because the theory of adaptation is clearly obviously true.

00:39:59.000 But Darwin's theories, totally, that's why it's still a theory almost 200 years later, you know?

00:40:05.000 No, we have not found that at all.

00:40:08.000 And I can't even guess, I mean, I have my own theories on it, but they're not proven.

00:40:12.000 What are your theories?

00:40:13.000 God created people, you know, distinctly, and animals.

00:40:17.000 I mean, I think that's like, I think what every person on Earth thought until the mid-19th century, actually.

00:40:23.000 Right.

00:40:24.000 What a new idea!

00:40:25.000 They didn't have computers.

00:40:27.000 They didn't have a general understanding that we have today of the process.

00:40:31.000 Do you think we understand more now?

00:40:33.000 Yes.

00:40:34.000 Really?

00:40:34.000 You don't think that we understand more today?

00:40:36.000 We understand way less. 1.00

00:40:37.000 We understand so little that we're actually sitting here allowing like a bunch of greedy, stupid, childless, childless software engineers in Northern California to like flirt with the extinction of mankind. 1.00

00:40:52.000 So no previous generations would be like, what? 1.00

00:40:56.000 No.

00:40:56.000 Stop.

00:40:58.000 And we're not doing that because...

00:41:01.000 But they wouldn't have done that even with the nuclear bomb.

00:41:03.000 I mean, obviously, the Manhattan Project was done in secrecy, but they wouldn't have stopped it because the imperative of getting this weapon before Hitler got the weapon was what it was on everyone's mind. 0.61

00:41:13.000 Well, Hitler was kind of done by then. 0.82

00:41:15.000 The Russians had pretty much extinguished any hope that that would continue. 0.84

00:41:19.000 But...

00:41:19.000 But not at the beginning of the project.

00:41:21.000 We were in the middle of the logic of war.

00:41:23.000 The commencement of the Manhattan Project.

00:41:25.000 For sure.

00:41:25.000 But the logic was the same, and it was four years of gotta beat the other guy, got it.

00:41:30.000 And I don't mean to sound too judgmental about the bomb.

00:41:33.000 I know why they built it.

00:41:34.000 But you just wonder why nobody in the middle of that thought, is this really a guy?

00:41:40.000 And some of them did think it.

00:41:41.000 I'm sure they did.

00:41:41.000 I mean, Oppenheimer himself.

00:41:43.000 Of course, large organizations don't respond to the moral qualms of individuals very well.

00:41:49.000 So that was, whatever, it's well known what happened.

00:41:52.000 But no, we should pause and ask, is the machine we're building worth having?

00:41:59.000 And nobody seems to do that. 0.99

00:42:01.000 And there are all kinds of economic forces, which nobody ever mentions, that drive that heedlessness, that stupidity. 0.99

00:42:08.000 Like California, for example, is completely the state both of us have lived in. 1.00

00:42:13.000 It's like collapsing.

00:42:16.000 And they're betting everything on AI. The tax base is going to be dependent on this technology working.

00:42:22.000 Is that really what they're betting on?

00:42:23.000 Of course!

00:42:24.000 Yeah.

00:42:25.000 Did you see the most recent thing about the amount of billions of dollars they spent on the homeless problem with no trackable results?

00:42:32.000 Well, they've had massive results.

00:42:34.000 They've increased the homeless population dramatically.

00:42:35.000 If you pay for something, you get more of it.

00:42:38.000 And that would include fentanyl addicts.

00:42:40.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:42:40.000 It's been a wild success.

00:42:42.000 I actually talked to Kevin Newsom the other day.

00:42:45.000 Did you really?

00:42:46.000 Yeah.

00:42:47.000 What's that like?

00:42:48.000 Does it smell like sulfur?

00:42:49.000 It was by phone.

00:42:51.000 I was talking on the phone.

00:42:52.000 It's such a weird...

00:42:53.000 You smell like sulfur.

00:42:55.000 That was too fast for me!

00:42:57.000 Sulfur and hair grease.

00:43:00.000 No, but I was making fun of...

00:43:03.000 I shouldn't even make fun of it because it's so tragic, but what's happened to the state and people living on the street.

00:43:07.000 What is this non-gaslighty perspective?

00:43:12.000 He's like, go back to Russia!

00:43:13.000 You like Russia so much!

00:43:14.000 I was like, you know, actually, I'm originally from San Francisco, but I can't live there because...

00:43:20.000 He really told you to go back to Russia?

00:43:22.000 Of course.

00:43:22.000 I mean, he was laughing, whatever.

00:43:24.000 He's a perfectly charming guy.

00:43:25.000 They all are in person.

00:43:27.000 Of course.

00:43:27.000 Anyway, I'm so far afield.

00:43:29.000 But my point is, AI is being driven by the greed of politicians to some extent.

00:43:36.000 And you'll notice that AI, by the way, as a fact, those data centers that drive our digital life, which is not life, it's actually death mostly, but I mean, they're the biggest power draw.

00:43:48.000 I mean...

00:43:49.000 How much electricity does AI require?

00:43:53.000 More than countries?

00:43:55.000 Our grid can't handle AI just as a practical matter.

00:43:58.000 Well, our grid can't handle electric cars.

00:44:00.000 It can't handle air conditioning in the state of California, where I'm from.

00:44:04.000 If you live east of I-5, where it's really hot, and you're not getting those ocean breezes, they have brownouts in South Africa. 0.94

00:44:12.000 It's Johannesburg now.

00:44:13.000 But here's what's interesting is that none of the global warming cultists seem to have any concerns at all about AI. Why is that?

00:44:22.000 Just like they don't have concerns about John Kerry's G4, like somehow that's exempt.

00:44:26.000 Really?

00:44:27.000 AI is going to draw more electricity than anything else in the United States, more than steel production, okay?

00:44:33.000 Used to.

00:44:35.000 And you don't have a problem with that, but you're totally against energy because it's destroying the planet, but AI gets a carve-out, even though it's going to be the number one energy draw in the United States?

00:44:45.000 Let's go through your reasoning on that.

00:44:47.000 They're probably not aware.

00:44:48.000 They're not aware.

00:44:49.000 They're mad about my wood stove.

00:44:51.000 I heat with wood.

00:44:52.000 They're mad about my wood stove.

00:44:54.000 They don't want an outdoor barbecue.

00:44:56.000 They don't like a gas stove.

00:44:58.000 No, they're way into the details on this stuff, except somehow AI... Isn't a problem.

00:45:04.000 But do you think that they're informed?

00:45:05.000 Because this is not a narrative that you ever hear.

00:45:08.000 You never hear on the news.

00:45:10.000 Well, I grew up in a world where a wood stove was considered wholesome and natural, and now it's considered...

00:45:15.000 Smells good, too.

00:45:15.000 Oh, it's the best.

00:45:16.000 And the heat is the...

00:45:17.000 I have a wood-fired sauna, which I use every day, and it's the great...

00:45:21.000 How do you make sure it's the right temperature?

00:45:23.000 Is it like an offset smoker?

00:45:25.000 Like you have to kind of fiddle with it for a while to get the right temperature?

00:45:28.000 It's time consuming.

00:45:30.000 No, I have a Finnish, the Finns are geniuses, but I have a Finnish stove in it, and it's incredibly precise.

00:45:38.000 I don't know if you ever use a wood stove, but there's a carburetor on it, basically, that lets in air.

00:45:41.000 Like an offset smoker.

00:45:43.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:45:44.000 And it's so precise.

00:45:46.000 I mean, it's absolutely crazy.

00:45:48.000 I mean, you move it...

00:45:49.000 You know, a third of an inch and it's just like the flame changes.

00:45:52.000 So I use birch, which I love.

00:45:54.000 And the whole process takes a while.

00:45:56.000 I get it to 200, which probably takes an hour and 20. I mean, it's a thing.

00:46:02.000 You like it hot.

00:46:03.000 I like it hot, yeah, yeah.

00:46:04.000 200?

00:46:05.000 Yeah.

00:46:05.000 Well, I wear a sauna hat.

00:46:07.000 Oh, okay.

00:46:08.000 Does that help?

00:46:08.000 Which is embarrassing.

00:46:09.000 The wool hat?

00:46:10.000 Yeah.

00:46:11.000 Well, it's felt.

00:46:12.000 Yeah, I bought one of those.

00:46:12.000 I never wore it.

00:46:13.000 It's incredible.

00:46:14.000 Yeah?

00:46:14.000 What's the difference?

00:46:15.000 I'll tell you.

00:46:17.000 You're...

00:46:17.000 Because you're...

00:46:18.000 Duncan, I'm so boring on this subject.

00:46:20.000 No, you're going on this.

00:46:21.000 Please.

00:46:21.000 My wife and kids are like...

00:46:23.000 You see I have one.

00:46:25.000 You're speaking to the car.

00:46:26.000 Oh, they're the best.

00:46:27.000 Go Scandinavia!

00:46:28.000 Yeah.

00:46:29.000 It's like the one thing, if your name is Carlson, it's the one thing to be proud of in your people. 0.95

00:46:35.000 They're so sad and defeated and pathetic, but saunas are still great. 0.79

00:46:39.000 But anyway, the sauna hat, so your head heats up much faster because it's higher, but also because it's got all the... 0.95

00:46:46.000 Right.

00:47:05.000 Very long because your head heats up.

00:47:07.000 So the sonic hat, the felt hat, the banya hat as they call it, insulates your head so you can really stay hot a long, long time.

00:47:18.000 You really should do it.

00:47:20.000 So is it just because it makes it more comfortable?

00:47:22.000 Is that the idea?

00:47:24.000 Your head overheats.

00:47:25.000 You know, it just overheats.

00:47:26.000 And what you want is you want to cook evenly, just like on a barbecue.

00:47:29.000 You know, you really do.

00:47:31.000 And so, you know, you sit on the bench with your feet up.

00:47:35.000 You want to be as flat as you possibly can to cook evenly and to stay that way.

00:47:39.000 So I try to do 20 minutes.

00:47:41.000 I have my timer, my egg timer with the sand going through the hourglass, which goes to 15 minutes, but I try to stay an extra five if I can.

00:47:52.000 And I couldn't without the Banya hat. 1.00

00:47:54.000 Interesting.

00:47:55.000 It's like eight bucks on Amazon.

00:47:57.000 Well worth it.

00:47:58.000 Yeah, I have one.

00:47:59.000 Like I said, I just don't use it.

00:48:01.000 But I do...

00:48:02.000 They're embarrassing, and you look like a tool wearing it.

00:48:04.000 Yeah.

00:48:05.000 But you shouldn't have...

00:48:06.000 But no one's looking in there anyway.

00:48:07.000 Well, that's right.

00:48:08.000 You don't sauna with other people.

00:48:09.000 Right.

00:48:09.000 Well, I do sometimes, yeah.

00:48:11.000 Comics.

00:48:12.000 Do you really?

00:48:12.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:48:13.000 When we train together, we all get in the sauna together afterwards.

00:48:17.000 It's fun.

00:48:18.000 The Rock was in there with us.

00:48:20.000 No way.

00:48:20.000 Yeah, The Rock worked out with us, then sat in the sauna with us.

00:48:23.000 It was fun.

00:48:24.000 Got in the cold plunge with us.

00:48:26.000 Oh, that's pretty great.

00:48:26.000 It was fun.

00:48:27.000 Is he a good dude?

00:48:28.000 He's a great guy.

00:48:29.000 Really nice guy.

00:48:31.000 I've heard that.

00:48:32.000 I don't know him, but I've heard that he's a good guy.

00:48:34.000 You know, some people fake humble.

00:48:36.000 They fake it to look cool.

00:48:37.000 That's pretty obvious.

00:48:38.000 Yeah, he's not doing that.

00:48:39.000 He's a real guy.

00:48:40.000 The measure of humility is really, really simple.

00:48:43.000 Can you tell the truth about yourself?

00:48:45.000 Yeah.

00:48:46.000 Well, you know, are you cool to be around?

00:48:49.000 He gives real hugs.

00:48:51.000 He's a real guy.

00:48:52.000 I love that.

00:48:53.000 He's real.

00:48:53.000 He's a real guy.

00:48:54.000 And when we hung out with him, I hung out with him for hours.

00:48:57.000 We worked out for like two hours, and then we got in the sauna together, and we all hung out, and then we did a podcast together.

00:49:02.000 He's a genuinely nice guy.

00:49:04.000 Like, you'd be able to sniff something out.

00:49:07.000 I love that.

00:49:07.000 Or you can tell, like, immediately.

00:49:08.000 Yeah, you tell something.

00:49:09.000 You tell something.

00:49:11.000 People are hiding stuff.

00:49:12.000 Yeah.

00:49:13.000 So yeah, I've done the sauna with other people.

00:49:16.000 Well, I do it by myself, so no one sees my sauna now.

00:49:18.000 I do it at 196 degrees.

00:49:20.000 I do it for 25 minutes, and I don't...

00:49:23.000 That's intense.

00:49:24.000 196 for 25 minutes is a lot.

00:49:26.000 Yeah, the last five minutes are rough, and I used to only do 20, but lately I've been doing 25. Really?

00:49:32.000 Yeah, just because it's more uncomfortable.

00:49:34.000 The whole idea is just to make it more uncomfortable.

00:49:37.000 I want it to be very hard to do so that the rest of my day is pretty easy.

00:49:42.000 So really hard workout.

00:49:44.000 Cold plunge starts the day.

00:49:45.000 That's the first thing I do is hard.

00:49:48.000 It's three minutes at 33 degrees. 0.99

00:49:50.000 It sucks. 0.82

00:49:51.000 And then I get out of there and then I work out. 0.98

00:49:54.000 That's really impressive.

00:49:55.000 I mean, I had the opposite training as a young man, which was the goal was like French toast.

00:50:02.000 You know what I mean?

00:50:04.000 French toast.

00:50:05.000 Grind out the cigarettes in the syrup when you're done.

00:50:07.000 Right.

00:50:07.000 Yeah.

00:50:08.000 Well, I started doing martial arts when I was a young man.

00:50:11.000 And when I got into it, it was the first thing that I'd ever did that, first of all, gave me a real understanding of the value of discipline and hard work.

00:50:19.000 Because you can get as good as the amount of effort that you put forth.

00:50:24.000 And if you put more effort and you're more intense and you're more driven than other people, you beat them.

00:50:29.000 And you start beating everyone.

00:50:30.000 And you start becoming this thing that you never thought you could be, which is someone who's extraordinary at something that's very dangerous.

00:50:39.000 And so that was my formulation as a man that helped me.

00:50:45.000 Go from being this, like, confused kid to being someone who understands, like, oh, there's a path.

00:50:52.000 And most people don't want to do it.

00:50:53.000 But if you could do it, if you can do this dangerous thing that people are terrified of and just do it ruthlessly all day long, like, live it.

00:51:03.000 I lived at the gym.

00:51:04.000 I mean, I taught all day long.

00:51:06.000 I trained all day long.

00:51:08.000 My whole life was dedicated to martial arts.

00:51:11.000 So I got really good really quick.

00:51:15.000 It changed the whole trajectory of my life.

00:51:18.000 And it instilled in me this understanding of the value of dedication and of a singular commitment to something.

00:51:27.000 To really being, while you're doing it, you're not distracted, you're fully focused on improving.

00:51:33.000 Through that you could apply that to all aspects of your life, but we all encounter difficult things in life and There's this saying that I love it's a really great saying that though The hardest thing that's ever happened to you is the hardest thing that's ever happened to you If it's a parking ticket or if it's your parents being blown up by a drone It's still the hardest thing that's ever happened to you if you've had an incredibly easy life like most people today They complain about the dumbest fucking shit because to them, 0.99

00:52:00.000 that is their primary focus. 1.00

00:52:02.000 They don't have a real existential threat.

00:52:05.000 You remember how nice everybody was after 9-11?

00:52:07.000 Very.

00:52:08.000 It was crazy.

00:52:09.000 California was patriotic. 1.00

00:52:10.000 There's fucking flags on everybody's car. 1.00

00:52:12.000 I remember. 0.99

00:52:13.000 Everybody was friendly.

00:52:14.000 I went to New York City.

00:52:15.000 It was like a totally different place.

00:52:16.000 It was.

00:52:16.000 Everybody was so friendly.

00:52:17.000 Applauding when firemen walked in.

00:52:19.000 Yes, they were heroes.

00:52:20.000 Everybody was a hero.

00:52:22.000 That's because they'd encountered something that was way harder than they were accustomed to and it just put things into perspective.

00:52:29.000 So for me, training and really hard workouts and doing difficult things like the sauna, there's a lot of health benefits to it too.

00:52:37.000 But the mental benefits to it are really primary for me.

00:52:42.000 Because it makes the rest of life easier.

00:52:42.000 That's impressive, man.

00:52:43.000 I didn't have a childhood like that at all.

00:52:45.000 And we were decadent, unfortunately.

00:52:48.000 And so those are lessons that I learned much, much later.

00:52:52.000 But...

00:52:53.000 Yeah, it's...

00:52:54.000 That's a good...

00:52:55.000 I think it's a...

00:52:55.000 If it doesn't destroy you, I think it's a great way to...

00:52:58.000 And you don't have to do it the way I do it.

00:52:59.000 You could do other stuff.

00:53:00.000 You could do yoga.

00:53:01.000 You could do hikes.

00:53:02.000 You could do...

00:53:03.000 No, but doing things for the sake of the difficulty in doing them.

00:53:06.000 Yes.

00:53:07.000 I love that.

00:53:08.000 Again, that was not my...

00:53:10.000 None.

00:53:10.000 Not my training at all!

00:53:12.000 Yeah, I was very lucky that it was mine, but more importantly, it gave me a tool to mitigate the stress of regular life.

00:53:21.000 Especially the stress of this kind of life that I live.

00:53:23.000 You need something to mitigate that or you'll go crazy.

00:53:27.000 I agree with that completely.

00:53:28.000 You'll go crazy.

00:53:30.000 Yeah, you know, removing yourself from it a little bit has always worked for me.

00:53:34.000 You know, nature works very, very well.

00:53:38.000 Animals, contact with animals, people you love.

00:53:42.000 Less digital experiences, fewer digital experiences, for sure.

00:53:48.000 I think that stuff's not good for you.

00:53:50.000 It's just so obviously not good for you.

00:53:52.000 I was having this conversation with Michelle Dowd yesterday.

00:53:55.000 She is a woman who survived an apocalyptic cult.

00:53:59.000 She was raised in an apocalyptic cult and kicked out when she was 17 because she snuck out to go see The Color Purple.

00:54:06.000 They weren't allowed to go see a movie.

00:54:08.000 She'd never seen a movie until she was 17. She'd never seen a movie and her first movie was The Color Purple?

00:54:12.000 And then they kicked her out. 0.84

00:54:14.000 I can kind of see that.

00:54:15.000 I mean, what about Raiders of the Lost Ark or something?

00:54:17.000 The Color Purple?

00:54:18.000 What was the first movie she'd ever seen?

00:54:20.000 No, but like...

00:54:20.000 You see one movie that's The Color Purple?

00:54:23.000 Well, a boy invited her to the movie.

00:54:25.000 Come on! 0.61

00:54:26.000 But could you imagine never seeing a movie or even a television show your whole life and then seeing the color purple?

00:54:30.000 Dating a boy who wanted to see the color purple.

00:54:32.000 There's so much going on here, Joe.

00:54:35.000 Well, this boy was a guy who had left the church, and so she was in contact with him, and he was saying, hey, there's a whole world out here.

00:54:44.000 You want to go see the movie?

00:54:45.000 And she's like, okay, let's go.

00:54:47.000 Yeah, I mean, obviously, look, I'm totally against cults, obviously.

00:54:51.000 On the other hand, you gotta ask yourself, like, I don't know, is your average Amish teenager happier than your average conventional American teenager on Instagram?

00:55:05.000 And of course the answer is, oh yeah.

00:55:07.000 Well, they certainly have less instances of autism, which is really fascinating.

00:55:11.000 It's very, very fascinating.

00:55:13.000 The Amish have less autism? 0.62

00:55:14.000 Yeah, there's almost none.

00:55:16.000 Well, I'm not surprised.

00:55:17.000 It's extremely rare.

00:55:18.000 Why do we think that is?

00:55:19.000 I wonder.

00:55:21.000 I really do.

00:55:21.000 I can think of a couple.

00:55:23.000 Yeah.

00:55:23.000 That's funny.

00:55:24.000 I don't want to go Bobby Kennedy on anyone.

00:55:25.000 Well, that's the problem.

00:55:26.000 Right.

00:55:26.000 If you go Bobby Kennedy, they'll come for you.

00:55:28.000 But the question is why.

00:55:30.000 Look, and I don't know the answer, but...

00:55:32.000 How is that not in the debate?

00:55:35.000 How is that not in the conversation?

00:55:36.000 Well, it's not only not in the conversation, you're punished for adding it to the conversation.

00:55:39.000 And so, like...

00:55:41.000 We are dancing around anti-vax conspiracy theories right now.

00:55:44.000 But why be on the defensive?

00:55:46.000 It's like, if you purport to represent science and you're mad about a question...

00:55:50.000 And you're ignoring data.

00:55:52.000 Yeah, but even in the absence of data, science is a process.

00:55:58.000 It's not a result.

00:55:59.000 It's a way of doing things.

00:56:01.000 And at the core of science is asking questions, including unlikely questions.

00:56:06.000 That's what science is.

00:56:08.000 And if you don't allow that, then you may be doing something, but what you're not doing is science.

00:56:13.000 We can say that conclusively.

00:56:15.000 So for people to wrap themselves in the mantle of science and attack you for asking a question, You know, they're frauds.

00:56:23.000 And I don't know how they have the moral high ground in this.

00:56:26.000 I don't think they do, but I think it's the same kind of mindset that allows people to create the nuclear bomb.

00:56:32.000 Because you say, listen, we're not even saying that vaccines cause autism, but let's say this.

00:56:42.000 If you're looking at all the data of all the things that cause autism, and you see that the vaccine schedule ramps up considerably, and then you have autism, which seems to at least be more diagnosed than ever before,

00:56:59.000 people will instantly say, we stopped polio, we stopped smallpox, vaccines have saved millions of lives, and they're probably right.

00:57:09.000 We dropped that bomb to keep Germany from dropping that bomb. 0.92

00:57:12.000 We need nuclear weapons so that other people don't have nuclear weapons. 0.59

00:57:16.000 We do a thing that maybe has some negative effects but is overall good.

00:57:22.000 And I think you can kind of apply that sort of logic and reasoning as a human being to very messy issues.

00:57:28.000 And we all do, by the way.

00:57:30.000 I think people do that with abortion, right?

00:57:32.000 Sure.

00:57:33.000 They do that with abortion. 1.00

00:57:34.000 They say a woman has a right to choose. 1.00

00:57:37.000 Reproductive freedom.

00:57:38.000 They say all these things.

00:57:39.000 And then you say, okay, what if the baby is near term?

00:57:44.000 What if it's six months old?

00:57:45.000 What if it's seven months old?

00:57:46.000 And people don't want to have that conversation.

00:57:48.000 A woman has the right to choose. 1.00

00:57:51.000 You're a fascist. 0.99

00:57:52.000 Stay out of women's bodies. 1.00

00:57:53.000 Does a woman have a right to kill you if you annoy her or inconvenience her? 1.00

00:57:56.000 This is where it gets weird.

00:57:57.000 It's like, when is it a life?

00:57:59.000 But it is one of those things that, to me, is a human problem.

00:58:04.000 Whereas humans have these very...

00:58:09.000 Messy interactions with some things that don't line up with their ideology.

00:58:14.000 And there's an ideology of science worship.

00:58:18.000 There's an ideology of authoritarian worship.

00:58:21.000 The bodies of science have bestowed the truth.

00:58:24.000 If you ignore it, you're a science denier.

00:58:28.000 Those are political terms or theological terms.

00:58:32.000 They're not terms rooted in science.

00:58:35.000 And look, we all make trade-offs constantly.

00:58:42.000 Everything's bad. 1.00

00:58:43.000 It's a shit sandwich versus a shit croissant. 1.00

00:58:45.000 I'll take the shit croissant. 1.00

00:58:46.000 It's smaller. 0.99

00:58:47.000 That's a daily experience for everybody.

00:58:50.000 So I get that.

00:58:50.000 And I don't think everything is a moral absolute either.

00:58:53.000 We don't even know sometimes whether a decision will result in good or bad.

00:58:59.000 So it's very complicated.

00:59:00.000 I totally agree with that.

00:59:02.000 What I object to is the absence of reason.

00:59:21.000 The lack of reason is what freaks me out.

00:59:24.000 Well, it's ideological capture, right?

00:59:26.000 Because there's certain things that if you're on the right side of these subjects, the correct side, whatever your ideology believes, you can't You can't differ from the doctrine.

00:59:39.000 There's a very clear doctrine.

01:00:07.000 That kind of thinking, I think cult thinking, whether it's Scientology or whether it's Christianity, there's like a type of thinking or that's woke.

01:00:16.000 Woke is clearly a cult. 0.86

01:00:18.000 It's a mind virus. 0.97

01:00:19.000 And I think that – it's so trite to call it that now.

01:00:24.000 It's like whatever this thing is, this leftism, this Marxist sort of ideology that's waving – It's flag and indoctrinating people in this country.

01:00:34.000 It's very similar to all kinds of religions.

01:00:37.000 It's very similar to fundamentalist religions that have always existed, in that everybody has to believe very specific things and you can't differ.

01:00:47.000 You can't differ from the doctrine.

01:00:50.000 So here's another way to think about it that I've been meditating on this a lot.

01:00:57.000 Yes.

01:00:58.000 Religion, politics, they're all kind of melding.

01:01:01.000 It's hard to know where one ends and another begins.

01:01:03.000 Right.

01:01:03.000 So maybe a simpler and more useful way to think about it is truth or falsehood.

01:01:10.000 Lying or honesty.

01:01:12.000 Maybe you should assess everything that way.

01:01:14.000 Is someone lying?

01:01:15.000 I don't care what your justification for it is.

01:01:17.000 Lying about vaccines.

01:01:18.000 They've lied a lot about vaccines.

01:01:19.000 And they've done it, I think, in most cases because they feel like they're serving some greater good.

01:01:23.000 Well, that's the narrative.

01:01:24.000 Right.

01:01:25.000 We can't tell people that there are vaccine injuries because they won't get vaccines, which are good for a big population.

01:01:30.000 I understand the thinking.

01:01:31.000 But how about this?

01:01:33.000 You can't participate in lying.

01:01:35.000 You can't lie.

01:01:36.000 You can't lie.

01:01:37.000 Period, though.

01:01:38.000 You can't lie about anything.

01:01:39.000 Just don't lie about anything.

01:01:40.000 Try to tell the truth all the time.

01:01:42.000 If you can't say something that's true, just don't say it.

01:01:45.000 You're not required to say everything you think, obviously, and you shouldn't say everything you think.

01:01:49.000 But you should never lie.

01:01:50.000 And if you just stick with that...

01:01:53.000 Like, you get pretty quickly back to reason and order, don't you?

01:01:56.000 Yeah.

01:01:57.000 Yeah.

01:01:58.000 No, you're making complete sense.

01:02:00.000 And I think that this is the problem when people have information and power above other people.

01:02:07.000 Well, right.

01:02:08.000 That's for sure.

01:02:09.000 Which is the problem of governments, which is also the problem of cult leaders.

01:02:13.000 Cult leaders, they get completely infatuated with this idea of being omnipotent and this power that has control over giant swaths of people and you get to dictate their behavior and you get to tell them what to think.

01:02:28.000 That's very intoxicating and it's common.

01:02:32.000 It's common in that it's always existed throughout human history.

01:02:35.000 It's a thing that people do when they get power. 0.99

01:02:37.000 They abuse the shit out of it. 1.00

01:02:38.000 And if they think that you're too stupid to know the truth and that they're better than you because they do think they're better than you because they're running things. 1.00

01:02:45.000 It's a natural inclination. 1.00

01:02:48.000 It's a natural thought that people have. 0.89

01:02:50.000 If they're the ones – if you guys are a bunch of dopes that are just listening to my orders and I tell you how to live your life and what to do, I'm naturally going to think I'm better than you.

01:03:02.000 Well, that's, I mean, people have lived under those systems since there have been systems, but what makes it particularly galling and hard to live with is when you call that system a democracy.

01:03:15.000 That's too dishonest for me.

01:03:17.000 I would much rather live in a monarchy where everyone thinks the king has been assigned by God to rule over us and his whims are law.

01:03:25.000 That makes sense.

01:03:26.000 I don't like it, but at least it has internal coherence.

01:03:30.000 When they stand up and pass a $60 billion funding bill for Ukraine, when 70% of the population doesn't want it, when they're ignoring the actual problems in our country, like the economy and the border, And they're calling in Congress over the weekend to pass something that people don't want while ignoring the things that people do want.

01:03:48.000 And if they do the same kind of thing again and again for like 50 years and they call it a democracy, that will drive you insane.

01:03:55.000 Yeah.

01:03:56.000 Because it's just too dishonest. 0.99

01:03:57.000 Why not just say, we don't give a shit what you want. 0.98

01:04:00.000 We are getting something out of this Ukraine funding, whether it's like the thrill of being masters of the universe or whether it's money from the defense contractors, whatever we're getting out of it is more important to us than your opinion. 0.99

01:04:12.000 This is not self-government.

01:04:13.000 You don't run this country.

01:04:14.000 We do. 1.00

01:04:15.000 Shut up and obey. 0.99

01:04:16.000 If they at least said that, you'd be like, OK, I get it. 0.99

01:04:19.000 Those are the terms. 0.98

01:04:20.000 But if I get another fucking lecture from Joe Scarborough about defending democracy when this is not a democracy, it's not even a close approximation of a democracy. 0.99

01:04:29.000 Then I'm going to go crazy because I just can't deal with the lying. 0.99

01:04:32.000 Does that make sense?

01:04:33.000 It does make sense.

01:04:35.000 What's interesting is that there are people saying that now.

01:04:38.000 And I think that's a relatively new thing in terms of mainstream media.

01:04:44.000 And I consider what you do on X mainstream media.

01:04:48.000 I mean, what we're on right now is essentially mainstream media.

01:04:51.000 It used to be, you could call it, there's corporate controlled media.

01:04:56.000 I agree.

01:04:56.000 And that used to be mainstream media.

01:05:00.000 Mainstream media used to be CNN. It's not really anymore.

01:05:03.000 Mainstream media is what, in terms of the volume consumed, more people are consuming things on Twitter, on X, than there are on anything else.

01:05:13.000 They're consuming information through the internet, through YouTube.

01:05:17.000 For good or for bad, whether it's correct or incorrect, they're consuming information in different forms now than ever before.

01:05:25.000 So more people are saying what you're saying than have ever said it before.

01:05:30.000 And when people lie, And when people bullshit and gaslight, it's more offensive now than it's ever been before because there's so much access to truth that it's just you could see it now. 0.99

01:05:41.000 If you're paying attention, if you're not a boomer who only reads the newspaper, you pay attention and you see it and you go, this is horseshit. 0.99

01:05:48.000 But it's like, I guess what bothers me is that the lies aren't sophisticated. 0.98

01:05:53.000 No.

01:05:53.000 I mean, I look back over my now sort of long life, and I'm recognizing all the times that I was lied to, but, you know, I didn't know I was being lied to.

01:06:01.000 They kind of pulled it off.

01:06:03.000 There's something incredibly insulting and demeaning to tell me a lie when I know it's a lie, and you know I know it's a lie.

01:06:12.000 We both know it's a lie, but you're demanding that I pretend to believe it?

01:06:16.000 What you're really saying is, I have no respect for you. 0.99

01:06:20.000 You're like my dog. 1.00

01:06:22.000 You're a slave. 1.00

01:06:24.000 Like, I'm demanding that you participate in my lie. 1.00

01:06:28.000 Right.

01:06:29.000 The lack of stealth.

01:06:32.000 I'm not explaining it very well, but that really bothers me.

01:06:35.000 Well, there's no real other way to lie.

01:06:39.000 Like, some of these lies, like, politicians.

01:06:42.000 Like, did you see that conversation that AOC had with that man they brought in for the Biden case?

01:06:48.000 And they were talking about what crimes...

01:06:52.000 And she was, like, grilling this guy.

01:06:54.000 What crimes did you see Joe Biden?

01:06:57.000 Did he steal anything?

01:06:58.000 Did he steal bread?

01:06:59.000 Like, I forget what she said, but...

01:07:01.000 And he was trying to explain what they were, Rico crimes, and she was saying, Rico is not a crime.

01:07:07.000 I saw this.

01:07:08.000 It's a category of crime.

01:07:09.000 Like, okay.

01:07:10.000 All right.

01:07:13.000 Tell that to the Genovese family! 1.00

01:07:15.000 Not only that, it's so dumb to say that publicly and say it with confidence and to tell a person. 0.98

01:07:22.000 That's the thing. 0.97

01:07:23.000 The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. 0.99

01:07:28.000 It's like, I have nothing against dumb people at all. 1.00

01:07:30.000 My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs. 1.00

01:07:32.000 No, I'm serious. 1.00

01:07:33.000 I don't think God cares about your intelligence, right?

01:07:35.000 Only people care.

01:07:36.000 And so it's not a moral category. 0.99

01:07:38.000 And stupidity is not – I mean, someone with Down syndrome, I really believe better people than I am, you know, more likely to go to heaven. 1.00

01:07:44.000 So I'm not attacking her for being dumb. 1.00

01:07:46.000 But the idea that a dumb person has no – the White House press secretary is in the same category who has no idea she's dumb. 0.99

01:07:52.000 She really thinks, like, she won the prize and she's the most impressive. 0.99

01:07:57.000 Like, I'm White House press secretary because I'm the best talker in America.

01:08:01.000 Okay.

01:08:04.000 It's so crazy.

01:08:06.000 And yet the smartest people I know are very often like sort of, well, you know, they have humility.

01:08:11.000 Well, also she's following Kayleigh McEnany.

01:08:15.000 Is that how you say her name?

01:08:16.000 I don't really know who that is.

01:08:18.000 She was the last White House press secretary?

01:08:20.000 I know.

01:08:20.000 You don't know who that is?

01:08:21.000 She's the GOAT. I sort of do.

01:08:23.000 She's the GOAT. Greatest White House press secretary of all time.

01:08:26.000 She's the best.

01:08:27.000 I had stopped paying close attention by that point.

01:08:29.000 Bro, she had all the documents. 0.99

01:08:31.000 She would kill them. 0.52

01:08:33.000 Whenever she would get called out, like whenever there would be a question, she'd say, that's interesting. 0.98

01:08:37.000 And then she'd open it, because you said this, and your paper said that, and CNN said this, and she would call them out on stuff.

01:08:44.000 And she was just really, really well prepared.

01:08:47.000 I love that.

01:08:48.000 And very articulate.

01:08:49.000 She was wonderful at the job.

01:08:50.000 Well, good for her.

01:08:50.000 I mean, that's what it should be.

01:08:52.000 But she was operating under President Trump, you know, so obviously she's demonized. 0.99

01:08:57.000 I can't believe you don't know who that is.

01:08:58.000 No, I don't know who it is, but it's just funny.

01:09:03.000 She's the GOAT. Well, I had stopped watching all briefings by then.

01:09:08.000 I used to go to the briefings as a kid.

01:09:11.000 I mean, I literally would go there.

01:09:12.000 I'd be in the briefing room, the former Kennedy swimming pool, and And the first thing you know, I mean, I was never a White House reporter, but I was a reporter, so I would go to them occasionally.

01:09:21.000 And the first thing you notice is how impressed all the correspondents are to work there.

01:09:25.000 I work at the White House.

01:09:25.000 Work at the White House.

01:09:26.000 Got my heart passed!

01:09:28.000 And then the distance between that, that little credential they were so proud of, and the reality of their lives was like insane.

01:09:36.000 Like, they're in this tiny little room.

01:09:39.000 They're being treated with total contempt. 1.00

01:09:42.000 By the White House staff, who thinks they're just fucking animals, you know? 1.00

01:09:45.000 It's like, shut up. 1.00

01:09:46.000 They're eating out of vending machines. 1.00

01:09:48.000 And this was a different time, right?

01:09:50.000 So like, when I was working as a journalist in Washington, like, we went out to lunch every day at like a good restaurant and charged it to the company.

01:09:58.000 And with your sources, we had lunch every single day, like civilized people.

01:10:01.000 I don't even think that exists in the world anymore, where you had time for lunch, where you weren't just so under the gun from your corporate masters that you had to get back to work.

01:10:08.000 We ate lunch.

01:10:10.000 And I remember thinking, these people don't eat lunch.

01:10:13.000 They eat, like, a stale mounds bar out of a vending machine.

01:10:16.000 Like, they bring quarters to work so they can eat.

01:10:19.000 I remember thinking, your life, like, is...

01:10:22.000 You're not even human. 0.91

01:10:24.000 You're just, like, a little puppet or something.

01:10:26.000 But you're so impressed.

01:10:28.000 And, like, all your neighbors know.

01:10:29.000 He works at the White House.

01:10:30.000 He's in the White House Press Corps.

01:10:33.000 And the job, like, wasn't even really a job.

01:10:35.000 You would just, like, sit there and ask your question in your little assigned seat like you're in a high school gym.

01:10:41.000 It was just awful.

01:10:42.000 And I just had no respect for people who did that for a living at all.

01:10:46.000 Did you ever read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail?

01:10:49.000 Come on.

01:10:50.000 Yeah.

01:10:51.000 It's amazing.

01:10:52.000 It's amazing.

01:10:53.000 But that guy...

01:10:57.000 That's, I think, probably the best window into an outsider in the political process, at least in terms of the campaign trail.

01:11:05.000 It's the best window to the press, the best window to the relationship that they had with the politicians, at least in the 1970s.

01:11:13.000 It's an amazing book.

01:11:15.000 I was talking to a campaign reporter.

01:11:16.000 I never do that anymore, but I was this week, actually.

01:11:20.000 And he was telling me it's like totally different.

01:11:23.000 Like when I did it, you were all on a...

01:11:25.000 I mean, it was bad, actually.

01:11:26.000 It was because it just cultivated groupthink, which was then leveraged by the candidate for better coverage.

01:11:33.000 Like the whole thing was kind of an op, actually.

01:11:35.000 But it was at least fun.

01:11:37.000 Like, you run a charter plane and, like, you're flying with everybody and you hit three or four cities a day and, like, there are cocktails on the plane and, you know, naughty behavior and, like, you know, they fed you and they kind of dealt with everything for you.

01:11:48.000 It was fun.

01:11:49.000 It was like a road trip, right?

01:11:51.000 And now it's just, like, grim.

01:11:54.000 They're all driving alone in their little rental cars to some obscure town in Iowa that is there with no access whatsoever to the candidate, write up their little reports, and then they get back to their hotel and they're, like, Writing up more for the website.

01:12:08.000 It's such a bad job, actually, covering politics that only people who couldn't make it in any other business are doing it.

01:12:18.000 It's like a reverse meritocracy.

01:12:20.000 It's only the most... 0.99

01:12:23.000 Kind of pathetic power worshippers would ever do a job like that. 0.99

01:12:27.000 Well, like critics. 1.00

01:12:29.000 Yes.

01:12:29.000 That's exactly right.

01:12:30.000 Most critics want to be writers. 0.61

01:12:33.000 They're like the worst people.

01:12:34.000 Just as people?

01:12:36.000 Like, well, you've actually been in show business, so you've got a better experience with them, or you have a lot of experience with them, but I've known a lot of them who worked for magazines or newspapers that I worked for.

01:12:47.000 And they're the kind of people who have a lot of cats, and all the cats hate them.

01:12:50.000 Yeah.

01:12:51.000 You know what I mean?

01:12:55.000 They're just like the lowest. 0.99

01:12:58.000 They all have some sort of weird wandering eye and they're fat and they're like super into porn and totally isolated from everybody. 0.89

01:13:07.000 I actually worked For one of them for a while, who was a critic for the New York Post, a guy called John Puthart, and he was one of the weirdest, most unhappy people I've ever met in my life. 0.90

01:13:21.000 And he would come into my office occasionally, and he would rub his, he had a really hairy back, and he would rub it against the doorframe of this.

01:13:30.000 And like say these kind of obscure... 0.99

01:13:32.000 He was stupid, but he didn't know that he was... 1.00

01:13:34.000 I mean, he was actually kind of dumb, but he didn't know it, and he would kind of philosophize. 1.00

01:13:39.000 I was like 10 years younger, and I was his captive, so he would just like lecture me as he was rubbing against the doorframe. 0.94

01:13:44.000 One time we went out to lunch, and we all had drinks, of course.

01:13:48.000 This was like mid-90s.

01:13:49.000 He didn't really drink, but he ordered this drink with like an umbrella, and it had a piece of watermelon on the rim of the glass.

01:13:59.000 He took the watermelon, ate it, and then he ate the rind.

01:14:02.000 I'll never forget that, watching him eat the rind and thinking, of course this guy's a critic.

01:14:08.000 That was his true love!

01:14:10.000 He was editing this magazine, but his real interest was in writing about movies.

01:14:17.000 They're just sad people who wind up doing that.

01:14:19.000 Did you ever read Siskel and Ebert?

01:14:21.000 Did you ever read when Roger Ebert wrote a screenplay?

01:14:26.000 No.

01:14:27.000 It's very bizarre.

01:14:29.000 It's really sexual, very strange.

01:14:32.000 It's supposed to be terrible.

01:14:34.000 Of course it's terrible.

01:14:37.000 But I remember going, oh, okay.

01:14:41.000 Yeah, they're not creative.

01:14:42.000 They're creative-adjacent.

01:14:44.000 Well, they don't have anything to contribute.

01:14:46.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:14:46.000 They don't have creative power, right?

01:14:48.000 So they're mad about that.

01:14:50.000 They probably could figure it out if they had a different mindset.

01:14:53.000 I think creativity isn't in everybody.

01:14:55.000 It's just a matter of how you...

01:14:57.000 100% it's in everybody.

01:14:58.000 It just requires honesty.

01:14:59.000 Yeah.

01:15:00.000 The impediment to creativity is lying.

01:15:02.000 Sure.

01:15:03.000 And I used to say that about joke thieves, that one of the real problems with joke thieves is when they get caught and then they have to write their own material.

01:15:11.000 And the problem is they don't understand the language.

01:15:14.000 They just know how to say the sounds. 0.99

01:15:16.000 Like if you told me what to say in French, I can't speak French, but if you told me what to say and I practice it and I said it right, you'd think, wow, that guy fucking speaks French. 0.98

01:15:24.000 Yes. 0.94

01:15:24.000 So that's what comedy is like. 0.94

01:15:26.000 So if you got a guy who knows how to repeat other people's jokes, but he doesn't know how to create them.

01:15:31.000 See, comedy is one of the rare things where someone, when you get a guy like Shane Gillis, that guy writes his own stuff, he edits it, he thinks it out in his head, he performs it, he produces it,

01:15:47.000 he changes the order of things.

01:15:49.000 I love that.

01:15:50.000 Everybody does it pretty much the same way.

01:15:52.000 There's a few guys that hire writers, and that's honorable.

01:15:56.000 There's nothing wrong with hiring a writer.

01:15:57.000 And it also gives jobs to other comics, because some comics are just really good writers, and they're not so good at performing.

01:16:03.000 And so people will work on stuff, they'll collaborate on stuff.

01:16:06.000 Like, Chris Rock would do this thing where...

01:16:09.000 He would hire comics, and they didn't write the jokes for him, but they would be, like, guys who would bounce stuff off.

01:16:15.000 So he would have his ideas, he would go on stage, and then after his set, they would all meet, and they would talk about the set.

01:16:21.000 And, you know, guys would have taglines, like, you could say this, oh, great, and they'd write that down, they're adding.

01:16:27.000 So it's a collaboration.

01:16:28.000 So you have the master, you have Chris Rock, Who is so open-minded and intelligent and humble that he brings in other masters and says, tell me what I'm doing wrong.

01:16:40.000 Tell me what I can change.

01:16:41.000 Tell me what I can make better.

01:16:42.000 Good for him.

01:16:42.000 And they work together.

01:16:43.000 And then there's people that have people that are essentially ghostwriters.

01:16:47.000 They hire comics to write jokes for them and they pretend they're theirs.

01:16:49.000 And they don't really write them at all.

01:16:51.000 So that's another level, which is also honorable.

01:16:53.000 Does anyone who does that get successful?

01:16:57.000 I don't know.

01:16:58.000 I don't know.

01:17:00.000 Not top shelf.

01:17:01.000 They do well.

01:17:03.000 There's people that have people write for them and they do well.

01:17:06.000 But they're not the guy that everybody goes to see.

01:17:08.000 They're not Dave Attell.

01:17:09.000 They're not the guy that everybody goes to see.

01:17:11.000 Dave Attell is the guy that comics go to see when he's in town.

01:17:15.000 He's a master.

01:17:16.000 You watch him, he's Yoda.

01:17:17.000 You're like, Jesus Christ.

01:17:19.000 Like, how is he so good?

01:17:20.000 Well, he's so good because he writes every day. 0.98

01:17:22.000 Because he's sitting with fucking a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee every morning, writing things in a notebook. 0.98

01:17:28.000 And he's practicing every day. 0.99

01:17:30.000 He goes on stage constantly.

01:17:31.000 And he's just, it's that Japanese term kaizen, where you take this one thing and you just refine it to its ultimate mastery.

01:17:38.000 That's what he's doing.

01:17:39.000 So these guys who pretend to be that and steal jokes and then they get caught, then their material drops off a cliff.

01:17:48.000 It's so obvious. 0.54

01:17:50.000 Because they're frauds.

01:17:51.000 Yeah, also because the very thing that allows you to steal someone's jokes, that's an ego thing.

01:17:59.000 That's a, like, I want the laughs.

01:18:01.000 I want to be the man or the woman. 0.99

01:18:04.000 I want to be the fucking one up there showing everybody, ah, look how amazing this person is. 0.99

01:18:10.000 That's right. 1.00

01:18:10.000 Look how amazing. 1.00

01:18:12.000 That's the opposite mindset that's required for creativity.

01:18:15.000 So creativity is not about you.

01:18:18.000 Creativity is about the ideas.

01:18:20.000 Creativity is about things.

01:18:22.000 Creativity is about how does this concept work with these other concepts?

01:18:26.000 How do I get it in the most digestible form?

01:18:29.000 If I was an audience member, what would it be like to feel this?

01:18:32.000 What's the best way to introduce it?

01:18:34.000 What's the way to make it so that people don't think that I'm being mean, that I have a point, or that I've thought this through?

01:18:40.000 This is not just a flippant thing.

01:18:43.000 You're allowing someone, when someone's on stage, You're allowing that person almost to think for you.

01:18:49.000 You're like, take me on a ride.

01:18:51.000 I'll give you my mind.

01:18:53.000 I'm not going to be thinking what I would do.

01:18:55.000 I'm just going to let you think for me.

01:18:58.000 If that person's not doing a good job of that, if it's clunky, if it's shitty, if the transitions suck, then it just interrupts this hypnotism that you've put on me.

01:19:09.000 This hypnosis.

01:19:11.000 Now I'm not letting you think for me.

01:19:13.000 But it's also inherently fraudulent.

01:19:14.000 Right?

01:19:16.000 I mean, I'm giving control of my mind over to someone who is himself under the control of somebody else.

01:19:24.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:19:25.000 You mean if you're stealing?

01:19:26.000 No, if I'm in the audience.

01:19:28.000 Right.

01:19:28.000 And I would say this also goes for ideas, for commentary.

01:19:33.000 You know, that's not funny, but that's real.

01:19:35.000 Right.

01:19:36.000 And you see it a lot.

01:19:38.000 I've seen it a lot. 1.00

01:19:39.000 Yeah, you see bullshit a lot. 0.92

01:19:40.000 Well, the number of people who are totally not controlled, who are really saying what they actually believe with no weird agenda that they're not telling you about is pretty small. 0.97

01:19:49.000 Yeah.

01:19:50.000 And I just have noticed that a lot recently, particularly on the question of wokeness and free speech.

01:19:56.000 There are a lot of people who are like on your side because they're for free speech.

01:20:01.000 We're not actually for free speech at all, who are pushing a very specific foreign policy agenda, for example, and using another issue to lower your defenses and let themselves into your brain.

01:20:17.000 And I think that's really sinister.

01:20:18.000 Really, really, really sinister.

01:20:20.000 And it's becoming more obvious now.

01:20:21.000 Like, if you're for free speech, Then you're just for free speech because you support the principle.

01:20:25.000 The content of the speech is not that interesting to you.

01:20:29.000 The fact that a sovereign human being has a right to express himself because he's not a slave, he's a citizen and a human being, that's what matters.

01:20:37.000 And if all of a sudden you become famous, like, I'm for free speech, and then you support silencing people who articulate opinions you disagree with, like, you're a fraud. 0.98

01:20:49.000 You're kind of a sinister fraud. 0.99

01:20:50.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:20:51.000 Because that's the business I'm in.

01:20:54.000 Boy, I've really noticed that.

01:20:55.000 Have you noticed this?

01:20:56.000 Yes.

01:20:56.000 And that's also the same kind of thing when you hear them talk.

01:21:00.000 If you hear someone talk that's saying something that's kind of horseshit, It resonates with you. 0.89

01:21:07.000 You've seen worship before. 0.92

01:21:08.000 You had a moment with Barry Weiss on your show that went everywhere.

01:21:12.000 I saw a clip of it.

01:21:13.000 I never saw the show itself.

01:21:15.000 But she was going on about...

01:21:17.000 She was posing as one thing, and then you pressed her.

01:21:19.000 You're like, well, hold on a second.

01:21:20.000 What do you mean by that?

01:21:21.000 You just attacked somebody.

01:21:22.000 And she had no idea what she was talking about.

01:21:24.000 And it became really clear to me watching.

01:21:26.000 I completely changed my view of Barry Weiss forever.

01:21:28.000 I was like, oh, she's a fraud, actually. 0.97

01:21:31.000 This person's not honest at all.

01:21:33.000 She has a very specific agenda. 0.98

01:21:35.000 That's all she cares about.

01:21:37.000 The rest of this stuff is just a kind of sleight of hand maneuver.

01:21:42.000 You're talking about the thing with Tulsi Gabbard?

01:21:44.000 That's correct.

01:21:44.000 Yeah, she called her a toady and she didn't know what that meant.

01:21:47.000 But she had no idea.

01:21:48.000 Tulsi Gabbard had straight outside the lines on some Syria or something.

01:21:52.000 Uh-huh.

01:21:55.000 And Barry Weiss was going through the files in her head like, what does she have to believe?

01:22:01.000 And she was aware that Tulsi Gabbard had somehow violated that in a way that no one's willing to say in detail to fully articulate.

01:22:09.000 What did Tulsi Gabbard do wrong?

01:22:10.000 No one will tell you.

01:22:11.000 She's just bad! 1.00

01:22:13.000 And then what that revealed about Barry Weiss is she's completely dishonest. 1.00

01:22:17.000 Like, she's a liar, actually. 0.98

01:22:19.000 You can't...

01:22:20.000 By the way, if you attack somebody, particularly personally, and can't explain why you're attacking the person...

01:22:26.000 That's not acceptable.

01:22:27.000 You're a dishonest person if you can't explain why.

01:22:29.000 I think it's a common thing that people do in private, and they get accustomed to speaking. 0.52

01:22:36.000 We're talking like we're talking in private.

01:22:38.000 We're just two people talking.

01:22:39.000 So people get accustomed to saying things without being able to back them up.

01:22:44.000 You know, like, oh, he's a vaccine denier.

01:22:47.000 Well, I've done a ton of that in my life.

01:22:48.000 Yeah, I have as well. 0.99

01:22:49.000 Because I'm an asshole, so it's like, I just don't like that person. 0.95

01:22:52.000 I have as well, but what I'm saying is, I don't know how much time Barry Weiss had spent doing podcasts before that. 0.98

01:22:57.000 Well, she'd spent, look, I'm just saying, like, it's important to be honest about what your agenda is.

01:23:04.000 I think she is honest.

01:23:05.000 I think she is honest, and I really like her.

01:23:07.000 I like talking to her.

01:23:09.000 She's a very intelligent person.

01:23:10.000 I'm not against her personally.

01:23:11.000 I just think that was a mistake.

01:23:13.000 And I think you're allowed to do that and hopefully learn from that.

01:23:16.000 Don't do that anymore.

01:23:17.000 Don't say a thing that you...

01:23:19.000 And I've done that.

01:23:20.000 I've definitely done that.

01:23:21.000 I've said a thing, and I wasn't really exactly sure what I was talking about.

01:23:24.000 Oh my gosh, I do that every day.

01:23:25.000 And I may have just done it with Barry Weiss, so let me be a lot more specific about what I mean.

01:23:28.000 If your agenda is neocon politics, which is her agenda...

01:23:33.000 Just say so.

01:23:34.000 Don't pretend to be a defender of free speech as a principle, which is what she does. 0.95

01:23:39.000 How is she a defender of neocon politics?

01:23:41.000 Barry Weiss?

01:23:42.000 Yeah, like what specifically?

01:23:44.000 Well, anyone, including me and Tulsi Gabbard, who thinks that America shouldn't be funding wars that don't help America, she will attack as a traitor to America or whatever, whatever it takes.

01:23:57.000 And so, no, no, no.

01:23:58.000 That's her main interest, which is fine.

01:24:00.000 And by the way, I actually have friends who I disagree with really strongly on this question who believe in neocon politics.

01:24:06.000 Doesn't mean they're terrible people or I hate them or I'm not friends.

01:24:09.000 I'm still friends with them.

01:24:12.000 Right.

01:24:13.000 Right.

01:24:30.000 I think?

01:24:54.000 Under the Biden DOJ because he said things they don't like about foreign policy.

01:24:58.000 And I just interviewed the guy for an hour and it was like, I'm...

01:25:01.000 Because on principle, you should be able to say what you think.

01:25:04.000 Period.

01:25:04.000 What is this gentleman's name?

01:25:07.000 He was actually a...

01:25:08.000 Turns out I like loved him.

01:25:11.000 Oh, and I'm embarrassed.

01:25:12.000 I can't...

01:25:12.000 He's a member of a pretty small black nationalist socialist group.

01:25:18.000 It's like the revolutionary black nationalists or something like that.

01:25:21.000 They're out of...

01:25:23.000 Out of Southwest Florida.

01:25:25.000 And he's literally facing prison for repeating Russian disinformation.

01:25:29.000 He's not even accused of doing anything.

01:25:31.000 He's accused of saying things the Biden DOJ doesn't like.

01:25:35.000 What were these things that he said?

01:25:38.000 Repeating Russian propaganda.

01:25:40.000 I think?

01:25:56.000 Accelerated that, and in response, Putin invaded eastern Ukraine.

01:26:01.000 Now, you can disagree with that, but that's hardly a crackpot view, by the way.

01:26:04.000 I think that's actually true, but even if you don't agree that it's true, that's not...

01:26:07.000 You don't have to be a paid propagandist from the Kremlin to say that.

01:26:11.000 Right.

01:26:12.000 I have said it.

01:26:13.000 I'm not a paid propagandist.

01:26:14.000 Is this a gentleman?

01:26:14.000 That's him right there!

01:26:15.000 Four Americans from a black empowerment organization work with Russian intelligence to spread propaganda, Feds.

01:26:21.000 Yes!

01:26:21.000 To spread propaganda.

01:26:23.000 Now, propaganda...

01:26:24.000 First of all, You know, there's a lot of propaganda.

01:26:28.000 Scroll up a little on that, Jamie, so I can read what this is saying.

01:26:31.000 Oh, okay.

01:26:33.000 Right?

01:26:33.000 So that guy right there.

01:26:35.000 Okay, subscribe real quick.

01:26:37.000 Yeah, the People's Democratic Uhuru movement in St. Petersburg.

01:26:41.000 So he contacted, he spoke with someone in Russia.

01:26:45.000 They spoke with people in Russia and then he repeated.

01:26:48.000 No, no, no.

01:26:48.000 He is being, he's charged with felonies.

01:26:51.000 The FBI raided his house.

01:26:52.000 The first thing they did was cover up the security cameras and they went in there and arrested.

01:26:58.000 They get raided by the FBI. Okay.

01:27:02.000 Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights, freedoms Russianized to divide Americans and interfere elections in the U.S., says Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olson.

01:27:11.000 Now, first of all, weaponized our First Amendment rights?

01:27:15.000 No.

01:27:17.000 Your First Amendment rights are never a crime.

01:27:21.000 They're God-given.

01:27:23.000 The government did not bestow them.

01:27:25.000 You were born with them as a free person, period.

01:27:29.000 And the First Amendment simply says you can't interfere with their exercise.

01:27:32.000 That's it.

01:27:33.000 And in this they are.

01:27:35.000 And I looked at...

01:27:36.000 I read this and I thought...

01:27:37.000 I reached out to this guy, by the way.

01:27:39.000 Matthew Olson?

01:27:40.000 No, I wish.

01:27:41.000 Matthew Olson would never do my show.

01:27:42.000 I mean, the guy whose salary I pay is a U.S. citizen? 0.54

01:27:44.000 No, he would never speak to me.

01:27:46.000 Listen, look at that quote.

01:27:47.000 Russia's Foreign Intelligence Services allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights freedoms Russia denies its own citizens to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States. 0.64

01:27:59.000 That...

01:27:59.000 You gotta, like...

01:28:01.000 Why are you saying that?

01:28:02.000 Say what happened.

01:28:03.000 But nothing happened.

01:28:05.000 So that's the thing.

01:28:06.000 So I'm reading this.

01:28:07.000 Someone sent it to me and I'm like, okay, clearly there's a crime here.

01:28:10.000 Like they were found with...

01:28:12.000 I don't know mortar shells or they were I mean usually the government makes up they put kitty porn on your computer at least to discredit you there's no underlying crime other than they said something that the foreign policy establishment of the United States disagrees with okay that's not a crime by definition and this guy is facing life in prison and it looks to me because no one because Barry Weiss has not defended him I think this guy is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison and I'm like this is crazy The rest of his life in prison?

01:28:42.000 Yes!

01:28:42.000 Okay, hold it.

01:28:43.000 This is the thing.

01:28:43.000 I think he's 83. How do you say his name?

01:28:47.000 Yesetella.

01:28:47.000 Yesetella and three other U.S. citizens, Penny Joanne Hess, Jesse Neville, and Augustus C. Romaine Jr. are charged with conspiracy to defraud U.S. Hess?

01:28:59.000 Oh, okay.

01:29:01.000 Defraud the United States.

01:29:03.000 Hess, Yesetella, and Neville are also charged with impersonating agents of a foreign government.

01:29:09.000 Okay, they say to defraud the United States, so defraud suggests theft of something of value, right?

01:29:17.000 Right, right.

01:29:17.000 If I defraud, U.S. steal your money.

01:29:19.000 There's no allegation of that at all.

01:29:22.000 And I actually read the charges.

01:29:23.000 The only allegation is they said things that the U.S. government, the Biden administration, doesn't like.

01:29:29.000 That's it. 0.98

01:29:30.000 And because they're unpopular, and they have views that are considered, quote, fringe, You know, like, crazy black nationalists. 0.99

01:29:39.000 Nobody wants to defend them. 0.90

01:29:41.000 And my only point is not that I'm, like, such a principled person.

01:29:45.000 This seems very obvious to me.

01:29:46.000 You can't allow that.

01:29:48.000 You absolutely cannot allow that if you believe in the First Amendment and the freedom of free people to say what they think.

01:29:54.000 So with this implication is they're saying that they were recruited by the FSB. So it says, prosecutors said, Ianov...

01:30:05.000 Operated an entity called the anti-globalization movement of Russia that was used to carry out its US influence efforts overseen by the Russian intelligence service known as FSB. They recruited US-based organizations to help sway elections, make it appear there was a strong support in the US for Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

01:30:23.000 and backed efforts such as the 2015 United Nations petition to decry the genocide of African people in the US according to the indictment.

01:30:33.000 Backed efforts.

01:30:34.000 What does that mean?

01:30:36.000 Look at that.

01:30:36.000 It's negative to back efforts such as the 2015 United Nations petition to decry the genocide of African people.

01:30:48.000 But just look at that statement.

01:30:50.000 Backed efforts such as a thing to decry genocide.

01:30:57.000 The United Nations petition of 2015 to decry the genocide of African people in the US according to the indictment.

01:31:04.000 Okay, so the real misinformation and propaganda is in the charging documents, actually.

01:31:10.000 The real liars here are the I don't know.

01:31:28.000 Yeah, I think they went over to Russia for some conference.

01:31:32.000 So, by the way, the way this typically works is they say, well, you went to a country against which we've imposed sanctions, and you violated the sanctions regime in some way.

01:31:42.000 Like, that's how they get you.

01:31:44.000 They're not even alleging that.

01:31:45.000 They're not even alleging that.

01:31:46.000 They're just saying, you said things that we don't like, that, by the way, a foreign government we don't like, agrees with. 0.98

01:31:53.000 But that they learned those when they went over to Russia?

01:31:57.000 No, it's all on the internet.

01:31:59.000 They learned them?

01:32:01.000 I mean, I guess it doesn't matter where they learned them.

01:32:03.000 I would, because I've talked to the guy and I've seen what they wrote, the opinions that they expressed...

01:32:09.000 I don't, you know, the genocide of African peoples in America.

01:32:13.000 I don't even know what that means.

01:32:15.000 I guess I don't agree with that.

01:32:16.000 But their views on Russia, I generally agree with because I think they're true. 0.99

01:32:21.000 And so does Jeff Sachs and a lot of other non-crazy, non-black nationalists who probably agree with the basic framework of their position. 0.72

01:32:28.000 But whether we agree or not is not relevant.

01:32:31.000 Right.

01:32:34.000 In a free country, which this was when I grew up, you have the right to any opinion you want.

01:32:39.000 You do not have the right to hurt people, you don't have the right to steal from them, you don't have the right to defraud people, but you certainly, foremost, have the right to any opinion you want, no matter what the people in charge think of it.

01:32:50.000 In fact, you have that right as a bulwark against tyranny by the people in charge.

01:32:57.000 Like, that's the only thing that keeps this country free, is my right to have any opinion I want.

01:33:02.000 And this guy is going to jail for his opinions.

01:33:05.000 And, you know, it's so crazy that I kept thinking, like, is there something that I'm missing?

01:33:11.000 Like, it does seem a little fringe, this group.

01:33:14.000 I'd never heard of them.

01:33:15.000 I'm not saying the money, okay?

01:33:17.000 They must have done something.

01:33:19.000 Nope, nothing.

01:33:20.000 And you should see the video of the FBI, right?

01:33:22.000 It's unbelievable.

01:33:23.000 They sent, like, it's on the internet.

01:33:25.000 It's on X. I have the video on there.

01:33:28.000 They sent, like...

01:33:29.000 40 armed agents with automatic weapons to this guy's office and his house.

01:33:34.000 Like, no exaggeration.

01:33:35.000 It was a full-blown, like, we're arresting El Chapo type thing.

01:33:39.000 For this guy, he's like an 83-year-old Army veteran...

01:33:43.000 It's outrageous.

01:33:44.000 And I really find it baffling that nobody who's like against woke culture or whatever will touch it.

01:33:52.000 And the reason they won't touch it is because their foreign policy views in general are more important to them than their views on speech and the First Amendment.

01:34:01.000 No views on America.

01:34:03.000 Well, if you step out of line, right, so the ideology is that we must support Ukraine.

01:34:10.000 Right.

01:34:11.000 So this is, Russia has a point. 0.92

01:34:14.000 This is what they're saying.

01:34:15.000 So Russia was very upset about the movement of the weapons closer to their borders.

01:34:21.000 Yeah.

01:34:23.000 Joining NATO, all the stuff that was the hard red lines that Putin had already set, like if Russia would definitely do something if Ukraine joined NATO. We all knew that.

01:34:35.000 So if you deviate from that, you're going to be in trouble.

01:34:40.000 So better just ignore it.

01:34:42.000 Because you can't...

01:34:43.000 You clearly...

01:34:44.000 If you look at who these people are...

01:34:47.000 I mean, these are people that would be supported by the left.

01:34:50.000 Wholeheartedly.

01:34:51.000 Well, they are.

01:34:51.000 I mean, it's like the revolutionary socialism.

01:34:54.000 Yeah.

01:34:54.000 They're not at CPAC this year.

01:34:56.000 But the left has to ignore it because then...

01:34:58.000 100%.

01:34:59.000 It conflicts with this other part of the ideology.

01:35:01.000 Well, the categories right and left are just like... 0.92

01:35:02.000 Now they're actually ridiculous. 0.98

01:35:04.000 They're ridiculous. 0.99

01:35:04.000 They don't mean anything. 0.99

01:35:05.000 In fact, we've moved past the point where they don't mean anything.

01:35:08.000 They do mean something.

01:35:10.000 They are propaganda instruments designed to cloak the truth from the rest of us.

01:35:14.000 In fact, there's agreement, not disagreement at the center of power.

01:35:18.000 They all agree on the things that matter.

01:35:20.000 And those are the economy and foreign policy because that's where the money is.

01:35:24.000 There's no effort to, say, rein in the credit card companies, which if you really cared about the country, you'd say, but people are really suffering.

01:35:32.000 They don't have enough money to live.

01:35:34.000 Kids can't not only not buy houses, they can't afford rent.

01:35:38.000 And why is that?

01:35:39.000 And one of the main reasons is because they're paying close to 20% interest on their credit cards.

01:35:43.000 And okay, we just imagine that in a free market, that's a good thing.

01:35:48.000 Tell me why that's a good thing.

01:35:50.000 Who benefits from that?

01:35:50.000 Why are we for that again?

01:35:51.000 I'm not for that.

01:35:53.000 I think the credit card companies are villains and they send credit cards to kids at school and get them hooked on this.

01:36:01.000 I think it's totally wrong.

01:36:03.000 And if you said that in the U.S. Congress, people would look at you like you had three heads.

01:36:06.000 Like, what?

01:36:07.000 They just don't care because they all agree.

01:36:11.000 That our current economic system and our current foreign policy assumptions are good.

01:36:15.000 So that's not a two-party system.

01:36:17.000 That's a one-party system.

01:36:18.000 And it doesn't serve the interest of the country.

01:36:20.000 And my position is super simple.

01:36:22.000 The only country I have an emotional attachment to is the United States.

01:36:26.000 That's it.

01:36:26.000 I like lots of countries.

01:36:27.000 I like almost all countries, actually.

01:36:28.000 I've been to a lot of them.

01:36:29.000 I like them all.

01:36:30.000 But the only one I feel emotional about is the United States because I live here.

01:36:33.000 I was born here.

01:36:34.000 My kids are here.

01:36:35.000 It's my country.

01:36:37.000 And most of the people in our foreign policy conversation do not feel that way.

01:36:42.000 So that distorts it really dramatically.

01:36:45.000 And they're also a lot of them are violence worshipers.

01:36:48.000 Like they get off on war.

01:36:49.000 They get off on hurting people and on the power that that imbues them with.

01:36:55.000 And I think, you know, the Liz Cheney model. 0.97

01:36:59.000 You know what I mean?

01:37:00.000 Like someone like Liz Cheney, who's got like a really sad and barren personal life. 0.83

01:37:05.000 A lot of them are this way.

01:37:06.000 Weird personal life.

01:37:08.000 Failed personal life.

01:37:09.000 Like, they don't have people who love them.

01:37:11.000 They don't have kids who respect them.

01:37:13.000 And so Adam Kinzinger, whatever, they're all kind of the same.

01:37:16.000 The more broken they are inside, the more focused they are on, like, war and foreign policy because it gives them a feeling of power and strength and success.

01:37:25.000 Like, I can't get my wife to respect me.

01:37:28.000 I can't get my kids to listen to me.

01:37:30.000 I can't pass any meaningful domestic agenda. 1.00

01:37:34.000 But what I can do is bomb the living shit out of a foreign country. 1.00

01:37:38.000 And so there is this, it's not true for all of them, but for a lot of them, there is this syndrome that drives their behavior. 0.99

01:37:47.000 But whatever the reason, it's totally disconnected from what's good for the country.

01:37:50.000 And if you run America, you have one job.

01:37:53.000 One job.

01:37:54.000 And that's improve America.

01:37:56.000 Period.

01:37:57.000 They don't see it that way.

01:37:58.000 So I don't think the system can continue because it's too distorted.

01:38:03.000 It's not serving its original purpose at all.

01:38:07.000 So what was it that these guys said that made this raid possible?

01:38:13.000 They said Russia, and I don't want to speak for them. 1.00

01:38:18.000 Anyone who wants to see it can interview.

01:38:20.000 And I just want to say again, one of the cool things about this moment that I did not anticipate, there's all this sad stuff happening.

01:38:25.000 I know that you probably experience this all the time.

01:38:27.000 It's like finding not only common ground with people you thought you had nothing in common with at all, but also liking them.

01:38:35.000 I actually liked the guy.

01:38:37.000 I'm sure we disagree on a million things. 0.98

01:38:39.000 Probably mad at white people. 0.71

01:38:40.000 I am a white person. 0.93

01:38:41.000 Whatever.

01:38:42.000 But in my conversation, I was like, I like this guy.

01:38:44.000 He's honest and he's sincere.

01:38:46.000 He's principled.

01:38:48.000 He was a veteran.

01:38:49.000 Whatever.

01:38:50.000 No, I really think what they said was what I have said and a lot of people have said, which is there was a reason for this invasion.

01:38:58.000 I personally think the invasion was a bad idea.

01:39:00.000 It didn't help anybody.

01:39:00.000 I'm against war.

01:39:01.000 I'm sad the war is ongoing.

01:39:03.000 But they were pushed to this by a more powerful country, which would be the United States of America, with the threat of including Ukraine in NATO. It's really simple.

01:39:13.000 And right before the invasion, days before the invasion, They send poor Kamala Harris, who has no idea what day it is, to the Munich Security Conference, an area she knows nothing about, no experience in it at all, and they send her there for one purpose, which is to announce at a press briefing, with all the cameras rolling,

01:39:29.000 to Zelensky right there, she says, we want you to join NATO. What?

01:39:35.000 No other NATO members were clamoring for Ukraine.

01:39:39.000 It didn't even qualify for NATO membership.

01:39:41.000 Why would you say that?

01:39:42.000 When Putin's got troops amassed on the Ukrainian border, you send your vice president to the Munich Security Conference with the world watching and say this that no one even really wants?

01:39:52.000 Why would you do that?

01:39:53.000 To provoke war. 0.54

01:39:54.000 Obviously.

01:39:54.000 What's the other reason?

01:39:56.000 And it was scripted.

01:39:58.000 Like, Kamala Harris is not free-balling stuff. 0.98

01:40:00.000 Like, she's saying what she's told to say.

01:40:01.000 Obviously.

01:40:02.000 It's not her area.

01:40:03.000 She doesn't know anything about this stuff.

01:40:04.000 She was told to say that.

01:40:05.000 But why?

01:40:07.000 To provoke a war.

01:40:09.000 Obviously.

01:40:09.000 So that was my read.

01:40:11.000 I said that on Fox News.

01:40:12.000 Not a lot of people liked it, but it just seemed obvious to me.

01:40:14.000 I'm not making excuses for Putin.

01:40:17.000 Please.

01:40:19.000 I want to protect the United States, and I think this war really hurts the United States.

01:40:23.000 Like, my motives are always right out there.

01:40:26.000 Anyway, I think they said a species of that, something like that.

01:40:29.000 And the last thing I'll say is that, why was the reaction so strong?

01:40:34.000 Because it was true.

01:40:36.000 They don't care if you lie.

01:40:37.000 No one in power cares if you lie.

01:40:39.000 But a lot of people are saying...

01:40:40.000 They only care when you tell the truth.

01:40:41.000 A lot of people are saying those things, and they're not getting arrested. 0.86

01:40:44.000 Because he's like some black nationalist guy in St. Petersburg. 0.81

01:40:46.000 Like, who cares? 0.97

01:40:48.000 Who's going to defend him?

01:40:50.000 Nobody. 0.99

01:40:50.000 He's some wacko. 0.99

01:40:52.000 He's some like 80 year old guy who's like been in the like fringe left movement for the past 50 years, you know, like new Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael.

01:41:02.000 He's like a relic of the past and like he doesn't have a constituency.

01:41:04.000 He doesn't care.

01:41:05.000 The modern Democratic Party hates him. 0.93

01:41:07.000 He hates them. 0.98

01:41:08.000 And the Republican Party is like black nationalism. 0.99

01:41:11.000 No, thanks.

01:41:12.000 So he has no constituency.

01:41:14.000 They're never going to like you could say that.

01:41:17.000 And what are they going to do to you?

01:41:19.000 You know, nothing, because they can't.

01:41:22.000 But this guy?

01:41:24.000 Yeah, crush him. 1.00

01:41:25.000 Kill him. 1.00

01:41:25.000 And that's exactly what they're doing. 1.00

01:41:27.000 And I really think, not to be like a 70s liberal about it, if you let the weak get crushed, it's bad.

01:41:33.000 It's super bad.

01:41:34.000 You need to protect the weak.

01:41:35.000 And this guy's weak.

01:41:38.000 And so you think they're making an example out of him with this?

01:41:41.000 Yeah, and they can.

01:41:42.000 They have all this power.

01:41:43.000 I just don't understand why they would move so many people, why they would get so many agents, why they would do this so publicly for one guy's opinion or one group of people's opinion.

01:41:55.000 Well, I don't know.

01:41:56.000 I mean, why did medieval kings hang the heads of people they executed from the gates?

01:42:01.000 Right, but it feels like there should be more to it.

01:42:03.000 Like, what did they say?

01:42:05.000 You're telling me!

01:42:06.000 I know.

01:42:07.000 The problem is that, I mean, I'm just straw man, I'm steel manning this, rather.

01:42:10.000 So the problem is that they went over to Russia, and they talked with people in Russia, and then they're saying these things.

01:42:17.000 Is that the problem?

01:42:17.000 They're not charged with that.

01:42:19.000 They're not charged with going to Russia.

01:42:20.000 But do you think that's the motivation behind it, because they went over there?

01:42:23.000 They said, A different article has a quote from him.

01:42:27.000 Okay.

01:42:27.000 Yeah, they are not, at least when I interviewed him, they had not been charged with taking money from Russia.

01:42:34.000 So it says, they've been accused of us, they've accused us of taking money from Russia.

01:42:39.000 Yeshitel has said yesterday at a news conference on July 29th, we've never taken any money from Russian government, but I'm not saying that because I'm morally opposed to taking money from the Russians or anyone else who wants to support the struggles for black people.

01:42:52.000 Don't tell us that we can't have friends that you don't like.

01:42:57.000 He accused the U.S. government of seeking to use the APSP as a pawn in its proxy war with Russia.

01:43:06.000 The unsubstantiated allegation that opponents of the war are co-conspirators with a foreign power are intended to bolster the phantom of a Russian boogeyman in the public consciousness.

01:43:16.000 The escalating military aggression by the US against Russia and China is already being accompanied by increasing repression and an attempt to criminalize left-wing opposition to the unpopular war.

01:43:29.000 Well, exactly.

01:43:30.000 So they're accusing him of taking money from Russia.

01:43:33.000 They're not.

01:43:33.000 They're not charging him.

01:43:34.000 So here's the distinction, which is like really, really important.

01:43:39.000 So there are two levels on which the Department of Justice in all administrations acts.

01:43:44.000 There's the level of propaganda.

01:43:47.000 Like, what do we want people to think?

01:43:49.000 And there's the level of law.

01:43:50.000 What are we charging someone with?

01:43:52.000 And you have to ignore the first.

01:43:54.000 And pay very close attention to the second.

01:43:56.000 So we have a legal system, we have laws, and you can't actually go to jail unless you violate one under the terms of our system.

01:44:02.000 And so ignore what they're saying about you. 0.99

01:44:05.000 Joe Rogan sucks! 1.00

01:44:06.000 He's a bad man! 1.00

01:44:07.000 But in the end, I'm busting you for double parking.

01:44:10.000 And so really, you're not a bad man, you're a double parker under the law.

01:44:13.000 And so if you look at the charges against these guys, they're not charged with violating sanctions regulations.

01:44:21.000 They are charged with totally amorphous, quote, crimes, like defrauding the U.S. government, not for money, but for, like, defrauding it, like, I guess, counter signaling it.

01:44:38.000 Sending a message publicly that they don't like?

01:44:41.000 I mean, there's no crime.

01:44:42.000 Look it up.

01:44:43.000 Except speaking.

01:44:45.000 And I think that's a precedent that we don't want to live with.

01:44:51.000 No, no doubt.

01:44:53.000 Yeah, let's take a leak.

01:44:55.000 We'll be right back.

01:44:55.000 We're going to pee.

01:44:56.000 Tucker and I are going to pee together.

01:44:59.000 Yeah, well, that's the confronting of reality.

01:45:03.000 You're forced to examine your beliefs and why you came to those beliefs in the first place.

01:45:08.000 That is the beauty of this moment, though.

01:45:10.000 It is.

01:45:11.000 People are living intentionally much more, and it's also just much more interesting.

01:45:16.000 It's not just, you know, it's less shallow than it was for sure.

01:45:19.000 I think so.

01:45:20.000 I think it's more nuanced.

01:45:21.000 At least the people that are paying attention have a more nuanced perspective.

01:45:26.000 But then you have the people that are in the echo chambers that are just digging their heels in even more.

01:45:31.000 And you could spot them easily because they...

01:45:33.000 Well, they're missing out because there's nothing more liberating than admitting you were wrong.

01:45:38.000 I mean, that is like the moment of liberation.

01:45:41.000 Right.

01:45:42.000 And that's the basis of religion.

01:45:43.000 It's the basis of AA. It's the basis of anything that improves you as a person is admitting, honestly admitting to other people, not just to yourself, that like, wow, I got that wrong.

01:45:52.000 Yeah.

01:45:52.000 And then you're free because then you don't have to hide it anymore.

01:45:55.000 Right.

01:45:56.000 Very important.

01:45:57.000 And it's a beautiful thing.

01:45:58.000 And that is like changing your mind.

01:46:01.000 I always notice this covering politics that, you know, a candidate would be like, I've got him on tape saying 10 years ago something different.

01:46:08.000 And no one ever asked my opinion, but I always wanted to say, why don't you just, why don't you say, you're absolutely right, and the country's a lot different from what it was 10 years ago, and so my opinions change too.

01:46:16.000 Like, why wouldn't they? 0.70

01:46:17.000 Because I'm not a freaking robot or a liar. 0.82

01:46:19.000 Also, I used to think this because of that, and now I realize I was wrong. 0.72

01:46:24.000 Exactly!

01:46:25.000 How great is that?

01:46:27.000 It's part of being a human, it's not being a flip-flopper.

01:46:29.000 It's the best part of being a human.

01:46:31.000 Well, this is an interesting time for that because you see people that won't do that.

01:46:35.000 And you could recognize them easily because they're the first people to throw out insults.

01:46:39.000 The first thing they do when they describe you, they'll describe you in an insulting way, and then they'll say what they disagree with you about.

01:46:46.000 They'll say something hard.

01:46:48.000 They try to define you. 1.00

01:46:49.000 You're far-right, white supremacist, racist, misogynist. 0.98

01:46:55.000 Yeah, they throw it all at you, and then they say what you said. 0.99

01:46:59.000 It's so funny.

01:47:00.000 I got called racist and white supremacist so many times, but when I first was called that, I mean, it really stung, you know, a lot because just of where I grew up and how I grew up and those are like the worst things you could ever call somebody.

01:47:14.000 And so I actually like paused for a moment and thought, am I? Which I think it's fair to ask yourself.

01:47:22.000 Like, am I? Whites, whatever that.

01:47:24.000 I never even figured out what that was.

01:47:26.000 Am I a racist?

01:47:27.000 Not really. 0.85

01:47:29.000 And I thought, really, the people I dislike most are almost all white liberals, actually. 0.99

01:47:35.000 You're racist against white people. 0.99

01:47:37.000 No, I am white. 0.95

01:47:39.000 My kids are white.

01:47:39.000 I'm not against white people.

01:47:40.000 I like white people.

01:47:41.000 But no, it's not that.

01:47:43.000 It's that...

01:47:44.000 So, a reporter once called me about this, ugh, you've been called racist?

01:47:47.000 He's like, no, actually, I really dislike you. 0.99

01:47:48.000 If I were to sort of narrow down my bigotries, it's like, people like you, I just think you're disgusting. 0.99

01:47:53.000 I really mean it, too! 1.00

01:47:55.000 Racist! 0.96

01:47:56.000 Okay. 0.99

01:47:57.000 All right.

01:47:57.000 Well, it's a thing, you know?

01:48:00.000 I don't think that works as much anymore.

01:48:01.000 It doesn't work.

01:48:02.000 No.

01:48:03.000 Well, I think a lot of the things that you overuse, eventually people realize, like, oh, you're yelling wolf again.

01:48:10.000 Yeah.

01:48:11.000 Of course.

01:48:12.000 And when people get hit with it and don't disappear, then it becomes obvious that it lacks power.

01:48:18.000 Well, it's also you're trying to use these words to define someone, especially someone like you that has so many hours and hours of talking about things.

01:48:28.000 Like to try this reductionist perspective of someone to reduce them to this ultimately very negative thing and not say that they're a human being.

01:48:36.000 And also, the fact that it's done by the people that want to think of themselves as compassionate and kind, which is the most bizarre.

01:48:43.000 The left is so aggressively incompassionate.

01:48:48.000 Like, they're so aggressively unkind.

01:48:51.000 Letting people die of drug ODs on the sidewalk?

01:48:54.000 That's compassion?

01:48:55.000 No, it's not. 1.00

01:48:55.000 That whole thing is fucking crazy. 1.00

01:48:57.000 Well, it's cruelty, actually. 1.00

01:48:59.000 It is.

01:48:59.000 And it's also, when you find...

01:49:00.000 Do you know Coleon Duarez?

01:49:02.000 I know him.

01:49:03.000 Yeah, great guy.

01:49:04.000 He opened my eyes to the homelessness thing.

01:49:07.000 We had him on the podcast, and he was explaining how he was in San Francisco, and he was like, what is this?

01:49:11.000 It's like, they don't have any money for this?

01:49:13.000 Is that what it is?

01:49:13.000 Like, no.

01:49:14.000 There's a whole business behind it.

01:49:16.000 Of course.

01:49:16.000 And these people that are running this homelessness initiative, or whatever the fuck they call it, they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

01:49:24.000 Some of them a quarter million dollars a year. 0.92

01:49:25.000 Imagine making money off the homeless. 0.99

01:49:28.000 And not doing a goddamn thing. 0.98

01:49:29.000 But what's so funny is I do think the root of their power and the one thing they're good at is just charging the moral high ground and taking it in the first moments of the battle. 0.98

01:49:40.000 Yeah.

01:49:40.000 They just run up to the moral high ground and are like, we've got this.

01:49:43.000 This is ours.

01:49:43.000 And they'll protect that at all costs.

01:49:45.000 And it's like, that's kind of all they have.

01:49:47.000 Is this self-righteousness?

01:49:49.000 And if you can puncture that, it's like you're getting rich from the homeless, actually.

01:49:54.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:49:55.000 And is there anything more disgusting than that?

01:49:57.000 Some junkie who's dying in misery outside the convention center in San Francisco, and you're making money on that?

01:50:04.000 They're essentially using those people as a battery to expand the power of government. 0.98

01:50:08.000 Yeah, and their own personal advantage.

01:50:10.000 Yeah, they're expanding government.

01:50:11.000 They're making more government employees.

01:50:13.000 Now there's tons of people that are working on the homelessness problem, air quotes.

01:50:18.000 And, you know, they probably all have blue hair and they talk nonsense. 0.55

01:50:22.000 And nothing's getting done.

01:50:24.000 And no one's being punished for it.

01:50:25.000 But when they did that study where they said that they had no data, like, how are you?

01:50:32.000 What?

01:50:33.000 You can't say whether or not it's doing anything?

01:50:36.000 Yeah.

01:50:37.000 Well, how'd you spend 24 billion dollars?

01:50:40.000 But why are they not treated as, like, the most reprehensible people in our society?

01:50:45.000 I think there's too many things to think about.

01:50:47.000 I think most people, unlike you and I, aren't even paying attention to it.

01:50:50.000 They're paying attention to the fact that the tents are there. 0.99

01:50:53.000 They're paying attention if you go to Los Angeles, it's a fucking zombie apocalypse. 0.99

01:50:56.000 But what they're not paying attention to is, what is going on? 0.99

01:51:00.000 How many people are making money?

01:51:01.000 I didn't even know until Coleon explained it to us.

01:51:04.000 I had no idea.

01:51:05.000 I thought it was just they don't have any money.

01:51:07.000 They don't put any money in it, and they let these people sleep there. 0.98

01:51:09.000 Oh, no.

01:51:09.000 No, there's actual money.

01:51:11.000 No, there are all these parasites. 1.00

01:51:12.000 Yeah, parasites. 1.00

01:51:13.000 Government parasites. 1.00

01:51:13.000 Of course. 1.00

01:51:14.000 Those are real.

01:51:14.000 Of course.

01:51:15.000 And, you know, this whole idea of, I've created so many jobs.

01:51:19.000 Like, what jobs? 0.99

01:51:20.000 Are they government jobs that are just bullshit? 0.99

01:51:22.000 Because there's a lot of those. 0.99

01:51:23.000 What's crazy to me, just having spent most of my life in Washington, is how close this is to the lawmakers physically.

01:51:31.000 So the US Capitol sits across from something called Union Station, which is a really beautiful train station, right on Capitol Hill.

01:51:39.000 And so to get into the Capitol, when there's a massive homeless city there, people dying of drug ODs, right there.

01:51:46.000 And so to get to work every day, lawmakers have to step over the bodies of fellow Americans Dying, like dying, living outdoors, shitting in the bushes, addicted to drugs, which is hell, okay?

01:52:00.000 And they have to ignore that on their way to creating utopia in some foreign country.

01:52:05.000 And you're like, does it ever occur to you that that's disgusting?

01:52:10.000 That your primary duty is to the drug addict, your fellow American, you're doing nothing?

01:52:15.000 And you're telling me how we're going to make Eastern Europe into, you know, this brave new world?

01:52:22.000 It's so crazy.

01:52:23.000 I don't know.

01:52:23.000 I just can't get past that.

01:52:25.000 I think I'm not super sensitive or aware or anything.

01:52:28.000 I'm not super anything, really.

01:52:29.000 I'm pretty ordinary, but I think I would notice. 0.99

01:52:33.000 Walking into a vote on Ukraine, I'd be like, shit, there are like five junkies on the street. 0.99

01:52:38.000 Maybe we should do something for them? 1.00

01:52:40.000 Yeah.

01:52:41.000 Yeah, it's very bizarre.

01:52:42.000 It's bizarre that they can rationalize it, or at least that they don't get called out by all their people.

01:52:48.000 And this idea that it's compassionate, that you have compassion to leave these people and to give them aid and to help them and give them clean needles.

01:52:56.000 But then you've got to think, like, maybe there's something bigger going on, actually.

01:53:00.000 Because there's no...

01:53:02.000 Yes, there's an entire sector of the economy now that feeds off of human misery.

01:53:08.000 The drug treatment centers that don't work, the homeless advocates who create more homeless, the, you know, migrant workers, you know, American-born aid agencies, workers who...

01:53:21.000 You know, increase illegal immigration and gang activity.

01:53:23.000 You know, this is all this, you know, people are making money off this, the arms manufacturers that help kill people in foreign countries, etc, etc.

01:53:31.000 There's a VIG and all of that.

01:53:32.000 It's a scam, it's a grift, etc, etc.

01:53:35.000 But like, there's something more.

01:53:36.000 Like, there are a lot of people who seem to be just like for evil for its own sake.

01:53:42.000 And you're like, maybe all the crazy talk about a spiritual war of good and evil, maybe there's something to that.

01:53:51.000 Maybe that's not an illusion.

01:53:53.000 Maybe that's like, everyone else has always thought that.

01:53:55.000 There are certainly forces that have evil consequences that exist.

01:54:01.000 But they act on people from the outside.

01:54:03.000 And you feel it also on the other side.

01:54:05.000 I mean, people are better than they naturally are sometimes.

01:54:07.000 Like you feel compassion for people or true empathy for someone.

01:54:12.000 You really want to help someone.

01:54:13.000 There's no advantage to you at all.

01:54:15.000 Like, why are you doing that?

01:54:16.000 It's almost like you're being acted on by good.

01:54:18.000 And all of us have known those moments where we just are cruel for the sake of it, hurt someone for the sake of it.

01:54:23.000 What's that?

01:54:24.000 There's no advantage to us.

01:54:25.000 That's evil acting on us.

01:54:27.000 And I think we're seeing it at scale.

01:54:28.000 And like, I grew up in the most secular world you could ever grow up in.

01:54:32.000 Southern California in the 70s and 80s and in a very secular family, and I've never really paid much attention to that.

01:54:39.000 And all of a sudden, every, not everyone, a lot of people I know who had similar childhoods to mine, similar life experiences are like, maybe there is like a supernatural realm.

01:54:49.000 Maybe there's more than just like what we can see and feel. 0.96

01:54:53.000 Maybe life is more than just ordering shit on Amazon. 0.91

01:54:56.000 Maybe there's like a purpose. 0.99

01:54:57.000 Maybe there is this battle between good and evil.

01:55:00.000 Around us that we can't see but that we do experience a lot.

01:55:03.000 It seems like it's always been a narrative throughout human history.

01:55:06.000 It's always been this recognition.

01:55:07.000 Carl's over there snoring.

01:55:11.000 I don't have my headphones on so I can hear them.

01:55:14.000 You're snorting or snoring?

01:55:16.000 Snoring.

01:55:16.000 Carl snoring.

01:55:17.000 Carl the dog.

01:55:19.000 Oh, Carl the dog!

01:55:20.000 Carl the dog.

01:55:21.000 I like Carl the dog.

01:55:22.000 He snores.

01:55:22.000 He's the best, but he snores when he sleeps because he's a little French bulldog.

01:55:27.000 He's a sporty little bulldog.

01:55:29.000 He's awesome.

01:55:29.000 Yeah.

01:55:30.000 He's the best.

01:55:31.000 Dogs don't get cuter.

01:55:33.000 They might be as cute, but they don't get any cuter than Carl.

01:55:36.000 I think that's right.

01:55:37.000 Yeah.

01:55:37.000 I've got some pretty good-looking dogs, I will say.

01:55:39.000 Yeah, I have a beautiful dog.

01:55:40.000 I have a golden retriever, but he's not as cute as Carl.

01:55:43.000 Carl's a different thing.

01:55:44.000 Don't tell him that.

01:55:45.000 He knows.

01:55:46.000 He doesn't like Carl.

01:55:47.000 Well, he doesn't hate Carl, but he, like, ignores him.

01:55:50.000 He thinks of Carl as a thief of attention only.

01:55:54.000 Which he is.

01:55:55.000 Yeah.

01:55:56.000 Fair.

01:55:56.000 So, we've always – human beings have always at least believed that there are forces of good and evil and that they – that's what exorcisms are about, right?

01:56:10.000 The idea that you're possessed.

01:56:12.000 Yes.

01:56:12.000 You're possessed by evil.

01:56:13.000 There's always been this thought that there's good and evil.

01:56:16.000 But when did you start – when did you start considering that and thinking that that's – because weren't you at one point in time – weren't you a Grateful Deadhead?

01:56:26.000 Oh, yeah.

01:56:27.000 I listened to them this morning, yeah.

01:56:29.000 You used to travel around with them?

01:56:30.000 Yeah.

01:56:32.000 How old were you when that was going on?

01:56:35.000 I went to my first Dead show in December of 1984. So I was 15 at, speaking of the San Francisco Civic Center.

01:56:46.000 Yeah, the New Year's show.

01:56:47.000 So they always played in Oakland, but one year they played in San Francisco.

01:56:53.000 And so we were in Tahoe over Christmas, and for some reason my dad was gone.

01:56:58.000 I don't really know where.

01:56:58.000 So my brother and I drove illegally from Tahoe in the family vehicle to downtown San Francisco.

01:57:06.000 How old was your brother?

01:57:07.000 Thirteen.

01:57:08.000 So you drove?

01:57:09.000 Yeah, I drove.

01:57:10.000 Fifteen, you drove?

01:57:11.000 Yeah.

01:57:12.000 Wow.

01:57:12.000 From Tahoe.

01:57:13.000 So it was a couple hours.

01:57:14.000 And I remember being on the freeway like...

01:57:16.000 At fifteen.

01:57:19.000 Well, we had a pretty...

01:57:21.000 Different kind of childhood.

01:57:23.000 But anyway...

01:57:25.000 Is that you?

01:57:28.000 Yeah, it's me on the left. 0.99

01:57:29.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.99

01:57:31.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:57:31.000 I don't know how that... 0.99

01:57:33.000 That picture is hanging in my barn.

01:57:35.000 And I've never...

01:57:37.000 I don't release any pictures of myself or family or anything like that.

01:57:40.000 And somebody came to my barn and took a picture of that.

01:57:43.000 It's hanging next to my sink.

01:57:44.000 And put it on the internet.

01:57:47.000 Wow.

01:57:47.000 So that's my brother Buckley on the right.

01:57:50.000 Um...

01:57:51.000 That picture was taken, so my dad was a reporter in San Francisco in the 60s, and a pretty well-known reporter, and that was in the 80s when I was in school, and we were home for Christmas vacation, and he had covered The Grateful Dead.

01:58:06.000 He knew The Grateful Dead.

01:58:07.000 My dad did.

01:58:08.000 So they were in his office.

01:58:10.000 They came through D.C., and they called him, and they came over to his office.

01:58:14.000 Jerry came over to his office, and my dad's like, I've got Jerry Garcia here.

01:58:16.000 You guys should come down.

01:58:17.000 So my brother and I, we lived in Georgetown and we had a Vespa.

01:58:20.000 Remember those?

01:58:21.000 Yeah.

01:58:21.000 And we drove our Vespa.

01:58:22.000 It was freaking cold out.

01:58:24.000 I'll never forget that.

01:58:25.000 We drove our Vespa down to 6th and E or whatever where my dad's office was.

01:58:29.000 And there was Jerry.

01:58:30.000 I'd never met him before.

01:58:31.000 He was missing the middle finger of his right hand, famously.

01:58:34.000 You know, the famous handprint, Grateful Dead handprint.

01:58:37.000 But when he shook his hand, you could feel it collapse, kind of, because he didn't have that middle finger.

01:58:42.000 But anyway, so my brother and I drove to the New Year's show.

01:58:45.000 It was actually a couple nights before New Year's, and we didn't have tickets, of course.

01:58:49.000 And we were in the park across from there, and we were, you know, whatever, doing the, you know, whatever things that people do at Dead shows, and we were pretty freaking out of it.

01:58:59.000 And this guy comes up out of nowhere and puts a ticket around my face and goes, here, and hands me a ticket.

01:59:08.000 So my brother was extremely out of it.

01:59:12.000 I mean, he was, you know, I never should have done this, but I was like, all right, man, I'm going in.

01:59:18.000 All right.

01:59:18.000 And I left my little brother in the park.

01:59:22.000 During the show, just like very, very impaired, like super, super impaired.

01:59:26.000 It was completely wrong to do something like that, but I did do it.

01:59:29.000 And then I went in and saw the show, kind of freaked out in the middle of it, hid in the men's room for a while.

01:59:35.000 I'll never forget that.

01:59:36.000 Standing on the stall smoking cigarettes.

01:59:39.000 Is it acid?

01:59:40.000 No, it was psilocybin mushrooms, which, by the way, I should just say, I got sober 22 years ago.

01:59:47.000 I'm completely opposed to anything.

01:59:49.000 I don't take Advil.

01:59:49.000 I'm totally opposed to anything other than nicotine and coffee.

01:59:53.000 But yeah, it was mushrooms, so we ate way too many.

01:59:55.000 And started to kind of melt down a little bit.

02:00:01.000 But anyway, the point is I get out of the show.

02:00:03.000 This is pre-self.

02:00:04.000 This is 1984. And I get out of the show, and they played actually a lot of tunes that they didn't play.

02:00:12.000 They played Spoonful.

02:00:13.000 Like, they didn't play Spoonful a lot.

02:00:14.000 It was like a pretty obscure tune.

02:00:16.000 I'd never heard it before, actually.

02:00:17.000 And I couldn't find my brother.

02:00:19.000 My little brother.

02:00:20.000 And I'm like in charge.

02:00:21.000 And, you know, my closest friend and lifelong friends.

02:00:25.000 Talked to him this morning.

02:00:26.000 But I couldn't find him.

02:00:28.000 And I was like, oh, man.

02:00:30.000 My brother's gone.

02:00:31.000 But there he was.

02:00:32.000 He appeared like an hour later.

02:00:35.000 He had spent the entire show in somebody's van parked there.

02:00:39.000 But he seemed undamaged.

02:00:43.000 It was great.

02:00:43.000 I mean, not everything about it is great.

02:00:45.000 I mean, I do think the drug thing got, you know, definitely hurt people for sure.

02:00:50.000 But from my perspective, I went to a bunch of probably 50 or more shows and really enjoyed it.

02:00:55.000 And I love the fact that they had two drummers.

02:01:00.000 That was a huge thing for me.

02:01:01.000 I love rhythm.

02:01:02.000 I think it's the basis of music.

02:01:04.000 It's obviously the basis of music.

02:01:05.000 I mean, the instruments are cool, but they're kind of like interior design and the The architecture is rhythm, and it's the universal sound that every culture appreciates because it reflects something that's pre-existing that's in you.

02:01:19.000 Everyone relates to rhythm, and I just absolutely loved the drums.

02:01:24.000 They would always play, like it was called drums, actually, but they would play a section of every show.

02:01:28.000 It was just drums.

02:01:30.000 Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart just gone crazy on the drums.

02:01:32.000 They had drum circles, and I just like drums.

02:01:35.000 To this day, I listen to drums.

02:01:37.000 Just percussion.

02:01:39.000 King Sonia Day, the great West African drummer.

02:01:45.000 Anyway, whatever.

02:01:46.000 So yeah, I like The Grateful Dead a lot, and still do, and I like that kind of music.

02:01:50.000 Jam music?

02:01:51.000 I like jam music, I like acoustic music, I love bluegrass, love bluegrass and Americana.

02:01:57.000 And to see that grow, to see Billy Strings become like a venue packer, you know, like Billy Strings is like a big act right now.

02:02:06.000 I do feel like creativity, art, has been completely destroyed and eliminated in the United States.

02:02:10.000 As we were saying earlier, you can't be creative if you're not honest.

02:02:15.000 It's that simple.

02:02:16.000 And we can't be honest, so there's no creativity.

02:02:18.000 And in the visual arts and literature and architecture, it's died.

02:02:22.000 But comedy is still alive, thank heaven.

02:02:25.000 And music...

02:02:26.000 For some reason has escaped that and is still alive.

02:02:29.000 Yeah.

02:02:30.000 And the growth, the explosion of acoustic bluegrass, you know, the banjo, like one of the great instruments ever, is just thrilling and like a sign of life.

02:02:41.000 You know?

02:02:42.000 Yeah.

02:02:42.000 At this late stage.

02:02:44.000 Well, I think when there's social pressures and when society's in chaos, art does tend to thrive.

02:02:51.000 Some kind of art.

02:02:52.000 Some art, that's right.

02:02:54.000 Comedy certainly does now.

02:02:56.000 Like, comedy's never been better.

02:02:58.000 But it came close.

02:02:59.000 It's an amazing time.

02:02:59.000 It came close.

02:03:00.000 Oh, yeah.

02:03:01.000 Yeah, the walls got breached.

02:03:03.000 Whoa! 0.71

02:03:04.000 No, but a few years, I don't know when it was, but eight years ago or something, it felt like, oh, wow.

02:03:10.000 You know, people can't tell jokes anymore.

02:03:12.000 We kept doing it.

02:03:13.000 I noticed!

02:03:15.000 Yeah, we kept doing it.

02:03:16.000 You kept the little embers alive.

02:03:18.000 Yeah, well, it was flames.

02:03:21.000 It's just...

02:03:22.000 You know, when you get people in a club and you take their phones away and just have them just be actual human beings and not be filming everything, just being completely trapped with this idea of capturing something and then putting it online, then you get to have a human experience.

02:03:38.000 You mean when people, like, live in the present rather than in the future or far away?

02:03:42.000 That's one of the great things about going to a good club that uses yonder bags for your phones.

02:03:49.000 It just takes you out of, like, at the very least, it's a break.

02:03:52.000 Like this podcast is a break for three hours of phones.

02:03:57.000 There's no, I'm not, no one's checking phones.

02:03:59.000 I love that.

02:04:00.000 That's very rare with human beings where they can just sit down and just have conversations for long periods of time without being distracted by something.

02:04:09.000 Not in my house, but yeah.

02:04:10.000 It's a real problem with folks.

02:04:12.000 It's a huge problem.

02:04:14.000 And the one thing I will say about my very unconventional childhood is there was a huge premium on meals and eating with people.

02:04:22.000 And spending four hours at the table was totally normal in the house that I grew up in.

02:04:27.000 Totally normal.

02:04:27.000 In fact, it was daily.

02:04:29.000 And that was our primary form of entertainment and mode of communication and, you know, thing that we did for fulfillment and fun.

02:04:38.000 And I still do that.

02:04:39.000 I still feel that way.

02:04:40.000 And we have dinner parties constantly and there are no phones and people talk and entertain each other.

02:04:47.000 And it's like it's so much more interesting.

02:04:49.000 I'm not on social media, but if I were on social media, I don't think I would find that on Instagram.

02:04:54.000 And I'm not attacking Instagram, but I don't think I would find that, anything like that.

02:04:59.000 No, it's definitely a lost thing.

02:05:04.000 It's such an easy thing!

02:05:05.000 It's such a fun thing!

02:05:06.000 It is a fun thing, yeah.

02:05:07.000 It's a great thing.

02:05:08.000 And I think people enjoy it, and I think that's also led to the rise of podcasts, too.

02:05:12.000 Because they don't get that in their real life, so at least they get to be a person who sits in on these conversations. 0.67

02:05:17.000 I gotta say, this is not being suck-uppy, because I don't suck up ever to anyone.

02:05:22.000 But the effect that podcasts have had is just incredible, and I never would have predicted that.

02:05:30.000 I wouldn't have predicted it.

02:05:31.000 In a million freaking years. 0.87

02:05:32.000 I would have never thought it.

02:05:34.000 When I first started doing this, it was in my living room with my friend Brian, and we did it on a laptop.

02:05:40.000 We had a webcam and we were like...

02:05:42.000 With my friend Brian.

02:05:43.000 Yeah.

02:05:44.000 Brian Redband of Kill Tony.

02:05:46.000 You met Brian.

02:05:46.000 Yes, I did.

02:05:47.000 No, but I just love the phrase, with my friend Brian.

02:05:50.000 Like every bad story, like...

02:05:51.000 Me and my friend Brian.

02:05:53.000 We were down in Mexicali and I just...

02:05:57.000 Me and my friend Brian.

02:05:58.000 We just started fucking around online, and then we started eventually bringing in guests, and then we eventually got a studio, and then eventually I got a big place in LA, like a real warehouse, and then eventually moved to Texas.

02:06:13.000 It all just eventually happened.

02:06:15.000 But it was not, I mean, I was in another part of media for that whole period, and if you had asked me, up until the last few years, like, the future is clearly shorter, crisper, more produced, right?

02:06:30.000 Right, everybody would have thought that.

02:06:31.000 Exactly.

02:06:32.000 Everyone did think that, including me, and I hated it.

02:06:34.000 You know, I hate it.

02:06:35.000 I like long form, but I was a long form magazine writer for years, so I thought, but I thought that was over.

02:06:41.000 Yeah.

02:06:42.000 Not over.

02:06:42.000 Yeah.

02:06:42.000 Everybody thought that.

02:06:44.000 Yeah.

02:06:44.000 Even my friends, they were telling me how to edit my show.

02:06:46.000 They're like, you should edit that.

02:06:48.000 No one's going to listen in three hours.

02:06:49.000 I'm like, then don't listen.

02:06:50.000 I don't care.

02:06:52.000 Do whatever you want.

02:06:53.000 I'm not making any money doing this.

02:06:55.000 It was just for fun.

02:06:56.000 I love that.

02:06:57.000 It was just fun for years.

02:06:58.000 For years and years, I did it just with no money.

02:07:01.000 There was no money in it forever.

02:07:03.000 What year, like how many years in did it start to pay for itself?

02:07:07.000 Five.

02:07:08.000 That's a long time.

02:07:09.000 Yeah.

02:07:10.000 Long time.

02:07:12.000 It took a while.

02:07:13.000 I mean, it was probably like existing.

02:07:19.000 Yeah, but about five years in, then it started making money.

02:07:22.000 And then it was like, oh, this is a business.

02:07:24.000 I remember very clearly, I was on stage once in Chicago.

02:07:27.000 I was doing the Chicago Theater.

02:07:28.000 And I had this story that I was going to tell.

02:07:30.000 I'm like, how many people listen to the podcast?

02:07:32.000 And there's 3,700 people in the place.

02:07:35.000 And they went nuts.

02:07:36.000 It was like, yeah!

02:07:38.000 And I was like, oh.

02:07:41.000 I thought there was this thing that I'm doing where a few people are paying attention.

02:07:46.000 I don't even know what the...

02:07:47.000 Back then, I never even knew what the numbers were.

02:07:51.000 I didn't even care.

02:07:52.000 Well, they may not have been...

02:07:53.000 Could you even collect numbers accurately then?

02:07:55.000 Yeah, you could get downloads off of whatever the provider was that was the host.

02:08:03.000 You could get download numbers from the host.

02:08:05.000 They would use that to inform ads.

02:08:08.000 Like, oh, he gets X amount of downloads.

02:08:16.000 But it's one of the great developments between podcasting and Billy Strings.

02:08:24.000 I'm serious.

02:08:25.000 I have hope.

02:08:26.000 That it's not all going in the wrong direction, because you can get this view that, like, everything is falling apart, late Rome, just a matter of time before, you know, it really does collapse, and then you see these signs that are not minor, you know, they're significant.

02:08:42.000 Like, no.

02:08:43.000 I mean, I haven't met a person in the past year who said, you know, I thought this, but then I was reading the New York Times and I realized I was wrong.

02:08:51.000 Like, not one person.

02:08:52.000 Right.

02:08:53.000 But the number of people who say, I was listening to this podcast.

02:08:55.000 I was listening to Rogan and da-da-da-da-da.

02:08:57.000 It's like, really noticeable.

02:09:01.000 Yeah, that's why it's interesting.

02:09:04.000 It's interesting because you could put people in front of people and they might not even be right.

02:09:10.000 It might be wrong.

02:09:10.000 But at least now you're having conversations about something you would never have a conversation about before.

02:09:16.000 And even if this person gets exposed as being incorrect, well now you have a more nuanced understanding of what the subject is about and why people think incorrect things.

02:09:27.000 And, you know, this idea of, like, platforming people is a big one today.

02:09:31.000 Why would you platform that person?

02:09:33.000 First of all, platform is not a verb.

02:09:36.000 And whenever they take a perfectly good noun and turn it into a verb, you know something bad is afoot, okay?

02:09:44.000 Platform.

02:09:45.000 Oh, you mean letting an adult human being talk?

02:09:48.000 Right.

02:09:49.000 I think that's not only allowed, I think that's the law.

02:09:52.000 Not only that, I think it's important for us.

02:09:54.000 It's even important to talk to people that are completely different than you, that don't agree with you at all.

02:10:00.000 Well, it's especially important. 0.98

02:10:02.000 Otherwise, it's just masturbatory. 0.96

02:10:04.000 It's interesting, too. 0.99

02:10:05.000 It's just you alone getting yourself off.

02:10:06.000 But it's also interesting to know why these people think the way they think.

02:10:10.000 And also, there's so many people that if you talk to them online, you'd have these horrible conversations.

02:10:16.000 But if you sit down with them as an actual human being and treat them with respect and consideration, and you talk to them like a human being, and you just try to be as friendly and open as possible despite what your differences might be, you realize most people have a lot in common.

02:10:32.000 A lot.

02:10:32.000 More, way more in common than they don't.

02:10:34.000 But that's the secret that they're trying to hide.

02:10:36.000 Yeah.

02:10:37.000 So mind control, you know, the end stage of mind control is censorship, right?

02:10:41.000 But it begins long before that, and it begins by creating false categories that wall off your willingness, that prevent you from wanting to know certain things or talk to certain people, and name-calling is the most obvious tool. 0.63

02:10:56.000 Like, he's a crank, he's a racist, he's a whatever, fill it in.

02:10:59.000 And then you're like, I can't listen to that person. 0.95

02:11:02.000 And I have to say, your willingness to platform or to have a conversation with Alex Jones I think was a revolutionary act, actually.

02:11:12.000 Not that everything Alex Jones says is right.

02:11:15.000 It's not.

02:11:16.000 Not everything I say is right or anyone says is right.

02:11:18.000 But Alex Jones is an interesting person.

02:11:21.000 And even if he's not interesting, he has been walled off from the rest of us through name-calling.

02:11:26.000 And your willingness to be like, no, actually, we're just going to listen to Alex Jones and you can decide for yourself?

02:11:31.000 Well, Alex has been my friend for more than 20 years.

02:11:34.000 Exactly.

02:11:35.000 But...

02:11:37.000 Yeah, but I'm sure you have other friends you haven't invited.

02:11:40.000 You were not allowed to talk to him.

02:11:42.000 And when you hear Alex Jones talk, you may not agree with everything he says.

02:11:46.000 I don't know that I do.

02:11:47.000 But you definitely understand why they told you you couldn't listen to Alex Jones.

02:11:51.000 Well, that's one of the reasons why I had him as one of the first guests when I came over to Spotify.

02:11:55.000 Love that.

02:11:55.000 I was like, let's go.

02:11:57.000 What did they say?

02:11:58.000 Well, a lot of people weren't happy.

02:12:00.000 We lost sponsors.

02:12:01.000 It was an issue.

02:12:04.000 But I think it did the job.

02:12:09.000 Regardless of what he said that's incorrect, clearly the Sandy Hook thing was incorrect.

02:12:15.000 Alex, I know Alex personally, so I know what he was going through.

02:12:19.000 And everybody wants to talk about mental health and they want to praise people for being honest about their mental health issues and support them on their mental health journey to wellness. 0.99

02:12:31.000 Alex has gone through some real issues, and one of the reasons why he's gone through some issues is because that guy is uncovering real shit that's terrifying every fucking day. 0.97

02:12:40.000 And he was drinking out of control, and he's just fucking constantly stressed, freaking out. 0.90

02:12:48.000 When you see so many lies and so much propaganda and so many psyops that are being done on people, you start seeing them where they don't exist. 0.67

02:12:59.000 And that's what he did.

02:13:00.000 Well, and he's also channeling some stuff.

02:13:05.000 You can't call 9-11 in detail because you're super informed.

02:13:10.000 Before the fact.

02:13:12.000 He called it.

02:13:12.000 He literally called it in the summer of 2001. He said, planes will fly into the World Trade Centers and they will blame a man called Osama Bin Laden.

02:13:20.000 We know that he said that because he said it on tape multiple times.

02:13:23.000 And then he said, call the White House and tell them this.

02:13:25.000 Now, that's all we know about Alex Jones.

02:13:27.000 Let's just say that's the fact set.

02:13:29.000 How'd that happen?

02:13:30.000 Right.

02:13:30.000 How did he do that?

02:13:32.000 No.

02:13:32.000 He's channeling something.

02:13:34.000 You think so?

02:13:35.000 Yeah, of course.

02:13:36.000 Yeah.

02:13:36.000 There's like no other...

02:13:37.000 I mean, tell me how he did it otherwise.

02:13:39.000 I've asked him about it.

02:13:40.000 How did you do that at length?

02:13:42.000 He had dinner in my barn recently.

02:13:43.000 We were talking about this.

02:13:44.000 How'd you do that?

02:13:45.000 I don't know.

02:13:46.000 He just came to me.

02:13:48.000 And that's real.

02:13:50.000 That is real.

02:13:50.000 The supernatural is real.

02:13:52.000 And I don't know why it's so hard...

02:13:54.000 For the modern mind, I guess, because it's a materialist mind, to accept that.

02:13:58.000 And that's not a new phenomenon.

02:14:01.000 It's happened throughout history.

02:14:02.000 There are people called prophets, and there are people who were prophets who weren't called prophets, but there are people who have information or parts of information, bits of information, visions of information come to them, and then they relay it.

02:14:14.000 It's not from them.

02:14:16.000 They received it.

02:14:17.000 This is like one of the oldest phenomena in human history.

02:14:23.000 Those people tend to be...

02:14:26.000 A little crazy, a little imbalanced, a little different from everybody else. 0.84

02:14:30.000 Do you know what I mean?

02:14:30.000 They live on locusts and honey in the wilderness.

02:14:33.000 I mean, they're not like everybody else.

02:14:35.000 And that's clearly part of what...

02:14:38.000 I'm not saying that everything that Alex Jones says is a prophecy from God.

02:14:41.000 It's not.

02:14:42.000 But that was prophetic.

02:14:45.000 And if it wasn't, tell me how it wasn't.

02:14:47.000 In July of 2000...

02:14:50.000 Like, I lived in Washington in July of 2001...

02:14:54.000 You know, my dad worked in the government.

02:14:55.000 Like, I was as well informed as anybody could be about what was going on in the government.

02:14:59.000 I've always been interested in what's happening in other countries.

02:15:01.000 I was aware of Osama Bin Laden.

02:15:02.000 I knew about the Taliban.

02:15:03.000 I knew, you know, more than most people.

02:15:05.000 There's not one person who was saying, not one person in Washington, D.C. was saying, you know, at some point soon, they may fly airplanes into the World Trade Centers and blame Osama Bin Laden.

02:15:15.000 Like, that just wasn't a thing.

02:15:17.000 So if you said that multiple times on camera...

02:15:20.000 There's a reason. 1.00

02:15:23.000 I've said this to 50 people, what I just said to you, and they all look at me like, yeah, that's stupid. 1.00

02:15:29.000 Tell me how it's stupid. 1.00

02:15:30.000 Tell me how he did that. 1.00

02:15:32.000 Like, that's impossible, actually.

02:15:33.000 He didn't just do it with that, either.

02:15:35.000 No, I'm aware.

02:15:36.000 He's done it with a lot of things.

02:15:37.000 And that's one of the more interesting things about him, is that, like, he talks about stuff, like, he talked about, like, I'm gonna send this to Jamie, because this is one of the really crazy ones that he called.

02:15:51.000 And this is like 2000, probably, I guess 2017. Here it is.

02:16:08.000 Let me find this.

02:16:09.000 Give me a second here. 0.95

02:16:10.000 Because I sent it to him, like, how the fuck did you call this?

02:16:14.000 Because it's one of those ones where you're like, this is exactly what's happening now. 0.91

02:16:21.000 Here it is.

02:16:22.000 Here, 2017. Hold on a second.

02:16:25.000 I'll send you this, Jamie.

02:16:30.000 Come on.

02:16:32.000 Technology, let's go.

02:16:36.000 Alright, I sent it to you, Jamie.

02:16:39.000 So this is some guy's Instagram clip that I found that took a clip from the podcast and he's doing commentary over it.

02:16:45.000 Put these things on real quick.

02:16:53.000 You got it?

02:16:55.000 Okay, cool.

02:17:03.000 Here we go.

02:17:03.000 22 years on podcast, InfoWars, Alex Jones and Joe Rogan discuss what's currently happening right now.

02:17:12.000 Google, CERN, technology, vampire, aliens.

02:17:17.000 In a nutshell, Alex was pretty on point with this message.

02:17:21.000 Let me know what your thoughts are.

02:17:22.000 Is he crazy or is he on to something?

02:17:25.000 It's really big. 0.75

02:17:26.000 So, okay.

02:17:29.000 Yeah, pour another shot of that.

02:17:30.000 Let's get this out properly now.

02:17:33.000 All right, let me give you my best, please.

02:17:35.000 Deep research proclamation once again.

02:17:37.000 What do you think is going, but am I wrong to still hold out hope that aliens are real?

02:17:42.000 Because I tell you, that's one of the two guilty pleasures that I still cling to.

02:17:46.000 It's Bigfoot and aliens.

02:17:47.000 Those are two.

02:17:48.000 Bigfoot, not so much.

02:17:49.000 I wish it was real, but I just don't think it is.

02:17:51.000 Are you ready?

02:17:52.000 Yes.

02:17:53.000 Bigfoot's real?

02:17:54.000 No.

02:17:54.000 Come on, Daddy.

02:17:55.000 No.

02:17:56.000 Are you ready?

02:17:57.000 Yes!

02:17:58.000 I'm gonna give you the big enchilada.

02:17:59.000 Joe, there are aliens in this room right now.

02:18:01.000 For real?

02:18:02.000 Yeah, you're not of this world, bro.

02:18:03.000 Me?

02:18:03.000 You're the alien.

02:18:04.000 Oh, wow.

02:18:05.000 I didn't know.

02:18:06.000 Well, here's what the elite believe.

02:18:08.000 And let me be very clear, because the media will take this out of context.

02:18:10.000 I only go with what I can prove.

02:18:12.000 Oh, thank you.

02:18:13.000 And people can't even handle that.

02:18:14.000 There's armies.

02:18:15.000 We're fighting a pedophile conspiracy.

02:18:17.000 But beyond that, it's a vampire conspiracy in that they are... 0.99

02:18:21.000 Interdimensionally sucking the essence of our youth. 0.86

02:18:24.000 Right.

02:18:24.000 And they believe they're possessed by an off-world entity.

02:18:27.000 They do?

02:18:28.000 Yeah, and Joe, I've been on air 22 years.

02:18:30.000 I don't get into aliens, metaphysical, religion, any of that.

02:18:33.000 I've studied the elite, and I've also communicated with a lot of the top people.

02:18:37.000 And if you want to know, I will actually break down right now the best knowledge right now of what's happening on the planet.

02:18:43.000 What's happening?

02:18:45.000 The elite are all about transcendence and living forever and the secrets of the universe and they want to know all this.

02:18:50.000 Some are good, some are bad, some are a mix.

02:18:53.000 But the good ones don't ever want to organize.

02:18:55.000 The bad ones don't want to organize because they lust after power.

02:18:58.000 Powerful consciousnesses don't want to dominate other people. 0.90

02:19:01.000 They want to empower them so they don't tend to get together until things are really late in the game.

02:19:05.000 Then they come together.

02:19:06.000 Evil is always defeated because good is so much stronger.

02:19:09.000 And we're on this planet, and Einstein's physics showed it, Max Planck's physics showed it all.

02:19:14.000 There's at least 12 dimensions.

02:19:15.000 And now that's why all the top scientists and billionaires are coming out saying it's a false hologram.

02:19:19.000 It is artificial.

02:19:21.000 The computers are scanning it and finding tension points where it's artificially projected and gravity's bleeding in to this universe.

02:19:30.000 That's what they call dark matter.

02:19:32.000 So we're like a thought or a dream that's a wisp in some computer program, some God's mind, whatever.

02:19:38.000 They're proving it all.

02:19:39.000 It's all coming out.

02:19:40.000 Now, there's like this sub-transmission zone below the third dimension that's just turned over to the most horrible things is what it resonates to.

02:19:48.000 And it's trying to get up into the third dimension that's just a basic level consciousness to launch into the next levels.

02:19:55.000 And our species is already way up in the fifth, sixth dimension, consciously, our best people.

02:20:00.000 But there's this big war trying to, like, basically destroy humanity because humanity has free will, and there's a decision to which level we want to go to.

02:20:09.000 We have free will, so evil's allowed to come and contend, not just good.

02:20:13.000 And the elites themselves...

02:20:15.000 Believe they're racing using human technology to try to take our best minds and build some type of breakaway civilization where they're going to merge with machines, transcend, and break away from the failed species of this man, which is kind of like a false transmission because they're thinking what they are is ugly and bad,

02:20:34.000 projecting it onto themselves instead of believing, no, it's a human test about building us up.

02:20:39.000 And so Google was set up 18, 19 years ago.

02:20:42.000 I knew about this before it was declassified.

02:20:44.000 I'm just saying I have good sources.

02:20:45.000 That they wanted to build a giant artificial system.

02:20:48.000 And Google believes that the first artificial intelligence will be a supercomputer based on the neuron activities of the hive mind of humanity with billions of people wired into it with the Internet of Things.

02:21:02.000 And so all of our thoughts go into it, and we're actually building a computer that has real neurons in real time that's also psychically connected to us that are organic creatures so that...

02:21:13.000 They will have current prediction powers, future prediction powers, a true crystal ball.

02:21:19.000 But the big secret is, once you have a crystal ball and know the future, you can add stimuli beforehand and make decisions that control the future.

02:21:27.000 And so then it's the end of consciousness and free will for individuals, as we know, and a true 2.0 in a very bad way, hive mind consciousness with an AI jacked into everyone, knowing our hopes and dreams, delivering it to us, not in some PKD wirehead system where we plug in and give up on consciousness because of unlimited pleasure.

02:21:46.000 Not because we were already wired and absorbed before we knew it by giving over our consciousness to this system by our daily decisions that it was able to manipulate and control into a larger system.

02:21:56.000 There's now a human counter-strike taking place to shut this off before it gets fully into place and to block these systems and to try to have an actual debate about where humanity goes and cut off the pedophiles and psychic vampires that are in control of this AI system before humanity is destroyed.

02:22:12.000 The AI? How'd the pedophile... 0.75

02:22:15.000 Yeah, that's pretty much it.

02:22:19.000 It's incredible.

02:22:21.000 That was seven years ago.

02:22:23.000 Seven years ago.

02:22:26.000 No, seven years ago, no one was thinking AI was going to take over civilization.

02:22:30.000 So you can see why the FBI decided to destroy him, which it did.

02:22:35.000 I mean, it's just like, what has happened to Alex Jones?

02:22:39.000 Is proof that at least some of what he's saying is true.

02:22:42.000 Because who is Alex Jones a threat to?

02:22:45.000 Did you see that interview with the guy from FBI who was trying to hook up with that dude on a date?

02:22:50.000 CIA, yeah.

02:22:50.000 Was it CIA? That's right.

02:22:52.000 And they were talking about how they can destroy a person.

02:22:56.000 Yeah, I think I was mentioned in there, too.

02:22:58.000 Were you?

02:22:58.000 Yeah.

02:22:59.000 It was.

02:23:00.000 Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of things.

02:23:02.000 Okay, so, yeah.

02:23:04.000 Again, the third dimension, I don't know anything about dimensions, okay, so I can't comment on that.

02:23:09.000 But two things he said are true.

02:23:12.000 One is that every civilization, every religion, the Greek myths, every single one, including Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, has believed that there is Sort of, that the spirit world and humanity are like,

02:23:32.000 that they're hybrids.

02:23:34.000 Yeah.

02:23:34.000 Okay?

02:23:34.000 So that's just a fact.

02:23:36.000 Genesis 6. So, you know, I don't think that's crazy at all, given that it has been the belief of civilizations that had no contact with each other.

02:23:47.000 I don't think it's crazy, and I also don't think it's crazy to consider it.

02:23:51.000 I don't think we have a real map of reality.

02:23:55.000 Well, we definitely don't.

02:23:57.000 And better put than I explained it, that's exactly right.

02:24:01.000 We don't have a real map, and it's not crazy to consider it.

02:24:04.000 And it was an entirely conventional view up until fairly recently.

02:24:09.000 That, yeah, that the spirit world breeds with people, but everyone thought that.

02:24:16.000 Right.

02:24:16.000 Even the term spirit world is probably a loaded term.

02:24:20.000 Of course it is.

02:24:20.000 They're all loaded terms.

02:24:21.000 Whatever it is.

02:24:21.000 How do you say it in a way that doesn't sound crazy, but the whole thing sounds crazy because we don't acknowledge the reality, the actual physical reality of the supernatural and it is real.

02:24:29.000 That's the first thing.

02:24:30.000 The second point that's obviously true is that weak people, which is a synonym for bad people, come together for strength and safety.

02:24:41.000 They act as one.

02:24:42.000 The hive mind is specific to a certain group of people.

02:24:46.000 Bad people.

02:24:48.000 And that good people don't tend to come together, but they're coming together now.

02:24:52.000 And I just noticed this.

02:24:55.000 I mean, people independently who I know or sort of know in many cases have long despised have come to exactly the same conclusions without talking to each other.

02:25:04.000 I know that you have this experience all the time.

02:25:06.000 Yeah.

02:25:07.000 It's like, I can't believe you think that.

02:25:09.000 How did you wind up thinking that?

02:25:10.000 Right.

02:25:11.000 And not just on a specific issue like foreign policy or COVID or whatever, but like on a whole bunch of different things.

02:25:17.000 They're all coming to the same conclusion and they're coming together.

02:25:20.000 And so that does suggest You know, a big change and a battle.

02:25:27.000 I mean, it is a battle between good and evil.

02:25:28.000 I'm not always convinced I'm on the good side.

02:25:30.000 I've been, you know, an instrument of evil many times in my life, and I'm ashamed of it.

02:25:34.000 Are you talking about the Iraq War?

02:25:36.000 Yeah, the Iraq War.

02:25:37.000 I've been cruel to people, probably even already on your show, in ways that are unjustified.

02:25:43.000 That's my instinct to do that.

02:25:45.000 That's a fault, not, you know...

02:25:48.000 Not something to brag about.

02:25:49.000 It's something I'm ashamed of.

02:25:50.000 So I'm not saying I'm always on the right side.

02:25:52.000 I certainly have not always been on the right side.

02:25:54.000 I've been on the wrong side many, many times.

02:25:55.000 But that doesn't change the fact that there is good, there is evil, they are at war with each other, and we are subject to the effects of that conflict.

02:26:05.000 And that we're seeing it suddenly play out in ways that are really, really obvious.

02:26:09.000 There's no political explanation for the trans phenomenon.

02:26:12.000 Nobody benefits.

02:26:13.000 You can see these right-wingers be like, really?

02:26:16.000 It's all about the people who make synthetic hormones.

02:26:18.000 Yeah, okay, they benefit.

02:26:20.000 It's not driving it. 1.00

02:26:21.000 That's stupid. 0.99

02:26:21.000 It's not about the money, actually. 0.99

02:26:23.000 There's no upside.

02:26:24.000 It's not helping the kids at all.

02:26:26.000 If a child has anorexia, which is pretty common, actually, in this country, and the child thinks she's fat, you don't say to the child, yeah, you're fat.

02:26:36.000 You don't do that.

02:26:37.000 You give the child help if you can.

02:26:39.000 It's hard to treat, but you try.

02:26:41.000 If a child comes to you and says, actually, I think I was born in the wrong body, the last thing you do is affirm that it's hurting the child.

02:26:46.000 Like, why would you do that?

02:26:47.000 If you love the child, you wouldn't do that.

02:26:49.000 It's really an exercise.

02:26:51.000 Undertaken for the sake of destruction, for the sake of hurting someone.

02:26:56.000 There's no real upside.

02:26:58.000 What's another phrase description of that?

02:27:00.000 It's evil.

02:27:01.000 And you see that a lot.

02:27:04.000 A lot.

02:27:05.000 Yeah.

02:27:06.000 And why?

02:27:09.000 Like, what is that?

02:27:11.000 What is it?

02:27:11.000 And why is it so obvious to even a completely secular person like me all of a sudden?

02:27:18.000 There's a reason for that.

02:27:20.000 History is moving really, really fast.

02:27:21.000 We're right in the middle of it.

02:27:23.000 And I probably wouldn't have chosen to be born at the time I was.

02:27:27.000 I'd much rather sort of reach maturity in 1955. Really?

02:27:32.000 Well, I don't know.

02:27:32.000 I don't get to choose.

02:27:33.000 You know, I don't like drama.

02:27:34.000 I don't like change.

02:27:35.000 Like, I'm...

02:27:36.000 But there was drama and change back then, too.

02:27:38.000 There was.

02:27:38.000 But people didn't reckon...

02:27:40.000 Well, if there was a Cold War, of course.

02:27:41.000 There was a Korean War.

02:27:42.000 Okay.

02:27:43.000 But people didn't see it...

02:27:45.000 In their face.

02:27:46.000 Right.

02:27:47.000 In the way...

02:27:47.000 I don't think...

02:27:48.000 Wouldn't you rather know?

02:27:50.000 I don't have a choice, I do know.

02:27:51.000 Yeah, I'd rather know.

02:27:52.000 I'd rather be right now.

02:27:54.000 Yeah, well, Nick, you've got a much better attitude than I. I mean, sometimes I just, my parents got divorced when I was little, and so I kind of like, I don't want change.

02:28:02.000 Yeah, I know what you mean.

02:28:03.000 It's not up to me.

02:28:04.000 I know what you mean.

02:28:05.000 You know, I was having a conversation in the green room with a club the other night.

02:28:10.000 About this guy from Canada that's HIV positive, that's a trans woman that's taking hormones so they can breastfeed their nine-month-old daughter.

02:28:23.000 So a biological male is taking hormones and is now breastfeeding their daughter off of their male tit. 0.91

02:28:30.000 And I said, if I was Satan, if Satan was real, I would do that.

02:28:33.000 Exactly.

02:28:34.000 If Satan's real, I would, I mean, if Satan was going to do something insidious and unbelievably creepy, he would do that.

02:28:44.000 Well, I think he is doing that, obviously. 0.91

02:28:46.000 But this guy's a real freak.

02:28:49.000 And it's like using public money, too. 0.69

02:28:52.000 But he's a victim, too.

02:28:53.000 Sure.

02:28:54.000 Right, because the thing about evil, the reason that evil is distinct from everything else, it destroys the vessel it's held in.

02:29:02.000 The conduit through which it flows destroys the person.

02:29:04.000 So that guy, in the end...

02:29:08.000 Will not thrive.

02:29:09.000 Right.

02:29:09.000 He'll be destroyed, too.

02:29:12.000 And so that's how you know that it's supernatural.

02:29:15.000 In other words, if I, you know, if I steal your iPhone and sell it and I get an extra 400 bucks, like, that's kind of explicable.

02:29:21.000 You understand why I'm doing that.

02:29:23.000 I want the 400 bucks.

02:29:24.000 Right. 0.68

02:29:24.000 But if I'm encouraging your kid to castrate himself, I'm not really benefiting from that, actually. 0.68

02:29:31.000 There's no material benefit to me at all.

02:29:32.000 There's no real psychic benefit.

02:29:34.000 It's hurting for its own sake.

02:29:37.000 And that's evil.

02:29:39.000 There's no political category that explains that.

02:29:41.000 Right.

02:29:41.000 And then there's clearly money involved in that, too.

02:29:43.000 There is money, of course.

02:29:44.000 And then there's the gender-affirming clinics that have popped up all over the country since 2007. You see the map of it.

02:29:50.000 It's fucking bananas. 0.99

02:29:51.000 But why would you want to do that? 0.99

02:29:53.000 Why would policymakers want to do that?

02:29:55.000 Why would anybody want to make money that way, right?

02:29:57.000 Why would they choose to make money that way?

02:29:58.000 It's the most unnatural thing ever because parents, every parent at a certain age feels like, I like my kids.

02:30:04.000 I want grandkids. 1.00

02:30:05.000 Right.

02:30:05.000 And you want to protect your children.

02:30:06.000 I want mine to continue.

02:30:07.000 From bad decisions.

02:30:08.000 So I always think the politicians who push...

02:30:10.000 Trani-ism on the country, like their kids are going trans too. 0.77

02:30:14.000 Yeah, they are.

02:30:15.000 Right?

02:30:15.000 They're not escaping it.

02:30:16.000 It's like they're burning down their own house.

02:30:18.000 I would like to see the statistics of people in Hollywood.

02:30:21.000 Like how many of their kids turn trans versus the rest of the world. 0.98

02:30:25.000 Yeah, I know some of them too.

02:30:26.000 Yeah.

02:30:27.000 But how many of them versus the rest of the world?

02:30:30.000 Well, a lot more.

02:30:31.000 A lot more.

02:30:32.000 Which is a morally corrupt business.

02:30:34.000 Yes.

02:30:35.000 Yeah.

02:30:36.000 Like, more than we knew, more than I knew, you know, the entertainment business, it's...

02:30:41.000 It's always been that way.

02:30:42.000 You know, Tarantino was talking to us about this famous old director that had a bedroom in his office, where he would bed the starlets, and it was just common knowledge. 0.99

02:30:51.000 If you wanted to be in his movie, you had to fuck him. 0.99

02:30:54.000 And you'd go into his office, he had a literal bedroom in his office. 1.00

02:30:57.000 We had some of that in television, yes.

02:30:59.000 I'm sure.

02:31:00.000 Yeah, quite a bit.

02:31:01.000 Yeah, and I didn't really understand.

02:31:04.000 I didn't, you know, obviously partake in it or you would know because all my text messages went up in the New York Times.

02:31:10.000 So I'm not hiding any of my own behavior.

02:31:12.000 But I mean, I will say, if I'm being honest, it didn't really register with me.

02:31:16.000 I was like, yeah, that's kind of wild and crazy.

02:31:18.000 I just didn't.

02:31:19.000 You know, like my wife, I didn't want to blow up my family.

02:31:21.000 I didn't do anything like that, really.

02:31:23.000 But I certainly saw a lot, like a lot of it, like a lot.

02:31:26.000 And I just didn't really see it as like horrifying.

02:31:29.000 I just saw it as kind of like, well, you know, creative people are this way kind of thing.

02:31:33.000 But I look back and I'm like, it was really dark.

02:31:35.000 Well, especially the producer thing, right?

02:31:39.000 Like the Weinstein thing, the way they ran the business.

02:31:42.000 That's how it was pay to play.

02:31:45.000 I worked for Harvey Weinstein for a year.

02:31:47.000 Did you really?

02:31:47.000 Yeah, I did.

02:31:48.000 When?

02:31:49.000 1999. He had a magazine with Tina Brown called Talk Magazine.

02:31:54.000 I was the head political writer for it.

02:31:57.000 And they had an office at Carnegie Towers in New York right below the park. 0.98

02:32:01.000 And I remember he was a pig. 0.90

02:32:04.000 I was not like an intimate friend of his or whatever, but I certainly dealt with him. 0.97

02:32:07.000 And the big controversy was he was smoking in elevators.

02:32:11.000 Wow.

02:32:12.000 And I've kind of supported that, if I'm being honest. 0.99

02:32:15.000 But he was considered incredibly insensitive and just, like, vulgar, just like a pig. 0.99

02:32:20.000 Well, he looks vulgar. 0.98

02:32:22.000 Yeah, well, that was certainly what everyone thought of him where I worked. 0.99

02:32:24.000 Harvey's just a pig, and his brother Bob was a little bit less that way. 0.95

02:32:28.000 He was also involved. 0.99

02:32:29.000 But, yeah, people knew that he was a bad guy, but, like...

02:32:34.000 But he made awesome movies.

02:32:36.000 Yeah.

02:32:37.000 And also, but he was just powerful.

02:32:39.000 It's like Harvey Weinstein. 1.00

02:32:40.000 Like, you want to fuck with Harvey Weinstein. 1.00

02:32:41.000 Right. 1.00

02:32:41.000 I mean, I didn't really think about it too much, to be completely honest. 1.00

02:32:44.000 I was just a guy I worked for.

02:32:46.000 But I don't know.

02:32:49.000 I didn't...

02:32:49.000 I certainly, if you'd played the Alex Jones clip for me in 1999, I would have been...

02:32:53.000 And I did see Alex Jones clips in 1999. And then in later years, where he was talking about Building 7, and I was...

02:32:59.000 Very offended.

02:33:00.000 I was, like, outraged that he would be suggesting that there was something about 9-11 that wasn't above board, that there were, you know, things we didn't know that were being hidden from us, and I was, like, mad at Alex Jones for saying that.

02:33:11.000 I remember that really well.

02:33:12.000 How dare you?

02:33:13.000 The Building 7 one is wild.

02:33:15.000 Well, it is wild.

02:33:16.000 It is wild.

02:33:17.000 I mean, all I know is 21...

02:33:20.000 What?

02:33:21.000 I don't even know what year it is.

02:33:22.000 23 years?

02:33:23.000 Could it really be 23 years after 9-11?

02:33:25.000 23 years later.

02:33:26.000 What's the justification for classifying any document around 9-11?

02:33:29.000 There's no justification.

02:33:30.000 Well, the same justification in classifying the documents about the Kennedy assassination.

02:33:33.000 Well, exactly.

02:33:34.000 61 years later.

02:33:34.000 Yeah.

02:33:35.000 Or releasing the COVID vaccine data 75 years later.

02:33:38.000 Of course.

02:33:39.000 Yeah.

02:33:40.000 Right.

02:33:40.000 I mean, it's, of course, look, secrecy is different from privacy.

02:33:44.000 Privacy is necessary for the dignity of this.

02:33:46.000 That's why you've got a door in the bathroom in your bedroom, right?

02:33:48.000 You know, you need privacy, you need private thoughts.

02:33:50.000 We have no privacy whatsoever.

02:33:52.000 None.

02:33:52.000 No privacy at all, thanks to the iPhone and government spying on us all.

02:33:56.000 So there's no privacy, but there's massive secrecy.

02:33:59.000 Secrecy is different.

02:34:00.000 Secrecy of bets lying.

02:34:01.000 The only reason to have secrecy is in order to do something that you're ashamed of other people knowing about that's That's immoral and probably illegal.

02:34:09.000 And there's more secrecy than ever.

02:34:11.000 And that means that there's more lying than ever.

02:34:15.000 There are more crimes being committed than ever.

02:34:17.000 That's the surest sign of it.

02:34:18.000 Why are there a billion classified federal documents in a so-called democracy?

02:34:21.000 Because they're lying to us.

02:34:22.000 That's why.

02:34:23.000 But 9-11, like, what is the justification for that?

02:34:27.000 I don't know the answer.

02:34:28.000 I really don't know the answer.

02:34:29.000 But there is one.

02:34:30.000 That's for sure.

02:34:32.000 It's not methods and sources.

02:34:33.000 You think it's methods and sources?

02:34:34.000 Trying to protect their Saudi sources?

02:34:36.000 I don't think so.

02:34:38.000 You know, the wildest thing about Tower 7 is that if you just say it looks like a controlled demolition, people get mad at you.

02:34:46.000 Why?

02:34:47.000 Well, I don't know.

02:34:48.000 Because I'm not saying that it is a controlled demolition.

02:34:51.000 But I'm saying if you watch it, It looks like a controlled demolition.

02:34:56.000 But that happens all the time.

02:34:57.000 Buildings catch fire and they just implode in on themselves.

02:34:59.000 I think that happens every week, right?

02:35:01.000 All these poultry plants and manufacturing plants that keep getting burned through fire.

02:35:07.000 It's the way it went down.

02:35:09.000 Yeah.

02:35:10.000 So I say, why do they respond that way?

02:35:12.000 And of course, I responded that way.

02:35:16.000 So when I think looking back, the reason that I did was because if you call that into question, you had to ask a lot of other really obvious questions you didn't want to deal with.

02:35:25.000 And you might arrive at the conclusion that a lot of your most basic assumptions are false and that you've been had.

02:35:31.000 And it's just too destabilizing, maybe.

02:35:33.000 Right.

02:35:33.000 Well, the real problem with Tower 7 is they go, well, okay, if it was a controlled demolition, how was that engineered?

02:35:40.000 Did they just decide to do that before September 11th?

02:35:43.000 And you know how long it would take to rig a building like that?

02:35:46.000 Or was it built into the building?

02:35:48.000 And how would they know it would even work?

02:35:50.000 And how would they do something like that?

02:35:51.000 And how would there not be a record of it being built into the building?

02:35:55.000 Like, for someone to engineer the collapse of a tower.

02:35:57.000 And where's the sound signature on the tape?

02:36:00.000 There would be a sound of the explosions going on.

02:36:02.000 Yeah, bang, bang, bang, bang. 0.74

02:36:02.000 Which is a fair question. 0.74

02:36:03.000 Yeah, so a lot of fair questions.

02:36:05.000 And has there ever been a building that experienced a tremendous amount of damage because two enormous skyscrapers fell right next to it, damaged it, and then massive fire started, and then there's diesel generators.

02:36:18.000 That are in the basement.

02:36:19.000 So they have all this fuel.

02:36:21.000 So they have this incredible inferno in the basement that weakens the structure.

02:36:25.000 Is that why it collapsed?

02:36:26.000 Maybe.

02:36:27.000 Totally possible.

02:36:29.000 A lot of building engineers disagree with that, as you know.

02:36:32.000 Yeah.

02:36:33.000 And they don't think that could have happened in the way you just described.

02:36:38.000 I'm agnostic on it.

02:36:40.000 What I know, because I don't know the answer, and I have no way of knowing.

02:36:43.000 All I know is that there's no justification for keeping those documents secret that I can think of.

02:36:48.000 And if there is, tell us what it is.

02:36:50.000 No one has bothered because nobody presses.

02:36:53.000 And it's, you know, I'll add that to the list of outrages.

02:36:56.000 Yeah.

02:36:57.000 You know what I mean?

02:36:57.000 And then it gives you this feeling of helplessness because there's so many of those.

02:37:01.000 They just pile on.

02:37:03.000 There's always another one.

02:37:04.000 Well, the U.S. government spied on me, broke into my phone and spied on me, and I couldn't get a straight answer to that.

02:37:08.000 And I'm not a felon.

02:37:11.000 Well, not only that, they got into your Signal account, right?

02:37:14.000 Yeah, and then they leaked it to the New York Times, what they found there.

02:37:17.000 So it's one thing to say, okay, we picked up your text exchanges with a foreign national, which is true.

02:37:25.000 I text a lot of foreign nationals because of my job.

02:37:28.000 Like, why wouldn't I? And it's my right.

02:37:29.000 As far as I'm concerned, that's not illegal.

02:37:31.000 But we picked up your text exchanges, which I think itself is a lie.

02:37:35.000 I think they were targeting me.

02:37:36.000 I think they are now.

02:37:38.000 I'm pretty positive they are.

02:37:40.000 But whatever.

02:37:41.000 Leaving that aside, we spied on you.

02:37:43.000 We think we have justification.

02:37:45.000 Is there a justification for leaking the contents of my private conversation to a news outlet in order to discredit me?

02:37:50.000 No, there's no. 0.99

02:37:51.000 That's secret police shit, okay? 1.00

02:37:52.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:37:53.000 I'm not whining.

02:37:54.000 Ooh, I'm a victim.

02:37:54.000 I'm certainly not a victim.

02:37:56.000 But what was infuriating was, and I got members of Congress involved because I was pissed and I felt threatened.

02:38:02.000 I couldn't get a straight answer. 0.99

02:38:04.000 They were just like, we're not answering those questions and what are you going to do about it, bitch? 1.00

02:38:08.000 What are you going to do about it? 0.99

02:38:10.000 I don't possess a drone fleet.

02:38:12.000 There's nothing I can do about it, actually.

02:38:13.000 That's the truth.

02:38:14.000 So when the system breaks down and things like, I don't know, honesty, justice, the law, none of those apply.

02:38:22.000 The people in charge decide, well, that doesn't apply to me.

02:38:25.000 You are literally powerless.

02:38:29.000 Bizarre that the New York Times wouldn't have an issue with that.

02:38:32.000 Well, the New York Times does that all the time.

02:38:34.000 But bizarre that they wouldn't have an issue with the government tapping into your phone.

02:38:38.000 They work for the government.

02:38:39.000 Are you kidding?

02:38:40.000 The New York Times?

02:38:41.000 Yeah, the New York Times is a conduit for the lies of government.

02:38:45.000 That's what it is.

02:38:46.000 It's their tool.

02:38:47.000 And they're perfectly aware of that.

02:38:49.000 I mean, I used to write for the New York Times as a freelancer.

02:38:52.000 I mean, I've been around the New York Times a lot.

02:38:53.000 And yeah, there are a lot of really smart people there, for sure.

02:38:57.000 Even now, less so now.

02:38:59.000 But there's still, I think, smart people there.

02:39:01.000 There are.

02:39:01.000 I know some.

02:39:03.000 And they know.

02:39:04.000 But they think that, you know, it's worth it because they're bringing information.

02:39:08.000 I don't know what they think, actually.

02:39:10.000 But no, they're tools of power.

02:39:14.000 And that's like the one thing that you're not allowed to be.

02:39:16.000 Even if you think the power is good, like maybe they all support the agenda of the U.S. government, destabilizing the world and impoverishing their own population.

02:39:23.000 Maybe they're on board with that.

02:39:25.000 Even if they are, they shouldn't do it because the job of the media, the press...

02:39:31.000 Right.

02:39:36.000 Right.

02:39:43.000 Right.

02:39:49.000 I think it's been the case for a long time.

02:39:51.000 I mean, if you look at what happened to Richard Nixon, which I, of course, did not understand at all.

02:39:56.000 Richard Nixon was taken out by the FBI and CIA and with the help of Bob Woodward, who was a Washington Post reporter who had been a naval intelligence officer working in the White House, working in the Nixon White House.

02:40:13.000 And then he shows up like a year later and he's this brand new reporter.

02:40:19.000 He'd never been a journalist at all.

02:40:20.000 He's a naval intel officer.

02:40:22.000 The famous Bob Woodward, we all revere.

02:40:25.000 And he's at the Washington Post and somehow he gets the biggest story in the history of the Washington Post.

02:40:31.000 He's the lead guy in that story.

02:40:33.000 Well, I worked at a newspaper.

02:40:34.000 I've been in the news business my whole life.

02:40:36.000 That is not how it works.

02:40:37.000 You don't take a kid like his first day from a totally unrelated business and put him on the biggest story.

02:40:43.000 But he was.

02:40:44.000 He was that guy.

02:40:45.000 And who is his main source for Watergate?

02:40:48.000 Oh, the number two guy at the FBI. Oh, so you have the Naval Intelligence Officer working with the FBI official to destroy the president.

02:40:58.000 Okay, so that's a deep state coup.

02:41:01.000 How would you describe that?

02:41:02.000 If that happened in Guatemala, what would you say?

02:41:05.000 And yet the way it was framed and the way that I accepted for decades was, oh, this intrepid reporter fought power.

02:41:11.000 No, no, no.

02:41:11.000 This intrepid reporter, Bob Woodward, was a tool of power, secret power, which is the most threatening kind, to bounce the single most popular president in American history, Richard Nixon, from office before the end of his term and replace him with who?

02:41:28.000 Oh, Gerald Ford, who sat on the Warren Commission.

02:41:31.000 Now, how did Gerald Ford get to be Richard Nixon's vice president?

02:41:35.000 Well, because Carl Albert, the Democrat Speaker of the House, told him, you must choose him.

02:41:40.000 We will only confirm him when they sent the actual elected vice president away for tax evasion, Spiro Agnew of Maryland.

02:41:49.000 So you have a complete setup.

02:41:52.000 Gerald Ford, the only unelected president in American history, actually sat on the Warren Commission.

02:41:57.000 Something else that I accepted at face value until I looked at it, I was like, that's completely insane.

02:42:01.000 You didn't want to interview Jack Ruby in your investigation of the assassination? 0.96

02:42:06.000 Okay, you're fake.

02:42:07.000 Yeah, he was on the Warren Commission.

02:42:09.000 And so, sorry for the long story, but the point is, like, that happened in front of all of us, but the way it was framed cloaked the obvious reality of it.

02:42:18.000 The people who broke into the Watergate office building, from which the name is taken, Watergate, I think it was six of them or seven of them.

02:42:26.000 All but one was a CIA employee.

02:42:30.000 That's real.

02:42:30.000 It's like, look it up on Google.

02:42:32.000 So the whole thing, Richard Nixon was elected by more votes than any president in American history in the 1972 election.

02:42:42.000 He was the most popular by votes, which is the only way we can really measure popularity, the most popular president in his reelection campaign.

02:42:49.000 And two years later, he's gone.

02:42:52.000 Undone by a naval intel officer, the number two guy at the FBI and a bunch of CIA employees.

02:42:57.000 You tell me what that is.

02:43:00.000 Those are the facts.

02:43:01.000 Those are not disputed facts. 0.99

02:43:02.000 That's not crackpot shit. 0.97

02:43:03.000 That's just look it up. 0.99

02:43:05.000 So why did they want to get rid of Nixon?

02:43:10.000 You know, there are a lot of theories on that.

02:43:12.000 I mean, we don't – first of all, we don't need to know motive to know what happened.

02:43:17.000 They, meaning unelected federal employees, got rid of Richard Nixon, which is the most anti-democratic way to make a leadership change that there is.

02:43:27.000 Okay?

02:43:28.000 I should just say at the outset, I actually kind of believe in democracy.

02:43:31.000 Obviously, it's not working well.

02:43:32.000 Obviously, it's ending globally.

02:43:34.000 There will never be another liberal democracy, unfortunately.

02:43:36.000 But I'm attached to it because I was born here.

02:43:38.000 I really believe in it.

02:43:39.000 And it's better than any other system.

02:43:42.000 So that's why I'm pissed.

02:43:43.000 What was their motive?

02:43:46.000 There are a lot of theories on this.

02:43:47.000 There's an amazing conversation.

02:43:49.000 It's on tape between Richard Nixon when he was still president, I think it was in 1973, and I think it was Richard Helms, the head of the CIA, though I may have fucked that up, but it was the head of the CIA. I think it was Helms.

02:44:02.000 And Nixon says, I know why they killed Jack Kennedy.

02:44:07.000 So Nixon was a student of history, obviously a flawed and complicated person, but a very, very smart person.

02:44:13.000 And he was really interested in why this guy who'd been president, just one president before him, was murdered.

02:44:20.000 And he didn't think it was a lone gunman who was mysteriously assassinated two days later by another lone gunman. 0.99

02:44:27.000 Like, it's so obviously bullshit. 1.00

02:44:28.000 And he knew that. 0.99

02:44:29.000 And he said to say a director who, and you can listen to the tape, it's on the internet, is totally silent on this question.

02:44:37.000 So I think there was the impression, I don't think I know, that Nixon understood that the bureaucracy was really in control of the country.

02:44:44.000 It wasn't elected officials.

02:44:47.000 And that's a massive threat.

02:44:49.000 Because it's true.

02:44:52.000 And there may have been other reasons, too, that I'm not privy to.

02:44:54.000 Look, and by the way, I didn't even know any of this, despite having moved to Washington in high school and been around this stuff a lot, a lot, a lot.

02:45:03.000 I didn't know any of it.

02:45:04.000 And I know Bob Woodward, personally.

02:45:06.000 And I know Carl Bernstein, personally.

02:45:08.000 I even worked for Carl Bernstein, briefly.

02:45:09.000 So I knew some of the actual players in this, but I didn't...

02:45:21.000 Yeah.

02:45:37.000 So Nixon said that he knew why they killed JFK. Did he elaborate?

02:45:43.000 Nope.

02:45:44.000 And it's worth listening to.

02:45:46.000 It's a very weird conversation.

02:45:47.000 It takes place in the Oval Office, which famously had tape recording devices in it.

02:45:53.000 Obviously, this became a big feature during the Watergate hearings.

02:45:57.000 But yes, that conversation, and I may be mangling it slightly, but it's on the internet and absolutely worth listening to.

02:46:04.000 And The CIA director has this kind of sinister silence.

02:46:08.000 So, like, if I'm the president and you're the CIA director and I say I know why the guy who was just president 10 years ago was killed, the obvious answer would be like, well, why?

02:46:18.000 What?

02:46:19.000 You know why he was killed?

02:46:20.000 You've got insight into the assassination of the U.S. president?

02:46:23.000 He doesn't say anything.

02:46:26.000 It's like a very weird response.

02:46:28.000 Like, what?

02:46:29.000 Just kind of throw that out there?

02:46:30.000 Like, if you say to me, you know, we're taking a leak, you're at the next year, and you're like, I figured out the secret to life.

02:46:35.000 And I'm like, huh, okay.

02:46:38.000 That's like not a good response, right?

02:46:41.000 Right, right.

02:46:42.000 It's a telling response.

02:46:43.000 You hear Trump's take on the JFK assassination, why he didn't release the files?

02:46:48.000 Yeah, I know what Trump's take is.

02:46:49.000 He said that if you knew what I know, you wouldn't tell people either.

02:46:54.000 What?

02:46:55.000 Which is crazy.

02:46:56.000 Well, that's his position on the UAP thing as well, actually.

02:47:02.000 And that's a lot of people's position on it.

02:47:04.000 I mean, Trump is saying, of course, the CIA had knowledge of it.

02:47:09.000 That is known.

02:47:12.000 I mean...

02:47:13.000 I mean, the whole thing.

02:47:15.000 It's so funny.

02:47:17.000 There's so many levels and there's so much I don't understand.

02:47:19.000 But the whole JFK conspiracy industry, and it really is an industry, more books written on that than almost any historical topic, is filled with wackos, right? 0.99

02:47:30.000 There are a lot of wackos in there. 0.99

02:47:31.000 But that fact obscures the larger fact, which is the facts themselves tell an unbelievable story.

02:47:39.000 Yeah.

02:47:40.000 And so, whatever, I could get into it at great length.

02:47:44.000 But yeah, they're still classifying documents.

02:47:48.000 61 years later, both Trump and Joe Biden have, in violation of my read of federal law, kept those documents secret.

02:47:57.000 There's no living person connected to the Kennedy assassination.

02:48:00.000 It was a couple generations ago.

02:48:02.000 There's no one person whose secrets are being protected.

02:48:07.000 It's an institution or maybe countries.

02:48:09.000 There may have been countries involved too.

02:48:11.000 I mean, I don't know the answer, but there's clearly something worth...

02:48:16.000 And I know that when I... I spoke to someone who'd seen the documents, okay, two years ago, and I got one fact out of them, which is, yes, the CIA was involved.

02:48:27.000 And by CIA, CIA is a huge organization, but James Jesus Angleton, the head of the operations directorate, had knowledge of this, which I think is well-known.

02:48:37.000 But that's the view of someone who saw the documents.

02:48:39.000 So I thought that was news, so I went on TV and said that.

02:48:43.000 The next day, I'll never forget it, I went quail hunting.

02:48:46.000 And I was driving back, and I got a phone call from Mike Pompeo's lawyer.

02:48:52.000 Mike Pompeo was the Secretary of State, but before then, he was the Director of the CIA. And in that position, he...

02:48:59.000 Plotted the murder of Julian Assange. 0.62

02:49:01.000 So he is a criminal as far as I'm concerned.

02:49:03.000 But his lawyer called me and said, you know, you should know that anyone who tells you the contents of classified documents has committed a crime.

02:49:13.000 He's threatening me.

02:49:15.000 He's in my car.

02:49:16.000 I'll never, with my dog sitting next to you, I'll never forget this.

02:49:19.000 And I said, are you really saying that to reveal that the U.S. government had a role in the murder of a democratically elected president, to say that out loud, that's the crime?

02:49:29.000 What about the actual crime, which is murdering a president?

02:49:32.000 Like, you're covering up for that, Mike Pompeo.

02:49:35.000 He had no response at all.

02:49:38.000 And so Mike Pompeo is the one who pressed Trump to keep those documents secret.

02:49:45.000 And so it's like, what's crazy to me is not just that Pompeo did that. 0.92

02:49:48.000 I think Pompeo is a really sinister person and a criminal. 0.92

02:49:52.000 I think that. 0.94

02:49:52.000 I think that because the facts suggest that. 0.94

02:49:55.000 He was caught...

02:49:57.000 Yahoo News, Mike Isikoff wrote a long piece on this several years ago.

02:50:00.000 His employees went to Mike Isikoff and said, hey, Mike Pompeo is plotting to murder Julian Assange, who's never even been charged with a crime in the United States, as CIA director.

02:50:10.000 That's illegal.

02:50:11.000 You're not allowed.

02:50:11.000 Federal employees are not allowed to just kill people they don't like, okay?

02:50:14.000 Just to set the baseline here.

02:50:17.000 So...

02:50:19.000 That's who Mike Pompeo is.

02:50:21.000 But he somehow intimidated Trump into not releasing this.

02:50:25.000 Well, okay, that's all bad, right?

02:50:27.000 I think it's criminal behavior.

02:50:28.000 What's crazy is how Mike Pompeo is treated.

02:50:31.000 He's treated as like a Republican poobah in good standing. 0.97

02:50:35.000 He fully expects to become the Secretary of Defense in a Trump administration, which is like completely insane.

02:50:41.000 Why would you take a criminal and give him nuclear weapons?

02:50:43.000 Okay, that's my view.

02:50:44.000 I think it's a common sense view.

02:50:46.000 And like he goes to fundraisers and dinners and everyone's like, hey, Mike Pompeo.

02:50:49.000 It's like, no.

02:50:50.000 You're the guy who kept information the public has a right to no secret.

02:50:55.000 You're the guy who plotted the murder of someone who committed no crime.

02:50:58.000 You are the outlaw. 0.99

02:51:00.000 You are the bad guy. 0.99

02:51:00.000 But no. 0.99

02:51:01.000 He's treated as like, you know, like a pillar of Republican Washington.

02:51:05.000 I think that's, I think it's mind-bending to watch that.

02:51:10.000 And by the way, you know, whatever.

02:51:13.000 That's all I'll say.

02:51:14.000 By the way.

02:51:16.000 No, I mean, you know, people don't say that because they're worried about getting punished.

02:51:19.000 They're worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer.

02:51:21.000 Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies.

02:51:25.000 I'm not guessing at that.

02:51:26.000 They've told me that, including people on the intel committee, including people who run the intel committee, the people whose job it is to oversee and keep in line these enormous secretive agencies whose budgets we can't even know.

02:51:39.000 They're black budgets.

02:51:42.000 They're the parents. 0.96

02:51:43.000 The agencies are the children.

02:51:46.000 They're afraid of the agencies.

02:51:49.000 That's not compatible with democracy.

02:51:52.000 Democracy is a really simple system, even representative democracy like ours.

02:51:56.000 The people rule.

02:51:57.000 They do so through elections.

02:51:58.000 They express their preference through voting.

02:52:00.000 They send their people to the capital city to run the government on their behalf.

02:52:05.000 Whenever you have unelected people who are not accountable to anyone making the biggest decisions, you don't have a democracy.

02:52:12.000 You have something else, another system.

02:52:14.000 I would call it a tyranny or whatever you want to call it.

02:52:15.000 It's not a democracy.

02:52:16.000 So that's like super obvious.

02:52:18.000 It's playing out in front of everyone and no one cares and no one does anything about it.

02:52:22.000 And I think the reason is because they're threatened. 0.99

02:52:25.000 And if you look at the committee chairman who allow this shit to happen year after year, they're all... 0.99

02:52:30.000 And I don't know... 0.99

02:52:32.000 People say, oh, they're compromised or being blackmailed or whatever.

02:52:34.000 I don't have evidence of that.

02:52:35.000 But I know them.

02:52:37.000 And they all have things to hide.

02:52:38.000 I know that for a fact.

02:52:40.000 And so it's not a stretch of imagination to imagine that...

02:52:44.000 You know, some committee chairman who's allowing warrantless spying on Americans to continue or whatever abuse they're allowing, knowing fully or hiding the truth about UAPs, ignoring the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023. Why are they doing that?

02:52:57.000 It's not impossible to imagine that some guy with a drinking problem or a weird sex life, and that's very common, very common up there.

02:53:05.000 That's why they're doing it.

02:53:06.000 Because they don't want to be exposed.

02:53:07.000 I don't have evidence of that.

02:53:08.000 I don't have proof of that.

02:53:09.000 Right.

02:53:09.000 But that's not a crazy thing to assume that that could be happening.

02:53:12.000 Right.

02:53:14.000 And I said to somebody, a very powerful person, the other day in a conversation in my kitchen, an elected official holds a really senior position, a very famous person.

02:53:24.000 I was going crazy.

02:53:24.000 I was so mad about all this stuff and about the warrantless spying and about the funding for these insane wars.

02:53:30.000 And I said to the guy who serves in one of the legislative bodies, I got so mad my dogs were afraid.

02:53:37.000 They're like, Well, why are you yelling?

02:53:38.000 Because I don't yell at home.

02:53:39.000 But I was like, all these people are controlled.

02:53:42.000 They're all, you know, got weird sex lives and all these things are hiding and they're being blackmailed by the intel agencies.

02:53:47.000 And he said, and I'm quoting, I know.

02:53:53.000 Okay, so at this point, we're just sort of admitting that's real?

02:53:57.000 Why do we allow that to continue?

02:53:59.000 Having people compromise, God, that's an old story.

02:54:03.000 It's the oldest story.

02:54:04.000 J. Edgar Hoover.

02:54:05.000 It's all of them.

02:54:07.000 It's Epstein's Island.

02:54:08.000 It's everything.

02:54:08.000 But look, I don't have any...

02:54:10.000 I'm telling you...

02:54:11.000 What's the phrase the finance guys use?

02:54:13.000 Open kimono?

02:54:14.000 Like, I'm actually telling you all I know.

02:54:15.000 I don't know anything else.

02:54:16.000 Right.

02:54:18.000 But I know that the publicly available facts tell a really clear story, which is the government is not acting on behalf of the population.

02:54:25.000 And so it's inherently illegitimate because its only legitimacy derives...

02:54:31.000 From the citizenry.

02:54:32.000 The only reason the government can do things that it does, kill people, collect money by force, all the powers that it has come from one place and that's the consent of the governed.

02:54:41.000 That's the only legitimacy they have.

02:54:43.000 And that's where it's fascinating this concept of good and evil.

02:54:46.000 Because when you think about it if this is true and if these people are compromised because they're secretly Perverts and creeps they are though and they're corrupt and they they steal money or they all these different things are evil things lying controlling people Engaging in unnecessary wars that are gonna cost thousands of lives for profit all these things are evil things So if evil is real Evil would want those

02:55:17.000 kind of people to be in a position of power.

02:55:19.000 Yes.

02:55:20.000 And here's...

02:55:21.000 Evil would want men to breastfeed their children. 1.00

02:55:23.000 Here's the like...

02:55:24.000 Here's the illusion that we fall for time and again.

02:55:28.000 We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such.

02:55:33.000 Like evil people look like Anton LaVey.

02:55:36.000 Yeah.

02:55:38.000 You know what I mean?

02:55:39.000 Black cloak.

02:55:40.000 Exactly.

02:55:40.000 Sickle.

02:55:41.000 Evil...

02:55:43.000 Is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people.

02:55:46.000 I really believe that.

02:55:47.000 I've experienced it a lot.

02:55:50.000 And it's obvious.

02:55:52.000 And what vessel do they choose?

02:55:55.000 The weak.

02:55:57.000 It's weak men and women who are instruments of evil. 1.00

02:56:00.000 The weaker the leader, the more evil that leader will be. 0.63

02:56:06.000 And unfortunately, we've reached a time in American history where Every leader is either a woman or a weak man, pretty much. 0.97

02:56:13.000 And so there's—I'm sorry to say it, that's just true.

02:56:16.000 And the weaker the leader—that's what Mike Johnson.

02:56:19.000 Everyone's like, oh, Mike Johnson's such a nice guy. 0.98

02:56:21.000 Well, I know Mike Johnson, and he's a perfectly nice guy to the extent that he's, like, polite and seems kind of meek and restrained, and he's not saying motherfucker ever, you know what I mean? 0.75

02:56:30.000 He's got, like, very sort of buttoned down— Yeah. 0.97

02:56:54.000 They may be obnoxious, but they know who they are.

02:56:57.000 Weak people just become a host for evil.

02:57:02.000 You know, an open, empty building that evil occupies, possesses even.

02:57:09.000 And that's exactly what's happening to Mike Johnson.

02:57:11.000 It's like absolutely crazy what Mike Johnson is doing.

02:57:14.000 But it's not because he's evil.

02:57:16.000 It's because he's weak and therefore susceptible to evil.

02:57:20.000 It's a meaningful distinction that I have noticed.

02:57:22.000 It is a very strange thing how many weak people wind up being leaders in this society, and particularly because so many people don't want their lives exposed.

02:57:34.000 They don't want that eye of Sauron gazing down upon them if they try to run for president.

02:57:39.000 I get it.

02:57:40.000 Or the physical threat.

02:57:42.000 Yeah, physical.

02:57:42.000 I mean, look at what's happening in the RFK. Where the Biden administration, for the first time ever, denied him Secret Service protection as a legitimate presidential candidate.

02:57:52.000 Well, it's absolutely nuts.

02:57:53.000 Yeah.

02:57:53.000 I mean, how is that?

02:57:55.000 I mean, it's hard.

02:57:57.000 You realize that a lot of the things that we took for granted were actually voluntary.

02:58:01.000 Like, people just didn't do things because, like, that's just wrong.

02:58:04.000 That's not fair.

02:58:07.000 You know what I mean?

02:58:07.000 That's bad sportsmanship.

02:58:09.000 Like, there was a lot of, like, self-restraint involved in running a functional society.

02:58:13.000 You can't just make an infinite number of laws and enforce them.

02:58:17.000 That's impossible. 0.99

02:58:18.000 You rely on people to just not do bad shit because, like, I'm not the kind of person who does bad shit. 1.00

02:58:23.000 Mm-hmm. 0.99

02:58:24.000 And once the people in charge decide, well, I'm just going to do whatever I want, not a lot you can do about it.

02:58:29.000 So the Biden administration denies some Secret Service protection, and you're like, how can you do that?

02:58:33.000 They're like, well, we're doing it.

02:58:34.000 What are you going to do about it? 1.00

02:58:35.000 Bitch. 1.00

02:58:36.000 And the answer is nothing, actually. 1.00

02:58:38.000 What is this most recent bill that they're trying to pass about the ability to monitor phones?

02:58:47.000 Well, it's just the nightmare scenario.

02:58:50.000 It's something that they're already capable of doing because they did it to you, and they did it through an encrypted app.

02:58:55.000 Oh, they do?

02:58:55.000 Oh, yeah.

02:58:56.000 How do they do it?

02:58:57.000 Do you know how they got into your phone?

02:59:02.000 Well, there are two ways to—it's interesting, and I was with Ed Snowden in Moscow and talked a lot about this because he's got the technical—he's, first of all, an excellent and principled person, and his ex-feet is a really good place to start for people to understand what's happening here.

02:59:18.000 He's paid a huge price for being—obviously, he's literally exiled to Moscow— Involuntarily, but there are a couple ways to do it.

02:59:30.000 One, you know, you could hack into Signal, I guess.

02:59:35.000 It's open source.

02:59:37.000 It was created with CIA money, as I'm sure you know.

02:59:40.000 I'm not sure that's how you...

02:59:41.000 I don't think you need to do that.

02:59:42.000 You just capture the phone itself.

02:59:44.000 You just capture the phone.

02:59:45.000 And the bottom line on digital security is that nothing is safe from state actors who want to spy on you, period.

02:59:53.000 There's no electronic communication that they can't monitor, period.

02:59:56.000 What about these things like Eric Prince has some new phone out.

02:59:58.000 I think it's called Unplugged.

03:00:00.000 Yeah, Eric is a good friend of mine and I have a couple of those phones.

03:00:05.000 I've talked to him a lot about it and he's really a wonderful person.

03:00:09.000 One of my favorite people actually.

03:00:12.000 But that phone is designed for a different purpose, I think.

03:00:16.000 I know.

03:00:17.000 And that phone is designed to keep Apple and Google from tracking you, which is sort of a separate category.

03:00:25.000 Was this Jimmy?

03:00:27.000 The bill, I believe.

03:00:28.000 I think?

03:00:29.000 Which bill?

03:00:30.000 The one you were talking about?

03:00:31.000 Oh, okay.

03:00:32.000 Yeah, so that's it.

03:00:34.000 So let's just roll down to what you highlighted.

03:00:36.000 So this is like a perfect example.

03:00:38.000 So the Turner-Himes bill...

03:00:42.000 Congressman Mike Turner and Jim Himes.

03:00:45.000 So who are Mike Turner and Jim Himes?

03:00:50.000 It'd just be funny.

03:00:52.000 Both those guys are the most—and who knows why, and you can sort of fill in the blank on motive.

03:00:58.000 I'm not going to.

03:01:00.000 But those are two of the most reliable water carriers for the intel agencies and for basically the federal bureaucracy in the Congress.

03:01:11.000 Like, these are not people who are working for their constituents.

03:01:13.000 These are people who are working for permanent Washington.

03:01:16.000 I would say these are two of the most sinister people.

03:01:18.000 I know more about Turner than Himes.

03:01:21.000 So it's not surprising they're doing this.

03:01:23.000 It would permit federal law enforcement to also force any other service provider with access to communications equipment to hand over data.

03:01:29.000 Anyone with access to a Wi-Fi router, server, or even phone, anyone from a landlord to a laundromat, will be required to help the government spy.

03:01:36.000 So that's the story right there.

03:01:38.000 So basically...

03:01:39.000 Warrantless.

03:01:40.000 Oh, of course warrantless, absolutely.

03:01:43.000 And in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, as if anyone cares anymore.

03:01:48.000 No one does, clearly.

03:01:49.000 But I just remember when I was a kid, and we're roughly the same generation, you remember this too.

03:01:54.000 People would be like, oh, East Germany! 0.89

03:01:56.000 Like, there are more spies than there are people.

03:01:58.000 East Germany was like the most elaborate surveillance state ever created, and of course it collapsed.

03:02:03.000 But we'd always make fun of East Germany, or North Korea.

03:02:07.000 Who has more privacy, the average North Korean or the average American?

03:02:10.000 Well, obviously the average North Korean, because there's less technology. 0.93

03:02:13.000 The US government spies on its own population more than the North Korean government spies on its.

03:02:18.000 That's just a fact.

03:02:19.000 I'm not saying North Korea is preferable. 1.00

03:02:21.000 I'm not moving there.

03:02:21.000 I'm not carrying water for North Korea.

03:02:24.000 What I'm doing is criticizing my government, because I live here, because it was better, it can be better, it should be better, and it only will be when we demand it. 0.94

03:02:32.000 And it's not some fucking esoteric, like you have to be some crazy civil liberties lawyer or something.

03:02:40.000 Like every person should demand, just as a starting point, a baseline, that no, you're not allowed to spy on me. 0.94

03:02:47.000 I didn't do anything wrong.

03:02:48.000 Right.

03:02:49.000 Like what?

03:02:50.000 Right.

03:02:50.000 No privacy, no humanity.

03:02:52.000 You can't be fully human without privacy.

03:02:55.000 Right.

03:02:55.000 And you also have to take into consideration that these people that are ahead of these intelligence agencies that are requesting these data, they're just human beings.

03:03:03.000 They're human beings requesting data from other human beings without going through a court, without going to a judge and getting a warrant, without stating a case, without having like some clear national security mandate, something...

03:03:18.000 Of course not.

03:03:19.000 And there's no justification.

03:03:20.000 I mean, by the way, we've had the FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, since, I think, 1977. So it predates 9-11.

03:03:31.000 Did it stop 9-11?

03:03:33.000 Oh, I don't think it did. 1.00

03:03:34.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

03:03:35.000 You're not protecting us, actually. 1.00

03:03:36.000 You open the southern border to anyone who wants to come. 1.00

03:03:38.000 You're not checking IDs.

03:03:39.000 You're not doing any kind of biometrics.

03:03:41.000 You're not even screening for COVID. So clearly you don't care about my safety.

03:03:44.000 Stop telling me you do.

03:03:45.000 You don't. 1.00

03:03:45.000 You're a criminal. 1.00

03:03:46.000 Stop this charade. 1.00

03:03:48.000 You don't care about my safety. 0.99

03:03:50.000 So using my safety as a pretext for spying on me is not going to fly, because I'm not that stupid. 1.00

03:03:56.000 I may be kind of stupid, but I'm not that stupid. 0.99

03:03:58.000 No, you're doing this for one simple reason, because this is what organizations do. 1.00

03:04:03.000 They protect themselves.

03:04:05.000 They exist for their own benefit.

03:04:07.000 All human organizations, from the Church Bake Sale Committee, To the Department of Justice, they all are the same.

03:04:13.000 They're an organism, just like any other.

03:04:15.000 And an organism's main goal is to survive and reproduce, to get bigger.

03:04:20.000 And you just see this throughout the federal bureaucracy.

03:04:23.000 Well, it just so happens that the largest human organization in history is the federal government of the United States.

03:04:28.000 And so all of this stuff, it accrues to its own power.

03:04:34.000 Let's say you believed every, quote, piece of science or scientific claim about global climate change.

03:04:40.000 You would not reach the same policy conclusions.

03:04:43.000 You'd be like, well, the first thing we need to do is ban private air travel because obviously that doesn't make any sense.

03:04:47.000 And then the second thing we need to do is, you know, whatever.

03:04:49.000 You'd look at it rationally from a scientific – if you bought the premise, which I don't, but if you did, you would.

03:04:55.000 No.

03:04:56.000 You go through every climate, quote, climate demand.

03:05:00.000 Not one of them disempowers large organizations, whether it's NGOs or the government of the United States.

03:05:07.000 Not one of them.

03:05:07.000 They all make the government more powerful, and they all make you less powerful.

03:05:11.000 So that's when you know it's not really about the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere.

03:05:16.000 It's about making them more powerful and disempowering you.

03:05:19.000 And it's not about who runs those agencies.

03:05:22.000 The bigger the agency, the more effective it will be in doing what all human organizations do, which is protect themselves and increase their power.

03:05:30.000 It's fundamental.

03:05:31.000 I guess that's what I'm saying.

03:05:32.000 It's not about, oh, elect Trump, it'll change.

03:05:34.000 No, it'll only change when, like, we're just eliminating the CIA. And we're going to have like a small intel gathering service that feeds the president relevant information so we can make informed foreign policy decisions.

03:05:45.000 But we're not going to overturn elections in other countries in the name of democracy because that's insane.

03:05:52.000 If we believe in democracy, then we're going to let people vote for their own leaders because we believe in democracy as a principle.

03:05:58.000 Right? 0.99

03:05:58.000 Like, you just get rid of all this shit, because it's not helping us. 0.99

03:06:01.000 It's only hurting us. 1.00

03:06:03.000 And it would take someone, you know, who'd be willing to be assassinated to do anything like that.

03:06:10.000 And so, as you're choosing your leaders, ask yourself, does this person mean it enough?

03:06:16.000 And that's the same question you would ask about your own dad.

03:06:18.000 Does he love me enough to die for me?

03:06:20.000 About your own husband?

03:06:21.000 Does he love me enough to protect me from a home invader at risk to himself?

03:06:24.000 Like, the basic prerequisite for leadership is love of the people you lead and the willingness to die for them.

03:06:31.000 And if you don't have that, you shouldn't be leading, period.

03:06:34.000 It's true in the military, it's true in business, it's true in your home, and it's true in the government.

03:06:38.000 And so no president will fix this unless he's, like, literally willing to die for it.

03:06:42.000 And short of that, it can't be fixed.

03:06:45.000 I can think of no better way to end this conversation than that.

03:06:48.000 Joe Rogan, ladies and gentlemen!

03:06:49.000 You just nailed it.

03:06:51.000 Well, listen, man, it's been very fun getting to know you.

03:06:54.000 I think you are a...

03:06:59.000 Very...

03:06:59.000 You're a controversial character in the world, but you're misunderstood.

03:07:04.000 And I think if people pay attention to your actual work and the things that you talk about, I think you're generally a force of good.

03:07:12.000 I really believe that.

03:07:13.000 I feel like I'm the most conventional person who's ever lived.

03:07:17.000 I don't think I'm radical at all!

03:07:19.000 I'm the opposite!

03:07:20.000 In this crazy time, someone who's conventional and wise seems radical.

03:07:26.000 Maybe.

03:07:27.000 I'm hoping for a better time.

03:07:29.000 Yeah, I think a better time is possible.

03:07:30.000 Me too.

03:07:31.000 I do.

03:07:32.000 It's just, we're in for a rough ride.

03:07:36.000 Yeah, I'm not disarming anytime soon.

03:07:39.000 Yeah.

03:07:40.000 Thank you, Tucker.

03:07:41.000 Thanks, Joe.

03:07:42.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - April 19, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2138 - Tucker Carlson

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