On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and actor Mike Baker joins the pod to talk about a variety of topics, including the Epstein scandal, his favorite cartoons, and much, much more. Also, we talk about the recent death of Michael B. Jordan and the conspiracy theories surrounding it.
00:00:34.000I raised my three boys on that show, much to my wife's horror.
00:00:39.000But it's a great show, but I haven't seen that episode.
00:00:41.000When you think, like Bridget Fetesy had a funny quote, like when you think that they have reached the bottom of the highest level of not giving a fuck, they reach unseen levels.
00:01:03.000Look, I mean, although, again, going back to South Park, yeah, once they did the Woodland Creatures episode all those years ago, you thought, okay, that's got to be the worst thing.
00:01:12.000Which one was the Woodland Creatures episode?
00:03:17.000Everyone knows it doesn't make any sense.
00:03:19.000Let's just, and then he didn't know about the Michael Badden stuff, the autopsy stuff, where it showed that he had three broken bones in his neck, which never happens when you hang yourself.
00:03:30.000Even when you like leap from somewhere with a rope around your neck and it snaps your neck, you never have three broken bones.
00:03:39.000He's not launching himself off the first floor balcony.
00:04:24.000But they're actually doing, right, as we speak, and I find this fascinating, is that the assistant attorney general, Todd Blanche, is down in Florida for an interview with Ghillaine Maxwell.
00:04:36.000And she's serving 20 years in a Florida prison for sex trafficking.
00:05:20.000So this is the first time the Department of Justice, you're telling me, and meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, you've got Democrats like Adam Schiff and others going, we have got to release these fucking files.
00:05:27.000They had four years under the previous administration, right?
00:05:30.000Look, everybody's fucked in this situation.
00:05:32.000But they had all that time to do whatever they wanted to do.
00:05:35.000And nobody up until this point apparently has talked to her.
00:05:38.000Now, you know, some folks on the legal side are saying, well, look, if she had anything interesting to say, she would have said it during the course of her trial, right?
00:06:40.000Go up, Bigger, so we can see it so we can see the quote below it below it no go back there we go i can't read it here it goes uh this is what the atlantic posts if the epstein scandal teaches us anything it's that america needs a dedicated and decently funded group of people whose job it is not to just ask questions but to find answers and then this guy sean davis posts the woman
00:07:40.000So, just the fact that we're just asking questions along with that, or is this a knock on the defunding of PBS, which is essentially a propaganda network for the Democratic Party?
00:07:52.000Yeah, which is now being, apparently, we'll see if that happens, but apparently being defunded.
00:08:41.000And, you know, nobody's going to look good from this.
00:08:44.000But, again, I would caution some, you know, just because a name might be in a file, no matter whose it is, right, doesn't necessarily mean there's nefarious activity.
00:08:54.000It could be like any police file, right, that says, okay, the individual stopped at this particular location and this person was there doesn't mean they're connected to something awful.
00:09:03.000Maybe they were if they're in the file, right, but I'm just saying there's a lot of people probably in that file that are going to be named if it ever comes out who may or may not have been engaged in illegal activity, but just release the goddamn things.
00:09:16.000Yeah, there's probably a lot of people who just went there.
00:09:19.000Did I send you that thing where this guy was breaking, did I say NPR or PBS earlier?
00:10:18.000Yeah, but again, anybody who at this stage of the game thinks that the media doesn't have an agenda, that they're not complicit in one way or another with whatever may be, come on.
00:11:01.000I mean, it's like NPR relied on tax money, and there's this giant outrage that the government's going to defund it.
00:11:08.000Well, and what they're trying to do is they're trying to couch it and saying, look, you're taking away the only source of news for rural locations, for example.
00:11:16.000Like, you've got some place up in North Dakota that has no other access, and so they rely on NPR for their news.
00:11:23.000I don't know a lot of people up in North Dakota that say, I wonder what NPR is saying about this.
00:11:26.000Well, not just that, but it's like, at the end of the day, the reality is the internet exists, and we don't need, you don't need to fund, publicly fund something that's clearly biased when the internet exists.
00:11:52.000And to be fair, if anybody wants to know what the hell's going on in the news, they can just listen to the President's Daily Brief podcast, frankly.
00:12:12.000As far as accusations that were biased, I would stand up and say, please show me a story that concerns you, because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom.
00:12:49.000right-wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think no no that's like literally this is and there's here's another great quote that she said if you look on the right side jamie where it says the truth is a distraction from getting things done that is such a fucking Orwellian thing to say click on that just so you can hear her say this because it's it's so bananas that someone would say this out loud and not think it's.
00:13:16.000One of the most significant differences, critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren't actually focused on finding the truth.
00:13:27.000They're working for something that's a little bit more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now.
00:13:34.000And after seven years there, I actually believe that they're onto something that for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth isn't necessarily the best place to start.
00:13:47.000In fact, I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.
00:14:18.000And I don't know whether that's a TED Talk or not, but as soon as I see that type of forum where they're earnestly standing there and they've got their little mouthpiece there around there and they're talking and they're looking out into the distance and you think, oh, climb out of your own fucking ass, right?
00:15:07.000I will say that the Epstein, the Epstein situation is going to be so disappointing to so many people now because I have this theory that nothing ever gets done in Washington, D.C., right?
00:15:25.000There's never any real consequences of any nature.
00:15:27.000And we've got all sorts of things happening right now, right?
00:15:29.000So the Epstein case is just one of them.
00:15:32.000But right now, you've got the Dems focused on Epstein because, you know, again, they see a good opportunity here to go after Trump, regardless of who else is in the files, right?
00:15:43.000And the Dems, I think, were worried for quite some time and didn't pursue it because, you know, years back they were thinking, okay, Clinton's going to be embarrassed.
00:15:51.000So, again, my point would be just release everything.
00:15:54.000I don't understand how, if you just look at the way that they handle this logistically, whoever thought, because the mob wants to eat, right?
00:16:03.000And they've been throwing red meat to the mob about Epstein files now for years.
00:16:09.000And so whoever in their communications group or in their strategic thinking arena in the administration thought, you know, that we can get away with just saying there's nothing to see here, they should be fired, right?
00:16:21.000Because there's no way you can satisfy this mob.
00:16:24.000And now the mob is oddly bipartisan because it's got the Dems and it's got part of the base of Trump in there.
00:16:30.000And they're all screaming to have this, goddammit, just release this shit.
00:16:34.000Otherwise, this is going to be around Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.
00:16:57.000Yeah, part of that's a family request.
00:16:58.000The family has asked in the past on a number of occasions, they really don't want some of this because some of it, look, some of it's salacious about Martin Luther King, which doesn't take away from everything that he did, right, as a leader of a cause and a movement.
00:17:13.000But some of it is extraterrestrial affairs.
00:17:17.000So there's been some push to be concerned about that.
00:17:27.000It's 56 fucking years later they released this stuff.
00:17:31.000And we're still not any closer to, I mean, again, I don't want to appear down that rabbit hole, but we're still not any closer with Martin Luther King.
00:17:38.000Again, not a conspiracy guy except today, apparently, but there's shit there.
00:17:42.000Well, you've said multiple times that if there's one that you think looks really bad, it's that one.
00:17:49.000But going back to, I know I'm bouncing around here, but going back to the Epstein thing, I don't understand how they handled this so poorly, right?
00:17:56.000For Pam Bondi to come out and talk about the files and all my stuff.
00:18:00.000And then within a blink of an eye, they come out with this bullshit Sunday night memo saying there's nothing to see.
00:18:06.000How could they just lack of coordination?
00:18:10.000I think a messaging problem is always kind of a key element of the Trump administration, whether it's this one or not.
00:18:16.000And now, look, that's not a, I'm not knocking a lot of the policies.
00:18:19.000I like a lot of the policies that come out of this administration, this one and the previous, the first administration.
00:18:24.000But I'm just saying, a hallmark of a Trump administration is the ability to have a self-inflicted wound, shoot yourself in the foot because of messaging usually.
00:21:03.000So the security guys were doing things.
00:21:05.000They were x-raying, you know, parts of materials that were coming in for the construction.
00:21:10.000Apparently, at one point, what was going on was the Russians were installing listening devices inside the rebar of the construction process.
00:21:21.000And apparently, at one point, one of the wires on one of these communications devices that was stuck in there had broken.
00:25:25.000But from an operational perspective, if you see a guy like this who's super connected and is, and all the way back to, what, 2008 was like his first trial, right?
00:25:36.000So he's had a long history of these problems.
00:25:39.000But if you know that he's kind of engaged in a variety of things, as an example, if I'm Chinese Intel, right?
00:25:48.000And I just read the goddamn entertainment news and there's these rumors and allegations of high-level people flying off to his island.
00:25:56.000I'm going to think, that's interesting because potentially if I could get an accessed source there, if I can get somebody inside that operation, whether it's Ghelain Maxwell, whether it's Epstein himself, whether it's somebody who's just on the outskirts of it, maybe I'll start picking up some pretty interesting, leverageable information on people that maybe I want to influence.
00:26:15.000And it's so funny to me that it always comes down to like carnal needs and carnal desires.
00:26:23.000It's always sex because these guys, when you get to like this Bill Gates level and Bill Clinton level, you can't just go pick up gals at the bar.
00:26:35.000So if you're a super famous super freak and you like chasing skirts, but you can't do it.
00:26:44.000Which is you get somebody to procure for you, which apparently was primarily Maxwell's job.
00:26:49.000And she's out there and she was described usually as his girlfriend, but she was clearly operating as his pimp or whatever the female version of a pimp is.
00:27:04.000But look, again, I can't speak to the rumors about him working for one Intel agency or another, but I will say if I'm working for an Intel agency and I see something like that, yeah, I might find that of interest.
00:27:20.000And then I would definitely go after somebody to see what's going on.
00:27:24.000If for no other reason, then, you know, again, maybe it's an opportunity there.
00:27:29.000Well, it's the easiest connect the dots puzzle of all time.
00:27:31.000You got rich, powerful people and hot chicks and probably drugs and cameras.
00:27:37.000And I tell you, the Russians love nothing better than the truth, the reality is in terms of recruiting an asset, recruiting an asset by using blackmail is tough, right?
00:27:51.000That window starts closing immediately, right, in terms of their operational usefulness, right?
00:27:56.000Because there's a lot of issues there.
00:28:00.000You're blackmailing somebody for their cooperation.
00:28:03.000At some point, that's going to go south on you.
00:28:06.000It's not like you've recruited somebody for ideological reasons, right?
00:28:09.000Or even something as straightforward as they need the money because their kid's sick, or whatever it may be.
00:28:45.000Well, you know, the asset will turn on you, right?
00:28:47.000Next thing you know, you know, you've got an agent working now, a double agent working for the other side, right?
00:28:54.000Because they're so fucked over by the fact that they've been blackmailed.
00:28:58.000And at some point, they lose their shit.
00:28:59.000They decide to roll for the other side.
00:29:01.000But aren't you constantly monitoring them and looking at their phone?
00:29:06.000No, there's only so much you can do, right, in terms of maintaining, particularly with a hard target, particularly with an asset who's in a difficult or challenging environment, you know, Chris, and you've got limited access to them, whatever it may be.
00:29:20.000So you're really relying on clandestine communications.
00:29:23.000You don't have a lot of face-to-face meetings.
00:29:25.000And at some point, you never know when things are heading south.
00:29:28.000And then the next thing you know, look, so that's the operational reason for trying to avoid blackmail.
00:30:01.000And, you know, honestly, sometimes that can work.
00:30:05.000Wasn't that kind of, if you thought about this island, if you're bringing award-winning scientists, like famous people, politicians, world leaders, all to one place, you're basically throwing as much shit against the wall as you can.
00:30:20.000And then you have all this stuff on all these different people, and they know it.
00:30:24.000And so then you just kind of like, wasn't there like some CEO that had to step down because he wound up giving Epstein, it was found out that he gave Epstein like $150 million that they couldn't explain why?
00:31:14.000I've advised the Apollo board that I will retire as CEO before my 70th birthday in July, remain as chairman.
00:31:20.000No, he's going to remain as a chairman.
00:31:22.000New York Times detailed at least $75 million in payments and found that Mr. Black had paid Epstein $158 million in a five-year period ending in 2017.
00:31:33.000He also lent Mr. Epstein more than $30 million, only $10 million of which he was paid back.
00:31:39.000So that's a guy that they got something on here.
00:34:17.000Metadata from Raw Epstein prison video shows approximately two minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of the two stitched together clips.
00:34:26.000The cut starts off at the missing minute.
00:34:37.000But here's the thing, it's like these guys that are all involved in this are still, they've been around for a long time, and they have this mentality that existed before the internet, where you could just kind of put stuff out there, and you wouldn't have all these psycho-sleuths out there that are going to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb, especially guys who are tech wizards who can look at the metadata and who can figure this kind of stuff out.
00:35:04.000And look, we still have ADHD, right, collectively as a nation, right?
00:35:08.000And I think maybe that's what they're, you know, some people are saying, look, they've called the recess on Capitol Hill because they figure by the time they come back in September, everybody will have moved on from this, right?
00:35:32.000Because this is one where there's a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was going to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved.
00:35:43.000And when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever, and then they're trying to gaslight you on that.
00:36:24.000In fact, and I'm in the building on occasion, and we're actually working on a show that's going to be a great TV show based on this amazing museum that's inside agency headquarters.
00:36:41.000If I go on TV to talk about something, they just like, you know, it's not like they're going to call up and say, well, here's our view on this.
00:37:06.000With a thing like this, what is the general feeling about people that you talk to that are still in the agency or people that are still involved in the government?
00:37:14.000Like, how are they feeling about this?
00:37:16.000Because the general public is outraged, right?
00:37:18.000Do the people inside, are they frustrated?
00:37:21.000Like people that wanted this stuff to be exposed?
00:37:24.000Yeah, you know, it's funny because with the agency, it's not like the Bureau.
00:37:27.000The agency, I think most people, honestly, don't really probably give a shit about the Epstein files.
00:37:34.000They're more concerned now about this release from Tulsi Gabbard and the talk about manipulating intelligence for the 2016 election and Russian collusion and all of that.
00:37:46.000That speaks more to the agency than the Epstein files does, just from a, you know, whose responsibility is whose, right?
00:37:51.000This Epstein thing is a DOJ, FBI issue.
00:37:55.000I think if they're concerned about it, it's because of how it erodes trust in organizations, institutions, right?
00:38:32.000Like, you need people that are paying attention to that shit, and they should be on your side.
00:38:36.000They should be on the side of the American people, paying attention to threats.
00:38:40.000If you'd think that not paying attention at all is going to do you any good when there's all these countries out there that are fucking plotting constantly, you're crazy.
00:38:53.000The real world is filled with madness.
00:38:55.000And you got to have people paying attention to it.
00:38:57.000But I think that, you know, to answer that question, I think they're more focused on or interested in or, you know, looking at this issue of, you know, and it's surfaced again right at the same time as the Epstein files, right?
00:39:13.000Now it's like sucking all the oxygen out of the room for the past couple of days.
00:39:16.000Tulsi Gabbard comes out and says, I'm releasing these documents.
00:39:23.000They're throwing around the word treason.
00:39:26.000They're saying that Obama knew that Russia did not meddle in the election, did not have any impact in the election, but yet promoted this idea.
00:39:35.000And then there's been some incredible clips of all these different news reporters, CNN and MSNBC, just saying over and over and over again, clear evidence of Russian collusion.
00:40:03.000Adam Schiff coming out on camera numerous times saying, you know, I can't tell you what I've seen, but I've seen things that's a lot more than circumstantial evidence about this collusion.
00:40:12.000So, yeah, they but again, it's much more complex.
00:40:17.000It's much more complex than what folks tend to hear just in like a two and a half or three minute news segment, right?
00:40:25.000So the Democrats want you to think there's nothing to see here in these documents.
00:40:29.000How could you possibly spend time doing this?
00:40:31.000You're just trying to distract from the Epstein files.
00:40:35.000And the Republicans are saying, Obama committed treason, right?
00:40:39.000The reality is, as it oftentimes is, is somewhere in that middle, right?
00:40:46.000There's a lot of conflating of issues here.
00:40:49.000So nobody is questioning, Republicans or Democrats, nobody's questioning that the Russians meddled in the election, just like they did in the previous one, just like they did in this last one.
00:41:01.000They've been meddling since World War II, right?
00:41:16.000Yeah, well, I mean, you know, in the early days, what were they doing?
00:41:21.000In the early days, they would pay off trade union representatives, right, to push a certain line, to, you know, to push for a softer tone, much like the Chinese do now, push for a softer tone against the Soviet Union, right?
00:41:34.000Or during World War II, to push for isolationism, keep the U.S. out of the war, right?
00:41:40.000Before the Nazis turned on the Soviet Union and then they tended to need us.
00:41:44.000Or they would pay journalists to write articles pushing a particular point of view.
00:42:03.000What's happening is that once again, there's a bit of a messaging problem from the Trump administration.
00:42:09.000Trump administration, at the end of the day, is saying what was bullshit was this Russia collusion angle, right?
00:42:18.000Was the idea that, you know, this is complicated to explain, and I'm not doing a very good job of it, but they're saying, yes, there was meddling, but you pushed a story, meaning Brennan and Comey and, you know, all the others that were involved in this, and now going up to the top with Obama,
00:42:35.000saying you took what was an Intel Community Assessment, ICA, because everything has an acronym, that said there was no indication of Russian efforts to push or influence in a particular direction the election.
00:42:56.000And most of that initial reporting was on election infrastructure.
00:43:02.000So there was a fairly significant bit there that said the Russians weren't able to hack into election machines and actually alter vote counts.
00:43:10.000So they said we have seen no evidence of that.
00:43:14.000And so you could argue that in part, the Trump administration is having a hard time explaining, much like I am, that the problem here wasn't that there was anybody saying there's no meddling.
00:43:29.000They're just saying that you, at a certain point, around about December 9th, I think it was, you had a meeting where Obama was sitting in there with Comey and Andrew McCabe and a variety of others.
00:43:39.000And the president himself requested a different intelligence community assessment, which is a little unusual for a president to say, I'd like you to do an ICA on a particular thing.
00:43:54.000Well, they were telling him we don't see that Russian meddling impacted the election, basically.
00:44:03.000The Dems are saying, well, that's just about the electronic infrastructure, about the voting machines, right?
00:44:09.000In reality, the ICA was also, that instruction, the President's Daily Brief and the writing that had been done, the analysis had been done up to that point, was saying, we haven't seen anything that the Russian meddling influenced the outcome of the election.
00:44:23.000Well, then, shortly, and then they squashed that particular piece, right?
00:44:36.000It's amazing anything shit gets done in the government when you read these emails going back and forth between James Clapper at the DNI and other places.
00:44:50.000And you can also see in there that they're saying, we don't think the steel dossier is credible.
00:44:54.000You know, the two senior Russian analysts, right, at the agency were telling John Brennan at the time, if you put the dossier in there as a piece of information into this assessment, you're compromising the credibility of the whole thing because we don't believe it.
00:45:11.000And Brennan instructed, and it's in writing, instructed them to go ahead and do it, right?
00:45:16.000Because it basically he liked the narrative of the steel dossier.
00:45:24.000And so he chose that over the analytical process, right?
00:45:31.000Over the discipline that you need to corroborate information that's going to go to a high-level Intel assessment.
00:45:40.000So, you know, if anybody's in the crosshairs right now, it's probably John Brennan, right, in terms of, because he went up on Capitol Hill at some point and said that, you know, the steel dossier didn't form an important point of, you know, wasn't in the document, wasn't in the ICA.
00:46:28.000If you have a bunch of experts that give you an assessment, this is the facts, this is how it went down, you're like, I don't like those facts.
00:46:36.000I don't think He said I don't like the facts.
00:46:38.000And that's where this is going to be a problem.
00:46:39.000Anybody who thinks Obama is going to go to prison for treasonous conspiracy, I think, again, much like Pam Bondi, you know, with her treating of the Epstein files, which was ridiculous, Tulsi Gabbard has gotten out over her skis.
00:47:21.000He's perfectly got the right to sit in a meeting and say, okay, well, I tell you what, let's sit on this, right?
00:47:28.000and James Clapper and the others agreed, yeah, we're going to take this document and we're going to set it aside that we all worked on.
00:47:33.000Now we want to restructure it focused on, you know, the outcome of the election and the Russian meddling and where this went and how they...
00:47:44.000And it's nuanced and he can and never get in trouble because, yeah, fine, you've got the right to do that.
00:47:49.000I mean, it's not illegal by any means.
00:47:52.000But there is no doubt in my mind that there was a desire to drive this thing in a certain direction, right?
00:48:04.000And so there is no doubt in my mind that, A, first of all, using the steel dossier in there was just horseshit, right?
00:48:12.000Because that thing, there hasn't been any allegation in that steel dossier that's been verifiable.
00:48:21.000So they went, and they remember, they used that steel dossier in part to then go to FISA courts and get warrants.
00:48:26.000So that's another issue that I think from a legal perspective, again, not a lawyer, but I think some people should be probably concerned about how they represented that information, knowing, right, based on kind of what we're seeing from the document releases from Tulsi Gabbard.
00:48:41.000But again, you can see, by virtue of how difficult I'm trying to explain this, it's much more complex than just them bad, these guys good, these guys good, these guys bad.
00:48:54.000There's layers here that I think need to be examined.
00:48:57.000And I think that at the end of the day, you're not really going to get, much like every fucking everything else that happens in D.C., you're not going to get a lot of satisfaction on this one.
00:49:08.000But I do think, I'm convinced that, yeah, they drove this narrative shortly after, into January, when they released the new ICA, then suddenly leaks to the press, and that's when the Russia collusion story happened, right?
00:49:21.000And that's the, you know, that's the, that's the thing that they should be focused on, right?
00:49:27.000They're losing the message because they're throwing shit out there.
00:49:31.000There's a lot of detail, and people get bored.
00:49:34.000And, you know, so I think that's a problem they're going to have here trying to push this thing forward.
00:49:40.000And I do think also that Tulsi Gabbard should have been a little bit more circumspect in the way she explained this, right, and how she described the actions.
00:49:48.000Because I think there were some people who are culpable in terms of going after this narrative and pushing this Russia collusion story that then wasted a couple of years and, you know, God knows how much money on investigations and impeachment hearings and all the rest of it.
00:50:03.000Why do you think she chose to frame it that way?
00:50:05.000Do you think she was instructed to do that or she was guided to do that or encouraged to do that?
00:50:10.000Because if it's not warranted, if you don't believe it's warranted based on the evidence that you've looked at, like she's the director of national intelligence.
00:50:21.000Well, I think she's part of it is the realization that, look, I mean, you put that information out there.
00:50:26.000I think it would have been more appropriate if she'd released all the documentation, said, here's, and lay out in a very good, like almost like a PowerPoint presentation, make it very simple for the press, because the press isn't inclined to pursue this because the press were complicit, right?
00:50:41.000So you're trying to say, this is what these people did, and you helped them.
00:50:45.000Now, what we want is for you, meaning the media, to uncover all of this and report on it.
00:50:50.000They're not going to, they're fucking not going to, they were winning awards, journalistic awards for their coverage of the Russia collusion story.
00:50:56.000So the idea that they're going to somehow now say, yeah, oh, that was a problem.
00:51:00.000So I think they should have maybe just made this more factual-based, stayed away from the, you know, the sort of the hyperbolic statements about treason and all the rest of it, and then tried to explain it to the American public in a way that they can digest a little bit better.
00:51:15.000But when you throw out things like treasonous conspiracy, once again, much like with the Epstein thing, you're creating this kind of howling mob that's going to expect something.
00:51:24.000And I just don't know that they're going to get it.
00:51:27.000So do you think that it's possible that she was encouraged to do this because this kind of takes away some of the heat off of the Epstein thing?
00:51:36.000I'm sure that was a thought process in there somewhere.
00:51:39.000Yeah, I think that's a reasonable assumption.
00:51:43.000If you have the Intel community or you have the White House deciding to themselves, look, we know this information is kind of bullshit, but it certainly serves a narrative, which is we want to delegitimize the new president that's coming in because we can't stand him, then that's a really, really serious problem that needs to be examined.
00:52:05.000It's also so short-sighted because do you not know that that information is eventually going to come out and that's going to compromise the confidence that people have in anything that the intelligence agencies put forth after that?
00:53:59.000Yeah, they didn't know what else to do.
00:54:01.000And, by the way, there's so much going on right now.
00:54:06.000Today, speaking of Kamala and speak about Biden, but today, what's his name?
00:54:13.000The chief of staff, the former chief of staff for Biden, I think he was only there for a couple of years, Ron Klain was up on Capitol Hill to talk because they're holding these interviews up on Capitol Hill to try to figure out what the hell was going on, right?
00:54:27.000At what point did people decide they're going to cover up the mental condition of Joe Biden?
00:54:47.000You know, and Ron Claint apparently stayed up there for a couple hours talking, right?
00:54:52.000But, you know, again, he wasn't there for the last couple years of the administration, I think, but he was there for the debate prep, right?
00:54:58.000And he's come out publicly and said, "I was shocked at his condition." So, you know, people...
00:55:03.000I think they set him up for failure in that debate.
00:55:10.000Why would they agree to a debate at 9 p.m. when you got a guy who's really old and kind of broken down?
00:58:22.000As they do with most of our pharmaceuticals, including what we've been talking about.
00:58:25.000And so then people probably bought black market Adderall, which probably has fentanyl in it, which probably contributed to a lot of deaths.
01:01:50.000I mean, you think Biden's condition and Obama treason.
01:01:55.000Yeah, so it's really, it's disappointing.
01:01:59.000But again, I don't know how I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than the fact that it's very depressing if you think about where our focus is right now.
01:02:13.000There's a lot of flashpoints around the world, a lot of real serious crises and threats to national security and concerns.
01:02:21.000And the White House can't seem to get a focus on things.
01:02:29.000But yeah, the border thing is a great win.
01:02:32.000That's a very, from a national security issue, that's a terrific win.
01:02:37.000The fact that it was open for so long is so insane to think that anybody would think that would be a good idea unless you wanted chaos.
01:02:46.000Yeah, that is always discussed as like, was it intentional?
01:03:04.000So clearly there's a lot of people in the Dem party, in the Democratic Party that are fans of or believe in open borders.
01:03:13.000But there's also the moving of the people to swing states and the fact that it changes the number of congressional seats regardless of whether or not someone's there legally or illegally.
01:03:23.000Once they do a sentence on how many people live there, it raises the number of congressional seats that's available.
01:03:59.000I mean, so opening up your borders and say, come on in, and we're going to provide you with whatever Mom Dani in New York is providing, new free grocery stores and free bus and free childcare and everything's going to be free.
01:04:17.000He said, and if you're wondering how I'm going to pay for this, I'm going to tax the rich.
01:04:20.000You think like, oh, my God, Stalin, you've been going all the way back to, you know, communists have been talking that way for years, feeding the same bullshit lines to gormless sheep, where just now Mom Donnie's just talking to a new generation of sheep.
01:04:35.000And, you know, he could well end up as the mayor.
01:04:39.000Utopian perspectives are really attractive to young people because you see the way these older rich people have been running the world.
01:06:30.000Yeah, at some point he's got to stop that.
01:06:32.000But I think there's a good chance that if Eric Adams ran as an independent, maybe that's the plan.
01:06:41.000And if Cuomo dropped out, I think if they split the vote, then I think Momdani wins.
01:06:45.000But they're going to have to, and the Democrats, you know, nationwide seem to have some real concern over Momdani, right?
01:06:51.000Because that's not the message they want to send at a time when they see sort of this cultural shift in America where we think, okay, we might be done with this whole woke issue, right?
01:07:01.000And then they see Momdani out there slinging the bullshit, doubling down.
01:07:05.000And you got Bernie Sanders backing him.
01:07:06.000You got Jerry Nadler in New York backing him.
01:07:29.000And he's, you know, he's, you know, again, you know, God bless the ideology of the youth, but, you know, people should do a little bit more research into his ideas and how they've worked elsewhere.
01:09:05.000I think it's going to be interesting because Gavin Newsome obviously is in sort of a soft campaign right now to set the table to run for president.
01:09:50.000But look, if you look at the Democrat Party and you say, okay, so what does that mean, right?
01:09:54.000Because right now they're flailing about, right?
01:09:57.000They're doing this autopsy of what happened from this last election, even though they're not going to address the issue of Joe Biden and at what point did we know that he shouldn't be running.
01:10:07.000They're going to leave that off the table.
01:10:09.000But the purpose of the autopsy is essentially to try to figure out what's our next step?
01:12:19.000Yeah, that interview with how is it, apparently the family has no control over him, but how is it that they allow him to go and do podcasts or interviews of any sort, right?
01:12:37.000When he was talking about it, I mean, he said, I'm reluctant to explain this, but he was being honest about why it works and what's so euphoric about it.
01:12:44.000Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, it feeds into the Democrats have decided, apparently, that they need to be tougher, right?
01:12:49.000Because after the last election, and so they would send Tim Waltz out there and, you know, Elmer Fudd and in his hunting gear to try to appeal to middle America.
01:13:00.000And so I can see it, you know, and you see more Democrats getting out there and swearing because that makes them tougher.
01:13:08.000So that interview with Hunter Biden, I can see, feeds into this idea that the Democrat strategists have is we've got to be more mainstream, right?
01:13:17.000We've just got to be, which again is kind of in part why they're so concerned over Mamdani in New York City.
01:13:24.000Well, they were trying for a long time to squash masculinity and frame it all as being toxic, and people rebelled against that in a huge way.
01:13:59.000We try to figure out our way through this world and people go one way too far and then they overcorrect going the other way and then we try to bring it back to the middle and it never really kind of goes there.
01:14:26.000And from a legislative perspective, that's a real problem, right?
01:14:29.000Because you really never do get shit done, right?
01:14:31.000Because you're bouncing from extreme to extreme.
01:14:33.000It's also a problem with this four-year term thing.
01:14:36.000It's like every four years, we have a new person or the same person does it twice.
01:14:41.000These are the options, the only options that you have.
01:14:43.000So you have this terrible situation where you're always like shitting on the other side and there's no like, hey, this is the president now.
01:15:28.000I always wonder, how do people not, and again, maybe some intrepid investigative journalists, if there are any left, I mean, who wouldn't want to do a story about the wealth gains by politicians?
01:15:43.000Just look at the past 10 years, right?
01:15:44.000And say, and take them on both sides, right?
01:15:47.000So you look at Chuck Schumer and AOC, and you look at on the other side, you look at Grassley, and you look at Mitch McConnell, whatever, right?
01:17:16.000It's all just horseshit when someone like Nancy Pelosi is able to do it legally.
01:17:21.000If you're able to make hundreds of millions of dollars legally through some way your salary is so low.
01:17:27.000Most people who make, not that it's low, but most people who make a salary of, it's a great salary, but most people who make $170,000 a year might have $170,000 in the bank.
01:19:34.000But take the financial incentives and the excitement out of it, and maybe you get a different group of people who want to pursue that work.
01:19:44.000And then they just go the hell back to wherever they came from and work a job.
01:19:48.000But also, there's a problem that the campaigns are so ugly.
01:19:51.000And we've agreed, sort of as a society, that that's how we do it.
01:19:56.000And that these people are going to attack each other.
01:19:58.000You know, I remember one of the things during the, when Biden was running, when Kamala Harris was saying that he was guilty of sexual assault.
01:20:52.000You have to have some sort of a Mike Ben style recall in your head where you can keep track of everything because it's just coming at you so fast and doge and Elon and this and that.
01:21:04.000I had some guy ask me last night, do you think that the Elon Musk and Donald Trump thing was staged?
01:21:15.000I go, do you think that they made an agreement that Elon would say that you're on the Epstein client list and that's why you won't release the file?
01:21:24.000Do you think that Donald and Elon came to that agreement?
01:21:28.000Just sitting around over a Diet Coke thing.
01:22:38.000It says, for example, additionally, New York state law has outlawed the use of words like independent, independence, America, and America as the names of political parties.
01:23:35.000The name America Party has been used by several different political parties in the United States, most famously as the official name of the Know-Nothings.
01:23:49.000He likes the term X. A nativist group sometimes dubbed the America's Third Party that rose to prominence in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War.
01:23:59.000The Know-Nothings were during the Civil War.
01:25:41.000I mean, and then people were probably very reluctant to buy a Tesla Because they were worried.
01:25:46.000Like, hey, if I buy this fucking thing and park it somewhere, someone's going to key it.
01:25:49.000I know somebody who actually covered up the Tesla insignia on their car.
01:25:54.000Bro, I was worried behind someone the other day on the highway, and they had a fucking thing on their car that said, I bought this before Elon went crazy.
01:26:11.000But there was an element also that was like, oh, you know, it's a legitimate form of protest, you know, what, to blow up a fucking Tesla dealership, right?
01:26:20.000That's not blow up a charging station.
01:26:21.000It's certainly not legitimate to destroy people's private property who are just paying a lease on a car that they probably had for three or four fucking years before any of this shit went down.
01:27:04.000I mean, so it's, you know, the U.S. Olympics, by the way, the U.S. Olympic Committee just said, you know, males will not be able to participate in female sports.
01:27:28.000And it's like, that's where this woke thing just hits the wall where people who have daughters and people are just like, hey, look, I want you to live your life and be whoever you want to be.
01:27:40.000I don't want to infringe upon your right to express yourself.
01:27:43.000But at a certain point in time, when you impose this on other people and you fuck up their lives, and Vivek had a great term.
01:27:53.000He was calling it the tyranny of the oppressed.
01:27:56.000That the oppressed, people who are legitimately oppressed in a lot of ways, then they turn that on everybody else and they want everyone to concede to their demands.
01:28:17.000I want, yeah, again, I'm busy enough that I don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about what other people are doing.
01:28:24.000At the same time, I don't need to play along with your imaginings.
01:28:30.000And so I think that's where it started to, once it started to impact other people, you know, like a kid who loses a race because now suddenly she's racing against a dude.
01:28:44.000900 medals that would have gone to biological females that were won by biological males because of this crazy ideology over the last few years.
01:28:56.000And think about how many girls lost out on scholarships.
01:28:59.000Think about how many girls just like felt fucked over by the system where you've got a guy in the fucking locker room with his dick hanging out.
01:29:06.000You're supposed to pretend that that's a woman.
01:30:30.000This is a totally different thing that you're dealing with.
01:30:33.000And then you also have to factor in, as uncomfortable as this is for people, you have to factor in perverts who all of a sudden can just say, I'm a woman and wear a dress.
01:30:43.000And now they can enter into women's spaces and you can't stop them.
01:30:56.000But you're opening the door for fucking sexual predators.
01:31:00.000People who are out of their fucking minds, man.
01:31:03.000And you also had, one of the things I never quite figured out was you also have the you have the parent who's like, they've got a three-year-old son who says, I'd like to play with the dolls.
01:31:13.000And then suddenly the mother's the enabler, right?
01:31:15.000They want to get them a hormone blocker.
01:31:16.000Yeah, and you're thinking like, how about you just let the kid be a kid?
01:31:19.000You know, maybe tomorrow they want to play football.
01:31:22.000Maybe the next day they want to do interpretive dance.
01:31:24.000Maybe the following day they want to play baseball.
01:31:26.000Let the fucking kids grow up in a certain way without trying to impose this bizarreness on them.
01:31:33.000Well, they do it because they want that kid to be whatever.
01:32:18.000Yeah, it's bizarre because the same people would not say, I'm going to shotgun 12 cores and then drive my car.
01:32:27.000But goddammit, they'll be happy to get behind that boat and then take off.
01:32:31.000And so we've got our boys have started driving the boat on their own, taking their friends out and that sort of thing.
01:32:37.000And it's actually more nerve-wracking when they head out on the lake than it is when they get in their car and drive somewhere because of just the craziness that goes on.
01:32:48.000So, yeah, I watched one of our boys head off in the boat.
01:32:53.000He had like, there were like three dudes and seven girls on there.
01:37:29.000Yeah, it's, and then we're, you know, we're at the precipice of artificial general superintelligence, which is going to bust out of its cage if it hasn't already.
01:37:40.000I mean, there's real good arguments that it's already done it, and we're not aware of it yet because it hasn't assumed control of things.
01:37:57.000We're just unaware of it, but I think people at the cutting edge, I think, but yeah, we went from a Rogan show that was done by AI to now you can't swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting Rogan babies, right?
01:38:16.000I will say, anytime, and I don't spend a lot of time digging through things like that, but anytime I see the baby episodes with you and Theo, I'm like, yeah, I got to watch this son of a bitch.
01:42:33.000There's a thing that's going to happen within our lifetime where all creativity is going to be suspect because you're not going to be able to know unless someone's doing something off the cuff, like live in front of you, you're not going to be able to know whether or not something's AI generated anymore.
01:42:52.000Like they have AI generated stand-up comedy now that it's not great, but it's okay.
01:42:57.000You know, where you have a guy on stage, the audience is fake, they're laughing.
01:43:26.000Well, in terms of driving narratives or telling stories or getting people to think a certain way.
01:43:31.000I mean, think about how simple that is now from a hostile element, right?
01:43:36.000Like if I'm working Russian propaganda for the FSB, how easy is it now for me to create a clip of whatever, let's take a hot topic, right?
01:43:47.000And suddenly you've created a clip where Trump is talking about being in the Epstein files or somebody around Biden's circle is talking about how they covered up his money.
01:44:02.000They're not going to necessarily question whether it's because that's not how people work, right?
01:44:06.000They see shit on the internet and they go, oh, yeah, I'm going to send that to my buddy.
01:44:10.000And yeah, you've got some people who might be more cynical than others, but for the most part, people just eat that shit up.
01:44:15.000And so I think that's also shows you the incompetence of the government that they release that video from the cell that's got two minutes and 53 seconds removed because these aren't the best people in the world that are doing that.
01:44:29.000I mean, there's, yeah, you could argue on the hostile side, on the whatever you want to call them, the hackers or people on the cutting edge of doing things and using this technology for nefarious purposes, they, you know, I'm not saying the government doesn't have good quality people doing it, but you tend to have cutting edge folks on the hostile team.
01:44:50.000Yeah, they're not going to be working for the State Department.
01:44:52.000No, they're going to make money other ways.
01:45:04.000I sent you the Lockheed Martin thing, right?
01:45:06.000I also sent you the thing that I was looking for earlier, which is, I believe he's a senator that's reading off the most ridiculous tweets from the CEO, former CEO of NPR.
01:47:57.000Lockheed Martin allegedly discovered a revolutionary new propulsion system and has been secretly developing it for decades, according to Burleson's source.
01:48:07.000They used it in the first iteration, which was the Tic Tac.
01:48:10.000They have an intermediary one that they are more advanced with.
01:48:16.000And then now they're putting it inside what looks like conventional so that it's not obvious.
01:48:24.000Yeah, I'm going to have to call bullshit on all that.
01:48:26.000Look, there's some, there's an interesting, if you scroll back down, there's an interesting, you know, when you start to, there you go, dissecting this.
01:48:33.000He says, I've had two people come to me that say that Tic Tac's a Lockheed Martin creation.
01:48:37.000Now, he doesn't say who those two people are.
01:48:39.000I've had two people come to me that said they had sex with Bigfoot.
01:48:44.000But you've got, then it says, this isn't speculation.
01:48:47.000This is a congressman with direct access to classified information, which is the implication that, well, the people that came to him with this have access to classified information, which is un, you know, there's no connection there.
01:48:57.000So they're taking a data point and another data point and they're drawing a line between the two of them and saying, yes, he's getting this from classifying.
01:49:05.000And so, you know, and also the next part has been secretly developing it for decades.
01:49:09.000I'm here to tell you that if Lockheed Martin was developing something for decades, a new form of propulsion, maybe I'm just a cynical son of a bitch, but I don't think they'd be keeping it secret for all this time.
01:49:23.000I don't think it would have been able to be kept secret because somebody would have opened their yap or the Chinese would have gotten their hands on it in their economic and intel espionage efforts.
01:50:01.000And look, I think we've talked about this before.
01:50:03.000There are companies out there, private companies that are working trying to figure out how do you get ahead of the curve of deep fakes, right, and AI-generated material.
01:51:48.000You know, in short, yeah, everybody's chasing, just like they're chasing a better battery, everybody's chasing a new form of propulsion, right?
01:51:55.000I mean, that's a leading part of what governments are spending their money on if they have the resources to do it.
01:52:02.000So, yeah, there's a national security issue there, and you would think that the congressman then would say, oh, okay, maybe if you're telling me this, I'm not going to go out in public and say it, right?
01:52:12.000Maybe if we're talking about this, maybe I shouldn't be talking about what Lockheed Martin is doing and obviously working hard, if it's correct, to keep it secret because that's a national security issue.
01:52:25.000It all sounds like a sack of bullshit.
01:52:28.000Well, it's also like the problem is a lot of these politicians, it's kind of a form of entertainment in a lot of a way because they're trying to get attention.
01:52:38.000It's like they're almost like reality stars, right?
01:52:40.000They're trying to do something outrageous to get attention, and that'll help them get elected.
01:52:44.000That'll get the constituents on their side, and they're, I'm going to be the guy that releases all this information.
01:54:19.000It's just like, I want there to be some information that's real.
01:54:23.000And I think there are, like, Commander David Fraver's depictions and his descriptions of what happened, and there's other fighter pilots that were involved.
01:55:52.000And so he went to work in 23, because this stuff has been sealed for quite some time, but he went to work in 23 for some California-based company that was contracted with the Pentagon.
01:56:07.000And during the course of that month that he was there, he downloaded some 3,600 files or so on the technology that this company develops on behalf of the Pentagon related to sensors.
01:56:19.000Sensors that are very sensitive information that used to detect nuclear missile launches, used to detect and track hypersonic and ballistic missiles, used for fighter jets to track incoming missiles, heat-seeking missiles.
01:56:58.000So as it turns out, the amazing part about this story is he accepted a job during the course of his brief period of time with this California company working on these sensors.
01:57:59.000He applied for funding for these talent programs from the, which is essentially the Chinese Communist Party.
01:58:05.000He stated in emails that he's, you know, he thinks it could be really beneficial to the Chinese military, some of the work that he's doing.
01:58:12.000And so from 2014 on, he's been doing this, And people are still hiring the guy.
01:58:18.000So now he's out on an almost $2 million bail.
01:58:20.000I don't know how they're allowing him to roam around free.
01:58:25.000But it's just another example, I guess, is what I'm saying, of what happens out there and why people need to be aware, why companies that are engaged in anything almost, because the Chinese party is interested in everything.
01:58:39.000But you see this and you think, okay, I get it.
01:58:45.000But then you look and you go, how the fuck did he keep on doing this all these years?
01:58:49.000How was he, he go from a company and get hired by another company, and they were obviously excited by his expertise, but nobody bothered to dig into him.
01:58:58.000And that's always how businesses, for the most part, get fucked, is they don't have a proactive mindset.
01:59:06.000They're not thinking about that when they're hiring somebody.
01:59:09.000They're not thinking, oh, I'll bet there's a hostile state-sponsored entity out there that like to steal our information.
01:59:15.000Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, isn't that also part of the problem with having these administrations that are only office for four years?
01:59:21.000So they have all their problems that they have to deal with.
01:59:37.000And the people that are running the companies, all they want to do is get that company off the ground, start making a lot of money, get a government contract.
01:59:44.000Now, theoretically, they're supposed to be going through a variety of security processes about the dissemination of information, who's got access to it, and all these things.
01:59:55.000But clearly, it's not working all that well.
02:00:15.000Again, this is just the past 12 hours or so.
02:00:21.000And they were going after, among other organizations and agencies, the group that's responsible for maintaining our nuclear stockpile, which sits inside the Department of Energy.
02:00:32.000So it's the National Nuclear and Security Administration, something like that.
02:00:37.000So, yeah, I guess I always like to point out that it's a hostile world out there.
02:00:41.000And going back to your point, you need to have organizations that are out there trying to secure the national security interests of America.
02:00:53.000So, yeah, that sounds like I'm standing there.
02:01:37.000So what do we know about how much damage was done by those bunker buster bombs?
02:01:43.000I saw some video, and again, I don't know what's real, but it looked insane where they were reviewing the damage, and they were kind of climbing into this giant canyon that was created by these bunker busters.
02:02:36.000They came out and said, we've completely obliterated these sites.
02:02:40.000What appears to be now coming from some of these assessments, at least the early assessments, is that they did significant damage to one of the sites, Fordo.
02:02:49.000And then the other two sites, they did some damage, but that's where it's questionable.
02:02:55.000And these are coming from Israeli and U.S. intelligence.
02:02:57.000And honestly, when it comes to Iran, sometimes we rely very heavily on what the Israelis have because their intel tends to be a little bit better.
02:03:05.000I mean, it's their existential threat.
02:03:33.000And the Israelis think that they actually did manage to keep stockpile of some of the enriched uranium that was buried way down inside of, I think it was Isfahan, the site.
02:03:45.000And so it was successful to a degree, right?
02:03:52.000But not to the degree that it was discussed early on and what they're still saying.
02:03:57.000So I think that's, you know, and that's a realistic approach.
02:04:01.000You know, I think the military was fairly clear in some of their scenarios that they were drawing up prior to this that, you know, we don't have high confidence that we can completely destroy these sites.
02:04:12.000But if they've destroyed and damaged a large number of centrifuges, well, that takes time to replace.
02:04:19.000And so I think what's going to happen is the regime, and I think they're already doing it, they're going to disperse all of their efforts.
02:04:29.000They're not going to stop trying to enrich uranium.
02:04:31.000They're not going to stop this drive towards a nuclear weapon because now in particular, I think they view it as, you know, that's our only leverage going down the road.
02:04:39.000So they're going to disperse it to smaller sites, going to make it more difficult to create a single strike scenario where you take it out for the most part.
02:04:49.000And I think that's where we're going with it.
02:04:53.000But look, the Israelis during the course of their twelve days or so, they degraded the missile capabilities, which was a big part of what they wanted to do, significantly.
02:05:06.000Now, depending on who you talk to, that significantly is like 40% destruction of launchers and missile stockpiles to 50%.
02:05:14.000But again, they still have the ability to make them, and they still will.
02:05:19.000So we've kind of kicked the can down the road.
02:05:23.000We've bought some time in terms of, okay, they're not going to get to a breakout point next week, but we haven't really solved the problem.
02:05:34.000And you don't solve the problem unless the regime goes away.
02:05:39.000And then people talk about regime change and everybody gets all squirrely.
02:05:43.000But you're going to have this same problem.
02:05:45.000They've already said they are going to continue to arm their proxies.
02:05:50.000And there have already been weapons shipments that have been interdicted, going to the Khouthis, going to Hezbollah.
02:05:58.000That process of them getting weapons to their proxies is more difficult in part because Syria has fallen and the Syrian government doesn't like Iran.
02:06:08.000The new one, the Islamist government that's there, doesn't like Iran.
02:06:11.000So they're shutting down some of that traditional routes that they use to move weapons back and forth and other resources.
02:06:51.000Again, people can argue about, they should have done it, but from an operational perspective, it was pretty damn impressive.
02:06:57.000Taking out some of the military leadership, taking out some of those nuclear program managers, directors, scientists was really impressive.
02:07:05.000And it showed what was so impressive was when they tricked them with a fake phone call.
02:08:00.000They didn't have the munitions, so they don't have these bunker busters to penetrate and get down to Natanza or wherever.
02:08:09.000So it wasn't a surprise that we did it.
02:08:14.000Again, I just think we should be, and I suspect the Pentagon felt like we should have been more circumspect in how we described the success of it.
02:08:22.000Now the foreign minister from Iran's come out the past couple of days, and he said, oh, serious damage.
02:08:27.000We've had to stop all uranium enrichment.
02:08:54.000But I think there's been damage, but not to the degree that they would like to have seen.
02:08:59.000But a lot of people didn't understand why at this point did we do that?
02:09:02.000Because one of the narratives was that they had the capability of enriching uranium to 90%, but they didn't plan on doing it.
02:09:14.000They only wanted to have it so that they could use it as leverage.
02:09:19.000Yeah, there is no civilian purpose for having 60% enriched uranium.
02:09:26.000So, yes, maybe they thought if we get a stockpile of it, then we're very close because it's an easy lift getting from, well, relatively speaking, getting from 60 to 90% for weapons grade.
02:09:38.000So, yes, maybe their thought was only we just use it as leverage and we're not actually going to pursue a weapon.
02:09:43.000But I don't know that you want to, you know, you want to make strategic decisions based on the hope that that's the case, right?
02:09:52.000I think everything else they'd shown in the past, their obfuscation, their hiding of their program, backing off of past agreements, none of that showed that they were earnest negotiators or that they were honest brokers in what that weapons program was like.
02:10:08.000So I think there sounds like there was significant intelligence that came in to the Israeli services that said they're fast-tracking this whole effort.
02:10:21.000And that may have been in part because of the damage done to their proxies.
02:10:27.000So they may have looked and seen, look, Hezbollah's leadership was torn apart.
02:10:31.000Their stockpiles were incredibly degraded.
02:10:55.000That's where it gets fucked up because one of the things that people voted for with this new administration was no more wars, no more useless wars.
02:11:03.000And then six months in, we're bombing Iran.
02:11:49.000People are saying, draw the curtains and we shouldn't be at war and we shouldn't be doing any of this and we shouldn't support Israel and what are we doing?
02:12:15.000I just think we need to be pragmatic about how much damage we've done and what the potential is for us having to revisit this whole issue.
02:12:23.000The thing is, people are so skeptical about motivations now.
02:12:26.000They're so skeptical about public narratives, like why we're doing this and why we're doing that.
02:12:32.000And I think one of the things that's important, hearing it from a person like yourself that's spent most of your lifetime involved in this, that there are things, like we really shouldn't be meddling in every part of the world, but sometimes we have to meddle.
02:13:27.000Looking back on Iraq, looking back on Afghanistan.
02:13:30.000Now, Afghanistan should have been a surgical move.
02:13:32.000We should have gone into Tor Bor, blown the shit out of that, tried to get bin Laden.
02:13:37.000And then we should have said, look, if you do this again, meaning if you let your country be a sandbox for the terrorists, we're going to come back here and do this again.
02:13:44.000And then we should have gotten the hell out and not worried about, well, maybe we can build a stable federal-style government in Afghanistan, which has never happened, and which we could have looked at what the Soviets said and said, yeah, this is not going to work.
02:13:54.000So there's things where we should be learning, or we're not very good at, we should be learning and saying.
02:13:58.000But my point being is you've got to leave the door open because there are times when shit could go really seriously wrong.
02:14:04.000And if the Iranians suddenly, you know, if you're wrong about the hope that, well, I think they just for peaceful purposes, because I'm going to, for some reason, believe, you know, counter to their actions up till now, I'm going to believe the Iranian regime.
02:14:17.000And then they announce that they're a member of the nuclear club, you've got a shitstorm going on in the Middle East, because it's not like the regional actors like the Saudis are going to go, okay, no worries, we're going to let Iran have the bomb and we're not going to get it.
02:14:30.000Now you're going to have multiple nuclear-armed nations sitting in the Middle East and at odds with each other.
02:14:37.000And I don't know that that's a really good scenario because you're inching closer to use of a tactical nuclear weapon.
02:14:44.000Like Putin's already in his moronic puppet Medvedev keeps rattling the nuclear sable.
02:15:36.000Yeah, it's very, it gives people a lot of anxiety when you think about all the possibilities of all over the world, all the different things that are happening, whether it's Ukraine and Russia, Iran and Israel.
02:15:50.000It's like everything is just like this constant feed of doom that, you know, if you're paying attention and you kind of have to pay attention a little because it is kind of crazy and it could affect your life.
02:16:06.000Which is, I think, why we're so quick to want to glom on to what's happening with Epstein or what's happening with the Intel assessment because it takes away the focus from there's shit happening in the world that could create bigger conflict and could drag us into something bigger.
02:16:23.000Look, the European Union is heavily focused on what's going on with Russia because they're sitting on the border.
02:16:28.000And so right now, Putin, he has no interest in peace.
02:18:04.000Maybe the goal is clearly to get everything back, but they're not going to get Crimea back.
02:18:08.000They're not going to get some of the eastern region that the Russians have been sitting in now for quite a long time, even before the invasion.
02:18:16.000So you've got some negotiated settlement that they can accept.
02:18:22.000But if we say we're not going to support them and you can't inflict enough pressure or whatever you want to call it, pain on Putin to get him in a serious way to the negotiating table, then ultimately, yeah, the Russian military will overwhelm them, right?
02:18:41.000Because they've got the support of China.
02:18:42.000They've got certainly the support of North Korea.
02:18:44.000North Korea is about to send another 30,000 troops to the front lines on behalf of Putin.
02:18:51.000I mean, that's crazy, but we've got North Korean troops by the thousands fighting and dying in Ukraine.
02:18:59.000And so the U.S. providing military support that keeps them in the fight long enough to hopefully, with the EU expanding what they're doing, to hopefully get Putin to think, okay, fuck it, I do have to sit down at the table.
02:19:13.000Well, this is what's discouraging, is that Trump said, when I get into office, I can fix this in 24 hours.
02:19:24.000It's always, again, I go back to that same thing.
02:19:27.000There's always a problem with, you know, and again, this is not a, I'm just saying maybe get better, you know, comms people and try to get just a tad bit more discipline.
02:19:39.000But, you know, the idea that you're going to fix this problem in a day, you know, it's hyperbole, but people buy into it, right?
02:19:45.000And then you get a mob that are saying, well, how come we couldn't?
02:19:50.000Rather than saying, well, no more wars, just say the world is an unusual, unstable, chaotic place.
02:19:56.000There may be occasion when we need to be involved, but I'm going to try to minimize that.
02:20:00.000Say something like that, and then you don't have to throw more red meat to the crowd.
02:20:05.000But it's, yeah, the Ukraine situation, and Zelensky's got some other problems, right?
02:20:12.000It's an interesting situation that may, hopefully it doesn't bore people, but it's important to keep on the radar, is that Zelensky has just signed a bill that kind of gutted the two primary anti-corruption organizations in Ukraine.
02:20:29.000And Ukraine's had years and years of history of being a corrupt nation.
02:20:33.000And it's always been a roadblock to them getting into the European Union because they're saying, you've got to do something to clean this goddamn place up.
02:20:40.000So Ukraine has had a history of, not just with Zelensky, but prior to that.
02:20:45.000And so the parliament wrote up a bill basically handing over control of these two anti-corruption, independent organizations that monitor corruption inside the Ukraine government, handed over that control to the prosecutor general, government control of these organizations.
02:21:03.000And they put that bill that they wrote, a Zelensky supporter wrote it, put it on Zelensky's desk like 48 hours ago.
02:21:11.000And he had the choice to either sign it or veto it.
02:21:21.000And now you've got street protests, significant, large street protests in Ukraine against this because they considered this this authoritarian takeover.
02:21:30.000And they know what their history was like.
02:21:31.000And so the people are worried about this.
02:21:33.000So they're out on the streets protesting.
02:21:34.000Putin's looking at it going like, ah, it's fantastic.
02:21:37.000Because Putin's been saying that Zelensky's an illegitimate leader for some time now.
02:21:42.000And one of his demands has always been, you know, I'll negotiate, but Zelensky needs to go.
02:21:47.000And because he wants a pro-Kremlin leader in there.
02:22:19.000Anyway, so that's, yeah, we touched very briefly.
02:22:21.000We haven't even talked about the situation with Hamas and Israel, but I'll leave that for another day because I'm sure if we got together again in another half a year, it's still going on.
02:22:35.000There's no ceasefire that's going to happen.
02:22:37.000Every time you turn around, the U.S. Witkoff or somebody in the U.S. administration or the Saudis or the Egyptians or the Qataris, whoever's handling mediation is saying, yeah, we're very close to a ceasefire.
02:24:18.000but poor Malcolm, I mean, he goes and his death is completely, you know, it's like if you and I were on a plane and plane went down, it'd be like, we lost a legend today.
02:24:29.000You know, Joe Rogan is gone, along with 240 others.
02:25:20.000And then I could tell because I'd had an art issue in the past, right?
02:25:24.000And I knew exactly what was going to happen.
02:25:25.000And so I started feeling this and I could just kind of feel the energy drain out of me.
02:25:29.000But I'm out in the middle of the fucking water.
02:25:32.000And I kind of look up and there's no, I can see my wife off in the distance, you know, but I'm like, you know, and so I'm just trying to keep my goddamn head above water.
02:25:56.000I don't want to take my mask off and I'm saying, ah, I'll be okay.
02:25:59.000And I am, you know, I'm just kind of like barely going.
02:26:02.000But I'm doing that the dude thing, right?
02:26:04.000When you have, as a dude, if you're having a heart attack, you don't want to alert anybody because you're like, I don't want to cause a scene.
02:27:54.000We're always hovering around the top 10.
02:27:56.000And I think it speaks to the fact that, you know, for the most part, look, we're just trying to tell people what's happening without telling them how to think about it.
02:28:04.000And that's what people want because there's not a lot of that.
02:28:07.000And it's worked out well in that regard.
02:28:08.000And occasionally I'll say something, I get a little comment in there, but I try to keep the opinion out of it.
02:28:13.000But it's, yeah, it's all the podcast platforms, a YouTube channel, and it's gone well.
02:28:19.000It's been a great adventure so far, and it's been growing, which, again, for me, that is very satisfying in the sense that nowadays, everything's opinion, right?