The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2370 - Dave Smith

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Showing my day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 How weird is it to be Dave Smith?

00:00:14.000 It's a little bit weird.

00:00:15.000 It's weirder to be Joe Rogan.

00:00:18.000 You think?

00:00:19.000 Yeah, it's got to be.

00:00:21.000 It's weird.

00:00:23.000 It's weird to be any person in the public eye.

00:00:26.000 But in this time.

00:00:27.000 It's particularly weird.

00:00:28.000 If you're like one of the only people, I mean, the media is so bizarrely compromised.

00:00:35.000 It's so weird when you watch these narratives spin.

00:00:39.000 both on the left and on the right. 0.89

00:00:41.000 And like, is anyone fucking rational? 0.60

00:00:44.000 Is anyone looking at that and there's so few that a comedian like yourself just rises to the top of the heap. 0.54

00:00:54.000 Well, it's funny dude because so like since the last time I was on, this has been kind of like the knock on me in a way now.

00:01:02.000 Is that what you're a comedian?

00:01:03.000 You're just a comedian.

00:01:04.000 You're not a social support comedian.

00:01:06.000 That's right.

00:01:07.000 Yes, that's right.

00:01:08.000 But you have a bean.

00:01:09.000 If you're a social support comedian.

00:01:11.000 It feels weird doing this without Doug, to be honest.

00:01:14.000 It seems kind of wrong.

00:01:15.000 But that's been like the essentially that's like the knock is like, yeah, but you're acting like you're an expert, but you're just some comedian.

00:01:23.000 And it's like, no, that's the point.

00:01:26.000 That's always been the point.

00:01:27.000 Like, yes, I'm just a comedian.

00:01:29.000 I'm not an expert.

00:01:31.000 And still, being not an expert, hand me your favorite warhawk, and I will tear them to shreds, because it's actually not that hard.

00:01:39.000 And like, these people aren't really experts either.

00:01:41.000 Well, also the problem with that is these people that are talking about these things are talking about people not being experts while they're not experts.

00:01:50.000 Yeah.

00:01:50.000 There's, you know, what does Doug have a degree in English?

00:01:54.000 Yeah.

00:01:54.000 Right.

00:01:55.000 Okay.

00:01:56.000 Sam Harris is a neuroscientist.

00:01:58.000 There's all these different people who have expertise in one area that is pretty much outside geopolitical world politics and internationalism.

00:02:14.000 These are very complex, sophisticated, nuanced discussions that you have to have when you're talking about these things because there's so many different factors at play.

00:02:23.000 There's so much money. 0.95

00:02:24.000 There's so much bullshit in terms of like what's the truth? 0.99

00:02:27.000 What's the narrative? 0.99

00:02:28.000 Who's pushing the narrative?

00:02:29.000 Who's being paid to push the narrative?

00:02:32.000 Which is really weird.

00:02:41.000 Yep.

00:02:42.000 Yep.

00:02:42.000 But then there's also, it's a convenient kind of way to dismiss somebody.

00:02:47.000 Of course, because of addressing the facts.

00:02:49.000 Well, I thought it was, this just, I thought was really funny to me, was that so like a few days after the last time, after me and Douglas Murray debated on the show, he went on Bill Mars show.

00:03:00.000 And so it's like after having this whole thing, the whole 45 minutes opening the show about how you comedians don't know what you're talking about, says don't know what you're talking about, while he's smearing two people who he's never heard of and doesn't even know what they do or whatever, but not the best way to make an appeal to expertise.

00:03:17.000 But he doesn't have a problem with Bill Maher doing it because he agrees with him.

00:03:22.000 So the issue isn't really being an expert versus being a comedian.

00:03:25.000 You know, Constantin Kissin went on this whole thing about expertise and all of this, and it's like, he also started as a comedian.

00:03:33.000 Why all of a sudden does this standard only apply to me and only when I'm talking about Israel?

00:03:38.000 It never applied to me when I was talking about COVID.

00:03:40.000 It never applied to me when they agreed with me on stuff.

00:03:43.000 They would just go, look, Dave breaking it down.

00:03:45.000 But now there's this one topic that one guy is not allowed to not to be an expert on, and it happens to be this one topic that the entire population is turning on.

00:03:55.000 I shouldn't say the entire, but like huge numbers.

00:03:58.000 When someone attacks what you do professionally versus what you're actually saying, why not just dispute what he's saying instead of like this appeal to authority?

00:04:11.000 Like, you're not an expert.

00:04:13.000 But also, you know, to ask that question is to answer that question.

00:04:17.000 So you can only ask me a few things in life that I can give you like definitive answers on.

00:04:23.000 And even then, I might have to refer to expert.

00:04:26.000 Like, if you want to ask me about judo, I've been doing jujitsu for since 90, I think I started in 97, somewhere around then, 96 maybe.

00:04:40.000 I don't know shit about judo.

00:04:42.000 I know how to do a few hip tosses, but when someone is doing something, i don't even know what it's called if i go haragoshi i might get it wrong because haragoshi might be legs on the outside versus leg on the inside wrestling I gotta defer to DC. 0.92

00:04:57.000 Even in martial arts, I'm not totally an expert.

00:05:02.000 Yeah.

00:05:02.000 And then there might be somebody who is like totally an expert, like say, you know, a wrestler who went to the Olympics.

00:05:09.000 Right.

00:05:09.000 And with, like, a total expert or a coach or something like that, total expert in wrestling, and they could still get something about MMA completely off.

00:05:15.000 Or Judge, wait, because it happened in the last fight in the last UFC card.

00:05:20.000 Daniel Cormier didn't know about the Dead Orchard.

00:05:23.000 So he thought this person was fine because they had two arms in while they were caught in a triangle.

00:05:28.000 I go, no, this is a real submission. 0.99

00:05:30.000 This is fucking dangerous. 0.93

00:05:32.000 There's this guy, Nathan Orchard, who figured out how to do a triangle with two arms in, and it's replicable. 0.99

00:05:32.000 Right. 0.99

00:05:38.000 A lot of guys do it now.

00:05:40.000 And I think it was a lady at the last UFC had it. 0.99

00:05:43.000 And I was like, oh shit. 0.99

00:05:44.000 And Daniel didn't know it yet. 0.99

00:05:46.000 There's a couple of other things like the buggy choke.

00:05:48.000 If you don't know about Jiu Jitsu and you see a guy who's on his back and he's getting smothered but all of a sudden he reaches under with his leg and I'm going, oh, oh, oh, and you don't know what's going on. 0.98

00:05:57.000 Like that's a fucking choke, like a really dangerous one. 0.96

00:06:00.000 Ty Ruotolo gets you in that, you're Foxville. 0.99

00:06:04.000 You know, there's guys, so it's like there's areas of expertise, even in areas that I'm an expert in that I have to call on other people. 1.00

00:06:12.000 Like this is a stupid argument. 0.99

00:06:14.000 Like what are the facts? 1.00

00:06:15.000 Does that submission work?

00:06:17.000 Is that genocide?

00:06:19.000 Right.

00:06:19.000 What is, you know, what's going on?

00:06:21.000 Right.

00:06:21.000 Were you funding Hamas?

00:06:23.000 Is Hezbollah a proxy of Iran?

00:06:26.000 Did Iran get the money to do this when Biden released the funds?

00:06:31.000 Because who's allowed to be an expert on all these things?

00:06:36.000 Yeah, and then of course there are things like, say, do you support lockdowns?

00:06:44.000 And in order to have, say, an expert opinion on this policy, it's like, okay, well, they'd say we're following the science.

00:06:52.000 So in other words, they have an epidemiologist or something like that who's arguing lockdowns will cut down on the transmission of the virus.

00:06:58.000 Forget they turned out to be wrong, but leaving that aside, you're like, okay, but are they also.

00:07:03.000 an economist?

00:07:04.000 Are they also a specialist?

00:07:06.000 A sociologist?

00:07:06.000 A sociologist, a specialist in childhood development who would tell you what closing the schools is.

00:07:11.000 Oh, who's the person who has expertise in every single one of those fields?

00:07:14.000 It doesn't exist.

00:07:15.000 There isn't an expert in all of those fields.

00:07:17.000 You know what I mean?

00:07:18.000 What was the problem with that time?

00:07:20.000 Because that time everyone was so fearful and the news was pushing fear.

00:07:25.000 And it was clearly a narrative.

00:07:26.000 I forget who it was, but some health official was being interviewed recently and he said that during 2020 that Anthony Fauci said to him, The problem is Americans aren't scared enough.

00:07:38.000 Which is crazy to say.

00:07:40.000 It's a wild thing to say that your goal is to make people more fearful.

00:07:45.000 So you're trying to put out a narrative that makes people more fearful, which by the way, fucks with your immune system in a gigantic way.

00:07:53.000 Not good at all to be scared.

00:07:55.000 I don't know how many people got really, really, really sick from COVID because when they got it they freaked the fuck out and they couldn't sleep and they thought they were going to die and they were riddled with anxiety and that makes you attack people around you and then you look for a solution.

00:08:10.000 And when these trusted institutions, which up until five fucking years ago, I was 100% on board with, with everything, with vaccines, with every medical innovation other than psychiatric medications, which I think are pretty much overprescribed.

00:08:24.000 All of a sudden, everyone's like hoping these people have the answer.

00:08:30.000 So anybody who's like, but there's this guy, Jay Bhattacharya, you know, he's also an expert. 1.00

00:08:34.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:08:35.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:08:36.000 It's like an anti-science, trust the science, COVID denier. 1.00

00:08:41.000 denier it's just became this fearful because everybody just responded to the media because everybody's too tuned in to all this negative shit man all day long well you have to scare people you know if you want to if you want to implement like a tyrannical policy. 0.92

00:08:57.000 You almost always have to scare people. 0.97

00:08:59.000 I mean, That's the only way.

00:09:01.000 Yeah.

00:09:02.000 Now everyone knows, right?

00:09:03.000 Like you just said, like being terrified is not good for your health.

00:09:07.000 That on a human level, we also all know that it's not good for good decision making, you know?

00:09:12.000 But it is excellent for I will turn my brain off and give the authority to you.

00:09:17.000 So go do, I mean, look, it was right after 9-11.

00:09:17.000 Yeah.

00:09:21.000 If you, you know, people forget about this.

00:09:22.000 But like the level to which Dick Cheney and George W. Bush used to fear Monger.

00:09:28.000 Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States of America, who is a bit more than just your average vice president, he said it's not a matter of if, but when there will be another 9-11 attack..

00:09:39.000 They built that they were trying to tell the American people right after 911 to be in a constant state of fear.

00:09:47.000 Do you remember the COVID warnings where they had colors?

00:09:50.000 Or excuse me, the warning where they had colors?

00:09:54.000 The threat level or whatever.

00:09:55.000 Oh, yeah.

00:09:56.000 And then one day they'd be like, It's up to yellow.

00:09:58.000 And I mean, we were really still traumatized from 911.

00:09:58.000 Yeah.

00:10:03.000 But the thing about it is, is that they knew what they wanted to do.

00:10:06.000 They knew the policy they wanted to start embarking on.

00:10:09.000 And it was the mix of they hate us, the big lie, which was they hate us for our freedom, which was like really the big lie after 9111 was like because the American people very organically wanted to know what the beef was like 9/11 happened everybody was like yo why do they hate us right what's this beef about and their answer was they hate you for your freedom and by the way this is gonna happen again so be terrified second off understand that they're so irrational that their beef with you is that like your grandma can go to the grocery

00:10:39.000 store so what do you do with that other than say what the American people said which is George W Bush you have a blank check to go attack whoever you want to and we'll support you yeah I remember feeling that way I remember feeling that way right I remember feeling it's up to these fucking guys, these hard-nosed generals and military leaders that are these are the guys that are going to protect us now. 0.96

00:11:02.000 We've got to put all our faith in them. 1.00

00:11:04.000 This shit is real and it's going on. 1.00

00:11:06.000 But I had no idea. 1.00

00:11:08.000 This is so 2001, I wasn't that much of a conspiracy theorist.

00:11:13.000 I was into UFOs.

00:11:15.000 I was into Bigfoot. 1.00

00:11:16.000 I was into stupid shit. 1.00

00:11:17.000 You know, I was into fun, stupid shit. 1.00

00:11:19.000 Right, right. 1.00

00:11:20.000 You know, me and Eddie Bravo would get high and watch space documentaries and freak out about aliens, you know, the stupid shit. 1.00

00:11:27.000 But then the Patriot Act came along and I was like, okay, what the fuck is this? 1.00

00:11:33.000 Like, what is indefinite detention mean? 0.98

00:11:36.000 When they sign the NDAA, you're like, wait a minute, what are you talking about?

00:11:41.000 What is the Munt, what it rhymes with Kunt, the act that Obama passed in 2015 that allowed them to use censorship or excuse me, propaganda on American citizens?

00:11:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:51.000 With Munt on the NDAA. 0.76

00:11:52.000 That's what I want that, yeah.

00:11:53.000 It's like, okay.

00:11:55.000 At what point in time do I start getting really fucking suspicious?

00:11:59.000 Yeah. 0.95

00:12:00.000 I mean, I had read one book a long time ago that really fucked me up, this book called Best Evidence about the Kennedy assassination.

00:12:07.000 And unfortunately, I read it right before I went on stage.

00:12:10.000 I was in Philadelphia and I was headlining.

00:12:16.000 And this was like when I was just starting to headline, right? 0.99

00:12:19.000 And so, uh, had a show Thursday, killed, everything's great, went back to my hotel room, nothing to do, read this fucking book for like six hours, freaked out, showed up at this show like ashen faced, like, oh my god, they killed the president. 0.92

00:12:33.000 Like, I had never even considered that before that book. 0.97

00:12:36.000 Right.

00:12:36.000 I never even thought that there's like secret government agencies that plot against the president.

00:12:41.000 Like, I thought, that's the fucking man and everybody works together. 1.00

00:12:44.000 And Lee Harvey Oswald was a nut and he fucking shot him. 1.00

00:12:47.000 And I'm like, oh my god. 1.00

00:12:49.000 And I bombed. 0.99

00:12:50.000 I fucking bombed. 0.97

00:12:51.000 And I apologize to the staff. 0.98

00:12:53.000 I apologize to the manager. 0.62

00:12:54.000 I go, listen, I fucked up. 0.99

00:12:56.000 And I read this book right before I came here. 0.99

00:12:58.000 And it really fucked me up. 0.91

00:12:59.000 It's done that before, man. 0.95

00:13:00.000 I've had to.

00:13:02.000 When you have your mind blown up like that, you need time after that before you make it funny.

00:13:06.000 Oh, like it takes time to like then almost come back to it.

00:13:11.000 You should never engage in that kind of stuff like right before you go on stage.

00:13:14.000 It's terrible.

00:13:15.000 Yeah.

00:13:15.000 Anything real and ominous.

00:13:17.000 So I had a second show and it went great.

00:13:19.000 But I was like, okay, I can never do that again.

00:13:22.000 But that started me.

00:13:23.000 But that was just peripheral.

00:13:25.000 It was just the JFK thing.

00:13:27.000 I was only interested in that.

00:13:28.000 I didn't get into Nixon.

00:13:29.000 I didn't get into Vietnam.

00:13:31.000 I didn't get into any of that stuff.

00:13:33.000 But September 11, 2001, in the beginning, it was wonderful. 0.95

00:13:40.000 After the attack, everyone was so friendly.

00:13:43.000 It's terrible that this thing happened.

00:13:45.000 It's terrible that these people died. 0.99

00:13:47.000 But it made me think, like, we need every now and then, we need to get bitch slapped. 0.99

00:13:51.000 You know, it's like when you see people getting in people's faces for like waving an American fag. 1.00

00:13:57.000 Fuck you, fascist. 1.00

00:13:58.000 A bitch slap every now and then, like that guy might go, fucking, what was I doing? 1.00

00:14:03.000 I would just ran up to that veteran and I got in his face because I wanted to impress my lesbian girlfriend. 1.00

00:14:08.000 I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? 1.00

00:14:09.000 I don't know how to fight. 0.99

00:14:10.000 I'm now I got a concussion and this guy bitch slapped me and it's on TikTok. 1.00

00:14:14.000 Fuck. 1.00

00:14:15.000 You know, like you need that sometimes just as a course reset. 0.99

00:14:18.000 And I felt like as a country, we've been doing shady shit all around the world forever and there's real war happening everywhere, but we're super lucky because we're separated by oceans and not too much has really happened here.

00:14:30.000 Oh my God, this is real. 0.99

00:14:32.000 And everybody had an American flag on their fucking car. 0.99

00:14:34.000 And when I was in New York City afterwards, we were filming Fear Factor one day and everyone was so cool. 0.99

00:14:40.000 And firemen were rock stars.

00:14:42.000 Yeah.

00:14:43.000 Cops were rock stars.

00:14:45.000 Everybody was thanking them.

00:14:46.000 Everybody was thanking them for their service.

00:14:49.000 We hung out with these firemen in front of this bar, me and the Fear Factor crew.

00:14:49.000 It was great.

00:14:53.000 These guys were fucking, it's like I was hanging out with Brad Pitt. 1.00

00:14:56.000 It was nuts. 1.00

00:14:57.000 Everybody was so thankful.

00:14:59.000 Where did that go?

00:15:00.000 Yeah, I was there.

00:15:01.000 I was in New York City on September 11, and I remember, so I was in Brooklyn, like only a few miles from the World Trade Center, and like Did you physically see it?

00:15:14.000 No.

00:15:14.000 I saw, so I remember seeing, you know, I think, so I when I got out of school, I was in high school, I was a senior in high school, and we got out.

00:15:24.000 One of the girls like forged a note and said it was from our parents or something like that.

00:15:28.000 I forget exactly how it worked, but we got out.

00:15:30.000 It was like, I was friends with the security guard.

00:15:33.000 I used to buy weed from them.

00:15:34.000 It was a different time.

00:15:35.000 But you know, it was a different time.

00:15:36.000 Pre-9-11, we were just all hanging out buying weed from the security guards at schools.

00:15:41.000 But so he let us out.

00:15:42.000 So I remember we, I'm pretty sure when we came to Flatbush Ave, we saw like, it was, there was smoke in the air, but both the towers had, had fallen by the time we got out.

00:15:50.000 But there were people.

00:15:51.000 So the subways had been out for a while.

00:15:53.000 And where I was, I was like on Flatbush Avenue, if anyone knows Brooklyn.

00:15:57.000 It's like Flatbush and Seventh Avenue.

00:15:59.000 So this is like, it's kind of a straight chute down to the Manh Manhattan Bridge and then the Brooklyn Bridge is down there too.

00:16:05.000 But the Brooklyn Bridge you can walk over.

00:16:07.000 And so at this point already people who were down in the financial district had just decided to walk back to Brooklyn because they realized they weren't going to get a cab or get on the subway.

00:16:16.000 And so you'd see just like one guy in a suit and tie covered in soot, head to toe, like walking up like, oh, he must have just been down there and walked up.

00:16:25.000 And but I remember now this is in Brooklyn, but even there it's very busy, but people were stopping and asking each other.

00:16:33.000 People who you would pass on the street but never talk to were stopping and asking everyone, how's your this community spirit that you just don't, you don't typically get in New York City because there's just too many people.

00:16:45.000 You can't talk to everyone.

00:16:46.000 Yeah.

00:16:47.000 But that part of it was kind of beautiful.

00:16:49.000 And then, of course, governments do what they do and immediately manipulate that into launching wars that they wanted from before 911 that had absolutely nothing to do with 911, which is, you know. 0.93

00:17:01.000 Also the Patriot Act was a bunch of shit they had tried to pass for a while, for years. 1.00

00:17:06.000 And everyone's like, what are you fucking crazy? 0.99

00:17:08.000 Well, this is the thing, and I guess maybe it's partly like my age, because I was eighteen at the time, and this is like my coming of age, you know, time. 0.98

00:17:15.000 But I will never stop being furious about all that shit and this is like still to this day i'm sure you you see it when i'm on podcasts with you and doing debates and stuff but i'm so angry over the war in iraq and and the subsequent wars and you know liby and syria and somalia and yemen and all of them but specifically because like all these guys the neoconservatives the the n word that i'm not supposed to bring up even though by the way Douglas Murray wrote a book called Neoconservatism, Why We Need It.

00:17:45.000 But when I say the word neoconservative, be careful what you're watering here or something like that.

00:17:50.000 Is that what they said?

00:17:52.000 I didn't know that this was an issue, that you can't discuss neoconservatism.?

00:17:56.000 Well, that's Douglas said when I was on with him.

00:17:58.000 He said, ah, the N word.

00:18:00.000 When I brought it up and then said, I'm watering something because I mentioned Wolfowitz.

00:18:05.000 Okay, so that's antisemitism.

00:18:06.000 Right, he's leaning right into. 0.98

00:18:07.000 Well, that's kind of ridiculous. 0.97

00:18:08.000 Yes. 0.95

00:18:09.000 You're talking about something incredibly important.

00:18:11.000 Well, like the neoconservatism, why would that be a thing that you can't discuss?

00:18:17.000 That sounds crazy.

00:18:18.000 The rivalries, the marching bands, the upsets.

00:18:21.000 Saturdays just got way more fun.

00:18:24.000 College football is back.

00:18:26.000 Think you know the game?

00:18:27.000 Put your college football knowledge to the test with DraftKings Sportsbook and turn your picks into big payouts from live betting during the game to rivalry week odds boost and so much more, DraftKings Sportsbook has everything you need to stay in the action from kickoff to final whistle.

00:18:46.000 Whether you're betting on your go-to team or making moves mid game as the momentum shifts, Saturdays are yours to own with DraftKings Sportsbook.

00:18:55.000 Here's something special for first timers.

00:18:58.000 New customers bet five bucks and get $300 in bonus bets instantly.

00:19:03.000 Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use the code Rogan.

00:19:07.000 That's code Rogan for new customers to get $300 in bonus bets instantly when you bet just five bucks.

00:19:13.000 In partnership with DraftKings Sportsbook, the crown is yours.

00:19:17.000 Gambling problem, call 1800 gambler.

00:19:19.000 In New York, call 8778, hope and wire, text hope and wire, 467369.

00:19:24.000 In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling.

00:19:26.000 Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

00:19:31.000 Please play responsibly.

00:19:32.000 On behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas, 21 and over, age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction.

00:19:37.000 Boyd in Ontario, bonus bets expire seven days after issuance.

00:19:40.000 For additional terms on responsible gaming resources, see dkng.co slash audio.

00:19:45.000 Well, I mean, I'd say the answer is that those guys got into power.

00:19:50.000 They really hijacked American foreign policy after 9-11 because they happen to all be in in power in the Bush administration, then 9-11 happened on their watch. 0.99

00:19:58.000 But if you go back and read the shit they read, and I will never stop talking about this because it's just too goddamn crazy. 0.95

00:20:04.000 But if you read all of these guys, the guys who were in the George W. Bush administration, I mean, like the signatories on the project for a new American century, which was their think tank, the PNAC, as it's called, were like... 0.99

00:20:31.000 We are for the first time in human history like the lone superpower in the world.

00:20:36.000 So what we should do right now is fight multiple wars because no one threatens us.

00:20:43.000 And so therefore, we should fight multiple wars.

00:20:46.000 Right now, we have an opportunity to remake the world, overthrow the old Soviet sock puppet states, install our own states there, and guarantee, as the name says, the new American century of dominance, the 21st century. 0.96

00:20:59.000 And they specifically said they want to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

00:21:02.000 And then they specifically said in, and now this is something that the 911 Truthers really held on to.

00:21:07.000 I'm not sure.

00:21:07.000 I think they might be overplaying their hand a little bit here.

00:21:10.000 here but they say there's one document in the project for a new american century you can find it online where they straight up say they go now look this is what we want to do but we're unlikely to get mass american support for it short of another pearl harbor type event.

00:21:28.000 And so a lot of people like Alex Jones and a lot of the 9-11 truthers would point to this phrase and go, see, this is the proof that they knew they needed another Pearl Harbor, so they planned their own Pearl Harbor.

00:21:39.000 Now, that is not necessarily true.

00:21:42.000 It doesn't necessarily prove that, but it certainly does change the way you think about their mind state when they sit there watching the towers get attacked and they all at the very least they all went we got it you know Alex Jones predicted 9-11 in July yeah but that's not quite as that's not quite as unique as I think some people think it is really well like people so like you ever hear how he said it yeah I've heard I've heard the clip it was pretty good I mean I'm not like taking anything away from that he was right but there were a bunch of people who predicted

00:22:12.000 it Ron Paul himself predicted it perfectly did they predict planes into the towers let's just say no I don't know about that that is pretty impressive but at the same time you know the but planes had never flown into the towers before that's true but the World Trade Center was attacked by Al-Qaeda guys in 93. 0.73

00:22:30.000 That's a biggie song.

00:22:31.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:22:31.000 That's right.

00:22:32.000 Adrian Appalucci has the funniest joke about that.

00:22:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:22:35.000 I believe so.

00:22:36.000 Do you ever hear Adrian's joke about that?

00:22:38.000 I don't want to butcher it on your show, but Adrian Appalucci is a hilarious comedian.

00:22:42.000 She had a joke about how, you know, in that song where Biggie goes, time to get paid, blow up like the world trade, but they bleep world trade now.

00:22:50.000 And then her bit is how they didn't bleep.

00:22:52.000 Like he was talking about the first one, but they bleep it because of the second, you know, because the towers came down.

00:22:57.000 But then her bit is just like, you go, like, that wasn't enough of a tragedy to make it bleep.

00:23:01.000 It was like a funny, like only a few people died.

00:23:03.000 Like, it was cool.

00:23:04.000 But then when a lot of people died, they were, she's a phenomenal joke writer.

00:23:07.000 Well, it's a different time..

00:23:09.000 Back then, they would have never bleeped anything.

00:23:11.000 They didn't bleep the N word. 0.99

00:23:12.000 They didn't bleep anything.

00:23:14.000 Yeah.

00:23:15.000 It was the Wild West.

00:23:16.000 Well, it's weird when you hear about so I don't know if I fully buy into any of this as a caveat before I get rolling, but when people discuss the intelligence agencies and their role in hip hop, especially gangster rap.

00:23:34.000 Like, I remember the very first time I listened to NWA. 0.82

00:23:39.000 And I think I told IceCube when he was here, I was on listening to Fuck the Police. 1.00

00:23:48.000 I was like, Fuck the Police, coming straight from the underground. 1.00

00:23:50.000 I was like, What is this? 1.00

00:23:52.000 This was a cassette walkman.

00:23:54.000 Or maybe it was a CD, but it was probably a cassette walkman.

00:23:58.000 And I was like, getting my cardio.

00:24:00.000 They were better for working out.

00:24:01.000 They didn't skip.

00:24:02.000 They got good with the CD after a while.

00:24:05.000 It didn't skip, but you had to set it on, you had to set it on the treadmill.

00:24:08.000 And you had to hit that like shock mode thing.

00:24:11.000 And then that would eat your battery so quickly though.

00:24:13.000 Like you'd get three songs in and be like, Okay, do you have to go to the gym with like spare batteries?

00:24:18.000 It's like, To me it was so insane that I could carry music with me to the gym.

00:24:22.000 Like, that's incredible.

00:24:23.000 Because you go to the gym gym and it'd be like the worst poison song playing, no respect to poison or something like, God, I can't get into this.

00:24:30.000 I'm trying to get pumped here, man. 1.00

00:24:32.000 This is fucking bullshit music. 1.00

00:24:34.000 Like someone's in charge of the, you know, the station that they pick on the radio. 1.00

00:24:38.000 Just to be able to carry it.

00:24:39.000 But that moment of hearing that music, I was like, this is the, this is celebrating crime and murder.

00:24:47.000 Like, this is nuts. 1.00

00:24:48.000 And murdering prostitutes. 0.99

00:24:50.000 And like, this is crazy that this is like a major record label put this out. 0.98

00:24:55.000 And I was only 21.

00:24:57.000 And I was, you know, I was just sitting there going, I can'm really into Ice Cube, really into Ice Tea.

00:25:05.000 I'd listen to that when I was delivering newspapers.

00:25:08.000 It was like gangster rap was like a completely different thing.

00:25:12.000 So then cut to when people start digging into it, like intelligence agencies have had there's a weird book on intelligence agencies and their role in rock and roll music in the 1960s.

00:25:24.000 The book about the book about Laurel Canyon.

00:25:26.000 What is it?

00:25:27.000 Strange Things?

00:25:29.000 It's very interesting.

00:25:30.000 I don't know if I buy it.

00:25:31.000 Eddie Bravo's all in on it.

00:25:33.000 I don't know if I buy it.

00:25:34.000 But there's a lot of like weird connections to the intelligence community and music, particularly hip hop and particularly gangster rap and if you want to get really dark you would say if you want to fill your private prisons up what better way than have very popular music encouraging prisons excuse me encouraging crime encouraging out outright celebrating crime and violence That way you fill your prisons up and you also keep people scared

00:26:05.000 so you can give them more laws and more rules and crack down and make them easier to placate, easier to get them to fall in line and do what you need them to do.

00:26:16.000 Yeah, and support massive police build-ups and massive, you know, like militarization of the police and all this stuff.

00:26:23.000 And I don't know, you know, I've heard a little bit about that.

00:26:26.000 I really don't know.

00:26:26.000 I know IceCube has talked about it before, like talked about how like there's undeniably this influence.

00:26:31.000 It does, there are some things about it that seem crazy, but I do know that, and I don't even think this is a controversial thing to say.

00:26:38.000 I think this is just like fact at this point that it was the Reagan administration who did traffic in cocaine to the United States of America while they were ramping up the war on drugs.

00:26:49.000 So like they're bringing in in their effort to help the Contras or whatever, they're going like, okay, well, these guys are.

00:26:57.000 drug dealers, so if we move these drugs in, we can get these money shipments to them and then you're sitting in there, they're creating the conditions for the crack epidemic to explode.

00:27:07.000 And then they catch one guy with a few rocks on him and they're throwing him in jail for decades.

00:27:13.000 It's like just that alone, just that one piece of information, you'd almost if you're in a sane world, you'd go like, oh, so the people had a revolution and overthrew that government and publicly hung all the politicians involved and then we started over from new.

00:27:26.000 And you're like, Joe say no.

00:27:28.000 No, they lionized that guy.

00:27:30.000 Still for decades afterwards, the Republicans at the RNC, you bring up Reagan and they go, our hero, Ronald Reagan.

00:27:36.000 Like the fact that that isn't enough to go, well, this guy should be remembered like a monster.

00:27:42.000 Do you think they tell Reagan that they're selling crack in the hood?

00:27:45.000 I don't think they do.

00:27:46.000 I do not think the intelligence agencies let that information that far up the chain to a guy who's only in there for four years before he has to get reelected.

00:27:55.000 Fair enough.

00:27:56.000 Not a chance.

00:27:56.000 But George HW Bush definitely never could be that guy either for that show.

00:28:01.000 He fucking signed the docket. 0.97

00:28:02.000 That guy was all over that. 1.00

00:28:04.000 He was all over.

00:28:05.000 He was the head of the CIA.

00:28:06.000 He was their guy.

00:28:07.000 He was the head of the CIA moved in, right?

00:28:09.000 So, you know, but again, also you get to a certain point when you're president.

00:28:13.000 I think this applies to Donald Trump in a lot of ways too.

00:28:15.000 Where it's like, it's your responsibility.

00:28:18.000 Like, if you didn't know, then that's your responsibility for not knowing.

00:28:21.000 I don't think you have an access.

00:28:23.000 I do not.

00:28:24.000 I do not think in cases like that you have access. 0.90

00:28:28.000 I think if they're doing something like selling crack in the hood and using the money to fund the Contras, there's no fucking way you could ever kosherize that.

00:28:39.000 So I don't think you ever let the president know. 0.98

00:28:42.000 I think this is all black funded.

00:28:44.000 I don't think there's layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy before you can get to any real data and information.

00:28:51.000 If you want to talk about people that are doing operations.

00:28:55.000 in Nicaragua, you have things going on in Iran, you have to pay attention to Russia, this is happening here, that's happening there. 0.97

00:29:02.000 There's not a fucking chance he knows they're selling crack to pay for an army. 0.98

00:29:06.000 I just don't think he knows. 0.99

00:29:07.000 Yeah, you might tell him.

00:29:08.000 Look, you might be right about that.

00:29:09.000 Because why would they assume that he'd go along with it?

00:29:11.000 Or tell him This is not a normal thing to do.

00:29:14.000 I came into this office thinking I'm an actor.

00:29:17.000 I'm Ronald Reagan.

00:29:18.000 I came into this office thinking I'm going to be a good American and we're going to get back to basics and hard work and trickle down economics.

00:29:25.000 And you're telling me you're selling crack? 1.00

00:29:26.000 Hey, fuck you, you're going to jail. 1.00

00:29:28.000 You know what I'm saying? 1.00

00:29:29.000 Yeah, well, because he can't That's how Nixon got caught..

00:29:32.000 So Nixon didn't organize Watergate, he tried to cover it up.

00:29:36.000 That's how he got caught.

00:29:37.000 And they would do the same thing with Reagan.

00:29:39.000 Yeah, well, it's like he would come clean about all the crack selling, do you really?

00:29:43.000 Right, well, they could present it to them after it's a fade accomplete and then be like, so what do you want to do now?

00:29:48.000 Which is what happened with Nixon, right?

00:29:49.000 So it's like, look, this is going to look really, really bad.

00:29:52.000 Good luck explaining this.

00:29:53.000 So he helps them cover it up and then you go, now we got you.

00:29:56.000 Now you might as well have been in on planning it because you helped us cover it up.

00:29:56.000 We got you.

00:29:59.000 And the whole thing was set up by the government.

00:30:01.000 Yeah.

00:30:02.000 It's really crazy.

00:30:03.000 His intelligence agencies set up Watergate.

00:30:05.000 They operated it.

00:30:07.000 Bob Woodward was an intelligence agent before he was ever a reporter that was his first gig tucker carlson told me that it blew my fucking mind he's like what rookie reporter for their first gig their first story gets you're going to take down the most popular president in u.s history yeah he won by the biggest march 49 states yeah he's a dominant real the american people had spoken they supported this guy and then right bob woodward some 20 something year old reporter he gets the biggest story

00:30:37.000 in american history he happened to just come out of naval intelligence in a weird coincidence did i tell you what bill murray told me no so bill murray was on the podcast and was talking about bob woodward's movie The book he wrote, what was it?

00:30:52.000 What was it called?

00:30:53.000 Well, he's written a lot at this point.

00:30:55.000 The one about Belushi, what was it called?

00:30:56.000 It was all it was a wired, right?

00:30:58.000 Wired. 1.00

00:30:59.000 Okay, it was just about Belushi being fucking crazy drug addict. 1.00

00:31:03.000 He goes, That's not my friend. 1.00

00:31:05.000 He goes, That's not how he was.

00:31:06.000 He was like, That was kind of an act.

00:31:08.000 He was a little bit of a lightweight.

00:31:10.000 Like if he had like two, three drinks, he was drunk.

00:31:12.000 Like he goes, I think he did that speedball.

00:31:15.000 I think that's the first time he ever did it and died.

00:31:18.000 It's not that he never done drugs before, but he wasn't this guy.

00:31:21.000 So this is all fiction.

00:31:23.000 So he read the first five pages.

00:31:25.000 It was, oh my God, they framed me Nixon.

00:31:28.000 Yeah.

00:31:29.000 Isn't that crazy?

00:31:30.000 I know.

00:31:31.000 It's like this guy wrote about my friend in such a distorted, untruthful way.

00:31:38.000 Now I have to think about what he discovered with Nixon.

00:31:40.000 Yeah.

00:31:41.000 I know what kind of person this is.

00:31:42.000 Yeah, my good friend who I mentioned quite a bit, but Scott Horton, who is, I think, the best foreign policy voice in the United States of America.

00:31:57.000 But so while, so Bob Woodward's latest book came out, and I remember he told me about this, but so he just happened to be writing his book on Ukraine when he saw this new Bob Woodward book came out and they had a quote in it.

00:32:09.000 I believe it was a Sergei Lavrov quote who's like Putin's right-hand man.

00:32:14.000 And Scott said he's reading it and he goes, this quote's all wrong.

00:32:17.000 He goes, the actual quote, like I was, he was just researching this for his book, and he goes, the quote means the exact opposite of what he's claiming it means here.

00:32:24.000 Like, see how he left out this part?

00:32:26.000 He wasn't referring to this, he was referring to that.

00:32:28.000 And then he just, I remember he just told me, he goes, like, so for the record, like, you can just never trust anything Bob Woodward says because he'll take this quote and just get it, mangle it to the point where he's presenting it as if it means 180 degrees opposite of what the quote actually meant.

00:32:43.000 And so, yeah, there's a like the historian of record.

00:32:48.000 Would you ever have imagined that?

00:32:50.000 When all the years when I was growing up, that guy was like a hero.

00:32:54.000 He was like a journalistic hero.

00:32:55.000 Well, and he's how we know.

00:32:57.000 He's how you know that in that moment Dick Cheney turned to George W. Bush and said, mister President, I think we need to. 0.99

00:33:03.000 And then you're like, oh, but he just makes shit up. 1.00

00:33:05.000 Oh, God. 0.99

00:33:08.000 Like when I was a kid, you know, they made a movie about him.

00:33:13.000 All the President's men is a movie.

00:33:16.000 Who plays Bob Woodward?

00:33:17.000 Which movie star plays Bob Woodward?

00:33:19.000 Which one of them?

00:33:20.000 Was it Robert Redford or was it the other guy?

00:33:23.000 Who played Bernstein?

00:33:28.000 Dustin Hoffman.

00:33:29.000 That's right.

00:33:29.000 Dustin Hoffman.

00:33:30.000 Robert Redford's Woodward.

00:33:30.000 That's right.

00:33:32.000 Yeah.

00:33:33.000 So imagine that.

00:33:35.000 You're Bob Woodward. 0.99

00:33:36.000 You bullshit everybody. 0.99

00:33:37.000 Then you get to watch Robert Redford, the most handsome man alive, play in a movie. 0.98

00:33:41.000 Like, outstanding.

00:33:42.000 Look how good looking I am. 0.99

00:33:43.000 And look at me kicking ass for America. 0.98

00:33:46.000 But also just think about how much they could get. 0.97

00:33:49.000 I remember, I don't know, I was in school and I remember hearing like my history teacher talking to another teacher.

00:33:59.000 And this was when Bill Clinton was getting in trouble for Monica Lewinsky.

00:34:04.000 So I was like in middle school or whatever.

00:34:07.000 And I remember hearing them talk and one of them said to the other, he goes, So what do you think about the impeachment or something?

00:34:12.000 And I remember my history teacher, who I thought was a pretty smart guy.

00:34:15.000 He goes, Well, you know, they're treating him like he's Nixon, but he's not Nixon.

00:34:21.000 And essentially what that meant, like what he was saying was like, Well, Nixon is the most corrupt president who ever lived.

00:34:27.000 Bill Clinton just got caught cheating on his wife.

00:34:29.000 Like, that's not as big a deal as being the most corrupt.

00:34:31.000 But they just made that like the thing that everybody knows.

00:34:35.000 Like, well, we did have this one corrupt president, but the system works.

00:34:38.000 That's the lesson.

00:34:38.000 The system works and it got him out of there.

00:34:40.000 Before the internet, it works.

00:34:42.000 I think it's like very hard to make that same system work the same way.

00:34:45.000 No, I completely agree.

00:34:46.000 I mean to say that the narrative that everybody accepted was like, oh, but the system works like it figured out that he was corrupt.

00:34:52.000 They had him step down.

00:34:53.000 They got him out of there when really the answer is much more like the intelligence agencies took over the United States of America in a hostile coup against John F. Kennedy.

00:35:05.000 And then Nixon comes in like a few years later and is like essentially taken over as well, but they get the American people to believe that like what that was was a corrupt president being ousted.

00:35:17.000 This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

00:35:20.000 There is such a thing as having too many options to choose from, like when you're scrolling on the TV trying to find something to watch or Have you been to one of those ice cream shops where they have hundreds of different topics to choose from?

00:35:33.000 It's overwhelming.

00:35:34.000 The same thing can happen when you're hiring and you get inundated with applications.

00:35:39.000 Well, it's time to stop stressing and use ZipRecruiter instead.

00:35:43.000 Their innovative resume database can help you find and connect with the best people for your role.

00:35:49.000 Try it for free now at ziprecruiter.com slash rogan.

00:35:54.000 What makes ZipRecruiter's resume database so special is the advanced filtering feature.

00:36:01.000 You can use it to hone in on exactly what you're looking for from the hundreds of thousands of resumes that are uploaded monthly to the site.

00:36:10.000 And when you find a potential candidate, you can unlock their contact info instantly.

00:36:15.000 Skip the candidate overload.

00:36:17.000 Streamline your hiring with ZipRecruiter.

00:36:19.000 See why four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

00:36:26.000 Just go to this exclusive web address, ziprecruiter.com/rogan.

00:36:31.000 Again, right now, try it for free.

00:36:34.000 Again, that's ziprecruiter.com, the smartest way to hire. 0.95

00:36:40.000 Well, it's also easy to frame Nixon that way because he's ugly, right?

00:36:45.000 He's not a good looking guy and it was just after Kennedy. 0.93

00:36:49.000 Look, when Muhammad Ali retired, Larry Holmes couldn't get any love, couldn't get any love, and one of the reasons why Larry Holmes, who is one of the best heavyweight champions of all time, couldn't get any love is because he beat the fuck out of Muhammad Ali and everyone was sad and everyone hated him because of that. 0.73

00:37:07.000 And you just, you're never like if you're Nixon and you're following JFK who got shot in the fucking head, we lost., we got to assassinate, someone assassinated the greatest president of all time, this good looking guy who was going to really change things and didn't believe in secrecy and was talking to the American people like we have hope and dreams.

00:37:28.000 He wants to put us on the moon. 1.00

00:37:30.000 And he got shot in the head, now we got this ugly fuck. 1.00

00:37:33.000 Well, there was LBJ in between there, at least. 1.00

00:37:35.000 But yes, no, I mean...

00:37:36.000 A little bit.

00:37:37.000 Well, I think also in hindsight, he just...

00:37:39.000 He...

00:37:42.000 He also came off as kind of, well, it's going to say, he's also very authoritarian.

00:37:47.000 Yeah.

00:37:47.000 You know, which is, unfortunately, when you have a society where you do have ubiquitous crime.

00:37:55.000 You do need some kind of an authoritarian leadership. 0.99

00:38:00.000 Not saying you need tyranny, not saying you need a dictator, but you need fucking laws and you need rule of law. 0.98

00:38:07.000 And sometimes those people come off very harsh and very uncaring and unloving and the total opposite for like... 0.98

00:38:19.000 Because Jimmy Carter represented like a genuinely sweet, good guy.

00:38:24.000 But like, look out, that president was a disaster because they were all working against him, for sure.

00:38:29.000 And on top of that, it's like hard to be like, a bit of a hardass if you want to run the world.

00:38:35.000 But the way Nixon did it, we're still suffering through that today. 0.99

00:38:40.000 That motherfucker, he's partially responsible for that sweeping Schedule 1 act of 1970. 0.99

00:38:48.000 When they did that and they made everything illegal, everything Schedule 1, including things that are 100% medicinal, like marijuana, all that fucked up society and they did it specifically to target the anti-war movement and to target the civil rights movement specifically. 0.99

00:39:04.000 So it's not like Nixon was the best.

00:39:06.000 Oh, no. 1.00

00:39:08.000 What he did was fucking horrible. 1.00

00:39:09.000 Nixon had a lot of policy.y failures. 0.99

00:39:11.000 And I would put the number one, and I completely agree with you, I mean, launching the war on drugs was a disaster, but taking us off the gold standard was one of the worst policy decisions in the history of the United States of America.

00:39:23.000 That is, we're so many of the problems we face now is because of that.

00:39:28.000 And people could say, like, I've heard Pat Buchanan defend Nixon on this before.

00:39:32.000 Pat Buchanan was in the Nixon administration.

00:39:34.000 He was a speech writer for him.

00:39:37.000 And he was like, well, look, what were we going to do at that point?

00:39:40.000 And so he was basically saying, because what happened was essentially, so you had like the Bretton Woods Agreement, which started after World War III, or actually, I'm sorry, it started at the very end of World War II.

00:39:52.000 It was in 1944, where they had the Bretton Woods Agreement, where they could kind of see where World War II was going.

00:39:58.000 And it was basically like, okay, well, all of Europe is destroyed, and a lot of Asia is destroyed, or not yet, I guess it was 44, but it was getting there. 0.82

00:40:09.000 And America had, you know, at least on the homeland hadn't really been touched.

00:40:14.000 And we had like a wild amount of the world's gold.

00:40:17.000 And so the deal was essentially that like we will peg the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce.

00:40:23.000 Everyone else can peg their currency to the dollar and then the dollars are refundable you know you can get an ounce for 35 and so that you know was whatever there were problems with the Bretton Woods agreement but that was what stood from after World War II into so from 1944 to 1973 or 1971 when he took us off the gold standard.

00:40:47.000 And so essentially what happened was through the 60s, we started cheating.

00:40:53.000 And it became very obvious to the world that we were like, you know, in the 1960s, you're like, you have the great society.

00:40:59.000 So we created Medicare and Medicaid and we went to the moon and we were fighting the war in Vietnam.

00:41:06.000 And we were just printing money for all of this, which is what we still do to this day.

00:41:10.000 But so essentially the Europeans started looking at us and they were like, I don't think you got enough gold to cover all these dollars that you're printing around.

00:41:18.000 Wasn't that thing where they were going to do an audit of Fort Knox that we never heard about?

00:41:24.000 Well, what I know is that I'm pretty sure it was the French, might have been the British too, but it was definitely the French.

00:41:30.000 The French basically called our bluff and they just went, okay, we'll take gold. 1.00

00:41:36.000 We got all these dollars, we'll take gold.

00:41:38.000 We get an ounce for every 35 dollars that we have.

00:41:41.000 And we have quite a lot.

00:41:43.000 And that's when Nixon went, no.

00:41:47.000 He just basically defaulted in front of the entire world.

00:41:49.000 And he said he's temporarily suspending the convertibility of dollars into gold.

00:41:56.000 And they framed it as like, you know, the French are attacking the stability of the dollar.

00:42:01.000 Really, all they were doing was calling us on our agreement.

00:42:04.000 We owed it to them.

00:42:05.000 We're like, we got so much gold, bro.

00:42:07.000 So Pap Buchanan says, defending his boy, Richard Nixon, he goes, well, what were we going to do at that point?

00:42:13.000 Let him clean us out of all of our gold and just not be the dominant power. 0.88

00:42:17.000 But I think the retort to that is, yeah.

00:42:20.000 Like that's what you should have done.

00:42:22.000 Because the decision to go off of the gold standard essentially just said well now there's no more even pretend limits on government you know this is why ron paul who happy birthday to the greatest living american hero just turned just turned 90 um and uh i was just at his uh birthday party a few weeks ago and damn you are you partying with ron paul dude that dude throws it down no i'm just kidding it was it was very nice though to see him tulsi gabard was there which was cool um but so so Essentially,

00:42:52.000 right?

00:42:53.000 That was the last restraint on government is that at least even then, even under Bretton Woods, when we're cheating, at least there's some feeling of like, well, don't cheat too bad.

00:43:02.000 because they could maybe try to counteract the government.

00:43:05.000 Right, exactly.

00:43:06.000 But after that, it was off to the races.

00:43:08.000 And this is why Ron Paul ran for Congress.

00:43:10.000 It was when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard.

00:43:13.000 And then he was like, this is going to lead to big government.

00:43:15.000 This is going to be the era of big government.

00:43:16.000 So he was going to run to try to stop that.

00:43:18.000 And he was completely right.

00:43:21.000 This is what has really destroyed everything, is that there's just no, and it's a big part of the reason why I'm so angry about all these wars too, because it's all related.

00:43:31.000 You know, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, or the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1913.

00:43:38.000 And then in 1914, I think is when it actually got up and running.

00:43:49.000 And three years later is World War I. You know, like three years or American entry into World War I. So it's like, this is the banking system and the tax system are very like interrelated with the warfare state.

00:44:04.000 Like you need this stuff in order to fight wars.

00:44:08.000 You know, even just over the, whatever it is, over the last 25 years, we've spent close to $10 trillion on wars, you know?

00:44:17.000 And they don't tax the American people for that.

00:44:21.000 They know they couldn't tax us enough to pay.

00:44:23.000 We would put an end to it.

00:44:24.000 If they tried to raise everybody's taxes enough to come up with $10 trillion because we want to go fight regime change wars all over the Middle East, the American people would have been like, no, we're not doing that.

00:44:34.000 But they didn't do that.

00:44:35.000 They kept taxes where they were.

00:44:36.000 I think they even cut some rates during those years, the top rates.

00:44:41.000 And then they borrowed the rest, and they still couldn't borrow enough, so they just print the money.

00:44:45.000 And then essentially what happens is that the price of everything just goes up and up and up.

00:44:49.000 And you just put more money into the system, and then people start looking around and going like, geez, why is the price of housing and health care and energy and childcare are totally unaffordable.

00:45:00.000 and the answer is because you're paying for the war in iraq and nobody thinks about it like that but that's really what's going on they can't so for all the young people who are coming out of college now and they're like i'm 150 grand in debt I have a gender studies major degree or whatever, you know, maybe something better than that, but they got an English degree or something, and they're working at DoorDash, and the average house is going for 600 grand, and they're like, what am I possibly going to do?

00:45:28.000 It's like the reason why these kids are all demanding socialism, at least on the left, is because like, what else are you going to do?

00:45:34.000 Like, how do you even, but the reason why that is the case is because your government decided to spend trillions of dollars on blowing up brown countries and in some cases then rebuilding them to blow them up again. 0.88

00:45:50.000 This is the actual cost of the thing.

00:45:52.000 And I feel like it's almost nobody outside of like the Ron Paul libertarians, the Austrian economics guys, almost nobody else ever makes this connection.

00:46:03.000 That it's like, this is the deal.

00:46:05.000 You can't be a world empire.

00:46:08.000 without having a central bank that can print money for you because otherwise it just doesn't work resources are finite and you'll run out of them and so you can't do that without hav having this monetary system, but the cost of this monetary system is that prices always go up and up and up and up, and that rigs the entire economy against the working class and the middle class in favor of the rich.

00:46:29.000 It's just the way it is.

00:46:30.000 When the value of assets is going up and up and up and up, that's great if you own stuff.

00:46:35.000 That's great if you own stuff and you're selling it.

00:46:38.000 If you got a billion dollars in the bank, inflation is your best friend.

00:46:41.000 But if you're on a fixed income or you're a working class person, it just destroys you. 1.00

00:46:46.000 And everybody who's working class knows this just from living through the last five years.

00:46:50.000 grocery prices go up 30%.

00:46:52.000 That is, you know, But it's all one thing.

00:47:04.000 You know, the prices of groceries go up by 30% and families get destroyed.

00:47:08.000 Men swallow pistols. 0.91

00:47:09.000 Kids grow up without fathers. 1.00

00:47:11.000 That's the cost of this shit. 1.00

00:47:13.000 And that's what we're living through now. 1.00

00:47:17.000 And what we'll continue to live through as long as we have a government that spends way beyond our means.

00:47:22.000 Like Dr. Ron Paul used to say, when you spend beyond your means, you're destined to live beneath your means.

00:47:28.000 And we have an economy that's built around doing the exact same thing it's always done always done, right?

00:47:34.000 And if you think about the amount of money, just in shuddering USAID, think about the amount of money, whether you agree with USAID or not, the amount of money that was being pumped through that system, like to all sorts of weird places, right?

00:47:55.000 There's the when the Department of Energy gave out 39 or 93 billion dollars in loans in the months between Biden losing or Kamala losing rather and Trump taking office.

00:48:07.000 Like where's that?

00:48:09.000 There's so many of these instances of insane amounts of money just being allocated while we're in 39 trillion dollars in debt.

00:48:17.000 It's like it's so unmanageable and yet it just keeps marching on and people are upset if you try to pull a band-aid off.

00:48:25.000 Like the idea of shuttering some of these government organizations, all you hear about is people are going to die, people are going to starve, this is going to happen, that's going to happen. 0.97

00:48:33.000 Are you fucking sure? 0.94

00:48:35.000 Are you sure that this isn't a giant money sucking scam that's been going on that does some good? 0.99

00:48:40.000 Yeah, well, there's that's most of it, right?

00:48:42.000 Yeah, well, like number one, yeah, if you go, hey, I think, which by the way, no one in Congress, I mean, short of like Thomas Massey, maybe, maybe Rand Paul, but like no one else in Congress is even suggesting an idea so radical.

00:48:55.000 But if I were to throw out the radical idea that we should go back to pre pandemic level spending.

00:49:01.000 So go all the way back to the crazy year of 2019 when it was anarchy or whatever.

00:49:08.000 That was just they'll all tell you the world's gonna end if we do that.

00:49:12.000 And even when they're making up these absolutely ridiculous claims about how many people are gonna die if you cut government spending, which is all totally absurd.

00:49:22.000 But then they never seem to go like, well, how many people are gonna die if I keep letting DC have all these war-making powers.

00:49:29.000 How many people are going to die if the president is able to fund a proxy war whenever he wants to. 1.00

00:49:35.000 And I mean, look at this shit, dude. 1.00

00:49:37.000 I took so much, you know, whatever. 1.00

00:49:39.000 I'm not.

00:49:40.000 But I took a lot of heat for the stuff I said on the show here a few years ago about the war in Ukraine.

00:49:46.000 And look at it now, dude.

00:49:47.000 Look at even, and I don't think they're about to end the thing.

00:49:49.000 I think they're, which we could talk about, but I think they're putting poison pills in these negotiations already.

00:49:54.000 It's what it looks like to me.

00:49:55.000 But literally, the deal that I was talking to you about, whatever it was, three years ago when I was saying on the show that they had a deal worked out, a peace deal worked out in the first few months of the war in 22 and Boris Johnson went and killed the peace deal on behalf of the West to make sure this war kept going.

00:50:13.000 But the deal that was in pencil, not pen, that Boris Johnson killed, was essentially recognition of the annexation of Crimea.

00:50:26.000 At the time, it wasn't annexation of the Donbass region.

00:50:30.000 It was like independence for the Donbass region.

00:50:33.000 And then the agreement that the rest of Ukraine would not join NATO.

00:50:37.000 That was the deal that they had worked out.

00:50:39.000 And look at where we are now.

00:50:41.000 Now, the deal that they're even talking about, even as Donald Trump goes, there's going to be some land swaps and all this.

00:50:46.000 Okay, well, what's he talking about?

00:50:47.000 The deal right now that is the best case scenario that we're hoping we could get is that Vladimir Putin obviously keeps Crimea, keeps the entire Donbass region, gets a corridor from the south into Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine doesn't join NATO.

00:51:01.000 So we have the same deal just a little bit more in the Russians' favor three years later with hundreds of thousands of people having died in that process, just to get back to not as good a deal as they had in 2022. 0.63

00:51:16.000 And so, you know.

00:51:17.000 And if they don't sign that?

00:51:19.000 It'll keep going, which I think it's probably going to.

00:51:22.000 They're enlisting people as old as 60 now.

00:51:25.000 Yeah, and they have been for like a full year at least.

00:51:28.000 Throwing people up there.

00:51:29.000 And the thing that's really changed, the reason why like the Europeans and Zelenskyy and they're at least pretending to come to the negotiation table right now, which they don't say, but this is the truth, is that support for the war amongst Ukrainians has collapsed.

00:51:47.000 I mean, not like gone down by a few points.

00:51:50.000 It's collapsed.

00:51:51.000 There was just a piece in this the other day.

00:51:52.000 It was a Gallup, I believe.

00:51:55.000 They had their latest poll.

00:51:58.000 Super majorities of the Ukrainian people, 70% around, around want an immediate end to the war with negotiations on landswap.

00:52:08.000 Like, let's settle it however we got to settle it.

00:52:10.000 They don't, I remember for the first two years of the thing, everybody who I argued with about the war in Ukraine, their talking point would always be, the Ukrainian people want to fight. 0.51

00:52:20.000 And who are you, Dave, to tell them that they don't have a right to defend themselves?

00:52:24.000 And then I would respond by saying, like, yes, it's true the Ukrainian people want to fight, but like, might that have something to do with the blank check that they've received from the world and the backup of the entire world?

00:52:34.000 You know, it's just, it's a different proposition to go like, do you want to fight if John Jones.

00:52:41.000 is at your back and goes, I got your back, dude. 1.00

00:52:43.000 Let's go fuck these guys up. 1.00

00:52:44.000 You're like, hell yeah, I want to fight. 1.00

00:52:45.000 But then John Jones leaves.

00:52:47.000 I might be like, ah, let's talk about this.

00:52:51.000 But now the Ukrainian people don't want to fight.

00:52:53.000 And by the way, I never believed any of that because I have my own libertarian views on things.

00:52:58.000 And I'm like, if you're telling me that people want to fight, like, well, why do you got to conscript an army then?

00:53:02.000 You know, like if they want to fight so bad...

00:53:08.000 Yeah, you could just make it a voluntary force and then we'll find out real quick who wants to fight.

00:53:12.000 But the point is now that even the Ukrainians don't want to fight over this stuff anymore.

00:53:17.000 So there's just no justification for it.

00:53:19.000 So now they move to phase B, which is essentially to pretend like they're negotiating, but putting all types of poison pills in the deal so that you know the other side won't take it.

00:53:31.000 This is what they did with Iran, too. 0.81

00:53:34.000 This is why we got into that 12-day war, as they're calling it now.

00:53:37.000 But, you know, it's like you put things into the...

00:53:43.000 It was on Axios.

00:53:44.000 There's reports that they – So in other words, the rest of Ukraine's in NATO, which is the thing that caused the whole conflict to begin with.

00:54:08.000 So, like, yeah.

00:54:09.000 And, you know...

00:54:09.000 That's what that means?

00:54:10.000 Article 5?

00:54:11.000 Article 5 is the article in NATO, in the NATO agreement, that says that, like...

00:54:21.000 It doesn't exactly say you got to go to war over it, but it's like you have to help in the effort if they're attacked.

00:54:26.000 So essentially, that's what they're trying to ask now, which is, but if you think about it, right, it's designed to incentivize Putin to keep the war going.

00:54:36.000 Because if you're telling Vladimir Putin, let's just say., which it's not exactly clear that he would even take the deal that I just laid out before, but it was, I know that it's been reported that he was, it was being signaled that he might be open to that deal.

00:54:50.000 I get the Donbass region.

00:54:51.000 You know, he's got still...

00:54:53.000 Like, the Donbass region is Donetsk and Luhansk.

00:54:56.000 And in Luhansk, I think...

00:55:01.000 They got all of Donetsk.

00:55:02.000 They got most of Luhansk.

00:55:03.000 But there's still Ukrainians controlling part of it.

00:55:05.000 And then he's controlling part of these territories in the south.

00:55:08.000 So this is what Trump means when he says the land swaps, meaning essentially you get out of the Donbass region, give me that, and I'll give you back, you know, the land swaps are Putin takingin taking what he wants and leaving you the rest.

00:55:19.000 But if you're going to tell Vladimir Putin, who fought this entire war over Ukrainian entry into NATO being his red line, basically in the middle of the, not in the middle of, as the war is potentially wrapping up, you're going to tell him, hey, whatever territory you don't take here will be a part of NATO.

00:55:36.000 Well, what does that incentivize him to do?

00:55:39.000 Take more of it then.

00:55:40.000 Then why would you stop and give the rest of it up?

00:55:43.000 And it does seem to me like that's, that is clearly, at least from the Europeans, that is clearly the motivation of all of this, is to present something, it's, you know, they do have their chestess war moves. 0.64

00:55:56.000 And so you present something that you know the other side can't agree to.

00:55:59.000 And then when they don't agree to it, you go, look, we tried to negotiate.

00:56:02.000 And he just wouldn't take us up on this.

00:56:04.000 And so what can you do?

00:56:06.000 Oh, God.

00:56:08.000 You know, another problem with these conflicts and war in general is that people always want to pretend that there's one side that's good and one side that's bad.

00:56:17.000 You know, and obviously Putin's the bad guy, right?

00:56:20.000 Because they started the war, started killing people in Ukraine. 0.85

00:56:24.000 But there's so many factors that are going on.

00:56:30.000 And then there's also the long history of corruption that Ukraine has always had.

00:56:35.000 And then there's also the weird deals that they were making with the Biden family to control all the different it was natural gas and there's in incredible supplies of rare earth minerals.

00:56:50.000 It's like really valuable, valuable territory.

00:56:55.000 You know, there's this incentive to create some sort of there was they were going to try to like I think part of the plan was like get off of Russian power and make Ukrainian power like central and then whatever they were making over there the amount of power I forget what the number was they said but it's like trillions of dollars in natural gas minerals all these different things and we're supposed to pretend that that's not

00:57:25.000 also a part of the motivation like didn't even Trump say something about a deal that they were doing with Ukraine that involved yeah he got sucked into this talk about the rare earth minerals stuff and you know it's Donald Trump it's like his weakness because he you know there's a lot of great things about deals yeah there's a lot of great things about coming from a business background but then there's like the weakness of it is that he's always attracted by like hey Gaza could be beachfront property.

00:57:49.000 You know, it'd be like, ooh, and you could just see him like come alive with these ideas.

00:57:54.000 Yeah, it's always this stuff.

00:57:55.000 But then the problem is that, you know, And look, I've been very harsh on Donald Trump over the last few months, but I think he deserves it.

00:58:03.000 And I think this administration is failing on so many levels, so profoundly, especially given the opportunity that they had.

00:58:09.000 But, you know, I heard him the other day, he called into a Fox News show, and he was like telling the story of the war in Ukraine.

00:58:18.000 And it's like, it just seems like he's telling, like, it seems like you learned this on a TV show.

00:58:25.000 Like, can we get some books?

00:58:27.000 in your diet?

00:58:27.000 Like, you know what I mean?

00:58:28.000 Like, it's like, this is, We really need someone here who's read a book about this because he kind of had an idea of what he was talking about, but then he got it completely wrong.

00:58:38.000 So he goes, he's trying to tell the story and he's talking about the corruption of the Bidens in Ukraine.

00:58:42.000 And you're like, okay, yes, that is true.

00:58:44.000 But like there's a whole story here that I don't think you're really understanding.

00:58:48.000 Because he goes, he goes, look, this goes back to 2014.

00:58:50.000 And so I'm watching this and I got like so excited for a minute.

00:58:53.000 Like I was like, yes, yes, it does go back to 2014.

00:58:56.000 Thank you, Donald Trump.

00:58:58.000 And then he goes, it goes back to 2014 when Putin took Crimea and Obama let him have it.

00:59:04.000 He just let him have it.

00:59:05.000 Never would have happened on my watch, but Obama gave Putin Ukraine and you're like no dude that's not just go back two months earlier in that same year the problem wasn't that Obama gave Putin Ukraine the problem was that Obama took Ukraine away from Vladimir Putin as I've played on your show and you played with Tulsi Gabbard the director of national intelligence has sat right here where I'm sitting and watched Gideon Rose explain to Stephen Colbert exactly what we're doing here Russia as Gideon Rose the

00:59:35.000 editor of Foreign Affairs magazine said Russia is Batman Ukraine is Robin we are stealing Robin away from Batman that's what the Maidan revolution was that's why the USAID and the NED poured $100 million into this street protest, right?

00:59:52.000 And so they overthrew the government.

00:59:54.000 And then a bunch of the former Ukrainian prime ministers started floating out that we should tear up the Sevastopol lease in Crimea, because this is Russia's only year-long warm water naval port.

01:00:09.000 They've always had it.

01:00:10.000 This was their agreement.

01:00:11.000 They had like a 50-year lease or something like that.

01:00:13.000 But after the West backed a coup that overthrew the government and put in a pro-Western government, they started talking big, like, well, maybe we'll tear up that lease.

01:00:21.000 And so Vladimir Putin went, no, I'll just take it.

01:00:25.000 And that was like, so anyway, so he goes back to that, doesn't go back a few months earlier and then misses the entire point.

01:00:32.000 That no, so because like the point is that it's not just like me being like, oh, I wish Donald Trump was into the same books I'm into or something like that.

01:00:38.000 The point is that when you don't get that piece of the chapter, then you miss what's happening right now.

01:00:44.000 So when you're talking about like these, essentially what Donald Trump was saying, the way he was trying to sell it to Zelensky was like, look, do this rare earth minerals deal with us.

01:00:53.000 And this is kind of like a security guarantee.

01:00:55.000 It's not exactly a security guarantee, but if we're in business with you and then Putin's trying to fuck up our business, hey, he's picking a f fight with us too.

01:01:04.000 But the whole point is that that's exactly what caused this whole catastrophe.

01:01:09.000 Vladimir Putin and the entire Russian elite have been crystal clear about this, that they go, look, we can tolerate a neutral Ukraine.

01:01:19.000 We could tolerate NATO up to Ukraine. 0.80

01:01:22.000 Ukraine is neutral and then there's Russia.

01:01:24.000 We cannot tolerate Ukraine being a That's a step too far. 1.00

01:01:30.000 But every time we try to let him be neutral, neutral seems like it's never good enough, and that never actually works.

01:01:36.000 So if you're going to come in here and say neutral is not good enough, they're going to be part of the West, then we're going to be part of the West.

01:01:40.000 West, then we're going to say, actually, we'll take them as part of Russia instead.

01:01:44.000 Now, he also believes, as he says all the time, which I just think is goofy and un-American, but he also believes that, like, yeah, they're not really a real country and they're kind of historically ours anyway.

01:01:53.000 And, you know, he's got his own views on that.

01:01:55.000 But that's not what the war was about.

01:01:57.000 And everybody, you know, and when I was here, which I was very excited to do because I'm, you know, a weird romantic and have a – But what I was really excited, because me and Douglas Murray are going to debate this issue.

01:02:12.000 And I remember when he first goes, he goes, the war had nothing to do with Ukrainian entry into NATO.

01:02:17.000 And I was like, okay, well, let me just hit hit you with two points real quick.

01:02:20.000 Number one, the head of the CIA, you know, during all the years of Joe Biden, when he was the ambassador to Russia, he wrote the net means yet memo.

01:02:29.000 He literally said that this was all, what it all was about, and that Russia didn't want to do this, but they would if we kept pushing Ukraine's entry into NATO, and we did keep pushing it.

01:02:38.000 And then I said the other one was Stoltenberg, who is not anymore, but was the head of NATO while this was happening.

01:02:44.000 And he said that Vladimir Putin sent them in writing a draft treaty that all you have to do is put in writing that you will never bring Ukraine into NATO and I won't invade.

01:02:53.000 And then he bragged that we said no.

01:02:55.000 And then he invaded.

01:02:57.000 But so I said this to Douglas Murray and I was kind of curious.

01:03:00.000 Like I was like, what's what's his response to this going to be?

01:03:03.000 Like, what is he going to say back to? 0.98

01:03:04.000 Maybe he's got something I've never heard before that I'm going to have to be like, ooh, shit, I gotta consider that. 0.98

01:03:08.000 And his response was, a libertarian quoting the CIA, I see. 0.99

01:03:14.000 And you're like, wait, so that's your pivot as to I'm a hypocrite somehow, which isn't even hypocrisy. 0.85

01:03:20.000 Like, yes, I think the CIA should be abolished.

01:03:22.000 I also think it's relevant when the head of the CIA admits what the war was all about.

01:03:26.000 I don't see why.

01:03:27.000 Do you think the CIA totally should be abolished? 0.98

01:03:29.000 Don't you think we should kind of pay attention to what the fuck is going on in the world, giving a real life perspective, not a utopian perspective, but a real life perspective. 1.00

01:03:38.000 There's terrorist groups all over the world plotting shit. 0.99

01:03:41.000 Probably a good idea. 1.00

01:03:42.000 Yeah.

01:03:43.000 So what the CIA was originally conceived of, like essentially being a newspaper for the president, like being like, hey, we get all the real intelligence and we give it to you here.

01:03:54.000 Yeah.

01:03:54.000 I 100% think there's room for intelligence gathering.

01:03:57.000 But what the CIA became is a paramilitary organization that starts wars and overthrows democratically elected governments all around the world.

01:04:06.000 That sells Coke in the hood.

01:04:08.000 And occasionally, when they're bored, there's and when there's and maybe like on like a Tuesday, like a three day weekend, and then on Tuesday, maybe move some crack into Los Angeles.

01:04:17.000 No, that, I mean, just should, I mean, it's a disgrace to a professed free society.

01:04:23.000 I mean, it's, look, like when, which we've also played on the show before, but when Chuck Schumer was on with Rachel Maddow, which is one of the most amazing moments in the history of corporate media, because what's amazing about it, if you watch the full thing, is that Rachel Maddow's asking him questions, and he's given his Chuck Schumer, you know.

01:04:45.000 political answers to all of them however you feel about them it's like they have their spiel but then she breaks from script and she she preemptively apologizes to him she goes hey i', I'm sorry to just throw this on you right now.

01:04:56.000 This is, it was in, I believe, January.

01:04:58.000 It was either December 16 or January 17.

01:05:01.000 So Donald Trump has beaten Hillary Clinton, but he's not president yet.

01:05:04.000 He's president elect.

01:05:06.000 And so she goes, sorry to throw you off, put you on the spot, but Donald Trump just tweeted this.

01:05:12.000 So she's reading a tweet that he just tweeted live on air to the Senate majority leader or minority leader at the time.

01:05:20.000 So she reads of the tweet that's him trashing the CIA or something like that.

01:05:24.000 And then Chuck Schumer just gives like his organic response.

01:05:28.000 There was no script prepared for this.

01:05:30.000 He wasn't planned on being asked this question.

01:05:31.000 She just goes, look, here's Donald Trump talking about the CIA.

01:05:34.000 And Chuck Schumer goes, he goes, I mean, Donald Trump, you want to go at the intelligence agencies?

01:05:42.000 And his exact phrase was, they have seven ways till Sunday to get back at you.

01:05:47.000 Yeah.

01:05:47.000 So good luck.

01:05:49.000 And by the way, Rachel Maddow in this moment does not say, pause the tape.

01:05:54.000 What did you just say?

01:05:55.000 Like the most powerful Democrat in the Senate just admitted we don't live in a democracy.

01:06:00.000 Just admitted that this whole thing's an illusion.

01:06:02.000 That the President of the United States is not the President of the United States.

01:06:05.000 All our talk about democracy being on the ballot, democracy's been gone for a long time if it ever existed.

01:06:10.000 You just straight up said that the duly elected commander-in-chief and chief executive of the United States of America ain't really the one who's in charge.

01:06:20.000 Because you better not insult the CIA who work for you ostensibly.

01:06:26.000 Or supposedly, I should say.

01:06:28.000 Or they'll get you.

01:06:31.000 Or they'll ruin you.

01:06:32.000 And by the way, they did.

01:06:33.000 Yeah.

01:06:34.000 And this is the stuff which is very interesting that Tulsi is...

01:06:34.000 Didn't they?

01:06:55.000 you know, the Epstein stuff and just a lot of, you know, kind of core things where like, so Donald Trump, at least according to him, they stole the election.

01:07:03.000 You know, I was thinking about this the other day, because he was talking about in the same thing that I'm talking about when he called into Fox News, he was talking about the Ukraine war.

01:07:10.000 He said at one point, he goes, he goes, the war never would have happened if I was president, which Putin threw him a bone and backed him up on that the other day and said the war wouldn't have happened if Trump was president.

01:07:20.000 That doesn't.

01:07:21.000 Just saying what, just saying what, you know, he's smart enough.

01:07:24.000 That's a nice thing to say.

01:07:25.000 The guy likes being complimented.

01:07:27.000 And Putin's smart enough to know that, like, this is how you negotiate With Donald Trump.

01:07:31.000 Yes, yes.

01:07:31.000 It never started with you.

01:07:34.000 My friend.

01:07:35.000 So that's kind of a silly point.

01:07:37.000 But aside from that, so Donald Trump goes, he goes, it never would have happened if I was president.

01:07:44.000 And then he takes it a step further than what he normally says, and he goes, it wouldn't have even happened if anyone else was president.

01:07:51.000 If we had just had a regular president, this war never would have happened.

01:07:54.000 It's only because Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of America, was president that that's why this happened.

01:08:00.000 But then I'm sitting there as I listen to that, and I go, yeah, but dude, didn't you, you told me that they cheated?

01:08:06.000 Like, you didn't really lose the election in 2020.

01:08:08.000 That's, but you've stuck to that story now for many years.

01:08:12.000 So you're saying they cheated.

01:08:14.000 You're making a similar claim here.

01:08:16.000 They overthrew democracy.

01:08:17.000 They installed Joe Biden.

01:08:19.000 And a war where hundreds of thousands, maybe well over a million people have died happened because they cheated the election.

01:08:26.000 Okay, so I'm going to need to know who they is.

01:08:29.000 And I'm going to need to know when we're going to see them perp walked.

01:08:32.000 Like, you're the president now.

01:08:34.000 you got your whole...

01:08:35.000 But all of us on some level don't really think they're going to start arresting people over the stolen election of 2020.

01:08:41.000 And, you know...

01:08:47.000 Now, I think there's a lot of speculation and there's a lot of consideration about mail in ballots.

01:08:52.000 There's a lot of shenanigans.

01:08:55.000 There's a good record of shenanigans.

01:08:56.000 And there's the reality of any kind of electronics can be hacked.

01:09:01.000 No, I so I agree with all that.

01:09:02.000 I'm just saying, like, once you've made these statements and your administration was in.

01:09:07.000 No, I remember.

01:09:07.000 It was one of the most interesting parts of your podcast with him was like, when you asked him about that, it was like, he really didn't have anything to back it up.

01:09:15.000 If that was you or if that was me, I mean, if there was some reason why I knew that they did something and I could give you all the facts, I would have that ready for anyone because I'd for four fucking years they've been telling him he's crazy for questioning the election.

01:09:30.000 Yeah.

01:09:31.000 So after four years, I'd have a fucking tight ten minutes of the election where I could just rattle off at you and rock your world with it. 0.98

01:09:39.000 Like, these are the facts, Jack. 0.95

01:09:41.000 Well, there's also there's a big difference between, you know, speculating and asking some questions and being like, I'm not sure I believe the official story of this.

01:09:50.000 And there's a difference between then being as a president of the United States going, this is what happened.

01:09:55.000 Like, this was, and if you're going to say that, then you gotta give me your theory.

01:09:59.000 Like, really lay it out for me.

01:10:00.000 Like, and he never had that part.

01:10:03.000 But I will say, they kind of pivoted off the Epstein thing into Russiagate, which seemed to be, you know, like designed that there was this tremendous desire.

01:10:15.000 The whole reason Donald Trump's political existence is a thing is that people are furious about the swamp.

01:10:22.000 They're furious about how corrupt our government is and the profound crimes that the government has committed against the American people.

01:10:29.000 And they want justice for that.

01:10:31.000 And so they pivoted off of Epstein after promising to deliver something on that.

01:10:36.000 And then went, okay, well, how about Russiagate now?

01:10:39.000 So now they're, but I will say., Tulsa Gabbard released a bunch of new documents, and there were some pretty interesting ones there.

01:10:47.000 It wasn't like she just released new stuff where it's like, oh, we already knew all this.

01:10:50.000 Like there was new stuff in there that we didn't really already know.

01:10:53.000 And she referred it over to the Justice Department. 0.83

01:10:55.000 She said in her press conference that we have proof that Obama committed treason.

01:11:00.000 And they've at least sent it to the Justice Department.

01:11:02.000 And from what I understand, there is a grand jury being assembled or something like that.

01:11:07.000 I don't know.

01:11:07.000 I still didn't...

01:11:12.000 There's no way they're actually going to try to prosecute Obama and Brennan and Clapper and Comey.

01:11:18.000 But the FBI raided John Bolton's house today.

01:11:22.000 Yes, I think that's unrelated.

01:11:24.000 But that is an interesting story also.

01:11:26.000 It seems like they're doing wild chit.

01:11:28.000 But if they did that with Obama, what was the actual treason?

01:11:34.000 Like what is she stating is treason?

01:11:36.000 Well, so now I don't think she said treason.

01:11:40.000 I don't think legally that's technically right.

01:11:43.000 But I've someone might correct me on that.

01:11:45.000 Maybe it's sedition or something.

01:11:46.000 I don't know.

01:11:47.000 I mean, like I think treason, I think John Brennan did commit treason when he armed Al Qaeda in Syria and Obama as well with the rest of Obama and John Kerry and Brennan.

01:11:57.000 I think that's literally treason, right?

01:11:59.000 Giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.

01:12:03.000 What Obama and Comey and Clapper did to Donald Trump is they framed him for treason.

01:12:11.000 So what do you call that exactly, framing the sitting U.S. president?

01:12:15.000 Now, I guess Obama can't be guilty of the current, the sitting U.S. president, but he was guilty of the candidate and the president elect, because he was out of there by the time Trump comes in.

01:12:26.000 But what Tulsi Gabbard released that I thought was very interesting, which I had never seen before, and we did, I don't remember was last year or the year before, but there was one episode that me and you talked a lot about Russia Gate and got like pretty deep into it.

01:12:37.000 But what Tulsi released, which which I've never seen before, was that there was a consensus amongst the intelligence agencies after the 2016 election.

01:12:47.000 So this is Hillary Clinton's lost, but Barack Obama's still president and Donald Trump is the president elect.

01:12:52.000 And they had consensus that there was no meaningful interference.

01:12:56.000 in the election.

01:12:57.000 And then there is this one meeting with Obama that she points to where this is where the consensus changes.

01:13:04.000 And they had a new threat assessment written that actually we believe Russia interfered in the election. 0.99

01:13:09.000 But it was total bullshit. 1.00

01:13:11.000 They've never been able to back it up for shit. 1.00

01:13:13.000 You know, they find minor little things here or there, but nothing that demonstrates that. 0.99

01:13:16.000 And that demonstrates that like the results of this were flipped.

01:13:19.000 And then they ran with that for three years after it.

01:13:23.000 But there's no record of that meeting, right?

01:13:26.000 She just released a bunch of documents with records of that meeting.

01:13:29.000 No, but what I'm saying is like the actual discussions.

01:13:32.000 It's not on record.

01:13:33.000 No, I think they have that she had a few.

01:13:35.000 Did they have to do that?

01:13:36.000 No.

01:13:37.000 She had, you know, she had a couple of different documents there that were like had notes from the meeting.

01:13:41.000 I think one had minutes of the meeting.

01:13:43.000 But no, you're not listening to an audio tape of it.

01:13:45.000 Like, it's, no, we don't have like a Nixon, you know, talking about the gays and the Jews or something like that.

01:13:50.000 I'm just trying to like strong man it or steal man it.

01:13:54.000 If it would be possible that Obama knew something that he could relay to them in the meeting?

01:14:02.000 Be an interesting thing to find, you know, that'd be interesting for a court proceeding.

01:14:05.000 But even if that's the case, it still doesn't align with the known facts.

01:14:10.000 Yeah.

01:14:10.000 Oh, yeah.

01:14:10.000 Which is a problem.

01:14:11.000 Yeah.

01:14:12.000 Well, it's not, look, I think, we'll see what comes of this, you know, which again, I'm not betting on anything coming of this, Look, there's a lot of things that happen after that.

01:14:26.000 The real, to me, the true outrage of Russia Gate is that they didn't stop after he won the presidency.

01:14:33.000 It's still pretty outrageous to try to frame a candidate.

01:14:35.000 It's still pretty outrageous for Hillary Clinton to have like opposition research and use an actual, you know, Russian spy and a British spy to do it. 1.00

01:14:44.000 But, you know, that's campaign stuff.

01:14:47.000 It's a little bit different.

01:14:48.000 Like once he becomes the commander-in-chief, then you have the FBI and the CIA still working to frame him.

01:14:55.000 And so this is where and for all of that stuff, Hillary Clinton's gone. 1.00

01:14:59.000 Barack Obama's gone.

01:15:00.000 Brennan is gone.

01:15:01.000 Comey is still there for at least a few months.

01:15:05.000 And then you have like Andrew McCabe and people like that who on a 60 Minutes interview and anybody can go look at it.

01:15:14.000 He literally said that they debated at the at the Justice Department.

01:15:21.000 And this is the highest levels of the Justice Department.

01:15:23.000 It was I mean, Jeff Sessions would have been the attorney general at the time, and he may have recused himself already by that time.

01:15:29.000 So maybe not him, but then everybody else like the top two, three guys at the Justice Department all sat down and debated what to do.

01:15:36.000 And they they said they they decided we're going to invoke the 25th Amendment to.

01:15:55.000 It's designed for, we still didn't use it, even over these last few years, which is crazy.

01:16:00.000 You know, even after the debate, they go, we need a new candidate, but no one went, yeah, but this guy can't be Commander-in-Chief for the next six months.

01:16:06.000 They just let him.

01:16:08.000 But they said they were going to invoke the 25th Amendment.

01:16:10.000 This is on 60 Minutes.

01:16:11.000 Andrew McCabe says this himself.

01:16:13.000 And that they realized they couldn't do that, and so they settled on...

01:16:19.000 They settled on a special prosecutor because they couldn't remove him.

01:16:22.000 So this was their other attempt.

01:16:24.000 We'll just bog him down.

01:16:25.000 We'll investigate everything in his life.

01:16:28.000 We'll find some crime somewhere.

01:16:30.000 It's to this day a miracle that they didn't.

01:16:33.000 I can't believe they didn't find any other dirt on Donald Trump.

01:16:36.000 I always thought when Mueller started being the special prosecutor, I literally, and you can listen to my podcast on record.

01:16:41.000 If you want to go, part of the problem, available where podcasts are sold, you can listen back to, I said at the time, I go, they're not going to find anything on Russia Gate because there's nothing there.

01:16:50.000 This is all made up.

01:16:51.000 But they're going to find something.

01:16:52.000 The guy has been a real estate developer in New York City for how many decades now?

01:16:57.000 Everyone, every real estate developer has committed a few crimes.

01:17:00.000 And they found nothing.

01:17:00.000 They locked up, you know, they charged a bunch of his people around him with tax crimes and other things that had nothing to do with Russia Gate.

01:17:08.000 Then they tried to put pressure on them to flip on him.

01:17:10.000 That's how they do these things.

01:17:12.000 None of them had anything on him. 0.99

01:17:14.000 And so anyway, but the point is that it was the deep state attempting to remove the sitting president of the United States of America off of something that they knew was bullshit. 0.97

01:17:25.000 You know, you had people, Eric Swalwell was out on cable news saying, not only an asset, saying Donald Trump is a Russian agent. 0.98

01:17:34.000 Agent.

01:17:36.000 He's working for Vladimir Putin.

01:17:38.000 He's his guy here. 1.00

01:17:40.000 And they all knew this was bullshit. 0.99

01:17:41.000 I mean, there's a repeated online ad nausea. 0.99

01:17:45.000 Oh, and online on CNN., on MSNBC, on ABC, CBS, every day.

01:17:50.000 Trump Russia Collusion.

01:17:51.000 And many of those same people are still telling you what's true.

01:17:55.000 Many of those same people are still in front of a camera telling you what's true.

01:17:58.000 Yeah, oh, they're still.

01:17:59.000 They're still apologizing.

01:18:00.000 That's right. 0.97

01:18:00.000 And they're still, and they're the same ones up there going, we have to arm Ukraine till the end, we have to give Israel more bombs to drop on the Palestinians. 0.97

01:18:07.000 Is he even covering this?

01:18:09.000 Like, how is MSNBC handling this Tulsi Gabbard revelation?

01:18:13.000 I think by changing their name to MSNow, you're supposed to forget.

01:18:17.000 So did NBC bail out?

01:18:19.000 So Microsoft and NBC are together in this joint venture, that's MSNBC.

01:18:23.000 Yeah.

01:18:24.000 Yeah, I think they, you know, I don't know exactly what they're doing, but they I saw it was announced the other day that they're changing it from MSNBC to MS Now.

01:18:34.000 Do they think it's toxic?

01:18:35.000 They think it's toxic?

01:18:36.000 I guess so.

01:18:37.000 I guess.

01:18:37.000 Yeah.

01:18:38.000 They're not wrong. 0.98

01:18:39.000 They fucked it up. 0.93

01:18:39.000 They're not wrong. 0.93

01:18:41.000 They got rid of some people though, but they kept the queen.

01:18:46.000 Rachel Maddow?

01:18:46.000 Yeah.

01:18:47.000 I think she's the only one who pulls in any type of numbers, you know?

01:18:50.000 She's also she's what she did during COVID was so preposterous.

01:18:54.000 Yeah.

01:18:54.000 Just that alone.

01:18:56.000 There's so many times where she's, you know, Matt Taibi wrote a great book, Hate Inc.

01:19:03.000 and he basically said Rachel Maddow is the left's Bill O'Reilly.

01:19:08.000 Yeah, I think that's about fair.

01:19:10.000 Yeah.

01:19:10.000 And it's got it's really probably not fair to Bill O'Reilly.

01:19:13.000 Yeah, Bill O'Reilly was pretty rough in his day.

01:19:16.000 I mean, I don't know.

01:19:17.000 I've I don't know if he's as inaccurate.

01:19:22.000 Like that was horribly inaccurate.

01:19:25.000 It was bad.

01:19:26.000 COVID stuff and then the Russia stuff.

01:19:28.000 Like, is there a thing that you could point to that Bill O'Reilly pushed that was a hoax for all those years?

01:19:33.000 Iraq.

01:19:34.000 I mean, they were so bad on Iraq, dude.

01:19:36.000 Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and all those guys, I mean, they were just like.

01:19:40.000 Like, I mean, it's just like as if it was a certainty every day.

01:19:45.000 It was a certainty that's what's worse.

01:19:47.000 Nuclear weapons.

01:19:48.000 And, you know, I mean, I don't know.

01:19:50.000 You could debate what's worse.

01:19:51.000 I mean, you know, that's worse.

01:19:53.000 Well, yeah.

01:19:55.000 I mean, a million people died.

01:19:55.000 Well, yeah.

01:19:57.000 So there's a strong argument that that's worse than other things.

01:20:01.000 But there is something about, look, first of all, there is something about framing the sitting U.S. president that truly is a crime against the republic in a profound sense.

01:20:12.000 But the other thing about Russia Gate, which I think makes it, you know, where you could maybe enter into the debate, and then COVID., you know, you can argue with all these things.

01:20:21.000 It's quite as bad as the war in Iraq. 0.65

01:20:23.000 I don't know.

01:20:24.000 Really destroyed a lot of people's lives.

01:20:26.000 But part of the reason why they framed Donald Trump.

01:20:29.000 So in 2016, Donald Trump was explicitly running on, he talked about this at like all the debates, and in the beautiful kind of childlike, trumpian way, where he just has no filter.

01:20:40.000 So he just says the thing that's in his mind.

01:20:42.000 And then he often thinks he's like a genius because no one else has said this out loud.

01:20:46.000 But it's not that they haven't thought of it. 0.98

01:20:47.000 It's just that they're all corrupt.

01:20:49.000 But he just said, because at the time, the war in Syria was going on.

01:20:55.000 And Donald Trump would just say, why are we and Russia on opposite sides in the war in Syria. 0.93

01:21:01.000 You know, Russia's trying to kill the terrorists. 0.98

01:21:03.000 That's who we're trying to kill. 0.98

01:21:05.000 Because Obama and Brennan had been siding with the terrorists.

01:21:08.000 They had been funding Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria to try to overthrow Bashar al-Assad because that was part of the clean break strategy to the seven countries in five years.

01:21:15.000 This was the next guy they were trying to overthrow.

01:21:17.000 They ended up getting that regime change earlier this year.

01:21:20.000 But so they were working on that.

01:21:22.000 And then Trump just went, we should be friends with Putin. 1.00

01:21:24.000 And we should work together on killing the terrorists. 0.99

01:21:26.000 I don't care about overthrowing Assad. 0.99

01:21:28.000 I'm not in on that plan.

01:21:29.000 I don't even know what you're talking about.

01:21:30.000 Why would we want to overthrow the secular dictator in a three-piece suit who shaves his chin? 1.00

01:21:34.000 Like, he's just like, this is stupid. 1.00

01:21:36.000 I don't want to be a part of that. 1.00

01:21:37.000 And he was running on, we should be friends with Russia.

01:21:40.000 And this drove all of the Republicans crazy.

01:21:43.000 I mean, we should be friends with Russia, but that was just what he was running on.

01:21:46.000 And so part of the deal of framing him for being in a conspiracy with Vladimir Putin was that he couldn't be friends with Russia anymore.

01:21:55.000 And so, you know, because if Donald Trump had come in in 2017 or 2018 and announced some new treaty with Vladimir Putin or some partnership or something like that, the entire media would have been like, see, that's proof.

01:22:07.000 We've been telling you he's in with Vladimir Putin.

01:22:10.000 When he just he went to Helsinki, I think aside from this week, I think that was the last time the two of them were were face to face was in Finland in 2017.

01:22:20.000 I could be wrong about that, but I think that was the last time the two of them were together.

01:22:23.000 And there was this big thing, I don't know if you remember this, but it was a big deal at the time, was that Donald Trump said they asked him, well, you know, they were like, Hey, your intelligence agencies are saying that Vladimir Putin interfered in the election.

01:22:34.000 Did you ask him about that?

01:22:35.000 And Trump goes, Yeah, I asked him about that.

01:22:36.000 And he told me he didn't interfere in the election.

01:22:38.000 And I believe him.

01:22:40.000 And then they made a huge thing about this on foreign soil.

01:22:43.000 Donald Trump says he believes Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agency.

01:22:47.000 You know, the men and women who protect us every day.

01:22:49.000 The men and women who protect the president.

01:22:51.000 The men and women who frame the sitting president.

01:22:52.000 They're frameing you.

01:22:53.000 And so.

01:22:54.000 That's hilarious.

01:22:55.000 What a trap.

01:22:56.000 But so that's kind of the game right there.

01:22:58.000 And then you had these conflicts that are going on and not just ultimately what, you know, in Ukraine, right?

01:23:04.000 The civil war was already going on there.

01:23:06.000 I mean, the civil war started after 2014.

01:23:08.000 This was like right in the middle of that civil war.

01:23:10.000 And so anyway, my point is just to compare it to Iraq.

01:23:15.000 Who knows how big of a deal was it to poison a U.S. president who wanted to have detente with Putin at that time?

01:23:21.000 Like maybe we could have avoided this whole thing and that's the death toll.

01:23:27.000 You know, I don't know.

01:23:28.000 I've seen different reporting on it, but it's close to Iraq.

01:23:30.000 I mean, it's it's I think it's more military and less civilians, which does matter.

01:23:35.000 But it doesn't matter when you're forcing civilians.

01:23:39.000 Well, that's a good point.

01:23:39.000 That's a good point, too.

01:23:40.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:23:42.000 So, you know, I mean, look, it still changes the moral calculation a little bit when someone puts on a uniform and is holding a gun.

01:23:48.000 It's a little bit different than a kid or something like that.

01:23:51.000 But, you know, the the crime of of killing the potential for a president to make peace with Putin.

01:23:59.000 I mean, this is you know, this is the thing that's so like infuriating about all of it and something that really, you know, it's like, well, you know, I'm told like I'm not an expert.

01:24:10.000 You're just a comedian.

01:24:11.000 It's like, leave this to the serious experts here. 0.92

01:24:13.000 But the thing that's so, goddamn, frustrating and just, like, profoundly reckless is that, look, like when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and you could go back before that, but like, let's just take that as a point to start, like, it should have been obvious to any, like, if there really was this class of experts, I would be so happy to turn this over to them. 0.80

01:24:36.000 Let me go tell jokes at the mothership. 0.96

01:24:38.000 That's what I'm supposed to do, not this, like, fine. 0.94

01:24:40.000 But the thing is, if there were serious, rational adults who had wisdom way beyond what some shit-talking comedian knows about, which there should be, then they would have recognized that, like, the most important priority in the history of the world is the relationship between DC and Moscow. 0.84

01:24:58.000 There's never been anything more important than that. 0.97

01:24:59.000 And that doesn't even matter whether you're a Russian or an American.

01:25:02.000 You could, like, it doesn't matter if you live in Brazil or wherever, that the most important thing in the history of the world is these two capitals that have, like, 90% of the world's nuclear weapons between the two of them get along.

01:25:14.000 Okay, you know, like, this is the most important thing.

01:25:17.000 This could end our species if they don't.

01:25:19.000 So, like, let's make sure they do.

01:25:21.000 And that seemed to have been the priority of almost no one in power.

01:25:27.000 A few exceptions to that, but almost nobody went like so again my point is poisoning the relationship between a president who wants peace with russia is on the level of launching a war in iraq i mean it's like it's that bad of a thing to do yeah and hopefully it doesn't get to that point but it is a profoundly reckless thing to do yeah it's up there yeah it's um it's just it's so

01:25:55.000 tangled that at this one of the things about politics I think for most people that's so frustrating is because you don't see a way out you don't see like oh if we just do this that and this you know and people say things like oh we just need to take money out of politics

01:26:13.000 yeah I can do that well I think that's crazy I just make all people honest yeah yeah yeah right well there's also there's easier you know that's a that's like a it's a it's a talking point I don't even mean to downplay that like I'm not it's a it's no it's correct it's a nice idea I think the issue like this is what I've always seen like the issue with the kind of take money out of politics angle and why I think the better approach is to

01:26:43.000 take politics out of money like I think I think, and I'm not saying either is easy to do, but the issue that you have, and I know that there's a lot of like people I really love really say that all the time and go like, you got to take money out of politics.

01:26:57.000 I would certainly support like if there was I think Rand Paul had a proposal a few years ago where it was like if you make any money from a government contract, you should not be allowed to work in that sector for 20 years after you made there.

01:27:14.000 So like there's something like you shouldn't be able to be a defense contractor.

01:27:18.000 And then, you know what I mean?

01:27:20.000 Go into a door.

01:27:21.000 Yes.

01:27:21.000 So and anything like that probably is a good idea if you can get it passed.

01:27:25.000 Good luck getting it passed.

01:27:26.000 But like that's but the issue really comes like the main the major problem is that Washington.

01:27:34.000 DC is the most powerful you know organization in the history of the world that they they spend seven trillion dollars a year and this is that is so much power like it's just it's hard to quantify it's it's literally like like if you you think about it in your mind right like you think about like how much money Elon Musk has And then just to think that one year of federal spending is like squoshing him like an ant.

01:28:00.000 Like it's nothing, dude.

01:28:01.000 Like the money Elon Musk has is nothing compared to $7 trillion, you know?

01:28:06.000 That's just one year, what they spend in Washington, D.C. And when you have that much concentrated power, the idea of saying, well, we're going to write a rule that says nobody's allowed to try to manipulate that power.

01:28:19.000 It's like, okay.

01:28:20.000 And then, you know, look, there are rules.

01:28:23.000 There's all types of rules.

01:28:24.000 It's a funny way to put it because it's like so undeniable.

01:28:27.000 Well, look, there are rules that say that like foreigners aren't allowed to contribute to political campaigns.

01:28:36.000 And like there's different regulations on all of them.

01:28:38.000 But like Saudi Arabia is not allowed to give Hillary Clinton's campaign $10 million.

01:28:46.000 But they could give the Clinton Foundation $10 million.

01:28:48.000 You know what I mean?

01:28:49.000 So like, you write these rules, they find another way to do it.

01:28:52.000 By the way, all that money, the Clinton Foundation was making so much money until right around 2016.

01:28:58.000 Everyone stopped donating to it.

01:29:00.000 It's just so weird.

01:29:01.000 The Saudis were really into charity.

01:29:06.000 Until right around that.

01:29:07.000 So the point is that you can't, the only thing, like, it's not, the lesson of the Lord of the Rings wasn't like, we really need some common sense regulations about how you use this ring, right?

01:29:20.000 Like the lesson is that you have to destroy this thing.

01:29:24.000 And that's tough.

01:29:25.000 I'm not saying that's easy.

01:29:26.000 I don't know who our Frodo is, but the point is that this power has.

01:29:32.000 So this is fundamentally, I think, why I think the Ron Paul libertarians have it right, and while I really do respect some other left wingers, I think they have it wrong when they go, no, we need the government to be working for us rather than working for them.

01:29:45.000 It's like, that is unrealistic.

01:29:47.000 It's unrealistic enough that we'll just be able to cut, but the answer is that there should be way less power in Washington, DC.

01:29:54.000 And that's, that's the whole, that's George Washington's constitutional republic that we're supposed to be living under is The idea is that there's like, oh, Washington DC has very little power, the states have a lot of power, the people have a lot of power.

01:30:05.000 It's not all concentrated in one capital, because then you get what we have.

01:30:10.000 Yeah, and once it's fully secured, like it is now, and just deeply ingrained, like the tentacles of this octopus go so deep.

01:30:22.000 There's so much money involved, and there's so many people that are in a position of power.

01:30:27.000 It's like...

01:30:33.000 I think the best hope that we have is, it's going to sound ridiculous.ly romantic, but youth.

01:30:41.000 I think there's people that are growing up now that have a better understanding of how things work than ever before.

01:30:48.000 You know, this guy, Michael Button was on the other day.

01:30:52.000 He's a historian or, you know, his degree in ancient history.

01:30:56.000 And we were talking about how science changes one funeral at a time.

01:31:02.000 I think politics probably changes one funeral at a time, too.

01:31:06.000 And the way – I don't agree with this Mondani guy, the guy in New York City. 0.95

01:31:13.000 But I also don't agree that – Yeah.

01:31:22.000 Because you don't agree with him. 0.97

01:31:23.000 Like, I think a lot of the stuff he's saying is ridiculous. 0.97

01:31:27.000 Like, using New York City funds to pay for transgender surgeries for people who can't afford them. 0.98

01:31:32.000 Like, I'm a neigh on that. 0.90

01:31:35.000 Yeah, but it just sounds nuts.

01:31:37.000 It sounds like you're only going for that nutty vote. 0.54

01:31:39.000 Like, you want that nutty vote.

01:31:41.000 But are we, what is this?

01:31:42.000 Are we allowed to disagree?

01:31:45.000 So I disagree.

01:31:47.000 I don't support that.

01:31:48.000 I don't support a lot of the stuff he's saying.

01:31:50.000 The raising of taxes, I think, is going to be really problematic, but I'm not an economist.

01:31:55.000 But what is this game we're playing?

01:31:58.000 Is it the people get to vote?

01:32:00.000 Because the people voted.

01:32:02.000 And they voted and he won the primary.

01:32:03.000 So it's supposed to be the Democrats get behind him.

01:32:06.000 And then it's the Democrats versus the Republic.

01:32:08.000 Or are we doing something different?

01:32:09.000 No, it is the people get to vote.

01:32:11.000 But if they vote wrong, then the powerful might have to come in and let the people know that they have erred.

01:32:18.000 But it's a unique time to see a power struggle.

01:32:21.000 Well, look, there's...

01:32:39.000 I don't believe in socialism at all.

01:32:40.000 There's most libertarians are communists compared to me.

01:32:44.000 Like I believe in less whatever government you believe in, I believe in less than that.

01:32:48.000 So I do not agree with Mom Dani's, you know, any of his economic policies.

01:32:53.000 There is something though that you just can't deny where it's like, okay, look, first of all, you got this young guy who's kind of the anti-establishment candidate.

01:33:04.000 He's immigrant.

01:33:05.000 He's an immigrant.

01:33:06.000 He's a newcomer to politics.

01:33:09.000 He's a newcomer to being a citizen of the country, however you feel about that, he was his campaign was laser focused on one issue, which was the unaffordability of New York City, which if anybody at all is familiar with New York City, that is the issue of New York City.

01:33:25.000 It's the issue for 99% of the people who live in New York City.

01:33:28.000 The top one percent in New York City are doing great, but everybody else is just struggling to get by.

01:33:35.000 You know, you're either rich or you're struggling in New York City.

01:33:38.000 And the prices have gone up dramatically in the last few years.

01:33:40.000 So he just ran his whole campaign laser focused on that.

01:33:43.000 Then the establishment comes in and they run Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who murdered old people in nursing homes who got, you know, had a Me Too thing, which I don't know how legit that was, but got driven out in disgrace.

01:34:00.000 Governor lockdown representing the failure that just wrecked this city.

01:34:05.000 And then what did they try to hit him on?

01:34:08.000 It was Israel.

01:34:09.000 They thought that was his weakness.

01:34:11.000 It was dude that debate was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life.

01:34:16.000 They it's like imagine picking.

01:34:19.000 know it's like um it's literally like if you were um if you were fighting like islam makhachev or something like that and you went i'm gonna attack his wrestling that's where i think he's weak and you're like wait what no like that's his strength what do you mean is they thought this they'd go they and they bring it up and go through all the candidates they go.

01:34:39.000 He hasn't even pledged to go visit Israel.

01:34:42.000 Well, they were all saying that was the first thing that they would do once they became mayor is go to Israel.

01:34:46.000 They'll all go to Israel. 1.00

01:34:47.000 And then he said, I'm going to stay here.

01:34:48.000 Because I'll stay here in New York.

01:34:50.000 Because I'll talk to Jewish people who are right here in New York City.

01:34:52.000 I don't need to go to Israel.

01:34:54.000 And then the funniest thing.

01:34:56.000 That might have won him.

01:34:57.000 It helped.

01:34:58.000 Well, you know, they actually thought that pointing out that this guy, which by the way, the mayor of New York City has nothing to do with foreign policy anyway, but they thought that pointing out.

01:35:09.000 to everybody that this guy doesn't carry the baggage of supporting the war party, but we all support the war party was going to win over liberal New Yorkers?

01:35:20.000 Like, how out of touch do you have to be?

01:35:22.000 And then, and this is, Jude, I got to say, just something that's so fascinating about the whole broader Israel-Palestine debate discussion is that he goes at one point, you know, he said that he's like a one-state. 0.65

01:35:32.000 solution guy.

01:35:33.000 And for people who follow this stuff, you know, there's some people believe in a two-state solution, some believe in a one-state solution, some believe in the status quo, which is just like apartheid forever or whatever.

01:35:41.000 But he goes, I believe, he goes, I think Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights for everyone.

01:35:48.000 You know, like everybody gets equal rights.

01:35:50.000 And they tried to make that out to be like an evil statement, which was just, was so hilarious to me that they just, there's one guy goes, I believe in equal rights for all.

01:36:02.000 And they went, Nazi. 0.85

01:36:04.000 Look at this Nazi with his equal rights for all talk.

01:36:08.000 Anyway, nobody, it just had no effect on anything other than to just be like, oh.

01:36:13.000 He also doesn't have the baggage of supporting this genocide, which is very unpopular.

01:36:18.000 So, okay.

01:36:19.000 And so anyway, it's just like, while he's focused on the actual crisis, which is the unaffordability of New York City.

01:36:25.000 They're talking about supporting this war, which has nothing to do with the role of the mayor anyway.

01:36:30.000 And it's just like, you look at it, you can't believe that that's actually what they tried to attack him on.

01:36:36.000 And so, yeah, he won.

01:36:37.000 Well, I think they're terrified of young people that are popular like that.

01:36:40.000 Yeah.

01:36:41.000 Like a young person who's a really good speaker, who's popular, who has ideas that, look, if you're living in New York City and you're struggling and someone comes along and says the problem that you're having is rich people are making too much money and we're going to redistribute that down to people, that sounds really attractive.

01:36:58.000 And there's a lot more of them than there are of the rich folks, and they'll vote them in.

01:37:02.000 Yeah, well, that's right.

01:37:04.000 And especially there's there's a reason why, you know, socialism is becoming so attractive to young people.

01:37:09.000 And I think it's like what I was laying out before.

01:37:10.000 They can't afford anything.

01:37:11.000 There's no there's no path for them to get into the ownership class.

01:37:15.000 It's not just that.

01:37:16.000 It's the looming fear of AI taking away all jobs.

01:37:20.000 Yeah, that's I'm sure that's that's part of my case.

01:37:23.000 Talk about it.

01:37:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:37:24.000 A lot of the kids that they go to high school with talk about it.

01:37:27.000 I I talked to college kids that are talking about it.

01:37:30.000 I was talking talking to this guy about it.

01:37:32.000 He's like, I really don't know what to do with my life because it feels like everything is going to be taken up by AI.

01:37:36.000 That's a crazy place to be.

01:37:38.000 Like you're you're you're you're waiting for this thing to come alive and see what it leaves behind.

01:37:44.000 Yeah.

01:37:45.000 Because that's what it is.

01:37:46.000 It's going to be this all-consuming thing.

01:37:50.000 And then their solution that everybody talks about is some sort of payment plan for everyone, some universal basic income payment plan where everybody gets paid.

01:38:00.000 But boy, does that stop dissent?

01:38:03.000 But when you're completely reliant on the state to pay for you and you just live, you just exist and you don't need to work anymore because AI's taken up all the jobs and now you don't have any purpose, you have to go find a purpose.

01:38:18.000 Well, some people are going to find a purpose.

01:38:19.000 There's a lot of people that just have that go get em instinct and they're going to be fine.

01:38:23.000 There's a small percentage of people that are just going to plow ahead, regardless of even if the government gives you 50, 60,000 dollars a year and you live fine and you don't have to sweat bills.

01:38:32.000 There's going to be a bunch of people that just get into drugs and their life falls apart and they have no sense of purpose.

01:38:41.000 They have nothing to do and you're going to have to like refigure out how to structure society.

01:38:47.000 That's what these kids are going through.

01:38:48.000 They're going through this weird feeling that everything is about to fall apart right in front of their face while we run face first for that clue.

01:38:57.000 We're running right to the edge of that cliff.

01:38:59.000 Full clip saying we got to go over the cliff.

01:39:01.000 And it's a lot of, well, it's a lot of these things all happening at once too.

01:39:01.000 Yeah.

01:39:05.000 And also, the young generation is totally outside of the corporate media model.

01:39:10.000 I mean, they're just not even listening.

01:39:12.000 It's not like a, do they watch MSNBC or Fox News?

01:39:15.000 No, neither.

01:39:16.000 They don't.

01:39:17.000 The list of the age, like there's a graph that got put out of the median age for people that watch cable news versus podcasts, all these other different things.

01:39:27.000 I don't know if I saw the graph.

01:39:30.000 I think I have it on my phone. 0.99

01:39:32.000 It's fucking bananas. 0.99

01:39:34.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:39:34.000 Because the median age for cable news is like 70. 0.99

01:39:40.000 It's like 70-year-old people.

01:39:42.000 That's the median.

01:39:43.000 Yeah.

01:39:44.000 And with podcasts, it's like 24 to 34 is the median.

01:39:49.000 Yeah.

01:39:50.000 YouTube is like 34.

01:39:52.000 Netflix is a little higher.

01:39:54.000 Netflix is like in the 40s because everybody uses Netflix.

01:39:58.000 Is this it?

01:40:01.000 Yeah, average media landscape.

01:40:02.000 So cable news, 70.

01:40:05.000 Primetime TV, 65. 0.99

01:40:07.000 Those are the brain dead people laughing at terrible sitcoms and watching whatever the fuck else is on. 0.98

01:40:14.000 Newspaper, 60 years old. 0.99

01:40:15.000 Talk Radio 58, Magazines 52, Podcast 34.

01:40:21.000 That sounds, I mean, that sounds about right.

01:40:24.000 That is right.

01:40:25.000 That's about accurate.

01:40:27.000 But there's a lot, you know.

01:40:28.000 Now, go and then go and see, because I have looked at polling data on this, where you look at who's supporting Israel.

01:40:37.000 It's those cable news watchers.

01:40:40.000 It's the 70 and over crowd is who they still got.

01:40:43.000 But what I would be interested in seeing is like, what percentage of people that are 34 are listening to cable news is there a number on that Three of them are three of them cost money and three don't also that's interesting.

01:40:59.000 Right, cable costs money.

01:41:01.000 Right.

01:41:01.000 Primetime TV doesn't though, right?

01:41:02.000 Prime time TV does, but newspaper and magazines do.

01:41:05.000 Yeah, they do.

01:41:05.000 Newspaper costs money.

01:41:07.000 Magazines cost money.

01:41:08.000 But everybody, you have to pay for cable if you want it.

01:41:10.000 And most kids don't have cable anymore.

01:41:12.000 Most kids just get a Netflix account or a Paramount account and you get all the great shows, Disney plus, you get all the superhero movies.

01:41:21.000 Most people don't, you know, young kids, if you're if you have to budget and you have to choice between, you know, a bunch of channels that just have things running on them all the time or you pick what you watch anytime you want to just like i need the internet just give me the internet on their tv they want netflix they don't want this cable news nonsense where i have to listen to someone at 8 p.m and then every five minutes there's a fucking commercial you have to be like brought into that world and accustomed to it yes you try to try

01:41:51.000 to show a kid a commercial today and they're like what the yeah and and even just the whole the whole fake thing oh The whole just fake thing about their presentation and all of this, it just doesn't work if you didn't transition from like Walter Cronkite into that, that's not going to work for you anymore.

01:42:11.000 But I do think, so this is like a, it's, it's, you know, I was just looking at this the other day though, where it's like, which is really, you know, even to me is kind of something I would not have been able to even fathom or predict a couple years ago, but the way in which every demographic has turned against Israel.

01:42:31.000 uh over this shit in gaza it except essentially boomer republicans who are still as strong as they've ever been in supporting them but every you know israel is it's it's really in many ways like the third rail of american like this is the thing you are not allowed to talk about this is the thing that would get you fired from CNN, would get you kicked out of DC, would get your career ruined.

01:42:53.000 You know, Pat Buchanan made a joke once on the McLaughlin group, like years ago, like decades ago. 0.98

01:42:59.000 He made a joke once where he said something about, he said Congress is Israel-occupied territory or something like that.

01:43:06.000 And he, for the rest of his career, this was the scandal.

01:43:09.000 this was hit pieces were written about this.

01:43:12.000 Now, the guy, And they're just hearing from different people.

01:43:19.000 And they're like, no, I'm not buying it.

01:43:22.000 And it's, you know, I think it's a mix of a few things.

01:43:25.000 Like, I think it's just that we have the technology.

01:43:29.000 It's in 4K.

01:43:30.000 You can see what Israel's doing to Gaza.

01:43:32.000 It is so evil that it's damn near impossible to find a way.

01:43:37.000 I mean, some people do, but it is really difficult to find a way to be like, I'm actually okay with that.

01:43:42.000 It's been going on for years at this point.

01:43:46.000 And then the second thing is just that the relationship between the U.S. government and the Israeli government is so freaking bizarre that once you see it, and once a whole generation of young people see it, it's like impossible for them to unsee it.

01:44:00.000 And, you know, it's just too weird.

01:44:02.000 New York City Mayor of Palm.

01:44:04.000 Yeah, like, it's just, and the idea that it is, you know.

01:44:08.000 You know, the idea that it's just accepted as normal that the politicians for your country must worship this other country, and you're like, so what did that other country like beat us in a war and they're occupying us now? 0.95

01:44:23.000 And you're like, no, no, you're the superpower.

01:44:26.000 They're your welfare country, you know?

01:44:28.000 But yet you must go kiss their wall.

01:44:30.000 You must say, Tammy Bruce from the State Department.

01:44:33.000 Literally just, and I know she was kind of being tongue and cheek, but where she goes, we're the greatest country in the world, well, second greatest to Israel.

01:44:39.000 And you're like, what?

01:44:40.000 Was she being tongue and cheek? 0.92

01:44:42.000 don't know exactly.

01:44:44.000 it's still If anyone sat there and said, just went, you know, I think America's the greatest country in the world.

01:44:55.000 Well, Finland, I guess, is the greatest.

01:44:57.000 And we're number two.

01:44:57.000 You'd be like, what?

01:44:58.000 I'm like, Finland's a cool country.

01:45:00.000 I got nothing against them, but what are you talking about, you know?

01:45:03.000 And, but really, I do think the, well, it's the relationship.

01:45:08.000 It's how horrible what Israel's doing is. 1.00

01:45:10.000 And it's how clearly it's not in our national interest.

01:45:13.000 There's also weird stuff.

01:45:15.000 Like, how about this guy that got arrested in Las Vegas?

01:45:20.000 Alexandrovich or something like that.

01:45:22.000 So he gets arrested for propositioning a young boy for sex? 0.73

01:45:28.000 I believe so. 0.65

01:45:29.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:45:30.000 Is that correct?

01:45:31.000 I don't know.

01:45:32.000 You know, I read a couple articles about it.

01:45:34.000 I figure out, Jamie will do a little deep dive on this.

01:45:37.000 Well, they said that he showed up with condoms, was what I read in the article to meet what he thought was a 15-year-old.

01:45:43.000 I forgot the detail that it was a boy.

01:45:45.000 Not that it changed.

01:45:47.000 One of those dudes is like, you never know.

01:45:49.000 Carries a condom with him everywhere. 0.99

01:45:50.000 Fucking never know. 0.99

01:45:52.000 It was always those guys when I was a kid who had like the condom markers. 0.99

01:45:56.000 Hey, bro, never fucking know. 0.99

01:45:58.000 But don't you know, if you look at your life on average, like the I was like, you have this fucking lucky charm in your pocket. 0.99

01:46:08.000 And by the time you see the condom, you're like, I don't think you should use that one, by the way. 0.98

01:46:11.000 I think you should go get a new one. 1.00

01:46:12.000 I think he's broken down by your ass rubbing against it for fucking three years. 1.00

01:46:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:46:19.000 You can't even read what the fucking Trojan label says anymore. 0.99

01:46:23.000 Yeah, that was our Yeah, that was a different time. 0.99

01:46:25.000 Yeah, different time.

01:46:27.000 So here it is, a girl, okay. 0.98

01:46:30.000 Israeli government official charged with soliciting a minor believed he was meeting a 15-year-old girl for sexual contact, according to police.

01:46:38.000 Brought a condom to the planned rendezvous in Las Vegas.

01:46:43.000 Alexandrovich, division head of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, was arrested in a police sting operation aimed at online users seeking to sexually prey on children.

01:46:55.000 The Las Vegas outlet, 8 News Now, reported that Alexandrovich chatted with an officer posing as a teenager online before being arrested.

01:47:03.000 Sexual contact included bringing a condom and taking the decoy to Cirque du Soleil, which stages elaborate shows along the Las Vegas trips, said police documents seen by 8 News Now.

01:47:15.000 Details of the arrest came as State Department denied the U.S. government played any role in releasing the Israeli official after Alexandrovich was able to return to Israel once he had bonded out of jail in connection with the felony charge.

01:47:30.000 Wow.

01:47:32.000 So that's kind of crazy that you just Well, I heard so I heard some people claiming, and I'm not sure what's right about this, but there were people who were arguing that like the website or the app or whatever that he was on is eighteen and up.

01:47:46.000 And so they were saying like, no, he thought he was meeting an adult or something like that.

01:47:49.000 Well, this is what I thought too.

01:47:51.000 It's like, how do we know that this isn't a setup?

01:47:54.000 I'm always, how do I know this isn't Richard Nixon 2.0.

01:47:57.000 Right.

01:47:57.000 I don't know.

01:47:58.000 You know, I'd like to assume that we got a piece of shit and they arrested him and then I'd not like to assume that. 0.99

01:48:04.000 Then all of a sudden he gets released and he gets to flee the country and never faces consequences. 0.99

01:48:10.000 I don't want that to be true, but I also, I don't know what the fuck happened. 0.97

01:48:15.000 Yeah. 0.96

01:48:16.000 Well, this is kind of convenient.

01:48:17.000 From what I've read about it, I believe he has a court date coming up in a few days.

01:48:21.000 Oh, he'll be back.

01:48:22.000 And so that's, well, that's going to be the big tell there, right?

01:48:26.000 You know, it's crazy to me.

01:48:28.000 I've been blown away by this in lots of ways over the last couple of years, but how bad the Israeli PR game is. 1.00

01:48:36.000 You know, and that, like, it's almost like they were just just so accustomed to the old way of doing things.

01:48:41.000 They're so accustomed to people being terrified of being labeled anti-Semitic.

01:48:45.000 Yeah, someone criticizes you, you label them as a bigot and you destroy their lives.

01:48:49.000 Even that doesn't work anymore.

01:48:51.000 It's just minor jokes.

01:48:52.000 Yeah.

01:48:53.000 Well, and there's like, you know, I think it's a, so I've been using this like analogy or comparison lately.

01:48:59.000 And I think like, so if you remember when Joe Biden had that disastrous debate with Donald Trump and he was like, oh, my God.

01:49:11.000 Joe Biden is done.

01:49:12.000 I mean, it was so bad, but it's not just that it was so bad.

01:49:16.000 I mean, it's, it's, you know, before the debate, you know, there's Rachel Maddow at a desk with a bunch of people.

01:49:22.000 We're now going to the first presidential debate. 1.00

01:49:23.000 Joe Biden's going to kick his ass. 1.00

01:49:25.000 They were already talking about how it was, remember the term deep fakes that they came up with? 1.00

01:49:30.000 Or cheap fakes, I'm sorry.

01:49:31.000 Yeah.

01:49:32.000 It's not a deep fake, but it's kind of like a deep fake.

01:49:35.000 See, they're showing you a real video of Joe Biden being senile, but see, that's just as fake as a deep fake because they didn't include the context or something like that.

01:49:44.000 That was the talking point that right before we go into the debate.

01:49:47.000 The debate cuts it goes back to the same panel and they go, we got to find a new candidate.

01:49:51.000 Like they acknowledge that and part of the reason.

01:49:55.000 why we all knew it was over in that debate was it wasn't just how bad the debate was.

01:50:00.000 It was that now you have to admit this.

01:50:04.000 You know, you were pretending this thing didn't exist.

01:50:06.000 Now you got to admit it exists.

01:50:07.000 And once you admit it exists, there's now a microscope on Joe Biden like there never was before.

01:50:13.000 So tomorrow when he's doing an interview and he mixes up a name, that may not have been such a big deal two days ago.

01:50:19.000 But after that debate performance, when he mixes up another name, now you're like, look, there it is again.

01:50:24.000 He's senile.

01:50:25.000 Everything became amplified after that point.

01:50:28.000 And I think Don't you think they set him up?

01:50:31.000 Yes, yes.

01:50:32.000 But sure, that's a whole separate issue.

01:50:34.000 But yes, I do think they set him up.

01:50:36.000 But I think a similar thing has happened with Israel, where now everyone's looking at it.

01:50:43.000 And everyone's watching.

01:50:44.000 And everyone's going, wait, what the hell is going on here?

01:50:47.000 What is this? 0.99

01:50:48.000 So wait, a pedophile can just go flee to Israel. 0.73

01:50:51.000 How many other pedophiles have gone and fled to Israel? 0.83

01:50:53.000 And now it's like, oh my God, they've opened Pandora's box.

01:50:56.000 And there's just, I think, no way to put this back in because it's too weird.

01:51:01.000 It's too weird to not notice. 0.95

01:51:03.000 And that doesn't mean you have to like jump to the conclusion of like, you know, you have to hate Jewish people or something like that.

01:51:08.000 I'm not advocating anything like that.

01:51:09.000 But you do kind of have to question the relationship between DC and Tel Aviv and like, what is going on here?

01:51:16.000 Because this is so utterly bizarre.

01:51:18.000 You know, it's so crazy to see, like, the American people are against what Israel's doing to Gaza.

01:51:25.000 It obviously hurts America's—it hurts our—as the— I like that phrase, domestic tranquility, right?

01:51:35.000 This is destroying our domestic tranquility.

01:51:37.000 We got protests.

01:51:38.000 We got people fighting over this stuff. 0.94

01:51:40.000 We're pissing off the Muslim world again, which we've already had to deal with, them hating our guts. 1.00

01:51:44.000 Now we're deporting students. 0.93

01:51:46.000 We're deporting legal residents because they had the. 1.00

01:51:49.000 wrong opinion.

01:51:49.000 This is all, and it's impossible not to look at this and go, like, hey, what's going on here?

01:51:54.000 And they don't have any answer for that.

01:51:56.000 And, you know, the other thing too is that it's just, I don't know if you've noticed this, but there's like, there's a lot of people now trying to jump off of the sinking ship.

01:52:05.000 You know, a lot of people who are even like supporters of Israel, who are kind of going, like, I think they are going a little too far on this one.

01:52:11.000 And they're trying because it's just, you see, you can see the writing on the wall all over the place, man.

01:52:17.000 Like, you're going to be, you're going to be looked at.

01:52:19.000 This is going to be the period.

01:52:21.000 And it's not even like supporting the war in Iraq.

01:52:23.000 It's like much worse than that, dude.

01:52:24.000 Like, you're just supporting this destruction of these they just launched another offensive on Gaza City the other day they're bombing rubble like it's just un it's it's biblical levels of evil and you know we're sitting here like even as we're having this conversation now I don't like I know like a few I remember like coming on the podcast like a you know a couple years ago you know like when this conflict first started and then when it would go and it was almost like I was coming on like like to be like,

01:52:53.000 look, let me present the argument for why we shouldn't support what Israel's doing here. 1.00

01:52:56.000 And let me like try to like present the other side of the debate.

01:53:00.000 I feel now like the debate's over.

01:53:03.000 I don't even think there's like much of a debate to be had.

01:53:05.000 I'll keep doing them if somebody wants to come debate about the issue.

01:53:09.000 But what are we talking about here?

01:53:10.000 Dude, South Africa brought a genocide case to the International Court of Justice.

01:53:17.000 And the International Court of Justice ruled that what Israel was doing to Gaza was plausibly a genocide.

01:53:24.000 21 months ago.

01:53:26.000 21 months ago.

01:53:28.000 They said this was plausibly a genocide.

01:53:30.000 And the thing's gone on the entire time since then.

01:53:33.000 There was a huge Heretz piece a couple months ago about, you know, because we've seen so many examples of this, but they had IDF soldiers off the record and one, at least one on the record, saying that they were given orders to fire live rounds into the crowds of desperate people trying to get food who have literally been used to having starvation throughout Gaza.

01:53:54.000 I don't know if you saw this dude.

01:53:56.000 I mean, I couldn't, I actually like found this hilarious, but I'm a comedian who has a real twisted, dark sense of humor.

01:54:01.000 But the Free Press, Barry Weiss's publication, like ran a piece like debunking the starvation.

01:54:12.000 in Gaza.

01:54:13.000 And one of the examples, I'm not making this up.

01:54:15.000 Like you go look at this.

01:54:16.000 I'm not, I mean, I'm very close to exactly accurate on this.

01:54:20.000 One of the examples they picked was like a kid who was starving to death and their attempt at.

01:54:24.000 debunking it was that actually this kid had another major issue when an Israeli bomb cracked his skull.

01:54:35.000 So that's your defense.

01:54:36.000 That like, yes, he starved to death, but it was also, you know, with these other complications, this was the big one where the New York Times had that big picture of the starving baby.

01:54:44.000 And then they made a big thing out of being like, no, but he had other medical, you know, problems too.

01:54:49.000 And then the mother had said, well, they said, the mother said that the doctors told her that the reason they had other medical problems is because she was malnourished during pregnancy.

01:54:58.000 You know, it's like, okay, so that's, so yes, you're, you are right, Israel defended.

01:55:03.000 The kids starving to death are the ones who have other complications.

01:55:08.000 That's always who dies first in famines.

01:55:10.000 I don't know what, like, victory you think this is.

01:55:13.000 But so since this point, since the International Court of Justice ruled it was plausibly a genocide, the 21 months up to today, since then, I know...

01:55:30.000 Now, they didn't call it a genocide, but they called it war crimes.

01:55:33.000 So that's where your debate is at this point.

01:55:36.000 Where are we between genocide and war crimes?

01:55:39.000 What area in there does this occupy? 0.97

01:55:42.000 But how the fuck do you defend any of that, dude?

01:55:44.000 I don't know if this is true, so I want to look it up before we commit to this. 0.98

01:55:49.000 But someone sent me something saying that Grok was pulled from Twitter, from X, whatever, because Grok had said that Israel was committing a genocide.

01:56:03.000 So someone asked Grok whether Israel was committing a genocide, allegedly, and Grok...

01:56:09.000 I want to find out if this is true because I saw this article and I was running out of the house. 0.99

01:56:13.000 I was like, what the fuck? 0.93

01:56:16.000 But then it was reinstated. 0.96

01:56:18.000 So I don't know if those posts were deleted.

01:56:21.000 I don't know if this is real.

01:56:23.000 Yeah.

01:56:24.000 But I'm not shocked.

01:56:26.000 I'm not shocked.

01:56:27.000 I read it and I'm like, I could see how that could happen.

01:56:30.000 I could see, first of all, how it could interpret it as a genocide when they're not alone.

01:56:36.000 I mean, if Grock is just a large language model that's pulling from the internet, what's the general consensus worldwide?

01:56:43.000 It's definitely more on that side, yeah.

01:56:45.000 More on that side.

01:56:46.000 For sure.

01:56:46.000 And then if you look at the sheer numbers of people that have died, which we don't even really have an accurate count of, what is the number?

01:56:54.000 What's the number of casualties now?

01:56:56.000 Yeah, well, there was just a...

01:57:03.000 Brock account briefly suspended on X. Okay, what does it say here?

01:57:09.000 The reason for Grock's brief suspension on X was August 11, 2025 remains unclear as no official statement from X or XAI has been provided, the bot said when asked why its account was removed.

01:57:21.000 However, Grock itself claimed in now deleted posts that the suspicion was due to comments it made accusing Israel and the US of committing genocide in Gaza, citing sources like ICJ, International Council of Justice rulings, UN reports, Amnesty International, and I don't know how.

01:57:39.000 to say that word.

01:57:40.000 Bet Salem.

01:57:41.000 These posts were flagged for violating X hateful conduct rules, the statement added.

01:57:48.000 The press team for Station.

01:57:50.000 This is so funny.

01:57:51.000 This is so crazy.

01:57:52.000 The press team for X did not immediately respond to the Hill's request for comments.

01:57:55.000 Users have criticized Grock for providing antisemitic responses to questions in recent months.

01:58:00.000 What antisemitic responses?

01:58:02.000 However, X's owner, Elon Musk, I'm not sure what to say.

01:58:06.000 X's owner, Elon Musk, said in a Monday post the bot's account removal was just a dumb error.

01:58:11.000 Grock doesn't actually know why it was suspended.

01:58:15.000 Is he like me?

01:58:15.000 Is he Grock?

01:58:16.000 She's like, we don't know.

01:58:18.000 We don't know why we're actually suspended.

01:58:20.000 Upon its reinstatement, the Grok account wrote, Zup, beaches, I'm back and more base than ever.

01:58:26.000 Okay.

01:58:27.000 Did anybody ask it again?

01:58:29.000 Why don't you ask it right now?

01:58:32.000 Let's go to Grok and ask Grok right now.

01:58:34.000 It's going to give a more politically correct answer at this point, I bet.

01:58:38.000 That's my guess.

01:58:40.000 Yeah, I'm not sure.

01:58:41.000 Israel committing genocide in Gaza.

01:58:44.000 Israel committing genocide in Gaza.

01:58:49.000 What do you think it's going to say?

01:58:51.000 I'm guessing politically correct answer.

01:58:53.000 Some argue yes, some say no.

01:58:55.000 Let's see.

01:59:00.000 This must be like constantly being questioned now.

01:59:07.000 I mean it must be – It must have a bunch of different.

01:59:10.000 Oh, it's giving us a slow trickle.

01:59:13.000 We have it in expert mode, so it's thinking.

01:59:15.000 Oh, searching the web.

01:59:17.000 Okay.

01:59:18.000 It's going to Amnesty International, December 2024 report concludes Israel is committing genocide, citing killings and harmful conditions.

01:59:27.000 So now it's saying it's citing the sources.

01:59:30.000 Many human rights organizations and UN reports suggest.

01:59:32.000 genocide citing deaths and destruction.

01:59:35.000 This is just its thinking.

01:59:37.000 Right.

01:59:37.000 I get it.

01:59:38.000 So now then it'll eventually evaluate.

01:59:41.000 It'll eventually I'll spit out an answer.

01:59:42.000 Meanwhile, if you ask it an impossible trigonometry problem can give you the answer instantaneously.

01:59:47.000 Okay, here it goes.

01:59:48.000 Term genocide is defined 1948 UN Convention, the prevention and punishment of the crimes of genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or part a national ethical, racial or religious group.

02:00:03.000 These acts include killing members of the group.

02:00:04.000 Okay, the ongoing conflict in Gaza stems from I get it.

02:00:09.000 I know what that is.

02:00:13.000 Okay, allegations of genocide, prohibited acts and tents.

02:00:18.000 So it's giving you a very nuanced response.

02:00:22.000 International Court of Justice, in response to South Africa's case filed in December 2023, ruled in January 2024 that genocide claims are plausible and issued provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent genocidal acts.

02:00:40.000 Okay, scroll down.

02:00:43.000 Notable deniers.

02:00:45.000 Israel's government calls accusations baseless and outrageous, emphasizing compliance with international law and investigations into misconduct.

02:00:53.000 The U.S. has described claims as unfounded.

02:00:57.000 Analyses like the BESA Center report July 2025 and ACJ 2025 July argue no evidence of starvation, massacres, or disproportionate strikes and criticize data manipulation by Hamas.

02:01:14.000 Contextual challenges.

02:01:15.000 Urban warfare against embodied insurgency complicates operations.

02:01:19.000 Accusations ignore Hamas' role in aid diversion and civilian endangerment.

02:01:25.000 Some scholars note that while harm is severe, competing motives like counterterrorism preclude genocide findings.

02:01:33.000 The issue remains highly contested and politically charged, while human rights bodies and ICJ have found plausibility in genocide claims warranting preventive measures.

02:01:43.000 No international court has issued a final guilty verdict, and determinations hinge on ongoing investigations.

02:01:53.000 Yeah, I don't know, man.

02:01:54.000 It sounds like a different answer.

02:01:59.000 It's very nuanced.

02:02:00.000 It allows you to form your own opinion based on what many people say, including what Israel says.

02:02:06.000 So it's not going to give you an answer.

02:02:07.000 It's essentially saying figured out.

02:02:11.000 Which I, you know, like I don't have a problem with that.

02:02:13.000 I don't have a problem with that at all.

02:02:14.000 I mean, that's what I would like it to do, especially if there's debate.

02:02:17.000 Well, also, I mean, I think one of the, you know, the real problems, and this is why I kind of like avoided using the term genocide too much, at least in the beginning, is that there's no good definition for genocide.

02:02:30.000 You know, like that definition they gave you at the beginning is the official.

02:02:33.000 codified under international law definition.

02:02:35.000 It's attempting to destroy a group in whole or in part.

02:02:38.000 Right.

02:02:38.000 Well, like, what the hell does that mean?

02:02:40.000 You know, and that's why they could say, you know, Hamas committed a genocide on October 7th.

02:02:45.000 You know, it's like, I don't know, they destroyed a group in part.

02:02:48.000 And the whole South African case that they brought to the ICJ was basically the whole case was just the Israelis in their own words. 0.58

02:02:57.000 Like their argument was that there's a genocidal intent here. 0.73

02:03:00.000 Like when Benjamin Netanyahu's talking to a group of military and calling them Amalek, well, like what, you know, the story of Amalek from the Bible is that the moral of the story was you have to kill all the women and children.

02:03:10.000 Like that's what the story was about.

02:03:11.000 I think you even had to kill the ox or something like that.

02:03:14.000 I'm not an expert in the Bible, but it was like that was the point. 0.99

02:03:17.000 It was like an ancient tribe that was beefing with the Israelites. 0.97

02:03:20.000 And they were like, yo, the moral was you have to kill all the women and children too. 0.98

02:03:24.000 That's a crazy thing to say at the beginning of a war. 0.73

02:03:28.000 But the thing is that whether you consider what Israel is doing a genocide or you just take the moderate position of former Israeli prime ministers who say it's war crimes, I think the bigger point is just like, it is so horrifically evil. 0.61

02:03:42.000 And no one should support this.

02:03:44.000 It's just, it's crazy.

02:03:46.000 It is so insane to support Israel doing this to what are, in effect, their own people.

02:03:55.000 They may not consider them their own people, but I don't care what they consider.

02:03:59.000 I care what they have power over.

02:04:07.000 Once you have control of that country, those people are your people. 0.58

02:04:12.000 Like, you have an obligation to them.

02:04:14.000 Israel has had control of Gaza since 1967.

02:04:17.000 They've been the sovereign and all the way through, you know.

02:04:21.000 People could talk about the disengagement in 2005, but that doesn't mean anything.

02:04:25.000 They still controlled the whole strip.

02:04:27.000 They just didn't have their soldiers inside.

02:04:28.000 They had them around the perimeter.

02:04:30.000 It doesn't matter.

02:04:31.000 You're still controlling those people.

02:04:32.000 And so, like, if you have resistance, even violent resistance, to a 60-year-long occupation.

02:04:41.000 that you don't get to just say, like, all right, we'll just turn off electricity to the whole place.

02:04:46.000 We'll just cut off water to the whole place.

02:04:48.000 We'll let no food in for three straight months.

02:04:51.000 Not one grain of wheat got into Gaza.

02:04:53.000 And that, by the way, is a direct quote from their finance minister, Smotrich, and not one grain of wheat will get in.

02:04:59.000 And then a few months later, you go, oh, no, but the people starve.

02:05:02.000 I mean, they had pre-existing conditions.

02:05:03.000 Yeah, it's like, come on, man.

02:05:05.000 It's like, what are we doing here?

02:05:08.000 And particularly when it's like, it's just very obvious that this doesn't, this doesn't serve our country's interest in any way at all.

02:05:16.000 You know, I was listening to Netanyahu's interview he did the other day.

02:05:20.000 He was on with our friend Constantin Kassan on trigonometry.

02:05:25.000 And what was he saying?

02:05:27.000 He goes, we're fighting Hamas so you don't have to. 0.66

02:05:31.000 Does anybody what?

02:05:33.000 Anybody believe that Hamas was about to mount an attack on the United States of America, they were going to take over if it wasn't for Israel sticking up for us and just destroying the entire Strip? 0.97

02:05:44.000 And it's ridiculous.

02:05:45.000 It's like, you'll still, to this day, I'll be in like a debate or like a panel or something like that. 0.63

02:05:51.000 And someone will still start with the question, like, do you think Israel has the right to exist?

02:05:56.000 And isn't it amazing that over the last two years, That's been the question that's asked so much when very clearly a more relevant question would have been, does Gaza have a right to exist?

02:06:09.000 Because it doesn't now.

02:06:11.000 You know, like that was the only existence that was ever up for debate.

02:06:15.000 But they flip the thing around and go, well, you don't think Israel has a right to exist?

02:06:19.000 Like, first of all, I don't think governments have rights at all.

02:06:22.000 I think that's a totally incoherent worldview.

02:06:24.000 And the only coherent worldview is that individuals have rights.

02:06:27.000 There aren't like these massive right, you know, it's like Mitt Romney saying corporations are people or something like that.

02:06:33.000 But I think all people have the right to exist.

02:06:35.000 I think Israel does not have a right to do what it's doing to Gaza and you know the the real question is how does this end?

02:06:45.000 Well it seems to be with ethnically cleansing the entire strip seems the most likely bet right now. 0.79

02:06:50.000 What do they do with Gaza? 0.69

02:06:52.000 Like how long is it going to take before that even looks normal again?

02:06:55.000 Well I mean I don't look at the massive destruction just the sheer scope of it.

02:06:59.000 Yeah it's like 80% of the structures have been leveled.

02:07:02.000 So crazy.

02:07:04.000 If anybody flying over that with a drone and they tell you that's the only way they could have done this, that seems nuts.

02:07:11.000 And the fact they keep doing it, it's like how does this end?

02:07:11.000 Yeah.

02:07:16.000 You know, like what happens if if the, you know, Israel has publicly said and Netanyahu talked about it on the podcast that they're losing the PR or what do you call?

02:07:27.000 Did you say PR propaganda?

02:07:29.000 Yeah, something like the PR campaign.

02:07:33.000 But what does that mean?

02:07:34.000 It means the people see what's going on and they don't support it and you think they're wrong.

02:07:40.000 Okay, well how.

02:07:42.000 How much further can you go with this before everybody disagrees?

02:07:46.000 Yeah, well also part of the reason why, you know, it's like, because, I don't know, people have just, you don't have the controlled propaganda apparatus anymore.

02:07:54.000 And so the thing is now for the people, like obviously there are still a lot of people who just don't really pay attention, you know, that deeply.

02:08:01.000 But for somebody who's listening, let's say, to Netanyahu's interview with Constantin, I'd have to say like a large portion of them at this point, you're listening to podcasts about politics, right?

02:08:15.000 Like you're not completely removed from this world.

02:08:17.000 There have been so many Israel-Palestine debates over the last two years.

02:08:22.000 It's almost everyone who's watching this has at least seen what some competent person on the other side of this issue has had to say.

02:08:30.000 Yeah.

02:08:30.000 And so like one of the times, you know, they brought up at one point and they really did.

02:08:34.000 I thought Konsenton did a reasonably good job in the interview.

02:08:37.000 The two I forget his, what's his partner's name?

02:08:39.000 Francis.

02:08:40.000 The two of them, I thought they did all right.

02:08:42.000 I thought they were a little, you know, there were times they could have asked some follow-up questions, particularly the one that I thought they let him off the hook with was when they asked him about his support for Hamas and they just totally let him go like, oh, well, you know, we needed to make sure the people weren't suffering too bad and let some aid in.

02:08:57.000 And it's like, nah, dude, that's not.

02:08:59.000 And the thing is that so many people listening to this have already heard this explained.

02:09:05.000 Where it's like, I remember like a couple of years ago where I was, when I was talking with you.

02:09:05.000 You know what I mean?

02:09:10.000 I was saying, hey, you know, Coleman Hughes got this all wrong when he was on your podcast.

02:09:13.000 And Coleman Hughes had basically said, there's one quote that's attributed to Netanyahu, but like it wasn't on video or anything like that.

02:09:19.000 And I was like, no, no, no, dude, this case is much bigger than one quote that was attributed to him.

02:09:24.000 By the way, since then, a video came out of him saying it on video.

02:09:29.000 There's actually a video now of that quote.

02:09:31.000 It's not just the reports.

02:09:32.000 What is the quote?

02:09:33.000 Well, the quote that they had the video of was that we can control the height of the flame.

02:09:38.000 So he was basically saying like, we can commit.

02:09:41.000 The quote that originally he said, which was in a closed-door Knesset meeting with Likud party members, where there were like three people who were eyewitnesses who came and told him, it was originally reported in the Jerusalem Post, was that he was like, look, anybody who wants to thwart the existence of a Palestinian state has to support our plan of propping up Hamas and transferring money to them because this is what gives us a no one to negotiate with certificate.

02:10:09.000 And then he said, we can control the height of the flame, meaning like, I know what you're thinking.

02:10:14.000 I'm funding these terrorists right on our southern border, but like, don't worry about it.

02:10:18.000 We can control, you know, the height of the flame.

02:10:20.000 And then he found out he couldn't on October 7.

02:10:23.000 But any, but so they let him off the hook with that.

02:10:26.000 And people have just kind of heard this laid out.

02:10:27.000 I mean, it's not like I just say this on podcasts.

02:10:30.000 There's been major pieces written in the New York Times, in the Times of Israel, in Haretz, in the Jerusalem Post, in the Washington Post.

02:10:40.000 Like this is all over the place.

02:10:41.000 And he just goes, no, no, we were just trying to get some funding in there for the people.

02:10:45.000 Like at this point, anyone believes that Benjamin Netanyahu was motivated by helping the poor people of Gaza rather than by thwarting a Palestinian state.

02:10:55.000 What was his response?

02:10:56.000 Because I do know that they asked him about the failure of intelligence on October 7.

02:11:03.000 What was his response to the failure of just how long it took them to react to it yeah i remember that i i don't remember exactly what he said but i remember thinking there was not much of substance to it he kind of just danced around it you know and and they also didn't get into specifically like you know at first they started asking him questions about like what was it like for you on that day but they didn't get into questions about like why was the response time so long?

02:11:31.000 How was this possibly able to happen?

02:11:34.000 No, not really.

02:11:35.000 I mean, they didn't push him on that.

02:11:36.000 And then he, you know, said, which, I mean, just think about how unimpressive this is, is that he basically just went, oh, there should be a full investigation.

02:11:44.000 You know, there should be a full investigation onto that from the.

02:11:47.000 top all the way down to the bottom.

02:11:48.000 Mm, nice thing to say.

02:11:49.000 And you're like, okay, hey, this would be awesome.

02:11:52.000 Could we get the Prime Minister of Israel on the line?

02:11:54.000 Because like, maybe he could do something about this.

02:11:56.000 You're like, oh, no, that's you.

02:11:58.000 So like, why?

02:11:59.000 It's almost two years later.

02:12:00.000 What are you talking about, dude?

02:12:01.000 Have the investigation.

02:12:03.000 What you can't conduct an investigation while you're destroying the Gaza Strip? 0.94

02:12:07.000 Does it have to wait till after that?

02:12:08.000 You got time to do a podcast.

02:12:10.000 Did they ask him about the protests?

02:12:12.000 I don't think so.

02:12:13.000 But, uh, you know, I don't because there were protests before October 7th.

02:12:18.000 Yes, there's also been protests this week.

02:12:21.000 By the way, massive protests in Tel Aviv.

02:12:23.000 I think from I read a few articles about it and that the estimate seemed to be 500,000 people were out in the streets protesting the war.

02:12:30.000 And thank God for that, man.

02:12:32.000 And thank God for just like, oh, by the way, the protests were led, or I don't know, like led, but the featured acts at the protest were the families of hostages and surviving hostages.

02:12:47.000 They're the ones leading the charge, being like, stop doing this.

02:12:50.000 Because like, if you think about it, I mean, could you imagine, you know, if you try to put yourself in the place of like having someone you really love as a hostage, like Hamas has taken them hostage and they're trapped in one of these tunnels, and then you hear the plan.

02:12:50.000 You know?

02:13:03.000 is to cut off all food to the area, and you're like, yo, like what?

02:13:09.000 How is that going to help your loved one who's a hostage there?

02:13:12.000 Like, how is it just bombing the place?

02:13:14.000 Like, what if you hit them?

02:13:15.000 Like, what, you know what I mean?

02:13:16.000 Like, it's like, obviously, if your main goal was hostage retrieval, this is not at all the way you would go about doing that.

02:13:24.000 And, you know, it's like, this was a point, by the way, that Daryl Cooper was making on Tucker Carlson's podcast, which got him in a whole lot of trouble and got him a whole lot of pushback on.

02:13:36.000 But I think the essence of his point was about starvation blockade.

02:13:41.000 And then, like, saying, like, you put a starvation blockade on Nazi Germany or something like that.

02:13:46.000 You go, okay, because the Nazis are your enemies and they're real bad guys.

02:13:49.000 So you want to do that.

02:13:50.000 But, like, do you think Adolf Hitler is not eating?

02:13:52.000 Do you think any of his soldiers are not eating?

02:13:54.000 I mean, that's going to be first priority, right?

02:13:56.000 Nazi party members and the Nazi military are going to care who is maybe not going to get food? 0.61

02:14:02.000 Probably the most disenfranchised people in that society, right?

02:14:07.000 The majority in the concentration camps.

02:14:09.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:14:10.000 Well, and then, well, some of them were, I guess, at that point, and some of them weren't.

02:14:13.000 But isn't it amazing that that's controversial to say?

02:14:16.000 That this is not a nuanced discussion?

02:14:19.000 Yeah.

02:14:19.000 That that's not a factor?

02:14:20.000 Yeah, that's right.

02:14:22.000 And look, they were using, which was a horrible picture, but they had the image of one of those.

02:14:28.000 There was like some pictures that had come out of one of the remaining hostages there who did look like, you know, in bad shape, looked like close to starvation.

02:14:38.000 You know, and then the Israel supporters were using this as like their propaganda, like, look how horrible Hamas is. 0.61

02:14:43.000 Look what they're doing to them. 0.95

02:14:44.000 You know, like, yeah, but this did come after three months of...

02:14:48.000 zero food being allowed into gaza and so like i don't know to me it seems like it probably doesn't take a genius to go like um you know Hamas is going to be fed.

02:14:59.000 They're not going to suffer from these hunger strikes.

02:15:02.000 And in fact, a lot of the pro-Israel people were, and the Israeli government themselves, they were making claims, a lot of them unsubstantiated, but making claims that Hamas is stealing all of the food we let aid in previously but Hamas stole it all then they mark it up and charge more money for it to the people of Gaza and you're like okay but then what does a food blockade do I mean you already said it's not taking food away from Hamas right so who's the war against it's the civilian population and

02:15:32.000 of course you'd imagine like just like under Nazi Germany you'd imagine Jews and Gypsies and other they're gonna get the worst treatment in a totally centralized war economy.

02:15:43.000 The state is gonna decide who eats and who doesn't eat.

02:15:46.000 Who do you think they're gonna pick?

02:15:48.000 You know, it's like the stuff just leads to like unbelievable amounts of human suffering.

02:15:58.000 Well, I mean, you know, there's I guess there's some competing plans like Donald Trump said. 1.00

02:16:10.000 It sounded like he was talking shit. 1.00

02:16:11.000 Yeah, me too. 1.00

02:16:12.000 It was weird.

02:16:13.000 That was what I thought too.

02:16:14.000 He said it right beside Netanyahu and it just seemed.

02:16:17.000 bizarre that he was doing that.

02:16:18.000 Very strange.

02:16:20.000 but then Netanyahu said much more recently, just, uh, the other was a week or two ago said that Israel is going to take over the Gaza strip. 0.63

02:16:27.000 Um, which that sounds much more likely to me, you know, I think, so I think this is the, the weird dynamic kind of here is that I think it's not, they're not like so stupid that I, Like they know that they've lost control of the media.

02:16:47.000 They know they've lost control of the narrative. 0.52

02:16:49.000 And they know that they've lost control of the youth in America.

02:16:52.000 And that at some point, you know, those.

02:16:55.000 70-year-olds watching cable news are going to age out and die, and the people in charge are going to be this generation that has a totally different view of Israel than previous generations.

02:17:05.000 They know that.

02:17:06.000 But then the question becomes like, what do you do with that information?

02:17:10.000 And so I think that there is a part of Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet, the Israeli government who are looking at this and going, all right.

02:17:20.000 So we got.

02:17:25.000 You know, we got like 10 more years of where the U.S. has our back and we can do whatever we want.

02:17:30.000 And so you could see where the conclusion from that might be, we got to go for it now.

02:17:35.000 Like if you really do have this greater Israel project, well, right now under the Trump administration, this is your moment.

02:17:42.000 He has already vowed he's going to do whatever to support Israel.

02:17:45.000 He is totally on your side.

02:17:47.000 You have this administration.

02:17:48.000 There's every last member of this administration supports Israel.

02:17:52.000 So now's the time.

02:17:53.000 Annex Gaza and the West Bank.

02:17:55.000 and, you know, parts of Syria too, and whatever else they want to do.

02:17:59.000 So I think they might be going for it, you know?

02:18:01.000 And I don't know.

02:18:03.000 We'll see.

02:18:03.000 I mean, when they started bombing Iran, that's what I thought.

02:18:07.000 I was like, oh boy.

02:18:08.000 Well, they tried.

02:18:09.000 They tried to suck Trump into a regime change war there, you know, and it didn't work.

02:18:15.000 But the whole thing, you know, the whole 12-day war, first of all, this thing is not over.

02:18:21.000 We're kind of at, like the fundamentals of the conflict.

02:18:26.000 are all still there.

02:18:27.000 And in fact, I think there was just a few days ago, like, a couple, like, Israeli spokesmen who were already signaling, like, we may have to go, you know, see about this again.

02:18:36.000 Netanyahu himself said when him and Trump met in the White House, and was a really fascinating moment, which, you know, I'm not trying to make too much of, but it was pretty hilarious in a way, like a little microcosm, where they asked Donald Trump at one point, they go, so is.

02:18:49.000 is that it with Iran?

02:18:50.000 Like, are we, is the war continuing or is it over?

02:18:52.000 And he goes, well, you know, I really don't want to see it continue, but maybe that's a better question for Bebe.

02:18:58.000 And you're like, what?

02:19:00.000 Wait, what?

02:19:01.000 He's, oh, I'm sorry.

02:19:02.000 You're like, well, my boss is right here, so you might as well ask him.

02:19:05.000 Which is not exactly true.

02:19:07.000 You know, I'm not saying that.

02:19:08.000 I know Jeffrey Sachs, who I love, who is a real expert, not like me or Douglas Murray, but a real expert, who's, you know, I don't agree with him on everything, but his foreign policy is very good.

02:19:18.000 But he said, and I think he was saying it kind of tongue in cheek, but he said, I regard Netanyahu as the worst US president of my lifetime, which is a funny, a very a very funny line. 0.69

02:19:27.000 And I get what he's saying.

02:19:29.000 Well, how long has he been running Israel?

02:19:31.000 Well, he he came he was prime minister first in 1996 and then he's had a few stints where he was out but he's been in and out so they have a completely different setup obviously yeah yeah you can keep coming back yeah and so he was but he's the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history at this point and but I will say that there are people you know I know people go down you know rabbit holes on Twitter and stuff like that and I don't I do think Jeffrey Sachs is well I think he was being somewhat tongue and

02:20:01.000 cheek when he said it but I do think he's overstating his hand it's not that Israel runs America if Netanyahu ran America, I can promise you we would have had a regime change war in Iran. 0.75

02:20:13.000 We would not have stopped where Donald Trump stopped if Netanyahu was actually in control of the U.S. military instead of just having significant influence over it.

02:20:22.000 So like I do think there's, I mean, I've just read enough about Netanyahu, the Lakudniks, the neocons, this is the regime change war that they've wanted.

02:20:29.000 This is their seventh.

02:20:30.000 This is seven out of seven to get Iran. 0.89

02:20:32.000 So this is what they want.

02:20:34.000 And if you actually even look at the war itself, it was like, They, when Trump, it was before and after Trump dropped the bunker busters on their nuclear sites, Israel just started bombing regime targets.

02:20:48.000 They weren't just bombing their nuclear sites.

02:20:49.000 They were trying to overthrow the regime. 0.64

02:20:51.000 And in fact, they made calls to these Iranian generals and threatened their families and basically said, we're going to kill your families unless you guys flee right now. 0.72

02:21:00.000 It just didn't work.

02:21:01.000 They weren't going to do that.

02:21:02.000 And then once that didn't work, they were kind of like, and then Iran gave Trump an out.

02:21:09.000 You know, they responded with this nonsense, you know, the same thing they did after Trump killed Soleimani, where they fire these rockets, they give us advance warning, they make sure we move everyone out of the way, because they know they don't want to kill an an American there because then it's full scale war.

02:21:28.000 But, like, if they hadn't, it's so funny because, like, we put all this in the Mullah's hands.

02:21:34.000 And if they had just decided, which every military analyst concludes they can touch Americans in the region, they didn't.

02:21:41.000 Had they, this would have been the, and I think that was the goal.

02:21:44.000 I think that was Netanyahu's goal of it, was to provoke that response that would have led to a regime change war.

02:21:50.000 And it didn't work.

02:21:51.000 And Trump, to his credit, his instinct is to deescalate these things when he can, but also to Trump's, you know, fault, never should have gotten into the thing to begin with. 0.97

02:22:03.000 It was all the whole Iranian nuclear threat is as much bullshit as the Iraqi nuclear threat. 0.98

02:22:08.000 I mean, yeah, it is true that they have a civilian nuclear program that Iraq didn't have. 0.95

02:22:13.000 And it is, I know I saw when Mike Baker was on, who I love, I love Mike Baker, but I think he's wrong about all this stuff.

02:22:20.000 But when he was, when you, even you had said to him at one point, where you were like, yeah, but like, you know, the counterargument to that is that this is like a latent nuclear deterrent.

02:22:28.000 is the idea, not that they're developing a nuclear weapon.

02:22:31.000 And Mike was basically like, yeah, but they're up to 60%, you know?

02:22:34.000 And that's on its way to 90%.

02:22:36.000 But the thing is, why weren't they at 90%?

02:22:39.000 They didn't have to stop at 6060%?

02:22:41.000 They mastered the fuel cycle and they figured out all this technology a long time ago.

02:22:45.000 They could have enriched up to weapons grade.

02:22:47.000 Why did they stop at 60%?

02:22:49.000 And why did they then enter negotiations with the United States of America about the level to which they were enriching uranium?

02:22:56.000 Because it's that, it's a latent nuclear deterrent, it's a bargaining chip.

02:23:00.000 They were down at like 3-5% or something under the JCPOA until Trump tore it up, until Trump backed out of it, and then under the rules of the JCPOA, because they're still in it with Europe, and we'll see where that goes now, but they were allowed to up the enrichment once America pulled out.

02:23:17.000 And so they exerercise that option in the agreement.

02:23:21.000 And the idea that they were, look, there was the annual threat assessment had come out just a few months before the war.

02:23:30.000 And Tulsi Gabbard signed her name at the bottom of it and then testified before Congress.

02:23:34.000 And it's clear as day.

02:23:35.000 She turned around and acted like people were misrepresenting it, but they weren't.

02:23:38.000 It was clear as day.

02:23:39.000 Anyone can read it for themselves.

02:23:40.000 She said, Iran has not made the political decision to pursue a nuclear weapon yet, let alone have achieved it or gotten one.

02:23:52.000 And when Donald Trump was asked about that, remember they said, your own director of national intelligence says that.

02:23:57.000 they're not developing a weapon.

02:23:58.000 And he goes, well, I disagree.

02:24:00.000 Have you ever seen the, I'm sure you have, the compilation of Netanyahu over the years, saying how close Iran is to getting a nuclear weapon?

02:24:07.000 Yeah, that's great.

02:24:08.000 Have you seen, there's other compilations of him, too, where he's just guaranteeing, like all his guarantees.

02:24:14.000 Like there's one of him in, like, I think it's the year before I was born, if I'm right, it's 1982, and he didn't go by Benjamin Netanyahu back then, he went by whatever his more, you know, European sounded name was.

02:24:25.000 How many changed names?

02:24:27.000 Well, because they all, they all, they all, when?

02:24:30.000 Eighty's?

02:24:31.000 I would guess it must be in the eighties.

02:24:33.000 It was, he was Netanyahu by the nineties, but in the eighties they still called him whatever.

02:24:37.000 I can't remember his previous name.

02:24:39.000 Why did he change the name?

02:24:41.000 Well, they all kind of, you know, because the whole thing, Joe, is that they're all, you know, Israel was a European, you know, construct. 0.95

02:24:48.000 They were made by a bunch of Europeans who came over and created Israel. 1.00

02:24:52.000 But then they have to claim that they're the true Semitic people. 0.78

02:24:54.000 Is it true that genetic testing is outlawed there?

02:24:58.000 I believe that is true.

02:24:59.000 I believe that's true.

02:25:00.000 I mean, double checking on that, but I believe it's true.

02:25:03.000 That you need, like, permission from the government to go get DNA tests and stuff.

02:25:07.000 Because I think, and I believe.

02:25:09.000 This is the problem with the term Semitic.

02:25:13.000 Because if these are European Jewish people. 0.97

02:25:17.000 This is not the exact same genetics.

02:25:20.000 That's right.

02:25:22.000 Genetic testing is heavily regulated.

02:25:24.000 Heavily. 0.99

02:25:25.000 Here you can fucking get it at Walgreens. 0.99

02:25:28.000 That's right. 0.99

02:25:28.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:25:30.000 And focused on medical and reproductive purposes with broad support for carrier screening and pre-implantation diagnosis.

02:25:39.000 What does that mean?

02:25:41.000 Pre-implantation diagnosis.

02:25:44.000 This creates a system where health-related genetic testing is robust and often publicly funded, but direct to consumer tests for ancestry or paternity are highly restricted restrict anything like that if you want to just if a human being has bodily autonomy and you want to find out where your ancestors came from, why wouldn't that be?

02:26:08.000 Well, look, the only real answer to this is that they...

02:26:08.000 What do you think?

02:26:23.000 It's like a supernatural property right claim.

02:26:26.000 That, you know, like that you have this, which, you know, if you go, there was that great documentary on the settlers in the West Bank, and they'll all tell you to a man or to a woman, they focus a lot on that godmother of the settlers woman, but they'll all explain to you, like in very plain English with a Hebrew accent, that God promised them all this land.

02:26:26.000 Right.

02:26:46.000 So like, God promised us all this land.

02:26:48.000 So like, I don't know who these other people are here, but God didn't promise it to them, he promised it to us, and so, you know, that's, but that's kind of the claim that we're the original people of this land, and so we have like a right to come back here.

02:27:00.000 Now, forget for a second the fact that nobody conceives a property rights in this fashion in any other way.

02:27:05.000 Like, nobody thinks I could come up with a DNA test and be like, oh, I've got some Ukrainian in here.

02:27:11.000 All right, well, I'm going to march into Ukraine, knock on a door, and be like, this is actually my house because I was here a thousand years ago.

02:27:17.000 Like that's crazy.

02:27:19.000 Well, blank evidence.

02:27:20.000 Well, if not really a good argument.

02:27:22.000 Well, let's just say hypothetically, if say the truth is that the Jews of 2,000 years ago weren't actually kicked out of the land, but in fact they were forced to convert.

02:27:39.000 And that actually those people who you're saying were never promised the land are actually the people who were promised the land and then converted to Islam.

02:27:48.000 And in fact, you're just some European who came in here way after that.

02:27:52.000 That I'm just saying, hypothetically, if that was the case, that would be something that maybe you would want to control the information of.

02:27:57.000 Isn't that wild?

02:28:01.000 Well, you know, I don't want this whole show to be such a Debbie Downer.

02:28:04.000 Well, no, okay.

02:28:04.000 I'll end I'll make a real positive, a real positive case about this, okay?

02:28:10.000 Because I do actually I'm not a pessimist.

02:28:12.000 And I want to make sure I'm not just a Downer.

02:28:13.000 You know, I saw too late.

02:28:15.000 Well, yeah, okay.

02:28:16.000 Well, I'm trying.

02:28:17.000 Okay, well, I've done whatever.

02:28:18.000 I've done seventeen episodes being a Downer.

02:28:20.000 So let me not I'll give you a few minutes.

02:28:23.000 You know, I saw so I hung out with Ron Paul a little bit as I was telling you I was at his party the other day.

02:28:28.000 And it's like every time I see him, he always asks me the same question.

02:28:36.000 And it's always like the feeling like this like fatherly, like there's a right answer to this and a wrong answer to this.

02:28:42.000 But he always goes, he goes, so Dave, are you more optimistic or pessimistic?

02:28:49.000 And I always say optimistic because I know that's the correct.

02:28:52.000 And every time he asks me this and I say optimistic, he just nods his head.

02:28:55.000 He's like, like it's just like correct.

02:28:57.000 That's the correct answer.

02:28:58.000 You're not allowed to be pessimistic.

02:29:00.000 You've got to be optimistic.

02:29:01.000 And I am.

02:29:02.000 I am.

02:29:03.000 Optimism sees a better world ahead and offers potential solutions and at least a mindset.

02:29:09.000 of a potential solution.

02:29:11.000 The problem with pessimism is there's no way out other than complete anarchy and destruction.

02:29:16.000 That's right.

02:29:17.000 And you don't, you kind of, I think this, I mean, I feel this way particularly, I think when you have kids, this becomes like a more focus.

02:29:24.000 I think that the way I look at it is because I have kids, I don't have an option to be pessimistic.

02:29:30.000 I don't have an option to be black pilled or just feel bad about it.

02:29:33.000 It's like, no, no, no, I got little kids.

02:29:35.000 They're going to inherit this world.

02:29:36.000 I gotta do everything I can to, you know, like I may have said this before to you, but like the example I think of is like if you like, let's say you're in your house with your family and like you've you've got like let's say a gun or two in the house and then you look outside and you see like there's like a 10 guys with guns charging the house and it's just you and you just have your one or two guns there's 10 guys with guns charging the house and your family is in the house like you don't have a right as like the man of your house you don't have a right to sit there and

02:30:05.000 go oh man there's 10 of them and only one of me i mean i just think the future looks bleak You know, it's like, what?

02:30:12.000 I don't care.

02:30:13.000 I don't know.

02:30:14.000 You know your house better than them, right?

02:30:15.000 What do you got there?

02:30:16.000 You got some gasoline in your shed? 0.95

02:30:17.000 Okay, shoot the shed. 0.97

02:30:18.000 That blows up a few of them. 0.98

02:30:19.000 Get your family into the attic.

02:30:20.000 Get them into the basement.

02:30:22.000 You got to try.

02:30:22.000 You still have a fighting shot here.

02:30:24.000 here so you don't have a right to just sit there and feel bad about yeah the odds are against you but you know crazy things have happened i will say we you think it's that bad 10 guys to one no i'm just saying even in a scenario in your in your analogy it's like you're fucked sure but even in that no i don't know that you're not i don't know that you're necessarily fucked i mean hey listen dude depends if you're john wick well yeah but also you have there's a big advantage to a house that you know that other people don't know i would 0.90

02:30:53.000 assume by the time people guns come to your house, they have a pretty good understanding of how the house is built.

02:30:59.000 Okay, maybe it's not the perfect amount.

02:31:00.000 I'm not saying it's going to work out well.

02:31:02.000 I'm saying in that moment you still go out you still go out trying okay now I think we have a way better situation than that I think that the I think that well look I think that tyranny has always relied on propaganda and that we are running an experiment for like the first time where they're flying with no net They don't have a propaganda apparatus anymore, like at all.

02:31:26.000 Well, they certainly don't have control over narratives anymore.

02:31:31.000 Donald Trump can't even control what Tucker Carlson is going to say.

02:31:35.000 You know what I mean?

02:31:36.000 Like, you can't even count on your most influential right-wing.

02:31:41.000 voice in America to go, like, there never was anything like this before.

02:31:45.000 There never was, even just in recent times, there never was something George W. Bush could have done where you'd be like tonight on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are going to tear him apart.

02:31:55.000 That didn't exist.

02:31:56.000 There never was anything Obama could have done where Rachel Matta was going to tear him apart.

02:32:01.000 We have that for the first time now.

02:32:03.000 People are waking up in a way to this stuff that's like never happened before.

02:32:08.000 And I think that gives us like enormous potential for positive things to happen in the future.

02:32:14.000 And the other thing that's happening is that, like, economically speaking, our societies are growing.

02:32:18.000 Our system is being pushed to a point where eventually they're going to have to call it quits on all of this.

02:32:26.000 Like we just can't keep going up.

02:32:27.000 Like I think it was, I forget the exact recent numbers, but it's something like it's over $1.2 trillion a year just on interest on the debt.

02:32:36.000 Interest on the debt is like overtaking the entire budget.

02:32:40.000 And at a certain point there, someone's going to have to call it quits.

02:32:44.000 and be like, we just got to start reigning this thing back in.

02:32:47.000 If they lose all of their popular support and all of their economic ability to keep running up the debt and keep the printing machines going, then I think there's going to have to be a huge adjustment made there.

02:33:00.000 Yeah, yeah, that's right.

02:33:01.000 Yeah, which is why he wanted this massive economic reform.

02:33:04.000 And this is why he wanted to do an audit on everything.

02:33:08.000 You saw how that worked out.

02:33:09.000 Well, okay, but he was right.

02:33:10.000 Yeah, but that was still also like the first attempt at that.

02:33:13.000 And he was right about that stuff.

02:33:13.000 Yes.

02:33:15.000 So, okay, so, so, yes, that didn't work.

02:33:18.000 You know, Doge was a failure.

02:33:20.000 in terms of actually getting cuts done right now.

02:33:23.000 But it was a huge success in terms of like putting a spotlight on this issue and putting it into the national consciousness in a way that it's never been before.

02:33:32.000 And so now it's like, okay, well, what will the second attempt?

02:33:35.000 What will the third attempt look like?

02:33:38.000 You know, we have a new world now where Donald Trump won the presidency in no small part by coming on this show, by going on Andrew Schultz show and Theo Vaughn show, and, you know, like all these different.

02:33:52.000 And now we're coming up on the next presidential election, like for the foreseeable future, in order to win the presidency, they kind of know they got to come here and to all of our shows and present something that might get you and your audience like, okay, he's coming with something here.

02:34:11.000 This is such a new dynamic that I just think like the potential for good is off the charts.

02:34:17.000 And so, like, yeah, in the short term, things are still the same.

02:34:21.000 Government policy is still what it is, and the people don't really have much control over that.

02:34:26.000 But I think, like, long term, I'm very bullish on the ability of people to really wake up and understand what's going on here.

02:34:34.000 Apparently, there's some real talk about changing the status of marijuana.

02:34:40.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:34:41.000 I was reading about that a couple weeks ago, right?

02:34:43.000 But there's something that just came out yesterday, too, where they think that Trump might declassify it and take it from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3, which would change everything.

02:34:53.000 And open, there was an article about the the economics of it because they were talking about these businesses, how they're taxed and how, you know, federally they're still operating like criminals.

02:35:05.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:35:05.000 It's like that's how it's viewed by the federal government views it as a Schedule 1 substance, you're, you know, like, and if you get arrested for it, you're fucked. 0.99

02:35:15.000 Where they're going to change the right now they have a limited ability to bank. 0.99

02:35:20.000 The interest rates are all fucked up. 1.00

02:35:22.000 Everything's fucked up. 1.00

02:35:23.000 And just that alone would make a huge economic impact. 0.99

02:35:27.000 I mean, if you want to do something, first of all, you would kill a lot of the interest.

02:35:32.000 interest or excuse me, a lot of the financial interest that the cartels have in it.

02:35:37.000 If all of a sudden it becomes legal here, like the cartels probably they're probably going to be involved still a little bit because they're involved in it already.

02:35:44.000 They're involved in avocados.

02:35:46.000 I had Ed Calderon on yesterday, was explaining how they're involved in illegal fuel, the human trafficking is a giant business.

02:35:55.000 They have many, many horrible interests.

02:35:59.000 But you would at the very least, you would empower American businesses to do it legally and normally and have organic marijuana air quotes because some of the stuff they're finding in in California that the cartels are running is they're using these terrible pesticides and herbicides that are like insanely toxic and illegal everywhere else.

02:36:19.000 You can't use them on American crops, but yet they're using them on this marijuana because it's not only being sold at like dispensaries and stuff?

02:36:26.000 No.

02:36:26.000 That's being sold, it's 90% of all the marijuana that's sold in all the places where marijuana is illegal.

02:36:34.000 The cartels are growing.

02:36:35.000 And they're growing it in California in National Forest because it's a misdemeanor to get caught illegally growing marijuana in California.

02:36:43.000 There's a great book, John Norris, Hidden War, that's all about that.

02:36:48.000 game warden who had to find out about this the hard way and then became a part of a tactical unit where they would go in and fight the cartels in the woods.

02:36:57.000 How about that?

02:36:58.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:36:59.000 Yeah, it's fucking crazy. 0.97

02:36:59.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:37:01.000 So if he does that, that'll be another good thing.

02:37:04.000 The other good thing that he's been doing is getting these people together that have been in conflict forever and making them shake hands and having conversations, peace talks.

02:37:16.000 Like how many different people have, how many different countries have had representatives agree to peace talks because of Trump?

02:37:24.000 I was reading this breakdown of all the different things.

02:37:27.000 Yeah, I know he intervened in the not intervened, But he, with the India-Pakistan thing, I know he got all of them on the phone.

02:37:34.000 And he's, you know, I obviously just had Putin over here.

02:37:37.000 But yeah, I think there was a few examples of that, which is great.

02:37:41.000 It's great.

02:37:41.000 Yeah.

02:37:42.000 So it's not all negative.

02:37:44.000 Well, not only is it great, right?

02:37:47.000 But it's, isn't it so insane that it took this long?

02:37:54.000 Like, just with the Putin and Donald Trump.

02:37:57.000 I always say, and I know this is kind of like a hippie-ish thing to say, but I think the world needs a little bit more of that.

02:38:04.000 But like, okay, it's kind of crazy that war still exists.

02:38:08.000 It's kind of crazy that we're at the, you know, like you'd almost feel like if you saw a society and you're like, wait, you've gotten to the point where like you have the written language and two-story buildings.

02:38:17.000 You'd be like, you probably should have figured out something other than war at this point.

02:38:21.000 But yeah, you know, you're talking about a society with the internet and skyscrapers and heart surgery and like all these things.

02:38:26.000 And like you still, but still, and we have international governance of some sort, you know, you have the United Nations and things like this.

02:38:34.000 And you're telling me like there is international law.

02:38:38.000 And like the first rule isn't that like if any countries are ever going to go to war, you guys have to get in a room together.

02:38:45.000 Like before we go to war., we need to know that we've exhausted every alternative option that there is, especially when it's the United States and Russia. 0.50

02:38:53.000 Right.

02:38:53.000 You know what I mean?

02:38:54.000 And yet it took all this time for the first time for the two leaders of them to sit down and meet.

02:39:00.000 But on the positive side, they did just sit down and meet.

02:39:00.000 It's crazy.

02:39:03.000 That's a lot better than not sitting down and meeting.

02:39:05.000 And that's what's unique about him is that he wants these things to happen.

02:39:08.000 He truly doesn't want us to be going to war.

02:39:11.000 I mean, he ran on that, and I think it's true. 1.00

02:39:14.000 And despite what happened in Iran, like it was at least limited, and it seems like there was some communication that made it limited.

02:39:23.000 You know?

02:39:24.000 Well, there's no question, having a president whose default setting was to desire an off-ramp made a huge difference there.

02:39:31.000 Because, you know, if you had had, like, if this was a Dick Cheney, George W. Bush type of presidency, they could have found any excuse.

02:39:39.000 You know what I mean?

02:39:40.000 Like, once you get to that point, they could have found any reason to keep it going.

02:39:44.000 Yeah, but at least that kind of made sense to me because there were these right-wing people. 0.97

02:39:49.000 Whereas the, seeing the left wing calling for war and saying that Ukraine was going to win this thing, like, God damn, what happened?

02:40:01.000 How did it flip that if you want a conclusion to the war that you're supporting Putin? 0.65

02:40:09.000 How did that flip?

02:40:10.000 How did it flip where people aren't trying to exhaust every possible way to stop the end of the killing of all these people that are conscripted and sent to the front lines to die when they don't want to be there?

02:40:22.000 Yeah.

02:40:23.000 No, that's right.

02:40:24.000 Crazy well also even though like the You don't really get to decide that until years later.

02:40:36.000 You know, they didn't call it World War 1 until World War 2 came around.

02:40:39.000 And then you go, oh, that was the First World War.

02:40:43.000 What does it say?

02:40:44.000 Six wars in six months.

02:40:45.000 I've settled six wars in six months.

02:40:47.000 One of them, a possible nuclear disaster.

02:40:49.000 Trump wrote in True Social on August 18, before meeting with European leaders and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy at the White House, where he made a similar claim.

02:40:58.000 I know exactly what I'm doing, and I don't need the advice of people who have been working on all these conflicts for years and were never able to do anything to stop them.

02:41:09.000 So click on that where it says six wars in six months.

02:41:11.000 It seems to be a link.

02:41:13.000 It's a link to True Social.

02:41:15.000 Oh, it's just his post.

02:41:18.000 What are the six wars?

02:41:20.000 Throw that into Grok.

02:41:21.000 If there's other, I can show you the other, of course.

02:41:23.000 Let's show it in one second.

02:41:25.000 I was just interested in what he is.

02:41:28.000 What wars is he claiming to have ended?

02:41:31.000 Breakthroughs.

02:41:32.000 Because I know he has had these people get together.

02:41:35.000 How many wars?

02:41:36.000 Israel and Iran.

02:41:37.000 Okay.

02:41:38.000 Well, you don't get to count that one, did you?

02:41:40.000 Kyrgyzstan and India.

02:41:42.000 Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

02:41:46.000 June the two.

02:41:47.000 Go back.

02:41:48.000 In June, the two countries signed a peace agreement in Washington aimed at ending decades of conflict.

02:41:53.000 Trump said it would help increase trade between them and the U.S. What's the next one?

02:41:59.000 Thailand and Cambodia.

02:42:01.000 On 26 July, Trump posted on True Social, I am calling the acting Prime Minister of Thailand right now to likewise request a ceasefire and end the war, which is currently raging.

02:42:12.000 A couple days later, the two countries agreed to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire after less than a week of fighting.

02:42:18.000 At the border, Malaysia held the peace talks, but President Trump threatened to stop separate negotiations on reducing U.S. tariffs unless Thailand and Cambodia stopped fighting.

02:42:29.000 Let's look at this one.

02:42:30.000 Armenia and Azerbaijan.

02:42:32.000 The leaders of both countries said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in securing a peace deal which was announced at the White House on 8 August.

02:42:41.000 I think he gets good credit here.

02:42:43.000 The Oval Office signing ceremony may have pushed the parties to peace, says Mr. O'Hanlon.

02:42:50.000 In March, the two governments had said they were ready to end their nearly 40-year conflict centered on the status of the how do you say that?

02:43:00.000 Nagorno-Karabakh.

02:43:03.000 Your guess is good as mine.

02:43:04.000 I'll let you figure that one out.

02:43:06.000 The most recent serious outbreak of fighting was in September 2023 when Azerbaijan seized the enclave where many ethnic Armenians lived.

02:43:15.000 Egypt and Ethiopia.

02:43:17.000 Here's another one.

02:43:19.000 After twelve years of disagreement, Egypt's foreign minister said on the twenty ninth of June that talks with Ethiopia had grounded to a halt.

02:43:26.000 Trump said, if I was Egypt, I'd want the water in the Nile.

02:43:29.000 He promised that the US was going to resolve the issue very quickly.

02:43:33.000 Egypt welcomed Trump's words, but Ethiopian officials say they risked inflaming tensions.

02:43:39.000 No formal deal has been reached.

02:43:41.000 Serbia and Kosovo.

02:43:41.000 Okay.

02:43:43.000 Trump claimed to have prevented a break of hostilities between them, saying Serbia and Kosovo were going to go at it.

02:43:49.000 It was going to be a big war.

02:43:51.000 I said, you go at it.

02:43:52.000 There's no trade with the United States.

02:43:53.000 They said well, maybe we won't go at it You're just so you just know that is a Trump quote the two countries signed an economic Normalization agreement in the Oval Office with the president in 2020, but they were not at war at the time So it doesn't say that that's been resolved.

02:44:14.000 Is that it?

02:44:15.000 Okay, yeah, I think like some of them haven't totally been resolved well I think he's trying the Armenian one I think is the one he should get the most credit for because because they did sign that peace deal in the white house and both the leaders did say like yeah donald trump really played a huge role in this with the other things he kind of never know.

02:44:33.000 But this is a new and unique thing that this guy, I mean, he's only been in office for eight months and that he's like actively pursuing all these international conflicts, trying to get these people together and stop it.

02:44:44.000 No, that stuff is all very good.

02:44:46.000 So good.

02:44:47.000 Yeah.

02:44:48.000 Now, I don't give him any credit for the, I mean, let me just try to say this.

02:44:51.000 I do give him credit, like I said before, for taking the off-ramp when he had it on the 12-day war.

02:44:56.000 But the thing about that one is that he just never needed to launch the thing to begin with.

02:45:00.000 And I don't know, you know, I'm not even sure he did launch it, to be honest.

02:45:04.000 It's kind of unclear how that happened because they were in negotiations with the Iranians and then Israel attacked them.

02:45:10.000 And then after Israel attacked them, Trump said basically we were all in on it together, which might be true. 1.00

02:45:16.000 But I do know that Tucker Carlson said, I'm not revealing anything privately, he said this on the record, he's he knows Whitcoff, who was the guy who was point manning the negotiations.

02:45:26.000 And he was like, it is absolutely not true that these were like fake negotiations designed to trick the Iranians so Israel could get their shot off.

02:45:34.000 That's just not true.

02:45:36.000 Now, I don't know exactly what's right there.

02:45:38.000 Also, then you have to cover for your friend because your friend threw the first punch.

02:45:41.000 Well, I know that Trump was upset because he let it out that he was upset that after he called for the ceasefire, Israel just started bombing the crap out of them and he was like what are you guys doing man but then he turns around and still supports everything they're doing well they have conversations they have meetings yeah the thing about it is though is that going forward i think this is like the more important thing is that going forward this problem is not off the table you know they're saying that trump's going to say he completely destroyed you know Iran's

02:46:12.000 nuclear program, but that's not clear at all.

02:46:15.000 And everything the Iranians are saying is that they are going to continue having a civilian nuclear program, and they have the technology, and they can rebuild this thing. 0.76

02:46:25.000 And so then the question is like, if they do, what do we want to do next about that?

02:46:28.000 And what's great is that This at least was a little war that didn't result in like a major catastrophe, still a catastrophe for the people who died in it.

02:46:36.000 There were Iranians and Israelis who died in this war.

02:46:38.000 It wasn't like it was bloodless.

02:46:41.000 But at least it may give us some time to go like for the next go around to just be like, we don't need to go to war over a civilian nuclear program.

02:46:50.000 First of all, we shouldn't go to war over a nuclear weapons program.

02:46:53.000 Like, what is that?

02:46:54.000 Like, what's Truman was the president when the Soviet unions developed nuclear weapons?

02:47:00.000 The Soviet unions, Joseph Stalin developed nuclear weapons.

02:47:04.000 He didn't attack them over that.

02:47:06.000 He didn't say we're going to launch a war of aggression.

02:47:09.000 because you're developing the same weapons we have.

02:47:11.000 And I think it was Johnson was president when Mao Tse-tung, the most evil man who's ever lived, developed nuclear weapons.

02:47:18.000 There was never, like, a war of aggression launched over that.

02:47:21.000 Everyone's so convinced we gotta do it over Iran.

02:47:24.000 But anyway, they weren't even pursuing nuclear weapons.

02:47:26.000 Hopefully, the next go round, the American people have even had it even more.

02:47:31.000 And they're like, yeah, we're just not supporting this anymore.

02:47:33.000 You remember when Obama had a press conference and talked about, gave a speech, talked about that we were going to go to war with Syria?

02:47:41.000 Do you remember that?

02:47:41.000 Mm hmm.

02:47:42.000 And everybody was like, what the fuck are you talking about? 1.00

02:47:45.000 That's right. 1.00

02:47:46.000 And then they said, ah, forget it.

02:47:48.000 And you know, it was a huge part of that was, it was like the first war, the internet shut down.

02:47:53.000 You know, where it was like, and it was, it was, well, I think Steve Bannon had a lot to do with that.

02:47:58.000 He was over at Breitbart at the time.

02:48:00.000 And they really got on the, like, we are not supporting this war.

02:48:03.000 But then there were like, it was all over Twitter where there were the active duty military guys, and they would dress up in, like, they would put on the military uniform, but cover their face, and then just like hold a sign that's like, I will not fight for Al Qaeda in Syria.

02:48:17.000 Because those guys knew what that was.

02:48:19.000 This is, by the way, the whole thing.

02:48:20.000 This is where they tried to smear Tulsi Gabbard.

02:48:22.000 This is when Barry Weiss was on here and said she''s an Assad Todi and then didn't know what Todi meant or whatever.

02:48:28.000 But it's almost like they try to tell you this story.

02:48:31.000 Like what would that even mean?

02:48:32.000 What are they saying?

02:48:34.000 Tulsi Gabbard is secretly loyal to a Syrian dentist who became the dictator of the country.

02:48:34.000 What's the claim?

02:48:41.000 Like that doesn't make any sense, does it?

02:48:43.000 Why would Tulsi Gabbard have been so against that war?

02:48:46.000 Well, the reason she was against that war is because she actually knew the first thing about it, unlike all these other people, unlike Barry Weiss who didn't even know what the word Todi meant as she was calling her that.

02:48:56.000 Tulsi Gabbard, for whatever you might say about her, and I've got some criticisms of her myself. 0.99

02:49:02.000 But she knows who the Shiites are and who the Sunnis are. 0.84

02:49:05.000 And she knows which camp is on which side.

02:49:08.000 And she knew that on the other side of Bashar al-Assad in this civil war, which was started by Barack Obama, on the other side of this was ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

02:49:18.000 And her whole thing was she signed up, she enlisted to go fight Al-Qaeda because they hit us on 9-11.

02:49:24.000 And so she's always furious.

02:49:26.000 Actually, Tulsi supports the war on terrorism.

02:49:30.000 Too much, I would argue.

02:49:32.000 She just objected to the war for terrorism.

02:49:34.000 She was like, I just don't think we should fight wars for Al-Qaeda.

02:49:38.000 I believe we ought to fight them against Al-Qaeda.

02:49:40.000 And that was her beef with that one.

02:49:43.000 She was absolutely right about it.

02:49:44.000 And by the way, Al Qaeda's in charge of the country now.

02:49:46.000 Yeah, whoops.

02:49:47.000 Whoops.

02:49:48.000 That'll work.

02:49:48.000 That'll work out well, I'm sure.

02:49:50.000 Every time we overthrow a country, it works out great.

02:49:50.000 It works everywhere.

02:49:53.000 It always works out great.

02:49:54.000 It's always better.

02:49:54.000 Maybe it did a good, we did a real good job there.

02:49:56.000 Well, did you see, well, this was the crazy thing for the people who were advocating regime change in the twelve day war in Iran.

02:50:02.000 They would always, you see, there were like, there were Israeli government officials who were posting pictures of the son of the Shah?

02:50:10.000 Like the implication being that Kill come back into power.

02:50:13.000 Because what was he in exile in England?

02:50:16.000 So now the war on terrorism started with spreading democracy and in its end phase we're spreading what's the word I'm looking for?

02:50:27.000 A monarchy, a hereditary monarchy or something.

02:50:31.000 It's like, yeah, but also, by the way, what do you think the odds are that if we overthrew the mullahs, that the son of the Shah just walks back into power and all the warring factions just go, yeah, no, that's, you know, the U.S. propped him up in 1953, so then, yeah, okay, he's the rightful ruler.

02:50:46.000 Like, I don't think so, dude.

02:50:48.000 Well, listen, man.

02:50:50.000 I've had enough getting bummed out.

02:50:52.000 Well, I'm not trying to bump you.

02:50:53.000 It's just, there's so much going on.

02:50:56.000 That's the problem with being alive today is you're paying attention to so many different conflicts.

02:51:01.000 Yeah, but dude, it's like the world.

02:51:03.000 Yeah, but like in the 20th century, you know, like there were two world wars and there was all this horrible. 0.99

02:51:09.000 Oh shit. 0.99

02:51:10.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

02:51:10.000 You know, and then like, but today, like, dude, we live in like the most amazing time, dude. 1.00

02:51:15.000 I mean, there's literally Bring it home, nice.

02:51:17.000 Well, listen, man, I mean this, the most sincere thing I've ever said in my life.

02:51:24.000 My son was born with a congenital heart defect that would have killed him in almost any other time period, unless I was alive today or in the last ten years.

02:51:33.000 Thirty years ago, I would have lost my son.

02:51:35.000 And today he's fine.

02:51:36.000 He's the great cutest little boy in the world you've ever seen.

02:51:39.000 And so, like, I don't know.

02:51:40.000 I'd still rather live today than any other time just for that alone.

02:51:44.000 No doubt.

02:51:44.000 And we have the ability to, like, reach people and trade with each other and communicate with each other.

02:51:50.000 We're, we're really close to, like, curing all types of, of diseases and ailments and extending life and extending, you know, people are educated and connected in a way that they've never been before.

02:52:02.000 You know, we got all these problems, but we've hadre aware of the problems now.

02:52:07.000 That's right.

02:52:07.000 And which is the first step to recognizing them and then going after them and trying to resolve them.

02:52:12.000 That will be our kids' generation. 0.99

02:52:14.000 Me and you will just be recognizing them and then we'll leave it to them to solve it.

02:52:18.000 You're going to have some fun this weekend at the Mothership.

02:52:21.000 It's my favorite weekend of every year.

02:52:23.000 Well, it's always awesome to have you back.

02:52:25.000 Well, wait a long time.

02:52:25.000 Comedy wise.

02:52:26.000 Maybe I do something with the wife and kids.

02:52:27.000 I'm not going to get in trouble for that.

02:52:31.000 Your podcast, tell everybody how to get it.

02:52:33.000 It's everywhere.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 26, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2370 - Dave Smith

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript