00:00:06.000Train by day, Joe Rogan, podcast by night, all day.
00:00:13.000So, Dave, you were telling me right before the show that you are now retiring because you got an impromptu phone call and bet hundreds of millions of dollars on oil prices going down.
00:03:34.000Oh, at the top it says, it says, Luttnick said in an interview last year, he was never in the room with Epstein other than a 2005 visit to his apartment.
00:05:02.000Elder Lutnick announced the sale of the stake in the firm and other investors, Supreme Court on Friday invalidated many of Trump's tariffs.
00:05:11.000The president said, Okay, Castor did not consider the product, which has existed for years.
00:05:17.000It was humming trade on Wall Street's Trump first-term tariff push, but decided against it after weighing the political sensitivities.
00:05:26.000According to a senior banker familiar with this matter, a Cantor spokesman said the salesman erroneously believed the firm was likely to greenlight the business.
00:06:34.000Yeah, but to AI, we all might be homeless guys taking shit.
00:06:37.000Did you see that there was these San Francisco tech guys, and they got trapped in their Waymo because a homeless guy started attacking the Waymo and yelling at them, why are you paying robots?
00:07:21.000But another one, a Waymo, a gal got in, and there's a fucking homeless guy in the trunk because apparently the last person, when they left their Waymo, they opened the trunk to get their luggage out, and they never closed it.
00:07:36.000So the homeless guy hopped into their fucking Waymo and closed the house.
00:07:52.000The main claim is that Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Luttnick's former firm now chaired by his son, stood to profit by buying tariff refund rights that only became valuable if Trump's tariffs were overturned.
00:08:06.000But the firm insists it ultimately did not execute those trades.
00:08:11.000Investigators and reporters, reporting notably by Wired, described Cantor Fitzgerald exploring a business where it would buy the rights to future tariff refunds from importers for about 20 to 30 cents on the dollar.
00:08:23.000Internal materials cited in those reports suggested Cantor had capacity to trade several hundred million dollars of these refund rights and had already facilitated at least one trade of around $10 million in rights under the IEEPA tariffs.
00:08:38.000The idea was that if courts later struck down the tariffs, the government would have to refund duties and Cantor or its clients would collect the full refund while the original importers only kept a small upfront payment.
00:08:58.000That was based off that email article right here.
00:09:00.000It says internal materials cited in those reports suggested Cantor had capacity to trade and had already facilitated at least one trade of around $10 million in rights.
00:09:14.000That is small potatoes for what we're talking about for these kind of guys.
00:09:18.000What Cantor and Luttnick's side say, Cantor Fitzgerald has publicly stated that while some salespeople explored, I like that in quotes, brokering tariff refund rates in 2025,
00:09:30.000the firm never executed any transactions or taken any position on tariff refund claims, calling contrary reports false.
00:09:40.000Follow-up recording has echoed that Cantor considered products tied to the Supreme Court tariff ruling, but ultimately backed off in part because of the political optics.
00:09:54.000Latest coverage is no public evidence that Cantor actually booked profits from this strategy, though the investigations in Congress are ongoing and focus on whether there was any attempted or potential profiteer.
00:10:09.000Are you more interested in the ethics conflicts of interest or the nuts and bolts of how the secondary tariff refund market works financially?
00:10:16.000So it seems like we don't really have evidence.
00:10:20.000I mean, if which is probably going to happen, but the Democrats take the House and the Senate in the midterm elections this year, I mean, that'll just be the next two years of politics.
00:10:30.000It'll be investigations and some Democrat lady just over, she just took over the seat in Trump's neighborhood where Mar-a-Lago is.
00:10:52.000But I have a feeling now there's probably a lot more for them to investigate and work on stuff like this and the meme coin stuff and whatever business deal.
00:11:02.000You know, I don't have the details at the top of my mind, but I do know that they said at one point that Jared Kushner would not be involved in this administration at all because he does so much business over there.
00:11:15.000And it's just like, so they were like, oh, no, no, no, he won't.
00:11:31.000I mean, when we look at the insider trading in Congress, when you look at all these slimy deals that get made with NGOs, you look at every, it's like everything's dirty.
00:12:20.000There was a while, like, where so many post officers went so crazy and started shooting people that they started calling it going postal, but it never just went away.
00:12:29.000Yeah, young people, if you're listening to this and you don't know what we're talking about, in our day, we didn't have school shootings.
00:12:34.000Okay, we had to do it the old-fashioned way.
00:12:36.000You had to drive a postman crazy until he went around shooting people.
00:12:39.000And it happened several times to the point that became a thing.
00:14:12.000I loved your, you had a rant about that years ago about how the problem is that there's so much fun and they're not accomplishing anything.
00:14:19.000So the last video game I got into was UFC 3.
00:14:43.000So I was at the one in Jersey, and they have in the green room, they have UFC 3.
00:14:49.000And I was like, oh, that's the game that I got really into.
00:14:52.000So I was there for a weekend, and I mean, I just, the whole time, I was there, just in the green room, playing this video game.
00:14:57.000And I was like, it was like a feeling almost like a drug addict who's around their drug of choice where I was like, I need to be away from that.
00:15:05.000Like, I will play this until I kill myself.
00:17:29.000I mean, he fought like the whole, like, I think when he started was like BJ Penn era of lightweight, and then he fought into like Anthony Pettis was the champion.
00:18:23.000TurboTax now has in-person locations nationwide.
00:18:27.000Walk into their tech-enabled stores and meet face-to-face with a TurboTax full-service expert who will get your best outcome.
00:18:37.000Your expert works to get you every dollar you deserve while updating you as you go about your day.
00:18:43.000Head to turbo tax.com to find a store near you.
00:18:47.000No, I mean, that's a real tough one, but there's nothing.
00:18:50.000Well, I guess like professional football, there's a similar aspect to where like you're not just, I mean, look, you can go to the hospital from basketball.
00:19:00.000You know, you can get hurt and get a bad injury.
00:19:02.000But the NFL or the UFC, you kind of like, you know, every time you go into it, like there's a very reasonable chance you're leaving here on a stretcher to go to the hospital.
00:19:13.000But particularly with MMA, it's the most unforgiving sport where like you, you're one mistake, one mistake away from like, you know, like if LeBron James misses a wide open layup, he runs back on defense and tries to, you know,
00:19:28.000get a block or something on the next play.
00:19:30.000But in MMA, you could be dominating, fighting a perfect fight, make one mistake, and it's like, okay, you're unconscious now.
00:20:20.000Which was like, it's an interesting thing how much, you know, like, well, first off, like getting knocked out cold like that, and you know better than me, but like that does a number to your body.
00:20:43.000Kamaro had to be very careful because he knew it anymore.
00:20:46.000I mean, he dodged most of the big ones until the big one landed.
00:20:51.000So in his head, in that fight, he had a narrative.
00:20:54.000And that narrative completely changed with one head kick.
00:20:57.000So going into the next fight, the narrative is now, if you fuck up, you will be unconscious.
00:21:02.000You can't get knocked unconscious again.
00:21:03.000And he fought much more cautiously in the second fight.
00:21:07.000I remember seeing that with, I felt like you could watch that when Dustin Poirier fought Connor McGregor the second time.
00:21:13.000Like, you know, McGregor had knocked him out years earlier.
00:21:16.000And you could kind of see, you know, like you could see Dustin.
00:21:20.000I'm not saying like he was nervous or anything.
00:21:22.000He's like one of the greatest fighters ever, but you could kind of just see like he gets in there and he starts and he takes a couple shots from Connor and he's still there, you know, and then he lands a couple shots and you could see like in that first round, like his confidence growing.
00:21:35.000Like you almost got to get that out of your head.
00:21:38.000That it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy beat you that back then, but you're a different guy now.
00:21:42.000Well, with Connor, it's all about weathering the initial storm.
00:21:47.000He's so explosive, so fast, so accurate.
00:21:51.000And then another part about that second fight was Dustin setting up those calf kicks, specifically because both of those guys fight Southpaw.
00:22:00.000And when you both fight Southpaw, if you're a Southpaw like Dustin, a lot of times the calf kick's not really available.
00:22:06.000Like you have to throw it with a switch or it doesn't have the same sort of potential.
00:22:11.000It's a slightly different potential when you're exchanging it in combinations.
00:22:15.000But with Connor, it was wide open because Connor has two things going on.
00:22:52.000Yeah, it's very strange that that was almost like a thing that didn't get figured out until so recently and then just totally changed everything.
00:22:58.000Like at this point, you rare, not saying you never see it, but you pretty rarely see guys kick guys in the thigh anymore.
00:23:05.000No, but I mean like compared to what it used to be, where it used to be like that was that was what a leg kick was for many years in MMA.
00:23:13.000And now it's, I'd say, like the majority of leg kicks are targeting the calf.
00:23:18.000Like you'll see almost like a thigh kick almost just to switch it up a little bit.
00:23:32.000There's been a few leg breaks from guys just full power leg kicking the thigh.
00:23:37.000And then someone just lifts up their knee a little bit and takes it on the right where the shin bone meets the kneecap is where they like to catch it.
00:23:45.000And boy, I've seen way too many of those.
00:23:48.000I've seen a bunch in person, but because of the internet, I've seen dozens and dozens of small promotions where a guy throws that kick wrong really hard and the guy checks it and his fucking foot just wraps around the leg and you see it dangling there.
00:27:06.000He already had made so much kind of like street cred for himself.
00:27:09.000And then the Irish thing, like the Irish were really, really into it.
00:27:12.000But from the very first fight, he would always create these moments where it's like, dude, this is going to be the biggest spectacle that you, my opponent, has ever been in in their career.
00:27:22.000Like, I'm going to get you mad with shit talking.
00:27:24.000I'm going to get the fans so excited because he's completely comfortable there.
00:27:28.000Like, I'm not sure if you're really comfortable here.
00:27:31.000And even with Aldo, who had been the entire division, literally when they started the division, they started him as champion.
00:27:39.000He came in because they absolved the WEC.
00:27:42.000So he was the entire featherweight division, had just dominated everyone, and he even created such a moment that like Aldo was like, he was the boogeyman.
00:29:24.000And dude, I mean, it wasn't even that big of a bar.
00:29:27.000They must have, I mean, it was shoulder to shoulder Irish people losing their fucking minds.
00:29:33.000Like it was the, it was the most fun environment to watch a fight in because they're just at, I mean, they're just like, but all that singing and chanting.
00:29:41.000It seemed like everyone had an Irish flag with them.
00:30:25.000I have picked a wrong fucking week for me vacation.
00:30:30.000By the way, I was going to say that Douglas Murray's big knock on me when he wrote his op-ed in the New York Post was he goes, you know, Dave goes on Joe Rogan and he talks about foreign policy like he's an expert, but I bet he wouldn't go in there and talk MMA with him because then Joe would recognize he's not an expert.
00:30:44.000And I was like, we do that all the time.
00:32:22.000Well, you know, it was a weird, a weird thing during that show was because it's a weird, I don't know, there's like weird incentives built into like all of this.
00:32:32.000Incentives are the right word because there's a lot of people that are saying things and you go, why are you saying that?
00:32:38.000Well, also, from my perspective, I was a little disappointed with it because I kind of thought, I was like, oh, this could be like a really cool thing.
00:32:44.000And it had been literally, which I don't think I'm saying anything that is like betraying confidence here, but the only thing that was ever said to me, I remember you called me and you were like, what do you think about doing this?
00:32:54.000And I think I said yes before you could finish answering the question.
00:33:30.000Like he kind of just like gave me the win in a thing that was a big show with like a, you know, a lot of people I knew were going to watch it.
00:33:38.000I mean, obviously, every time I do your show, a lot of people are going to watch it, but that was a particularly big one.
00:33:43.000And so I was kind of almost like for the first 45 minutes of it, I was kind of sitting there like, oh, I can't believe he just went this route.
00:34:04.000Like the arguing that that's not horrific.
00:34:08.000And if you're a human being and you recognize that there are human beings that are subjected to that government, just like you're subjected to ICE, you're subjected to Homeland Security.
00:34:32.000And the idea that you're responsible for October 7th, even if you're one of the people that cheered in the street, boy, don't you think you kind of have to cheer in the street if everybody else is cheering the street?
00:34:43.000If you're fucking in terror for your life and you have to like keep your safety intact, like you got to kind of go along with whatever everybody else is doing.
00:34:52.000I'm not saying that's good, but when you look at how that place is leveled, I mean, the most recent videos that I've seen were still like a few months old.
00:35:25.000And so instead, you pivot to arguing against this guy rather than against the issue.
00:35:30.000Well, I think that I can't remember if this was in the letter to America or this was in his declaration of war against America, but Osama bin Laden literally said that civilians are fair targets because you guys have elections and you vote for these politicians and they're the ones who conduct these wars that slaughter innocent Muslims.
00:35:54.000So like just saying, it's the logic of Osama bin Laden to say that civilians are responsible for what.
00:36:00.000And in Gaza, like they don't even really have a government.
00:36:15.000And so the idea that you're holding these people responsible for Hamas just doesn't make any sense.
00:36:21.000And just on a very basic human level, you just kind of go, and I'm not like an egalitarian.
00:36:27.000I'm not saying all people are equal or all cultures are equal or anything like that.
00:36:31.000But on a very basic human level, like those are real people too.
00:36:35.000And when a mother is like pulling her six-year-old dead body out of the rubble, that's the same exact experience as if your wife was pulling your six-year-old out of there.
00:36:45.000Like that same thing is happening to her.
00:36:48.000And once you even just admit that, it does just change the calculation.
00:36:52.000It changes the calculation to be like, okay, look, the onus is on you to demonstrate that this is absolutely necessary.
00:37:00.000Like there is no other option than to do it this way.
00:37:03.000And that makes defending most wars very difficult.
00:37:07.000Not all of them, you know, but most wars are very difficult to defend if you just run it through that filter of like, is there any other option other than this?
00:39:43.000But it was like, look at the difference between the lines at the airport before ICE was there and after ICE was there, and tell me that only 10 million illegal aliens got in.
00:40:51.000Well, I remember the numbers being like during the Biden administration where they'd be like, it was something like last month there were 700,000 border apprehensions.
00:41:00.000And you're like, well, geez, then how many were just floating?
00:41:03.000And you'd see those big caravans coming in and stuff.
00:41:05.000I mean, look, it's a huge, that still is a huge scandal.
00:41:10.000And as much as I have really been really criticizing Trump and the Trump administration since last summer, you know, he's done a good job in securing the border.
00:41:21.000That is the one thing that you kind of got to give him.
00:42:28.000But yeah, I mean, look, it's like, it's also a particularly, it's a profound act of treachery for a government to do that to its own country.
00:42:42.000Like to allow that and really facilitate that to happen against the will of the domestic population.
00:42:48.000Like if you were to, I've tried to look this up before.
00:42:51.000I was trying to figure this out because I did a big immigration debate last year or maybe the year before.
00:42:55.000And I was trying, you can't even get numbers on what the polling on open borders is because no one even asked the question in polling because it's like they asked like, do you think immigration policy should be less restrictive or more restrictive?
00:43:08.000Because the number of people who support open borders, it's like maybe 1% of the country supports that.
00:43:13.000It's as unified an issue as anyone could have.
00:43:15.000No, you can't just have the border wide open.
00:43:18.000And so to do that to the American people against their will, like you, you drastically change the country in a way that is not really, it's not easy to just undo.
00:43:29.000I mean, as we've seen, right, Donald Trump backed off of mass deportations almost immediately because big business doesn't want it.
00:43:36.000And then because, look, like the level of violence that you'd need to just physically deport 50 million people is going to be something that the American people just aren't going to put up with.
00:44:10.000But at the same time, you know, there is a balancing act there.
00:44:14.000And, you know, a lot of people, like a lot of right-wingers, will say, hey, look, if you're, you know, if you came here illegally, then that's a crime.
00:44:24.000But also, the supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States of America.
00:44:28.000And I've seen a ton of videos where there were masked ICE agents not even identifying themselves, going up to people, telling them that you have to answer my questions.
00:44:37.000You don't have an option to walk away, which is like not true.
00:44:40.000That was my take on it: is that you can't accept people that are masked, that don't have any paperwork, that don't have a warrant on the streets in militarized situations.
00:44:51.000Because if they're using it for this, which you agree to, that opens up the door for them to use it because you won't take your vaccine or because you did this or did that or whatever the fuck it is.
00:45:02.000If a different person gets in power, maybe they're going to use it for something you don't support.
00:45:07.000It's just not something you're supposed to accept.
00:45:10.000Something that someone told me that is, this is a very credible source that I cannot reveal what the source is.
00:45:16.000But they told me that there are people in this country, and not just a few, but many, many that are affiliated with terrorist organizations, directly affiliated, but they've applied for asylum.
00:45:32.000And because they've applied for asylum, you can't deport them until they go through the entire process.
00:46:13.000I think he's got a fair point there with suicidal empathy in terms of the idea of like that we that we cannot say on some level that it's like, no, look,
00:46:24.000we have a desire to preserve our society and we want to do what's bad.
00:46:29.000And we don't have to, out of some feeling of guilt, turn our country into something worse than what it otherwise would be.
00:46:36.000I think, and look, I'm not a big fan of Gad.
00:46:39.000He literally just, him and like Sam Harris and a few others, they literally just trash me all the time and refuse to engage on a single thing I've said.
00:46:48.000So like it'll just he calls me Wikipedia Dave on Twitter.
00:47:13.000I think it's a little bit different with the Mossad thing.
00:47:16.000But I also think that the big component that I think all of those guys are missing is that we also create more enemies with our foreign policy.
00:47:27.000And that's not to say that, like, you know, they always kind of caricature my position on this.
00:47:34.000Like, I'm not saying Islam is all peaceful and there are no problems in the Islamic world or anything like that.
00:47:39.000In fact, I don't think any religion has truly always been peaceful.
00:47:45.000But, you know, for guys like, say, like Sam Harris, who these kind of like pretend intellectuals who have spent, he spent his entire career talking about how violent and irrational the Muslims are and how you can't even draw a cartoon of Muhammad or Muslims want to do violent stuff.
00:48:25.000Like that is, you know, that is not just a political figure to Shiite Muslims.
00:48:29.000That is a, so at the same time, it's like, okay, I'm fine with saying, okay, you don't want to have suicidal empathy.
00:48:38.000My buddy Keith Knight, who's brilliant, works over at the Libertarian Institute.
00:48:42.000He had, I forget what he said, but he said something like, okay, I don't want to have suicidal empathy.
00:48:47.000Let's also not have homicidal empathy, you know?
00:48:50.000And so like, maybe it also is, like, as we were tying into that whole conversation with, no, I'm okay, thanks.
00:48:56.000With the whole thing about the kids and women in Gaza, it's like, it's also the fact that if you just view slaughtering Muslim children in the Middle East and in Northern Africa as like just an acceptable political price,
00:49:13.000you know, that's just collateral damage.
00:49:15.000And unfortunately, that happens when we pursue this policy.
00:49:18.000You're going to deal with more and more of that.
00:49:21.000And the combination of both, Joe, like the combination of having open borders, having all these people get in and continuing the war on terrorism and slaughtering people in these numbers must be the most insane combination ever.
00:49:34.000The idea that you'd be like, we're going to, you know, we're going to just make an entire generation of Muslims hate us because so many of them have seen what we've done to their countries.
00:49:44.000And also, we'll welcome all of them in with no checks and we can't get rid of them when they come here.
00:50:07.000He wanted to do like a COVID wrap-up, like to go over everything that happened, all the mistakes that were made and his position, my position, because that's where we kind of separated.
00:52:55.000We are taught, for example, to regard Gaddafi in a certain way.
00:52:59.000But if you look into what happened in his country while he was the leader, you look into the fact that every person is given a house at a certain age.
00:53:11.000You look at the fact that everybody's education and health care is free.
00:53:15.000You look at if somebody showed a particular talent for something that required further education overseas, all of the costs of that were paid for by the government.
00:53:25.000Now, these are all things put in place by the same country's leader that we're told is evil and corrupt.
00:53:52.000There was the famous clip with Hillary, which I showed a friend of mine the other day that he hadn't seen it and he couldn't believe it was real.
00:53:59.000She was on this show, and she gets unconfirmed information first that they got Gaddafi, and then she gets confirmed that he's dead.
00:54:07.000And she goes, we came, we saw he died.
00:56:28.000It goes, okay, well, then you're gonna be a target.
00:56:30.000You're gonna be target practice as long as the Iranian regime is still standing.
00:56:33.000And if you're talking about militarily occupying the country, like we did with Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that, this is a huge country with 92 million people.
00:56:42.000How many soldiers do you think you need to occupy that country?
00:57:39.000They think, by the way, Ben Shapiro used this same line called, he said, Trump finally broke Iraq war syndrome.
00:57:46.000Because they think, see, from Ben Shapiro's perspective, the illness is after you lie the American people into a war and slaughter a million people.
00:57:58.000You might look at that as the bad part, but the bad part is that these annoying Americans have this tendency to not want to do that again after that.
00:58:07.000But he claims Trump has broken Iraq war syndrome.
00:58:11.000Of course, there's really no evidence with support of the American people that that has changed at all.
00:58:16.000And, you know, George H.W. Bush was said to have defeated Vietnam war syndrome in Panama and in Iraq because they were relatively easy, you know, bloodless on the American side or very,
00:58:32.000very limited, you know, injuries and deaths.
00:58:37.000And they, you know, they weren't like quagmires that went on forever or whatever.
00:58:41.000But, of course, after the Persian Gulf War in 92, we went on to be bombing Iraq for ever since, essentially.
00:58:52.000You know, I mean, for 30 straight years after that, we were still at war with that country.
00:58:56.000I think for a million people being dead.
00:59:15.000When was the last time you answered a poll?
00:59:16.000When was the last time anybody called you up and said, Dave, first of all, when's the last time you ever picked up the phone if you didn't know who was calling?
00:59:22.000And then when you do answer, when was the last time you said yes to a poll?
00:59:25.000I don't even remember ever getting called.
00:59:27.000It has to be the dumbest of dumb people that answer those polls.
00:59:31.000So then you got to realize, out of those stupid fucking idiots, even how many of them think the war is a good idea?
01:02:06.000And so what they're doing here is that they're filtering who they consider to be MAGA and who they consider to be MAGA are the people who still say they support Donald Trump.
01:02:16.000But 100% of the people who don't support this war stopped supporting Donald Trump over it.
01:02:21.000Right, but look at this little thing on the bottom.
01:04:05.000Well, Trump himself has said, which literally this would be like considered an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory if anyone else had said it.
01:04:14.000But Donald Trump has openly talked about many times how the Edelsons give him all this money and they come by every day and all they have is another demand on behalf of Israel.
01:04:25.000Donald Trump also, very early in his political career, got in trouble with the Israel lobby and then immediately pivoted to blaming, to winning their favor back over by saying he would tear up the JCPOA,
01:04:42.000And it looks to me, you know, there's speculation aside, who knows exactly what control they have over the guy.
01:04:50.000But it looks to me that after Venezuela and when there were these big street protests and riots against the regime and Iran there, that they convinced Trump, and this is what Joe Kent, his director of counterterrorism, has said too,
01:05:05.000that they essentially convinced him that this would be the time you could do it swiftly, surgically remove the regime, and the people would rise up and overthrow it.
01:05:16.000And this is what Donald Trump said when he launched this war.
01:05:19.000He said, this is a regime change, and I'm calling on the great people of Iran to rise up.
01:06:32.000Donald Trump, when he launched this war, and there's been a whole lot of just false claims that have been made, but he said specifically that they killed 32,000 protesters.
01:06:45.000There has not been a shred of evidence presented to back up this claim.
01:07:15.000But then the CIA, at least there was a piece in the Washington, excuse me, in the Wall Street Journal where they had said, and this was like a week and a half into it, that they estimated like 6,500 or something like that.
01:07:47.000As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on January 8th and 9th alone.
01:07:53.000Two senior officials of the country's Ministry of Health told Time, indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.
01:07:58.000So many people were slaughtered by Iranian security services that Thursday and Friday it overwhelmed the state's capacity to dispose of the dead.
01:08:07.000Stocks of body bags were exhausted, the officials said, and 18-wheel semi-trailers replaced ambulances.
01:08:15.000Now, listen, all I'm saying here, man, is that you've got to be ⁇ I've just seen this movie play out a lot of times.
01:08:20.000You've got to be really careful about these accusations that are made in the run-up to a war.
01:08:24.000They're basically saying we have a source who told us this.
01:09:11.000We're in the 20s just if what they're investigating turns out to be accurate.
01:09:16.000If that's the case, but we're talking also here, Joe, about like NED-funded U.S.-based NGOs who are really around hawks, you know?
01:09:25.000And so, and I'm just saying, like, look, the claim, the claim here is that around, you know, I saw a bunch of the Zionists online when this was first coming out back in January.
01:09:34.000They were like, oh, my God, they've already killed half as many people as died in Gaza in just a couple days.
01:09:40.000And you're like, right, that's a pretty, that's a hell of a claim, right?
01:09:44.000I mean, like, if you, just from following wars all these years, if you started carpet bombing Tehran, Vietnam style, carpet bombing Tehran, after two days, that's the type of death toll you'd be looking at.
01:09:56.000Well, so the thing is, we don't, they don't have internet access to the state.
01:09:59.000Well, they shut down the internet during that period.
01:10:01.000But there were pictures that came out.
01:10:03.000All I'm saying is that if you had numbers like that, you would expect there to be some evidence that you could point to.
01:10:09.000And there's like one picture where they've pointed to like a couple dozen body bags and been like, see, look at this.
01:10:17.000I'm very skeptical of these claims when they're made right before we launch a war.
01:10:21.000But I think the other point is that at least according, and there has been some evidence of this, right?
01:10:27.000There were police stations that were burned.
01:10:29.000There were mosques that were attacked.
01:10:31.000These were not just peaceful protests.
01:10:34.000I'm not saying they don't have a right to violently rise up and overthrow their government, whatever.
01:10:38.000But all the hawks in the West were saying these people are trying to overthrow their government.
01:10:43.000Not only that, in the past, our agencies, our intelligence agencies, have engaged in nefarious practices where we have conscripted certain people to go and light things on fire and blow things up and create these events.
01:11:02.000Front page of the Jerusalem Post, they were bragging that there was Mossad within the protests.
01:11:07.000So now, look, I don't know, but also the thing is this, right?
01:11:11.000You are trying to overthrow a government, a government will kill you for doing that.
01:11:16.000And that's true about every government, including our own, including our own.
01:11:20.000If armed protesters went to try to overthrow Barack Obama's government, he would kill those people if they were actually a threat to them.
01:11:27.000Ashley Babbitt was murdered January 6th.
01:11:30.000And every single left-winger in the country went, well, that's okay.
01:13:34.000So all my point is about this, looking at this in the Iranian regime, it's just not clear.
01:13:40.000Like, what are you actually accusing them of?
01:13:43.000Are you saying that somebody was trying to overthrow the government and the government mowed them down?
01:13:48.000Are you saying that they lined up protesters and shot them all in the back of the head simply for voicing their opinion?
01:13:53.000Like, none of this is made clear, but when the war drums are beating, no one even cares to like ask these questions.
01:13:59.000It's just like, yep, they killed their own people.
01:14:01.000And then if you notice with this war, much like with Venezuela, and almost like with all of them, they just keep giving you, like, they throw like 15 justifications at it.
01:14:10.000You know, and you're like, wait, which one is the reason we're fighting this?
01:14:13.000Because I saw all of them like to play the humanitarian card and go, we're doing this, you know, for these oppressed people.
01:14:32.000Like, we're partners with some of the most brutal authoritarians in the world.
01:14:36.000And we've, and in the case of like Israel, we've been funding their destruction of Gaza for the last two and a half years.
01:14:42.000Like, it's, and, and so, like, that's not really what's motivating this here.
01:14:46.000And then, number two, Donald Trump even just the other day said he'll be partners with the new Ayatollah and run the Strait of Hormuz together.
01:16:10.000Their demands were that we stop attacking immediately, like that part they might get, that we pay them restitution for all the damage so far.
01:16:24.000Essentially, that we leave the region.
01:16:25.000I mean, they had a few other things there that were just like...
01:16:28.000And they want him to open up a Terry Blacks in Tehran.
01:16:41.000It doesn't seem like if he's not really negotiating with this guy, if that's not true, and if he's just putting this out there in the public as a negotiation ploy, what a cluster fuck.
01:16:55.000Because you're dealing with people that don't mind dying.
01:16:58.000They believe, I mean, these are very religious people.
01:18:19.000I mean, this is just too ridiculous, dude.
01:18:22.000And the thing is that a lot of people, you know, I've spent a long time at this point being against this war because this war has been telegraphed since the Bush administration wanted to do this shit.
01:18:34.000And at least for like 15 years, I've been publicly opposing this war.
01:18:41.000And one of the reasons why so many of us oppose this, and it's a shitty way to be vindicated, but is that, look, Iran is just not like any of the other opponents in the global war on terrorism.
01:19:01.000We had what the Pentagon calls escalation dominance in all of those other wars, which is all essentially like, it's just like, meaning like, if you do this, we do this.
01:19:10.000If you do that, like, we're prepared for everything.
01:19:12.000It's kind of like escalation dominance is a lot like, you know, like in jiu-jitsu, where you see really high-level guys who basically put you in a position where you can make one of two choices in either way.
01:19:22.000You know, like, okay, you can give me your back and I'll choke you, or you can push off me and I'll armbar you.
01:19:26.000And whatever option you have, I'm going to get you.
01:20:28.000You know, after 9-11, all the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, all the ones, essentially they all waved the white flag, all of them.
01:20:37.000Saddam Hussein welcomed UN inspectors in.
01:20:40.000He was trying to do anything he could to not meet the fate that he ultimately met.
01:20:44.000Gaddafi denuclearized, got rid of chemical weapons.
01:20:46.000Basharl Assad got rid of all his chemical weapons.
01:20:49.000Like they were all just like, we don't want it with you, you know.
01:20:57.000They allowed an inspections regime in to come look at their nuclear facilities, all of that.
01:21:02.000And even up to the 12-day war, when we dropped the bunker buster, and Israel bombed a whole bunch of regime targets, they still, in their response, called ahead, made sure there'd be no U.S. troops there.
01:21:15.000They hit the side of a little base there.
01:21:17.000And then they kind of went like, they gave Trump an off-ramp because they didn't want it.
01:22:45.000The people haven't been liberated, but whatever, he can claim that.
01:22:49.000This now, the problem here is that, okay, number one, Donald Trump's not really in a situation where if he just quit right now, how is he really going to say, look how wonderful this is?
01:22:59.000It's like, I don't know, dude, this cost a lot already.
01:23:02.000And it doesn't seem like there's any clear, like, what did we get out of this?
01:23:06.000Well, the only way it would work is if there was some sort of a deal with whoever the fuck is going to be the new guy in charge.
01:23:12.000And they did come to some sort of an agreement.
01:23:15.000And they did give them some compensation for all the shit we blew up.
01:25:18.000And look, I mean, it's not, again, this isn't like a conspiracy theory.
01:25:22.000The guys all tell you this in their own words.
01:25:24.000Benjamin Netanyahu was asked point blank a few months back what he thought of the Greater Israel Project.
01:25:29.000And he said, it's very near and dear to my heart.
01:25:32.000Like, this is the point of denying the Palestinians a state for all these years.
01:25:36.000You can't let the Palestinians have a state because then how are you going to take that all over someday?
01:25:40.000That's all supposed to be part of Israel.
01:25:42.000And the U.S. ambassador, the U.S. ambassador, not the Israeli ambassador, the U.S. ambassador to Israel is on record saying that God promised Iraq to Benjamin Netanyahu and that God promised Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and the West Bank and parts of Syria and all of this is greater Israel.
01:26:17.000We work on this ridiculous religious superstition that somehow when God said Israel in Genesis, he was referring to the state that was created that they named after that passage.
01:26:29.000This would literally be on the level, Joe, is if I named my son Jesus Christ and then I told you, you have to worship my son.
01:26:49.000You listen to some of those soldiers, the translation of some of those soldiers talking about what they did and even laughing about what they did.
01:27:02.000Maybe not so many of them now, but like 20, 30 years ago, you could put a video camera in front of one of these guys and ask him to tell their story.
01:27:12.000And so, you know, look, I mean, the idea here that America, after just 25 years of catastrophic failures, launching wars of choice, wars of aggression,
01:27:26.000lying the American people into it, just slaughtering millions of people and like bankrupting this country and really severely degrading the country with these wars.
01:27:35.000The idea that we would jump into another war of choice for Israel is just too like this is too crazy, man.
01:27:46.000And especially when it's the administration that really ran on and promised that we want to get out of this, out of this game of fighting stupid wars in the Middle East.
01:28:14.000Well, especially considering the fact that, well, like, even if there are some things about Donald Trump that maybe you don't like, but the other guys are saying we want to keep fighting forever wars, and this guy is saying we should stop doing that.
01:28:29.000That's enough to go, well, then he's better than you on net.
01:28:41.000But I do, I kind of view it like this.
01:28:44.000Like, and I really, I will say, maybe I'm a little biased here because I love you, but I don't think I'm being biased.
01:28:49.000I really think you played an enormous role in kind of like standing up to the progressive democratic establishment and their narrative over the last decade or so.
01:29:04.000And it's really hard to kind of overstate how crazy they were, how much of a threat to this country they were.
01:29:10.000And so for anybody who wants to give shit to anyone who voted for Donald Trump, it's like, hey, man, the alternative was the party who bragged about, first off, insane woke shit,
01:29:23.000like poisoning the minds of children in a really grotesque and abusive way.
01:29:27.000They gave us open borders, flooding the country with people.
01:29:31.000They gave us all types of COVID tyranny based on pseudoscience.
01:29:35.000They gave us the most reckless foreign policy in American history, which was this proxy war on Russia's border.
01:29:41.000And they were pretending the president wasn't senile when he clearly was.
01:29:46.000Then they, in the fourth quarter, threw up a cackling retard who was not democratically picked in any process.
01:29:52.000And so, sorry, like it, it does make sense that a lot of people went, okay, we're going to go back with this other guy.
01:29:59.000Also, there was an interesting dynamic happening in 24 where, okay, this wasn't, you know, Donald Trump, they had actually tried to throw him in jail, maybe even tried to murder him.
01:30:10.000We never really got any answers on that one.
01:30:17.000Even JD Vance, like a lot of these people who were supposedly much more non-interventionist, there was reason to hope that maybe it wouldn't end up here.
01:30:26.000But anyway, I guess my thing is that you played such a huge role in this.
01:30:30.000And I, to a lesser extent, played a role in standing up against a lot of that progressive insanity over the last 10 years.
01:30:35.000And I just feel like after 24, you know, this coalition came together where Donald Trump, for the first time ever, wins the popular vote, wins every single swing state, and really more remarkably, won the youth and the culture.
01:30:49.000Like Donald Trump went from being like the cultural pariah to being the guy like John Jones is doing the dance at the front.
01:30:56.000And it was just, it was, and that whole coalition has been destroyed over this war.
01:31:01.000And now he's going to hand the country right back over to these Democrats who we've been fighting so hard, all for what?
01:31:07.000All for a war that Netanyahu wanted against a country that, dude, by the way, the justification for the 12-day war was bullshit.
01:31:14.000They weren't trying to make nuclear weapons.
01:31:20.000But then, all, and I want to, you know, he said some nice things about me when he was on here the other day with you.
01:31:24.000So I will say some nice things about Constantine Kassen, who I, despite our disagreements, I really like that guy a lot.
01:31:31.000But he is, I could be wrong, I could be missing someone.
01:31:34.000He's the only guy I've seen who supported the 12-day war, but is really skeptical about this.
01:31:41.000And I've seen so many people, it's unbelievable, dude.
01:31:44.000Like they, they just, so like the 12-day war comes for the first 48 hours of it, they're like, dude, Israel's doing this on its own.
01:31:51.000All they want is for you to stay out of it.
01:31:54.000Then like the third day, they're like, all right, they do need some help shooting down the missiles that are coming back toward them, but whatever.
01:33:04.000Like where it just becomes like an insult thing or you know I debated Alex Behrens or it's kind of embarrassing in hindsight, but like, I don't know, it gets me really angry when the guy's calling me a Holocaust denier or something like that.
01:33:28.000I kind of have a thing where like, look, I'm really into this shit and I nerd out on it and I'm obsessed with all of this for whatever reason.
01:33:46.000And you're probably not used to hearing this type of vicious shit that like comics say to each other.
01:33:52.000But one of the things that I really appreciated about Francis and Constantin was when I went to do their show, it was just like it was genuinely a good faith conversation.
01:34:01.000And they weren't trying, they weren't trying to like win the point or get a clip that they could go, we destroyed Dave.
01:34:08.000And then once they do that, I'm like, okay, well, then I'm not trying to do that either, man.
01:34:15.000But the thing that's, I guess the thing that's really interesting about this moment is that because the kind of corporate media propaganda apparatus has been completely destroyed, and because the internet and social media and podcasts are where people go now for,
01:34:32.000you know, conversations and debates and news and all this stuff, they're kind of like, they're like, they're running without a propaganda apparatus.
01:34:41.000You know, like Israel just Israel in the last two and a half years is down like 50 points in the polls, like in terms of American approval.
01:34:51.000They've just been, it's a drastic change.
01:34:54.000Like I've never seen on any issue over the last few years.
01:34:57.000In our lifetimes, where it's been an issue that we are dealing with the consequences of the relationship.
01:36:21.000And look, one of the things I really respect about him is when I did his show, he literally starts it by going, he goes, you know, almost all these debates I see you in, like, you're kind of debating issues, and then people just debate your character.
01:36:34.000And he goes, I'm not doing that at all.
01:36:35.000I want to talk about the issues the whole time.
01:36:50.000This is what I will say about his position on this, which I think is kind of interesting.
01:36:56.000So, number one, when I was on Piers Morgan with him right after Venezuela happened, and he was his position, I don't want to mischaracterize it, but I think this is pretty accurate, was he was like, look,
01:37:10.000a lot of people are comparing Venezuela to Iraq or Libya or Syria, but like that is a different region, a different culture, a different religion.
01:37:20.000And so, really, what we should be comparing this to is other interventions in Latin America and South America.
01:37:27.000And, you know, I didn't completely agree with that.
01:37:29.000I was like, actually, I think there are some lessons you could learn from other wars that we've been in that might apply here.
01:37:36.000Hey, let's look at other interventions in Central and South America because we've got a long list of really disastrous ones.
01:37:41.000Like, if you want to look at Guatemala or Nicaragua or, you know, Cuba, Mexico, a whole bunch.
01:37:47.000But then, when this war in Iran starts, I don't see him going the equal opposite of that, going, hey, now that we're at war with Iran, we have to judge this by Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria, because you know what I'm saying?
01:38:02.000Like, that would be the flip side to the other position.
01:38:05.000The other thing is that when he's arguing with me about, because I was arguing that, you know, that the Israel lobby and the Israeli government were a huge part of why we fought the war in Iraq.
01:38:17.000And his big point that he stuck to, a lot of the Hawks stick to this, is that Ariel Sharon was actually, who was the sitting prime minister at the time, he was actually against the war in Iraq.
01:38:56.000But if you're going to say that that is evidence that Israel was not pushing us into this because the sitting prime minister at the time didn't like this war, okay, but again, then how does the current sitting prime minister of Israel feel about this war in Iran?
01:41:32.000If you're not listening to his podcast and you want a rational but hilarious take on all the fucking madness that's going on with not just this war, but the Epstein Files, his episode, The Epstein Files, I hardly ever tweet about other people's podcasts, but I hardly ever tweet.
01:41:48.000I'm like, this is one of the best podcasts about anything ever.
01:41:53.000His ability, Tim's ability to like rant, it like isn't like a hilarious rant that is laced with excellent points, but it's just hilarious the whole time.
01:42:04.000And just him going off is second to none.
01:42:29.000Best ranter that's ever walked the face of the planet.
01:42:32.000I remember when I first met Tim in New York back before he moved out to LA after that.
01:42:38.000But when I first met him in New York, and he was, I think, like he was a green stand-up.
01:42:43.000I think he hadn't been doing it for that long.
01:42:45.000But I remember just like being on podcasts with him and just being like, yo, this dude is going to be a fucking superstar.
01:42:54.000Like, it was just like his ranting, like ability, like he would go off on things where you just find yourself like, like, you almost have a moment where you forget you're on the show with him.
01:43:04.000You're like, I'm just sitting here watching that.
01:43:40.000And I said to her, How do you do this?
01:43:43.000And she says, Tim, it's Neuro's energy and focusments.
01:43:48.000And I said, but how do you do it after the guy, the husband and father of the kids, gets murdered and you're out there doing all kinds of stuff?
01:43:58.000You're doing fundraisers and you're dancing around with glitter pants.
01:44:26.000She said, yeah, Neuro Energy and Focus is powered by natural green tea, caffeine, L-thenanine for calm, focus, and vitamin B12, and B6 for I mean, whatever they're paying him, they should pay him more.
01:45:15.000He's a real good undercover, but every now and then you see it come out.
01:45:18.000Every now and then you see like, like I remember, and this is back when he was young and he was broke at the time, but Tim was always kind of a snob, even when he was broke.
01:45:27.000Like it was always kind of, and I went, I forget what it was, but I was like, I was like, oh, we could get food from this restaurant.
01:45:34.000And he goes, from there, I go, yeah, they got good food.
01:45:36.000And he goes, you think that's good food?
01:45:38.000Because he's like a real like foodie or whatever.
01:45:41.000I thought it was just like, oh, I saw it for a second.
01:45:43.000Well, he used to have money because he had money when he was selling.
01:46:56.000It's such a perfect little microcosm, though, of like, it's almost painful.
01:47:00.000Like, I'm like, guys, just, can you hire me?
01:47:03.000I mean, like, I wouldn't explain this to you.
01:47:06.000No, it wouldn't work either because they're so trained.
01:47:10.000It's like if you get a dog and that dog has been, maybe a, yeah, a cat might be a better example.
01:47:18.000Like, if you've never had a litter box in the house and the cat's been pissing all over the carpet, you are always going to have that cat piss on the carpet.
01:47:26.000If your entire life you've been spitting out nonsense from a teleprompter and now all of a sudden you have to be yourself, you've been functioning in a world of executives and producers where everybody goes over every little thing you say and do.
01:47:40.000You 100% read things you know aren't true, or at least partially actually.
01:48:04.000Is that they go, they actually go, okay.
01:48:07.000So all of these people have left, you know, watching cable news in troves.
01:48:12.000And now they, a lot of people listen to podcasts.
01:48:14.000They'll listen to you or Theo Vaughn or whoever it might be.
01:48:18.000And a huge reason, right, why people, a huge reason why you've been number one for so long now is because however anyone feels about you, you're authentic.
01:48:30.000You know, one of the biggest questions I get when people like meet me, if I do like meet and greet after shows or something, it's, what's Joe Rogan like?
01:48:38.000Is a question I get all the time because we're buddies and I've been on the show a lot a lot of times and people love you.
01:48:44.000And they'll go, what's Joe Rogan like?
01:48:45.000And I always tell them the same thing.
01:49:03.000And because you guys in the corporate media are all professional liars and have lied to the American people about the last 17 crises, you know, they don't trust you anymore.
01:49:13.000And so then their reaction to that is you go, well, what if we pretended to be podcasters?
01:49:30.000Dude, they all, this was to me, despite the fact that I, you know, and people give me shit about voting for Donald Trump and they could say, I should have known better and whatever.
01:49:39.000I was a huge critic of him in his first term and I'm a huge critic of him in his second term.
01:49:42.000But the best thing about Donald Trump winning in 24, and I did predict this right.
01:49:46.000I'm not always the best with predictions.
01:49:48.000I'm pretty good on issues, I think, but I'm not great at predictions.
01:49:59.000I remember we used to joke about, I remember coming on like a few years ago, and we would joke about how Brian Stelter would always, whenever he talked about you, he would always kind of go like the fringe Joe Rogan.
01:50:11.000Like as if he's the mainstream and you're the fringe, as if the numbers aren't readily available to all of us that we could be like, your show has like 200,000 listening and his has 20 million.
01:50:20.000So how is he the fringe and you're the mainstream?
01:51:14.000I think the woke shit and all the chaos of the fucking last four years of having a completely open border and the justifications of all these things, that's nuts too.
01:51:23.000I'm not on either buddy's side, anyone's not that much.
01:51:25.000But I think that the Democrats aren't ever going to get someone like me because I'm not with either or.
01:51:59.000But what you just said, I think is really.
01:52:01.000Well, this is something that I'm encouraged by: is that I think what you just said there, I really do believe that you speak for super majorities of the American people.
01:52:10.000And that's why, even though Donald Trump has shattered his coalition by lying us into this stupid war on behalf of a foreign country, that coalition is still ripe for someone else to pick it up and run with it.
01:52:23.000I hope Thomas Massey runs for president.
01:52:24.000I think, by the way, they're doing a big money bomb for Thomas Massey on March 30th.
01:52:28.000And I think him winning re-election in Congress is like the most important political election in the country right now because he's done nothing wrong except actually stand up for America first and for all the stuff that Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard and all these people ran on.
01:52:42.000And he's gotten the Israel lobby and the Edelsons, but I repeat myself, have been pouring millions of dollars into his race to try to unseat him for the crime of not going along with the Epstein cover-up and not going along with another stupid war and having some like fiscal sanity.
01:53:08.000Well, if that's like I don't know, like my position is always like, if you're saying, if not supporting covering up the Epstein files or not supporting a stupid war of choice, a war of aggression on behalf of Israel, means I'm not MAGA, then okay, I'm not MAGA, I don't, I'm not attached to the the, the.
01:53:26.000You know the phrase make America great again.
01:53:28.000I don't care then, but that phrase sucks.
01:53:31.000Here's the thing like, first of all, America is great, make America greater I'm down but make America great again.
01:53:39.000And then it becomes a movement of a bunch of fucking dorks, because a lot of them are dorks, a lot of them, these really weird, fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something they cling to, and there's a lot of people that are just real, genuine patriots and they're all lumped into this one group and you got to accept the dorks too.
01:53:59.000Like the concept of making America great is a great idea.
01:54:02.000But as soon as you have a fucking team and you allow anybody to join up, you don't even have tryouts for your team.
01:54:10.000So you've got a bunch of fucking dipshits that are running around spouting out opinions and you have to go along with them because they're MAGA.
01:54:17.000And then you've got bots online that are probably from fucking Indonesia or Russia or wherever.
01:54:23.000And they're pretending they're MAGA and they're saying crazy shit.
01:54:44.000But when they get in a group, man, they're the worst things in the world.
01:54:47.000And that's why it should be about the issues.
01:54:51.000It should be about your principles and what you believe in.
01:54:54.000And you should be like, look, I've said many nice things about Tulsi Gabbard over the years, and I was extremely critical of her since last summer into now, because I think she's lying us into a war, which is the war that she was always opposed to.
01:55:21.000So last summer, so Tulsi Gabbard had given her, as the Director of National Intelligence does every year, they give their annual threat assessment.
01:55:29.000And then she testified before Congress about it.
01:55:31.000And she, it was very clear in her annual threat assessment that Iran was not attempting to build nuclear weapons, that they had not yet made the political decision to attempt to build nuclear weapons, let alone like are actually going for it.
01:55:46.000And she testified before Congress saying the same thing.
01:55:50.000And then after negotiating, while they were negotiating, Israel sneak attacks them.
01:55:55.000Then she had some post where she goes, Iran could be weeks or months away from nuclear weapons, which was total bullshit.
01:56:03.000It made absolutely no sense of the money.
01:56:10.000So if they're enriching uranium up to 60% and they just have to enrich it further for the ability to use it in nuclear weapons, that is a couple weeks away.
01:56:19.000No, but not before it would be to build a bomb and to make it deliverable.
01:56:24.000I think all the experts say at least a couple years.
01:56:26.000But the point, aside from that, is that at the time, and this is over now, but at the time, Iran was still members of the JCPOA.
01:57:30.000And then I think there were a couple Israeli attacks, and then they went up to enriching at 60%.
01:57:34.000But so the reason we knew they were enriching up to 60% is because they were still members of the JCPOA with an inspections regime who was going in there and saying they're enriching up to 60%.
01:59:11.000And whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people, and our country.
01:59:59.000But it was, but it is avoidably actually correct.
02:00:03.000And if you're in a position like she's in, where you've got that guy breathing down your neck and you're forced to make a statement, you've got to tread very carefully on this tight rope that you're walking.
02:01:29.000If ultimately it is his responsibility to determine what's an imminent threat and what is not, I would imagine that she gets access to most of the same classified information that he does as the director of national intelligence.
02:02:00.000And also in his first term, I'll never forget this fucking conversation that he had with Steve Hilton because I think it was one of the first times since I remember where I've seen a president say, and Steve Hilton, by the way, I've been friends with him for 12 or 13 years.
02:02:13.000Met him and his family in Maui on the beach when my daughter's really young and his kids are really young.
02:03:09.000They all want me to be in war all the time.
02:03:11.000If it was up to them, we'd always be at war.
02:03:13.000And I do, you know, now, look, that was great.
02:03:16.000I thought actually the one to me that was even crazier was if you remember when Bill O'Reilly was interviewing him and he's talking about Vladimir Putin.
02:03:24.000And he goes, he's like, oh, well, you won't, you know, at the time, Donald Trump, which he had run on, he was trying, he was saying we should have détente with Russia.
02:03:31.000He goes, like, why do we, you know, we have all the nuclear weapons.
02:03:34.000Yeah, he goes, he goes, Putin's a killer.
02:03:36.000You want to have a detente with a killer?
02:03:37.000And he goes, we got a lot of killers too.
02:03:40.000And then he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean we got a lot of killers too?
02:03:58.000Well, I think this is kind of, I think, one of the main reasons why the establishment revolted against Trump the way they did.
02:04:06.000There's something very scary to the powers that be about a guy who, like, by his very nature, like, I don't even think he's capable of not letting things slip.
02:04:21.000And that, you know, was a big thing that people really didn't like about him.
02:04:25.000Very interesting to me is that so many of the never Trumpers have come to define his presidency.
02:04:34.000Like if you, if you remember back in 2016, the war hawk kind of Israel firster Republican crowd, the neocons and all them, they hated Donald Trump, hated him with a passion.
02:05:00.000And now they are the biggest Trump supporters ever, as kind of he's blown up the coalition that got him elected.
02:05:08.000So it's kind of interesting that they all, you know, you know, but again, tell those guys to all stay off Twitter.
02:05:16.000There's not one thing that they ever say that makes them look better.
02:05:19.000They get in these silly fucking, they just feel like they're going to make some stupid fucking statement and then refute a couple of people and don't understand the crowd reaction when you've got thousands of people tweeting against you now.
02:05:34.000Thousands just attacking you, destroying you, posting memes, posting videos.
02:06:24.000They busted this fucking warehouse had cell phones all rigged up for YouTube views where people would just hire a company and say, hey, you know, part of the problems, I get enough views.
02:06:39.000I'd really like to blow the fuck up and get to number one.
02:06:42.000And you hire them and they can get views.
02:09:35.000There was a guy, I can't remember his name, but just like the other day, some guy, he works for Fox News, and he came out and had a whole post about me.
02:09:44.000And he goes, he goes, Dave Smith's account is clearly botted by foreign.
02:09:49.000And I'm almost like when he said that, I was almost kind of like, there's a weird thing.
02:09:53.000Like, I know I've never paid for anything, but like, I don't know, you know what I mean?
02:09:58.000Like what someone else might have done or something like that.
02:10:00.000But I asked him, but I replied to him and I go, wait, what evidence do you have of this?
02:10:05.000And then his post was that he said, because I had 900,000 followers on Twitter, but I'm playing Laugh Boston this weekend.
02:10:33.000But I was like, look, man, I sold out all the shows last year, hoping to do the same this year.
02:10:37.000But I go, that is any, like, I just know the industry of stand-up comedy pretty well.
02:10:43.000And I was like, anybody who you're saying would be selling more than that, so what, selling out big theaters or selling out a stadium or something like that?
02:10:49.000All the people who do that have more followers than me.
02:10:52.000So like, he's not even right about the ratio of it or whatever.
02:10:57.000But then I kind of like, I grilled him on it a bit more because, listen, I'm kind of like you, like when you were talking about suing CNN back in the day for slandering you, like, I'm never actually going to do it, but I don't mind saying it.
02:11:58.000If you look at, you know, we brought up this up a million times, but there was an FBI, former FBI analyst who analyzed Twitter before the purchase, and it was his take that as much as 80% might be artificial.
02:12:11.000Now, this is back then, before Elon purchased it.
02:12:14.000I think they've taken some steps to try to ensure one of the things is you have to, you could go to the person's page.
02:12:22.000You could see what country they're posting from.
02:13:11.000That is an accurate representation of people.
02:13:14.000It's not good, but it's also accurate.
02:13:17.000And the only way that's going to change is if the other voices are more compelling.
02:13:22.000And at least now they have an opportunity to do that.
02:13:25.000Yeah, well, and you have to kind of engage in this.
02:13:28.000And I'm not saying you have to be on Twitter or something like that, but I'm just saying, like, if you want to, you know, I would love very much to get to a place where like, you'd be like, hey, let's all agree that we're not on board with the bigotry stuff.
02:13:42.000And I mean this, like, whether it's against white men or whether it's against black men or whether it's against Jews or whether it's against Muslims or whatever.
02:14:14.000I don't know if you saw this, but Ben Shapiro had, he made this video about like, about Piers Morgan and like going at him over having me on the show.
02:14:50.000He goes, no, because you're like so, he said, because I don't debate such intellectually dishonest people or something like that, which I thought was a weird criticism of me.
02:15:00.000Like, you could say I'm wrong, but I do believe the shit I say.
02:15:03.000Yeah, I don't think you're in the, I don't think in any demonstration of any, I don't think there's a single moment that I could point to that I think that you've been intellectually dishonest.
02:15:14.000I think that is like factually incorrect.
02:16:20.000And the thing about guys like that is that, particularly with Ben Shapiro, for the last two and a half years, his number one issue, Israel, has been the number one topic of conversation.
02:16:31.000And in that time, Israel's support has been bleeding.
02:16:35.000I mean, just like to a level you couldn't have imagined.
02:16:37.000You couldn't have imagined two and a half years ago to go, this will be a pro-Palestinian country.
02:17:14.000Anyway, so while you're smearing everybody who's a critic of Israel, you're not willing to like, you, listen, there are some people who don't debate, but he branded himself as the debate guy.
02:17:32.000If you're saying that this is the reason why you won't do it, that sounds crazy because wouldn't you want to debate someone who's intellectually dishonest?
02:17:38.000Because it would be so easy to refute them with facts.
02:17:52.000Well, that was kind of my thing with the Douglas Murray thing, too, where it was like at a certain point, you're like, dude, you can't just say you're an expert and I'm not an expert.
02:18:11.000And you could see the tremor in his eyes, like, oh, shit.
02:18:14.000Like, they don't want to give up that ground because they're playing a very different game.
02:18:17.000And the game is not, let's be intellectually honest about what we think is going on and what we think is good and bad about what's going on versus I'm trying to win.
02:18:57.000This Rod Rousey card, they got Francis fighting Philip Linz.
02:19:01.000Philip Linz, who was a light heavyweight in the UFC, and the UFC cut him, and he's fighting the scariest heavyweight who's ever walked the face of the earth.
02:19:17.000He was terrifying when he was on the sauce.
02:19:20.000Yes, but even Francis, Francis was a thing where Francis almost has a thing where it just seems like you have to fight a perfect against him.
02:19:32.000Which Stipe Miocic did their first fight.
02:20:30.000A guy that's that much of a destroyer that learns how to take backs and strangle people too and control you from the back and blast you unconscious like he did with that dude in the PFL in his last fight took his back and just blasted him into the netherworld.
02:22:35.000It's not a bad fight in that sense, but it's like you're going up against a guy with a chip on his shoulder that they're paying $20 million.
02:22:42.000He's the lineal, I don't know what they're paying him.
02:23:51.000Yeah, but when he's in the UFC, he's going to be a fucking problem.
02:23:56.000Olympic gold medalist, elite wrestler, moves like a cat, 250 pounds, young, super dedicated, and just recently learned striking and is fucking people up with his hands.
02:25:31.000I just saw one of his recent fights where He's finishing a double leg before he realized he knocked the guy out, it seemed like he KOs him with a left hook, and he's so fast that as the guy's collapsing on the way down, he shoots a double, connects,
02:25:45.000takes him to the ground while he's unconscious.
02:25:47.000So, before the guy has a chance to drop, that's how fast he is.
02:25:51.000He's already on him, taking him down, and pounds him out while he's already unconscious.
02:28:06.000And I apparently, according to this orthopedic surgeon that I went to back in the day, before I realized that stem cells could fix it, this guy was convincing me that I had to have surgery.
02:28:17.000And one of the things he said, you know that your shoulder's been dislocated.
02:28:26.000I'm just going to sit down and talk about how many times I've been camorrid, how many times I've been fucking arm blocked, how many times I've been caught in a triangle, how many times, you know, posting on the ground, I've jostled my shoulder.
02:28:38.000The good news is there have been no fracture or ligament injury.
02:30:00.000So you tell me I just get everyone for free now?
02:30:03.000I just don't have to order pay-per-views anymore.
02:30:05.000And there's just something about that.
02:30:06.000Now, I'm not saying whether this is Paramount's mistake or the UFC's mistake or whatever, but just like the basics of business to me go, so you just had a loyal customer who's very happy to pay for every pay-per-view.
02:30:22.000Like this just on some level, now I understand it's because Paramount gave them a whole bunch of money, but on some level, I go, number one, I go, but how is this good for business if the customer no longer has to pay for a thing that I was happily paying for?
02:30:36.000First of all, Paramount, the idea of doing this and investing $7 billion into the UFC over the next few years, the positive that they're going to get from that with loyal new customers is massive.
02:30:53.000So it's introducing it to a whole new audience.
02:30:55.000If you're a loyal pay-per-view buyer, if you spend, what is it, 70 bucks for a pay-per-view?
02:33:19.000And then you're going to get this huge influx of people that, you know, if you're on a budget, you're not going to subscribe to Paramount Plus.
02:33:52.000I guess it's just in some ways, I guess, and I don't really have much of a mind for business, but in some ways, there's just a thing where it's like, we've always done it this way.
02:34:32.000Go eventually watch Rose Nama Yunis versus Carlos Barza.
02:34:36.000There's been some fights back in the day that just weren't great.
02:34:39.000And there's been cards that even though they look good on paper, in reality, they weren't so fun.
02:34:46.000Yeah, but I also, I'm with you because I remember you used to say this back in the day all the time, but I am like a purist fan in MMA in the sense that like all of that is like, I don't care.
02:39:45.000But then again, when you are dealing with special talents and great, great fighters like Justin, who this is probably his last opportunity to fight for the title.
02:39:55.000I want that under the perfect conditions.
02:39:57.000I want that to be in an arena where it's 72 degrees and air-conditioned.
02:40:10.000Tents with mats on them and these guys are going to be slipping around in puddles of sweat.
02:40:14.000Shadow boxing in the situation room before you come out.
02:40:17.000Who's going to slip on sweat and blow their ACL out?
02:40:20.000You know, I mean, if you ever done striking on mats when a bunch of dudes have been training, like in a class, it's so fucking slippery, man.
02:40:29.000If it's that hot, it's going to, unless they have these mats and where they're getting set up in air-conditioned buildings somewhere.
02:40:43.000It's just, I don't like, I like the idea that it's like this big celebration of the UFC, that the president loves the UFC so much, he wants to do it at the White House.
02:40:54.000But in practice, I don't like it at all because you've got two world titles.
02:40:59.000You know, you've got the interim heavyweight world title, and then you've got this world title with Justin and Ilya at 55.
02:49:50.000I think that could be up to the judge's discretion upon view of the replay.
02:49:54.000Yeah, well, the thing is that, and we were talking about this last night, if you so if you land a nutshot and it's it's accidental, as it almost always is, you know what I mean?
02:50:05.000You're trying to throw an inside leg kick and it's a little close.
02:51:05.000There are some fucking wild things that don't get called for whatever.
02:51:08.000Don't you think that's a little bit of the corrupt referees?
02:51:11.000I'm not saying all of them, but that is one thing that's been 100% proven is that referees do get paid off in order to influence gambling lines.
02:51:20.000Yeah, there was that one referee who confirmed that it was the Sacramento Kings versus the Lakers, which was like a series that was like notoriously like everyone was like, yo, it was crazy.
02:51:34.000They didn't call any of these fouls on the Lakers and they called all these fouls.
02:51:37.000And then a ref came out and was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's what we were.
02:51:39.000And it does kind of make sense because it was the Shaq and Kobe Lakers.
02:51:44.000You got to get them in the finals, dude.