The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2526 - JD Vance

00:00:02.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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

00:00:12.000 So, last time we talked, last time I saw you, we were at a cage fight at the White House.

00:00:18.000 That's right.

00:00:21.000 That's one of the craziest experiences of my life.

00:00:24.000 It must have been one of the craziest experiences of your life.

00:00:26.000 Oh, yeah, it took me like two weeks afterwards to recover.

00:00:28.000 Just to go, did that actually happen?

00:00:32.000 It seems so insane.

00:00:34.000 Okay.

00:00:34.000 The most insane part of it, which I guess was before you got there, to me at least, is you come into work every day in the White House, right?

00:00:42.000 I have an office in the West Wing.

00:00:44.000 There's the Oval Office in the West Wing.

00:00:46.000 You look out the window, and as this eight story complex was growing up, it was just the most unbelievable thing.

00:00:55.000 It's like the South Lawn of the White House, but you've got the eighth wonder in the world being built up around it.

00:01:00.000 Every day, I'd look at it and be like, It would take me a couple seconds to be like, what the hell is going on?

00:01:06.000 And I'd be like, oh, yeah, it's UFC.

00:01:07.000 It's UFC coming in a couple weeks.

00:01:09.000 The whole thing was surreal.

00:01:10.000 First of all, it was crazy that the weather just went around us.

00:01:15.000 Like there was a real moment where the fights would have been postponed until 10 30 p.m. to start.

00:01:22.000 Correct.

00:01:22.000 And last minute, the storm just diverted.

00:01:27.000 That's right.

00:01:28.000 Well, and, you know, this book that I have that I guess we'll talk about a little bit, but the book tour started the next day.

00:01:36.000 So, I was flying to New York the next day to talk about it.

00:01:39.000 And all I could think about is every time we got the update from White House weather, oh, it might not start until 10 30. 0.96

00:01:45.000 I was thinking to myself, holy shit, that means I'm going to go to bed at like 4 a.m. 0.96

00:01:48.000 I'm going to look like a total crazy person when I try to go talk about this book. 0.97

00:01:54.000 But yeah, amazingly, it did work out.

00:01:57.000 Honestly, it actually helped a little bit because, as you know, it was hot as hell out there.

00:02:01.000 Yeah.

00:02:01.000 And it was super humid, you know, mid June in D.C.

00:02:04.000 And I think the weather actually helped cool it down a little bit because by about 10 o'clock or so, I was not thinking it's hot as hell out here anymore.

00:02:15.000 Yeah, it wasn't too bad, but I talked to Justin Gaetje about it, and he said it was a problem when he was fighting.

00:02:20.000 He said the air was very thick.

00:02:22.000 Like right after the first round, he was like, boy, this is rough.

00:02:27.000 Because that hot, humid air, and you know, it's fine walking around.

00:02:32.000 I mean, it's okay walking around.

00:02:34.000 It still feels, it is a swamp, right?

00:02:36.000 That's why people call it the swamp.

00:02:37.000 So, you know, that's obviously June 14th.

00:02:39.000 That's the Prince.

00:02:40.000 That's not why they call it the swamp.

00:02:41.000 That's one of the reasons why they call it the swamp.

00:02:43.000 They call it the swamp because of my colleagues, too. 1.00

00:02:46.000 Because it's filled with mud and water and gunk and shit and swamp monsters. 1.00

00:02:51.000 Oh, man. 1.00

00:02:52.000 So that's June 14th.

00:02:54.000 So that's the president's birthday.

00:02:55.000 That's also my 12th wedding anniversary.

00:02:58.000 Oh, wow.

00:02:59.000 And my wife, so that's the one thing.

00:03:02.000 Like, if somebody runs in here, it's because my wife's going into labor because she's like 39 weeks pregnant.

00:03:06.000 But I remember we go out to dinner like right before the UFC fight.

00:03:12.000 And we're, of course, checking the weather report to figure out what's going on.

00:03:15.000 And, you know, my wife normally likes to come to the cool stuff of being vice president.

00:03:19.000 That was the one where she was like, it's hot. 1.00

00:03:22.000 I'm super pregnant and I'm not going to sit out there for six hours.

00:03:26.000 So, yeah, I couldn't imagine.

00:03:27.000 Also, it was just there was so much chaos and the potential for real chaos was always there.

00:03:35.000 First of all, you have the ellipse.

00:03:36.000 So the ellipse has what, 85,000 people outside?

00:03:40.000 That's right.

00:03:42.000 And for people that are watching at home, like we could hear them.

00:03:44.000 Like when the fights, when something would happen.

00:03:47.000 In like kind of a delayed way, right?

00:03:49.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:50.000 You hear the cheers from the people that were near, so it was like 3,000 plus people tightly close to the octagon.

00:03:56.000 And then you had 85,000 people in the, yeah.

00:04:00.000 Yeah.

00:04:02.000 In the background, it was very eerie.

00:04:04.000 I actually loved that.

00:04:04.000 Yeah.

00:04:05.000 Like, I loved the delay reaction to where, you know, somebody get a good punch in or, you know, you get a takedown and then it was almost like the wave.

00:04:14.000 Yeah.

00:04:14.000 Because there was the initial center of it and then the people outside of it.

00:04:18.000 It was pretty sick.

00:04:19.000 It was very cool.

00:04:20.000 I think Dana said not once in a lifetime or not once in a generation or once in a lifetime experience.

00:04:26.000 Yeah.

00:04:27.000 I mean, it's once ever.

00:04:28.000 Yeah.

00:04:28.000 I don't see any other president.

00:04:30.000 I mean, if you become president, you're not going to do that, right?

00:04:33.000 Yeah.

00:04:33.000 I don't know, man.

00:04:34.000 I didn't want to do that.

00:04:35.000 It's actually very cool.

00:04:36.000 It's a very cool thing.

00:04:37.000 It was very cool.

00:04:38.000 Get it over with, do it once.

00:04:40.000 It was the only time in the history of the sport where there's been seven stoppages, seven knockouts.

00:04:45.000 Like every single fight was a knockout.

00:04:47.000 Oh, I didn't realize that.

00:04:48.000 Yeah, every single fight.

00:04:49.000 Okay.

00:04:50.000 The thing is, like, we've had seven knockouts and a card.

00:04:53.000 I think this last weekend we had 10 stoppages.

00:04:56.000 But that was different because it was like 14 fights.

00:05:01.000 That's right.

00:05:01.000 It was all fights.

00:05:02.000 Every single fight was a knockout.

00:05:04.000 So the last fight, when did you realize that was over?

00:05:07.000 Yeah.

00:05:07.000 With Connor?

00:05:10.000 When he fell down the second time, I was like, oh, this is not good.

00:05:13.000 The first time, I thought he just slipped.

00:05:15.000 It's hard to tell.

00:05:16.000 It's wild.

00:05:17.000 It's in the moment.

00:05:18.000 I thought he slipped.

00:05:19.000 And then when he got up and he threw a kick again, I'm like, oh, I don't like how his leg just gave out.

00:05:24.000 That didn't seem like it.

00:05:26.000 I'm still hoping he's just slipping.

00:05:28.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:05:29.000 I'm hoping he's just freaking out because he hasn't been in the octagon in five years.

00:05:32.000 And then he started moving around and he, like, grabbed his knee and buckled.

00:05:37.000 And there was some conversation.

00:05:37.000 Okay.

00:05:38.000 I never noticed that.

00:05:39.000 Yeah, there was some conversation going on between him and Max Holloway, and I was like, you know, Max is saying he can't fight, like something's wrong, and he's saying, Fight me.

00:05:48.000 He's like, Get up.

00:05:49.000 And so he lets him up, and then his knee buckles, and then the referee stops the fight.

00:05:53.000 Yeah.

00:05:54.000 Yeah.

00:05:55.000 It's always so the very last fight where the ref tried to call it at the end of the third round, and then because he was saying that there was a concussion issue, I mean, I couldn't tell what was going on.

00:06:08.000 This is the Ilya Taporia fight?

00:06:09.000 The Justin Gauche fight at the White House?

00:06:11.000 The Tiberio Justin Gauche fight.

00:06:12.000 No, he couldn't see.

00:06:13.000 Okay.

00:06:14.000 He was saying he couldn't see well.

00:06:16.000 Something was wrong with his right eye.

00:06:17.000 Well, I mean, it looks like his whole face was puffed up, so he couldn't see anything.

00:06:21.000 But, okay, so I thought it was a concussion thing, but it was just because of his vision.

00:06:24.000 No, they never do that.

00:06:26.000 I mean, the concussion thing would only be if someone had been battered.

00:06:31.000 There's a lot of times where fighters are fighting with concussions.

00:06:33.000 It happens all the time.

00:06:33.000 Yeah.

00:06:34.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:06:35.000 You get dropped in the first round, you probably have a concussion.

00:06:37.000 Yeah.

00:06:37.000 You get back up, you keep fighting, you're fighting on instincts.

00:06:39.000 There's been many times where fighters.

00:06:42.000 Wake up in like the fourth round.

00:06:44.000 And they've fought three rounds and they don't remember it at all.

00:06:44.000 Sure.

00:06:48.000 Oh, my God.

00:06:49.000 That's pretty crazy.

00:06:50.000 Not the best way to make a living.

00:06:52.000 Not the best way to make a living, man.

00:06:54.000 Yeah, no. 0.98

00:06:55.000 So we saw Gaichi at the White House a couple of weeks ago.

00:06:58.000 Yeah, I saw that.

00:06:59.000 I asked him, I was like, so are you done fighting?

00:07:01.000 And he kind of hesitated a little bit.

00:07:03.000 And then I think it was his mom was in the Oval Office with him.

00:07:05.000 She's like, yes.

00:07:07.000 Yeah, but, you know, if they offer him some life changing money for one more fight after that performance, I have a feeling he'll.

00:07:16.000 Take it.

00:07:17.000 Like, what is what could he fetch for his next fight?

00:07:20.000 Like, 50 more?

00:07:21.000 It's a good question.

00:07:23.000 You know, I don't know what his contract is.

00:07:25.000 I don't know how it works.

00:07:26.000 I don't know what the most anyone's ever.

00:07:27.000 I try not to pay attention to that stuff because I'm not on the business end of the sport.

00:07:33.000 It can kind of color your perception a little bit.

00:07:35.000 It can.

00:07:35.000 It's also, I mean, I want them to get paid the most amount possible.

00:07:40.000 That's my perspective.

00:07:42.000 Yeah.

00:07:42.000 But what I'm, my job is just to analyze and to see what's going on and to.

00:07:48.000 Commentate and try to give color and life to what's happening inside the octagon.

00:07:52.000 And I don't, I try not to dwell too much on the money.

00:07:55.000 I just want them to get paid a lot.

00:07:57.000 I want him to be able to retire and never have to do anything ever again.

00:07:57.000 Yeah.

00:08:00.000 Sure.

00:08:01.000 I don't know if Justin could do that.

00:08:02.000 What's crazy about it to me is just how much the sport has replaced boxing.

00:08:08.000 And, like, there's still obviously boxing is still a big deal and fighters still get paid a lot of money.

00:08:13.000 But, like, I remember when I was, I don't know, in high school, I feel like people would get really excited about the big heavyweight title bout.

00:08:23.000 Now it's the UFC thing.

00:08:24.000 Yeah.

00:08:25.000 So, culturally, it's like UFC has taken over boxing.

00:08:28.000 And I don't, I mean, I don't know how or why that happened.

00:08:31.000 Like, I don't know if it's just good marketing or if it's just the fights are so much more real and intense.

00:08:35.000 Like, I, but it's, it is a crazy shift that's happened in 20 years.

00:08:39.000 Well, I've had some, I had some friends this past weekend that manage fighters.

00:08:43.000 My friend Josh Dubin and a few other friends that actually manage boxers come to the UFC.

00:08:48.000 And they were all like, oh my God, this is so much better than a boxing promotion.

00:08:51.000 Yeah.

00:08:52.000 Because you, all the fights are exciting.

00:08:54.000 With boxing, most people are just there for the main event.

00:08:57.000 And a lot of people don't even stroll in until like 15 minutes before the main event.

00:09:01.000 Sure.

00:09:02.000 Like all the famous people that sit in the front row.

00:09:04.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:09:05.000 In the UFC, that place is packed for the future.

00:09:08.000 You know, five, six, seven fights in.

00:09:10.000 You know, and there's 14 fights in the night, and all of them are amazing.

00:09:10.000 Yeah.

00:09:14.000 It's like in the beginning, it's usually like half full, depending on where you are.

00:09:20.000 If you're in a place like Salt Lake City, it's pretty packed right away because they only get like one event every year or so.

00:09:26.000 But it's just a more exciting sport.

00:09:28.000 There's more ways to win, it's more dynamic, more things happen.

00:09:32.000 And there's more stars.

00:09:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:09:33.000 There's so many stars in the UFC.

00:09:35.000 So I'd never seen a fight live before.

00:09:35.000 Yeah.

00:09:37.000 Like, I've watched them on TV, but I'd never been there live.

00:09:39.000 So kind of crazy that it's literally in the South Lawn of the White House.

00:09:42.000 But the thing that I found completely shocking about it was like, I would think those arm bar takedowns are just done.

00:09:52.000 Like, that's it.

00:09:53.000 You're over.

00:09:54.000 But there were a couple of times where somebody had another person's arm.

00:09:58.000 Yeah, that was Josh Hoka and Derek Lewis.

00:10:01.000 Bless you. 0.99

00:10:02.000 And it's like, holy shit. 1.00

00:10:05.000 You're going to have your arm broken off. 1.00

00:10:05.000 Yeah, he just. 1.00

00:10:07.000 And yet he didn't.

00:10:08.000 He wasn't doing it right.

00:10:09.000 Okay.

00:10:10.000 Josh Hokan is a great wrestler.

00:10:12.000 Yeah.

00:10:13.000 And he's an excellent fighter, but he's not really a submission specialist.

00:10:16.000 I mean, he did get the arm bar, but he didn't do it right.

00:10:19.000 He was basically like pulling on.

00:10:19.000 Okay.

00:10:21.000 You have to elevate your hips and you have to create space so that the arm is bending back this way.

00:10:27.000 His arm is essentially flat to his chest, which is not what you want.

00:10:27.000 Yeah.

00:10:31.000 What you want is a back arch like this, where you see how it is right there?

00:10:36.000 So what he wants to do here, what he should do.

00:10:36.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:39.000 Instead of having his hips down, his knees up, what you're supposed to do is heavy leg curls with the leg and elevate the hips up and pull it way back.

00:10:47.000 So he'd almost be bridging.

00:10:48.000 He would have bend it.

00:10:49.000 He would be on the top of his shoulders and bridging, and then he would have broken his arm.

00:10:53.000 The other option is you pull it off to the side like this.

00:10:57.000 Yeah.

00:10:58.000 And you put it to the side of your hip, and you can break it that way.

00:11:01.000 Okay.

00:11:02.000 But it's just bad technique.

00:11:03.000 Yeah.

00:11:04.000 So watching it.

00:11:04.000 Okay.

00:11:05.000 No offense, Josh.

00:11:06.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:06.000 Watching it, I didn't realize that.

00:11:08.000 I just could not believe that dude held out for like three.

00:11:11.000 30 seconds was that more shocking, or when he said Michelle Obama is a man?

00:11:15.000 Which one was more shocking?

00:11:16.000 Uh, definitely the arm bar part.

00:11:20.000 Man, I work in politics, people say crazy stuff all the time.

00:11:24.000 Well, he says that every fight, does he?

00:11:27.000 Yeah, yeah, he said that the last time I interviewed him.

00:11:30.000 Oh man, well, it's a taste, he's like a pro wrestling character, like people lost their minds about it.

00:11:36.000 I know, lost their minds about it to the point where again, I had the view either the next day.

00:11:42.000 Or the day after to sort of promote this book.

00:11:44.000 That must be fun.

00:11:45.000 It was crazy.

00:11:46.000 It was harder than anything I've done in politics.

00:11:48.000 But to the point where all of my comms people, the thing they were most worried about was they're going to ask you about Michelle Obama being called a man.

00:11:59.000 What are you going to say about it?

00:12:01.000 And I was like, what an amped up fighter told a joke after a fight, said something after a fight, and that's actually national news.

00:12:08.000 I'm still surprised.

00:12:10.000 I've been in politics now for three, four years. 0.99

00:12:12.000 I'm still shocked the shit that people get really fired up about. 0.99

00:12:15.000 Well, I kind of understand it because it's at the White House. 1.00

00:12:19.000 First of all, A cage fight at the White House is crazy already.

00:12:22.000 I mean, if he said Michelle Obama's a man at the T Mobile Arena in Vegas, it's like, okay.

00:12:26.000 It's less of a story.

00:12:28.000 What he is, is he's a very good fighter, first of all.

00:12:32.000 But sometimes it's not enough to get attention.

00:12:35.000 And so what Josh has done is created this persona, like this pro wrestling bad guy persona.

00:12:40.000 When you talk to him off stage, he's like very normal, very smart guy.

00:12:44.000 It's just like he's decided, like, look, I want to maximize the amount of eyeballs that see me, and I'm going to create this crazy persona.

00:12:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:12:51.000 He comes out to.

00:12:52.000 The Hulk Hogan song, I'm a Real American.

00:12:56.000 He has sunglasses on, American flag, bandana.

00:12:56.000 That's right.

00:13:00.000 It's, you know, he's.

00:13:02.000 I mean, I love the presentation.

00:13:04.000 I love the presentation, but again, I like.

00:13:07.000 Not the best thing to say at the White House.

00:13:09.000 Michelle Obama's a man is not the best thing to say.

00:13:11.000 Fair, but the reaction to it to me was still totally disproportionate.

00:13:15.000 Yeah, of course.

00:13:16.000 Dude, people say stuff all the time.

00:13:18.000 And what I.

00:13:20.000 Okay.

00:13:22.000 I work in a business where obviously people make life and death decisions all the time.

00:13:27.000 And I'm always a little bit caught off guard by the culture that just overreacts when clearly the thing that Josh is trying to get is the overreaction in the first place.

00:13:38.000 Right.

00:13:39.000 So you give him exactly what he wants.

00:13:41.000 And like the worst you could say is, oh, that was an offensive comment, and you get on with the rest of your life.

00:13:46.000 Like that's the worst that you could say.

00:13:47.000 The people who really flip out about it and kind of lose their minds, I just don't understand that.

00:13:54.000 Well, first of all, I think a lot of it is there is an economy that is essentially based on getting reactions.

00:14:01.000 Correct.

00:14:02.000 And there's a lot of people that are just, for lack of a better term, they're not real.

00:14:09.000 Their reactions are performative.

00:14:12.000 Like a lot of what they're doing is just trying to comment on things and get clicks and likes and views.

00:14:21.000 And social media has ruined discourse in a lot of ways.

00:14:24.000 Yeah.

00:14:24.000 Because people, it has.

00:14:26.000 People are not having like real conversations about things.

00:14:29.000 They're reacting to things on Instagram and Twitter.

00:14:32.000 And, you know, they're just, They look at an opportunity like that, like, oh, I found a gold nugget.

00:14:32.000 Yes.

00:14:39.000 Like, this is going to give me money or this is going to give me attention.

00:14:39.000 Yeah.

00:14:42.000 It's going to get, oh, I can't wait to have a take on that.

00:14:45.000 Well, that's exactly right.

00:14:47.000 So, but okay.

00:14:48.000 So, my response to that is so many things is like, oh, he was being funny.

00:14:52.000 He was being outrageous.

00:14:52.000 And I just move on with my life.

00:14:54.000 What I find very interesting is the people who say, you know, oh, that was a joke.

00:14:59.000 Like, when Kill Tony, do you remember he told like the joke heard around the world in Madison Square during the 2024 election?

00:15:05.000 I remember getting into an argument with somebody about this.

00:15:07.000 I may have even been like in an interview, but I don't remember.

00:15:12.000 It could have been private, too.

00:15:13.000 Anyway, I'm like, he told a joke.

00:15:16.000 And the person's response is, well, it's not a very funny joke.

00:15:19.000 And my response to that is, you know what happens when somebody tells me a joke that's not funny?

00:15:24.000 I don't laugh and then I move on with my life.

00:15:27.000 This whole industry around outrage, especially getting outraged around humor, I think is actually really hurting the country.

00:15:36.000 Well, in that case, first of all, I told Tony a long time ago that joke was going to get him stabbed.

00:15:42.000 I really did.

00:15:43.000 He even jokes around about it on stage.

00:15:45.000 He talks about me telling him, that's the one, dude. 0.99

00:15:48.000 That's the one that's going to get you stabbed. 0.58

00:15:51.000 Any good joke, at least, is going to run you some risk of being stabbed. 0.96

00:15:54.000 Well, certainly a racial joke. 1.00

00:15:56.000 And that joke being about Puerto Rico, by the way, no one takes a joke better than Puerto Ricans.

00:16:02.000 Puerto Ricans are some of the best people at telling jokes. 1.00

00:16:06.000 It is a culture of joking and fucking around with each other and talking shit. 1.00

00:16:11.000 Absolutely. 1.00

00:16:12.000 They're great at it.

00:16:13.000 Yeah.

00:16:13.000 I served some Puerto Rican guys in the Marine Corps, man.

00:16:15.000 That's absolutely true.

00:16:16.000 They love him still.

00:16:17.000 You know, like, even after that joke.

00:16:17.000 Yes.

00:16:18.000 Yeah.

00:16:19.000 What is it?

00:16:20.000 You advised him not to tell that joke?

00:16:22.000 Well, I was kind of half joking.

00:16:23.000 You know, Tony, that's what Tony does. 0.97

00:16:25.000 You know, I just said that's the one that's going to get you stabbed.

00:16:28.000 But I mean, that's what Tony does.

00:16:30.000 Tony is like the Josh Hoket of comedy.

00:16:33.000 Like, he, but very talented.

00:16:35.000 You know, he's a really good, he's a roaster.

00:16:38.000 He's like roasting is his specialty, but it's also like he's trying to ruffle people's feathers.

00:16:43.000 That's what he wants to do.

00:16:45.000 Yep.

00:16:45.000 He wants to piss people off.

00:16:46.000 Like, that's, he likes being a pro wrestling heel.

00:16:49.000 Yeah.

00:16:49.000 He always, he's a huge pro wrestling fan.

00:16:51.000 Well, so, well, He so Tony, I like I'm a huge fan of his comedy.

00:16:56.000 I've only you know met him a couple times, I don't know him particularly well, but he's actually like you know more political, I would say, than most comedians.

00:17:04.000 Do you think that's fair?

00:17:05.000 Yes, okay, yes.

00:17:06.000 So, uh, very supportive of like Trump, like he's on the Republican team, yes, he's on the Republican team 100%.

00:17:13.000 So, it's because he's experienced so many loony left wing people in California, yeah, that's why he had to move.

00:17:19.000 Well, somebody sent me a clip, I think it was Shane Gillis at a roast where.

00:17:25.000 The joke was they were roasting Tony, and they're like, Tony Hinchcliffe is the only dude who would be excited if JD Pants was here.

00:17:33.000 And I was like, one, that's a very good joke.

00:17:38.000 And number two, I feel like I had made it.

00:17:40.000 Like, there have been a few moments where I feel like I've made it.

00:17:42.000 You're the vice president of the United States.

00:17:45.000 I think you made it.

00:17:46.000 When South Park spoofed me, I felt it more than when I got it sworn in as vice president of the United States.

00:17:51.000 That's hilarious.

00:17:53.000 That's very funny.

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00:19:12.000 Yeah, Tony is, I mean, that's his style.

00:19:14.000 Like, he loves being the heel.

00:19:17.000 He's in Austin now.

00:19:18.000 He gets the kick out of it.

00:19:19.000 Oh, yeah.

00:19:19.000 He's one of the first people that moved out here with me.

00:19:21.000 Okay.

00:19:22.000 Yeah, I mean, we've been here for six years now.

00:19:24.000 Yeah.

00:19:25.000 And every time we go back to California, we're like, we were right.

00:19:29.000 We were right.

00:19:29.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:30.000 It's falling apart.

00:19:31.000 It keeps going further and further down the toilet.

00:19:33.000 How do you feel like Austin is going?

00:19:35.000 Because.

00:19:36.000 The criticism of Austin, call it five or six years ago, is that it's a cool town.

00:19:42.000 It's got its own unique culture.

00:19:44.000 It's Texas, but it's also its own thing. 1.00

00:19:47.000 But that all of the Blue Staters moving in were going to like totally change the politics and the culture of Austin. 1.00

00:19:54.000 I actually don't think that's happened. 1.00

00:19:56.000 I think the Blue Staters that moved here moved here because they recognized that wherever they were living was not tenable. 1.00

00:20:02.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:20:03.000 It was falling apart.

00:20:04.000 And all of these places like New York and really California, like especially Los Angeles and San Francisco, they're falling apart.

00:20:14.000 I have a bunch of friends that are stuck there that can't move.

00:20:18.000 Like maybe they have family there or maybe they have a business there.

00:20:22.000 Yep. 1.00

00:20:23.000 And they fucking hate it. 0.99

00:20:24.000 And then I have a bunch of people that are trying to move, but they can't sell their house. 0.99

00:20:28.000 Like it's nuts there, man.

00:20:30.000 I don't think people, first of all, you get gaslit by Gavin Newsom.

00:20:34.000 I mean, he's just gaslighting everybody about how well, you know, the GDP of like the fifth largest country in the world.

00:20:42.000 That's what California is.

00:20:43.000 It's like, dude, how.

00:20:44.000 Hey, bro, it was like that before you were the governor.

00:20:46.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:20:47.000 Also, How much does a U Haul cost if you're leaving California?

00:20:50.000 How much does it cost if you're going to California?

00:20:52.000 Because that's the real measure of whether a state's doing well.

00:20:54.000 Yeah, the state has more people moving out than moving in, and that has never happened before.

00:21:00.000 Correct.

00:21:01.000 California, when I moved there in 1994 until I left, it was always every year traffic got worse.

00:21:07.000 Every year more people moved there.

00:21:08.000 Every year.

00:21:09.000 And I loved it.

00:21:11.000 I loved it.

00:21:12.000 I loved it from the time I moved there.

00:21:14.000 I was like, this place is great.

00:21:15.000 It's warm all the time.

00:21:17.000 The weather's fantastic.

00:21:19.000 There's so much cool stuff to do.

00:21:21.000 The people are great.

00:21:22.000 Yeah.

00:21:22.000 And then politics ruined it.

00:21:24.000 That's right.

00:21:24.000 So, my wife's from Southern California, San Diego.

00:21:26.000 And so, we spent a fair amount of time there.

00:21:29.000 And I just, man, I still feel a certain sense of like heartbreak over LA.

00:21:35.000 Oh, I do.

00:21:35.000 Because every time I'm in LA, you can see why this was like the quintessentially American city.

00:21:41.000 The architecture is beautiful, it's got its own vibe going.

00:21:44.000 Like you said, the weather is amazing.

00:21:46.000 And then you drive through Skid Row and you're like, how could any state or any city let this happen?

00:21:51.000 Skid Row is now 55 blocks.

00:21:54.000 It was 50 blocks.

00:21:56.000 Yeah, just like a year or two ago.

00:21:58.000 Okay.

00:21:59.000 So, my first experience with Skid Row was so Usha used to work at this like very fancy litigation firm in Southern California. 1.00

00:22:09.000 Before she was second lady, she was a corporate litigator.

00:22:12.000 So, there's a Christmas party in downtown LA, and you get these instructions from her firm, and they're like this really convoluted way of this is how you have to get to this Christmas party.

00:22:23.000 And I'm like, why do I have to follow these directions?

00:22:25.000 Why don't I just Put it in Google Maps, right?

00:22:27.000 This is like five or six, seven years ago.

00:22:29.000 So we realized that the reason why they gave you these convoluted directions was so that you could avoid Skid Row at night.

00:22:36.000 And so you get to this party, you drive through Skid Row if you follow Google Maps' directions.

00:22:43.000 You get there, and it's like this beautiful facility with fancy food and fancy wine.

00:22:49.000 And then there are armed guards outside of it and these gigantic walls.

00:22:53.000 And I realized when I was there, you know what this reminds me of?

00:22:56.000 This reminds me of going to the U.S. Embassy in Port au Prince, Haiti.

00:23:01.000 Like, super security, crazy wealth and privilege and status on the inside, and squalor and misery on the outside.

00:23:10.000 Like, it's the first time I'd ever thought America, like, this part of America is actually more like a third world country than anything that I thought we'd ever become.

00:23:19.000 Let me ask you this.

00:23:20.000 Yeah.

00:23:21.000 Why is it that large population centers, like places like Los Angeles and New York, Are almost always run by the Democrats.

00:23:30.000 Yeah.

00:23:31.000 Like, what is it about?

00:23:33.000 First of all, what happened with the last election in Los Angeles, just the primary, I think was so super sus.

00:23:43.000 And here's why it's super sus.

00:23:45.000 Not just super sus that Spencer Pratt, who was in second place, got overtaken by Nithya Rahman in the mail in ballots, but that the mail in ballots also passed a tax hike.

00:23:59.000 The people voted to pay more taxes.

00:24:03.000 Yep.

00:24:03.000 In a state where you have the highest taxes.

00:24:05.000 The highest taxes.

00:24:06.000 That's right.

00:24:07.000 They're like, we don't pay enough.

00:24:11.000 That is insane.

00:24:12.000 And then when you have direct evidence that they were recruiting homeless people.

00:24:17.000 That's right.

00:24:18.000 And they were getting homeless people and giving them cigarettes and cash, there's evidence.

00:24:22.000 Yes.

00:24:23.000 To use their address and mail in ballots.

00:24:25.000 Yeah, I wouldn't be the Californian, Joe, who wakes up in the morning and says, you know what?

00:24:30.000 I'm going to go and vote for higher taxes.

00:24:31.000 I don't get enough.

00:24:32.000 I don't pay enough taxes.

00:24:33.000 I feel like we could fix this if I just pay more taxes.

00:24:35.000 You're just right.

00:24:36.000 If I just pay more taxes.

00:24:37.000 The crazy thing about it, too, is it's that, okay, so after the initial ballots all came in, it was Karen Bass was number one, Spencer Pratt was right behind her, and then number three, whatever this woman said.

00:24:50.000 Smithy Raman.

00:24:51.000 Okay.

00:24:52.000 So you would expect the mail in ballots to be more or less like the original ballots in terms of one, two, and three.

00:24:59.000 I'm not saying Spencer Pratt's going to win the mail in ballots, but it just so happened that the third place person, in relative terms, did a lot better than the first and second place person.

00:25:09.000 Disproportionately better.

00:25:10.000 Such that the Republican was actually kicked out of the race, so that there's not actually a real election in California.

00:25:16.000 That to me was the crazy part.

00:25:17.000 It's like you were designing the vote share in order to kick Pratt out and put the third person into second place.

00:25:25.000 That to me is like very, very bizarre.

00:25:27.000 Because what is the theory of the mail in vote that is somehow like so much more pro Nithya relative to Karen Bass?

00:25:36.000 Makes no sense.

00:25:39.000 Why would it be?

00:25:40.000 Why would it be?

00:25:41.000 I mean, Karen Bass was ahead by.

00:25:43.000 Yeah.

00:25:44.000 But I mean, okay, so you asked the question: why do all these blue states or why do all these big cities, population centers, end up becoming blue?

00:25:54.000 And I think it's like a very complicated, right?

00:25:56.000 So, one thing, and you said this a few months ago, and like when you said it, I was like kind of annoyed by it, but then I like thought, there's like an element of truth to it, which is that Republicans still fundamentally have a cool problem, right?

00:26:09.000 There's something more charismatic, more cool about.

00:26:13.000 The Democrats, as opposed to the right.

00:26:16.000 That's right. 0.94

00:26:17.000 And so you said something about there are too many dorks or something on the right. 0.99

00:26:22.000 There's a lot of dorks. 0.99

00:26:23.000 You know, fair. 1.00

00:26:24.000 I'd say there's a lot of dorks on the left. 1.00

00:26:26.000 There's a lot of dorks on the left, too. 1.00

00:26:27.000 But it's a different kind of dork. 1.00

00:26:28.000 Yeah, it's a different kind of dork. 0.97

00:26:29.000 But the point is that there's something, you know, like, okay, if you're a pop star, you're a rock star, you're an actor, you're in all these cultural centers, you're more likely to be left than right. 0.78

00:26:40.000 And so I think that a lot of young people who are attracted to these population centers.

00:26:43.000 They sort of move along with the prevailing culture.

00:26:46.000 I think that's one thing that's going on.

00:26:48.000 I think a second thing that's going on is the people who are sort of attracted to a certain kind of right of center politics.

00:26:56.000 They want the suburbs, they want the single family home, they kind of want to be left alone.

00:27:01.000 They don't want sort of to be able to hear what their neighbors are doing.

00:27:03.000 So I think a little bit of it's just cultural self segregation.

00:27:06.000 And that's meant that a lot of these population centers have gone blue.

00:27:11.000 But it's very complicated.

00:27:12.000 I've thought about this a lot.

00:27:14.000 And I also just, man, I like.

00:27:16.000 I'm not one of these people who says we should just abandon California to the Democrats, like let them deal with their own problems.

00:27:22.000 I think California is like a quintessential part of the American dream.

00:27:26.000 Dream.

00:27:27.000 If you just abandoned California, you've lost something very core to American culture.

00:27:35.000 I don't want to give up on it.

00:27:36.000 I'm not saying we're going to win California in my lifetime necessarily, but I don't like the idea of giving up on it.

00:27:41.000 Well, it's not just giving up on it.

00:27:43.000 I mean, giving up on it would be terrible.

00:27:44.000 It's an awesome state.

00:27:45.000 The real problem is it's deeply corrupt.

00:27:49.000 I mean, deeply, deeply corrupt.

00:27:52.000 What they're trying to do is make it impossible for the other side to win.

00:27:56.000 Yeah.

00:27:57.000 And there should be laws against that.

00:27:59.000 First of all, the idea of mail in ballots for anybody other than people who are invalids, who can't leave their homes, or military, or people that for some reason they're serving overseas, they're doing something overseas, it should not be legal.

00:28:13.000 That's right.

00:28:13.000 And the fact that it became ubiquitous during COVID is a giant problem.

00:28:17.000 Yeah.

00:28:18.000 So this raises one of my total segue here side point.

00:28:21.000 But so if you remember in the aftermath of the 2020 election where there was all this like debate about was the election stolen, was the election not stolen, all the litigation that moved through.

00:28:30.000 There was a case in Pennsylvania that didn't get very much attention.

00:28:35.000 And I'm going to butcher it a little bit.

00:28:37.000 But basically, it was a guy in a rural area of Pennsylvania saying, You're undercounting my vote because we didn't have the opportunity to do the mail in ballots like they did in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

00:28:47.000 And the argument was a kind of disparate impact, right?

00:28:51.000 The cities ginned up all the mail in balloting and the ballot harvesting.

00:28:54.000 You didn't do that in the country.

00:28:56.000 And that hurt sort of our representation.

00:28:58.000 So they take this case to the Pennsylvania courts.

00:29:01.000 And what's crazy is the Pennsylvania courts basically say, you're making kind of a good point here.

00:29:07.000 Like the ballot harvesting did affect Republicans in a more negative way.

00:29:11.000 It did mean that certain people in the more rural parts of the state were underrepresented.

00:29:15.000 But then the court conclusion was, this is not a problem a court can fix.

00:29:20.000 Like that's a political problem.

00:29:21.000 Change your local elections leaders, change your laws.

00:29:25.000 Like that's not a remedy that the court has to fix.

00:29:28.000 And so everybody saw that case and they're like, oh, The judge rules against Donald Trump, rules against Republicans for saying that there was something illegitimate.

00:29:36.000 But no, actually, the judge kind of said, there is something kind of fishy here.

00:29:41.000 We're just the wrong venue to fix it.

00:29:43.000 Well, it's just very disheartening that you have to consider the fact that it's really possible that the elections get stolen.

00:29:55.000 And the California one was a big one for me.

00:29:58.000 And why not just have mail in, or why not just have voter ID?

00:30:02.000 Yeah.

00:30:03.000 Well, that's insane.

00:30:04.000 Not only did they not have voter ID, you can't show your ID.

00:30:07.000 You're not allowed to show your ID.

00:30:09.000 You can, in fact, be prosecuted if you try to force somebody to show their ID.

00:30:12.000 Which is that seems like you want people to cheat.

00:30:16.000 And is this from the same people that were saying you have to have an ID that shows you've been vaccinated just four years ago?

00:30:16.000 Exactly.

00:30:23.000 To go to a restaurant shopping or to go to a restaurant.

00:30:23.000 To go to a restaurant.

00:30:25.000 No, it's definitely that's the part about it that I think makes most people of my political.

00:30:25.000 Yeah.

00:30:32.000 Persuasion skeptical of what the Democrats are doing.

00:30:35.000 Like, if you don't want to cheat in the election, then just make everybody actually show an ID.

00:30:40.000 What the other thing people don't realize is I didn't realize this until a couple years ago.

00:30:44.000 The voter ID solves a lot of the mail in ballot problem because if you have to show an ID in order to get a mail in ballot, in order to actually confirm that there is a real identification attached to that vote, that solves a big chunk of the problem.

00:30:59.000 This is just logical.

00:31:00.000 Yes.

00:31:01.000 Like, I don't, I'm not saying that.

00:31:03.000 Every country does it.

00:31:04.000 I'm not skeptical.

00:31:05.000 I'm accusing them.

00:31:07.000 I think they stole the election.

00:31:08.000 Yes.

00:31:09.000 And I think it's common.

00:31:11.000 And this idea that elections can't be stolen, I always say to people, okay, do you think that the amount of election fraud is 0%?

00:31:22.000 No one thinks that.

00:31:24.000 Yeah.

00:31:24.000 No one thinks it's zero.

00:31:25.000 Zero.

00:31:26.000 There's always some overzealous person that works somewhere that's doing something.

00:31:31.000 There's always crazy people that like blue no matter who, we got to win or red no matter what.

00:31:36.000 There's always people, right and left, that are going to try to rig the election because they think it's imperative.

00:31:43.000 Look, we saw there was people like Oprah Winfrey was saying it.

00:31:47.000 Like, if we don't win this election, you may never vote again. 0.99

00:31:50.000 Like, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.99

00:31:52.000 Like, why? 1.00

00:31:53.000 Who's going to tolerate that?

00:31:55.000 Left or right?

00:31:56.000 That's right. 0.75

00:31:56.000 Crazy. 0.75

00:31:57.000 But that attitude allows people to justify cheating.

00:32:01.000 And I think they cheat.

00:32:01.000 Correct.

00:32:03.000 And I think they've been doing it forever.

00:32:05.000 And I don't think there's any other reason why you would have no voter ID.

00:32:08.000 And they try to say, oh, it's racist to have voter ID.

00:32:12.000 Like, what are you talking about?

00:32:13.000 Do you think other races are incapable of going to the DMV? 0.89

00:32:17.000 That's insane. 0.99

00:32:18.000 Yeah, it's.

00:32:19.000 That's racist.

00:32:20.000 It's actually super racist.

00:32:21.000 That's really racist. 0.83

00:32:22.000 The implication of their argument is literally like blacks and Hispanics cannot go to the DMV to get an ID. 0.84

00:32:27.000 By the way, if you look at the polling, Black Americans are as pro voter ID. 0.80

00:32:31.000 Even though most black Americans vote Democrat, they're still pro voter ID as much as white Americans is. 0.91

00:32:37.000 Most Americans are voter ID, they want voter ID except for operatives. 0.76

00:32:41.000 So I'll offer on the Joe Rogan podcast this deal as vice president of these United States that if Democrats really don't think that there's any cheating, give us voter ID.

00:32:51.000 I just don't know how to do it.

00:32:52.000 I just don't know how to do it.

00:32:53.000 Give us voter ID and we'll stop talking.

00:32:54.000 Why is that not a federal thing?

00:32:55.000 We are trying to make it a federal thing.

00:32:57.000 So we are right now trying to pass the Save America Act.

00:33:00.000 One of its main provisions is a requirement that you do voter ID. 0.94

00:33:05.000 And we actually have, I think, a majority of the Senate that would support it, but this is just weird Senate procedural bullshit.

00:33:11.000 There is a sub-segment of people who want voter ID but won't blow up the filibuster in order to achieve it.

00:33:20.000 And so they're so married to these old-world Senate procedures that they're going to make it impossible for us to pass Save America.

00:33:28.000 Now, we are, for what it's worth, trying to fix that and trying to address these weird procedural, archaic things.

00:33:33.000 It's insane though.

00:33:35.000 Like, if you ever, okay, I'm sure you hear people talk about the filibuster all the time.

00:33:40.000 I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole.

00:33:42.000 Here's what the filibuster is it is a pure Senate rule, it is a creation of the Senate procedures, which basically says that anything that has to do with the budget is a 50 vote threshold, and anything that, everything else, non budgetary, is a 60 vote threshold.

00:34:00.000 Now, as you can imagine, there's some gray area on things that maybe count as budget issues and should be 50.

00:34:06.000 Or are not budget issues and count at 60.

00:34:09.000 So, what we have tried to persuade the Senate to do is to treat the voter ID as something that can fall within the 50 vote threshold.

00:34:19.000 And there is no law, there's no provision in the Constitution.

00:34:23.000 It is legitimately that there are senators who are so attached to the idea that budget is 50, non budget is 60, that they're quite literally willing to prevent voter ID in America.

00:34:35.000 God.

00:34:35.000 It's nuts, dude.

00:34:36.000 It's so crazy.

00:34:39.000 And it's also like the idea that somehow or another, like Kathy Holchel had the craziest take on it.

00:34:48.000 Did you?

00:34:49.000 She often does.

00:34:50.000 Did you see her take on it?

00:34:51.000 I have not.

00:34:52.000 She was talking about black people in inner cities not even knowing what a computer is.

00:34:56.000 Did you ever see that?

00:34:57.000 No, I didn't see that.

00:34:59.000 Oh my God.

00:35:00.000 And then this one comedian, this black comedian, did this hilarious video where he was like circling around a computer, staring at it, like touching it, like he didn't know what it was. 0.94

00:35:00.000 It was so crazy. 0.94

00:35:11.000 What are you talking about?

00:35:11.000 It's just like.

00:35:14.000 Everyone has a phone.

00:35:16.000 That's a computer. 0.75

00:35:17.000 Phone.

00:35:17.000 That's a computer.

00:35:18.000 So many of these Democratic talking points presume that their own voters are actually idiots. 0.99

00:35:24.000 That's actually there's a big difference between, you know, Republicans, we sort of presume that our voters are adults, and you don't see that with a I'm not saying every Democrat, of course. 0.99

00:35:33.000 I don't want to cast too broad of a brush here, but it's like, you know, Gavin Newsom did this speech a few months ago.

00:35:39.000 The president, I think it's the funniest thing ever because he's like speaking to a group of black leaders and black businessmen, but it's like an audience that is 95 percent black.

00:35:48.000 And they're asking him about his dyslexia and his struggle with education.

00:35:52.000 And he basically says, Yeah, you know, I'm not very smart like a lot of you.

00:35:56.000 And it's like, I'm like you.

00:35:58.000 I can't even read.

00:35:59.000 Meanwhile, there's a ton of interviews where he's talking about all the books he reads. 1.00

00:36:03.000 Like, he's so full of shit. 1.00

00:36:05.000 Yeah, he's full of shit, but it's admirably full of shit. 1.00

00:36:09.000 But it's, I admire the fucking, the sheer tenacity that he has in being full of shit. 1.00

00:36:18.000 I, it's amazing. 1.00

00:36:19.000 It really is amazing.

00:36:20.000 But it speaks to the incentives of.

00:36:23.000 There's kind of like.

00:36:25.000 Look, there's a real populism that I'm very much a fan of because I think you should be responsive to people. 1.00

00:36:30.000 But there's like a faux populism of the way that I'm going to appeal to people is by assuming that they're idiots and acting like they're idiots. 1.00

00:36:38.000 And then. 1.00

00:36:38.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:36:39.000 But if you're committed enough to that bit, eventually it kind of leaks out what you're doing.

00:36:44.000 And I think that was sort of what Gavin did there, he told on himself a bit.

00:36:48.000 Yeah.

00:36:48.000 Well, it was just.

00:36:50.000 It's just, he's bizarre.

00:36:52.000 I will say, I have.

00:36:54.000 So I've only met Gavin, I think I've only met him one time in my life.

00:36:54.000 He's a bizarre guy.

00:36:57.000 And it was such a crazy experience.

00:37:01.000 So the debate between Biden and Trump during the 2024 cycle, and I'm there, I'm actually doing an interview for a documentary when the debate starts.

00:37:12.000 And there's this clip of me, the debate starts, I'm in the middle of this interview, there's a big screen behind me as I'm talking to the camera, which is here, and I kind of freeze and I look back at the The TV, and I'm like, oh my God, like this is actually happening.

00:37:27.000 Biden is imploding because if you remember, it was obvious from the get go.

00:37:30.000 So I go to the spin room afterwards, and that's where all these reporters and all the surrogates of the candidates.

00:37:37.000 This is before I was the VP nominee, and I'm just like, talking about how great the president did, how bad President Biden did.

00:37:43.000 I see Gavin Newsom there, and he literally looks like he's seen a ghost.

00:37:48.000 I've never seen a person who, as good of a bullshitter as he is, who realized.

00:37:53.000 There was no selling that performance.

00:37:56.000 But can you imagine?

00:37:57.000 Try to put yourself in the perspective of a human being.

00:37:59.000 I always try to be empathetic where Joe Biden has just had that debate, and you have to go on CNN to talk about how great of a job Joe Biden did.

00:38:08.000 Well, my favorite is Joe Scarborough because Joe Scarborough before it was like, I'm going to say something and F you if you can't take it.

00:38:17.000 This is the sharpest Biden we've ever seen.

00:38:20.000 Have you ever seen that?

00:38:22.000 No, I haven't.

00:38:22.000 Oh, it's amazing.

00:38:23.000 And then after the debate, he's like, we've got to get rid of him.

00:38:25.000 He's got to go.

00:38:26.000 You got to go, hey, hey, hey, what did you say?

00:38:29.000 You just said a couple of months ago, this is the best Biden ever.

00:38:32.000 Well, it's like I wonder what was going on with that.

00:38:32.000 That's wild.

00:38:36.000 Because the debates were earlier than they've ever been before.

00:38:40.000 And it seemed to me, it's like there was a concerted effort to hide what was wrong with him.

00:38:46.000 100%.

00:38:46.000 Everybody was bullshitting.

00:38:48.000 Everybody was gaslighting us. 0.99

00:38:48.000 Yes. 0.99

00:38:49.000 We all saw it.

00:38:49.000 Correct.

00:38:50.000 I remember a friend of mine who's super progressive, super liberal.

00:38:54.000 I talked about it on a podcast.

00:38:57.000 I'm like, this is crazy.

00:38:58.000 Even if he wins, he's not going to be the guy that's the president.

00:39:02.000 You're going to have his cabinet that are running everything.

00:39:04.000 Turned out I was right.

00:39:05.000 And they were saying, Oh, don't you understand that he has a stutter? 0.99

00:39:09.000 And I said, Where the fuck was that stutter in the 1990s? 1.00

00:39:13.000 Like, that's crazy. 1.00

00:39:14.000 That's crazy.

00:39:16.000 Like a stutter that only shows up when you're 80?

00:39:18.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:39:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:39:20.000 Like, this is a lie.

00:39:21.000 You're lying. 0.96

00:39:22.000 He's had two brain surgeries, like where they have to take the top of your head off.

00:39:28.000 Literally, they have to take like a cap.

00:39:31.000 Wait, Biden had two brain surgeries?

00:39:33.000 Oh, yeah.

00:39:34.000 You didn't know this?

00:39:34.000 How did I not know this?

00:39:35.000 I didn't know that he had two brain surgeries.

00:39:37.000 He had two brain surgeries.

00:39:39.000 Jimmy, please look this up.

00:39:40.000 Make sure that I'm right.

00:39:41.000 I'm 99% sure I'm right.

00:39:43.000 But I know he had one that was like.

00:39:45.000 Did he get a refund afterwards?

00:39:47.000 Well, it kept him alive.

00:39:49.000 It kept him alive.

00:39:50.000 I mean, he here, Biden has not undergone recent brain surgery.

00:39:55.000 He underwent two successful life-saving brain surgeries to repair two intracranial aneurysms in 1988.

00:40:03.000 I don't know this.

00:40:04.000 Yeah.

00:40:05.000 His medical professionals have stated that he made a full recovery and suffered no lasting brain damage or cognitive impairment from these procedures.

00:40:05.000 That's pretty crazy.

00:40:13.000 Oh, it's from the Washington Post, so you know it's accurate and definitely not biased at all.

00:40:18.000 And these medical professionals, were those the same people that said that the COVID vaccine is safe and effective? 0.99

00:40:23.000 It's, it's, we live in a wonderful time for bullshit. 1.00

00:40:27.000 It's like, because they bullshit you right to your face. 1.00

00:40:30.000 We do? 0.99

00:40:30.000 He had two brain surgeries, like major brain surgeries, because he's having aneurysms. 0.99

00:40:35.000 I don't care who you are.

00:40:36.000 That's probably going to do some damage.

00:40:38.000 It's going to leave some aneurysms are a real problem.

00:40:41.000 Your brain is bleeding.

00:40:41.000 It's a real thing.

00:40:43.000 People die from aneurysms all the time.

00:40:45.000 See, that's the crazy thing I never even knew about that.

00:40:48.000 How'd you not know about that?

00:40:49.000 I knew about it.

00:40:49.000 That's nuts.

00:40:50.000 Well, it speaks to how constrained our media environment is.

00:40:54.000 That even I had never heard of.

00:40:55.000 Right.

00:40:55.000 It was not a part of the narrative.

00:40:57.000 Certainly not from the Democrats.

00:40:59.000 But yeah, he's.

00:41:01.000 It was clearly.

00:41:02.000 I just don't understand why they ran him in the first place.

00:41:05.000 The whole thing made no sense.

00:41:07.000 And then to have no primary and just stick Kamala in there.

00:41:10.000 Yeah.

00:41:11.000 And then all of a sudden pretend that she's the best thing ever. 1.00

00:41:13.000 And like this idea, like complete flip of her being the least popular vice president ever, always sticking her foot in her mouth, always saying crazy shit. 1.00

00:41:22.000 How dare we say Merry Christmas? 1.00

00:41:24.000 You remember that one? 1.00

00:41:25.000 Like, what the fuck is. 1.00

00:41:27.000 What are you saying? 1.00

00:41:29.000 Like, joy is bad.

00:41:30.000 Merry Christmas is bad. 0.99

00:41:32.000 Legitimately, when the campaign consultants told me, Hey, we're going to hit this line because Kamala Harris came out in favor of taxpayer funded sex changes for illegal aliens.

00:41:43.000 And I remember thinking to myself, Come on, you guys.

00:41:46.000 Like, she didn't really say that.

00:41:48.000 It's taken out of context.

00:41:49.000 And then I go and look at it. 0.99

00:41:50.000 I'm like, Holy shit. 1.00

00:41:52.000 She actually said that. 1.00

00:41:53.000 And she was, she really was like the very worst.

00:41:59.000 Version of what the Democrats were producing in 2020.

00:42:02.000 The thing is, they were all doing it because that was the incentives of the party.

00:42:06.000 If you remember that debate where it was, do you want taxpayer funded Medicare for illegal aliens?

00:42:12.000 Which, like, Medicare is the program to provide health care to the elderly that people pay into for your entire working life.

00:42:19.000 You see your little Medicare tax statement. 0.86

00:42:23.000 And the idea that we were going to give taxpayer funded health care to illegal aliens, it was just insane. 0.96

00:42:28.000 It was a 90 10 issue.

00:42:31.000 Their party in 2020 got kind of taken over by the radicals.

00:42:35.000 And I think actually maybe you're seeing a little bit of that happening right now, where it seems like the radical organizations, the nonprofits, the donors are pushing the party in a direction that most of the voters haven't gone in.

00:42:48.000 Like you ask why Joe Biden was the nominee, and I'll say something in defense of Joe Biden.

00:42:53.000 So, like, was he the most effective politician?

00:42:56.000 No.

00:42:57.000 Had he had two brain surgeries?

00:42:58.000 Yes.

00:42:58.000 And clearly had shown the negative signs of aging.

00:43:02.000 But he was kind of the only candidate.

00:43:04.000 If you go back to 2020, who could hold together like the reasonable middle class black American in the Atlanta suburbs with whatever is going on on the far left of the Democrat Party?

00:43:18.000 And I think this is sort of the issue their party has.

00:43:20.000 I mean, to be candid, our party has its own coalition problems, and it's always tough in a two party system to hold everybody together.

00:43:26.000 Like, I think about this a lot.

00:43:28.000 I think it's really tough on the Democrats because the core of their party, like the most important voting block in the Democratic Party, Is middle class black Americans, socially moderate to even socially conservative, maybe a little bit more economically populist on certain business and tax issues.

00:43:45.000 They don't want to give tax breaks to major corporations. 0.55

00:43:47.000 They also don't want to trans the kids. 0.86

00:43:49.000 That's the base of their party. 0.84

00:43:51.000 But then you've also got the crazy people, and you have to kind of hold that together.

00:43:58.000 I think the argument for Biden was he was one of the only people who could hold that together, even though he was an awful politician in his own right, even before he was old.

00:44:06.000 Well, it's because he was Obama's vice president.

00:44:09.000 Exactly.

00:44:10.000 And, you know, he's established.

00:44:12.000 He's a known name.

00:44:13.000 And for the people that were kind of casuals and weren't really paying attention to politics, he's a proven commodity.

00:44:18.000 That's right.

00:44:19.000 He doesn't read as a crazy person to the general electorate, even though, you know. 0.73

00:44:24.000 I got hairy legs.

00:44:28.000 When he would tell me stories, like, oh, I'll tell you about cord pop.

00:44:32.000 Like, what? 0.99

00:44:34.000 What the fuck is going on? 0.99

00:44:35.000 The thing I couldn't get over Biden is just bad staff work, man. 1.00

00:44:39.000 The way that he ate ice cream. 0.97

00:44:41.000 I mean, it's like, you know, we could bring some of this stuff up, but it's like they would get him eating ice cream in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable. 0.86

00:44:51.000 I never even paid attention to that. 0.89

00:44:52.000 Oh, my God.

00:44:53.000 Like, there's just such bad optics.

00:44:54.000 Okay.

00:44:55.000 So there's a clip, I want to say, from the 2016 campaign where somebody is campaigning in Iowa.

00:45:03.000 And like, the Iowa State Fair is like one of the main things you go to when you're running for president.

00:45:08.000 And they give somebody a corn dog.

00:45:11.000 And somebody eats the corn dog.

00:45:12.000 And it becomes like a major news cycle for a long time.

00:45:16.000 And I will never forget in 2024.

00:45:19.000 This is how immature we are.

00:45:21.000 I know.

00:45:21.000 You got to have a little fun sometimes, though.

00:45:23.000 But in 2024, somebody is holding up a sign at the Iowa State Fair.

00:45:28.000 I think it may have been Vivek's, one of Vivek's events, Vivek Ramaswamy's events. 0.99

00:45:32.000 And the sign says, Eat the corn dog, you coward. 0.98

00:45:34.000 And it's one of the best political signs I've ever seen. 1.00

00:45:39.000 That's funny.

00:45:40.000 That's funny.

00:45:41.000 Yeah, you'd have to be a very manly man to be able to confidently eat a corn dog.

00:45:47.000 I don't know that I could do it, Joe.

00:45:49.000 I eat them.

00:45:49.000 They're good.

00:45:50.000 They taste good.

00:45:52.000 I love corn dogs.

00:45:52.000 I've been photographed eating a corn dog?

00:45:55.000 I'm sure someone has.

00:45:56.000 I've eaten corn dogs.

00:45:59.000 It's a much more interesting life that I've led.

00:46:01.000 I try to eat my corn dogs.

00:46:04.000 That's between me and my kitchen.

00:46:06.000 I'm not scared to eat a corn dog.

00:46:07.000 I just think it's funny that people just. 0.99

00:46:12.000 Anything that looks like a dick. 0.99

00:46:14.000 You can't bananas, corn dogs. 0.99

00:46:16.000 You gotta be careful when you're in politics.

00:46:19.000 This is an optics based business here.

00:46:21.000 What are those popsicles?

00:46:22.000 The ones that.

00:46:24.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:25.000 Yeah, I get it.

00:46:26.000 I mean, but it's just like that's how crazy we are.

00:46:29.000 That's what weirds people out the way someone eats a hot dog.

00:46:33.000 Like, okay.

00:46:33.000 Well, that's where we are, man.

00:46:40.000 Yeah.

00:46:43.000 The real reasonable Democrats is so stark to me.

00:46:49.000 And it's also with the right, it's like we're always the parties are always defined by the worst examples of the right.

00:46:56.000 That's right.

00:46:57.000 Or of the left, whatever it is, whether it's Patriot Front or whether it's Antifa.

00:47:04.000 Okay.

00:47:04.000 So who do you think is the worst example of our side?

00:47:07.000 Like, who do you read about on our side in your reaction as, holy shit? 0.98

00:47:10.000 And don't say, JD Vance, this is going to be a very awkward interview. 0.99

00:47:13.000 I'm screwed with you.

00:47:15.000 Well, the people that, you know, one of the things I had James Tallarico on the podcast, and one of the things that I think he has a really good point about, even though I know you're Catholic and you're very religious, putting the Ten Commandments in schools. 0.83

00:47:29.000 I don't think it is the right way to do it.

00:47:34.000 And this is a guy, Tallarico, who was in seminary and is very Christian.

00:47:38.000 He just thinks that even though he believes in the Ten Commandments, if you're just only representing the Christian faith in these schools, you're forcing your religion into other people's lives and that this is going to push people away from Christianity rather than encourage them to pursue it.

00:48:00.000 Yeah, I mean, I think you'd never want to force things on people.

00:48:04.000 I think one of the core Christian contributions to Western civilization is the idea of freedom of religion.

00:48:11.000 It's actually very much a Christian idea because you recognize the dignity of each individual, and part of recognizing that dignity is that each person has to find their own pathway to God.

00:48:20.000 You can't force this on anybody.

00:48:22.000 on anybody.

00:48:23.000 I don't think putting the Ten Commandments up in school is like forcing things on anybody.

00:48:28.000 But it's public schools.

00:48:29.000 So, I mean, if you're going to do that, why not... 1.00

00:48:32.000 Why not put Muslims?

00:48:34.000 You could make an argument why you should have a bunch of different religious tenets in schools.

00:48:42.000 I think in the Supreme Court, there actually are a lot of different sort of historical, cultural, legal documents that are up there.

00:48:49.000 I want to say that Moses coming down with a tablet is one of them, but I think there actually are other cultural, maybe even other religious elements of this, like where you recognize that a big part of sort of the law giving tradition in Western civilization is some of these religious texts, not exclusively Christian religious texts.

00:49:08.000 Obviously, some Jewish, there's like an important contribution from the Muslim world in this.

00:49:14.000 So, I guess I don't think of it as exclusionary while also recognizing that America is a society.

00:49:21.000 Our founders were people who were very much influenced, even if they weren't Christians, a lot of them, of course, were, but were very influenced by Christian culture and articulating American law.

00:49:32.000 So, my argument would be even if you're not a Christian, like, does seeing the Ten Commandments let me put it a slightly different way.

00:49:41.000 Does seeing the Ten Commandments force religion on a non Christian child? 0.72

00:49:46.000 I mean, my argument would be no, and I'd illustrate this by saying, well, there are all of these ways in which you actually could try to force religion on a child, right? 0.70

00:49:56.000 Well, it's not the worst way to force religion on a child, but to have it and not represent any other religion This is Texas, by the way.

00:50:03.000 So what he's talking about was that there's these Christian nationalists, these guys that are very wealthy that are trying to fund Christian schools and trying to defund public schools or any other kind of religious school.

00:50:18.000 What they want to do, and they pass this to get the Ten Commandments in all public school classes.

00:50:22.000 He's fundamentally opposed to that as a Christian because he thinks it's going to force people to have this in their class and it's going to push people away from Christianity.

00:50:33.000 I understand the argument, I just don't see it that way.

00:50:36.000 I guess if I'm a non religious student and I'm sitting in there and I see the Ten Commandments. 1.00

00:50:44.000 At the very least, I think I can appreciate it. 0.77

00:50:47.000 I mean, I, you know. 0.99

00:50:48.000 Okay, but what if you're a Hindu? 0.88

00:50:51.000 What if you're a Hindu?

00:50:52.000 What if you're a Muslim and you are seeing that represented but not your faith?

00:50:59.000 It's a public school.

00:51:00.000 First of all, I think that you I mean, I'm pretty sure Muslims, I'm not hardly an expert on Islam, but I think all of the Abrahamic faiths recognize the Ten Commandments as like a significant thing.

00:51:13.000 But I think if I was a Hindu looking at the Ten Commandments I mean, again, it's hard for me to say this, right, from my perspective, but I certainly went through an atheist phase in my youth.

00:51:22.000 And what I would see that as, as a non religious person or a different religion, is I would say this is like an important cultural element of the Western civilization, which is the foundation of the classroom that I'm sitting in.

00:51:36.000 And this idea that the law comes in as sort of above any man, even if you don't believe in God yourself, I think that's like an important concept.

00:51:45.000 I mean, if you look at the Ten Commandments, probably eight of them or something that I would hope that everybody would agree with, even if they're not themselves religious.

00:51:52.000 So I guess here's my view on it.

00:51:56.000 I would not be offended if I sat in a classroom as a Christian or if my kids sat in a classroom as a Christian and saw a religious text that wasn't Christian on the wall.

00:52:08.000 I would encourage them to see that.

00:52:10.000 No, I'd encourage them to see that as a learning experience to try to understand.

00:52:13.000 What if it was from the Quran? 0.96

00:52:14.000 What a bunch of. 0.98

00:52:15.000 It depends on what it was, right?

00:52:17.000 If it's like something crazy, but no, I mean, if it's something that is like culturally interesting, I guess I don't have a problem with my kid reading something.

00:52:28.000 The problem is it's mandated. 0.74

00:52:29.000 Like, if you have a classroom and the teacher is Christian and the teacher wants to have it in their classroom, maybe that's one thing. 0.82

00:52:36.000 But if you're mandating that you're going to have the Ten Commandments in classrooms, that's a different thing because now you're pushing Christianity on kids. 0.65

00:52:45.000 And this is Tallarico's position.

00:52:47.000 And as a Christian, he's saying, I think this is going to push children away from Christianity.

00:52:53.000 So, again, I understand what he's saying.

00:52:56.000 I just think that part of living in a society.

00:52:59.000 Where you have different people with different perspectives.

00:53:02.000 But you do have I mean, Christianity is the majority religion of the United States.

00:53:06.000 It is the religion that was extraordinarily influential to our founding, to the constitutional principles.

00:53:12.000 Again, freedom of religion is itself not really a liberal concept.

00:53:15.000 It was originally derived from a Christian idea about free will and the dignity of the person.

00:53:23.000 I think part of that is that you accept that you're going to have exposure to different things.

00:53:28.000 And if a state legislator In a majority Christian state, it's not like they're putting the Ten Commandments in front of these kids and saying, you have to read this and write it 500 times a day.

00:53:42.000 They're exposing kids to something, and I'm comfortable with kids being exposed to a lot of different things.

00:53:48.000 I think that's part of living in a society where there's a free exchange of ideas.

00:53:52.000 What I worry about with Telerico's perspective here is again, I'm not saying that I don't want kids to be exposed to anything that is outside of the Christian canon.

00:54:03.000 I actually want my kids exposed to things.

00:54:06.000 I write about this in the book that I think it's important to have a ground and enough faith that you can engage with a lot of different ideas and still ultimately sort of hold on to your Christian faith.

00:54:16.000 But isn't part of just living in a pluralistic democracy that people are going to be exposed to different things?

00:54:25.000 And I would kind of put it on Tolerico in a slightly different way that for a long time in this country, there were actually Supreme Court rulings that said that you cannot pray in a school.

00:54:37.000 Even a student organization led by the students, or that you cannot put the Ten Commandments up, even a teacher who chose to do it in their own classroom.

00:54:46.000 Do it in their own classroom.

00:54:49.000 I think you're always trying to strike this balance, given that we have the First Amendment in this country, between allowing the practice of religious faith in public spaces and possibly forcing religion on other people. 0.88

00:55:02.000 I think you have to strike that balance the right way.

00:55:05.000 I guess I just say if the Ten Commandments being in a classroom is the thing that you think is forcing religion on somebody, was he equally offended when the Ten Commandments?

00:55:16.000 We were like quite literally prohibited from being listed in a building.

00:55:20.000 I don't know if he was offended by that or if he was opposed to that.

00:55:24.000 But the idea of being exposed to it is one thing, it being mandatory is another.

00:55:31.000 And to mandate that in classrooms is a different thing because you're promoting, clearly promoting Christianity.

00:55:37.000 And his position is that promoting Christianity in that way is going to have an opposite effect on children.

00:55:43.000 You're pushing it on them.

00:55:45.000 And so you're not just exposing it to them, you're pushing it on them.

00:55:47.000 And especially if you're pushing it on children.

00:55:49.000 who come from a household that has a different faith.

00:55:52.000 I guess I just think the balance in our country the last 30, 40 years has actually been much more in the other direction, which is that we try to completely remove religion from the public square.

00:56:01.000 I think that poses its own problems because people practice their faith in all kinds of ways.

00:56:08.000 Don't you think that that's the responsibility of churches and synagogues and in the community?

00:56:15.000 If you want to promote religion, promote it that way.

00:56:17.000 But promoting in public schools should be just educational.

00:56:21.000 If you're in a religious class and a Classes teaching about religion, that's a different story.

00:56:27.000 Well, you're right.

00:56:29.000 It's certainly the responsibility of churches and synagogues and mosques and so forth.

00:56:33.000 But I also think that the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist sort of said this that if your approach to religion in public life always and everywhere is to push it out of the public square, then you're actually embracing a religion of your own in the public square, which is secularism.

00:56:53.000 You're just taking one religion and replacing it with secularism.

00:56:55.000 And I guess what I'm saying is I'm kind of comfortable with people of different faiths sharing the public square together.

00:57:01.000 But part of that is that if I'm in a 95% Christian community and my local city council wants to put up a nativity display on Christmas Eve, I'm okay with that.

00:57:12.000 And that was actually, for a long time in our country, actually prohibited.

00:57:16.000 And so what I think is that we got we sort of put ourselves in this frame in this country where we said every public display of religion is somehow illegitimate.

00:57:28.000 But I mean, I don't know.

00:57:31.000 I try to live my faith in a way that's consistent across different spheres of my life.

00:57:36.000 I don't preach to people.

00:57:37.000 I don't walk into the White House, tell my employees, you need to follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

00:57:43.000 I just try to live my life in a way that hopefully makes people a little curious about what motivates me and what inspires me.

00:57:51.000 But I also don't think that the expectation should be that we tell religious people they're not allowed to be religious in the public square.

00:57:58.000 Because I think that's what we've done over the last 30 or 40 years.

00:58:01.000 I guess.

00:58:02.000 You know, we can agree to disagree.

00:58:04.000 I see the Texas thing as an attempt to correct that.

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00:59:00.000 Well, I think living by example is probably the best promotion of any good way to live your life, whether it's Christianity or any other religion.

00:59:09.000 I think that's definitely the way to do it. 0.55

00:59:10.000 But The point is that this is being promoted by very wealthy people who are Christian nationalists, who want this to be. 0.71

00:59:21.000 They want it to. 0.58

00:59:22.000 What is going on here, Jamie?

00:59:23.000 Bible stories become required reading in Texas public schools.

00:59:23.000 What do you got?

00:59:27.000 Yeah, see?

00:59:28.000 Well, now you're taking it to another level.

00:59:32.000 So this is June 26.

00:59:33.000 This is very recently.

00:59:37.000 That is that kind of thinking.

00:59:42.000 That kind of mindset is what bothers me the most about some Republicans.

00:59:48.000 I see what you mean.

00:59:49.000 And then there's people that, again, they live their life in a very beautiful way and they follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and they're very admirable.

01:00:02.000 And I think that's very attractive and it makes people very curious about that religion.

01:00:07.000 I think that brings people to Christ and I think it brings people to religion.

01:00:10.000 Sure.

01:00:11.000 But then there's people like, did you read that?

01:00:16.000 Report that came from at the start of the Iran war, where there was a guy who was an officer, a non commissioned officer, who was at a briefing.

01:00:30.000 And this guy came in and was explaining to them that they didn't need to be afraid because this war was important because Trump had been anointed by Jesus Christ to bring about his return.

01:00:44.000 And the way they were going to, Jesus is going to return, is by bombing Iran.

01:00:50.000 I did not see that report.

01:00:51.000 That sounds pretty far out there to me.

01:00:53.000 This is the kind of right wing thinking.

01:00:57.000 So here it is.

01:00:57.000 Military commander tells troops bombing Iran is part of God's divine plan.

01:01:02.000 So we started getting calls in the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying their commanders were just jubilant about this, trying to tell people, don't worry, it's all part of God's plan. 0.83

01:01:12.000 They promised a 200 mile long river that is four and a half feet deep, filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill. 0.58

01:01:21.000 At the Battle of Armageddon, Weinstein said. 0.74

01:01:25.000 What was the one?

01:01:27.000 There was an article where the guy was explaining the actual quotes that the one officer was telling him, the one commander.

01:01:38.000 Yeah, but it's not that.

01:01:39.000 It was very specific.

01:01:41.000 It was very specific what he said.

01:01:46.000 I mean, for what it's worth, my attitude on this stuff is I mean, first of all, as a Christian, you sort of believe that everything is part of God's plan, even things that are.

01:01:56.000 Ultimately, very terrible.

01:01:57.000 I mean, you kind of have to make a valid decision.

01:01:58.000 Let me read the quote.

01:01:59.000 He urged us to tell our troops that this was all part of God's divine plan, and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the book of Revelations referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

01:02:11.000 He said that President Trump had been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth.

01:02:19.000 Okay.

01:02:20.000 If I'm in that meeting, I'm like, hit the brakes!

01:02:25.000 Hit the brakes!

01:02:27.000 That's where you need some of the psychedelics we talked about at the last Joe Rogan, JD Vance conversation.

01:02:32.000 That would definitely help.

01:02:33.000 I mean, my response that, first of all, like, obviously, do I endorse that?

01:02:38.000 No.

01:02:39.000 Do I think that it's important that people rein it in a little bit?

01:02:42.000 Because I'm sure you're right. 0.95

01:02:43.000 There were a lot of troops there, probably a lot of Christian troops there who were like, I'm not sure this is exactly right.

01:02:48.000 But the important point is, I think it's important as a Christian leader, as Christians, period.

01:02:56.000 One of the things we have to do is just have humility in the face of God's plan.

01:02:59.000 There's a lot that we don't understand, there's a lot that we don't get.

01:03:03.000 And I think, especially on matters of war and peace, the approach that I try to take is you try to make the best decisions that you can.

01:03:10.000 You hope that you're on God's side.

01:03:12.000 You don't assume that God has taken your side.

01:03:15.000 That's a very famous Abraham Lincoln quote.

01:03:17.000 And that's the attitude that I take.

01:03:19.000 So, for that, what I would encourage that NCO to say is you know what?

01:03:23.000 God is in control.

01:03:25.000 We don't know what's going to happen, but let's pray and try to do as good of a job as we can, trusting in God.

01:03:31.000 If I was speaking to a group of Christian troops, that's what I would say.

01:03:35.000 But you're speaking to a group of troops who don't know if they're Christian.

01:03:38.000 You don't know.

01:03:39.000 I mean, you're essentially letting these people know that you believe that Trump was anointed by Jesus to bomb Iran so that Jesus can come back to us.

01:03:49.000 So that Jesus can come back in a fire of our marriage. 0.99

01:03:50.000 If I were to say, I'd be like, can I get the fuck out of here? 0.99

01:03:53.000 Yeah, no, I hear you, man. 0.97

01:03:54.000 I hear you.

01:03:55.000 Look, yes.

01:03:57.000 And that is the first that I have ever heard of this particular story.

01:04:01.000 How have you not heard of this and Biden's two brain surgeries?

01:04:03.000 Apparently, I live in a bunker, man.

01:04:07.000 How do you not know about these things?

01:04:09.000 That's crazy.

01:04:10.000 Okay, here's the other thing I'll say is having heard about this for the first time just now, to your point about the media, I do think it's possible, let's be honest, that whatever that dude said, maybe it was good, maybe it was bad, has been misreported by the press.

01:04:30.000 I always have a filter on this stuff.

01:04:30.000 It's possible.

01:04:32.000 Like, I don't automatically assume.

01:04:34.000 It's also possible that this is the other thing.

01:04:36.000 He said the commander supposedly had a big grin on his face when he said all this, which made his message seem even more crazy.

01:04:43.000 And I think that's, again, I don't think anybody should have war is sometimes necessary, but it's never a good thing.

01:04:53.000 And I think that's like a fundamental Christian principle there are just wars, there are necessary wars, but war is always something that you try to avoid.

01:05:00.000 Right, but saying that this is what's being referenced in the book of Revelation.

01:05:05.000 Yeah, dude, I think that is nuts.

01:05:06.000 I also don't know that that principle.

01:05:09.000 I want to confirm that this person actually said that before teeing off on it.

01:05:13.000 Because what that sounds to me is like somebody butchering or misrepresenting something that somebody that I know might have said.

01:05:23.000 Quite possible.

01:05:25.000 You've got to be serious about that.

01:05:25.000 So it is possible.

01:05:26.000 Also, quite possible that you've got a really loony guy who is a Christian nationalist, who is a commander, and who is in this position where he's actually excited because he does think that this is a holy war and this is going to bring back Jesus. 0.87

01:05:42.000 Well, that's certainly possible.

01:05:43.000 I mean, America's got 330 million people, and we've got a lot of people who believe in a lot of things, but I can assure you that we don't encourage people to talk like that.

01:05:52.000 And again, all I can do as a Christian leader, I'll look into that story certainly, but all I can do as a Christian leader is talk about how I think about questions of war and peace, which is we try to do the right thing.

01:06:03.000 We try to figure out what it is that is consistent with Christ's moral teaching, and we try to, you know, comport our foreign policy with the cause of justice.

01:06:14.000 And that's what we try to do, recognizing it's always going to be imperfect.

01:06:17.000 But I don't think that we should ever have an attitude towards war like this is a great thing.

01:06:21.000 I'm going to grin and smile about that.

01:06:23.000 All I'm saying is I'm skeptical that anybody took that approach because the media misrepresents everything.

01:06:28.000 Do you think that this, the way that you just described it, aligns with our campaign in Iran?

01:06:34.000 Well, I think that the goal is certainly good, which is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

01:06:41.000 And I think that there are obviously a lot of questions about how best to achieve that. 0.87

01:06:47.000 There's both a short term and a long term piece of it.

01:06:50.000 I think the short term piece of it is effectively what's already been done, which is you destroy the nuclear sites and you destroy and eliminate the ability to rebuild the nuclear sites.

01:06:59.000 I think there's a longer term thing, which is where a lot of the debate is focused on right now, which is that building a nuclear program is hard, but it's not impossible.

01:07:09.000 And it's expensive, but it's actually not even that expensive if you look at it.

01:07:12.000 I mean, you could go on YouTube right now and find out how to build an atomic bomb.

01:07:16.000 So part of our Iran policy, and this is where I get frustrated with the people who say you should never negotiate with Iran, part of our Iran policy is solving the long term problem.

01:07:27.000 That if we could create the sort of circumstance where Iran would commit not just to not have a nuclear weapon right now, but over the long term to not try to rebuild that capacity, like, yeah, I think that that is a good and valuable thing.

01:07:42.000 If it was your call, would you have done exactly the same thing?

01:07:46.000 Well, one of the president said publicly that J.D. was less enthusiastic about it, I think was the exact phrase that he used.

01:07:54.000 I mean, my attitude towards this man, as you know, is the vice president.

01:07:58.000 I'm not a public commentator.

01:08:00.000 Like, my job is to give the best advice I can to the president of the United States.

01:08:04.000 I think he's said a little bit about what that advice was.

01:08:09.000 But once the president makes a decision, so long as I think that it's legal and ethical and all that stuff, and I certainly think whether you agree or disagree with it, what we've done has been legal.

01:08:19.000 My attitude towards it is I try to make it as successful as possible.

01:08:23.000 And I've got friends, of course, I think you've expressed some skepticism of this.

01:08:27.000 I've got a lot of friends, both in private and public, who've expressed skepticism of this who say, well, this is terrible.

01:08:33.000 We disagree with the decision, et cetera, et cetera.

01:08:36.000 I'm not a public commentator.

01:08:37.000 My approach to this is not.

01:08:40.000 To Monday morning quarterback a decision that was made three months ago.

01:08:43.000 My approach to it is to try to make it as successful as possible, which is why I've poured my heart and soul into these negotiations, which is why I've tried to make that goal, Iran not having a nuclear weapon, something that's not true both, not just now, but is true in the long term.

01:08:57.000 And that's the way that I try to approach it.

01:08:59.000 So, what is going on with Iran where it seems like the president keeps saying that a deal has been reached, negotiations have been successful, and then it all falls apart? 0.98

01:09:12.000 And we start bombing them again. 0.96

01:09:13.000 Yeah.

01:09:13.000 So, how long do we have here?

01:09:16.000 Because this is a long conversation.

01:09:17.000 So, I have to explain a couple of things in the background so you sort of fully appreciate people fully appreciate what's going on here.

01:09:25.000 So, number one, it's a bit of a simplification, but you have two elements within the Iranian system. 0.91

01:09:30.000 You have, and you sometimes hear hawkish Americans say this, that they're all crazy people.

01:09:35.000 They want to bring about the 12th Imam and the apocalypse and all that stuff. 0.76

01:09:39.000 There are people in Iran who believe that.

01:09:41.000 They're also pragmatists. 0.88

01:09:42.000 You've got the crazy people, you've got the pragmatists.

01:09:44.000 So, when we struck this MOU, and really what the MOU says, and it was misrepresented more than almost anything that I've ever worked on in public life, what it says is Iran is going to open the Strait of Hormuz, the violence is going to stop, and then we're going to negotiate to see if we can come to a broader deal on the long term nuclear issue.

01:10:05.000 That's what we wanted.

01:10:06.000 And what the Iranians wanted, of course, was long term economic and sanctions relief.

01:10:10.000 Now, here's the problem with where we are right now.

01:10:15.000 And I guess my summary view, Joe, is that I, of course, can't predict the future.

01:10:20.000 I don't know exactly where this is going to go.

01:10:22.000 But I think fundamentally we are on the right trajectory.

01:10:25.000 Trajectory, it's just going to be really messy and there's going to be a lot of stops and starts.

01:10:30.000 So, what happens?

01:10:31.000 The first week after we sign the MOU, we get 20 million barrels a day of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz.

01:10:36.000 That's what it was before the war.

01:10:38.000 The price of oil comes way down.

01:10:40.000 And there are elements, the hardliners in the Iranian system kind of freak out a little bit. 0.97

01:10:45.000 They're like, oh shit, did we just give away our major leverage point? 0.99

01:10:48.000 Screw nuclear weapons. 1.00

01:10:49.000 We just gave away the so in this MOU.

01:10:52.000 And so, there was this kind of freak out in their system.

01:10:54.000 So, they shot at a couple ships.

01:10:56.000 We responded. 1.00

01:10:57.000 I think that's entirely appropriate, of course. 0.98

01:10:59.000 If they're going to shoot at ships, we are going to shoot at the people who are shooting at the ships, or we're going to destroy the facilities that they're using to shoot at ships. 0.98

01:11:07.000 Okay. 0.98

01:11:07.000 So that happens. 0.98

01:11:08.000 And then the Iranians are like, oh, no, no, fine. 1.00

01:11:10.000 You're right.

01:11:11.000 We shouldn't have been shooting at ships.

01:11:12.000 So then they come back to the table.

01:11:13.000 And there's a few more days of negotiation.

01:11:16.000 And then the phase they're in right now is the hardliners have really, really reacted strongly to all the oil that's coming out of the Strait of Hormuz.

01:11:24.000 And they've basically said, we're going to try to shut this thing down.

01:11:28.000 We're scared about losing our leverage.

01:11:30.000 Now, the pragmatists in their system are saying this was a mistake.

01:11:33.000 Let's keep on talking.

01:11:34.000 And again, do I know how this is ultimately going to shake out?

01:11:37.000 Of course, I don't.

01:11:39.000 But what we're doing is a delicate diplomatic dance where we're using economic leverage points, we're using carrots and sticks, we're trying to talk to the pragmatists.

01:11:49.000 And then, of course, when they commit acts of violence, we're responding to it.

01:11:52.000 And all those things are happening simultaneously to get us on a better trajectory.

01:11:56.000 Now, that said, yes, right now there's shooting right now.

01:12:00.000 Last night they shot at some ships.

01:12:02.000 But with all that said, is their nuclear program still destroyed?

01:12:07.000 Yes.

01:12:08.000 Are the Straits not necessarily fully pre war traffic?

01:12:12.000 But are we getting enough oil and gas out of the Strait of Hormuz to prevent a worldwide energy crisis?

01:12:17.000 Yes.

01:12:18.000 And all of these things are happening in the context of the broader negotiation over the nuclear program.

01:12:24.000 You never know where this is ultimately going to end up, but that's where we are.

01:12:28.000 And then can I just say one other thing about this?

01:12:30.000 Because there are people you see Mike Pence, who's sort of a superhawk, my predecessor.

01:12:36.000 Who say this?

01:12:37.000 There are people who are super hawkish in the American system who have attacked the deal and, frankly, in some ways have tried to derail the deal.

01:12:47.000 And what I always say to those people is, what is your proposal?

01:12:51.000 What is your actual argument?

01:12:53.000 So just take the Strait of Hormuz, like the narrowest, but in some ways the most important part of this back and forth right now.

01:12:59.000 Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway.

01:13:01.000 To the extent you shut it down, you shut down 25% of the world's energy supply.

01:13:05.000 Okay?

01:13:06.000 Joe, you.

01:13:08.000 Could take $100,000 and go buy a bunch of drones on the black market and post yourself on an island in the Strait of Hormuz or near it, and you could fire drones at those ships.

01:13:19.000 Okay?

01:13:20.000 Now, what does that mean? 0.99

01:13:22.000 Some oil and gas is still going to get out because some ships and some ship captains are going to say, screw you.

01:13:27.000 Now, the United States can help that, right?

01:13:29.000 We can shoot down some of those drones, we can shoot down some of those missiles, and so we can facilitate the flow of traffic. 1.00

01:13:35.000 But the people who are like, you cannot negotiate with the Iranians, The reason why that's fundamentally idiotic is because so long as you have some person who's willing to fire off a few cheap drones, you're going to have some ship captains who say, no, no, no, we're not willing to do this. 1.00

01:13:52.000 So we got to kind of use all tools at our disposal. 1.00

01:13:55.000 The military is one tool, but diplomacy is another tool. 1.00

01:13:58.000 And I'm very frustrated by the Americans and frankly by people in other countries who are like, you cannot negotiate with the Iranians. 0.77

01:14:06.000 Well, then what is your proposal to get people to stop shooting at ships in the Strait of Hormuz? 1.00

01:14:11.000 You can bomb them.

01:14:12.000 You can take away their radar.

01:14:13.000 You can take away some of their drones and some of their missiles, but it's just too easy to fire at ships in the Straits.

01:14:20.000 So you've got to actually be willing to talk and to try to figure out the problem.

01:14:24.000 What is their proposal, the people who think you shouldn't negotiate with Iran?

01:14:27.000 I think that their proposal is to bomb and bomb and bomb.

01:14:31.000 And the honest view, Joe, is that they do not actually have a solution.

01:14:37.000 If you actually ask them, what do you want us to do?

01:14:39.000 What is the goal that you're trying to achieve?

01:14:42.000 They'll say things like, we'll just bomb them to oblivion.

01:14:46.000 Okay, we can do that. 0.99

01:14:48.000 We can drop a lot of bombs.

01:14:49.000 But what does that accomplish if there's still a crazy person who's still unwilling to shoot a few drones at the Strait of Hormuz?

01:14:55.000 What the president has done, I think, very, very capably, is said, we're going to use military force in this situation when it's connected to something we're trying to achieve.

01:15:05.000 So if you shoot at ships, we're going to shoot at the facilities at which you used to shoot at the ships.

01:15:11.000 But we're not just going to do something open ended indefinitely. 0.94

01:15:14.000 We're not just going to bomb and bomb and bomb.

01:15:16.000 We're going to try to use our military force as one of the many tools that we have to solve the problem.

01:15:20.000 And obviously, like I'm biased, but I think that's exactly the right approach.

01:15:24.000 I actually, you have to read between the lines a little bit because if you look at what Mike Pence or some of the conservative hawks, like people who voted for us but have been very critical of me, very critical of the administration, if you actually look at what they're proposing, they just want the military campaign to go on forever and they can't actually identify what it is that they're trying to accomplish.

01:15:45.000 None of them can identify what it is they're trying to accomplish.

01:15:48.000 And I read two things between the lines.

01:15:51.000 I think some of them want us to accomplish a complete change in the government of Iran, to topple the clerics and to replace those clerics with somebody who's You know, much friendlier.

01:16:03.000 But, like, look, what is our experience with doing that?

01:16:06.000 It's not good.

01:16:07.000 It's not good, right? 0.89

01:16:09.000 And so, like, if the Iranian people want to rise up and change their government, that's up to them.

01:16:14.000 But we're not going to send 150,000 ground troops in order to accomplish a change in a regime unless the people on the ground themselves want to accomplish that outcome.

01:16:26.000 Now, we're not going to send the troops in regardless.

01:16:28.000 But, like, to propose sending in the troops, you're basically saying that the U.S. military. Should do the job for the Iranian people, we're not in that business anymore.

01:16:40.000 We're just not. 1.00

01:16:41.000 And then I think a second outcome that people are, whether they're aware of it or not, is what I call the Libya outcome. 0.94

01:16:48.000 So if you look at the end result of our Libya policy after Gaddafi was killed by the Obama administration, by the way, again, a very stupid decision, what happened? 0.89

01:16:58.000 Libya basically turned into a failed state. 0.96

01:17:00.000 You had a refugee crisis, you had people pouring into Europe, pouring into other parts of Asia, other parts of Africa. 0.97

01:17:06.000 You had a lot of violence, a lot of terrorism come from that. 1.00

01:17:09.000 I do think that there are people who would like that to be the outcome in Iran. 1.00

01:17:13.000 But then I say, again, what is in our interest? 0.82

01:17:16.000 How is it in the United States' interest to have 94 million desperate people flooding into Europe, flooding into the United States, to have sort of the terrorist infrastructure that can get established when you fan terrorists all over the world?

01:17:31.000 We've run this experiment before.

01:17:33.000 And so our policy right now, what we're trying to accomplish, is get the straits open, ensure the free flow of oil and gas. 0.82

01:17:41.000 Obviously, we want to keep the Iranians from having a nuclear weapons program and using the tools of diplomacy and military power to accomplish that. 0.61

01:17:50.000 And Libya failing and the collapse of Libya is a lot of what's fueled the migrant crisis in Europe as well, correct? 0.84

01:17:59.000 Exactly. 0.76

01:18:00.000 That in Syria, another failed state that was created by bad Middle Eastern policy. 0.85

01:18:04.000 So there is precedent for the United States doing this. 0.85

01:18:07.000 Every time that it has happened, it's caused a refugee crisis, it's caused a spike in terrorism, and it's also, not incidentally, to the moral considerations. 0.64

01:18:14.000 It's led to a lot of innocent civilian deaths. 0.99

01:18:17.000 Now, what was the talk about?

01:18:19.000 The talk about, I think the number was like $300 billion in concessions to Iran to rebuild.

01:18:27.000 Yeah. 0.96

01:18:28.000 So this is another just bullshit argument that the critics made against the deal. 0.95

01:18:32.000 And again, like I, just to back up a little bit, this is my own little hobby horse, but look, the coalition that Donald Trump piloted to the 2024 election campaign, it was a landslide. 0.98

01:18:45.000 We won seven states.

01:18:46.000 It was historic.

01:18:47.000 Nobody, certainly no Republican, had.

01:18:50.000 Actually, led a coalition like that at least since the days of Ronald Reagan.

01:18:54.000 So, like, literally before I was alive.

01:18:56.000 Okay.

01:18:57.000 So, Donald Trump wins this great coalition.

01:19:00.000 And look, it's got, man, it's got hawks and it's got people who hate foreign wars.

01:19:06.000 Okay.

01:19:06.000 It's got people like you and people like Tucker.

01:19:09.000 It's also got people like Mark Levin and others.

01:19:11.000 Okay.

01:19:12.000 I just accept that as a reality.

01:19:14.000 That's part of the coalition.

01:19:15.000 I don't say that anybody is welcome or unwelcome.

01:19:18.000 I say that if you're willing to sort of help us, you're going to get a lot what you want.

01:19:21.000 You don't get everything that you want.

01:19:23.000 What has really annoyed me about the hawkish side of this thing is they attack any effort to negotiate.

01:19:33.000 They attack the president.

01:19:35.000 They attack me personally.

01:19:36.000 Donald Trump is betraying me.

01:19:38.000 Wait a second.

01:19:39.000 If you want to have a hawkish policy towards Iran, the idea that Donald Trump has betrayed you because he's also trying to negotiate to get a good outcome for the American people is crazy.

01:19:51.000 You've seen a lot of these people completely flip.

01:19:54.000 On him, and that brings me to the $300 billion point.

01:19:58.000 What we did with the MOU is we actually worked not just with the Iranians but with the Gulf Arab states.

01:20:06.000 What is the term MOU?

01:20:07.000 What does it sound like?

01:20:08.000 It's the basic structure that we set up for the negotiation.

01:20:08.000 Memorandum of Understanding.

01:20:12.000 So what happened here is okay, so people sort of think of the Middle East as like Iran versus Israel.

01:20:19.000 I think a lot of people do.

01:20:20.000 There's also a massive number of Gulf states that are really important, good allies to the United States.

01:20:27.000 You know, they and Israel don't always see eye to eye, but we're obviously very close to both Israel and to the Gulf states.

01:20:33.000 And the Gulf states actually came to us and said, you know what? 0.90

01:20:36.000 If the Iranians are willing, really willing to change their behavior, we'd like to invest in rebuilding their country. 0.91

01:20:43.000 Now, whether they change their behavior is something that's going to be determined over the long term, right? 0.98

01:20:50.000 We want to see real changes.

01:20:51.000 We want to see them to stop funding terrorist organizations.

01:20:53.000 And also, of course, none of that money comes from the United States.

01:20:58.000 But if Iran's biggest enemies in the region are saying, We'd like to invest if they've changed their behavior.

01:21:05.000 Would the United States let us?

01:21:07.000 Would we release the sanctions that would make it possible for the UAE and Saudi Arabia and other countries to invest in Iran?

01:21:13.000 Our attitude was well, isn't that a victory for us?

01:21:16.000 If Iran's biggest enemies see that they have changed themselves so much that they're willing to invest in the Iranian economy, isn't that like the definition of a win win?

01:21:26.000 And then you had all these people saying, no, no, no, no, you can't give them $300 billion.

01:21:30.000 It's like we're not talking about giving them $300 billion.

01:21:33.000 We're talking about letting other countries invest in Iran.

01:21:36.000 If Iran has changed the way that it treats the Gulf Arab countries, it's fundamentally between them, meaning the Iranians, and the Gulf Arab countries.

01:21:44.000 So there's this line in the MOU that basically says that if Iran meets all of its obligations, then we will permit other countries to invest in Iran.

01:21:53.000 That's it.

01:21:53.000 And that, like again, the hawks attacked us and misrepresented this and lied about it and said the Trump administration is going to give the Iranians $300 billion.

01:22:05.000 And it's totally fake.

01:22:07.000 It's totally fake, it's completely made up, and it was done purely in order to politically tank the negotiation.

01:22:15.000 So there's been this interesting dynamic here where, as we've been trying to negotiate, there have been these extraordinarily well-funded efforts to tank the negotiation, to prevent us from reaching a deal, to change American public opinion, which, by the way, if you look at the public opinion, people love the idea of actually getting to a final resolution on this thing.

01:22:38.000 Americans do not - they're not game for long-term.

01:22:42.000 You know, open ended regime change wars in the Middle East.

01:22:45.000 They're okay with us using the military to accomplish discrete objectives.

01:22:51.000 They're not OK with open-ended obligations.

01:22:54.000 What do you think the motivation of the Hawks is?

01:22:56.000 Do you think this is – are they influenced by defense contractors?

01:23:02.000 Are they – what is – What's the reason why they're so keen on continuing to bomb?

01:23:08.000 I think with any big group of people, you have a diversity of opinions.

01:23:13.000 So sure.

01:23:14.000 I'm sure that.

01:23:16.000 You have people who are influenced by defense contractors.

01:23:20.000 There's a lot of talk about how much the Israeli government is influencing American politics.

01:23:25.000 And there are certainly certain people within the Israeli government who hate the deal.

01:23:29.000 And we see exact evidence.

01:23:31.000 There was a Times story that came out yesterday that basically there are certain influencers in America who are being paid in order to attack the deal.

01:23:42.000 I think some of it is just pure political ideology, right?

01:23:46.000 It's foreign policy perspectives that are much different from mine.

01:23:50.000 They think that America should just, that we can basically, you can wave a magic wand with the military and accomplish whatever you want.

01:23:58.000 And, you know, it's not that simple.

01:24:00.000 You actually have to have a very clear objective.

01:24:02.000 Military power can accomplish a clear objective, but you've got to have that clear objective.

01:24:07.000 You can't just say, we're going to bomb until something good happens.

01:24:10.000 That never works.

01:24:11.000 The United States has tried that before.

01:24:13.000 So I think it's a combination of things.

01:24:15.000 But I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well funded.

01:24:22.000 Campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal.

01:24:27.000 And, you know, there was again, there's this Time article that came out yesterday.

01:24:30.000 A friend sent it to me.

01:24:32.000 It's like worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government.

01:24:47.000 And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish.

01:24:52.000 The negotiation objective that the president set for the country.

01:24:55.000 What is their position?

01:24:56.000 They're attacking you how?

01:24:57.000 Oh, it's social media posts.

01:25:00.000 They're leaking to reporters.

01:25:02.000 They're attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran.

01:25:07.000 We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely.

01:25:10.000 That is their explicit position.

01:25:13.000 Coming after me saying that people have come after me and say that I'm influenced by Qatar, that I'm influenced by foreign governments, that I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson.

01:25:23.000 There's just so much bullshit out there when what I'm actually trying to do is accomplish what the President of the United States told me to accomplish, which is a settlement of this that accomplishes our objectives.

01:25:35.000 Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. 0.98

01:25:37.000 We have the free flow of oil and gas.

01:25:40.000 And like, I should be clear, you know, like, I don't actually mind.

01:25:46.000 I don't mind that the, you know, let's say certain elements of the Israeli government want to criticize the deal.

01:25:57.000 Or have disagreements about the deal.

01:25:59.000 The deal.

01:26:00.000 I don't even mind an effort to try to influence foreign governments try to influence the United States all the time.

01:26:07.000 Israel does it, other countries do it.

01:26:09.000 It's just sort of the nature of the beast.

01:26:12.000 What bothers me is actually when Americans allow meaning American leadership allows that influence to affect their judgment and to affect what they are advocating for.

01:26:25.000 That's what really bothers me.

01:26:27.000 People are always going to try to influence the United States of America, whether they're allies of ours or whether they're enemies of ours. 0.98

01:26:33.000 But again, when I open up the pages of Time magazine and I see that there's a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, my response to that is, well, go to hell.

01:26:53.000 I'm going to do what I have to do for the American people.

01:26:55.000 I represent Americans first, and that's the way that I've tried to do this job.

01:27:01.000 And, Joe, the crazy thing is.

01:27:04.000 I'm like, people don't realize this.

01:27:07.000 I'm actually in this, you know, there's this massive pro Israel, anti Israel debate in the United States of America.

01:27:15.000 I'm like the reasonable moderate.

01:27:17.000 And I think that's what so many people don't realize is, you know, I've been accused of being an anti Semite.

01:27:24.000 I've been accused, been accused for what reason?

01:27:27.000 Quite literally for I've been accused of trying to, I guess, some people say that I've insulted the Jewish religion, which is insane.

01:27:35.000 Like, I have a ton of respect for the Jewish religion.

01:27:38.000 I mean, if you talk about What specifically did you say?

01:27:40.000 I don't know.

01:27:41.000 I've never heard a good compelling argument for why I'm an anti Semite, even though I've been accused of being an anti Semite by many people.

01:27:48.000 But it's what always I say to these guys is look at public opinion.

01:27:56.000 Look at the way young Republicans versus Republicans over the age of 65 approach this issue.

01:28:03.000 Like, right now, Israel is losing the public opinion battle in the United States of America.

01:28:09.000 It is a simple and obvious fact.

01:28:12.000 Donald Trump has said that publicly.

01:28:13.000 It's a simple and obvious fact.

01:28:15.000 What do you think that is?

01:28:16.000 Well, let me finish this point.

01:28:18.000 Okay, go ahead.

01:28:19.000 Okay, my attitude is towards this Israel is an ally. 0.91

01:28:23.000 Like France or like the United Kingdom, we're going to have disagreements with them. 0.95

01:28:28.000 We're going to have agreements with them.

01:28:29.000 There are areas where we're going to have similar interests and areas where our interests are going to diverge.

01:28:33.000 So, my approach to this is to say, you know what?

01:28:36.000 When we're partnered, great, let's work together.

01:28:39.000 And we're not, let's just be honest about it.

01:28:41.000 And I, for that, people attack me for being an anti Semite or anti Israel, and they don't see the writing on the wall that I'm actually just the guy advocating for a normal relationship with a normal country that's based around shared interest as opposed to based around, you know, something else.

01:29:00.000 So, why is Israel losing American public opinion?

01:29:09.000 Well, the narrative is that Israel has a very disproportionate effect.

01:29:13.000 On American politics. 0.76

01:29:15.000 Yeah, I see that narrative.

01:29:16.000 I mean, I actually think that they look, do they try to influence American politics?

01:29:24.000 Yes.

01:29:24.000 But like I said earlier, a lot of other countries do.

01:29:26.000 I think some are better at it than others. 0.97

01:29:30.000 I think the Israels are definitely more effective at it than most. 0.96

01:29:32.000 But I wouldn't say that they're the only effective country by any means that tries to influence American politics. 0.96

01:29:37.000 I just think you have to be self aware about it.

01:29:40.000 I mean, why wouldn't you?

01:29:41.000 It's a country of 9 million people, we have 330 million people.

01:29:44.000 And so, of course, they're going to try to persuade Americans.

01:29:48.000 They're going to try to move Americans in one direction or another.

01:29:51.000 I think that's just the nature of the beast.

01:29:53.000 But it's more than that.

01:29:54.000 Than that, the concern is that they're spying on American politicians.

01:30:01.000 There's concerns about funding, there's concerns about influence, there's concerns about whether or not politicians are whether they're aligned with Israel or whether they're aligned with the United States first.

01:30:13.000 Well, there's certainly like I definitely get those concerns, but my sense is that the way that all foreign influence works in the United States is people try to manipulate American public opinion.

01:30:26.000 And then from manipulating a public opinion, they try to get the outcomes that they want. 0.71

01:30:30.000 I mean, this thing is a very good example of this. 0.96

01:30:33.000 So, you know, like we know, I'm telling you, beyond a reasonable doubt, we know that the negotiation strategy that the president has asked us to pursue, and again, with limitations, like when the Iranians hit ships, the president has been willing to knock the hell out of the Iranians in response. 0.96

01:30:51.000 This is not just a negotiation, it's negotiation, it's military, it's all these things. 0.78

01:30:56.000 But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, That there have been people within the Israeli government who are trying to actually shift us away from that policy because they want to continue the military campaign.

01:31:09.000 And by the way, there are people within their government that I love, I have good relationships with.

01:31:13.000 I hope and I don't think that they're part of this.

01:31:17.000 I mean, the ambassador of Israel to the United States I think is actually a really good guy.

01:31:23.000 Obviously, he cares about Israel first.

01:31:24.000 I care about America first.

01:31:25.000 But there are some people within their system we know beyond a shadow of a doubt who are.

01:31:30.000 Manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely.

01:31:38.000 Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely.

01:31:41.000 So, does it happen?

01:31:43.000 Yes.

01:31:43.000 But I guess what I would say to the Americans who sort of see this and are frustrated by it, my attitude would be you should be frustrated at American leaders who are persuaded by this, affected by this.

01:31:57.000 Countries are going to do what countries do. 0.68

01:32:00.000 I really don't, it doesn't bother me that Qatar tries to influence the United States of America, and they do. 0.78

01:32:04.000 I like a lot of the Qataris just like I like a lot of the Israelis. 0.53

01:32:07.000 It doesn't bother me that Israel tries to do this.

01:32:09.000 It frankly doesn't even bother me that Russia or some of these other countries do it.

01:32:12.000 It's just the nature of being a political leader in 2026.

01:32:17.000 What does bother me is when those operations, those influence campaigns, actually affect American political judgment because they shouldn't.

01:32:28.000 shouldn't, because we should be thinking what is in the best interest of the United States of America. 0.64

01:32:32.000 Do you think that Israel is affecting American political?

01:32:36.000 I mean, I certainly think that there are a lot of talking points and there are a lot of arguments that make their way into American political discourse.

01:32:55.000 I think there are a lot of social media campaigns that definitely influence Americans and affect Americans.

01:33:01.000 Do I think that it's been dispositive on any particular issue?

01:33:05.000 Like, I think that's a much more difficult question.

01:33:08.000 Do you think that we would have?

01:33:09.000 Started this war in Iran without the influence of Israel? 0.71

01:33:13.000 I think the president, completely separate from any influence from Israel, believes very strongly, and again, I agree with this, that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon.

01:33:24.000 And I think he was willing to do things.

01:33:24.000 Right.

01:33:25.000 And I think he bombed them in June, right?

01:33:26.000 That was the initial attack, right?

01:33:29.000 June of last year.

01:33:30.000 Yeah.

01:33:31.000 Right.

01:33:31.000 Midnight Hammer, yeah.

01:33:32.000 Do you think he would have continued with the most recent campaign if it wasn't for the influence of Israel? 0.98

01:33:39.000 Yes, I do. 0.99

01:33:40.000 I do.

01:33:40.000 Really?

01:33:41.000 Yeah.

01:33:41.000 I do.

01:33:41.000 Really?

01:33:42.000 Yeah.

01:33:43.000 Look, I mean, I think, again, and I see this, and I see it even from people that are in our coalition.

01:33:51.000 And this would be my flip side to the hawks who have been attacking me or the president mercilessly over negotiation.

01:33:57.000 I would sort of turn this back on some of the doves or some of the realists who have been attacking the president of the United States.

01:34:03.000 The doves?

01:34:04.000 Those are the peace people?

01:34:05.000 Yes, peace people.

01:34:06.000 Hawks and doves.

01:34:06.000 You call them the doves?

01:34:07.000 You never heard that phrase?

01:34:09.000 I've heard hawks.

01:34:10.000 I've heard hawks.

01:34:11.000 I don't think I've ever heard doves.

01:34:13.000 Hawks and pigeons?

01:34:14.000 Hawks and, I don't know.

01:34:15.000 I think it's more doves than cheese.

01:34:16.000 Doves is good, right?

01:34:17.000 So, what I think a lot of people, I've heard this argument, is this idea that Donald Trump, you know, was sort of.

01:34:27.000 I've even heard people say he was blackmailed into this by the Israelis.

01:34:31.000 Yeah, I don't think that.

01:34:32.000 That's not true, dude.

01:34:33.000 It's just not true.

01:34:34.000 I've seen the decision making up close again.

01:34:36.000 Whether you agree or disagree with our negotiation, or whether you agree or disagree with the decision to launch the campaign Epic Fury to begin with, the idea that Donald Trump is being like.

01:34:50.000 Blackmailed is crazy to me.

01:34:52.000 Because again, I see the way that he makes decisions.

01:34:55.000 I see the way that he processes this stuff.

01:34:57.000 Like the idea that he picks up the phone with anybody and says, hey, like I'm going to take orders from you.

01:35:01.000 No, that's just not how Donald Trump operates.

01:35:03.000 Could you understand though why people would come to that conclusion, especially because of the Epstein files?

01:35:12.000 What do you mean?

01:35:12.000 Well, the Epstein files were supposed to be released, and there was a tremendous amount of resistance.

01:35:19.000 Those files being released.

01:35:21.000 That concerned a lot of people.

01:35:22.000 Because if you're talking about very wealthy, powerful people that were engaged in crimes.

01:35:27.000 I see.

01:35:28.000 You're basically saying the fear is that whatever's in the Epstein files was used to blackmail the administration into doing the Iran thing.

01:35:38.000 Or at the very least, the people that were involved in the Epstein files that didn't want them coming out had undue influence.

01:35:46.000 Again, like say this with all candor, like we absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files, like we just did.

01:35:56.000 But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something?

01:36:01.000 No.

01:36:01.000 I think the reason we screwed up the comms of the Epstein files is one, you know, Pam said, Pam Bondi said, the client list is on my desk, right?

01:36:11.000 Well, see, they had binders that were standing in front.

01:36:16.000 But those binders were largely documents that had already been released, right?

01:36:18.000 So here's let me try to define the purpose of that performative display of the Epstein files.

01:36:25.000 She was saying there's tens of thousands of hours of film.

01:36:30.000 I don't know what the purpose of it was, but I know that the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort.

01:36:37.000 What I think was happening look, I know Pam.

01:36:41.000 I like Pam.

01:36:41.000 I don't think there's anything malicious going on.

01:36:43.000 I think Pam was trying to respond to the political moment.

01:36:47.000 I think she overstated what we had and what we didn't have.

01:36:50.000 And I think that she got roasted for it publicly by a lot of people, including me.

01:36:55.000 Like, you know, you and I have talked about this a lot.

01:36:58.000 I'm like one of the OG Epstein conspiracy theorists.

01:37:00.000 I've probably gone down every single rabbit hole we could go down, most of them today.

01:37:05.000 Look, the original sin of the Epstein investigation, and obviously I'm biased here, but it was not what Donald Trump and the administration did in 2025.

01:37:18.000 It was you have to go back to 2007, 2008.

01:37:20.000 The original Alex Acosta investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, where he basically dropped the federal charges.

01:37:27.000 I think Epstein ended up getting prosecuted on some sort of local thing.

01:37:32.000 But the original warrant, he would be the original warrant back in 2008.

01:37:36.000 What was he looking for?

01:37:38.000 What was he allowed to look for?

01:37:40.000 Allowed to look for?

01:37:40.000 What were they collecting?

01:37:42.000 It was not looking at a broader conspiracy.

01:37:45.000 So that happens.

01:37:47.000 Okay.

01:37:48.000 Epstein gets pinched.

01:37:49.000 I think he goes to prison or maybe this is when he was on house arrest.

01:37:52.000 But like anything that existed from the 80s and 90s up to 2006, 2007, anything that existed that we didn't get back then was disappeared.

01:38:05.000 So like when people say, has what you've seen on the inside make you think that the, you know, that Epstein.

01:38:05.000 Right.

01:38:11.000 Never blackmailed people or that Epstein never engaged in broader sex trafficking?

01:38:15.000 No, absolutely not.

01:38:17.000 What I have seen, and I've looked at most of the files, is that there just wasn't dispositive evidence.

01:38:25.000 And if that dispositive evidence ever existed, it was probably destroyed after 2006, 2007.

01:38:30.000 Now, again, in our defense, yes, was there some bitching and moaning and was there some back and forth?

01:38:37.000 Yes.

01:38:38.000 But we eventually collected six million documents.

01:38:43.000 As part of the effort, the president, people say the president was forced into releasing the documents.

01:38:50.000 Like, again, the idea that Donald Trump could not have killed that legislation, especially with the United States Senate, is a joke.

01:38:57.000 He absolutely could have killed it.

01:38:58.000 What did he do?

01:38:59.000 He actually said, nope, we're going to release these files.

01:39:02.000 He thought, you know, he was annoyed by the story.

01:39:04.000 He was annoyed by the Democrats accusing him of doing things bad.

01:39:08.000 By the way, like, do I think there is any, I've never seen a single piece of credible evidence that the president of the United States engaged in wrongdoing with minors ever.

01:39:18.000 So, like when the president says the hoax, that's what he's talking about is this democratic idea that he somehow was a pedophile.

01:39:25.000 It's absurd.

01:39:26.000 There's no evidence for it.

01:39:28.000 Now, the Epstein law gets signed.

01:39:33.000 We find 6 million documents.

01:39:36.000 We find out 3 million of them are actually responsive, has something to do with the Epstein estate.

01:39:40.000 We release all of them, with the exception of a few things that are like the courts have said that we have to redact certain things or we can't release certain files.

01:39:49.000 But, like, we did release all of them.

01:39:51.000 All these files.

01:39:52.000 Did it take longer than it should have taken?

01:39:54.000 Yes.

01:39:55.000 But we did release these files.

01:39:56.000 And again, the problem here is not like anything that's in the files or not in the files.

01:40:05.000 The problem is if you go back to the original investigation, it was designed in a way that was way too narrow.

01:40:12.000 If there was a broader conspiracy, and you know my view is that there probably was, the evidence that existed in 2007, that was the opportunity to get it.

01:40:22.000 So when you say there probably was a broader conspiracy, what exactly?

01:40:25.000 That you're saying?

01:40:26.000 I think there are a few different options.

01:40:27.000 I mean, look, man, you and I could literally do two episodes about this.

01:40:31.000 I've gone on down every rabbit hole.

01:40:33.000 There's this funny New York Times story that's somewhat true, somewhat false, but where Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, says, Well, we know JD's a conspiracy theorist on this.

01:40:42.000 Like, I am, actually.

01:40:43.000 I've gone down every rabbit hole here.

01:40:47.000 Look, so there's the theory that whether it was American intel or foreign intel, that Epstein was sort of using.

01:40:56.000 Epstein was using sort of the sex ring to blackmail rich and powerful people.

01:41:02.000 There's that piece of it.

01:41:03.000 You know, I think there's a separate conspiracy that hasn't gotten covered as much, which is that Epstein actually, okay.

01:41:12.000 If you go back to the original Epstein guy, was Les Wexner, okay, who Columbus, Ohio was the wealthiest person in Ohio, maybe still is the wealthiest person in the state of Ohio.

01:41:26.000 I lived there for a time.

01:41:27.000 Knew about the Wexner Epstein relationship is that Epstein was his tax guy.

01:41:35.000 That Epstein was like the genius at identifying weird tax strategies that would allow you to not have to pay taxes.

01:41:43.000 But if you were being a little skeptical, would also say that it would allow Epstein to either blackmail people or to have a separate nexus of influence and control on rich and powerful people.

01:41:53.000 And so I think there's an underreported, underexplored story of was Epstein like doing a lot of tax stuff that was not on the up and up?

01:42:04.000 And is that one way in which he gained blackmail?

01:42:06.000 It's not. 0.54

01:42:07.000 Opposite of the sexual blackmail story, but in some ways it's, you know, you could imagine both things being true. 1.00

01:42:16.000 I also just think there's an element of he was a scumbag. 1.00

01:42:20.000 He was a very sick person. 1.00

01:42:22.000 He built relationships with a lot of other rich and powerful people who just didn't have any real moral judgment about the fact the guy was obviously a scumbag. 0.99

01:42:31.000 And again, to go back to defending Donald Trump, I know people don't want to hear this these days, but like, who was the guy? 0.97

01:42:37.000 People say Donald Trump's blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein.

01:42:40.000 Who was the guy who narked on Epstein to the Palm Beach police?

01:42:44.000 That's in the Epstein files.

01:42:46.000 It was Donald Trump.

01:42:47.000 He also kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago and took him out of Mar-a-Lago. 0.99

01:42:51.000 It's obvious that Epstein was a sick man.

01:42:53.000 But if people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty.

01:42:53.000 Yes.

01:42:57.000 We did mishandle, especially the communications of it.

01:43:00.000 What do you think should have been done?

01:43:01.000 I think that we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning.

01:43:04.000 And obviously, it takes a little time to review the stuff.

01:43:07.000 Find the stuff to redact things where you have victims and so forth, but we should have just done it as quickly as possible.

01:43:12.000 But some of the stuff that was redacted, some of the names that were redacted weren't victims.

01:43:17.000 So, yeah, I've looked into this and my understanding of this, having looked at a lot of this, but not all of it, is that it is sometimes hard to draw a distinction between victim and coke.

01:43:31.000 And like, let me highlight this in a very sort of obvious way.

01:43:36.000 Ro Khanna, who's been one of the most, one of the loudest voices on the Epstein fight, well, He became very loud on the Epstein files the minute Donald Trump became president, didn't seem to care about it during the Biden administration.

01:43:46.000 He actually brought one of the Epstein victims, I think, to the State of the Union last year, or maybe it was the year before last.

01:43:53.000 Well, like that victim, and I'm not accusing, I'm not saying she wasn't a victim.

01:43:57.000 I don't know anything about her particular case.

01:44:01.000 She was also listed as a co conspirator in some of these documents, right?

01:44:05.000 So there's an idea that some of the people who were engaged in the sex trafficking were also facilitating it as well.

01:44:11.000 So they were incentivized to get more girls.

01:44:13.000 Yeah, but what I, but yes, that's right.

01:44:15.000 But the idea is that it's hard to sort of, it's sometimes a little bit of a gray area between, you know, some of the people who were alleged victims were also alleged co conspirators.

01:44:25.000 And so what DOJ tried to do was kind of make that judgment as best they could and release as much as possible.

01:44:32.000 But it's clear that he was trying to get in contact with people that he felt were influential.

01:44:38.000 It was clear that he was trying to get people to get together on the island and meet at parties.

01:44:46.000 So, there was something he was doing where he was trying to either influence people or compromise people.

01:44:53.000 Correct.

01:44:54.000 So, it's not, there's some sort of an operation that was going on.

01:44:59.000 There is a story there, and I will go to my deathbed believing there's a story there, but I can't prove it.

01:45:07.000 And I promise you, there's not some document that at least I'm hiding that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.

01:45:14.000 He was also trying to get scientists.

01:45:16.000 And this is one of the reasons supposedly why he got that ranch in New Mexico.

01:45:22.000 So a friend of mine has this element.

01:45:23.000 Sorry, I should step back.

01:45:26.000 I should step back.

01:45:27.000 Conspiracy theories, one of the ways you discredit a conspiracy theory, I've thought about this a lot, is to try to hide it.

01:45:33.000 Another way you discredit a conspiracy theory is by flooding the zone.

01:45:37.000 So, one of the things I've tried to do when looking at all this stuff is to try to understand sort of where it fits in and to try to separate the real from the fake.

01:45:46.000 But one really interesting element of the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga, okay, so he dies in 2019, right?

01:45:52.000 This is at the very end of the first Trump administration.

01:45:57.000 His death.

01:45:58.000 Coincides very, very closely.

01:46:02.000 This is not my observation.

01:46:03.000 This is a friend, but I don't want to reveal confidences here.

01:46:06.000 It coincides very closely with the end of what you might call the era of censorship in academia.

01:46:13.000 So, back in 2019, 2020, we reached sort of peak academic censorship where people wouldn't publish a medical study because it might have sort of disparate impact racial undertones, or people were getting fired from academia for not doing land acknowledgement, stuff like that.

01:46:31.000 Okay.

01:46:32.000 I'm not saying that stuff has completely gone away, but Epstein, we know, was funding a ton of scientists.

01:46:37.000 By the way, where did his money come from?

01:46:39.000 He was funding a ton of scientists.

01:46:41.000 But like when he died, it's almost like the era of censorship started to break because he wasn't just, he was also plugged into a lot of in academia, but also, you know, he was plugged into the social media companies.

01:46:53.000 Like this is a dude who knew everybody.

01:46:54.000 He knew everybody.

01:46:56.000 So, look.

01:46:59.000 So, where did his money come from?

01:47:01.000 Well, from given part of it is suspect tax advice and setting up tax schemes for a lot of very, very rich people.

01:47:11.000 But why was he motivated to influence academia?

01:47:11.000 Right.

01:47:17.000 And what was the purpose?

01:47:19.000 I don't know the answer to that question.

01:47:21.000 I mean, I have theories.

01:47:23.000 There's, of course, the.

01:47:24.000 Well, most people think he was Mossad.

01:47:26.000 Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country.

01:47:32.000 Or both.

01:47:33.000 Or both.

01:47:35.000 Look, he clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence.

01:47:42.000 He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.

01:47:45.000 In fact, one of the interesting things the Epstein saga reveals about, and I try to make this point, is one of the reasons why I'm always careful and I say there are some elements within the Israeli government who don't like our peace process because there are a lot of elements within the Israeli government that actually do like our peace process.

01:48:04.000 That this indefinite campaign is not good for them either.

01:48:08.000 And the Epstein thing is interesting because, as much as I know Prime Minister Netanyahu, not a particularly popular person in the United States of America right now, Epstein seemed to be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center.

01:48:26.000 Like I've always found that fascinating.

01:48:28.000 It wasn't like he was super connected to the right of center of Israeli politics, America, he was connected across the board.

01:48:36.000 Like he had Republican friends, he had Democratic friends.

01:48:39.000 He had much deeper connections to the Israeli left of center than right of center.

01:48:44.000 I don't know what that means.

01:48:45.000 I've always had friends.

01:48:46.000 He was hanging out with Steve Bannon and Noam Chomsky.

01:48:49.000 He had, again, in America, he had friends across the political spectrum in a way he didn't necessarily have in Israel.

01:48:49.000 Exactly.

01:48:57.000 I had one of my guests try to get me to meet him.

01:48:59.000 Really?

01:49:00.000 Yeah.

01:49:00.000 When?

01:49:01.000 2017.

01:49:03.000 See, that's crazy to me because at that point he'd already gone down for at least one, like, sex abuse thing.

01:49:07.000 That was my position.

01:49:09.000 Ha ha.

01:49:10.000 I'll show you the emails.

01:49:11.000 Okay.

01:49:11.000 They're kind of funny.

01:49:12.000 I actually read them on stage.

01:49:14.000 You want to say, okay, fine.

01:49:15.000 People can find it.

01:49:16.000 Yeah.

01:49:16.000 I don't want to have the guy's already ruined.

01:49:19.000 Sure. 0.99

01:49:20.000 But I Googled it and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.91

01:49:27.000 See, but this goes back to my original warrant. 0.96

01:49:29.000 But this was part of what he was doing, correct?

01:49:31.000 He wanted to get influential people.

01:49:33.000 But you go back to the original 2007 warrant on Jeffrey Epstein. 0.94

01:49:39.000 All of the really crazy shit happened from the 90s to 2007. 0.75

01:49:44.000 That's when he was at the peak of his power. 0.99

01:49:47.000 That's when he hadn't yet gone down on a sex abuse scandal.

01:49:50.000 Like, to your point, right? 0.99

01:49:52.000 Even if you have some scumbags who are willing to introduce him to Joe Rogan in 2017, there are a lot of Joe Rogans, or at least some, who are going to say, wait a second, I'm going to Google this guy and find out that he's a predator. 0.97

01:50:03.000 A lot didn't. 0.98

01:50:04.000 That was really crazy.

01:50:05.000 A lot didn't, but some did.

01:50:06.000 And my point is that would limit his influence.

01:50:09.000 But if you go back to like the 1990s, the early 2000s, that is the stuff.

01:50:16.000 I think that is like the black hole of the Epstein saga.

01:50:19.000 We don't have nearly enough from that era.

01:50:22.000 And so the internet was destroyed.

01:50:25.000 I think we had a prosecution that explicitly was so narrow that whatever existed would not have even been caught up.

01:50:34.000 So they were specifically going after him for underage sex.

01:50:34.000 Right.

01:50:38.000 And they didn't look at the picture of the operation.

01:50:42.000 They didn't even try to.

01:50:44.000 They didn't even try to.

01:50:45.000 Well, that was one of the things about the prosecutor was told that he was above their pay grade.

01:50:50.000 I mean, it was one of the things that he was.

01:50:51.000 Well, he said he was like CIA or something, right?

01:50:53.000 He said I was told he was intelligence.

01:50:55.000 Right.

01:50:55.000 And yes, I've asked whether, like,.

01:50:59.000 Were there documents connecting Jeffrey Epstein directly to our intelligence agencies or anybody else's?

01:51:04.000 And the answer is no. 0.99

01:51:05.000 But if that shit existed, it wouldn't exist in 2026. 0.99

01:51:09.000 What is it like being the vice president? 0.99

01:51:11.000 Like, how much access do you have to information?

01:51:15.000 Because I'll give you another conspiracy.

01:51:17.000 So I have like effectively unlimited access to information.

01:51:20.000 Unlimited.

01:51:21.000 But I think that one of the things that I've learned about the job is you're doing so much on the day to day.

01:51:30.000 Like you're calling senators and trying to get them to pass a piece of legislation.

01:51:34.000 You're meeting with staff about what should go in the housing bill.

01:51:36.000 You're negotiating with the Iranians or the Qataris or the Israelis about something that's going on in the Middle East.

01:51:43.000 And a lot of it, like the UFO thing, like I've said that I'm going to look into the UFO thing.

01:51:50.000 And I've been saying that for a year and a half, and I haven't done it yet because I haven't had the time.

01:51:55.000 And so some of this is like you just have to have the time to actually.

01:52:00.000 Punch through the walls and to like go to the gatekeepers and say, You have to open up that gate because I'm the vice president.

01:52:06.000 And some of it is just hard to actually get to because I don't have the time to sort of focus on that one issue for any particular period of time.

01:52:13.000 So the answer is you have unlimited access to information.

01:52:16.000 The constraint is not people tell me no. 0.99

01:52:19.000 The constraint is you're just so busy doing other shit. 0.93

01:52:25.000 The UFO thing, I think, would be something that I would want to pursue. 0.98

01:52:29.000 Yes.

01:52:30.000 I mean, just for my own personal information, I would want to know what.

01:52:33.000 Is going on.

01:52:34.000 Correct.

01:52:35.000 So the question is are these special access programs that are above top secret and that this is our own stuff, or is this something that's far more bizarre and something that is interdimensional from another planet, whatever?

01:52:55.000 Fill in the blank.

01:52:55.000 Is it foreign?

01:52:56.000 And if it's foreign, is it 6,000 miles away or like 6,000 light years away? 0.99

01:53:00.000 Right. 0.98

01:53:01.000 Yes.

01:53:02.000 Right.

01:53:02.000 And that is, I will answer that question eventually.

01:53:07.000 Yes.

01:53:07.000 Really?

01:53:08.000 I'll get to the bottom of it.

01:53:10.000 How are you going to have the time to do that?

01:53:12.000 What would that entail?

01:53:14.000 Eventually, I'll have a few weeks where I can just sit down and worry about that problem.

01:53:17.000 You said something that I thought was very bizarre.

01:53:19.000 Here's the interesting thing about it.

01:53:19.000 I agree.

01:53:20.000 I will say that is one of those conspiracy theories that there are a lot of people in our government who are interested in this, meaning our current political leadership who are interested in this question.

01:53:39.000 Nothing has really happened yet, which makes me a little bit less interested in it.

01:53:45.000 Because there are a lot of people with access to those files and access to that information, and nothing has changed since Biden left office.

01:53:51.000 Which makes me think other people have looked into it and they just haven't necessarily found something.

01:53:55.000 But anyway, I eventually, I promise you, I'm going to sit down and spend a couple of weeks trying to figure out what's in these files.

01:54:03.000 Actually, I haven't done it yet.

01:54:06.000 You said something that I thought was very odd.

01:54:08.000 Okay.

01:54:09.000 You said that you thought that they were demons.

01:54:15.000 Okay.

01:54:16.000 I did say that.

01:54:17.000 What did you mean by that?

01:54:19.000 Well, I. First of all, not just in Christianity, but in a number of world religions, there are a number of mystical things that happened, extra dimensional, extra.

01:54:38.000 I'm not one of these people who's a hyper rationalist.

01:54:42.000 I think that there are things happening in the world that we're not always seeing.

01:54:46.000 I believe in God.

01:54:47.000 I think that there is a kind of what's the word I'm looking for?

01:54:50.000 Not extra real.

01:54:52.000 Supernatural.

01:54:53.000 Supernatural.

01:54:53.000 There are supernatural things that are happening.

01:54:55.000 Okay.

01:54:56.000 So, if you look historically at things that are similar to the alien phenomenon, where, oh, some strange being, it kind of looks like a human being but doesn't look like, but it's not human, and it shows a particular interest in human beings, and then it takes the human beings and does weird experiments on them. 0.95

01:55:23.000 I think my argument is that's either bullshit, right? 0.98

01:55:26.000 You're either talking to a crazy person, which I don't like. 0.99

01:55:28.000 I'm not saying just because I believe in the supernatural doesn't mean I believe in everything supernatural.

01:55:33.000 But if we're talking about an extraterrestrial being that is human like but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there's a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.

01:55:53.000 Well, a lot of these stories and these accounts.

01:55:59.000 We have one right here on the coaster.

01:56:01.000 Yeah, that's the mothership.

01:56:02.000 Logo.

01:56:04.000 A lot of these accounts are not of people being tortured.

01:56:12.000 They're people that are being exposed to information, like the Travis Walton story is a very famous case from the 1970s.

01:56:20.000 I'll read about it on the way back, though.

01:56:22.000 It's this guy right here.

01:56:23.000 I got a Travis Walton follower.

01:56:25.000 He's one of the most famous UFO abduction stories.

01:56:29.000 There's a movie with D.B. Cooper in the.

01:56:34.000 And, like, what is the information that they gave Travis Walton?

01:56:37.000 Was D.B. Cooper the guy who stole the money and jumped out of the plane?

01:56:44.000 Fire in the Sky.

01:56:45.000 There's a movie.

01:56:46.000 Oh, of course.

01:56:46.000 Yeah, I remember this movie.

01:56:47.000 I don't think I ever saw it, though.

01:56:48.000 1993.

01:56:49.000 Good movie, but sensational. 0.99

01:56:52.000 And Travis Walton says they made a bunch of shit up, and that's not what happened. 0.99

01:56:57.000 But the story was that he was a logger in Arizona, and he was leaving a job. 0.99

01:57:05.000 They were all together in a truck, and these loggers saw.

01:57:09.000 This thing, this light, land in this forest, and they went to go investigate.

01:57:16.000 He jumps out of the truck and he gets close to it and he's hit by some beam of light and knocked to the ground.

01:57:23.000 They take off and then they realize, like, we've got to go back.

01:57:26.000 We don't know what's going on.

01:57:28.000 They turn around.

01:57:29.000 They go back to get him.

01:57:30.000 They're freaked out and panicked.

01:57:32.000 They go back to get him.

01:57:33.000 He's gone.

01:57:34.000 The police interview them.

01:57:36.000 They think that they killed him.

01:57:39.000 There's an investigation.

01:57:41.000 Five days later, he shows up wearing the same clothes and he has this crazy story.

01:57:48.000 And he had been in.

01:57:50.000 This spaceship for five days is what he said, and that they had fixed him, they healed him, and then they had communicated with him telepathically, and he had had this very bizarre encounter with these beings that aren't from here.

01:58:07.000 Or if they are from here, they're very different than us.

01:58:10.000 Okay.

01:58:11.000 So I guess my response to that would be extra powerful beings, in this case, communicating telepathically, helping people.

01:58:19.000 Sounds.

01:58:20.000 So I guess my - Here's - let me - let me make the steel man version of my argument.

01:58:20.000 Like an angel.

01:58:26.000 It's that, okay, my dog - there's no real difference between me and God to my dog.

01:58:36.000 I can literally walk into a room and turn the light on.

01:58:38.000 I can make food appear instantaneously.

01:58:40.000 I can transport myself across time and space very, very rapidly. 0.99

01:58:46.000 If you're a human being with intelligence, but not supernatural intelligence, I guess my point is - again, this could all be bullshit. 0.99

01:58:53.000 This could all be fake. 0.99

01:58:54.000 That's a possibility.

01:58:55.000 But if it's real, is there really a meaningful difference between an angel or a demon and a space alien with super technology?

01:59:06.000 To our perception, they would largely just look like the same thing.

01:59:11.000 I think we're capable of nuance.

01:59:12.000 We're capable of understanding that human beings are far more complex and evolved than chimpanzees.

01:59:18.000 We could imagine a world where if we don't blow ourselves up.

01:59:24.000 And there's not a nuclear bomb, and we don't get hit by an asteroid if we live another million years, that we would have technology that's indistinguishable from magic.

01:59:36.000 Exactly.

01:59:36.000 That's exactly what I'm saying.

01:59:39.000 It doesn't mean we could show angels as demons.

01:59:40.000 It just means they're hyper evolved, advanced civilizations from somewhere else.

01:59:46.000 And what I'm saying is the perception of those beings to a more simple intelligence.

01:59:52.000 Sure.

01:59:54.000 A meaningful difference.

01:59:55.000 So you're asking, you're like talking about what it is that these things actually are.

02:00:03.000 And I guess what I'm talking about is how would a human being with my level of intelligence or your level of intelligence in 2026 understand what's going on?

02:00:11.000 Right.

02:00:11.000 But from a biblical perspective, there's a very big difference between a demon and a hyper intelligent being from somewhere else.

02:00:20.000 I mean, a demon or a hyper intelligent malicious.

02:00:27.000 If demons are real, If there really are dark forces in the universe and they're disembodied dark forces, these things that exist, and then there's also powerful light forces in the universe, they don't have to be mutually exclusive to the concept of hyper intelligent other species when you're looking at an insanely vast universe.

02:00:51.000 You're looking at an insanely vast universe.

02:00:54.000 I don't think they have to be, but I think that it is interesting to me that for most of human history, we would have understood supernatural, hyper powerful, hyper knowledgeable things as sort of celestial or celestial.

02:01:16.000 We would have thought of a cell phone as being sorcery.

02:01:18.000 I mean, that doesn't mean it's sorcery.

02:01:21.000 Maybe it's not.

02:01:23.000 Maybe it's just technology.

02:01:25.000 I just.

02:01:26.000 That argument doesn't make any sense to me.

02:01:30.000 Well, and this is not discounting the possibility of demons or discounting the possibility of angels.

02:01:36.000 Well, I guess I understand your point conceptually.

02:01:40.000 I don't actually disagree with this.

02:01:43.000 I don't think we're saying something different.

02:01:44.000 That, you know, metaphysically, there could be two separate things going on.

02:01:49.000 There could be celestial.

02:01:51.000 There could be extra Earth, outside of Earth space aliens, and there could also be angels and demons.

02:01:57.000 These could be two totally separate things.

02:01:59.000 One could be true and not the other.

02:02:01.000 I totally concede and agree with that point.

02:02:05.000 I guess what I'm saying is it's a distinction that is conceptually interesting to me, but if a space alien with superhuman technology comes to the earth and has malicious intent, I don't know how I'm supposed to tell the difference between that and a demon.

02:02:25.000 If they have malicious intent, but I mean, isn't that also the case with visiting people?

02:02:28.000 Right?

02:02:29.000 Like you could have a country and you get visited by the Peace Corps or you get visited by pirates.

02:02:36.000 Yeah.

02:02:37.000 You know, and are the pirates demons?

02:02:39.000 Is the Peace Corps angels?

02:02:42.000 No, but I think we're talking about something much different.

02:02:44.000 Are we?

02:02:44.000 Are we talking about something different or are we talking about a hyper advanced version of that?

02:02:49.000 We're talking about, I mean, as I understand it, we're talking about things that exist outside the United States, sorry, outside of the earth.

02:02:58.000 Okay.

02:02:59.000 And two different types of beings that could exist outside of it.

02:03:02.000 I mean, okay, maybe.

02:03:04.000 There's a lot of people.

02:03:05.000 Tim Burchett thinks that they're here.

02:03:05.000 Yep.

02:03:07.000 There's Atlantis or there's something else there.

02:03:09.000 Well, that they're somehow or another survivors of a long gone civilization that live under the ocean.

02:03:17.000 It's just as kooky as.

02:03:17.000 Yeah.

02:03:18.000 Here's the way I would put it there's also a difference between a demon and a ghost, right?

02:03:23.000 These things are two very different conceptual things.

02:03:24.000 Right.

02:03:25.000 But if I'm a human being and I meet a malicious ghost, maybe I think it's a demon.

02:03:30.000 And maybe all I'm saying is.

02:03:31.000 Maybe there's some point at which the conceptually interesting discussion of what it is is separate from how it appears to me and how I'm going to understand it as a human being in my particular social and cultural context in 2026.

02:03:55.000 But if you're looking for me to concede the point that there is something different or could be something different between an angel, a demon, a space alien, a supernatural.

02:04:03.000 But non any of those other things being yes, I can see that.

02:04:09.000 Yeah, the question is what do these special access programs like?

02:04:15.000 What is the information that's available?

02:04:19.000 Like, how?

02:04:19.000 My recording is in the same way.

02:04:23.000 David Rush and a lot of these other people that there have been crash retrieval programs.

02:04:26.000 Okay.

02:04:26.000 And I've talked to Dave before.

02:04:29.000 I think I called him actually after he was on your podcast.

02:04:32.000 There's like the crash retrieval stuff of whether that's real or not, where is it, etc.

02:04:41.000 There's the videos, right?

02:04:42.000 Etc., there's the videos, right?

02:04:44.000 There are all of these videos, some of which have been released and declassified that seem to me show some pretty weird stuff.

02:04:50.000 And then there might be other pieces of evidence as well.

02:04:53.000 I'm not saying there is or isn't.

02:04:54.000 I just don't know.

02:04:55.000 I try to keep an open mind about this stuff.

02:04:57.000 All I'm saying is I'm fascinated by it.

02:04:59.000 I don't have like some secret sauce, at least not yet, that tells me what's true and what's false.

02:05:05.000 I'm just saying this is something that I'm interested in, but it doesn't.

02:05:10.000 It's because it's like anything in life where.

02:05:15.000 Do I have to figure this out this week?

02:05:17.000 No.

02:05:18.000 So I'm going to do the things that I have to, like negotiate with the Iranians and try to get this bill passed.

02:05:23.000 So let's imagine a world where the Iranian negotiations go swimmingly.

02:05:29.000 Everything's done.

02:05:31.000 God willing.

02:05:32.000 All these Gulf Arab states decide, hey, let's invest money in Iran.

02:05:37.000 Let's change hearts and minds. 0.87

02:05:39.000 Whew, okay.

02:05:41.000 Avoided a gigantic apocalyptic scenario.

02:05:45.000 What?

02:05:46.000 What could be done?

02:05:47.000 Like, if we have information, who has this information?

02:05:52.000 And why are they holding on to this information?

02:05:54.000 And what do you know the Hal Put off story?

02:05:57.000 No.

02:05:58.000 So, Hal Put off, who used to work for NASA, said that he was brought in during the Bush administration where they were going, they were proposing disclosure.

02:06:10.000 And they were saying, this is what they were saying.

02:06:12.000 They're saying, we have biological remains.

02:06:16.000 And we have physical crafts.

02:06:18.000 We're proposing disclosure.

02:06:21.000 And they brought in a bunch of thought leaders, different disciplines, different schools of thought.

02:06:28.000 And they said, I want you to compile a list of pros and cons and put a numerical value on how this is going to affect society.

02:06:38.000 How is this going to affect religion?

02:06:39.000 How is this going to affect government?

02:06:41.000 How is this going to affect the economy?

02:06:42.000 All these different things.

02:06:44.000 And when they compiled this list, Every one of them had more in the con than in the pro, and they decided against disclosure because of that.

02:06:56.000 Now, if that's the case, what are we talking about?

02:06:59.000 Like, who has this information, and what is this information?

02:07:04.000 I mean, if that wasn't just a thought experiment, if they weren't really just fucking with these people, which I don't understand why they would do that, but let's assume what is known, and why would they prevent that information from getting out?

02:07:19.000 Well, that's.

02:07:22.000 That's a big if.

02:07:23.000 Have you seen the movie The Age of Disclosure?

02:07:25.000 I've not.

02:07:25.000 Okay.

02:07:26.000 Well, a lot of people, including intelligence officers, different people in the government, are in this documentary.

02:07:34.000 And one of the things that they're saying is part of the problem with all this is if they have had these programs going on for so long, that means they've been misappropriating funds and they've been lying to Congress.

02:07:46.000 So all these people that were involved in the program.

02:07:48.000 I've heard this argument.

02:07:49.000 Yeah, I've heard this argument.

02:07:50.000 So Lulu Elizondo and all these other people have said look, what we're going to need is mass amnesty for people that are involved.

02:07:50.000 Yeah.

02:07:56.000 It's the only way you're ever really going to get to the bottom of it.

02:07:56.000 In this.

02:08:01.000 The problem with that is if you've got unlimited money and you've got misappropriation of funds and lying to Congress, I guarantee some of that money has gone to places it shouldn't have gone.

02:08:14.000 100%.

02:08:15.000 Like it always does.

02:08:16.000 Yeah.

02:08:17.000 So it's always very hard to engage in these super generic, super general, I should say, hypotheticals because.

02:08:26.000 You know, like, yeah, if, if, look, we've got remains of space aliens and we're hiding them, then there are a million other sort of, there are a million possibilities for that.

02:08:37.000 What would explain it?

02:08:38.000 How it would have happened?

02:08:40.000 I am skeptical that's true.

02:08:42.000 The reason I'm skeptical that it's true that we have the physical remains is not because I don't think that's something that is physically possible or that the government is willing to do and able to do a lot of crazy stuff in our history and the history of all governments.

02:08:58.000 I am skeptical of the competence.

02:08:59.000 I actually made this point to Dave when we talked.

02:09:01.000 I think he's a very interesting guy.

02:09:05.000 I don't mean to insult him or say I disagree with him about everything.

02:09:09.000 I made this point to Dave when we talked.

02:09:11.000 It's like if we have literal Space alien remains in the custody of the United States government, there is no way that that wouldn't leak out in some way.

02:09:20.000 Well, it has leaked out anecdotally.

02:09:22.000 Well, I guess that's the counter argument.

02:09:24.000 But I think it would leak out in the Nixon story.

02:09:26.000 The Nixon and Jackie Gleason story.

02:09:27.000 No, I want to hear that.

02:09:29.000 But with cell phones and every way that we have, it's plausible to me you could hide that in an era where you have to have a giant camera the size of these antlers in order to take a photo of something.

02:09:40.000 But dude, I can take.

02:09:41.000 You have cameras now that are literally this tiny.

02:09:43.000 That's the part.

02:09:44.000 That I'm skeptical of.

02:09:48.000 Okay.

02:09:48.000 That we're hiding that.

02:09:49.000 Let me push back against that.

02:09:50.000 Because you know that if you have any sort of top secret, like if you go into a skiff, like there's no way you're bringing cameras in there.

02:10:01.000 Okay.

02:10:01.000 You're, you're, look, when I came here to this podcast studio, they had a dog and it's your studio?

02:10:08.000 And it's your studio?

02:10:10.000 Like I'm going to blow up my own studio.

02:10:10.000 Yeah.

02:10:10.000 Okay.

02:10:13.000 So, you know what I'm saying?

02:10:13.000 But okay.

02:10:13.000 Yeah.

02:10:15.000 But the, okay, the counter argument though is they check that stuff on you, they don't check that stuff on everybody.

02:10:18.000 Everybody here, they did.

02:10:19.000 Everybody here.

02:10:20.000 Yeah.

02:10:20.000 So, but all you need is one official with like the highest security clearance.

02:10:26.000 Now, okay, you're right. 0.65

02:10:28.000 Certain devices like give emanate signals that they can pick up on, Bluetooth and all that shit.

02:10:33.000 But like, but to have access to go into a room where they have these things and no one did have these things, I guarantee you they're going to make sure no one's got anything.

02:10:45.000 They could easily scan you to make sure that you don't have any kind of electronics, any kind of camera, any kind of recording device.

02:10:51.000 That's not hard.

02:10:52.000 I mean, especially if you've got something squirreled away at Area 51.

02:10:57.000 In the next two and a half years, we're going to run this experiment because I got two and a half more years as VP. 1.00

02:11:01.000 And I swear to you, if there are little green men, like body remains, text me, please. 1.00

02:11:07.000 Well, I'm not going to text you. 1.00

02:11:09.000 I'm going to try to smuggle a camera in and get a photo of these things.

02:11:13.000 Well, how would you, the vice president of the United States of America, have to have a camera smuggled in to do that?

02:11:19.000 Well, maybe I wouldn't.

02:11:21.000 But again, I've seen no evidence of that.

02:11:23.000 Do you think that you have the kind of evidence of this?

02:11:24.000 Like, look, let's imagine you find out that it rips right.

02:11:27.000 Patterson Air Force Base.

02:11:27.000 They have a secure facility somewhere.

02:11:30.000 Maybe it's not there.

02:11:32.000 Maybe they've kept it under wraps.

02:11:34.000 Maybe it's in the mountains somewhere.

02:11:36.000 And you find out that this thing exists.

02:11:38.000 Do you think it's as simple as you could just go out and tell everybody?

02:11:43.000 Or do you think that you get briefed on the implications of what would happen if you disclosed all this information?

02:11:49.000 Well, I would definitely get briefed on the implications of what would happen if you disclosed all this information. 0.96

02:11:53.000 And they would probably tell you, hey, you have to bullshit people. 0.90

02:11:56.000 Yeah, but dude, I'm not. 0.99

02:11:57.000 You're not going to bullshit people? 0.75

02:11:59.000 Well, look, I have many skills as a politician and some vices, but one of them is I'm just not a good liar.

02:12:05.000 Well, then they're not going to show it to you. 1.00

02:12:07.000 You just fucked up. 1.00

02:12:08.000 You just fucked up on this podcast by saying that. 1.00

02:12:10.000 They're showing it to the ladies on The View. 0.99

02:12:16.000 The intellectual leadership of the world.

02:12:16.000 That's right.

02:12:20.000 Trust me, they show it to the ladies of The View.

02:12:21.000 It will be said two hours later.

02:12:22.000 Anyway, I'm going to show it to them just so that no one will believe it.

02:12:27.000 I do want to look into this stuff.

02:12:28.000 I'm just telling you.

02:12:29.000 I'm just telling you, I have not yet seen the evidence that we have certainly extraterrestrial remains.

02:12:36.000 But there's a lot of stuff before extraterrestrial remains that's also interesting.

02:12:39.000 Like the flight patterns in some of these videos are super weird.

02:12:43.000 Well, the Commander David Fravor stuff is bananas.

02:12:45.000 It goes from 50,000 feet above sea level to sea level in like a second.

02:12:50.000 To what people say, right?

02:12:51.000 Because one of the arguments I've heard, for example, is could this just be a visual lure on the camera or something like that?

02:12:58.000 Okay, that sounds to me plausible.

02:13:00.000 I'm not an expert in cameras.

02:13:01.000 What the pilots' reaction to it is not like they're looking at a visual or on a camera.

02:13:08.000 It's like they're looking at something else that's really, really weird and difficult to explain given what they know about physics and aeronautical engineering, et cetera.

02:13:16.000 So, anyway, I am fascinated by this, but I just don't want to tell people like, oh, I've uncovered the truth or I haven't because I haven't looked at it yet.

02:13:24.000 Right.

02:13:24.000 Well, I would, if I was you, that would be the first thing I did.

02:13:27.000 I'd storm right in there and go, let's talk about tax policy.

02:13:30.000 Is that what you want to talk about?

02:13:33.000 No.

02:13:33.000 We could talk about tax policy.

02:13:34.000 It's way more interesting.

02:13:35.000 I would want to know.

02:13:37.000 I mean, I think the world wants to know.

02:13:39.000 I think it would fundamentally change our understanding of what it means to be a living organism.

02:13:44.000 Okay, what do you think?

02:13:45.000 Like, what is your.

02:13:46.000 You know more about this than I do.

02:13:48.000 I don't think we're alone.

02:13:49.000 But, okay, final agreement.

02:13:51.000 I don't think we're alone.

02:13:52.000 I just don't understand what it is.

02:13:54.000 Okay.

02:13:54.000 I don't know if it's.

02:13:56.000 So you don't have, like, a strong view about what it is.

02:13:58.000 You're just.

02:13:59.000 I don't have any data, right?

02:14:01.000 So I don't have any proof.

02:14:04.000 So I believe Commander David Fravor.

02:14:07.000 I believe Ryan Graves.

02:14:09.000 He was a fighter pilot that said that.

02:14:11.000 When they upgraded their equipment on these fighter jets in 2014, all of a sudden they started seeing these things that were staying completely motionless at 120 knot winds.

02:14:23.000 And they were a cube inside of a sphere, a black cube inside of some sort of.

02:14:30.000 Yeah.

02:14:30.000 Well, okay.

02:14:31.000 I know you've talked to Eric Weinstein.

02:14:31.000 So this is.

02:14:33.000 And I haven't talked to you about this lately.

02:14:33.000 Yes.

02:14:36.000 But one of the things that Eric sort of kind of persuaded me of a couple of years ago was.

02:14:43.000 It's Weinstein.

02:14:44.000 They get very sensitive to this.

02:14:45.000 It's Weinstein.

02:14:46.000 Got it.

02:14:46.000 Okay.

02:14:47.000 Eric Weinstein.

02:14:48.000 Good thought. 0.99

02:14:49.000 Speaking of pedophiles, I guess Harvey was a pedophile. 0.94

02:14:53.000 He had many sins, but not that one.

02:14:56.000 Candace Owens says he's innocent.

02:14:57.000 Oh, interesting.

02:14:58.000 Okay.

02:14:58.000 Or not guilty of everything that they said he was.

02:15:02.000 So, okay.

02:15:02.000 Eric Weinstein, this is probably three, four years ago, persuades me of this, actually.

02:15:08.000 It's an interesting theory.

02:15:10.000 His argument is in the same way that I would say, what's the difference between.

02:15:16.000 An extraterrestrial and an angel or a demon, depending on its intentions, from the perspective of a human in 2026.

02:15:23.000 His argument would be what's the difference between a space alien and a human being, but just a human being with super advanced technology, right?

02:15:32.000 And so I don't know if this is still his view, but he kind of was like, let's say you had human beings who just were super scientifically advanced.

02:15:44.000 Like what we know of the laws of physics, as I understand it, is that light speed is sort of the Upper limit of what one of our spaceships could travel.

02:15:53.000 You can't go any faster than the speed of light.

02:15:55.000 Well, that's a problem because everything else that could support extraterrestrial life is many, many, many, many light years away.

02:16:02.000 Years away.

02:16:04.000 His argument to me again back in the day was if you figured out a new physics in the same way that you had an understanding shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics, if you have a new understanding of physics that allows you to travel much faster than the speed of light, you could just have human beings either from a different planet or maybe they went to Mars and started their own civilization and then that got old.

02:16:28.000 At this point, they are many millions of light years away, but they can move through space and time in a way that is quite literally like.

02:16:35.000 Divine from our perspective or space aliens, but they're just human beings.

02:16:41.000 It could be human beings from the future.

02:16:44.000 If time travel is possible, why would it also?

02:16:46.000 But also, we know that life exists on Earth.

02:16:49.000 So if life exists on Earth, Earth is a planet.

02:16:53.000 There are hundreds of billions of stars that have hundreds of billions of planets.

02:17:00.000 We have no idea how many planets there are in the known universe that could potentially support life. 0.90

02:17:06.000 And if these things live on these planets and they live far longer than we have, like if you showed a nuclear bomb to someone from a hundred years ago, they would say that's the craziest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life.

02:17:22.000 You show them a reactor, show them a cell phone, show them that television. 0.87

02:17:26.000 So it's like my dog with a light switch, right?

02:17:28.000 Just be able to FaceTime someone in New Zealand.

02:17:31.000 Like, how, what is that?

02:17:32.000 What are you doing?

02:17:33.000 Now advance that forward one million years.

02:17:33.000 That's right.

02:17:36.000 That's right.

02:17:37.000 Then, you know, instead of using propulsion, You are instead manipulating space time.

02:17:44.000 So that's exactly right.

02:17:46.000 And one of the things I've talked with Elon about this, and Elon is obviously a super smart dude, but I've never heard a super satisfying answer to this.

02:17:54.000 One of the things that worries me like, I want humans to be a multi planetary species.

02:17:59.000 I want us to go to Mars instead of a colony.

02:18:02.000 And, you know, like, that's sort of I love humanity.

02:18:05.000 I want it to continue.

02:18:06.000 With space travel, that I've again not heard a satisfactory solution to is you know, when we're outside of the Earth's gravity, our genes, like our actual DNA, seem to not function as well when it's not on Earth style gravity, which makes sense, right?

02:18:29.000 We developed in these conditions with this gravity.

02:18:33.000 So, whenever you have somebody who goes to the International Space Station for like three months or six months and they come back and they are totally jacked up because, like, literally the cells in their body.

02:18:42.000 Are starting to like discombobulate in response to a low gravity environment.

02:18:47.000 I don't like, we have to figure out a solution to that problem.

02:18:47.000 Right.

02:18:50.000 That to me is sort of the most interesting part of space travel, of going to Mars, of setting up a colony on another planet is if you set up a colony on Mars, but and what it takes you like two years to get there and two years to get back or something like that.

02:19:06.000 Right.

02:19:06.000 But in that time, you've gone from a functioning adult, healthy, to like dead.

02:19:11.000 Right.

02:19:11.000 If you're in space for four years, that, that, That part of space travel is very fascinating to me, and I don't know that I've heard any satisfactory solution to it yet.

02:19:21.000 I don't think conventionally there is a satisfactory solution, but if you're talking about manipulating space time and not traditional propulsion, you probably can figure that out.

02:19:30.000 You could essentially contain this environment in exactly the same way it is and travel to somewhere else with that environment.

02:19:38.000 So, this is the idea of them living under the surface of the ocean.

02:19:42.000 I see.

02:19:43.000 How can they live in the depths of the ocean?

02:19:45.000 Well, because they have a completely contained environment.

02:19:48.000 Sure.

02:19:48.000 I mean, who knows?

02:19:51.000 Yeah.

02:19:51.000 It's just nonsense.

02:19:52.000 Maybe they figured out how I can eat like steak and Grater's ice cream and have the blood profile of eating, you know, chicken and salad.

02:20:01.000 And chocolate.

02:20:02.000 Well, I don't think chicken and towel is the way to go.

02:20:04.000 I'm a steak guy.

02:20:04.000 I know you don't.

02:20:06.000 I think just eat a little bit of ice cream every now and then.

02:20:09.000 By the way, ice cream is one of the very best desserts for you because it contains fat.

02:20:13.000 Because it's got a lot of fat and protein.

02:20:15.000 That's right.

02:20:15.000 Yeah.

02:20:16.000 That's right.

02:20:16.000 A little bit of sugar, but it's all a moderation thing.

02:20:20.000 That's right.

02:20:21.000 Yeah.

02:20:22.000 Well, anybody who wants to eat ice cream is a communist.

02:20:25.000 There's nothing wrong with ice cream.

02:20:27.000 Ice cream.

02:20:27.000 Speaking of communists, the Democratic Socialists of America, that's actually what they do at their events, they throw the ice cream into the Boston Harbor instead of the tea.

02:20:35.000 Ah, yeah. 1.00

02:20:36.000 Those fucking people scare me. 1.00

02:20:39.000 I'm really concerned that people think that's a good idea and that they think that socialism just hasn't been done correctly. 1.00

02:20:48.000 That drives me nuts because I think a lot of really well intentioned, really kind and empathetic young people think that that's the way to go.

02:20:57.000 And I do not think they understand the dangers of this ideology because it always leads to one thing it leads to a very powerful.

02:21:09.000 Military government that controls the population.

02:21:13.000 Period.

02:21:13.000 End of discussion.

02:21:15.000 And if you play it out, it is literally the only way that can get people to give up their money.

02:21:20.000 It's the only way they can get them to give up their property.

02:21:20.000 Yes.

02:21:22.000 And when you're hearing like Mom Dhani talk about freezing rents and taking bad landlords and then confiscating their property, you're like, do you, this is step one of what's happened in every communist dictatorship throughout history.

02:21:39.000 This is what happened in North Korea.

02:21:41.000 Give the government the land and we'll make sure that no one ever has to worry about food.

02:21:46.000 What a great idea.

02:21:48.000 Look how it turned out.

02:21:49.000 So I don't know who said this, but the whole argument of communism is that you seize the means of production, but because the means of production, the most powerful means of production, is the human mind, you ultimately have to get into totalitarianism.

02:22:01.000 You have to have control of that most fundamental element of the human person.

02:22:07.000 You also take away motivation.

02:22:08.000 And there's a thing that people don't like, which is extreme wealth.

02:22:13.000 But you have to understand that if it wasn't for the motivation of extreme wealth, you would not have an iPhone.

02:22:19.000 You wouldn't have these things.

02:22:21.000 Okay, so let me give you my Christian answer to this.

02:22:25.000 And it's a good plug for my new book, Communion Finding My Way Back to Faith.

02:22:30.000 Not to be confused with Whitley Stryver's book, Communion, which is all about aliens.

02:22:34.000 Okay, cool.

02:22:34.000 Did you know that?

02:22:35.000 No.

02:22:35.000 It's a coincidence, Joe.

02:22:37.000 Pull up the cover of the Good Communion.

02:22:39.000 Pull up the cover of the Good Communion.

02:22:42.000 I want all your listeners to buy.

02:22:44.000 The problem is, you didn't know about this book.

02:22:46.000 I would have told you to come up with a different title.

02:22:48.000 Seriously, I should have told you.

02:22:50.000 That's a Toldy's Tribal book.

02:22:51.000 Oh, there we go.

02:22:52.000 So we want that is wild.

02:22:52.000 Okay.

02:22:52.000 And then there's another one, My First Communion.

02:22:54.000 That's like a kid's book.

02:22:54.000 Okay.

02:22:55.000 But yeah, we want people to buy the second one, the one that says JD Vance on it.

02:22:59.000 Okay.

02:23:00.000 So this is one of the things I talk about in the book is like there is a Christian idea of political economy that's actually been lost in American politics, where it's like we think of it as libertarianism, the hardcore free market.

02:23:13.000 Versus socialism or communism.

02:23:13.000 There actually is a third way that has existed in pretty much all Christian economic thinking going back 2,000 years ago, which is that, yeah, extreme wealth inequality does create problems, but you still got to have private property.

02:23:32.000 You still have to have a state that protects private property rights.

02:23:36.000 There's a way to balance these things that I think we've sort of lost in our country a little bit.

02:23:40.000 When I like, okay, let me play devil's advocate with.

02:23:43.000 The DSA because I think that their ideas are crazy, and I think that you're right.

02:23:50.000 They will lead to a very totalitarian place.

02:23:51.000 I'm not defending a single thing that they say, particularly their hatred of ice cream.

02:23:55.000 Single thing that they say, particularly their hatred of ice cream.

02:23:59.000 What I am saying is, and maybe this is just sort of the way my mind works, I tend to be a little bit more empathetic.

02:24:07.000 Why are young people attracted to socialism in 21st century America?

02:24:12.000 One of the best interviews that Charlie Kirk ever gave, it was right before he died, it was an episode that he did with Tucker Carlson where he talked about the fact that if you don't give young people a stake, if you don't give them ownership, if you don't give them a sense of the American dream and of possibility in the future, they're going to become socialists.

02:24:30.000 Like, if you have a zero sum environment for a 25 year old in this country, they're going to start to say the only way for me to get anything is to take away from somebody else.

02:24:39.000 So, we have to get away from the zero sum thinking.

02:24:42.000 I think that's the root cause of this.

02:24:44.000 But I also think that, look, we've ran an experiment in the United States of America. 0.59

02:24:49.000 I think that we have undone that experiment, taken a different direction in the Trump administration, where we ship all the factories overseas and let low wage foreigners make our stuff.

02:25:01.000 That was a bad deal for American workers.

02:25:03.000 Again, it takes a long time to reverse that trend, but I think it's one of the best parts of Trump administration policy you do see that trend starting to reverse.

02:25:12.000 This idea that nobody should own anything, we should all become renters, whereas what we're trying to do is lower interest rates.

02:25:19.000 You actually have seen housing costs stabilize in the country over the last year and a half, frankly, because of immigration.

02:25:24.000 We had way too many people going after way too many homes. 0.98

02:25:27.000 You closed the border.

02:25:29.000 This is one of the reasons why rents and housing costs have stabilized a little bit. 0.70

02:25:34.000 I think that unless you go down that pathway of allowing young Americans to own something, socialism is the inevitable outcome. 0.75

02:25:43.000 Do I think that's good? 0.95

02:25:44.000 No.

02:25:45.000 But I really do worry, and I see this frankly more in my own party than I do on the other side.

02:25:50.000 There is this revulsion to socialism that's totally justified without enough thinking about how did we get here in the first place. 0.72

02:25:58.000 And if, man, if we don't fix that, and I would say if we don't get back to a more Christian sort of understanding of economics, socialism is the alternative. 0.88

02:26:08.000 Like that is where this goes. 0.88

02:26:11.000 If people don't own anything.

02:26:12.000 Exactly.

02:26:13.000 And in some ways, Joe, the game is rigged.

02:26:15.000 I mean, if you look at - I mean, again, I just - I think so much of housing because - this happened, I think it was during the presidential campaign, maybe it was right before.

02:26:15.000 Yes.

02:26:28.000 But I was talking to some family members over Thanksgiving and - just a sort of a younger friend of my wife's.

02:26:38.000 They were like five or six years behind us.

02:26:40.000 They were just about to get married. 1.00

02:26:41.000 And this young woman, successful engineer, makes a higher salary than most Americans. 0.97

02:26:48.000 She just sort of like tossed out there that, you know, when her parents' generation was coming up, it was like possible to own a house and to raise a family and not be worried that much about things.

02:26:59.000 And my thought was okay, you're an engineer.

02:27:02.000 You make way more money than 75% of people your age, maybe 90% of people your age. 0.57

02:27:07.000 And you think that it is like this ridiculous, unachievable objective to have literally what your parents had.

02:27:13.000 Which is a decent job, a nice house, and a safe place.

02:27:17.000 Literally, that same dinner, another guy, another friend of my wife's was talking about this.

02:27:24.000 He, South Indian family, grew up, his parents immigrated.

02:27:29.000 He was born and raised in San Diego.

02:27:31.000 He was like, When I was growing up in Oceanside, this is like a suburb of San Diego where a lot of Marines live in Oceanside.

02:27:37.000 It's close to Camp Pendleton.

02:27:38.000 When I was growing up, all of my kids that I played with, that I rode bikes with, that I was playing street hockey with and football with, All of those kids were the sons of enlisted Marines in Oceanside, California.

02:27:52.000 In Oceanside, California.

02:27:54.000 Then we went and looked at Oceanside, California rents.

02:27:58.000 Again, this is a couple years ago, rents and housing prices.

02:28:02.000 Every house was north of a million dollars on the street this guy grew up in.

02:28:05.000 Listen, Marine, frankly, most Marine officers could not afford to buy a million dollar house.

02:28:10.000 Does the socialism thing scare me?

02:28:12.000 Yes.

02:28:13.000 Is it the wrong solution?

02:28:14.000 Yes.

02:28:15.000 But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is the alternative if we don't have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged.

02:28:25.000 And that the American dream is attainable.

02:28:28.000 That's like our job.

02:28:29.000 That's what we have to do.

02:28:30.000 I'm not saying Rome was built in a day.

02:28:32.000 It's not going to be easy to undo some of these economic trends.

02:28:36.000 But man, we ran the experiment.

02:28:38.000 We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy, and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable, line goes up asset.

02:28:55.000 And what has that done?

02:28:56.000 It's created a generation of kids.

02:28:58.000 Who kind of are attracted to socialism.

02:29:01.000 You have to fix that problem.

02:29:02.000 Well, kids that do feel, and you're correct, and I agree with you, the system is rigged.

02:29:09.000 Kids feel like there are no options other than to burn it down.

02:29:13.000 And that's the problem.

02:29:13.000 Yes.

02:29:14.000 Because they feel very frustrated.

02:29:16.000 And this is part of our job to provide an option that isn't burn it down but is not just doing the same things that we've done for the past.

02:29:22.000 They're also terrified about the future because of AI because they feel like jobs are going to be taken away and there will be no place for people that have.

02:29:31.000 Education in very specific avenues, like very specific jobs, are going to just be irrelevant.

02:29:39.000 Yeah.

02:29:40.000 They're going to be completely wiped out by AI.

02:29:42.000 There is a huge fear over this.

02:29:44.000 So, let me kind of give my own spin on this.

02:29:47.000 Yes.

02:29:48.000 I was talking to a CEO, not of an AI company, but of a tech company.

02:29:52.000 And he's one of the few CEOs that's sort of right of center.

02:29:55.000 And I was like, well, what do you think?

02:29:58.000 Do you think AI is going to come and take all the jobs?

02:30:00.000 And his basic take was, The real historical analogy is the Industrial Revolution.

02:30:05.000 Did the Industrial Revolution displace or change a lot of jobs?

02:30:11.000 Yes.

02:30:12.000 It also created a lot of jobs that didn't exist before.

02:30:14.000 He was like, My concern here is not that 50% of Americans are going to be unable to find a job.

02:30:21.000 There will be some displacement, some sort of churn in the labor market, but that's not the main issue.

02:30:27.000 He said, The main issue, if you go back to the Industrial Revolution, is that there was a lot of demand for workers, but the inequality in the country Got completely out of whack.

02:30:36.000 Like, this is the era of the robber barons.

02:30:39.000 And then the robber barons in both Europe and the United States led to fascism.

02:30:42.000 It led to communism.

02:30:43.000 Again, to this point about giving people an option.

02:30:46.000 If you don't give them a good option, then it leads to fascism and communism.

02:30:50.000 Now, there's this fascinating encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII.

02:30:55.000 I'll send it to you.

02:30:56.000 It's one of the best things that I think has ever been written by a Christian leader.

02:30:59.000 It's written in the late 19th century.

02:31:02.000 And the basic argument of it is that in the age of industrial churn, There has to be a middle way between six year olds working on the factory floor and socialism.

02:31:14.000 And part of that solution is to give workers a sort of say in what's going on, give normal people some power in this system.

02:31:25.000 And I think that's the thing we have to figure out with AI.

02:31:28.000 I won't say that I have all the solutions because I haven't, but I think the fundamental question is how do you ensure that normal people have some control over this?

02:31:36.000 This.

02:31:37.000 Control over what their kids are seeing, control over the economic forces that are being unleashed by AI, some certainty that they're not going to wake up in a world where they can't buy a home but some other guy owns 35 mansions.

02:31:53.000 That to me is the fundamental challenge of AI it's going to unleash a lot of wealth creation, but if that wealth creation all goes to some segment of people, you're going to have communism.

02:32:04.000 That is the choice before us a lot of wealth being created.

02:32:08.000 That's good, by the way.

02:32:09.000 I like wealth being created.

02:32:11.000 But if you don't ensure that there's some broader prosperity from that wealth creation, like we have run this experiment before and it leads to communism.

02:32:19.000 Right.

02:32:20.000 Right. 1.00

02:32:20.000 So if the system is fucked, how do we unfuck it? 1.00

02:32:24.000 You have a magic wand. 0.99

02:32:25.000 I mean, look, this is what I'm saying.

02:32:28.000 I'm being honest with you that I don't have a magic wand.

02:32:31.000 I think there are a few things that we should sort of take from this.

02:32:35.000 I think, okay, the first is that we should give workers a real say at the bargaining table, okay?

02:32:43.000 What really worries me about AI is the fact that private sector unions have largely disappeared from the United States of America.

02:32:53.000 There are a couple of exceptions, but if you go back to why did the United States and Britain weather the Industrial Revolution better than literally every other Western country, I think you could make a good argument.

02:33:04.000 Strong religious institutions.

02:33:05.000 Right now we have very weak religious institutions.

02:33:07.000 Number two, I think you could say strong worker participation institutions.

02:33:11.000 Not just private sector labor unions, that was a big piece of it, but people don't realize that.

02:33:17.000 You know, Hollywood, major studios would actually work with community groups and churches to sort of help develop content.

02:33:29.000 Now, this was organic, this was a natural cooperation.

02:33:31.000 This wasn't mandated by some law, but where they'd go and say, Help us produce content that actually speaks to your membership, that speaks to your community.

02:33:41.000 And there was this sense of participation in American society that I think we've lost.

02:33:46.000 And that's the thing that I think we have to rebuild a little bit.

02:33:49.000 It's interesting that the Trump administration, the president, Personally, certainly me, have been accused of being too pro labor for Republicans.

02:33:56.000 But one of the reasons why I'm pro labor as a Republican is because - and I'm not saying unions are perfect, some of them have very serious problems.

02:34:05.000 Like I'm open-eyed about this.

02:34:07.000 Like the alternative may very well be communism in the United States of America, not next year, but down the road, you've got to give people a seat at the table.

02:34:16.000 And I think that's one answer to the question.

02:34:18.000 I think a second answer to the question is competition.

02:34:22.000 So, if you go back again to what worked and what was broken about the Industrial Revolution, hyper monopolist style companies that had way too much power.

02:34:35.000 I mean, Teddy Roosevelt famously talked about how some of the steel trusts were more powerful than the United States government.

02:34:43.000 So, you could vote.

02:34:44.000 Your vote didn't matter as much because the corporations were more powerful than the government.

02:34:49.000 I think reining that in, making sure that, like, what's the most obvious way to give normal people participation?

02:34:55.000 But if a single corporation has monopolized an entire space, then you don't have a real democracy unless you rein in the power of that company.

02:35:08.000 And I think that is another big risk with AI.

02:35:10.000 It's that we have a hyper monopolist who dominates the space and then influences the government, influences the nonprofit sector, and then real people are effectively cut out of the bargain.

02:35:22.000 So, again, I'm not going to pretend sitting here that I have all the solutions.

02:35:25.000 I think about this more than almost anything else right now.

02:35:28.000 But it's.

02:35:29.000 But it's the solution has to be giving normal people actual authority over their own lives.

02:35:36.000 But how can the government get involved in those steps?

02:35:39.000 steps?

02:35:39.000 Like what could be done on a federal level to implement that?

02:35:44.000 Well, you know, I think one of the things and we've we've looked at legislation along these lines, we haven't yet pushed anything.

02:35:50.000 But, you know, one problem with the 20 with with like the private sector labor union, one reason why your Democrats will say your private unions are at super low participation rates because the government.

02:36:02.000 You know, been anti union.

02:36:04.000 There's like some element of truth to that.

02:36:06.000 But the reality is that a lot of workers don't see the utility in joining a union because it's like, in a lot of ways, it's a 20th century institution when you need a 21st century institution.

02:36:16.000 So I think updating the modern union to be, to make more sense in the 21st century, I think that's a part of the story.

02:36:24.000 You know, I think antitrust.

02:36:28.000 How would you do that?

02:36:29.000 Well, a friend of mine, his name is Orrin Kass, actually, very fascinating guy, sort of a right of center economic thinker.

02:36:34.000 You know, his idea is that.

02:36:37.000 20th century labor law presupposes a sort of zero sum conflict between the company and the union.

02:36:43.000 And that where you've seen unions actually thrive, certain places in Europe, it's a little bit more cooperative.

02:36:49.000 And the unions actually have a little bit more power themselves where they can negotiate with the corporation with a little bit more breadth and a little bit more freedom.

02:37:00.000 Whereas in the United States, we sort of set a floor.

02:37:03.000 We create a very small number of things the union can actually negotiate over.

02:37:07.000 And so a lot of people say, well, why would I join a union?

02:37:10.000 Why would I participate in it?

02:37:11.000 So, basically, making the union a little bit more cooperative, which requires changing the legal form of it, I think that's interesting.

02:37:17.000 I think antitrust is a huge piece of the story.

02:37:19.000 Now, it's a little early with AI because we don't yet know which companies are dominant.

02:37:24.000 But I think one of the big mistakes, man, we made in the early 2000s is we should have gone after the big tech companies with antitrust.

02:37:31.000 Like, there is a trust busting mechanism that exists in the US government.

02:37:36.000 We just didn't use it.

02:37:37.000 We're going to have to be willing to use it in the 21st century.

02:37:39.000 And when it comes to unions, what Like, what is wrong with the current structure in terms of what power the unions have to negotiate for labor?

02:37:55.000 So, this is a concrete example that Oren uses all the time.

02:38:00.000 So, in some European countries, you have a minimum wage, right?

02:38:04.000 In some European countries, the union can actually cut a deal with the employer to where you pay a brand new employee.

02:38:14.000 Less than the minimum wage, then you pay a more senior person higher than the minimum wage.

02:38:21.000 But in order to pay the junior employee less than the minimum wage, you have to provide them job training and better benefits and so forth.

02:38:27.000 And so the idea is you turn the employee for the first couple of years, you turn the company almost into an educational institution.

02:38:35.000 But in order to do that, the union has to have flexibility.

02:38:38.000 That kind of arrangement is effectively illegal in the United States of America.

02:38:42.000 So it's that you create the ability for the union to be more flexible in how it negotiates.

02:38:47.000 You don't set all the terms for it, you allow the union to figure out what's in the best interest of its membership.

02:38:53.000 But people are opposed, like initially knee jerk reaction to lowering wages and lowering minimum wage.

02:38:59.000 I mean, most people feel, and I agree, that minimum wage is almost impossible to live off of, especially with A hundred percent.

02:39:07.000 But what these unions are not asking for, I mean, you have to kind of trust the labor representation of the people to sort of make the right arrangement for them.

02:39:07.000 Yeah, it is.

02:39:17.000 Right arrangement for them. 0.93

02:39:19.000 And so it's not, hey, let's create a minimum wage or a wage floor that's lower than the minimum wage.

02:39:27.000 It's what about taking for the first year of a person coming into the labor market where they work an internship for zero dollars, right, at a company?

02:39:37.000 Why don't we allow our workers to work effectively an internship, get the training they need, get the benefits that they need, and then join the workforce full time at a much higher wage?

02:39:48.000 The idea is that you trust the union to come up with this stuff, or the labor organization, whatever you want to call it, is you actually give the union the ability to sort of negotiate over this stuff on behalf of its members.

02:39:59.000 You don't assume the way the United States we do it is we basically take all that authority away from the union itself and we try to settle this stuff at the level of the government.

02:40:11.000 But again, where unions have been more successful, where they actually have higher membership and participation rates, what you see is These organizations actually have much greater flexibility.

02:40:26.000 And that ends up meaning that more people want to join.

02:40:28.000 That means these organizations have more power.

02:40:30.000 And then that means they can figure out the arrangement that works best for their membership.

02:40:35.000 So you kind of have to trust people.

02:40:36.000 You have to trust that people are willing to do this thing for their own benefit.

02:40:43.000 And so long as they've got the right authority and so long as they've got the right tools, you can trust people to do what's in their best interest and these organizations to do what's in the best interest of their membership.

02:40:54.000 Well, the problem that people would have with that is that corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders.

02:40:59.000 They always want to make the most money possible.

02:41:01.000 They have to make more money next quarter than they made this quarter.

02:41:04.000 One of the ways they do that is by paying people less.

02:41:07.000 But that's why I think you have to give workers some seat at the bargaining table.

02:41:11.000 There is a theory of economics that dominated in the late 20th century America, which is that basically the labor market was entirely efficient.

02:41:22.000 And maybe the corporation didn't want to pay their workers more money, but they would be forced to pay their workers more money purely because if they didn't do that, then they wouldn't be able to get enough workers.

02:41:32.000 Now, I do think that there's an argument for like, there are all of these ways why we should give workers more bargaining power.

02:41:38.000 One of them, and we've spent a lot of time talking about labor organizations, and that's important. 1.00

02:41:42.000 Man, one of the reasons why I'm such an immigration hawk is because it is really important not to flood the country with low wage immigrants. 0.65

02:41:49.000 Because if you give a corporation a choice between a low wage immigrant, And a native worker who's going to require, by the way, a native worker of any race, they're going to be forced to pay the native worker more if there's not a pool of low wage workers to go to. 0.99

02:42:05.000 And this is like a consistent finding in the economics literature, but also just common sense that when you flood the country with low wage immigrants, this is why I think the DSA types are a little full of shit when they talk about helping normal people. 0.99

02:42:18.000 If you want to help a normal person, don't provide a corporation nine low wage migrants. 0.99

02:42:25.000 To compete against them when they're bargaining for wages. 0.97

02:42:28.000 You actually give workers more power when you have a more restricted immigration policy.

02:42:33.000 Well, this is that's the that's that's where the real con is, right?

02:42:38.000 Because a lot of Yeah.

02:42:39.000 You've told me that you had a conversation with someone who was at the head of some corporation that was upset that they were trying to shut down illegal immigration because he said it's Head of a hotel chain.

02:42:50.000 Yeah.

02:42:50.000 Because he said basically, I want to be able to pay my workers less money and it's very hard because the native workers expect higher wages.

02:42:57.000 It's crazy. 0.97

02:42:57.000 I mean, there's this story from a few years ago. 0.97

02:43:03.000 It was the New York Times.

02:43:04.000 It was like unintentionally hilarious.

02:43:05.000 It was like unintentionally hilarious.

02:43:08.000 And it's talking about why Apple would choose to manufacture in Asia over the United States of America.

02:43:18.000 And it's talking about how the American workers, and it's almost kind of judgy towards the American workers.

02:43:23.000 It's like, well, the American workers want to go home and see their kids and have dinner with their kids.

02:43:29.000 And it's like, by the way, you go to the Foxconn factory in Apple and China, the Foxconn factory that develops products for Apple in China, and what do you see?

02:43:38.000 You literally see suicide nets.

02:43:39.000 Around the top of the building.

02:43:41.000 Because, yeah, the workers work 72 hours a week and they sleep in little apartments, four to a bedroom, but they also are so miserable, you have to take steps to prevent them from killing themselves.

02:43:54.000 So, you know, what I want out of American life is a little bit more dignity, a little bit more, oh, you know, yeah, I can afford to feed my family.

02:44:03.000 I can also go home and actually watch my kids' baseball game.

02:44:06.000 And that balance, I think, if you're looking at it from a pure profit motive, You know, maybe the corporation is going to think like that, which is why you have to give the people real power to push back and advocate for their own interests.

02:44:19.000 I think a lot of people in this country, if they had to choose, especially people that have money, if they had to choose between a phone that was manufactured in America where people were paid a very good wage and had benefits, and you have an iPhone that has a little American flag on the back and you have one that doesn't, I think a lot of people would buy the one with the American flag on the back because.

02:44:42.000 That's right.

02:44:42.000 They would feel better about their purchase.

02:44:44.000 They'd feel, I feel weird when I'm holding a phone and I know that someone was working in some factory in some foreign country, working 15 hours a day.

02:44:53.000 That's right.

02:44:54.000 And being paid nothing.

02:44:55.000 That's right.

02:44:56.000 I think that's true of our food, by the way, too.

02:44:58.000 Yeah.

02:44:58.000 They'd much rather it be made locally.

02:45:01.000 They're willing to pay a little bit more so long as it's healthier and it's made locally.

02:45:06.000 There obviously are exceptions to every rule, but I do, again, I think that we have run the experiment where we just try to do everything. 0.99

02:45:16.000 With low wage foreigners, whether they're in the United States via illegal immigration or whether they're outside the United States via offshoring and outsourcing. 0.99

02:45:26.000 And what it has led to is, I think, a society where socialism is a bit on the rise. 1.00

02:45:31.000 And one of our jobs in the administration, I think about this all the time, is how do you make things.

02:45:38.000 I'm not saying we're perfect and I'm not saying there isn't a lot of work to do because there is.

02:45:41.000 Like we were left in quite a hole by 40 years of bad policy.

02:45:44.000 People always talk about the Biden administration inflation.

02:45:47.000 Yeah, the Biden administration inflation was terrible.

02:45:49.000 It got up to 9%.

02:45:50.000 By the way, I think today's CPI report is you had deflation in the United States.

02:45:54.000 We actually had prices coming down, which is good because the Iran war, gas prices came down.

02:46:01.000 Gas prices have come down now because of the Iran war?

02:46:04.000 No, no, no, compared to where they were a month ago.

02:46:07.000 So they're not down from the beginning of the war, but they're down from where they were a month ago.

02:46:07.000 Right.

02:46:11.000 So you had a good CPI report, a consumer price inflation report today.

02:46:18.000 Yes, I don't ever get to the 9% inflation of the Biden administration.

02:46:22.000 Yes, the Trump administration has had a much better record on inflation than the Biden administration.

02:46:26.000 Nothing close to 9%, even in our worst month.

02:46:29.000 But some of this stuff is actually much longer term.

02:46:32.000 This is 40 years of failed bipartisan leadership, which has created really a kind of shell corporation out of the United States of America.

02:46:41.000 We don't make enough of our own stuff.

02:46:43.000 We don't have enough self reliance.

02:46:45.000 Our workers don't have enough bargaining power.

02:46:47.000 That has led, in a lot of ways, I think, to This kind of socialism fervor.

02:46:53.000 And we have to keep fixing these problems.

02:46:55.000 Again, I think that we're going in the right direction.

02:46:57.000 Maybe people disagree, but it's going to take years to fix this problem.

02:47:02.000 And if we don't, we are going to end up with a socialist president in this country.

02:47:06.000 I think it's also a narrative change.

02:47:09.000 And the narrative is stopping immigration is cruelty. 0.99

02:47:13.000 Correct.

02:47:14.000 And you're racist or xenophobic, and that we should just instead give these people citizenship.

02:47:22.000 And it's not a coincidence that.

02:47:25.000 I mean, like what we dealt with over the last four years was insane, where they just opened the border.

02:47:32.000 And not just encouraged people to come across, but facilitated it.

02:47:35.000 Helped them, got them on Medicaid, got them on Social Security, got people, they told people, Do you have a bad back?

02:47:43.000 Okay, well, your permanent disability, and you get free money.

02:47:47.000 Put them in a hotel, give them a phone.

02:47:48.000 Like, that's crazy.

02:47:50.000 And then move them to blue states.

02:47:52.000 And then you realize that that has a direct impact on congressional seats because of the census, which is also nuts.

02:48:00.000 The census should count citizens.

02:48:02.000 It should only count citizens, but it doesn't.

02:48:04.000 And that actually steals.

02:48:05.000 Congressional representation away from areas that have lower illegal immigration, which is its own problem.

02:48:12.000 So, yeah, it's the thing that I don't understand about the democratic socialists of America.

02:48:18.000 Obviously, I disagree with a lot of their ideas, but if you go back to Cesar Chavez, one of the original founding fathers of the American workers' rights movement, he was a hardcore restrictionist on immigration because he thought that the bosses would bring in low wage immigrants to compete.

02:48:37.000 Against his workers, and that would drive down their wages.

02:48:41.000 Yet the DSA, which says they care about the wages of workers, is quite literally like an open borders organization.

02:48:50.000 I tend to think that it's all BS, that they are actually pursuing a set of policies that are good for.

02:48:59.000 corporations care way more about open borders than they do about any other policy the DSA cares about. 0.63

02:49:07.000 While these people say that they're trying to fight for workers and they're trying to fight for the working man, The actual end result of DSA policy is to flood the country with low wage immigrants, which will destroy the middle class of this country.

02:49:20.000 In fact, we have run this experiment for decades now, and we have a much weaker middle class than we did before it started. 0.58

02:49:26.000 And I think this is a part of the problem that this country has that there's this narrative Republicans are cruel and they're anti worker and that they're anti lower class people or lower middle class people.

02:49:40.000 Yep.

02:49:41.000 That narrative.

02:49:43.000 Someone has to do a better job of messaging.

02:49:45.000 I'm trying to, man.

02:49:45.000 I'm trying to.

02:49:46.000 But, you know, it's one of those things that it took a long while for it to set in.

02:49:49.000 It's going to take a long while to get out of it.

02:49:51.000 But what I just try to remind people is that anybody who actually cares about the safety of your community is going to care about not empowering police brutality, but empowering the good cops to do what they need to do.

02:50:05.000 Anybody who cares about law and order is going to want to throw violent criminals in jail, not close down the prison.

02:50:11.000 Anybody who cares about your wages and your Safety is going to want to control the border.

02:50:16.000 So, I just all I can think to do is to remind people that I'm not saying Republicans are perfect.

02:50:23.000 And, you know, I have disagreements, of course, within my own party all the time.

02:50:27.000 But fundamentally, our party is right now pursuing a much better set of policies when it comes to safety of your home, your wages, your ability to keep more of your money.

02:50:41.000 I just got to keep preaching that message.

02:50:43.000 You know, the chips fall where they may.

02:50:45.000 And if you just look at the result of what you see in these cities where they don't enforce crime, where they don't enforce immigration laws, they provide sanctuary states, you see disasters over and over and over again.

02:51:01.000 Yeah.

02:51:01.000 I mean, and I don't understand why people who are voting for these things can't see that.

02:51:09.000 They can't see that the results have been catastrophic year after year.

02:51:14.000 They keep getting worse.

02:51:16.000 Yeah.

02:51:16.000 And the idea of voting a new, better person to do the same thing is just crazy.

02:51:21.000 Yeah.

02:51:22.000 It's totally crazy to me, too.

02:51:25.000 I think part of it is we haven't done a good enough job of actually going to some of these places.

02:51:30.000 Part of it is that it is shifting, and sometimes these shifts just take a long time.

02:51:33.000 If you look, the Republican Party under Trump's leadership is way more working class, way more middle class than the Republican Party of 20 years ago.

02:51:41.000 So these things are starting to shift.

02:51:43.000 But the public safety thing is very interesting to me because, like, one of the promises of America is that every man, woman, and child, rich or poor, black or white, deserves public safety.

02:51:57.000 Like, every rich person ever has had public safety.

02:52:00.000 Every rich person ever has been able to afford some security guard to make sure that somebody comes and tries to steal their stuff or Kidnap their kids, they're protected against that.

02:52:10.000 What America did is we democratized public safety.

02:52:14.000 Every person gets to keep their property.

02:52:17.000 Every person gets to not be stolen from.

02:52:19.000 Every person gets to walk down their neighborhood at night without being mugged.

02:52:23.000 Obviously, we have imperfectly applied that.

02:52:27.000 What the left has done over the last few years, why I think the crime thing is it's not just a sort of public safety thing, it's also a class thing, is they have made Working people less safe.

02:52:41.000 Like, if you look at my neighborhood, the neighborhood that my working class grandparents raised me in, it became less safe over time.

02:52:50.000 And really, working class neighborhoods had much higher rates of violence, much higher rates of carjackings, and so forth.

02:52:58.000 That happened during Biden's administration.

02:53:02.000 That's not a coincidence.

02:53:04.000 No.

02:53:06.000 Anything else?

02:53:09.000 Go buy communion, Joe, and we can talk about religion and faith and the Ten Commandments next time.

02:53:14.000 But thanks for having me, man.

02:53:16.000 Thanks for being here.

02:53:16.000 Appreciate it.

02:53:17.000 All right.

02:53:17.000 Wrap it up.

02:53:18.000 Bye, everybody.

02:53:20.000 Great.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 15, 2026

Joe Rogan Experience #2526 - JD Vance

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