The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #767 - Mike Baker

00:00:06.000 Yes!

00:00:07.000 And we're live.

00:00:08.000 Mike Baker, how are you, sir?

00:00:09.000 I am doing very well, thank you.

00:00:10.000 Very happy to be here.

00:00:11.000 Thanks for coming back, man.

00:00:11.000 Appreciate it.

00:00:11.000 Are you kidding?

00:00:12.000 Good to see you.

00:00:13.000 This world's in chaos.

00:00:14.000 We need to talk to a rational man like yourself who's got the inside scoop.

00:00:19.000 I have never been billed that way before, but thank you.

00:00:22.000 That's a bonus.

00:00:23.000 In this irrational world, your rationality, you're what's deemed a rational man now.

00:00:29.000 Yeah.

00:00:29.000 We've been lowering the bar, haven't we?

00:00:31.000 We've been lowering our expectations.

00:00:34.000 We were talking before the show started about the current cover of The Economist that has Donald Trump dressed up like his Uncle Sam, and it just says, really?

00:00:42.000 It's perfect, you know, and it's what you want to say to everybody who has jumped that chasm, right?

00:00:49.000 I understand that everybody's upset.

00:00:51.000 People are angry, people, for whatever their motivation, right?

00:00:53.000 So they're, you know, they get jonesed up.

00:00:55.000 This is it. 1.00

00:00:56.000 Look at that fucking cover. 1.00

00:00:57.000 Look at that. 1.00

00:01:01.000 This is what we're down to!

00:01:03.000 That's brilliant.

00:01:03.000 But how do you get from, okay, he's entertaining.

00:01:07.000 And I understand that.

00:01:08.000 Everybody wants to be entertained to some degree.

00:01:09.000 But how do you get to the point from saying it's entertaining to leader of the free world?

00:01:13.000 And that's the part that I can't understand when I talk to people who are absolutely supporting him.

00:01:20.000 Well, you as a man who's been deep in the world of security or CIA operative, you've got the inside scoop with how this machine runs to a certain extent.

00:01:31.000 Don't you think that at this point, it's so complicated that almost no one wants to be president?

00:01:40.000 It's not a job that people are scrambling to get anymore.

00:01:44.000 Right.

00:01:45.000 Nobody in their right mind would want to put themselves through it.

00:01:47.000 Unless you're independently wealthy and just don't care.

00:01:54.000 I think you're right.

00:01:56.000 You think about the kid who wants to become president of the Young Republicans Club, right, in middle school.

00:02:02.000 And then, you know, all through his life, that's all he wants.

00:02:04.000 He wants to be an elected official somewhere.

00:02:06.000 So he goes maybe to the town council, and his big goal is to become a congressman.

00:02:10.000 And God forbid, then he gets that, and he goes on. 0.98

00:02:12.000 There's a certain personality type, right, that's way up its own ass that allows you to think that, yes, I should be president of the United States. 0.98

00:02:21.000 I look in the mirror every morning and I think, yes, I should lead the free world. 0.96

00:02:24.000 So right there, I think you've got a flaw in all the people who are pursuing elected office.

00:02:29.000 But then you've got the money that's behind it.

00:02:32.000 You have to be independently wealthy.

00:02:33.000 I watched, not to disappear down a rabbit hole, but I lived on the East Coast before we moved out to Idaho, which is a great state.

00:02:39.000 Love it.

00:02:40.000 Oh my god, it's a great place.

00:02:42.000 Beautiful.

00:02:42.000 People don't know.

00:02:43.000 No, and we probably shouldn't say anything about it.

00:02:45.000 It's awful.

00:02:46.000 They think it's Kansas.

00:02:46.000 They think it's flat or something.

00:02:48.000 I had this conversation with these two guys about it, and they were like, well, you know, it's mostly farms. 0.99

00:02:53.000 I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about, man? 0.99

00:02:55.000 It is. 0.99

00:02:56.000 I mean, there's a lot of agriculture, but you know what?

00:02:59.000 Here's an interesting fact about Idaho.

00:03:01.000 People can write this down.

00:03:02.000 If you took an iron, an ironed Idaho flat, and then you did that with all the other states, the only other state that would be bigger would be Alaska.

00:03:10.000 Yeah.

00:03:10.000 And the same for river frontage, right?

00:03:12.000 The river miles.

00:03:13.000 Rafting is insane out there.

00:03:15.000 But the point being, I suppose, before we moved out there, I was on the East Coast, and my wife is involved in politics to some degree, but we spent some time in Connecticut.

00:03:25.000 Right.

00:03:25.000 Watching the governor race there.

00:03:28.000 And they would have to go from town council to town council.

00:03:32.000 It works based that way.

00:03:33.000 I mean, you have to get the vote of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party in the town council.

00:03:37.000 And the first question any of them would ever ask was, you know, can you self-fund basically?

00:03:42.000 You know, how much money do you have?

00:03:44.000 And so you put that together with the idea that nobody wants to open their family up to the ridiculous scrutiny that's involved.

00:03:52.000 And we get what we get.

00:03:54.000 We get this crazed campaign season. 1.00

00:03:58.000 Yeah, it seems like we're down to assholes. 1.00

00:04:01.000 That's it. 1.00

00:04:01.000 It's only people who want to be it. 1.00

00:04:03.000 And Bernie Sanders is just, I mean, he's kind of an old kook. 1.00

00:04:06.000 I don't think he's an asshole. 1.00

00:04:07.000 I don't think he's an asshole. 0.99

00:04:08.000 He seems like a nice guy, actually, with a lot of good ideas socially. 0.99

00:04:12.000 I don't know.

00:04:13.000 It's the biggest example, in my opinion, of picking the lesser evil.

00:04:20.000 I mean, that's how I'm looking at this campaign.

00:04:23.000 It's like, what's the lesser evil?

00:04:24.000 It's going to be Hillary Clinton, who basically, I just, I can't... 0.98

00:04:29.000 I don't feel any sincerity from her at all.

00:04:32.000 It's so hard.

00:04:33.000 She's been in the business for so long.

00:04:35.000 She's been involved in politics for so long.

00:04:37.000 I don't know if she knows how to be just herself.

00:04:41.000 That's a good point.

00:04:42.000 I mean, my problem with Hillary is it's purely an operational one. 0.76

00:04:45.000 I know that if I had handled Even in a conservative way, if you look at what she did with the email server and her colleagues or cohorts did, and you say, okay, in a conservative way, I'm looking at how bad it was.

00:05:01.000 Yes.

00:05:22.000 David Petraeus is a good example.

00:05:24.000 He hands over some information to his mistress, who had a security clearance, and he gets a couple years probation, a large fine, has to plead guilty.

00:05:34.000 She literally hands it over to the Chinese, the Russians, and any other state and non-state sponsored hacker out there. 0.81

00:05:42.000 Explain what she did for people who don't know.

00:05:44.000 Sure.

00:05:45.000 For whatever her motivation, she initially said it was simply a matter of ease, After saying that she didn't really know because it wasn't her gig, she set up a private email server in her bathroom.

00:05:58.000 Her bathroom?

00:05:59.000 In her bathroom at her house in New York. 0.99

00:06:02.000 Who the fuck puts an email on a server in their bathroom? 0.99

00:06:04.000 I know. 0.99

00:06:05.000 That seems like a weird choice.

00:06:07.000 Well, you're multitasking.

00:06:08.000 Maybe you don't have that much time in the day.

00:06:10.000 Maybe she's constipating. 0.93

00:06:13.000 She did not use that excuse, as I recall.

00:06:15.000 It still doesn't make sense.

00:06:16.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:06:17.000 I know.

00:06:17.000 I mean, like, they have no extra rooms, right, in the Clinton house.

00:06:21.000 It's a small place.

00:06:22.000 They only made about $190 million over the last couple of years.

00:06:25.000 So we're supposed to believe she's living in a one-bedroom, one-bath place, you know, 800 square feet.

00:06:30.000 And so she used this, and essentially the problem is traffic was directed through this unprotected server that now...

00:06:41.000 And she's arguing semantics.

00:06:42.000 She's saying, well, I never saw that it was classified, and yet it's either classified or it's not, and you know it.

00:06:49.000 And when you sign on to be, whether it's a senior official at her level or some moak that's walking around just carrying papers at the agency, whatever it may be, You sign agreements that you will protect classified information and it doesn't say it has to be marked classified. 0.97

00:07:07.000 It says that you are aware because you go through a briefing about what is and what isn't And how you look at a piece of information to determine.

00:07:33.000 It's an egregious mishandling of classified information that anybody else would be punished for.

00:07:39.000 And it's, you know, I don't think it's going to happen.

00:07:40.000 I think the Bureau is engaged in a couple of different investigations.

00:07:44.000 I think they have all the information they would need to put the ordinary person, you know, or move for an indictment.

00:07:49.000 I just don't think the DOJ is going to do it.

00:07:51.000 So what is their motivation to ignore it?

00:07:55.000 Well, I think it's a political top cover.

00:07:57.000 Because there's only one other person running for the Democratic Party.

00:08:01.000 Right, yeah.

00:08:01.000 And a lot of people aren't too excited about having Bernie Sanders become the president.

00:08:05.000 Right, right.

00:08:06.000 And I mean, again, it's sort of, you know, the left makes fun of the Republicans, as they should, because look what we've got as our frontrunner.

00:08:13.000 But, you know, they make fun of the idea that, you know, the Republicans are all upset because they're anointed one, whether it's Rubio or whomever.

00:08:20.000 You know, is in the dust right now.

00:08:22.000 It's the same way on the other side, right?

00:08:24.000 I mean, you know, there's a lot of people, you know, with their knickers in a twist on the left, upset that perhaps their anointed one isn't going to get in.

00:08:32.000 If Huma Abedin or one of her cohorts who was involved in this, who also were being looked at in a very, very serious way, if one of them gets banged up for this, then I don't know how it doesn't spread to her.

00:08:44.000 She was in charge. 0.98

00:08:45.000 And, you know, I understand shit rolls downhill, but... 0.98

00:08:48.000 Anyway, so that seems like the only way it wouldn't is the whole thing that we're talking about her in the first place that she's just so deeply entrenched in the system She's so political and she's washed so many hands and you know They're all tied in together and this is the fabric that's sort of keeping her afloat right now her whole Sort of, 0.99

00:09:08.000 you know, political operating mechanism.

00:09:12.000 I mean, she's just so deeply entwined in the Washington system.

00:09:16.000 And that seems to be what's keeping her from...

00:09:19.000 I mean, if this was going on, and somehow or another this was someone like Trump, someone who's an outsider, Jesus Christ, they would chase him down.

00:09:26.000 Yeah.

00:09:26.000 Yeah, forget about it.

00:09:27.000 This is a remarkable situation.

00:09:31.000 Somebody who's a frontrunner, and again, not taken away.

00:09:33.000 She's got a lot of experience.

00:09:34.000 Okay, I understand that.

00:09:36.000 I liked Bill Clinton.

00:09:38.000 I liked the guy.

00:09:39.000 I thought there was a lot of good things about him.

00:09:44.000 It's just... 1.00

00:09:45.000 It's pretty fucked up. 1.00

00:09:48.000 I don't know how else to put it. 1.00

00:09:49.000 We've got Trump on one side.

00:09:50.000 We've got Hillary under investigation on the other side. 1.00

00:09:53.000 We've got Bernie Sanders.

00:09:54.000 And I get it.

00:09:55.000 I understand why people like Bernie.

00:09:56.000 Because, hey, wouldn't you like free stuff?

00:10:00.000 Free stuff is...

00:10:01.000 Give me some of that.

00:10:02.000 I've got three little boys I've got to put through college.

00:10:04.000 Well, people feel like there's an imbalance.

00:10:06.000 And they feel like this is the only guy that's saying, hey, it's imbalanced.

00:10:10.000 And the people that...

00:10:13.000 Understand economics are apparently upset at him.

00:10:15.000 I don't understand economics.

00:10:16.000 I'm lucky I don't have to. 1.00

00:10:18.000 But the people that, you know, if I was a fucking accountant, I'd shoot myself. 1.00

00:10:21.000 I'd jump off a bridge. 0.99

00:10:22.000 But the people that understand it are like, this guy's policy, this is not going to work.

00:10:27.000 Like, none of this is going to work.

00:10:28.000 So that's an argument for other people.

00:10:30.000 But the people that feel like we got screwed in 2008 with...

00:10:35.000 The whole bailout and the banks and all the craziness with the economic collapse.

00:10:41.000 They feel like at least some guy's coming along that's addressing that and he's the only one.

00:10:44.000 So that's what people are gravitating towards.

00:10:46.000 And there's a lot of social stuff like his gravitating towards the Black Lives Matter movement and wanting to make medical marijuana legal and all that stuff.

00:10:55.000 That I understand too, but there's not one person that stands out where I go, there's my guy!

00:11:00.000 There's my guy!

00:11:01.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:11:02.000 Absolutely, 100%.

00:11:03.000 Yeah, I mean, if you could take Bernie, because I think one of the things people like about Sanders is he's been consistent over the years, right?

00:11:09.000 So he's not changing.

00:11:11.000 And again, there is something to be said here in this political system where apparently you're not allowed to evolve your thinking, right?

00:11:19.000 You're a flip-flopper.

00:11:20.000 Yeah, oh my God, you can't do that.

00:11:23.000 So that part of it, or you can't negotiate a compromise, as if somehow that's a weakness. 0.95

00:11:28.000 Negotiating and compromising is how you get shit done, whether it's in government or business. 0.72

00:11:32.000 But so anyway, I understand people like Sanders. 0.95

00:11:34.000 They like his consistency.

00:11:37.000 I understand the social side of it.

00:11:39.000 I think it makes good sense.

00:11:41.000 I'm like you.

00:11:42.000 I've spent most of my life overseas, some of them in some pretty crappy countries where socialism has been tried.

00:11:49.000 And I understand he's a democratic socialist, and so it's a Kind of gentler form.

00:11:53.000 But I've seen some pretty harsh results from those systems overseas.

00:11:57.000 And I'm surprised that...

00:12:01.000 I'm surprised that they're...

00:12:04.000 I understand young people jumping on that train.

00:12:07.000 And I'm just surprised that the other folks who are on board... 0.98

00:12:12.000 You know, there's a lot of people up in Wall Street that are saying, Bernie's going to tax the shit out of those people. 0.98

00:12:17.000 And he's said as much. 0.97

00:12:19.000 Yeah.

00:12:19.000 So...

00:12:20.000 I don't know how much he's going to tax people.

00:12:23.000 I've tried to pay attention to how the—I mean, essentially what he wants to do is anyone who makes more than a certain amount, he wants to impose a very large tax above that certain amount.

00:12:32.000 You know, figure out whatever that number is, whether it's $10 million a year or whatever the hell it is.

00:12:36.000 Anything over that, he's just going to tax the fuck out of it.

00:12:40.000 But the problem is that's not going to pay for everything he needs.

00:12:43.000 That tax is going to roll down to the middle class and the lower middle class.

00:12:47.000 And that's sort of the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.

00:12:50.000 I mean, Hillary's been talking about it a little bit.

00:12:52.000 She's been bringing this up.

00:12:54.000 And the Republicans haven't been talking about it because I don't think they view him as anybody that they're going to be facing in the general election.

00:13:00.000 You know, taxing that 1%, the 2%, the 3%, whatever it is, you know, you could raise those taxes up to 99%.

00:13:07.000 You're not going to pay for free healthcare and education for this country.

00:13:10.000 Well, not only that, everybody's always complaining about the government.

00:13:13.000 There's too much government.

00:13:14.000 The government's intruding in our lives, the government this, the government that.

00:13:18.000 When you charge more taxes, you take more taxes, what are you doing?

00:13:22.000 You're creating more government.

00:13:23.000 That's just what you're doing.

00:13:25.000 The money's not going to go directly to people.

00:13:28.000 You're not going to get a check in the mail, folks.

00:13:30.000 It's going to go to the government. 0.99

00:13:31.000 And then the same incompetent fucks that are handling the IRS and all the other shit, those are the people that are going to be handling this money. 0.99

00:13:38.000 And what do you think they're going to do? 0.99

00:13:39.000 They're going to create more jobs. 1.00

00:13:40.000 They're going to have more people working for less. 0.97

00:13:42.000 They're going to make more money and work... 0.99

00:13:45.000 Get less shit done, and it's going to be more catastrophe, and it's a clusterfuck. 1.00

00:13:49.000 There's too many goddamn people. 1.00

00:13:51.000 And you know what? 1.00

00:13:52.000 When 2008 hit, when the economy really went in the shitter, you know, growth in terms of employment, you know where it happened most in this country was in Washington, D.C. I mean, you saw the growth of government as...

00:14:03.000 The economy was absolutely heading south.

00:14:06.000 And that's just – that's the way it works.

00:14:08.000 There's certain things about big government that hold true whether it's here or outside this country.

00:14:14.000 But anyway, so I look at Bernie and I think, yeah, I get it.

00:14:18.000 I like the fact that he's been consistent.

00:14:20.000 I think that makes sense. 0.99

00:14:21.000 But then you look at the Republican side and we go back to that picture of Trump and you think, how does that fucking happen? 0.97

00:14:26.000 How do you get to this point? 0.64

00:14:29.000 And you think about poor, what's his name, Scott Kelly, the astronaut, he's coming down after, you know, he's out of a long sleep up in the space station. 0.98

00:14:35.000 I hope to hell that they haven't told him shit about what's happening. 0.91

00:14:37.000 Because how funny would it be for him to land, and Trump is the leading candidate, and nobody's said anything to him yet. 0.99

00:14:44.000 And he just comes home, turns on the TV, it's Super Tuesday, Trump's won everywhere, and he's going to be, I mean, he's dealing with gravitation and all the rest of it, so I guess this isn't his biggest deal.

00:14:52.000 Don't they get, like, internet up there?

00:14:54.000 I think he's got something.

00:14:56.000 I'm sure they do.

00:14:57.000 He's got satellite internet, I think.

00:14:59.000 Magazine delivery.

00:15:00.000 I mean, he's got to know.

00:15:01.000 I mean, you'd go crazy if you're completely removed from life when you're up there.

00:15:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:08.000 I would love to think that he doesn't know, and he'd be the one person who'd get gobsmacked when he shows up here and finds out what's going on.

00:15:14.000 Maybe he could run last minute.

00:15:16.000 Look, look, look, look.

00:15:17.000 Stop, stop.

00:15:18.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:15:19.000 There's no one else.

00:15:20.000 If Hillary gets... 1.00

00:15:22.000 Tossed up in this email exchange thing.

00:15:24.000 If she gets in trouble for this, and it's Bernie, that's it, on the Democratic side.

00:15:31.000 And on the Republican side, it's essentially down to...

00:15:34.000 I mean, Cruz seems like he's fallen out of it.

00:15:36.000 It's Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, and Rubio is a distant second. 0.99

00:15:40.000 And people are so excited about Trump, because he talks shit, he's bold and brash, he insults people, and he's got his own money. 1.00

00:15:48.000 He says a bunch of crazy shit like there's a great picture of him where it's it's a photoshopped picture of Somebody made a picture of him and he's got a gun And he's pointing it out the window of a car and it says get in pussy. 1.00

00:16:01.000 We're gonna make America great again But it just seems like there's so many goofy white guys who are ready and psyched to have Trump as president, like some insulting reality star kind of a president. 1.00

00:16:18.000 Who wants to impose trade sanctions. 0.96

00:16:22.000 That's what you want to do.

00:16:23.000 When the economy is troubled and weak, that's a great idea, is to shut down international trade.

00:16:29.000 That's always proven to be a smart thing to do.

00:16:32.000 There's the picture.

00:16:32.000 Look at this picture.

00:16:37.000 I'd love that as my screensaver.

00:16:39.000 See, as a comic, I should be excited about this.

00:16:42.000 Yeah, you should be.

00:16:43.000 I should be like, I am going to have a great four years at least.

00:16:46.000 You wouldn't have to do anything.

00:16:47.000 There would be no work involved in that.

00:16:49.000 Every day we'd just go on the internet and it would be a rush to get to the stage quickest with the material.

00:16:55.000 That would be the problem because everybody's going to have the same jokes.

00:16:58.000 The folly will be outrageous.

00:17:00.000 I think people are excited, though, that he's got his own money.

00:17:03.000 He's not entrenched in the system, the Washington system. 0.98

00:17:07.000 But goddammit. 0.90

00:17:08.000 No, we can't have this happen. 0.95

00:17:15.000 We have more crisis around the world right now, more hotspots, more potential very, very serious conflicts going on.

00:17:24.000 And now is the time you would think, whether it comes from the left or the right, that you want really clear-minded, strategic, smart, pragmatic, reasoned leadership.

00:17:34.000 And this ain't it.

00:17:35.000 I mean, you know, Trump isn't the guy.

00:17:38.000 Hey, great that he's insulting people.

00:17:40.000 Great that he's talking outside.

00:17:42.000 But he doesn't, you know, and I'm sure this is going to piss off.

00:17:46.000 I don't know how many Trump supporters you've got listening, but he doesn't stand for anything, right?

00:17:52.000 I mean, he stands for...

00:17:54.000 What?

00:17:55.000 I mean, I suppose the supporters would say he stands for winning.

00:17:58.000 But what the hell does that mean?

00:17:59.000 Tiger blood.

00:18:00.000 That's it.

00:18:01.000 That's it.

00:18:01.000 I had a tiger.

00:18:02.000 It's got panther bits in it.

00:18:03.000 Maybe Charlie Sheen could be his running mate.

00:18:06.000 He'd win for sure.

00:18:08.000 God.

00:18:08.000 But the fact that we've been having a conversation about it, where we're talking about whether a guy like Trump is suited to be president, is astounding.

00:18:16.000 We get that far.

00:18:17.000 We shouldn't even have that conversation.

00:18:18.000 We should be up at the 30,000-foot level and say, no, let's push that to the side.

00:18:22.000 Well, you know who oddly is impressive to me is Ben Carson.

00:18:26.000 I know he believes a lot of wacky stuff, like he's not entirely convinced that evolution is real.

00:18:33.000 He's got...

00:18:33.000 He hasn't quite wrapped his head around that one yet.

00:18:36.000 He's got some wacky ideas, like he's got a great picture of himself, a painting that he had done at his home, where it's him and Jesus is behind him, and Jesus has his hands on his shoulders.

00:18:49.000 It's, yeah.

00:18:50.000 Okay.

00:18:52.000 Jamie found it! 0.99

00:18:56.000 First of all, if I was Jesus, I'd fucking smack him. 0.99

00:18:59.000 Why is my head so small? 0.99

00:19:01.000 Why are my hands so big?

00:19:02.000 Why am I wearing a bathrobe? 0.99

00:19:03.000 What the fuck are you insinuating? 1.00

00:19:04.000 He's got that weird evil widow's peak thing going on here, too. 1.00

00:19:07.000 Well, it's a kind of crease in his head like a pit bull.

00:19:10.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:19:10.000 Look, he looks like he's ready to bite your face off. 0.98

00:19:12.000 It's like a Klingon head. 1.00

00:19:13.000 A Klingon head! 1.00

00:19:13.000 You're right, Jamie! 1.00

00:19:14.000 And he's wearing a comfy hotel bathrobe.

00:19:17.000 That's what that looks like.

00:19:18.000 It doesn't look like, you know, garb from the Middle East, necessarily.

00:19:21.000 Yeah, at all.

00:19:22.000 It looks like he's just walked out of the shower.

00:19:23.000 Why is it so white?

00:19:24.000 Doctor, you're here.

00:19:25.000 I don't even think they had bleach back then.

00:19:27.000 Did they have bleach in the Jesus days?

00:19:28.000 I mean, things were like natural cotton color.

00:19:30.000 Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure they had no Tide capsules or whatever we used.

00:19:34.000 I don't like how he made Jesus smaller than him either.

00:19:36.000 That's kind of weird.

00:19:37.000 Yeah.

00:19:38.000 That's rude.

00:19:39.000 I mean, you know, who knows who painted it for him.

00:19:41.000 But I agree with that.

00:19:41.000 I like the fact that, again, you have to talk about someone who's reasoned.

00:19:44.000 I like the fact that he's reasoned.

00:19:47.000 But...

00:19:48.000 He's not presidential.

00:19:49.000 He's not presidential.

00:19:50.000 And we've gotten to that point where there's so many problems with our system.

00:19:54.000 But one of the problems is I think that...

00:19:56.000 People are hell-bent on finding the candidate that they agree with everything on or that agrees with them on everything.

00:20:03.000 And I've got – my three little boys are, what, eight, six, and four, and they know they're not going to get everything they want, right?

00:20:09.000 But they also know that if they work it enough, they'll get some of what they want, and then they're going to be happy enough, and they'll go off, and the day continues.

00:20:19.000 Adjust their expectations.

00:20:20.000 Adjust their expectations.

00:20:21.000 But nobody wants to do that anymore.

00:20:22.000 In politics, and so you're getting, everybody's splintering off.

00:20:26.000 And so, you know, the worry, obviously, and it's not an epiphany, people are talking about it all the time on the Republican side, it's just, you know, people are throwing these verbal hand grenades out, and there's no way to repair the damage once there is some nominee, if there is a nominee.

00:20:39.000 Well, Christie's trying to do that now.

00:20:41.000 Chris Christie's now friends with Donald Trump.

00:20:43.000 He's endorsing Donald Trump.

00:20:44.000 Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump.

00:20:46.000 Newt Gingrich is reportedly talking to Donald Trump.

00:20:49.000 This sounds wrong, but how do you get to the point where you can set aside all your concerns and agree to step forward and say that he's the guy?

00:21:05.000 I don't know how that works.

00:21:06.000 But yeah, there's not one person that...

00:21:09.000 And that's fine.

00:21:10.000 So what you have to do is you have to look for the combination of character and experience.

00:21:13.000 I think that's what we used to do.

00:21:16.000 But it's all bread and circus now. 0.99

00:21:18.000 So that shit doesn't matter anymore. 0.99

00:21:19.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:21:20.000 I think we're going towards a third party at some point.

00:21:22.000 Well, you can't have a president that is...

00:21:26.000 Has any secrets they can't have any any sort of a weird kink or Weird background like could you imagine if JFK was alive today? 0.99

00:21:38.000 What kind of shit they would dig up on that guy's life? 0.99

00:21:41.000 Oh, absolutely. 1.00

00:21:42.000 Because he was a freak. 1.00

00:21:43.000 Great president, but he was a freak. 1.00

00:21:45.000 The guy was a sexual freak. 1.00

00:21:47.000 And the press corps kept that secret. 0.98

00:21:49.000 Just like what they did with Roosevelt and being in a wheelchair, there was a tacit agreement. 0.85

00:21:53.000 We're not going to bring this up.

00:21:54.000 Yeah, I mean, that was how they did it back then, because they felt like they had a duty to keep America strong.

00:21:59.000 And everybody just kept it to themselves and kept their mouth shut.

00:22:04.000 Yeah.

00:22:05.000 Well, I mean, Taft.

00:22:06.000 Taft was crazy.

00:22:07.000 And, you know, the press didn't bring up any of his... 1.00

00:22:09.000 Shit. 1.00

00:22:10.000 How about when Lyndon Johnson literally was doing a press conference while he was taking a shit? 1.00

00:22:14.000 That's right. 0.99

00:22:15.000 That's a true story.

00:22:16.000 Yeah, absolutely. 0.99

00:22:17.000 He did a press conference, on the toilet, taking a shit, in front of a bunch of reporters. 0.97

00:22:20.000 He would talk to his cabinet guys, or guys would come in and he would be dictating notes, and he'd be squatting on the pot there. 0.99

00:22:26.000 And you gotta admire that.

00:22:27.000 The guy was comfortable in his own skin.

00:22:29.000 But I think that everything's gotten sliced and diced, and Which is by itself also very divisive.

00:22:37.000 So the more that you do that, the more you take the country and say, well, we're going to slice this up into various demographics and sectors and groups and opinions, and we're going to go after this one.

00:22:46.000 Well, by definition, you're going to end up pitting groups against each other.

00:22:50.000 And that's what we've been seeing. 0.98

00:22:50.000 And I think that's in part why we're so fucked now. 0.98

00:22:56.000 And it's not a new phenomenon. 0.98

00:22:58.000 I'm not going to throw all that on the current administration.

00:23:01.000 I think they've been more divisive than they have been unifying. 0.83

00:23:04.000 You know, overall, as a country, and part of it may be the speed of information and all the rest of this shit, but it just seems like we're getting to the point where I think we're going to have to get rid of the two-party system.

00:23:16.000 We'll keep the two-party system, but we're going to have to have a third, maybe a fourth.

00:23:19.000 There's going to have to be more potential opportunities for people because that's what they're demanding.

00:23:24.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:23:26.000 You know what else I think?

00:23:27.000 I think there shouldn't be a president anymore. 0.99

00:23:28.000 I think it's a ridiculous idea. 0.93

00:23:30.000 Just a cabinet? 0.93

00:23:31.000 Just a committee?

00:23:32.000 Just having one guy that's...

00:23:34.000 I mean, we know he's not really in charge.

00:23:36.000 We know. 1.00

00:23:37.000 There's just too much shit going on. 1.00

00:23:39.000 There's no way he could be. 0.99

00:23:40.000 I mean, when something happens and something goes wrong, like someone said to me something about drones.

00:23:45.000 They were talking about drones, and Obama has blood on his hands.

00:23:48.000 I'm like, do you really Do you think he's in charge of all that?

00:23:50.000 Do you really think there's any way this guy could be on top of the economy, could be on top of international trade, could be on top of international relations, and he's also piloting drones?

00:24:00.000 Right.

00:24:00.000 There's a lawyer in the White House, basically, by the way, who makes that call on high-value targets and whether we get to go or not go.

00:24:06.000 A lawyer does?

00:24:07.000 A lawyer does, yeah. 0.98

00:24:08.000 Go figure.

00:24:09.000 How does that work?

00:24:10.000 With no real national security experience.

00:24:12.000 Who's the guy?

00:24:12.000 Don't even say his name.

00:24:13.000 I won't say.

00:24:14.000 I won't say the name.

00:24:15.000 Candyman.

00:24:18.000 So this guy decides whether or not it's worth the potential casualties.

00:24:23.000 Yeah.

00:24:23.000 There's a shitload of work that goes on in getting to that point where you can say, we've got the target package.

00:24:31.000 Can we go or not go?

00:24:33.000 People, you know, and again, I understand, you know, people think that the, you know, the agencies out there, you know, looking to create a one world government to screw everybody over, but... 0.96

00:24:43.000 How the fuck could that ever happen? 0.98

00:24:45.000 I don't! 1.00

00:24:46.000 That shit drives me fucking crazy. 1.00

00:24:49.000 The FBI and CIA can't even get along. 1.00

00:24:52.000 But that's what happened with Petraeus, right?

00:24:54.000 Right, exactly.

00:24:55.000 I mean, there are so many, and maybe, because we talk about checks and balances, and we talk about the intel committees, and sort of that nature, but maybe what really keeps us safe from the one-world government is the fact that there's so much territorial pissing that goes on between the different agencies.

00:25:09.000 But the point being is that once you get that target package, you've got to go get approval.

00:25:14.000 And the approval's not housed in the agency.

00:25:17.000 It's not housed at the Pentagon.

00:25:19.000 Final decision-making's over at the White House.

00:25:21.000 And it's basically a legal perspective. 0.98

00:25:25.000 And so once that's done, then yeah, sure, you can fire a rocket up their ass if they're still where they are and you can get the decision made quick enough. 0.98

00:25:35.000 Yeah, but I agree with it. 0.98

00:25:36.000 So your point is correct.

00:25:37.000 The president is like the CEO of a company.

00:25:41.000 He didn't know what the hell's going on past his division leaders.

00:25:46.000 He couldn't.

00:25:46.000 There's no way he could.

00:25:48.000 There's no way he could possibly know all the things that are going on that the United States is involved with all over the world.

00:25:55.000 There's no way.

00:25:56.000 I mean, what do we have?

00:25:57.000 How many different bases?

00:25:58.000 Don't we have, like, bases in more than 100 countries?

00:26:01.000 Something crazy like that?

00:26:02.000 Yeah.

00:26:02.000 I mean, if you just define a base as U.S. permanent or semi-permanent presence, yeah, it's a lot.

00:26:08.000 And not just that, but, I mean, every other operation that goes on, every other activity that goes on, that's why...

00:26:17.000 But I will say that's why you want at the top, while we still have a president, that's why you want someone who's very reasoned and clear-eyed, not thin-skinned.

00:26:27.000 You want someone who can negotiate.

00:26:28.000 You want someone who doesn't think they're the smartest person in the room.

00:26:31.000 And then they need to be able to pull together the cabinet that is going to actually start making decisions.

00:26:38.000 And I think presidential candidates, even at this stage, should be required to say who's going to be in their cabinet.

00:26:44.000 Who would be your choice for these various positions?

00:26:46.000 That's a very good point.

00:26:47.000 Thank you.

00:26:49.000 That doesn't really get brought up, right?

00:26:51.000 No.

00:26:52.000 Oh, no.

00:26:52.000 I think it would make a big difference.

00:26:55.000 You want to know who their team is going to be.

00:26:58.000 Who knows?

00:27:00.000 Maybe that would cause a scramble for top people. 0.53

00:27:02.000 I don't know what all that would mean.

00:27:06.000 Let's just say it's a very disappointing political season.

00:27:09.000 My big fear is that we're going to have artificial intelligence and that one day artificial intelligence is going to govern world policy and world issues.

00:27:18.000 I really believe that.

00:27:20.000 I know I'm retarded for thinking this. 0.99

00:27:22.000 But I think that there's going to come a point in time where we establish rules of operation.

00:27:28.000 Do no harm or do the least harm possible.

00:27:31.000 These are the laws.

00:27:32.000 These are parameters that we need to operate in.

00:27:35.000 These are the rules that we need to enforce.

00:27:37.000 And this is when something like ISIS, when it gets to a point where everyone agrees, okay, we have a tremendous issue.

00:27:45.000 We've got to do something.

00:27:46.000 Militarily, strategically, some choices have to be made.

00:27:50.000 What do we do?

00:27:52.000 That you could punch this in somehow or another to some sort of artificial intelligence, and it will dish out some sort of a decision based upon the rules of engagement, based upon the agreed-upon parameters that we have set.

00:28:07.000 Yeah, I mean, we're kind of marching in.

00:28:09.000 I know that we'll get to that point, but we certainly war game scenarios out where you're running a large number of potential possibilities.

00:28:23.000 I think we're good to go.

00:28:47.000 So, you know, that's like the Benghazi thing.

00:28:49.000 How did I end up on that?

00:28:51.000 But you look at Benghazi and you think, here's the part I don't understand about that, not that you asked, but All they had to do during the course of that attack, and they had no idea how long that attack was going to go on for, all they had to do was put the birds up with the guys in them and head towards Benghazi.

00:29:10.000 That's all they had to do.

00:29:11.000 And then this would not have ever been a story.

00:29:13.000 They probably wouldn't have gotten there in time to save lives.

00:29:16.000 But they would have gotten there.

00:29:17.000 They would have been there.

00:29:18.000 They would have secured the facility.

00:29:19.000 They would have helped with the dust to clean up.

00:29:21.000 And it wouldn't have been an issue.

00:29:23.000 But the idea that they could all be sitting around in the war room Watching this and not have that, you know, pop in their heads because three to four weeks down the road was a national election, and all they could imagine was there was going to be some goat rope, and they couldn't get to the point where they thought there'd be zero risk. 0.51

00:29:40.000 But it doesn't make any sense.

00:29:41.000 All those guys on the ground wanted was to know that the cavalry had been called.

00:29:45.000 They didn't expect to be saved, but they thought that help would be on its way because that's what you do.

00:29:49.000 And it's one of those strange – so when you talk about scenarios and war gaming and potential political blowback and all that, it's a fascinating world where you sit in a war room and all these different sides are being debated.

00:30:02.000 My perspective on Benghazi is I just don't understand why they didn't just try. 0.82

00:30:06.000 That's all they had to do and it would have been a story.

00:30:09.000 So you really think it was because of the election?

00:30:10.000 I think there were more political operatives in that room than tactical operators.

00:30:16.000 And I think that somebody got jammed up who wanted to spin them up and send them.

00:30:23.000 And I think that it was probably because – and again, I understand.

00:30:27.000 It's speculation, and I get it.

00:30:28.000 And I'm not one of those people that said, they could have saved those lives.

00:30:31.000 That wouldn't have happened.

00:30:32.000 But I just don't understand the simple concept that one of those political operators sort of said, you know what? 0.99

00:30:37.000 If we don't try, yeah, we might get fucked on this.

00:30:40.000 Well, shouldn't there also be a scenario or at least just a rule in place that whenever there's an attack, you send in the troops? 0.94

00:30:48.000 That's the comment that you're supposed to be keeping.

00:30:51.000 That's the promise that's supposed to be there.

00:30:53.000 Yes, the promise.

00:30:54.000 That's a great way of putting it.

00:30:55.000 And that's why all the guys have been, you know, and the folks that were in that program and everybody I know is...

00:31:02.000 People say, why would you be fixated on this?

00:31:04.000 Why is this important?

00:31:06.000 Like Hillary Clinton said, what difference does it make?

00:31:09.000 Oh, it's so important.

00:31:10.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:11.000 And for that reason that you said, there is this understanding that you will make the effort, you'll try.

00:31:18.000 And nobody out there on that pointy edge of the spear expects that they'll be saved, but they do expect that someone's going to call the cavalry and try.

00:31:26.000 Well, the idea that you're left to be hung out to dry with an... 0.64

00:31:31.000 It's not like there's no resources.

00:31:32.000 That's where it doesn't make any sense.

00:31:34.000 No, we have resources.

00:31:35.000 Yeah.

00:31:35.000 That's why it's so disturbing to people.

00:31:37.000 It's like if this was a political decision, it's like to try to minimize blowback because of election coming up, so let's just not do anything.

00:31:44.000 If that was the decision, well, that's contrary to the whole purpose of having military in the first place. 0.96

00:31:49.000 If there's a fucking attack, you're supposed to send in the troops. 0.98

00:31:53.000 Particularly attack on your facility. 1.00

00:31:54.000 Exactly. 0.99

00:31:55.000 And particularly to make sure that that fucking never happens again. 0.99

00:31:58.000 Because if you know that every time there's an election coming up and, well, they're not going to do shit because there's an election coming up in two weeks, now we can go in again. 0.99

00:32:07.000 Now's the time to do it. 0.97

00:32:07.000 That's a crazy precedent to set. 0.97

00:32:09.000 Yeah.

00:32:09.000 Well, it is.

00:32:10.000 And again, I wasn't there.

00:32:12.000 I don't know.

00:32:13.000 I just, in looking at it, all the various scenarios and knowing what resources were available and knowing What the guys expected on the ground, I just don't get it.

00:32:21.000 And, you know, for a group, meaning the administration that's supposed to be so clever and politically savvy, it just didn't make any sense.

00:32:29.000 And now they've been having to suffer with it ever since. 0.85

00:32:31.000 And aside from the fact that they just didn't fucking make the effort to try to save these people. 0.92

00:32:35.000 And again, not that they would have, but how do you not try? 0.96

00:32:38.000 I don't understand that.

00:32:40.000 I don't understand any of it.

00:32:41.000 I don't understand whenever they're making decisions based on whether or not there's an election coming up, and you would do something differently if there was, and people's lives could be lost because an election's coming up, versus how you would behave it was first term,

00:32:57.000 or first year, first term.

00:32:58.000 I think it's all madness.

00:32:59.000 Well, there's a risk aversion that takes hold.

00:33:03.000 And we got to a point, and it's not just a recent thing, it's not just this administration, you know, to be fair, But there's this understanding or this belief somehow that we can get to a zero risk on a military operation or an intelligence operation and, you know, so show me that we won't have casualties. 0.97

00:33:19.000 Well, what the fuck does that mean? 0.98

00:33:21.000 You're in a risk-taking business. 0.98

00:33:22.000 You want to try to minimize that risk for sure.

00:33:25.000 When your decision making gets to that point and you start then, it starts feeding down through the ranks and you start getting mid-level managers rising up who believe that a good watch is when nothing happens on their watch, you've got a real problem.

00:33:41.000 It's unrealistic.

00:33:43.000 Again, you don't want to rush out there until you want to have a game plan.

00:33:48.000 You want to know what you're doing operationally.

00:33:51.000 There are certain things that are worth bending your spear over.

00:33:54.000 Now, for a guy like you, that was in the CIA for so long, has been involved in this stuff for so long, how exhausting is all this?

00:34:02.000 Because it seems to me that, like, it seems like it never ends.

00:34:06.000 It seems like...

00:34:09.000 You step back for a little while, and it just piles up more. 0.70

00:34:12.000 If you retire, the new guy comes in, and you look at the new guy doing it, and the same shit's happening, and it doesn't seem like anybody put a dent in anything. 0.91

00:34:21.000 And it continues to go on, like the Middle East. 0.66

00:34:24.000 At one point in time, I mean, how- Well, I don't know what you're getting at there.

00:34:28.000 That seems pretty buttoned up.

00:34:29.000 I think we've got that under control.

00:34:31.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:34:32.000 It's the craziest fucking place in the world! 1.00

00:34:35.000 Wow. 1.00

00:34:35.000 If the whole world... 1.00

00:34:37.000 Okay, let's put it this way.

00:34:39.000 If the whole world was Syria, right? 0.99

00:34:41.000 Yeah.

00:34:42.000 If it was just one big country of Syria. 1.00

00:34:45.000 What the fuck? 0.99

00:34:47.000 If the whole world was Libya. 1.00

00:34:50.000 Yeah, imagine.

00:34:51.000 The whole world was Libya. 1.00

00:34:53.000 What?

00:34:54.000 Nah, you know what?

00:34:55.000 If you had told us...

00:34:58.000 We spent a lot of time trying to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

00:35:02.000 And the Soviets spent a lot of time trying to get themselves out of there. 0.80

00:35:05.000 About four years into their occupation there, they realized, and we know this because we've seen the Kremlin papers and we've had access to a lot of their thinking at that time. 0.97

00:35:16.000 They, after about year four, they said, this is fucked up. 0.96

00:35:19.000 We got to get out of here. 0.98

00:35:20.000 But what could they do?

00:35:21.000 So they spent the next five years or so trying a variety of things.

00:35:25.000 First of all, they tried to find a government that I think?

00:35:50.000 Weapon systems to the Mujahideen. 0.91

00:35:52.000 And in retrospect, maybe that wasn't a good idea.

00:35:56.000 But if you had told us that we'd be back...

00:36:00.000 Two and a half decades later, doing the same thing that the Soviets were doing, trying to... 0.97

00:36:05.000 I don't know what we were trying to do, build a nation, sell democracy where they don't have a fucking clue what we were selling. 0.92

00:36:12.000 So we don't... 0.88

00:36:13.000 Part of it is what you were saying.

00:36:15.000 We don't learn from our mistakes.

00:36:16.000 So that's why... 0.99

00:36:17.000 That's probably the most tiring part, is watching shit happen over and over in cycles. 0.98

00:36:21.000 And every generation thinks they can do it better. 0.99

00:36:24.000 And that's a good thing, probably.

00:36:26.000 But...

00:36:26.000 There's a lot of hubris involved in thinking that you're going to do this.

00:36:30.000 Somehow it's going to be different this time.

00:36:31.000 I had a guy – I was debating this guy who will remain anonymous.

00:36:36.000 He was in the military and we were in Afghanistan at that point already with trying to nation-build.

00:36:47.000 And I was very pessimistic about the whole thing.

00:36:50.000 And I kept saying, this is not what we should be doing with our boys, or women as well, and our resources and everything else. 0.99

00:36:58.000 I said, they don't understand what the fuck we're after here. 0.98

00:37:00.000 And we did a great tactical mission right after 9-11. 0.99

00:37:04.000 We did a beautiful, I sound like Trump, beautiful tactical mission.

00:37:08.000 And that's what we're good at.

00:37:10.000 We're great at tactical missions. 0.96

00:37:11.000 But then about springtime in 2002, we should have gotten the fuck out. 0.97

00:37:14.000 I said, if you do it again, we're going to come back. 0.96

00:37:16.000 We didn't.

00:37:16.000 We stayed because we wanted to build a road or improve their literacy rate by a couple of points.

00:37:22.000 So this guy said, well, it's different this time.

00:37:24.000 Because I was saying, look, it didn't work for the Russians.

00:37:26.000 Why do you think it's going to work for us?

00:37:27.000 And he said, well, they hated the Russians.

00:37:29.000 And I thought, wow, that's your reasoning?

00:37:31.000 Is it because somehow they like us?

00:37:34.000 Or we're going to throw chocolate bars out to them and stockings and they're going to come running? 0.99

00:37:40.000 I mean, what the hell is that point?

00:37:41.000 But we have this This mentality that we're going to do it better this time.

00:37:46.000 So you look at ISIS, you know, for example.

00:37:53.000 I mean, who couldn't have guessed if we completely walk out?

00:37:55.000 You can debate all sorts of things about Iraq, but who couldn't have seen if you walk out of that place, it was going to devolve into chaos. 1.00

00:38:02.000 You know, if you leave a vacuum, it's not good.

00:38:04.000 And so that's what we've got.

00:38:06.000 But we keep doing the same things over and over again.

00:38:09.000 And you could argue what we're doing in Iraq, we did all those years ago after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

00:38:15.000 And so we left, and it devolved into what it devolved into.

00:38:19.000 And oddly enough, there were a lot of neocons who thought, that was terrible.

00:38:23.000 We felt guilty about that, so now we're going to get it right this time.

00:38:26.000 We're going to stay.

00:38:27.000 Not thinking about what happened to the Soviets. 0.69

00:38:28.000 I don't know.

00:38:29.000 I don't know.

00:38:30.000 I remember when McCain was debating Obama.

00:38:33.000 When they were running for president and Obama was talking about going to Afghanistan and I remember this is a very sobering moment where McCain said, what are you talking about going to Afghanistan?

00:38:44.000 You're just gonna send troops in?

00:38:46.000 Do you understand that place?

00:38:47.000 And it was clear that Obama didn't.

00:38:49.000 You could tell by his body language.

00:38:51.000 You could tell by the way he was speaking about it.

00:38:54.000 McCain had this really clear sentence.

00:38:57.000 He said that place hasn't changed since Alexander the Great was running it. 0.99

00:39:02.000 And when he said that, I remember thinking like, whoa, what the fuck? 0.99

00:39:06.000 So then I started researching Afghanistan. 0.99

00:39:07.000 Then I started researching the terrain and how crazy it is.

00:39:11.000 It's literally like trying to control the Rocky Mountains.

00:39:16.000 It's like backcountry Idaho.

00:39:18.000 It's so remote.

00:39:19.000 It's so impossible to get to.

00:39:20.000 And then you find out that there's really only one city.

00:39:24.000 There's Kabul.

00:39:25.000 In the entire country, there's basically, you know, there's a few little towns.

00:39:28.000 There's one city.

00:39:29.000 Yeah.

00:39:30.000 It's just warlords.

00:39:31.000 And they don't know what we've been trying to sell them.

00:39:34.000 And it's the same with Iraq. 0.59

00:39:35.000 It's the same with Libya. 0.69

00:39:37.000 Libya is a complete hot mess now. 1.00

00:39:39.000 Isn't it crazy that getting rid of Gaddafi made Libya worse?

00:39:43.000 Well, you know what?

00:39:44.000 Gaddafi, here's that wacky thing.

00:39:46.000 Gaddafi was kind of our guy on counterterrorism for a few years before he got pushed out.

00:39:53.000 Because he had found Jesus, you know, not literally, I guess, you know, whatever, however they put it.

00:39:59.000 And he had started to cooperate with us.

00:40:02.000 And then the Arab Spring happened.

00:40:04.000 And then there was this bizarre belief that democracy was going to sweep through the region.

00:40:08.000 And the Italians and French came to us and said, you know, we got lots of interests there in Libya.

00:40:12.000 Would you back us up?

00:40:13.000 We had no national security interests in Libya.

00:40:15.000 And yet we went in and we did what we did. 0.94

00:40:17.000 And now it's a shithole.

00:40:18.000 It's 130 some odd tribes in Libya. 0.95

00:40:21.000 And we're still talking.

00:40:22.000 Right now, we're still talking as if somehow we're going to find a federal government.

00:40:26.000 And that's what's going to help us because then one of the generals just came out yesterday or today or whatever, and he said, well, I don't think the Libyans are going to be able to take care of ISIS themselves because ISIS now got a very strong hold in Libya.

00:40:40.000 Because they're smart.

00:40:41.000 Because they realize they're having problems in Syria and Iraq.

00:40:43.000 They've been looking for another place.

00:40:44.000 Libya is chaotic.

00:40:45.000 So the general says, you know, so once we get this unified government, then we can work on training and assisting and providing resources.

00:40:54.000 And it's just over and over. 0.99

00:40:55.000 So to answer your original question, but in a very roundabout way, yes, it's tiring because you see the same shit over and over again. 0.99

00:41:02.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:41:03.000 Well, I could only imagine.

00:41:04.000 I could only imagine.

00:41:06.000 Just trying to nation build and seeing these people that, first of all, you're dealing with completely different cultures, completely different cultures, completely different educations, people who are so backwards, so far gone, 1.00

00:41:22.000 that taking a 45-year-old man who's so fucked up and crazy and religious and trying to convert him to the ways of the West... 0.99

00:41:30.000 Like these fucking people that executed that kid the other day in the middle of Iraq for playing music because he was playing Western music. 1.00

00:41:37.000 They beheaded him publicly. 1.00

00:41:38.000 We don't understand that.

00:41:39.000 We can't process it, but we have never been able to.

00:41:41.000 You talk about the Viet Cong and we used to go in and we thought we were helping a village and going to an inoculated village and the Viet Cong had to come in there and kill them because they'd had contact with us.

00:41:50.000 One of the first people that we hired some time ago for my company, Diligence, for all your information and security needs.

00:41:58.000 A little plug.

00:41:59.000 Sorry, a little plug.

00:42:02.000 One of the first guys we hired was a Russian, came out of their GRU. And right after we'd gone in for the Tora Bora operation, he came to me.

00:42:13.000 And he had been a tank driver out in Afghanistan during the occupation for the Russians.

00:42:19.000 And he came and you could just see the intensity on his face.

00:42:23.000 And I had known him for a while.

00:42:26.000 So anyway, he grabbed me and he said, that was brilliant.

00:42:30.000 He said, meaning Tora Bora, meaning how quickly we had acted.

00:42:33.000 He said, that was brilliant.

00:42:34.000 He says, don't stay.

00:42:35.000 He said, don't stay. 0.99

00:42:36.000 They're like cockroaches. 0.95

00:42:38.000 Meaning you step on them here, they show up over here. 0.92

00:42:41.000 And you could just see in his face. 1.00

00:42:43.000 And that son of a bitch was right. 1.00

00:42:44.000 And if I had been smart, I would have dragged him back to the States... 1.00

00:42:48.000 I've taken them into the Pentagon and had them say that every hour on the hour, you know, until somebody figured out what the hell we should have been doing.

00:42:56.000 But...

00:42:57.000 Yeah, we don't seem to listen.

00:43:00.000 Sometimes you got to jump in.

00:43:01.000 Sometimes you got to take charge.

00:43:03.000 And sometimes you need somebody who's in charge.

00:43:05.000 You need a leader at the top of this food chain around the world.

00:43:08.000 Because if you don't have one, you get what we get now.

00:43:10.000 I would argue that part of the problem we have is the administration, for whatever their motivation, whatever their reasons, and again, you know, fine.

00:43:16.000 They want to do it.

00:43:17.000 That's what they're going to do.

00:43:18.000 They've stepped off the world stage to some degree.

00:43:20.000 They don't want to be...

00:43:22.000 The world's policeman or the world's leader.

00:43:24.000 They don't want to be at the top.

00:43:25.000 And when you do that, it's not as if suddenly a community of nations fills that void.

00:43:30.000 Some other interest is going to try to become the top dog. 0.99

00:43:34.000 That's just the fucking way it works. 0.97

00:43:36.000 So it's almost like there's a balance that's already been achieved, and you have to maintain that balance in some way, shape, or form. 0.98

00:43:41.000 I would rather the U.S. be at the top of the food chain because I think...

00:43:45.000 And some people argue, and there's always the folks that think we never act in best interest of anybody.

00:43:51.000 Let me just pretend I'm them.

00:43:52.000 The United States is the greatest terrorist organization in the world, man. 0.93

00:43:56.000 Don't you know? 0.96

00:43:57.000 You know what?

00:43:58.000 That's exactly what I'm talking about.

00:43:59.000 The U.S. has been invading countries forever, man.

00:44:01.000 Why don't you just leave them alone?

00:44:03.000 Just for oil.

00:44:03.000 Yeah, all we want is oil and gemstones, diamonds.

00:44:06.000 Well, we definitely We want that stuff, too.

00:44:08.000 We do want that stuff, sure.

00:44:10.000 The problem is we want that stuff, too.

00:44:12.000 But it's not that cut and dry. 0.91

00:44:14.000 You've got some fucked up parts of the world. 0.87

00:44:16.000 And the more I talk to people that have been to those fucked up parts of the world, the more that picture is starting to be clear and clear. 0.95

00:44:24.000 The more I talk to guys like Jocko Willink, who've been over there, SEALs, people that have served over there, you get this picture of this place that's not America. 0.52

00:44:33.000 And you get a lot of people that are talking about the rest of the world as if we're talking about America, like bad spots in America.

00:44:40.000 Like, well, we need to fix Chicago. 0.92

00:44:42.000 Well, let's just fucking fixing Chicago is a goddamn cakewalk compared to fixing Kabul or fixing any of these spots in the world, like Syria. 0.96

00:44:49.000 Yeah, and by the way, we could be at the top of the global food chain and still fix Chicago. 0.99

00:44:53.000 Yes.

00:44:53.000 We can multitask.

00:44:55.000 But, you know, I guess that...

00:44:57.000 I spent enough time behind the curtain of the U.S. government that, you know, my...

00:45:03.000 My view is colored somewhat, right?

00:45:05.000 And I understand.

00:45:06.000 Everybody's got their opinions based on their experiences.

00:45:08.000 My experience is what it is. 0.98

00:45:11.000 And I don't believe the US government is out there to fuck everybody over. 0.96

00:45:16.000 Sometimes they make a mistake. 0.98

00:45:17.000 We tend to be a pretty self-correcting nation.

00:45:20.000 We try.

00:45:21.000 Sometimes it takes a while, whatever.

00:45:23.000 But I would rather us be the ones up there trying to direct traffic.

00:45:29.000 Than some other nation, like China or Russia or Iran for the Middle East decision-making.

00:45:37.000 And we don't always get it right.

00:45:39.000 Absolutely not.

00:45:40.000 And you do have to have checks and balances. 0.99

00:45:41.000 Of course you fucking do. 0.98

00:45:43.000 You know, that's where people always, you know, fall on one side of their way. 1.00

00:45:46.000 Just all you want to do is, you know, steal oil and treasure.

00:45:49.000 No, I just want to try to ensure that we've got some good intent at the top of the food chain.

00:45:55.000 And I think the U.S. is well positioned for that because we try.

00:45:59.000 And again, we don't always get it right, but we make that effort.

00:46:02.000 So, you know, people can disagree.

00:46:05.000 I'm sure they are right now saying, ah, he's got an opinion.

00:46:07.000 But, well, yeah, I do.

00:46:10.000 Well, you actually have a qualified opinion, and that's the difference between your opinion and someone who's going, the United States, man, we need to stay out of other countries, man.

00:46:20.000 I think we need to pay attention to what's going on outside of the United States for sure.

00:46:25.000 I just don't know what you could possibly do to sort of smooth over the Middle East and bring them up to date. 0.96

00:46:32.000 I just don't know how you could, how do you bring ISIS up to date?

00:46:36.000 How do you say, hey guys, you really, you can't execute 15-year-old kids for listening to rap music.

00:46:40.000 You can't negotiate.

00:46:43.000 You can't, it's not an organization that we're going to be able to deal with in a manner that would make us all feel happy because we talked them down from, you know, from the ledge and they're not going to commit violence anymore.

00:46:54.000 That's not going to happen.

00:46:58.000 And you can't also kill your way out of it.

00:47:02.000 That's the other part of it.

00:47:03.000 So how do you do it?

00:47:04.000 Well, you try to manage it. 0.99

00:47:06.000 And you manage it in part by not allowing The extremists to have their own fucking territory. 0.98

00:47:13.000 Because that caliphate that they've been jonesing for all this time, that's one of the reasons why they've been having so much success in recruiting forward fighters. 0.98

00:47:22.000 There's been a shitload of people going into that place.

00:47:24.000 And they do it because, hey, look, we finally got our own turf.

00:47:27.000 Now, we can take that turf away.

00:47:30.000 It's now much more problematic because we sat on the sidelines for some time and the Russians are in there and nobody wants to get into a shooting match with the Russians at this stage of the game. 0.98

00:47:39.000 Denying them territory.

00:47:41.000 And then realizing that, like with cockroaches, they're going to pop up over here.

00:47:44.000 And then they're going to morph and they're going to be over here.

00:47:46.000 We're just going to have to play whack-a-mole for the rest of our lives, probably.

00:47:48.000 This doesn't go away, but we can minimize it.

00:47:51.000 And we can be aggressive enough without saying we're going to try to nation-build and also sell them something that they don't understand.

00:47:58.000 So, I don't know.

00:48:01.000 But, again, having sat on the sidelines for a while, we've created more of a mess at this stage of the game.

00:48:07.000 The Russian and Iranian influence, In Syria, the Iran's have more influence in the Middle East now than they've had in modern times.

00:48:15.000 And they can't imagine their good fortune.

00:48:18.000 And so now what are we doing?

00:48:20.000 Well, now the headlines are, look, they just had elections and the reformists are winning.

00:48:23.000 As if somehow...

00:48:25.000 Iran's going to change its tune. 0.86

00:48:27.000 It's insane.

00:48:28.000 We've had that hope for decades and decades.

00:48:31.000 And every time there's a little glimmer of maybe the reformists to the moderates are going to rise up, it doesn't happen.

00:48:39.000 Well, didn't we have a part of that too though, right?

00:48:41.000 Like where we brought in the Ayatollah to get rid of the Shah? 0.94

00:48:48.000 Wasn't there like a...

00:48:49.000 Well, we didn't so much foment it as we just stood by and watched it happen.

00:48:54.000 Is that what happened?

00:48:55.000 Yeah.

00:48:55.000 We didn't sort of influence it at all?

00:48:57.000 Oh no, the Shah was our guy. 0.99

00:48:58.000 The Shah was our guy. 0.93

00:48:59.000 The Shah was our guy, yeah. 0.98

00:49:01.000 We brought in the Shah though, right? 1.00

00:49:03.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:49:04.000 And the Shah was a son of a bitch. 1.00

00:49:06.000 You know, just in the same... 1.00

00:49:07.000 He was...

00:49:08.000 You know, frankly, he was not much different than Bashir Assad or Assad's dad.

00:49:12.000 I got it confused.

00:49:13.000 So the Ayatollah came in and...

00:49:15.000 How did the Ayatollah get into power?

00:49:17.000 He was in exile in France.

00:49:19.000 Right.

00:49:19.000 And there had been for some time, because of the brutality of the Shah...

00:49:24.000 There had been a hardline clerical uprising, sort of directing traffic amongst the population. 0.99

00:49:31.000 So the Shah, who was our guy, was brutal, and he was fucking up. 0.99

00:49:35.000 Right, right. 0.99

00:49:36.000 And he had a very brutal intelligence service.

00:49:38.000 And so that wasn't a happy chapter in the sense of...

00:49:46.000 You know, was the Shah our guy?

00:49:48.000 Well, yes.

00:49:48.000 But have we had other guys that were, you know, despots or not so much despots as just really unsavory people that in an ideal world you wouldn't want to associate with.

00:50:00.000 But the real world doesn't work that way. 0.99

00:50:02.000 There are some fucked up people out there. 0.97

00:50:04.000 And the fact of the matter is sometimes you got to deal with the person that's there. 0.99

00:50:08.000 That was the argument about...

00:50:11.000 What was going on in Iraq, right?

00:50:13.000 That was the argument about Saddam Hussein. 0.91

00:50:15.000 It's about Saddam Hussein was a horrible person. 0.97

00:50:17.000 He's a dangerous guy. 0.99

00:50:19.000 But getting rid of him might be worse.

00:50:21.000 Yeah.

00:50:21.000 And there were a number of people that said that.

00:50:24.000 And what turned that tide?

00:50:26.000 And people will – like Trump himself.

00:50:29.000 Bush lied.

00:50:30.000 People died.

00:50:31.000 It was only George Bush who thought there was weapons of mass destruction. 1.00

00:50:33.000 Have you heard the latest shit that he said? 0.99

00:50:34.000 That if he gets into office, he's going to find out the truth about who brought the towers down? 1.00

00:50:39.000 Oh my God, no. 1.00

00:50:40.000 He's a fucking truther. 1.00

00:50:41.000 He's a truther. 1.00

00:50:42.000 Not only that, he's also, remember, he's a birther.

00:50:46.000 He thinks Obama was born in Kenya.

00:50:48.000 Do you remember that?

00:50:49.000 Yeah, I remember that.

00:50:49.000 Everybody's conveniently ignored this.

00:50:51.000 I know. 1.00

00:50:51.000 Yeah, nobody's going after the obvious shit. 1.00

00:50:53.000 I didn't know about the truther bit. 0.99

00:50:56.000 Oh my God.

00:50:57.000 It just keeps piling on.

00:50:58.000 This is a recent statement that he made.

00:51:02.000 Yeah, you know what?

00:51:04.000 It's...

00:51:08.000 Again, how does it happen that this country, this fantastic country, and again, I spent most of my life overseas, I can go to the deepest, darkest shithole somewhere out there, middle of nowhere, and someone will say, If I go to America, I can work this hard and I can do really well.

00:51:25.000 I just have to, you know, if I can get to America, they still, people out there in the middle of nowhere still believe the American dream.

00:51:32.000 And yet you worry about it because I think we seem to be giving up on it here if this is the best we've got.

00:51:38.000 If we're willing to follow this guy, you know, down the tunnel, I don't know where we're heading, but it's not good.

00:51:46.000 And I also worry about – part of it with Bernie Sanders, going back to him, is I think sometimes the young people who support him, part of it is sort of being disheartened.

00:51:57.000 Since 2008, they don't see themselves as being part of the American dream. 0.98

00:52:00.000 And if you don't imagine yourself working hard and becoming wealthy, then you don't give a shit whether tax rates go up to 85 percent or not. 0.96

00:52:06.000 It doesn't matter to you because it's not going to be you. 0.98

00:52:09.000 It's going to be somebody else.

00:52:10.000 Right.

00:52:10.000 Well, it's just so confusing to people that no one can get it right.

00:52:14.000 I mean, everybody had these hopes and dreams for Obama, and he was going to get an office.

00:52:19.000 I remember this lady that was, when Obama got elected, she was so happy, and she was saying, I'm so happy because now I know that if my mortgage needs to be paid, he's going to help me.

00:52:33.000 And it was like this really weird...

00:52:36.000 Like moment where I realized like wow these people don't really understand how complex this entire system is and you're dealing with a guy who's stepping into the office right when all these banks are failing.

00:52:48.000 Yeah.

00:52:48.000 Right when all this this collapse is happening and people think that all of a sudden this guy's gonna come in and he's gonna have a completely different set of priorities and he's going to find all these people.

00:52:56.000 Are you losing your house?

00:52:57.000 We're going to fix that.

00:52:58.000 We're going to get that back for you.

00:52:58.000 Don't worry.

00:52:59.000 There's 300 million people in this country, ma'am, and there's not enough money to buy everybody's mortgage back and fix it.

00:53:06.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:53:07.000 We voted a guy into office who had no experience.

00:53:11.000 He never had a job.

00:53:12.000 Yeah, and so you get what you get, and I understand.

00:53:15.000 Okay, everybody was excited, sure.

00:53:16.000 Hope and change and all that.

00:53:17.000 It was a very powerful message that they were delivering.

00:53:20.000 It was a smart, smart campaign.

00:53:23.000 You would think that over a period of time then, what we'd really want now is somebody, and again, I don't know where you find them, but somebody with that combination of experience and character and a proven ability, a track record, to work both sides, right?

00:53:36.000 To say, look, we're going to be able to negotiate, we're going to compromise, we're going to find, you know, it's not rocket fucking science.

00:53:43.000 To work out some of these problems, right?

00:53:45.000 But the more problems we get and the more negative we get about them, it seems insurmountable.

00:53:50.000 But we should be able to find somebody in this massive country of ours who, you know, can propose some clear-eyed ideas.

00:53:59.000 I don't know.

00:53:59.000 Well, for me, it almost seems like...

00:54:02.000 Taking a guy who, this is an analogy that makes sense to me, taking a guy who's never fought before, and then make him run for the UFC, and now you're gonna fight in the UFC. Well, what's your fucking experience fighting? 0.96

00:54:14.000 You don't have any experience. 1.00

00:54:17.000 You know what I'm saying?

00:54:18.000 Like, all of a sudden, this guy gets this job.

00:54:19.000 It's the most complicated and impossible job in the world, and he's never served.

00:54:24.000 He's never been overseas.

00:54:26.000 He's never experienced combat.

00:54:27.000 He doesn't know what it means to be involved in a war.

00:54:31.000 He's never been there physically, boots on the ground, okay?

00:54:34.000 I'm not saying he has to, but I'm saying, wouldn't that help?

00:54:37.000 But wouldn't that flavor how you would understand and consider military action if you had actually been there?

00:54:43.000 Whether you'd been there...

00:54:45.000 At least Bush Sr. had been in the CIA. He had been the head of CIA. Bush Jr. was a classic.

00:54:52.000 Bush Sr. was a World War II hero.

00:54:53.000 Yes, that's right.

00:54:54.000 Shot down.

00:54:56.000 Bush Sr. was probably the most qualified guy to be ambassador to China.

00:55:01.000 Yeah, ambassador to China, head of the CIA, a war hero.

00:55:04.000 I mean, look, the guy, you know, but yeah, you're right. 0.99

00:55:06.000 Shit on now, left and right. 0.99

00:55:08.000 And that's where we're at. 1.00

00:55:09.000 You can't disagree with somebody's opinions without crapping on them, right?

00:55:14.000 You can't just say, look, I get it.

00:55:15.000 You've got different opinions than I do.

00:55:17.000 Yeah, okay, fine.

00:55:17.000 Let's talk.

00:55:18.000 Let's figure out where is the workable solution.

00:55:21.000 Well, you have to be a speaker, too.

00:55:23.000 This is the other thing.

00:55:24.000 You have to be this engaging, entertaining individual who I'd like to hear talk about.

00:55:31.000 One of the things that was so great about Obama was how good he was at giving speeches.

00:55:35.000 The guy's a brilliant, brilliant orator.

00:55:38.000 I mean, he had me. 0.99

00:55:39.000 I was like, this is my fucking guy. 1.00

00:55:41.000 I'm listening to him talk. 1.00

00:55:43.000 Finally, we've got a smart guy.

00:55:44.000 And as opposed to Bush, who was Bush Jr., who was an awkward sort of a guy, I mean, W just wasn't that good of a talker. 1.00

00:55:51.000 And people would say, he's stupid, he's a dumb guy. 1.00

00:55:54.000 Go back and listen to him when he was running for governor of Texas. 1.00

00:55:56.000 He's not a dumb guy. 0.79

00:55:58.000 He's tired and overwhelmed. 0.79

00:56:00.000 Right. 1.00

00:56:00.000 You don't get to those positions by being an idiot. 1.00

00:56:04.000 You may disagree with people's positions. 1.00

00:56:06.000 I disagree with Bernie Sanders.

00:56:07.000 I don't wish him any ill will.

00:56:10.000 I'm not horrified that he's running.

00:56:12.000 I think that's the way it works in this country.

00:56:14.000 I disagree with the concept of socialism or democratic socialism.

00:56:18.000 But at the same time, I understand and I appreciate the fact that that's what he believes and he's believed it for a long time.

00:56:23.000 So great.

00:56:24.000 Let's...

00:56:25.000 And you're right.

00:56:26.000 We should be trying to help people that need a leg up.

00:56:28.000 We should be trying to provide the safety net for the people that need it.

00:56:31.000 We should be trying to, at the same time, promoting the concept of hard work and success. 0.99

00:56:37.000 There's nothing wrong, fuck it at all. 0.99

00:56:39.000 There's nothing wrong with success. 1.00

00:56:40.000 You work hard.

00:56:41.000 It's like Monopoly.

00:56:42.000 Monopoly's decided they're going to, I don't know whether for all their board games or not, but Monopoly's going to take away the paper money and give you a bank card.

00:56:49.000 What?

00:56:50.000 Yeah.

00:56:50.000 Is that real?

00:56:51.000 Yeah.

00:56:51.000 I couldn't believe it when I saw Hasbro, which owns Monopoly.

00:56:54.000 They said, well, we're going to use a bank card from now on.

00:56:56.000 So all those kids out there, because I don't know, maybe they don't want them to learn how to count paper money because maybe it's unseemly.

00:57:01.000 I'm reading something into it that's not there, obviously.

00:57:04.000 You might not be.

00:57:05.000 Yeah.

00:57:05.000 It's part and parcel.

00:57:06.000 My kids, they started playing basketball a couple seasons ago.

00:57:12.000 I remember the first league, they didn't want to keep score.

00:57:15.000 Oh yeah, that's a big one. 1.00

00:57:16.000 What the fuck? 1.00

00:57:17.000 Yeah, you're not allowed to be a loser. 1.00

00:57:19.000 Yeah, we don't want to put these kids through stress, but you know what?

00:57:21.000 My daughter was playing softball and nobody won. 1.00

00:57:23.000 What the fuck are you doing? 1.00

00:57:24.000 What happened? 1.00

00:57:25.000 Why are you playing?

00:57:26.000 Get off the field, let's go do something else if nobody's going to win.

00:57:29.000 You've got to feel bad.

00:57:30.000 That's part of being a kid. 0.99

00:57:31.000 You feel bad and you go, that fucking sucked, and then you practice. 0.99

00:57:35.000 And you know what? 0.99

00:57:35.000 And those kids know. 0.99

00:57:36.000 I could ask my six-year-old, I could ask Sluggo, way into the third quarter of a basketball game, I'd say, what's the score?

00:57:43.000 And he would know the score.

00:57:44.000 All the kids knew the score.

00:57:45.000 They're all keeping score. 0.99

00:57:47.000 And so we're just blowing smoke up a parent's ass, and consequently we think we're being clever with our kids. 0.99

00:57:52.000 They're saying, eh, this will be fine. 0.99

00:57:55.000 But I don't know how I got off on this.

00:57:57.000 My kid walked off the scooter, the oldest one, walked off the lacrosse field and looked at me and he said, so how'd I do? 1.00

00:58:05.000 And I said, well, honestly, do you want me to be honest or do you want me to blow smoke up your ass? 0.99

00:58:10.000 And I'd said it, and I didn't realize there were the parents around. 0.99

00:58:12.000 They were horrified.

00:58:13.000 And then I got dressing down.

00:58:16.000 But he said, God bless him, he said, I want you to be honest.

00:58:19.000 And I said, well, you didn't really try as hard as you could.

00:58:21.000 I said, you know, you don't have to be the best, but you've got to try really hard.

00:58:25.000 And the only reason that other kid was scoring on you was because he wanted it more.

00:58:29.000 And I said, and you can do that.

00:58:31.000 And you can tell kids that they're not playing their best in a nice, constructive way.

00:58:42.000 Yes.

00:58:43.000 Yes.

00:58:44.000 Yes.

00:58:57.000 We created this monster ourselves. 0.99

00:58:59.000 And now a lot of those people, they look and they don't believe because they've been told they're victims and the system's rigged and they're getting fucked every day. 0.99

00:59:06.000 They don't believe they can be part of the system. 0.97

00:59:08.000 So sure, they look at Bernie and they think, yeah, that's about right.

00:59:11.000 That's what we need.

00:59:12.000 And they find like-minded people.

00:59:14.000 They band together.

00:59:15.000 They all agree on the same thing.

00:59:16.000 And they're having a battle right now to try to see who can be the most open-minded, the most liberal, the most accepting.

00:59:24.000 And that's where the competition is.

00:59:25.000 The competition is being the most left-wing, the most progressive. 0.99

00:59:29.000 They're fucking each other over on progressivists. 0.99

00:59:33.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:59:34.000 Progressivist?

00:59:34.000 That's not even a word.

00:59:36.000 It's madness.

00:59:37.000 It's so madness that it's not even a word.

00:59:38.000 I can't even have a word for it.

00:59:40.000 Yeah.

00:59:40.000 Progressivist.

00:59:40.000 You can make a new word.

00:59:41.000 Yeah.

00:59:42.000 George Bush made that up.

00:59:43.000 We're getting to a weird point where we're trying to coddle people.

00:59:48.000 And we're not allowing them to experience defeat.

00:59:52.000 We're not allowing them to experience discomfort, which is how people grow.

00:59:56.000 If you don't feel uncomfortable, you don't learn.

00:59:59.000 You don't learn from you. 1.00

01:00:00.000 Every mistake that I've ever made made me feel like shit. 0.99

01:00:02.000 And that's how I get better at things. 0.88

01:00:04.000 Yeah, because you learned, I don't want to feel that way again.

01:00:06.000 So how do I get better?

01:00:07.000 How do I do this?

01:00:08.000 How do I do it with wrestling?

01:00:11.000 That's a good question.

01:00:11.000 That is a good question.

01:00:12.000 Because you get pinned or you don't get pinned.

01:00:14.000 Okay.

01:00:14.000 You know?

01:00:15.000 I mean, how the fuck... 0.99

01:00:16.000 They call it before you get pinned. 0.99

01:00:18.000 What do they do?

01:00:19.000 Okay.

01:00:19.000 No one won!

01:00:20.000 Yay! 0.99

01:00:20.000 You look like you're approaching a pin, so let's stop it. 0.99

01:00:22.000 How are they going to do that?

01:00:23.000 Because I'll tell you what, man. 1.00

01:00:25.000 This fucking... 1.00

01:00:25.000 Times I got pinned when I was 14 years old still fuck with my head. 1.00

01:00:31.000 I've been carrying that all these years. 0.99

01:00:32.000 I'll be in the gym lifting weights thinking about some kid who pinned me in fucking high school and I'll get angry. 0.99

01:00:37.000 Little Bobby Schwartz. 1.00

01:00:38.000 This motherfucker. 1.00

01:00:39.000 If I ever find him. 1.00

01:00:40.000 I'll start doing extra chin-ups for that prick. 0.99

01:00:43.000 I'm going to go find where he lives.

01:00:44.000 But that's what motivates you.

01:00:45.000 It motivates you, you know?

01:00:47.000 I mean, getting tapped out in jujitsu.

01:00:49.000 There are guys that have tapped me out that are literally, like, when I'm tired, I will think about them tapping me out and I will push further.

01:00:58.000 That is the only thing that motivates you is that feeling.

01:01:01.000 It's one of the only things that's really a powerful motivating factor that everyone can relate to is that feeling of defeat.

01:01:07.000 That horrible feeling where you go, you know what?

01:01:09.000 I got to get better.

01:01:10.000 I got to get better.

01:01:11.000 Because someone's better.

01:01:13.000 And the idea that you're saying that no one's ever better, you're perfect.

01:01:16.000 That's not true.

01:01:17.000 No, it's not.

01:01:17.000 That's not true.

01:01:18.000 You get better at stuff.

01:01:19.000 There's always somebody.

01:01:20.000 Yeah.

01:01:20.000 Just like I tell my kids, there's always somebody that's going to be bigger than you.

01:01:23.000 There's always someone that's going to be smarter than you.

01:01:25.000 That's fine.

01:01:26.000 All you can do is the absolute best you can do.

01:01:28.000 And you work at it. 0.97

01:01:29.000 And if you fall down, you don't fucking pick yourself up. 0.96

01:01:31.000 You've got to learn how to lose. 0.99

01:01:32.000 Yeah, you've got to learn how to lose.

01:01:33.000 Learning how to lose is an important part of being a grown-up.

01:01:35.000 But we've got, I mean, look at, again, look at this, the irony of kids in expensive colleges.

01:01:42.000 You know, denigrating free speech because it upsets their feelings.

01:01:45.000 Progressivists. 0.99

01:01:46.000 Are you fucking kidding me? 1.00

01:01:47.000 Progressivists. 1.00

01:01:48.000 We got to look that word up.

01:01:50.000 Can we get some help on this?

01:01:52.000 My God.

01:01:53.000 Yeah, well, the idea of being a progressive is a great idea.

01:01:56.000 You know, you want everybody to, like, be equal and you want equality as far as the law and how people are treated and how you address people.

01:02:05.000 And no one starts out in a worse spot.

01:02:09.000 But once that's established...

01:02:11.000 Then you gotta compete.

01:02:12.000 Yeah.

01:02:13.000 And you have to.

01:02:14.000 And it's good for everybody.

01:02:15.000 It's good for you, it's good for me, as long as you're competing fairly, it generates, that competition generates a lot of good things.

01:02:24.000 First of all, it generates ambition, it generates success.

01:02:28.000 If you overcome these obstacles that are created by competition, you understand what needs to be done in order to achieve things.

01:02:38.000 If you're going to go through life and you're never going to have any obstacles, you're never going to have any character testing moments, you're not even going to know what you're capable of.

01:02:47.000 No, you're certainly not.

01:02:48.000 I mean, that's not much of a life lived, I mean, at the end of the day.

01:02:51.000 If you're not tested and you're not pushed and you don't fail...

01:02:55.000 I mean, I remember times when...

01:02:58.000 Yeah, it just, it didn't even, you knew it wasn't going to work out, right?

01:03:03.000 Yeah.

01:03:03.000 But you just, like you said, it made you work harder, it made you push harder, and you realized, it's like, you know what, it's like interrogation training.

01:03:12.000 I don't know why this is popping in my head, but it's interrogation training, the whole point of interrogation training is to break you down so that you realize you've got a point where it's just going to happen.

01:03:21.000 So in interrogation training, is it training you to be able to deal with being interrogated?

01:03:26.000 So what do they do?

01:03:27.000 I mean, you also have the other side of the coin, which is learning how to interrogate and negotiate and all the rest of it.

01:03:32.000 We like to call it negotiation.

01:03:35.000 But the idea being is that when you're in interrogation training, the idea is you have to understand that at some point, No matter who you are, it's going to fall apart.

01:03:45.000 And then what you need is you need to be able to pull yourself back together again. 0.99

01:03:48.000 So the idea of interrogation training in part is to show you that, A, you can go farther than you thought you could, but also at some point you're just going to say, fuck it. 0.98

01:03:57.000 I mean, because, you know, depending on where you're at, You know, you're going to break. 0.99

01:04:02.000 I mean, it's going to happen.

01:04:03.000 And when you do, you've got to be able to, otherwise you're just a puddle of goo, right?

01:04:07.000 You've got to pull yourself back together again.

01:04:08.000 So it's a bit like that.

01:04:10.000 Failure, like you said, failure teaches success.

01:04:13.000 Failure drives success unless... 0.99

01:04:17.000 You know, unless we're creating a culture of just fucking mediocrity. 0.99

01:04:21.000 Well, we are. 0.99

01:04:22.000 Yeah.

01:04:22.000 Well, we are, yeah.

01:04:23.000 Well, that's a happy sign.

01:04:24.000 Well, you have to learn the consequences.

01:04:26.000 You know, you can't nerf the world. 0.99

01:04:28.000 You have to learn the consequences of fucking up. 0.97

01:04:30.000 And if you don't learn the consequences of fucking up, you never understand what it takes. 0.99

01:04:35.000 There are people that work harder than you. 0.99

01:04:37.000 There are people that are smarter than you.

01:04:38.000 There are people that want it more.

01:04:39.000 There are people that are more ambitious.

01:04:41.000 There are people that are more intense and more focused and more disciplined.

01:04:43.000 And if there are not, then somehow or another we're all perfect and equal.

01:04:47.000 And that's not the case.

01:04:48.000 That's not the case.

01:04:49.000 Well, this competition fuels everything we have.

01:04:53.000 Look, here's a perfect example.

01:04:54.000 Every year, cars get faster.

01:04:56.000 Why do they get faster? 0.99

01:04:57.000 Because they're fucking competing against each other. 0.99

01:04:59.000 Chevy is competing against this company, they're competing against Ford, and they're all trying to make a car that goes zero to 60 in a half a second. 1.00

01:05:06.000 And every fucking year they get closer to that.

01:05:08.000 I mean, there's one reason for that, and it's because there's other cars out there that are doing a better job. 0.98

01:05:15.000 Their skid pad numbers are getting higher, their quarter-mile numbers are getting lower, they're getting faster, they handle better, they're getting safer.

01:05:22.000 They're doing this because of competition, and that's the only thing that fuels innovation. 0.96

01:05:27.000 Competition fuels innovation and this desire that everybody has to, I want to get the newest, greatest shit. 0.98

01:05:33.000 Right. 0.95

01:05:34.000 And whether you're talking about cars, whether you're talking about phones, it doesn't matter what it is.

01:05:38.000 It's everything.

01:05:38.000 And human beings.

01:05:39.000 Why else do they have the Olympic records?

01:05:41.000 Why is everybody trying to break records?

01:05:44.000 I mean, in the UFC, we're constantly going over statistics.

01:05:47.000 This guy's won more fights.

01:05:49.000 This guy's landed more significant blows.

01:05:51.000 This guy's landed more submissions.

01:05:53.000 You're competing.

01:05:54.000 This is why people like watching things like the UFC. It's because it's contrary to this participation shit that's going on. 0.99

01:06:02.000 This participation trophy bullshit that's going on with little kids. 0.99

01:06:05.000 And like I said, I go back to that same point, which is that we're not fooling any of them in a sense. 0.98

01:06:10.000 No.

01:06:10.000 Over a period of time, we create a bad precedent and a bad mentality.

01:06:14.000 But at that moment...

01:06:15.000 The kids know what the hell the score is.

01:06:17.000 They know what the hell's going on. 0.99

01:06:18.000 And they know that it's bullshit when you tell them they're wonderful every time that they're not. 0.96

01:06:23.000 I mean, if I told my kid, you know, every time he finished a practice or a sports game, you know, hey, you did great. 1.00

01:06:27.000 I mean, it means fuck all. 0.98

01:06:29.000 It means nothing to him at a certain point. 0.99

01:06:31.000 And then he loses what?

01:06:32.000 He loses respect, but he loses also motivation. 0.99

01:06:34.000 He thinks, well, fine, if I'm great all the time, what the fuck? 0.99

01:06:36.000 I don't, you know... 0.99

01:06:37.000 The better thing to tell them is, you know this horrible feeling that you've got in your stomach right now?

01:06:42.000 Use that as fuel. 1.00

01:06:44.000 Fuel yourself with the fuck-ups. 0.99

01:06:45.000 Fuel yourself with the failures. 0.99

01:06:47.000 But it doesn't mean we love you less.

01:06:49.000 Like, your parents and your friends are gonna love you no matter what.

01:06:54.000 You know, Randy Couture said this to me once.

01:06:56.000 We were talking about fighters and how he talks to fighters that he's training.

01:06:59.000 And he said, the most important thing is you can't be afraid to lose.

01:07:04.000 It's going to happen At one point in time, if you keep fighting, everybody loses.

01:07:08.000 But you have to think to yourself, what is important in life?

01:07:12.000 Your family loving you, your friends loving you, they're still going to love you.

01:07:17.000 All those pieces are going to be in place if you lose.

01:07:20.000 Accept that and then go out there and do your best.

01:07:22.000 And as long as you've done your best, You can keep your chin up and you can understand that whatever failure that you've experienced there, whatever mistake, this is like a mathematical problem.

01:07:35.000 You've learned.

01:07:36.000 Well, you can't throw a one-two and then drop your left hand and you get hit with a counter right.

01:07:41.000 Now you know.

01:07:42.000 But if you don't get hit with that counter right, you never know.

01:07:44.000 If you go through life just throwing a one-two and winning every time, you think you've got the perfect game plan, then you teach that to someone else, and that person realizes, well, no, this game plan's no good. 0.99

01:07:54.000 You gotta keep your fucking hands up. 0.99

01:07:56.000 If you don't keep your hands up, you get hit. 1.00

01:07:57.000 There's a certain reality.

01:08:00.000 It's one of the reasons, I keep going back to fighting, but it's one of the reasons why people like fighting, because it's so absolute.

01:08:05.000 Right, absolutely.

01:08:05.000 Other than subjective decisions.

01:08:07.000 Because decisions can be fucking bullshit. 1.00

01:08:09.000 But other than decisions, when someone hits you, they either hit you or they don't hit you. 1.00

01:08:13.000 It's very clear.

01:08:15.000 It's very decisive for the most part. 0.97

01:08:17.000 And, you know, there is no fucking about. 0.71

01:08:19.000 It is what it is as opposed to so much the rest of the... 0.90

01:08:22.000 You know, world or where you're trying to find examples or whatever where it's just gray and murky and I don't know if they...

01:08:27.000 Same as a score.

01:08:28.000 If a ball goes in a net, it goes in the net.

01:08:31.000 That's it.

01:08:31.000 It goes in or it doesn't go in.

01:08:33.000 And to raise kids to have this foggy concept in their head that it doesn't matter.

01:08:41.000 Well, no, it does matter. 0.99

01:08:43.000 It fucking matters a lot. 0.97

01:08:44.000 Here's what doesn't matter. 0.99

01:08:46.000 Your parents are going to love you.

01:08:48.000 Your friends are going to love you. 1.00

01:08:48.000 If your parents don't love you because you didn't drop a ball in the net, your dad's a piece of shit, right? 1.00

01:08:54.000 And that's something we all need to learn. 1.00

01:08:56.000 Yeah, and there are parents out there like that.

01:08:58.000 Holy smokes.

01:08:59.000 We've all experienced them.

01:09:00.000 We've all seen them.

01:09:01.000 I've seen them.

01:09:02.000 When my kid was going to soccer practice, I was watching this Dad's screaming his daughter. 0.99

01:09:07.000 And I was like, God damn it, dude. 0.99

01:09:09.000 Don't do that. 1.00

01:09:10.000 Go hustle! 0.98

01:09:10.000 Let's go hustle! 0.98

01:09:11.000 Let's go hustle! 1.00

01:09:12.000 Like all the fucking sports terminology. 1.00

01:09:15.000 Let's get that one. 0.99

01:09:16.000 We need to get that one back.

01:09:17.000 We gotta get that one. 1.00

01:09:18.000 If you're a parent and you're living your life through your kids' sporting exploits, go fucking do something else. 0.98

01:09:24.000 Encourage them and give them what they need to succeed. 0.98

01:09:27.000 But don't value yourself through what your kids are doing in sports.

01:09:32.000 And there's so many parents out there that do that.

01:09:33.000 I coached For a while, my daughter, who's now in college, she played a lot of softball, and so I was coaching at one point before she got to the point where I had nothing to offer, and so they had to actually get coaches who knew what they were doing.

01:09:47.000 But I remember at one point, there was this one dad who was just a complete douche, and he was always a douche, and he'd just show up, and he'd berate his kid, and his kid was fantastic, and she was wonderful.

01:09:57.000 And one time, she actually walked up to me, and you could tell she wanted to cry, but she didn't.

01:10:03.000 She was a great kid, and she apologized for her dad's behavior in the dugout because the dad was leaning over the fence and screaming.

01:10:10.000 How old was she? 0.89

01:10:11.000 At that time, she was 14, I guess.

01:10:14.000 And I said, look, honey, it's not your deal.

01:10:16.000 It's not your fault. 1.00

01:10:18.000 Then I had to go over, and I said, look, fella, you're a fucking douche. 1.00

01:10:21.000 And I said that to him, and I thought he was going to try to take my head off, but he was a big boy. 1.00

01:10:26.000 He couldn't argue with me. 0.96

01:10:27.000 I think he knew, deep down, he knew, yeah, okay, the guy's right, I am a douche.

01:10:30.000 And I said, you gotta leave, you can't come back.

01:10:32.000 Wow.

01:10:33.000 For a kid to apologize for their parents' behavior, but yeah, you're right, you see it fairly often. 0.99

01:10:38.000 Parents get fucking heated up. 0.96

01:10:39.000 There was a crazy story about a dad who killed another dad in a hockey fight. 1.00

01:10:44.000 Yes.

01:10:45.000 You remember that?

01:10:45.000 Yeah, I remember that.

01:10:46.000 The kids were playing, the kids apparently had got into it on the ice, and this fucking big giant guy beat a guy to death. 0.98

01:10:53.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:10:54.000 Beat a guy to death in front of his kid.

01:10:56.000 There was another guy, I think it was in Connecticut, softball also.

01:10:59.000 It's girls softball. 0.98

01:11:00.000 It gets very competitive, but how the fuck do you get so wound up about really anything? 0.96

01:11:06.000 So this guy, this dad went after, literally got upset because his kid wasn't getting enough playing time. 0.97

01:11:10.000 And so the coach turned and walked away.

01:11:12.000 The guy picked up a bat and went after him and hit him in the head with a bat and put him in the hospital.

01:11:18.000 Yeah.

01:11:18.000 How does that work?

01:11:19.000 Yeah, I remember that.

01:11:20.000 Yeah, he hit the coach, right?

01:11:21.000 Yeah, he did.

01:11:22.000 Yeah.

01:11:22.000 Yeah, because, you know, kid wasn't getting enough play.

01:11:24.000 I'd be like, okay, yeah, my daughter needs more playing time.

01:11:27.000 Competition, and that's what people are afraid of with competition.

01:11:29.000 That's why they're coming up with this idea of participation trophies.

01:11:33.000 There's a lot of people that are moving away or trying to move away from this.

01:11:38.000 They want a kinder, gentler world, and they think that that's the way to do it.

01:11:42.000 That's why I'm happy to be out in Idaho.

01:11:44.000 We don't necessarily go for the kinder, gentler world out in Idaho. 0.98

01:11:47.000 It's too fucking cold and you have wolves. 0.99

01:11:49.000 It's too fucking cold. 1.00

01:11:49.000 You got coyotes and wolves and bears and shit that are going to eat you. 1.00

01:11:52.000 And yeah, so it's very much a sort of pull your boots up and just get on with it.

01:11:56.000 It's a very good culture out there and it's a great place to raise kids.

01:12:02.000 And I just couldn't be happier because the outdoor activities are just fantastic.

01:12:07.000 The climbing and the rafting are incredible.

01:12:09.000 Skiing is obviously great. 0.83

01:12:11.000 Fishing and hunting is fantastic.

01:12:13.000 I mean, I sound like the Chamber of Commerce again.

01:12:14.000 No, you do, but it is a beautiful place.

01:12:16.000 I have a friend who has a house in Coeur d'Alene, and they send me pictures, and you're just like, Jesus Christ, that's real?

01:12:22.000 That's a real place?

01:12:23.000 You can fly up to Spokane, and that's the easiest way to get to Coeur d'Alene.

01:12:26.000 Do you drive there?

01:12:26.000 Yeah, you drive.

01:12:27.000 It's about 40 minutes or so.

01:12:28.000 That's it?

01:12:29.000 Yeah, from Spokane.

01:12:29.000 But if you fly into Boise and you drive up to Coeur d'Alene, it'll take you about a century and a half.

01:12:34.000 It takes a while.

01:12:35.000 Because you've got to go through the mountains. 0.99

01:12:36.000 It's a big fucking state. 0.97

01:12:38.000 Again, it's interesting because that and Wyoming and Montana, that whole part of the country, it's still a little bit different. 0.99

01:12:50.000 The urban centers are all starting to kind of unify and become a little bit similar.

01:12:54.000 I think when people have to deal with nature, when they're dealing with winter and storms and just the reality of being in nature, it humbles you and it also hardens you a little bit to the realities of changing climates and the realities of just wildlife and all the dangers and all the wonderful things that come from nature.

01:13:17.000 Right.

01:13:18.000 And that's it.

01:13:19.000 And the expansiveness of it.

01:13:20.000 It kind of humbles you a little bit.

01:13:21.000 You drive up.

01:13:22.000 We're very fortunate.

01:13:24.000 We're not that far from Yellowstone.

01:13:25.000 I mean, not far being, you know, a handful of hours drive.

01:13:28.000 And you go up to a place, and if people haven't, if they're listening, haven't been to Yellowstone, good God, you know, do yourself a favor and go there.

01:13:34.000 Don't go during high tourist season.

01:13:36.000 But if you want to see something that just is stunning, spend a few days up in Yellowstone.

01:13:40.000 And it really does, it puts you back a little bit.

01:13:43.000 And it makes you realize, A, how Amazing, you know, this planet is.

01:13:48.000 How incredible this country is.

01:13:50.000 And it also kind of puts your priorities a little bit more in shape.

01:13:54.000 We tracked a bunch of grizzlies up there for a Travel Channel show.

01:13:59.000 There were times when you'd forget what you were doing.

01:14:02.000 You'd just stand there and just stare out there at the scenery.

01:14:06.000 And of course, it was a travel channel show.

01:14:08.000 I was supposed to be co-hosting, and yet I was just gobsmacked.

01:14:10.000 I didn't have the words, which is not good for a co-host.

01:14:12.000 Apparently, you're supposed to be able to describe what you're seeing. 0.97

01:14:15.000 And I would just say, man, this is fucking incredible. 0.56

01:14:16.000 And they'd say, okay, you can't say that. 0.98

01:14:18.000 Can't say that.

01:14:19.000 It's a travel channel.

01:14:21.000 Can't say just beep it?

01:14:22.000 You would think so, but I don't think they want that impression.

01:14:28.000 But yeah, getting out to nature.

01:14:30.000 Seeing that environment, seeing the wild bison and buffalo and wolves and just the landscape.

01:14:38.000 And you learn also where your food comes from, right?

01:14:40.000 And I think that's part of it, too.

01:14:41.000 And that toughens.

01:14:42.000 Like, my kids, you know, they know where their food comes from.

01:14:45.000 They know what it takes to go out hunting.

01:14:48.000 They know what fishing's all about.

01:14:49.000 They understand it.

01:14:51.000 You develop a respect for it.

01:14:52.000 You understand that the world's not equal.

01:14:54.000 You know, I mean, all those precious animals out there, those bison are going to get a baby bison.

01:14:59.000 I watch the baby bison get dragged down, and you think...

01:15:02.000 And I was with someone who was on the production team that was like, well, we should get in there and help that baby bison. 0.73

01:15:08.000 What is he getting dragged down by?

01:15:10.000 Wolves?

01:15:10.000 He was getting dragged down by wolves.

01:15:12.000 So you guys were there while this was happening?

01:15:13.000 Yeah.

01:15:15.000 Yellowstone's done a wonderful job of bringing back a number of things.

01:15:19.000 And there's a fairly active wolf population up there.

01:15:22.000 The bears are looking great, the grizzlies and everything.

01:15:24.000 But the point being is that if you grow up out there, I think, or if you spend a lot of time out there, you understand that, yeah, Life isn't fair, right?

01:15:34.000 And if we just keep telling our kids that life is fair and everybody gets to be equal and That's not the way it works.

01:15:40.000 And even in the human species, it's not the way it works.

01:15:43.000 Like you said, somebody's always going to be harder, tougher, smarter, more intense, and that's a good thing.

01:15:50.000 Here's the thing, though.

01:15:51.000 It doesn't make you less of a person.

01:15:54.000 It doesn't make you loved less.

01:15:56.000 And I think people value...

01:15:58.000 There's a real problem when people think that winning is the only thing, because it's not the only thing.

01:16:06.000 There's a giant...

01:16:08.000 Spectrum of things that we value.

01:16:10.000 We value camaraderie.

01:16:12.000 We value friendship.

01:16:13.000 We value intelligence and a sense of humor and someone who's interesting and fascinating to talk to.

01:16:21.000 There's so many things that people value out of a human being that being the best at one thing that you compete in is not the only thing in life.

01:16:29.000 And this is a real problem with athletes once they retire because all of their sense of self-worth A lot of times is wrapped up in competition.

01:16:38.000 And they have been obsessed with greatness.

01:16:41.000 And then afterwards, they feel this hollow, sad life.

01:16:45.000 It's a big issue with fighters.

01:16:46.000 A gigantic issue with fighters.

01:16:48.000 They try to find something that takes that over, right?

01:16:51.000 Well, a lot of times they turn to drugs.

01:16:53.000 Because...

01:16:53.000 The high of competing is so intense.

01:16:56.000 Like, so many classic situations where great fighters turn to drugs.

01:17:01.000 Joe Lewis, Sonny Liston.

01:17:04.000 I mean, you can go down the line.

01:17:05.000 Aaron Pryor. 0.98

01:17:06.000 There's a lot of great fighters who turn to drugs later in their life because they just didn't know what the fuck to do. 0.98

01:17:12.000 Right, right. 0.95

01:17:13.000 You're always looking for something that's going to fill that void, I think.

01:17:16.000 And one of my brothers flew F4s in Vietnam for a couple of tours.

01:17:22.000 He was one of those guys.

01:17:23.000 He was like that guy's name, Robert Duvall's character in Apocalypse Now.

01:17:28.000 He was one of those guys that, you know, he appreciated the moment, right?

01:17:35.000 And he appreciated the rush that he was getting.

01:17:38.000 Smelled napalm in the morning.

01:17:39.000 Oh, yeah.

01:17:40.000 I mean, and so, you know, and by the point being is that, you know, he came back and it was like, you know, now what?

01:17:44.000 I mean, he's a great guy.

01:17:45.000 He ended up, you know, being a senior pilot at a commercial airline and he's never had an issue.

01:17:49.000 But at the same time, you could always tell that When you sit down, you know, over some drinks, you know, there's always that...

01:17:55.000 That was, you know, that moment in time, you know, or that was that event or that was that activity that...

01:18:01.000 I don't know if you ever fill that again.

01:18:03.000 You don't ever get to that point again where you're experiencing that same sort of rush or that challenge.

01:18:10.000 But you get addicted to hitting 11 when everybody else is hitting 6 on a good day.

01:18:15.000 A crazy day today.

01:18:16.000 I got up to 6. Imagine if you're Chuck Liddell.

01:18:21.000 He's like, oh, what did you do today? 0.99

01:18:23.000 You did a fucking mile? 1.00

01:18:24.000 You ran a mile? 1.00

01:18:25.000 You fuck? 1.00

01:18:26.000 You know? 1.00

01:18:27.000 It's like the the idea of danger and reward of consequence these are these are all They're so intense to someone who's been involved in like really heavy competition I see with fighters all the time this very reluctant Decision that they have they're very reluctant to step away from the game when they've been knocked out a bunch of times and they start to lose their chin and they start to experience some cognitive issues and And it's so hard for them and they need

01:18:57.000 someone to step in and grab them and go listen to me man if you don't get out now It's gonna get real ugly in the next couple years and you could you could reach a point where you're never gonna bounce back You get a few more knockouts three four more knockouts and you might be fucked for the rest of your life And we see it now with a lot of NFL players.

01:19:16.000 We've definitely seen it with a lot of fighters I mean Jesus look at the greatest of all time the greatest boxer of all time Is a physical wreck.

01:19:24.000 Muhammad Ali is in the worst shape of Like literally any public figure that has ever been so graceful and beautiful in his movements and the way he talked and so charismatic and now you look at him and he cannot talk at all.

01:19:40.000 He cannot walk.

01:19:41.000 That is a direct consequence of boxing.

01:19:43.000 Well, like you said, look at the NFL and look at what they're finding now.

01:19:46.000 Oh my god.

01:19:46.000 And that's, you know, that's filtered down to the youth.

01:19:49.000 You know, you don't have full contact football at an early age.

01:19:52.000 Well, it's a good move.

01:19:53.000 It's a good move, yeah.

01:19:54.000 A lot of parents now are just refusing to have their kid play football.

01:19:58.000 Well, I have friends that, you know, they'll let their kids fight.

01:20:02.000 They'll let their kids fight, but they won't let their kids get involved in football because they're like, look, if you fight and you get really good, it's you and one guy.

01:20:10.000 And you might get hit, and you're probably going to get hit, but if you do your diligence and you work on your technique and you understand footwork and you understand the rules of engagement, And you understand, like, correct strategy as far as movement and do all your work in the gym and understand how to...

01:20:25.000 Defense, number one.

01:20:26.000 That's the number one most important thing.

01:20:28.000 If you do that, you're gonna mitigate a lot of that issue.

01:20:32.000 There's a lot of fighters that walk away from the game and they're okay.

01:20:35.000 It is possible to do.

01:20:36.000 Look at Floyd Mayweather. 0.99

01:20:38.000 Fucking guy's 49-0 and he's fine. 1.00

01:20:40.000 You might not like him, but shit, he doesn't get hit. 1.00

01:20:43.000 He doesn't get hit. 0.99

01:20:45.000 I mean, the difference between him and a guy who decides to bite down at his mouthpiece and just slug it out and to see who's the last man standing, there's a giant difference in his strategy and the consequences of his strategy versus a guy who just likes to put on a show for the fans. 0.99

01:21:01.000 That guy's going to be in a fucking wheelchair when he's older. 0.88

01:21:05.000 Well, just the other day, I had a deal with Slugger, the middle boy, who said, you know, because he's been jonesing to play football. 0.99

01:21:11.000 And so then he found out that the only league available was flag football.

01:21:15.000 And he looked at me, he's not that age, he's almost seven.

01:21:18.000 And he says, well, what's the point?

01:21:19.000 That was his comments.

01:21:21.000 What's the point?

01:21:21.000 I said, well, honey, I don't know what the point is.

01:21:24.000 You raised an interesting question.

01:21:25.000 I said, so let's just focus on other sports for now.

01:21:28.000 Get involved in jiu-jitsu.

01:21:29.000 That's what I always tell someone who's got a kid and they want to get their kid in martial arts.

01:21:34.000 I got involved in martial arts at an early age.

01:21:36.000 But I got involved in striking.

01:21:38.000 But it was because there was no jujitsu when I was a kid.

01:21:41.000 But if I had a child that was interested in competing, I would get them involved in jujitsu because you might get your arm broken, but guess what? 0.94

01:21:49.000 They'll fucking put you in a cast, you'll heal up, you'll learn to tap next time. 0.97

01:21:52.000 You know what? 1.00

01:21:53.000 You'll get your arm broken falling out of a tree.

01:21:55.000 Yeah, you could easily.

01:21:56.000 When did you start?

01:21:57.000 How old were you when you started?

01:22:00.000 I took karate when I was 14, but I really got serious when I was 15. I took a little kung fu when I was younger than that, but I didn't get serious until I was a sophomore, right before freshman to sophomore.

01:22:17.000 So, 14 to 15. During that time, was there some reason why you got interested?

01:22:21.000 Well, I've been interested because I was small and I didn't want to get picked on.

01:22:25.000 There was definitely that.

01:22:25.000 But the big thing was, it was just straight luck.

01:22:28.000 I was a baseball fan.

01:22:30.000 I went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

01:22:32.000 I was walking home, and as I was walking home, me and a buddy of mine were going to the T, the public transport.

01:22:39.000 There was a giant line because it was the baseball game we had let out.

01:22:42.000 So we were walked by this Taekwondo school, and I walked upstairs.

01:22:47.000 And it was this long staircase up to the Jae-Hun Kim Taekwondo Institute.

01:22:52.000 And as I was walking up, just by luck, there was a guy named John Lee, who was the national Taekwondo champion, national light heavyweight champion, and he was training for the World Cup.

01:23:02.000 And he was in just peak training for the World Cup.

01:23:06.000 And as I got up to the top of the stairs, I heard this sound, this whomp!

01:23:11.000 And then this, like, chink! 1.00

01:23:13.000 Like these chains, like chink! 1.00

01:23:18.000 And I was like, what the fuck is that sound? 0.97

01:23:20.000 And as I got to the top of the stairs, there was this area you had to take off your shoes and you had to walk in. 0.99

01:23:24.000 You could watch these guys train.

01:23:26.000 And John Lee was kicking the bag.

01:23:28.000 And he was doing this spinning back kick on the bag and bending this 100-pound bag in half and sending it flying.

01:23:36.000 And I remember thinking, I gotta learn to do that.

01:23:41.000 I couldn't believe anybody could hit anybody that hard.

01:23:43.000 I'd never seen anything like that in my life.

01:23:45.000 The guy that you were with, the buddy that you were with, did he go up there too?

01:23:49.000 He quit.

01:23:49.000 He was a buddy of mine.

01:23:52.000 Still a buddy of mine, actually.

01:23:53.000 We're still friends.

01:23:55.000 We watched it together and I became obsessed.

01:23:59.000 I joined right away.

01:24:01.000 I joined right away.

01:24:02.000 That guy John Lee became like a big influence on me.

01:24:06.000 He taught me a lot.

01:24:07.000 He was living in Boston?

01:24:08.000 Yeah, yeah, and he wound up having a lot of drug problems himself.

01:24:15.000 It was crazy to watch as well, but that guy taught me.

01:24:18.000 He took me under his wing.

01:24:20.000 It was crazy.

01:24:21.000 You know, just total random turn of events, me walking up those stairs at the exact right time that that guy was there.

01:24:29.000 I mean, who knows?

01:24:29.000 I could have walked up the stairs.

01:24:30.000 It could have been a children's class.

01:24:32.000 Right, exactly. 1.00

01:24:32.000 And I would have been like, this is bullshit. 1.00

01:24:34.000 Let's go catch the train. 0.99

01:24:35.000 Exactly. 1.00

01:24:35.000 I walked up there, and the baddest motherfucker in the country was killing this bag. 1.00

01:24:40.000 It was just perfect timing. 1.00

01:24:42.000 Yeah.

01:24:43.000 And life's a lot like that. 0.98

01:24:44.000 I mean, you know, there's this shit that happens, and you think, wow, that's... 0.97

01:24:49.000 Whether it's happenstance coincidence or it's supposed to be that way, who knows? 0.99

01:24:53.000 I don't know why.

01:24:54.000 I mean, you could add all this meaning to it and you might be right or you might just be guessing.

01:25:00.000 But to me, it was a gigantic moment and decision in my life to go up those stairs and to see that guy doing that changed my whole life because that became my life.

01:25:11.000 And from 15 to 21, that's what I did every day of my life.

01:25:15.000 I mean, I trained every day.

01:25:17.000 And that's what you've got to find.

01:25:18.000 You've got to find whatever is going to spark.

01:25:20.000 You see parents do that all the time with their kids.

01:25:22.000 You know, I want a kid to be a baseball player.

01:25:25.000 And they just push and push and push.

01:25:26.000 Instead of saying, look, I want to expose these kids to various things and see if they spark themselves.

01:25:31.000 Find the things.

01:25:34.000 Because part of it's got to be internal.

01:25:36.000 You can't for a period of time, and then that's it.

01:25:40.000 It's only going to go so far.

01:25:41.000 But if you can find that thing like you did, That sparks something and the kid realizes, you know, I could become really good at this and I enjoy it and it sets me apart.

01:25:50.000 It makes me different.

01:25:51.000 It makes me special.

01:25:52.000 God bless, you know, if you can do that with your kids, you're halfway home.

01:25:56.000 I didn't even know if I could be good at it because I didn't have any talent.

01:25:59.000 I mean, it wasn't like I walked up there and all of a sudden I was the man.

01:26:03.000 Right. 0.99

01:26:03.000 You know, I walked up there and I was like, Holy shit, I was surrounded by black belts who were kicking people's heads off and I was like, this is insane! 0.99

01:26:11.000 It was just, to me, it was so terrifying, but it was also, in a good way, it was very much like a cult. 0.99

01:26:18.000 Because, in a good way, they didn't take advantage of you, but you had to bow, you had to say, yes sir, there was some intense discipline, and you got to see some intense consequences to fucking up. 0.94

01:26:31.000 Because I got to see a lot of guys get knocked out. 0.94

01:26:34.000 I saw a lot of guys get knocked out in tournaments, I saw guys get knocked out in practice.

01:26:39.000 And there was also the belt system.

01:26:42.000 The belt system, I think, in martial arts is very important for kids because, like, you start out as a white belt and you get that blue belt.

01:26:50.000 Like, here's a perfect example. 0.98

01:26:52.000 Anthony Bourdain is 58 fucking years old. 0.99

01:26:55.000 He just got his blue belt. 0.99

01:26:56.000 And he told me he was the happiest he's ever been in his life.

01:26:58.000 More important than anything other than, like, the birth of his child. 0.98

01:27:02.000 It was like, to him, it was like, I fucking did it. 0.98

01:27:04.000 And here's a guy who, like, used to be a heroin addict, smoked cigarettes, just drinking all the time, had a terrible lifestyle. 0.98

01:27:12.000 His wife, who's obsessed with jujitsu, got him to take a jujitsu class, and then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, that switch goes on.

01:27:20.000 Look at him there.

01:27:21.000 Yeah.

01:27:22.000 There he is getting his blue belt.

01:27:23.000 And for people who don't understand, that is a very difficult accomplishment to get your blue belt.

01:27:27.000 It is not easy to do.

01:27:28.000 It's very hard to do.

01:27:30.000 And that, if you can get your blue belt, and he's like, I'll never get my black belt. 0.98

01:27:33.000 I'm like, bullshit. 0.99

01:27:34.000 Listen to me, man. 1.00

01:27:35.000 If you can get your fucking blue belt, you can get your black belt. 1.00

01:27:38.000 Just keep going. 1.00

01:27:40.000 Yeah.

01:27:40.000 But like you said, for kids, it's that success, which runs counter to sort of the concept of team sports right now anyway with kids.

01:27:48.000 So you give them that opportunity.

01:27:50.000 And I've got, again, the middle boy who's six right now, he's that kid who likes to know what the parameters are and likes to know That there's a system in place, right?

01:28:03.000 So he's the kid of all of them.

01:28:04.000 And he's very aggressive, too.

01:28:05.000 He's a very physical kid.

01:28:06.000 So we've been looking at what's out there and where we live to see where would be a good spot for him.

01:28:11.000 But he's definitely the kid of the three that he looks at that and he goes, I get it.

01:28:16.000 I can go from here to here to here to here.

01:28:19.000 And that's a good thing.

01:28:20.000 Well, if you want to get involved in martial arts, we'll talk afterwards, and I'll find out what's near you.

01:28:25.000 That would be good.

01:28:25.000 Find out what's good.

01:28:26.000 But I can't recommend that enough for kids, for young boys especially, because it takes away this fear of engaging with other kids. 0.99

01:28:35.000 It takes away this fear of getting your ass kicked, a fear of the unknown. 0.99

01:28:38.000 If you don't know how to fight, you wind up getting involved in fights accidentally because you posture, you stick your fucking chest up, and you don't know. 0.99

01:28:48.000 The consequences are so alien to you that you wind up talking too loud or trying to bluff someone and you can fuck up and run into the wrong dude. 0.98

01:28:59.000 In a way, it's like concealed carry permits.

01:29:02.000 If you don't know what the hell you're doing and if you don't have the discipline and if you're not constantly training, Yeah, there's a serious potential for fuck-up. 0.90

01:29:11.000 There's a serious potential for fuck-up, and that's my own issue, my personal issue, with all these fucking states that are open-carry states, where you don't even have to have any training. 0.98

01:29:21.000 Like, I think it's kind of crazy. 0.96

01:29:23.000 I think, first of all, I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment, I have guns, so let me get that out of the way. 0.99

01:29:28.000 But I think you should learn how to fucking use a gun before you should get one. 0.99

01:29:33.000 How come I can get a car, I have to go through all this shit, I have to learn how to drive, I have to fill out forms, I have to learn the rules? 1.00

01:29:40.000 I can just go get a gun! 1.00

01:29:42.000 All you have to do is just not be a criminal, and you can get a gun.

01:29:45.000 That seems crazy to me.

01:29:46.000 The training aspect of it is, anybody who's serious about weapons, anybody who's dealt with them, anybody who's had to carry them for a livelihood, you gain a real appreciation for how quickly things head south.

01:29:59.000 And the idea that...

01:30:01.000 I agree with you 100%.

01:30:02.000 And I'm a huge supporter of the Second Amendment.

01:30:06.000 And I got a big old walk-in safe and happy to have it.

01:30:11.000 But at the same time, I just can't get behind the idea of people going out and not training, not practicing.

01:30:18.000 And that's a large...

01:30:20.000 Not a large, but I have...

01:30:22.000 You know what?

01:30:22.000 I'm about to speculate, so I probably shouldn't.

01:30:24.000 But There's a decent percentage of people who go out, they buy it, and then they put it in a lockbox, hopefully they put it in a lockbox, and then that's it. 0.98

01:30:33.000 Maybe sometime they're going to need it and they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

01:30:37.000 So it's the training and you just have to be constant repetition, constant repetition, because if you do need to use it, everything else shuts down. 0.96

01:30:45.000 All your little controls go away depending on your big muscle mass and repetition and muscle memory. 0.99

01:30:54.000 If you haven't been practicing, you're fucked. 1.00

01:30:56.000 You might as well turn it on yourself. 1.00

01:30:57.000 That's the same thing with fighting.

01:30:59.000 It's the same thing with everything.

01:31:00.000 When you're nervous, All the training comes out, and you're going to fall back on your training.

01:31:06.000 If you train incorrectly, you're going to perform incorrectly under pressure.

01:31:10.000 And that's the same with firearms, the same with everything.

01:31:13.000 If you don't prepare...

01:31:15.000 But see, we have this country where everybody's like, you're trying to take away our guns!

01:31:20.000 We're trying to take away our guns!

01:31:21.000 No one's trying to take away your guns.

01:31:22.000 But I think the idea of firearms, owning a firearm, being a right, I think it should be a privilege.

01:31:31.000 And I think much like driving a car is a privilege. 0.84

01:31:33.000 I don't think you should keep anyone from doing it just arbitrarily, but I think you should prove that you know what the fuck you're doing before you put other people in danger.

01:31:42.000 That's what we have with cars. 0.85

01:31:43.000 And by the way, in speedboats, too. 1.00

01:31:45.000 You've never gotten on a lake, and you've got some drunk asshole who's never gotten behind the wheel of a boat before, and all of a sudden he's doing 30 down the lake, and you think, what the fuck? 1.00

01:31:52.000 Some rich dickhead who buys a fucking one of those cigarette boats. 1.00

01:31:55.000 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

01:31:55.000 Have you ever seen those videos of those cigarette boats that go 100 miles an hour and people flip them up in the air and everybody dies? 1.00

01:32:01.000 Yeah, like a fountain boat.

01:32:03.000 Those things are insane.

01:32:05.000 You'll get somebody who'll buy one and they'll show up on the lake.

01:32:09.000 Next thing you know, your kid's out water skiing and you're fearing for their life.

01:32:14.000 Point taken, I think...

01:32:18.000 I don't know how you would tie in the purchase with the training, with the showing or proving the ability.

01:32:28.000 I don't know how you do that.

01:32:30.000 Extremely difficult.

01:32:31.000 Yeah, very difficult.

01:32:32.000 And I think a psychological evaluation isn't a bad idea either.

01:32:35.000 I don't think it's a bad idea to ask people a bunch of questions.

01:32:38.000 You know what I mean?

01:32:39.000 Just try to get someone who's a qualified individual to talk to this person.

01:32:44.000 I mean, you're not going to... 0.99

01:32:46.000 You're going to have some fucking psychopaths that are going to be able to trick you, but that's just... 0.98

01:32:49.000 You're going to weed out some folks that could be a problem, and people have a problem with that. 1.00

01:32:55.000 Well, you're trying to take away our guns.

01:32:56.000 What if these liberals get involved in this process and they say no one's qualified?

01:33:00.000 That's what they want.

01:33:01.000 Don't you understand?

01:33:02.000 Don't you understand?

01:33:03.000 It's a slippery slope.

01:33:05.000 Slippery slope.

01:33:06.000 Do one thing and it's all going to fall to hell.

01:33:10.000 That's a HIPAA issue.

01:33:11.000 How do you share medical information?

01:33:13.000 How do you share information from a psych's office?

01:33:19.000 Assuming they've had medical attention. 0.99

01:33:21.000 There's a lot of fucking nuts out there that haven't had anybody look at them. 0.99

01:33:25.000 Right. 0.99

01:33:25.000 And the other thing is, I've never woken up in the morning and thought to myself, good God, I've got to get myself another.45, or I've got to get myself another AR-15. 0.99

01:33:33.000 And I've got to have it now.

01:33:34.000 Right.

01:33:35.000 I have no problems with waiting.

01:33:37.000 And I've got teams in my company that do nothing but due diligence on people, right?

01:33:41.000 And now it's not for purposes of a weapons permit, but...

01:33:45.000 I know how difficult that process is, even for relatively straightforward due diligence.

01:33:50.000 And so the idea that I have no problems with expanded background checks, and I know a lot of people right now are screaming and saying, how did you do that?

01:33:58.000 Oh my God!

01:33:59.000 You're one of us!

01:34:01.000 But again, I'm a huge supporter of the Second Amendment. 0.97

01:34:03.000 I'm an NRA member, all the rest of that shit, and God bless it, but at the same time, We have to be able to find those ideas, those answers, or at least talk about them without immediately starting to pull the pins on the grenades and throwing them at each other. 0.94

01:34:19.000 And that's, you know, going back to the earlier conversation about politics and everything else, it's, you know, probably no other, well, there's other emotive issues, but certainly with the Second Amendment, you know, the idea that you're going to spend a little bit more time on a background check, you know, if you've got to rush into the store and buy your handgun and get out of there as quick as possible, 0.97

01:34:37.000 what's that all about?

01:34:39.000 I mean, just take, you know, you can take a little time.

01:34:41.000 There's other ways to kill yourself.

01:34:43.000 Yeah, so I don't know.

01:34:45.000 But again, nobody exists in the center anymore.

01:34:47.000 Nobody exists in the middle.

01:34:48.000 Exactly.

01:34:49.000 Exactly.

01:34:50.000 Even a guy who supports the Second Amendment, saying something like that could be problematic and you're going to get criticized for it.

01:34:55.000 Oh my God, if I run for governor out in Idaho, I'm sure someone's going to pull that one up.

01:34:58.000 Did you see what he said?

01:35:00.000 Yeah.

01:35:00.000 And you're thinking, well, how is that a problem?

01:35:03.000 I just don't understand how anybody could be against background checks.

01:35:07.000 It doesn't make any sense to me.

01:35:08.000 How could someone be against training?

01:35:11.000 How could somebody be against firearm education?

01:35:13.000 How could somebody be against that?

01:35:15.000 When you get a hunting license, you have to go through a hunter's safety course.

01:35:20.000 And the hunter's safety course is pretty extensive.

01:35:22.000 It takes a long time.

01:35:24.000 There's a lot of questions you have to answer.

01:35:26.000 You have to know. 1.00

01:35:27.000 Why the fuck... 1.00

01:35:28.000 Is that the case with hunting? 1.00

01:35:29.000 But it's not the case with a gun.

01:35:31.000 What about self-defense?

01:35:32.000 So shouldn't you have to have all these Shouldn't you have to have an understanding of how to use a safety?

01:35:39.000 And then the variations in training for classroom work for concealed carry permits.

01:35:46.000 You know, you got great training programs, and then you got less than great, significantly less than great.

01:35:52.000 And you're talking about carrying a weapon out in public, and that is an enormous responsibility.

01:35:58.000 And I think it's important, you know, and I think it's...

01:36:03.000 It falls in line with what we're talking about.

01:36:06.000 But how do you get to that point if as soon as you raise that issue, again, people start throwing hand grenades at you and you think, well, wait a minute.

01:36:13.000 I'm raising this as a possibility.

01:36:15.000 Maybe there's some other tact here that we can take.

01:36:18.000 And not just the Second Amendment. 0.99

01:36:20.000 Every fucking thing out there, right? 0.99

01:36:23.000 Obamacare. 1.00

01:36:26.000 It's either all this or all that.

01:36:28.000 Instead of saying at the early outset, what would have been wrong with saying, let's do pre-existing conditions, let's keep kids on their health plans for their parents a little bit longer, and then let's try to figure out where else we can make improvements.

01:36:40.000 But it's all one thing or the other.

01:36:42.000 I think one of the things about owning a gun, and this is very important to anybody that has a gun, you should want to be educated in proper firearm safety.

01:36:52.000 If you have a gun, you should want this.

01:36:54.000 So training shouldn't be something that you would fight.

01:36:58.000 It should be something that everybody would embrace.

01:37:01.000 If you have a gun, you understand the dangers and the consequences of having a gun.

01:37:05.000 You also understand that you need someone to show you how to do it right.

01:37:09.000 If you don't have anybody who puts it in your head, you know, always have your finger off the trigger.

01:37:15.000 This is the safety.

01:37:16.000 Know it.

01:37:16.000 Know it when it's pushed back, you know, you're here.

01:37:20.000 When it's pushed forward, you're ready to rock.

01:37:22.000 Like, know these things.

01:37:23.000 Understand these things.

01:37:25.000 Well, I think it's...

01:37:28.000 Yeah.

01:37:28.000 If you live out West, and again, I mean, because down South, you could argue the same thing about hunting culture and everything else, but there's a certain appreciation for both the use of weapons and the responsibility involved, because there are so many people out there that hunt.

01:37:44.000 And there are so many, I mean, I would suspect that, I mean, everybody I know that owns a weapon goes to the range, or they're out I mean,

01:38:02.000 I have no idea, but...

01:38:07.000 There's a few people.

01:38:08.000 I mean, there's ranges that you can go to where, you know, I mean, you can take firearms lessons.

01:38:13.000 The thing is that it's not mandatory.

01:38:15.000 And then there's also the variants, the different rules that you have in different states.

01:38:21.000 Like, Arizona's an open carry state, right?

01:38:23.000 Right.

01:38:24.000 So you just go to the store.

01:38:25.000 You're not a felon.

01:38:26.000 You get a gun.

01:38:27.000 Just walk around with a gun.

01:38:28.000 Yeah.

01:38:28.000 Right there on your hip, and you think, okay.

01:38:30.000 You don't have to know shit. 1.00

01:38:31.000 Yeah, and it causes problems. 0.99

01:38:32.000 I mean, depending on who you're talking to in law enforcement, there's a lot of folks in law enforcement that look at it and go, yeah, I mean, it's not what they would prefer.

01:38:43.000 It's not up to them to make that call, but at the same time, I look at it, and I think if there's one issue that probably summarizes The sort of the emotive nature of politics nowadays,

01:39:01.000 it's probably this one.

01:39:03.000 I mean, I think that we've gotten past the whole gay marriage thing, and the abortion thing always flares up and always will, probably. 0.88

01:39:09.000 But the Second Amendment...

01:39:11.000 You know, and so you do think, okay, well, how do we?

01:39:14.000 Because the default position for the administration is always, you know, it's always, you know, blowing it up, right?

01:39:20.000 And so, you know, they misplay it as well, right?

01:39:24.000 I think if there was more compromise, more discussion in the center where they could have this quietly outside of the, you know, the realm of media, but they just seem to be unable to do it.

01:39:33.000 So every time there's an incident, the first thing you see is somebody from the administration up behind the podium Making statements and talking about gun control, and that fuels the other side.

01:39:43.000 That fuels the side where they think they're just trying to take away all our weapons, because they see this.

01:39:48.000 And there's nothing reasoned going on in here.

01:39:51.000 There's no reasonable consideration of the pros and cons of this issue.

01:39:55.000 And no one's...

01:39:57.000 There's no one stepping in the middle.

01:40:00.000 You know what it's like?

01:40:01.000 It's like the FBI and Apple dispute.

01:40:03.000 That's what it's like.

01:40:04.000 It's like the same thing.

01:40:05.000 You got all on one side, you got all on the other, and the reality is, you know what, we could have found a solution here somewhere if we'd been...

01:40:15.000 I don't know.

01:40:16.000 Although, who knows?

01:40:17.000 I don't know.

01:40:17.000 Apple seems to be inclined...

01:40:19.000 To draw a line under this particular issue right now.

01:40:40.000 We're good to go.

01:40:54.000 And so they went to the county.

01:40:56.000 The bureau did.

01:40:56.000 They went to the county when they pulled this phone out of the truck and they said, we need to get the information off of this thing.

01:41:04.000 Because you know what?

01:41:05.000 A phone nowadays, everybody keeps everything on their phone, right?

01:41:07.000 Right.

01:41:07.000 And so they got the support.

01:41:10.000 They pulled and they found out that he had shut off the function that uploads data to the cloud in October.

01:41:18.000 And so they were able to get everything up to October, but then that's two full months prior to the attack.

01:41:23.000 So they said, okay, well, we can't get this.

01:41:25.000 And the phone has, you know, this default position where if you try the password 10 times and it erases everything.

01:41:32.000 So they took the phone.

01:41:33.000 The Bureau took the phone to Apple.

01:41:35.000 And this was well before they had to go to get a court order, well before it became public knowledge.

01:41:40.000 They actually went and had numerous quiet conversations with Apple, and they went to Apple and they literally said, you can take the phone, keep it on your campus, keep it in your facility, put it in your lab.

01:41:52.000 All we're asking is for you to create a systems information file that you can force on that phone, that one phone, And pull the text, which then allows you to brute force the password, right?

01:42:04.000 And get the texts off of there, get the data off of there that exists.

01:42:08.000 And then you can destroy the SIF, the systems information file.

01:42:11.000 You can keep the phone.

01:42:13.000 We don't even need to touch it.

01:42:15.000 You know, whatever. 1.00

01:42:16.000 You just give us the shit that's on the phone. 0.99

01:42:19.000 And Apple has been helpful in the past. 0.99

01:42:21.000 They've been helpful in the past.

01:42:25.000 This time, for whatever motivation, they've decided to draw a line in the sand and say, no, we're not going to do this.

01:42:32.000 And it's not as if...

01:42:34.000 They haven't been helpful, and there's an ongoing dialogue, and so it's disingenuous to say that Apple is now the bulwark for privacy, because they have been helpful in the past, and they will continue to be helpful, I suppose, in their own way.

01:42:48.000 But for this particular phone, for this one time, where they could have held onto the phone, created that SIF, destroyed the SIF, at that moment that they've pulled the text off, say, that's it, that's done.

01:42:58.000 So now what Tim Cook is saying is, not that it's creating a backdoor.

01:43:02.000 He's not saying that.

01:43:03.000 He's saying it creates a precedent.

01:43:04.000 But the precedent was already that if the Bureau goes through the process that Congress has set and then goes through that process and gets a court order— And the court then looks at it and says, yes, you've got probable cause.

01:43:20.000 You've got reasonable concern here.

01:43:22.000 They provide a court order.

01:43:24.000 Then they go and they make this request for assistance.

01:43:27.000 You're also talking about a dead guy.

01:43:28.000 Talking about a guy who shot 14 people.

01:43:30.000 18 people.

01:43:30.000 Whatever it was.

01:43:31.000 Killed 14 people.

01:43:33.000 I've heard all sorts of things.

01:43:34.000 I've heard people say to me, and again, I understand.

01:43:37.000 Don't get me wrong, because I understand fully the importance of finding the right place on the pendulum for security and privacy.

01:43:45.000 I get that.

01:43:46.000 I get that.

01:43:46.000 And that's an important discussion.

01:43:47.000 I'm not saying it's not.

01:43:48.000 You should always have that conversation.

01:43:50.000 But part of that is then during the course of that conversation, Congress, the courts, they make those decisions.

01:43:57.000 Where does that pendulum, you know, settle between security and privacy?

01:44:01.000 And then it settles here?

01:44:02.000 Okay, fine.

01:44:02.000 Then that's what the Bureau or whomever has to go through to get approval, to get some assistance.

01:44:07.000 And that's where it stands.

01:44:10.000 But, you know, to say that – because now you've got all three branches of government have said, yeah, we think that really we could use this information off of this phone.

01:44:18.000 But I've heard everybody say, well, why don't they just do the rest of the investigation? 0.90

01:44:22.000 Well, of course they've fucking done the rest of the investigation. 0.97

01:44:24.000 They've done all the other investigative steps. 0.97

01:44:26.000 So what are you saying?

01:44:27.000 In a situation like this, you just want them to do 80% of the investigation, and you know that you've got material on here which may lead to operational activity in finding other people who were involved or finding people overseas who were somehow assisting or whatever it may be.

01:44:44.000 If you're saying, well, just, no, you know what, for the sake of this...

01:44:48.000 We're not asking for a backdoor.

01:44:49.000 They're asking for that one phone.

01:44:52.000 And that's where this whole thing is really headed south.

01:44:54.000 And it's become this idea that, you know, which is erroneous.

01:44:58.000 But I understand what Tim Cook is saying about the precedent, although not really, because again, they've done this before.

01:45:02.000 For some reason, for this one, they're drawing a line.

01:45:05.000 So, anyway, but I've heard that.

01:45:07.000 Why don't they just do the rest of the investigation and skip this part?

01:45:12.000 What?

01:45:12.000 I don't follow that logic train.

01:45:15.000 And then the other people are saying, well, why don't they just get it off the metadata?

01:45:18.000 And that's another one of those things where people never believed what the government was saying. 0.95

01:45:22.000 But the meta-fucking data was numbers and volume. 0.97

01:45:26.000 That was it. 0.96

01:45:26.000 There was no information to be had there. 0.96

01:45:28.000 You could sit in a fucking room full of metadata and not know what the hell you're looking at. 0.97

01:45:31.000 You had to go through the court process to then get that particular numbers information. 0.99

01:45:36.000 So here's my question, because this is what came up with the Edward Snowden thing.

01:45:39.000 They were saying that the government is monitoring all cell phone data constantly, and they can get information all the time.

01:45:46.000 Well, this kind of proves that not to be true.

01:45:48.000 Yeah, but people don't look at it that way.

01:45:51.000 Make that leap back and say, oh, well, maybe that was a fallacy.

01:45:56.000 Yeah, sure, the metadata was sweeping up all those numbers and volume, but again...

01:46:00.000 It's not enough.

01:46:01.000 To what end?

01:46:02.000 Yeah, and so some people would say, once they realize what it was actually doing, then they say, well, but that's...

01:46:06.000 So what? 0.99

01:46:07.000 So they're just collecting this shit in the basement. 0.99

01:46:08.000 It's not doing any good, so they shouldn't even collect that information. 0.98

01:46:11.000 So what Edward Snowden was talking about is essentially just when it pertains to email.

01:46:16.000 I mean, he said they're collecting all this information, that the NSA is collecting all this information in regards to cell phone data.

01:46:25.000 They're recording every phone call.

01:46:27.000 They're recording all these text messages.

01:46:28.000 Yeah.

01:46:29.000 So is that not true?

01:46:30.000 Well, no.

01:46:31.000 Frankly, I'm here...

01:46:32.000 Of course, nobody's going to...

01:46:34.000 Again, this is very emotive, right? 1.00

01:46:35.000 So there's all those people out there that are going to say, fuck you. 1.00

01:46:37.000 You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. 1.00

01:46:39.000 Fucking CIA. Fucking CIA. Yeah, no. 1.00

01:46:42.000 Illuminati.

01:46:42.000 There is nobody right now...

01:46:44.000 Unless you're a terrorist, a terrorist suspect, or a criminal, there's nobody in the government who's a fuck about you. 1.00

01:46:49.000 I'm here to tell you that. 1.00

01:46:50.000 So your dick pics are safe, ladies and gentlemen. 1.00

01:46:51.000 Yeah, your dick pics are absolutely safe. 1.00

01:46:53.000 All your vagina pictures that you've been floating around to all your boyfriends. 1.00

01:46:57.000 Those are secure. 0.99

01:46:59.000 Nobody's going to route those around anybody else. 1.00

01:47:01.000 And anybody who would rat you out for those is a piece of shit and un-American in the first place. 1.00

01:47:04.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:47:05.000 Yeah.

01:47:06.000 So that's a really eye-opening thing, though, because this case kind of throws that all into jeopardy, because everybody was concerned.

01:47:12.000 Like, hey, the government can check in on all your phone calls and all your text messages.

01:47:16.000 Well, this would clearly be a case where they would want to do that.

01:47:20.000 Right.

01:47:21.000 They can't do it here without the judge granting this order.

01:47:25.000 So tell me why there was a recent court order that ruled in favor of Apple.

01:47:30.000 They did.

01:47:30.000 And that was in New York.

01:47:32.000 And that was an interesting case as well.

01:47:34.000 And that's probably going to set a precedent for maybe.

01:47:37.000 Maybe.

01:47:37.000 We'll see.

01:47:37.000 Because it's a little bit different.

01:47:39.000 What the judge essentially was saying in that case, and it involved a narco-trafficking investigation that was going on, And by the way, this isn't just for terrorism.

01:47:49.000 Imagine what if this was for pedophilia.

01:47:51.000 Imagine a large pedophilia ring.

01:47:53.000 What are you going to say? 1.00

01:47:54.000 No, we don't want to catch those fucking douchebags that are involved in that because privacy? 1.00

01:48:00.000 You know, I understand the privacy aspect, but each case has to be looked at on its merits. 0.99

01:48:05.000 And if you say through the courts and through the Congress that these are the hoops that the Bureau has to jump through, and they jump through those hoops then...

01:48:13.000 Then what?

01:48:13.000 Then it's up to each company to decide whether they want to support it or not.

01:48:16.000 I don't know.

01:48:16.000 That seems strange.

01:48:17.000 But anyway, the point being is that the one in New York, the judge essentially was saying, well, look, you want the courts to make a decision on this for something that Congress should really make a decision on this.

01:48:26.000 And so, in a way, his decision was a pushback against the concept that the...

01:48:31.000 The Bureau was basing this on, which is a very old law.

01:48:34.000 And so the judge is saying, look, relying on a law that's a couple hundred years old or whatever, maybe instead we should be having this looked at through the legislature.

01:48:44.000 And so there was an interesting sort of legality to his response to this.

01:48:49.000 But it definitely favored Apple.

01:48:52.000 And sure, that's great.

01:48:54.000 Let's legislate it.

01:48:55.000 But do you think that just maybe...

01:48:59.000 There are times when, from an operational perspective, you might want to move a little bit quicker than asking Congress to take up an issue and debate it and then maybe eventually come up.

01:49:10.000 So maybe occasionally you're going to have moments like the San Bernardino shooting where you've got a phone in your hand and all you're asking Apple to do is take possession of it.

01:49:20.000 And who knows?

01:49:21.000 Maybe their problem is they're worried that if they create the SIF at that moment, someone's going to steal it from them.

01:49:26.000 One of their employees.

01:49:27.000 So maybe they've got an internal security issue because then they can destroy it.

01:49:30.000 The bureau's not asking for that phone back.

01:49:32.000 They're not asking for that SIF. They're not asking them to do it on any other phone.

01:49:35.000 What is a SIF? It's a systems information file.

01:49:38.000 Okay.

01:49:38.000 So you just force it onto that phone and that bypasses the passwords.

01:49:41.000 Essentially what the court has done is made a very conservative interpretation of the law.

01:49:48.000 Right.

01:49:49.000 And basically saying that we don't believe this is a place where the courts should be decided.

01:49:53.000 We believe you should be taking this to Congress and so therefore I don't see why you're asking us to make a decision on this.

01:49:59.000 See, I understand the common person's perspective.

01:50:01.000 They don't trust the government, the whole Edward Snowden thing and WikiLeaks thing.

01:50:05.000 Everybody's freaking out about that.

01:50:07.000 And then they look at this saying, well, this is the slippery slope. 0.98

01:50:10.000 Again, this is the thing that if the government has access to your phone, but we're talking about a fucking mass murderer and a guy who's already dead and we have one phone. 0.98

01:50:21.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:50:22.000 And so to say that you're going to only do a limited investigation, even though you know you've got potential information.

01:50:29.000 Isn't there a way to do it on an individual basis, just one phone only forever?

01:50:34.000 That's what they're asking.

01:50:35.000 But can it be that you could never grant... 0.99

01:50:38.000 I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me that you wouldn't want to get access to that guy's fucking... 0.94

01:50:44.000 And here's where, and I think going back to that overriding theme, which is nothing resides in the center anymore. 0.95

01:50:50.000 You're right.

01:50:51.000 We do have to be concerned about privacy.

01:50:52.000 And I agree.

01:50:53.000 Okay, what happens if you know Big Brother?

01:50:55.000 But there are times when operational concerns probably override at least...

01:51:02.000 An element of this where a reason that people can exist in the middle and say, yeah, on this occasion, because you've gone through all these orders, and because we've set up this protection now, meaning Apple holds on to it and everything, But, you know, that's not the way it works.

01:51:17.000 And so, therefore, Apple comes out and says, and then the misinformation, ah, they're trying to create a backdoor to all our Apple devices.

01:51:23.000 By the way, what do you think Apple does with their devices that they sell in China?

01:51:26.000 You think the Chinese government would allow Apple – someone ought to talk about this in the media.

01:51:31.000 Do you think the Chinese government would allow Apple to sell devices that they can't get into?

01:51:35.000 I – We could ask Apple.

01:51:38.000 We should ask Apple.

01:51:38.000 Well, I'm sure it would be an issue, but I can speak from a friend that I have that worked at Google.

01:51:43.000 They had a gigantic issue in China with Google because, you know, they have Android phones.

01:51:49.000 And that was a big part of the issue, is the government wanted to have access to phones.

01:51:53.000 They also wanted to have access to what you're searching.

01:51:56.000 They wanted to know what people are searching.

01:51:58.000 They wanted to limit Google searches.

01:52:00.000 There was this gigantic issue they were having.

01:52:02.000 Then on top of that, Google Was having to deal with the fact that China was kind of ripping off their system and creating their own version of it. 0.82

01:52:11.000 China is the largest state sponsor of economic espionage and cyber crime, cyber hacking in the world. 1.00

01:52:19.000 And counterfeit shit. 1.00

01:52:19.000 And counterfeit. 1.00

01:52:20.000 They openly support counterfeit shit to the point where there's entire stores that have Apple logos, they sell Apple products, and none of it is legit. 0.99

01:52:28.000 Right. 0.99

01:52:28.000 All the computers are fake, all the phones are fake, all the laptops are fake, none of it is created by Apple. 0.99

01:52:34.000 It looks exactly like this shit right here. 0.99

01:52:36.000 Right. 0.99

01:52:38.000 They don't have laws to stop that. 0.98

01:52:57.000 And you look at, A, you look at their economy, and their economy is heading south.

01:53:02.000 Is it?

01:53:03.000 Yeah, their economy is not doing well.

01:53:07.000 Their growth projections are way off.

01:53:10.000 There's always been this belief that their numbers have been cooked in numerous ways.

01:53:15.000 Xi, the head of China, has been consolidating power.

01:53:18.000 He's been creating new security apparatus.

01:53:20.000 He's been hiding behind this anti-corruption drive to some degree, which is, again, part of his consolidation of power.

01:53:27.000 And this idea that, oh, somehow this rule of law is coming up.

01:53:30.000 Nobody actually believes that.

01:53:32.000 And they are continuing to be incredibly aggressive in economic espionage.

01:53:38.000 I mean, they're not the only ones.

01:53:39.000 Everybody acts in their own best interest.

01:53:41.000 But the Chinese have, I don't know, four dozen-plus academic institutions that are funded by the Chinese military, the PLA, that have responsibility for... 0.99

01:53:53.000 We've got economic espionage, developing new means of basically stealing shit. 0.54

01:53:58.000 They've got a couple dozen, at least, information warfare units that we've identified run by the PLA that are specifically designed to hoover up intellectual property and research and development and all the rest of that. 0.96

01:54:09.000 Not just from us.

01:54:10.000 I mean, from around the globe. 0.99

01:54:16.000 So the idea, yes, the idea that we would do business there and believe somehow that the authorities there in China aren't going to have our shit. 0.98

01:54:25.000 They're not going to have whatever it may be. 0.84

01:54:27.000 A pharmaceutical company that sets up a facility out there isn't going to lose their R&D. Of course they are.

01:54:31.000 Everybody knows.

01:54:32.000 Anybody in a serious manner who's doing business out in China knows as soon as you set foot in there and you establish yourself, you know, manufacturing or just sales, whatever it may be, Your information becomes their information.

01:54:44.000 It's just going to work that way. 0.99

01:54:45.000 Well, that's a problem, too, because all our shit is made over there. 1.00

01:54:48.000 A lot of shit's made over there, including stuff from Donald Trump. 1.00

01:54:52.000 But who knows? 1.00

01:54:54.000 Maybe he's going to bring it back to the States. 0.57

01:54:55.000 Well, I have a friend who works for the Bureau, and he was explaining to me How Chinese espionage works in the United States and how they catch people that a guy will come over here and live a completely normal life and won't look like there's anything going on with him whatsoever. 0.66

01:55:10.000 Family guy, no weapons, no crime, no nothing.

01:55:15.000 Befriend someone who works in some sort of an intellectual capacity, whether it's for some sort of a corporation that makes computers or something that works for the United States government in rocketry or whatever.

01:55:27.000 They befriend that guy and then slowly...

01:55:33.000 I know people that can pay you a lot of money for some of the information that you have.

01:55:39.000 And by the way, this information is out there anyway.

01:55:41.000 Everybody has that information.

01:55:42.000 Yeah, and it can be much less, oftentimes it's much less threatening than that.

01:55:46.000 I need – maybe I could have you consult with me on a paper that I'm writing for a very legitimate organization.

01:55:52.000 I mean a lot of these folks come over here and they start going to school and then they get a grad degree and then they get a job.

01:55:59.000 And then what do they want?

01:56:00.000 Well, the Chinese authorities want them to get another job.

01:56:02.000 And eventually they end up at Northrop Grumman or they end up at Lockheed or they end up – it doesn't matter, DuPont, Dow, wherever it is.

01:56:09.000 Information is of interest to them.

01:56:10.000 The Chinese are a little bit different than we are.

01:56:13.000 We tend to be very targeted, very specific in our tasking, in part because we're a smaller operation than they are.

01:56:19.000 They devote a huge amount of resource to this.

01:56:21.000 But they just hoover up whatever's out there, and then they make a decision, is it interesting or valuable to them or not?

01:56:26.000 And, you know, again, people will say, well, you know, you can't be coy about this.

01:56:31.000 We do that, too. 0.94

01:56:32.000 Well, you better hope we fucking do it, because otherwise it's a hugely unlevel playing field. 0.99

01:56:39.000 Otherwise, we're sweet angels out in the field of murderous criminals. 0.99

01:56:42.000 Right.

01:56:42.000 And all we're doing is, you know, yeah, we're all precious snowflakes.

01:56:46.000 And we're all just trying to get together and not keep score.

01:56:48.000 This is where Hillary's email problem becomes a real issue. 1.00

01:56:52.000 Right.

01:56:53.000 Because she, by doing this, and this sort of is in a roundabout way, we're bringing it all back, puts it in perspective why it's so dangerous that she had this unprotected email problem.

01:57:03.000 Because by copy and pasting classified information or deciding through her own decision-making process or the people that were with her, what's okay to copy and paste and what's not okay to copy and paste, and not whether or not you go by the established protocols of top secret or not top secret or clearance or whatever clearance level you have.

01:57:22.000 You're handing that over.

01:57:23.000 And the interesting thing is, they don't necessarily care.

01:57:26.000 I mean, obviously, it blows their skirt up to get top-secret information.

01:57:29.000 But they'll take anything.

01:57:31.000 They'll take it all.

01:57:31.000 They'll take the daily dribble that goes on through her email just to gain a better understanding as to what makes a person tick or who are the people around her.

01:57:41.000 They're looking for potential targets.

01:57:42.000 And that's part of it.

01:57:43.000 You're looking for, you know, where is there a chink in the armor? 1.00

01:57:46.000 Where is there an opportunity...

01:57:48.000 To get in to her organization.

01:57:51.000 Is there somebody on the periphery?

01:57:52.000 It could be a landscaper.

01:57:53.000 Hey, now I know who landscapes their...

01:57:55.000 Great!

01:57:56.000 It's like you're targeting a company.

01:57:59.000 Who are you going to target?

01:57:59.000 You're not going to target the CEO. You're going to target the cleaning service.

01:58:02.000 You're going to target the secretary or the caterer.

01:58:08.000 Yeah, and again, I get it.

01:58:10.000 It's like with Benghazi.

01:58:11.000 People roll their eyes.

01:58:12.000 Oh, the private email server.

01:58:13.000 But if you've been involved in this and you understand how aggressive it is out there, again, not just the Chinese, the Russians, everybody's at it.

01:58:25.000 We need to understand that it was a serious problem.

01:58:29.000 It was a breach.

01:58:29.000 And again, going back to the same thing, if it had been me, yeah, sure, I would have been done up.

01:58:33.000 If it had been somebody else, it would have been banged up and probably done time.

01:58:37.000 So it's a little discouraging.

01:58:40.000 That's kind of crazy that it is something that someone would go to jail for.

01:58:44.000 And yet...

01:58:44.000 Mishandling classified information.

01:58:47.000 It's a serious offense.

01:58:48.000 It's a very serious offense.

01:58:49.000 And particularly when you're a senior official, good God, she's a very smart person.

01:58:54.000 So this idea that somehow she just didn't know or she was too busy or I don't know how my BlackBerry works or whatever. 0.99

01:59:00.000 What a load of crap. 0.99

01:59:02.000 So, yeah, well, this whole... 0.99

01:59:05.000 This brings us back to this whole Edward Snowden thing.

01:59:08.000 What's your position on this, on that guy, and what he did in sort of exposing the fact that the NSA was involved in this wide-scale, this gigantic...

01:59:20.000 Sort of information gathering process.

01:59:23.000 The hoovering up of a metadata program that's gathering this stuff up.

01:59:27.000 Well, first of all, again, I think everybody should have spent a little more time understanding what the actual technical aspects of it were.

01:59:33.000 Well, his description of it, though, was problematic.

01:59:35.000 He was saying the people that worked with him were accessing the emails of ex-girlfriends.

01:59:42.000 Do I believe that maybe that might have happened?

01:59:45.000 Well, yeah.

01:59:45.000 It's a human system.

01:59:46.000 So, yeah, there's going to be some fuck-ups. 0.97

01:59:48.000 There's no doubt about it. 0.96

01:59:49.000 And that's a problem.

01:59:50.000 Well, I mean, I don't know what the ins and outs of NSA are in terms of their protocols for protection.

01:59:57.000 Firewalls on systems at government agencies tend to be, if they're used properly, are pretty robust.

02:00:04.000 But at the same time...

02:00:05.000 You know, any human system.

02:00:07.000 It's like TSA. Is someone going to be asleep at the wheel and somebody gets through with a shoe bomb?

02:00:11.000 Well, it could happen because it's a human system.

02:00:13.000 But where do I stand on it?

02:00:15.000 No surprise.

02:00:16.000 And, you know, again, it's all based on what your experiences are.

02:00:20.000 And I get the fact that people, you know, consider him a hero or a whistleblower or whatever they want to call it.

02:00:26.000 You know, he signed paperwork that said he was going to protect national security interests, that he was going to properly protect the information that he was given responsibility for seeing.

02:00:39.000 And he didn't do that.

02:00:41.000 And he also, despite what people may want to believe, He caused a lot of damage, a tremendous amount of damage in terms of information that was released about the way that we do things here, sources and methods that were of extreme interest to not just a terrorist organization,

02:01:00.000 but extreme interest to Russian interests, extreme interest to Iranians.

02:01:05.000 That's weird that he's in Russia right now.

02:01:06.000 Yeah, I know.

02:01:07.000 Go figure.

02:01:11.000 So did he do any good?

02:01:12.000 I don't know.

02:01:31.000 We're good to go.

02:01:59.000 I'm not – what's the word?

02:02:00.000 I'm not – unsympathetic doesn't sound right.

02:02:02.000 I understand I appreciate the importance of finding the proper place on the pendulum, but I have probably an overriding appreciation for security because of what I did.

02:02:11.000 And I understand that other people have an overriding appreciation for privacy because they didn't have the same experiences or they've had different experiences.

02:02:18.000 And so that's great.

02:02:20.000 I appreciate that.

02:02:21.000 And all I'm saying is I look at it from my perspective.

02:02:25.000 I don't look at him as a hero or whistleblower in any way.

02:02:30.000 I signed the same agreements, and I'm expected to live up to those just like anybody else who does.

02:02:38.000 He found a way that he thought was appropriate to make his point.

02:02:42.000 I have no idea what goes on in his head.

02:02:47.000 I just would have thought it would have been nice if, I don't know, we made the point in a way that also protected our national security interests a little bit better.

02:02:56.000 How could that be done, though, without exposing what he...

02:02:59.000 What exactly did he expose?

02:03:01.000 He exposed the fact that they were gathering up metadata, but there's been people that have said that it was more than metadata.

02:03:08.000 Well, he talks about surveillance programs, and there were lots of little bits and pieces because he...

02:03:32.000 I don't believe that Edward Snowden is smarter than the PLA. And the resources of the FSB in Russia.

02:03:46.000 Maybe I'm wrong.

02:03:47.000 Maybe he's like the Lex Luthor of IT. I don't think so.

02:03:52.000 But as an example, the surveillance program supposedly that we had against European leaders.

02:04:00.000 Remember the outreach with Angela Merkel and the fact that we're listening in on some of her conversations, the ones that we would have access to.

02:04:09.000 Oh, my God.

02:04:10.000 Really?

02:04:11.000 Really?

02:04:11.000 Because you know what they're doing?

02:04:13.000 They're listening on the conversations of their allies.

02:04:15.000 And I mean, the French, the former head of the DGSC, the French Intel Service, turned to the head of France at one point when the head of France was, you know, sacre bleu and how could we be doing this? 0.94

02:04:24.000 And, you know, and the former head of the Intel Service looked at a French guy and said, are you fucking kidding me?

02:04:31.000 What do you think we do? 0.91

02:04:32.000 This is what we do.

02:04:33.000 So this is just always, what he's exposing is something that everybody knew.

02:04:36.000 So the mock outrage.

02:04:38.000 You're saying it's like mock outrage.

02:04:39.000 It was Kabuki theater in Europe, for sure.

02:04:41.000 I mean, all the angst that supposedly...

02:04:43.000 Kabuki theater?

02:04:43.000 Yeah, I mean, the hand-wringing and all the, oh, I can't believe that our Americans would be, allies would be doing this.

02:04:48.000 So they kind of assumed I guarantee you what was going on in the back rooms was the intel service directors were all, you know, sitting down and I would hope to think that our director was looking at them and saying, what the fuck? 0.97

02:05:00.000 You know, and they were probably having a, you know, having a drink and saying, yeah, okay, we get it. 0.98

02:05:03.000 We get the joke.

02:05:04.000 You know, everybody's doing this.

02:05:05.000 And so the idea that somehow we're the bad guy...

02:05:09.000 Look, the French intel service is incredibly aggressive, as an example.

02:05:13.000 And there have been numerous cases where they've targeted U.S. corporations for economic espionage.

02:05:21.000 And the idea that somehow...

02:05:23.000 You know, people should be shocked that one nation is acting in its own self-interest and listening to other nations.

02:05:30.000 Again, same theory with economic espionage.

02:05:32.000 We better hope we're playing offense and defense in the way the world actually works. 0.65

02:05:36.000 It'd be great if we all held hands and, you know, winged monkeys on unicorns, flew out our asses, and we could all sing songs together, but it's not how the world works. 0.63

02:05:46.000 Anyway. 0.98

02:05:47.000 That's me disappearing down a rabbit hole.

02:05:49.000 But this rabbit hole is kind of important to talk about because you actually have some pretty deep knowledge about this rabbit hole.

02:05:56.000 And this is some of the things that get speculated left and right and back and forth, and either you take one side or the other, and everybody argues about it.

02:06:03.000 I mean, no one wants the government to have unchecked access to your emails, your phone calls.

02:06:07.000 I absolutely agree with that.

02:06:08.000 And that's what people are worried about.

02:06:10.000 Again, that slippery slope that is headed towards that.

02:06:13.000 But what you're saying is that everyone has always spied on everybody's phone calls.

02:06:17.000 They've always been involved in monitoring leaders whenever they could.

02:06:20.000 And that it's not just – it's standard.

02:06:23.000 It's standard protocol.

02:06:24.000 It's every nation acts in its own best interest.

02:06:28.000 Sometimes it seems like the U.S. is the only one that apologizes for it.

02:06:31.000 But if you did nothing else other than approach foreign policy from the perspective that every nation acts in its own best interest, we wouldn't get caught short as many times as we do.

02:06:40.000 Look at Putin.

02:06:41.000 I mean, Putin absolutely is an old-school KGB guy.

02:06:46.000 He's always regretted that the Soviet Union fell apart.

02:06:49.000 He considers it a huge catastrophe, probably the biggest catastrophe, he called it, of the 20th century.

02:06:54.000 And he's been busy ever since trying to figure out how to rebuild at least influence, if not territory.

02:07:01.000 And in 2005, he made one of his first statements about how it was a horrible thing that the Soviet Union fell apart.

02:07:09.000 And then a couple of years later, three years later, the troops rolled into Georgia.

02:07:13.000 And they still own territory in Georgia.

02:07:15.000 And people don't talk about that.

02:07:17.000 Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

02:07:18.000 They've still got large numbers of Russian troops in there.

02:07:21.000 So he got that.

02:07:21.000 He got Crimea.

02:07:23.000 Eastern Ukraine is, for all intents purposes, going to become part of Russian territory.

02:07:28.000 And he's always been the same way.

02:07:29.000 He says what he means.

02:07:30.000 He acts in Russia's best interest.

02:07:33.000 The Chinese are the same way.

02:07:34.000 We always seem to feel like that's unusual.

02:07:36.000 I mean, I remember times when we'd be engaged in some counterinsurgency operation overseas.

02:07:45.000 We'd dress them up and we'd give them money and party hats and we'd train them.

02:07:49.000 And then they'd go out, meaning the foreign service, you know, the foreign military, and they wouldn't act like we would, right?

02:07:55.000 There would be problems or there'd be human rights abuses or whatever.

02:08:00.000 And, you know, the Senate, you know, the Intel Committee would say, I can't believe this. 0.93

02:08:04.000 How come they're not, you know, well, because they're a fucking different culture, just like you talked about earlier with the Middle East. 0.65

02:08:09.000 They're You can dress them up and give them money and training, and they're always going to act differently. 0.97

02:08:14.000 It's just the way of the world.

02:08:15.000 But we never seem to quite get that.

02:08:17.000 And it's sort of like this acting in your own best interest.

02:08:19.000 We always seem to be, well, we do it, but we feel like it's unseemly somehow.

02:08:23.000 Every other nation out there is doing it.

02:08:25.000 Allies and others.

02:08:26.000 Everybody.

02:08:27.000 So is this a part of the problem with people getting access to information on how the world works?

02:08:32.000 As time goes on, that information becomes more and more accessible and people get more and more upset about things that essentially have always been like this.

02:08:41.000 Is that what's going on?

02:08:43.000 Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting way to put it.

02:08:45.000 So people have a problem with it, but they don't offer up a solution.

02:08:49.000 I mean, the argument is always the United States should do better.

02:08:53.000 We should be better.

02:08:54.000 We shouldn't spy on our American citizens.

02:08:56.000 We shouldn't spy on foreign leaders.

02:08:58.000 We should be the shining beacon of democracy and of honor throughout the world.

02:09:05.000 And, you know, that's a lovely idea.

02:09:06.000 And we try.

02:09:06.000 And it's kind of going back to what I said earlier.

02:09:09.000 And people will disagree, but, again, I've spent a lot of time.

02:09:13.000 Overseas dealing with these issues, and we try, right?

02:09:18.000 We don't always get it right, but we try to do that.

02:09:20.000 We try to be that bright beacon.

02:09:23.000 We try to be the right direction.

02:09:25.000 All those things.

02:09:26.000 And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

02:09:32.000 I remember one time I had a guy in a foreign service, a foreign military.

02:09:35.000 We were sitting having a drink and they'd been engaged in a long conflict.

02:09:41.000 And anyway, this guy says, hey, he says, thank you for bringing us democracy.

02:09:47.000 And then he paused for a minute and he says, please don't do it again.

02:09:51.000 I always thought that was a great line.

02:09:52.000 I always thought, yeah, I get what you're saying.

02:09:55.000 But yeah, it's...

02:09:58.000 It's not that easy to bring democracy.

02:10:00.000 And bringing democracy doesn't really work.

02:10:02.000 It doesn't really work.

02:10:03.000 And you know what?

02:10:05.000 So, yeah, so what do you do?

02:10:06.000 You end up dealing with people that are unsavory.

02:10:08.000 You end up dealing with countries that, you know, hey, we'd love them to be more in step with us.

02:10:13.000 But it's just not the way...

02:10:14.000 It's just not the way it works.

02:10:16.000 Well, it seems incredibly confusing, and I don't think anybody's ever offered up a reasonable scenario where you could take places that are like the Middle East and straighten it out.

02:10:25.000 No one's offered some sort of a step or a program where you can say, well, here's where they are now.

02:10:32.000 Here's the human rights violations.

02:10:34.000 Here's the real problems they have with religious freedom.

02:10:38.000 This is how we can get them out of that, and we can get them to a place where the United States is, where people have much more freedom.

02:10:45.000 The United States isn't free!

02:10:46.000 Freedom is an illusion, man!

02:10:48.000 It's an illusion!

02:10:50.000 We're not totally free.

02:10:51.000 No one's totally free.

02:10:52.000 There's no total freedom, but it's also because of the way the world is.

02:10:57.000 Yeah, I'm here to tell you, again, I've been to a lot of places, and we won the lottery.

02:11:05.000 And I realize everybody's coming from different positions and places in life, and it's pretty fucked up for a lot of people here sometimes.

02:11:14.000 But this is a good place to be overall, and there still is the potential, even though it may seem far off sometimes for some people, but there's still the potential.

02:11:24.000 If you work hard, you can do really well in this country.

02:11:28.000 And even those times when, I don't know, maybe I'm just kidding myself.

02:11:32.000 Maybe I'd like to continue believing that and maybe, who knows, maybe it's not true.

02:11:36.000 I got young kids, so I'm going to continue to believe it's true.

02:11:39.000 I think it's true for the most part, but I think it's complicated.

02:11:43.000 And I also think this is a very unusual place.

02:11:45.000 This country is only a couple hundred years old, and that's weird.

02:11:48.000 It's weird to believe that we really essentially found it in 1776. I mean, 200 plus years is not long at all.

02:11:58.000 It's going to what you're...

02:11:59.000 I mean, 1776, George Washington knew the importance of intelligence.

02:12:03.000 He talked about the importance of intelligence in the Revolutionary War.

02:12:06.000 I mean, the first...

02:12:07.000 I'll probably get this wrong, but the first entry into the...

02:12:11.000 What do they call that book of expenditures?

02:12:15.000 You know, that accounting book that they kept?

02:12:17.000 Basically, the first entry was to pay for spies.

02:12:22.000 And it was.

02:12:23.000 It was to establish a spy network, I believe, outside of Boston.

02:12:27.000 And so they understood, even at that time, the importance of it.

02:12:30.000 So yeah, to your point, there's been telephones, there's been people listening in.

02:12:34.000 And...

02:12:36.000 And you need to check and balance that.

02:12:38.000 You need to ensure that it's not overreaching.

02:12:40.000 I get all of that.

02:12:41.000 I'm just saying that when you do find that point and Congress enacts the law and the courts go with it and say yes, when you do that, and you're jumping through the hoops that have been put in place, and you've got to—theoretically, again, you would always like to think that we have committees up on the Hill that are inquisitive and aggressive in their questioning and are paying attention— But when all that is done,

02:13:08.000 then you'd like to think if you have an operational concern and you go through those hoops that, yeah, you'd be able to get the job done.

02:13:14.000 Kind of bringing it back to the Apple thing, I guess.

02:13:16.000 So I think kind of in a lot of ways, we're talking about a lot of similarities.

02:13:21.000 That we have, on one hand, we have the ideal utopia, we have the shining light of honor and dignity, and then you have the dire consequences of the worst-case scenario, right?

02:13:34.000 And we're kind of in the mix, right?

02:13:38.000 And that's sort of life.

02:13:40.000 Well, that is life.

02:13:41.000 That is absolutely life.

02:13:43.000 One thing you learn in the agency is that there's nothing black and white about the world.

02:13:49.000 And you learn, the CIA is very good at teaching you how to sort of exist in the gray areas and understand that you're never going to get all the information that you want.

02:13:58.000 You know, it's not like the beach books or the feature films where they get all the details and, okay, now it's time to go.

02:14:03.000 Let's do that operation.

02:14:05.000 You know, I remember most of the stuff that I was doing, most of the operations, you know, in the back of mind, you're thinking, boy, I hope this doesn't get fucked up, you know, because if you wait for all the information, you know, before you do something, something bad's going to happen. 0.98

02:14:18.000 It's going to be a fucking goat rope. 0.80

02:14:20.000 You've got to get off the X at a certain point, and usually that's before you have that full comfort. 0.97

02:14:26.000 So they teach you very well how to do that, how to do risk versus gain calculations and how to figure out, okay, this is what we're going to have to do.

02:14:33.000 But you've got to make a decision at some point.

02:14:35.000 The world would like it to be, again, sort of a zero risk.

02:14:38.000 That's why we always talk about counterterrorism.

02:14:40.000 They say, well, when are we going to get this over with?

02:14:42.000 We're not.

02:14:42.000 It's just a...

02:14:44.000 We have to evolve as a species.

02:14:46.000 Yeah, that's right.

02:14:49.000 It's going to have to come down to something pretty fucking astronomical to have no more violence, no more crime, no more espionage, no more hate.

02:14:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:15:00.000 You know what?

02:15:01.000 I suspect that ain't happening in your lifetime or my lifetime. 0.99

02:15:04.000 Damn it! 0.99

02:15:04.000 I know, I know. 0.99

02:15:05.000 It's so disappointing.

02:15:07.000 What if we give everybody mushrooms?

02:15:09.000 I have to do the trick.

02:15:11.000 I don't know.

02:15:13.000 That's it.

02:15:13.000 Mike Baker for president.

02:15:15.000 Give everybody mushrooms.

02:15:16.000 That's your- That's the tagline?

02:15:18.000 That's it.

02:15:19.000 You don't want to be president. 1.00

02:15:19.000 Nobody wants to be fucking president. 1.00

02:15:21.000 I really think we should get rid of presidents. 1.00

02:15:22.000 What would we have instead?

02:15:24.000 I think a giant committee of super intelligent people that aren't entirely responsible.

02:15:29.000 Not one figurehead.

02:15:30.000 I think the figurehead is a primate thing.

02:15:33.000 I think we always want the one alpha primate.

02:15:35.000 Yeah, the big silverback. 1.00

02:15:36.000 Yeah, the whole leader of the tribe thing.

02:15:40.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:15:40.000 That shit just can't work with 300 million people. 1.00

02:15:43.000 It's just too crazy. 1.00

02:15:44.000 And they all go gray so quick. 1.00

02:15:46.000 They get so fucking old. 1.00

02:15:48.000 Oh, man. 1.00

02:15:48.000 You look at them. 1.00

02:15:49.000 There's so much pressure on those guys.

02:15:51.000 Yeah.

02:15:51.000 And you know what?

02:15:52.000 It's also...

02:15:54.000 Yeah.

02:15:55.000 You look at President Obama.

02:15:57.000 Yeah, right.

02:15:57.000 He was a good-looking guy.

02:15:58.000 A smooth-faced, handsome, young, vibrant-looking guy.

02:16:03.000 He's got a head of white hair.

02:16:04.000 Not only that, his face is falling off his bones.

02:16:07.000 He looks so tired.

02:16:10.000 Well, I mean, yeah.

02:16:11.000 So he hasn't slept in years.

02:16:12.000 I was going to say.

02:16:13.000 The weight of that job.

02:16:16.000 But, you know, someone has always shouldered it, and somebody's always wanted the job.

02:16:20.000 But wasn't it a different weight?

02:16:22.000 Was it different?

02:16:23.000 I don't know.

02:16:24.000 I mean, you could argue...

02:16:25.000 He was dealing with the recession, the depression, and dealing with World War II. I mean...

02:16:32.000 I think it's always been.

02:16:34.000 It's just a terrible job.

02:16:35.000 It's a terrible job.

02:16:36.000 Part of it, I think, the biggest problem now is the speed of information, right? 0.99

02:16:40.000 So everybody's a fucking journalist on Twitter. 0.97

02:16:44.000 Everybody's a judge and jury through the speed of information. 0.99

02:16:47.000 Nobody bothers to check facts anymore.

02:16:50.000 Everybody's racing to get ahead of the news cycle, which exists in minutes now instead of hours.

02:16:54.000 I mean, remember, it used to be, what, you know, like the 5 o'clock news, the 11 o'clock news?

02:16:58.000 All day long, journalists had time to check their facts and their stories and their sources because they just had that one newscast or two newscasts in the evening. 0.61

02:17:05.000 And now, you know, let's fucking throw it out there and hope that, you know, we don't get it wrong.

02:17:10.000 So I think that weighs on anybody who's in politics. 0.97

02:17:14.000 Maybe it serves a good purpose as well.

02:17:16.000 It keeps, who knows?

02:17:17.000 Maybe it keeps them more honest.

02:17:18.000 I don't know.

02:17:18.000 But anyway, I think that has something to do with it.

02:17:22.000 Look at Obama then and now.

02:17:23.000 Look at this photo.

02:17:24.000 Look at this.

02:17:25.000 Jeez.

02:17:26.000 That's incredible.

02:17:27.000 That's a 20 year difference.

02:17:29.000 That's a 20 year difference in less than 8 years.

02:17:33.000 2009 to 2006, January 2016. Yeah, if we could throw up like a seven-year split on Trump now and see what Trump will look like after seven years in office.

02:17:42.000 He's going to look like Jabba the Hutt.

02:17:44.000 His face is already fighting gravity.

02:17:46.000 Wow, yeah.

02:17:47.000 That poor guy.

02:17:48.000 He's so rich, too.

02:17:50.000 Jesus Christ, what are you eating?

02:17:52.000 None of them are healthy.

02:17:53.000 How about Bernie Sanders?

02:17:54.000 Bernie Sanders is going to look like a question mark.

02:17:57.000 He's going to bend completely over.

02:17:59.000 His posture is so awful already.

02:18:01.000 Someone should teach that guy how to stand up straight.

02:18:04.000 And he's not that much older than Clinton, right?

02:18:06.000 He's only a couple years older than she is, I think. 1.00

02:18:07.000 Clinton looks like shit. 1.00

02:18:08.000 Yeah, well, she's not holding up that well. 1.00

02:18:10.000 She doesn't look good.

02:18:10.000 Well, neither does Bill.

02:18:12.000 Look how old Bill is.

02:18:13.000 Oh, jeez.

02:18:14.000 They rolled him out, and I think they realized right away, that's a bad idea.

02:18:17.000 Well, didn't he have – he had like some serious heart surgery, right?

02:18:20.000 Yeah, he did.

02:18:21.000 He did, yeah. 0.99

02:18:21.000 But he's a smart son of a bitch and he was fortunate in a lot of ways and he governed well and he understood the importance of compromise and negotiation. 0.99

02:18:31.000 And that was still at a time when you could do that, I think. 0.98

02:18:33.000 I don't know whether it's still possible. 0.98

02:18:35.000 I mean look at some of the shit that comes out of the Capitol Hill where – You know, I mean, Scalia is barely dead. 0.97

02:18:43.000 People are saying, we're not going to listen to anybody who gets proposed to, you know, come in here and replace him. 0.98

02:18:47.000 And you think, well, you probably could have held off on that statement for a little while.

02:18:51.000 Well, Democrats were so excited to get a liberal in there.

02:18:54.000 Yeah.

02:18:54.000 Oh, Obama can appoint a liberal.

02:18:56.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:18:56.000 Let's go.

02:18:57.000 Let's go.

02:18:58.000 And now he's throwing a left curve and said, well, maybe I'll, you know, who knows, maybe somebody who's a Republican.

02:19:03.000 And you can imagine that's, you know.

02:19:04.000 Is that what he said?

02:19:05.000 That's what he said, yeah.

02:19:05.000 Whoa.

02:19:06.000 He said, I forget what the guy's name is.

02:19:07.000 He's a former governor, I think. 1.00

02:19:08.000 Fucking sellout. 1.00

02:19:09.000 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

02:19:10.000 Obama's a sellout.

02:19:11.000 What about hope and change?

02:19:12.000 Now we've got to get Bernie in there because he'll, you know, hold the flag up high.

02:19:16.000 I would love to go camping with Obama.

02:19:18.000 Just spend a week with him.

02:19:19.000 Just get drunk with him every night.

02:19:21.000 Just tell me everything.

02:19:22.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:19:22.000 What the fuck is going on? 0.99

02:19:24.000 What is that gig like? 0.99

02:19:25.000 The guy's only three or four years older than me.

02:19:27.000 It's got to be a good feeling, too, with that last day.

02:19:30.000 I mean, I know there's obviously a lot of sadness and there's a lot of worry about, well, how am I going to be remembered? 0.53

02:19:34.000 But that last fucking day when you finally get to hand over the keys, get the hell out of there and go have a few pops and not have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night because some disaster is going on. 0.79

02:19:42.000 Yeah, but he knows too much. 0.97

02:19:45.000 So the consequences of all that knowledge that have been weighing on his head, all these pieces that are in play, where are they going to wind up?

02:19:51.000 In a book!

02:19:52.000 With a book deal.

02:19:53.000 Oh, book deal.

02:19:54.000 Book deal.

02:19:54.000 I didn't mean that.

02:19:55.000 I mean his own conscience.

02:19:57.000 His mind.

02:19:58.000 And then also the fact that he's got to have secret service for the rest of his life.

02:20:03.000 He's driving around in bulletproof cars forever. 0.99

02:20:05.000 That guy can't go to the fucking mall. 1.00

02:20:07.000 You give up your right to go to the movies. 1.00

02:20:09.000 Wow.

02:20:10.000 I wouldn't mind if I didn't ever go to the mall again.

02:20:13.000 Frankly, I'll be president if that means I can't go back into a mall.

02:20:16.000 There's so much you can't do, though.

02:20:18.000 Yeah, no, you're right.

02:20:18.000 You can't go to the ballgame, buy a ticket at the last minute, and go in and just sit in the bleachers.

02:20:22.000 Could you imagine if you do that and, say, Obama comes and sits down next to you with a dog and a pretzel and it's a Coke and a beer.

02:20:28.000 It would be selfie to death.

02:20:29.000 Nachos.

02:20:30.000 Yeah.

02:20:30.000 They would swarm him.

02:20:32.000 If he didn't have Secret Service, they would smother him with selfies until there was no air.

02:20:36.000 He would suffocate.

02:20:37.000 He died of selfies.

02:20:39.000 He probably should have held off on the whole selfie thing when he was in the White House, so to be fair.

02:20:42.000 Walking around the White House with a selfie stick was, I don't know.

02:20:45.000 Selfie sticks are unpresidential.

02:20:47.000 Yeah.

02:20:48.000 I think there's certain things you do and you don't do, and whether it's him or whether it's any other president, I think there's something to be said for maintaining the dignity of an office.

02:20:58.000 Look at him there.

02:20:59.000 Yeah, there you go.

02:21:00.000 Hey, look at you.

02:21:01.000 Hey. 0.99

02:21:03.000 How hard is it to fucking take a selfie just by yourself, man? 0.99

02:21:07.000 You don't need a camera to do that. 0.99

02:21:08.000 That just seems weird.

02:21:12.000 That's odd. 1.00

02:21:13.000 What a sign of the times that is, though, seeing him there with that magic wand with a fucking phone. 0.98

02:21:18.000 Well, did you see him before when he was peering around the corner with his sunglasses pretending to be James Bond? 0.97

02:21:22.000 You know what, also, I bet he has this iPhone 6 and not the 6 Plus, because they, well, we don't want you to look excessive, Mr. President.

02:21:30.000 It's probably a decision.

02:21:31.000 Go with a smaller phone, Mr. President.

02:21:34.000 It should be a little bit more approachable.

02:21:36.000 We don't want you outraged.

02:21:37.000 It's like, I want a Viper!

02:21:38.000 You can't drive a Viper!

02:21:39.000 Viper?

02:21:40.000 But it's an American car!

02:21:42.000 He could never have a Viper.

02:21:43.000 Can you imagine if the President drove a Viper?

02:21:45.000 On a Ford 150. Or a Corvette convertible?

02:21:48.000 Oh, man. 1.00

02:21:50.000 Fucking big Elvis sunglasses? 1.00

02:21:51.000 Yaaah! 1.00

02:21:53.000 I'm free, you fucks! 1.00

02:21:54.000 If it was me and I finished up, I would drive away from the White House on my last day in an El Camino. 1.00

02:21:59.000 This is the fact that drives my wife crazy. 1.00

02:22:02.000 I've always wanted an El Camino.

02:22:04.000 What year?

02:22:06.000 You know what?

02:22:07.000 You give me an El Camino from every year, it was manufactured, and I would be a happy boy.

02:22:12.000 Why do you like El Camino?

02:22:13.000 I don't know why.

02:22:16.000 It's irrational, and my wife hates it because she thinks it's a horrible looking car.

02:22:20.000 Do you have one?

02:22:21.000 I don't.

02:22:22.000 You're a grown man.

02:22:22.000 My latest buy was a Wagoneer.

02:22:26.000 Remember the old Jeep Wagoneers with a wood panel on the side?

02:22:29.000 You bought one of those?

02:22:29.000 I bought one of those and it's actually being redone at Bucks 4x4 in Idaho for all your automotive needs.

02:22:39.000 So you bought it and you're refurbishing it?

02:22:41.000 What year is it?

02:22:41.000 Yeah, it's the last year they manufactured it.

02:22:43.000 91. 91. And it's got original shag carpeting in there, and it's a brilliant vehicle.

02:22:50.000 Got the big bench seat.

02:22:51.000 Remember the bench seat?

02:22:52.000 You have the bench seat.

02:22:53.000 But those aren't good when you went around corners.

02:22:55.000 You slid all over the place.

02:22:56.000 Well, depending on if you had a girl by your side, then, you know, that was... 0.70

02:22:59.000 Yeah, you'd take a hard left turn.

02:23:00.000 Oh, what are you doing over here?

02:23:01.000 Man, those bench seats, but everything's mechanical.

02:23:04.000 Look at that.

02:23:05.000 You like that, huh?

02:23:06.000 Mm-hmm.

02:23:08.000 That's a good-looking car. 1.00

02:23:09.000 That's a piece of shit. 1.00

02:23:11.000 How can you say that? 1.00

02:23:12.000 Look at that son of a bitch. 1.00

02:23:13.000 That's a fucking ugly car. 1.00

02:23:15.000 That is a car right there. 1.00

02:23:16.000 And you know what?

02:23:17.000 That thing weighs about 400,000 tons.

02:23:19.000 It is solid steel.

02:23:21.000 I tap. 1.00

02:23:22.000 What the fuck did that? 0.99

02:23:23.000 What happened to that one? 1.00

02:23:24.000 You tap.

02:23:26.000 That's been...

02:23:26.000 Yeah, that's like a remod.

02:23:28.000 Someone did something weird.

02:23:29.000 Yeah, that shouldn't happen.

02:23:31.000 You want it classic.

02:23:32.000 You want it classic, that's right.

02:23:33.000 You keep it classic.

02:23:34.000 Wow.

02:23:35.000 You like the wood panel?

02:23:36.000 Oh, are you kidding me?

02:23:37.000 Of course, yeah.

02:23:38.000 Jeez.

02:23:39.000 Who doesn't?

02:23:40.000 This invalidates everything, all the common sense that you've laid out on this podcast the last two and a half hours.

02:23:46.000 There's a lot of people out there that would look at the Woodside Wagoneer and say, yeah, I get it.

02:23:51.000 That's a great vehicle.

02:23:52.000 Or the El Camino, to be fair.

02:23:54.000 A lot more throwing up in their mouth.

02:23:56.000 Yeah, well...

02:23:57.000 Well, you know, thank you for that.

02:24:00.000 But yeah, that's sort of the...

02:24:02.000 I know.

02:24:04.000 And then another thing, the 57 Bel Air.

02:24:06.000 I'm a big Bel Air lover.

02:24:08.000 Oh, that's a beautiful car.

02:24:08.000 Love Bel Airs.

02:24:09.000 That's a beautiful car.

02:24:10.000 There's no doubt about that.

02:24:11.000 I sit and watch for entertainment, and my two older boys will sit there and just be at Happiest Clans watching with me.

02:24:17.000 I'll watch Barrett Jackson.

02:24:18.000 Me too.

02:24:20.000 Me too.

02:24:21.000 See, look at that.

02:24:22.000 At Meekam Auction, one time I got caught in a rabbit hole.

02:24:25.000 I was sitting in my house and it came on. 0.99

02:24:26.000 I watched it for two fucking hours. 1.00

02:24:28.000 Just watch people buy a car. 1.00

02:24:29.000 That's all you do.

02:24:29.000 It's insane.

02:24:31.000 And there's just so much in it.

02:24:33.000 Look at that.

02:24:34.000 Well, there was a 1970 Challenger. 0.99

02:24:36.000 That's a beautiful goddamn car right there. 0.99

02:24:39.000 Wow. 1.00

02:24:39.000 What a car. 1.00

02:24:40.000 What a shape.

02:24:41.000 I know.

02:24:42.000 Is that a 55 or a 57?

02:24:44.000 That's in the old days when...

02:24:45.000 Is that a 57?

02:24:46.000 57 Bel Air.

02:24:47.000 Wow.

02:24:48.000 What they would do is...

02:24:49.000 I mean, it was all based on...

02:24:51.000 Aspiration, right?

02:24:52.000 So we had the space program that was starting to build.

02:24:55.000 And you could see it in the vehicles.

02:24:59.000 You could see what that time was like by looking at the cars and the excess of it all and the dreaming.

02:25:06.000 All the chrome, too. 0.98

02:25:08.000 It's pretty fucking special. 0.98

02:25:09.000 Look at that bumper. 0.99

02:25:10.000 God, the shiniest.

02:25:12.000 It's such a strange shape, too.

02:25:14.000 So gorgeous.

02:25:15.000 Yeah.

02:25:16.000 Anyway, and then there's Mercury Sun Valleys.

02:25:19.000 Mercury Sun Valleys are another good car.

02:25:21.000 Anyway, Nomads.

02:25:22.000 I mean, there's just so many good cars out there.

02:25:25.000 The girl I went to high school with her dad had a 55. Oh, my God.

02:25:28.000 It was gorgeous.

02:25:29.000 It was one of those cars.

02:25:30.000 Did you ever get to drive it?

02:25:31.000 No, no, I didn't know her that well, and he would never probably let anybody drive it, but he would just drive by.

02:25:37.000 There was two cars in my neighborhood when I grew up.

02:25:40.000 My sister's boyfriend's brother had a 65 GTO convertible, cherry red.

02:25:49.000 He was the king.

02:25:50.000 This guy was the king.

02:25:52.000 He would drive down the neighborhood, and everybody would go, Oh.

02:25:55.000 That's, yeah.

02:25:56.000 Cliff Jewett was his name.

02:25:57.000 It said chirps on his bumper sticker.

02:26:00.000 His license plate was chirps.

02:26:01.000 And he would drive this thing and he would slam through the gears.

02:26:04.000 And the wheels would go... 1.00

02:26:06.000 Because they had little skinny-ass fucking shitty tires back then. 1.00

02:26:10.000 And then there was another guy. 1.00

02:26:11.000 But those cars.

02:26:11.000 Oh, my God.

02:26:12.000 There's something about those cars to this day.

02:26:14.000 They're commanding the top dollar. 1.00

02:26:16.000 Fuck, yeah! 1.00

02:26:16.000 It used to be in the 50s, and that was when the big dollars were. 1.00

02:26:21.000 But now they've gone back into the muscle cars.

02:26:23.000 Yeah, but there's a year that you get to where they're not worth anything.

02:26:27.000 Like the 1980s.

02:26:28.000 Right. 0.99

02:26:29.000 They're not worth shit. 0.99

02:26:30.000 Well, you remember that point in time, it was a very sad point in time, when all of a sudden you realized that the Trans Am, the Camaro, the Mustang, they all started to look just the same. 0.99

02:26:41.000 Mustangs fell apart. 1.00

02:26:42.000 Oh, Mustangs were pieces of shit. 1.00

02:26:44.000 But now they're beautiful again. 1.00

02:26:46.000 No, they've done a good job of trying to revitalize that, but there was that period of time when Camaro used to be, 68, 69, remember?

02:26:53.000 The best!

02:26:54.000 69 Camaro is one of the greatest-looking muscle cars of all time.

02:26:57.000 And Hugger Orange.

02:26:58.000 They made a Hugger Orange, and it was a color that was beautiful. 1.00

02:27:00.000 See, you lost me again, you fuck. 1.00

02:27:02.000 You had me, and then you went with orange. 1.00

02:27:04.000 If you saw this thing though, it's a special color.

02:27:07.000 Hugger orange, 69 Camaro.

02:27:09.000 You gotta look that up.

02:27:10.000 Anyway, so I'm not sure how we got into that.

02:27:14.000 That's actually not bad.

02:27:15.000 That's actually not bad.

02:27:16.000 But you know what? 0.95

02:27:17.000 That 69 Camaro shape is so fucking spectacular. 0.96

02:27:20.000 It is the perfect muscle car shape. 0.96

02:27:23.000 I mean, it's hard to beat.

02:27:24.000 It's hard to beat that.

02:27:25.000 That's about as good as it gets, man.

02:27:27.000 And that's pulling top dollar now.

02:27:28.000 Oh, yeah.

02:27:29.000 Well, they're taking those now, and they do what they call pro-street conversions.

02:27:34.000 You know, they take a car like that, and they do everything.

02:27:38.000 They do a resto mod.

02:27:39.000 So all the brakes are new.

02:27:41.000 They have modern suspension.

02:27:43.000 You know, they have these Art Morrison chassis that are custom-built for those things.

02:27:49.000 So they take out their funky frames, and they put in, like, a really spectacular, well-designed frame, specifically made... 0.99

02:27:56.000 Look at that fucking car. 0.93

02:27:57.000 But those things never used to show up at auction because it was like, yeah, look, it's not original. 1.00

02:28:02.000 But now, yeah, it's pretty insane.

02:28:04.000 There's still a lot of people that like original. 1.00

02:28:06.000 They're assholes. 1.00

02:28:07.000 They want to die in a car accident. 1.00

02:28:09.000 Those fucking things, you hit the brakes and it's like, you better be ready. 1.00

02:28:12.000 That's why I'm having that Wagoneer redone. 1.00

02:28:14.000 Yeah, because I've got to drive those kids around in there. 1.00

02:28:16.000 But are you going to get modern brakes put in it and everything?

02:28:18.000 Oh, yeah.

02:28:19.000 Yeah, the whole thing's been, basically, you know, everything except the wood.

02:28:24.000 Are you going to do the engine?

02:28:25.000 Yeah.

02:28:25.000 What are you doing to the engine?

02:28:25.000 It's a complete rebuild on the engine.

02:28:27.000 What kind?

02:28:27.000 Fuel injection because, first of all, that's what you want.

02:28:30.000 You don't want a carburetor.

02:28:31.000 Oh, my God.

02:28:32.000 Especially in Idaho.

02:28:33.000 Well, I had it for a while before I put it over at Bucks 4x4 for all your automotive needs.

02:28:38.000 Gas in the carburetor.

02:28:39.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:28:40.000 You start it up.

02:28:41.000 I'd run out there.

02:28:41.000 I'd be in a hurry.

02:28:42.000 I'd jump in and I'd think, what am I doing?

02:28:45.000 Anyway, if anybody out there is looking to sell their El Camino, you can get in touch with me.

02:28:50.000 Wow.

02:28:50.000 Wow!

02:28:51.000 You're really that deep in it, huh?

02:28:52.000 I don't know.

02:28:53.000 Part of it is I remember as a kid, I had a great Hot Wheels collection.

02:28:59.000 And I remember the El Camino was one of my favorites back then.

02:29:02.000 To me, it looks like a pickup truck fucked a Chevelle. 0.98

02:29:05.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:29:05.000 Basically, I can't argue with you. 0.99

02:29:07.000 You're right.

02:29:08.000 I love Chevelles.

02:29:09.000 So to me, it's like, why would you have that when you can have a Chevelle?

02:29:12.000 A 69 Chevelle, one of the most beautiful muscle cars ever created.

02:29:16.000 But a 69 El Camino?

02:29:18.000 Like, wow.

02:29:19.000 There it is.

02:29:20.000 There's the Hot Wheel.

02:29:21.000 Yeah, that's nice.

02:29:22.000 See?

02:29:22.000 I think that's mine.

02:29:23.000 I think you got a picture of my very own Hot Wheel.

02:29:25.000 I got one of those sitting on my desk in the office. 0.98

02:29:28.000 People walk in and they stare at it and they go, why do you have this fucking toy El Camino? 0.97

02:29:32.000 Google a real 69 El Camino, Jamie. 0.98

02:29:35.000 Let's see what a real one looks like.

02:29:37.000 Not a Hot Wheel one.

02:29:38.000 Not a Hot Wheel one, no.

02:29:40.000 That's not a bad looking car, though.

02:29:42.000 You know, the front is so good looking.

02:29:44.000 Yeah.

02:29:45.000 Like, go down that one, the one with the black and white right below that.

02:29:48.000 Ooh.

02:29:48.000 See, look!

02:29:49.000 See, the back looks like shit, though. 1.00

02:29:52.000 The front is so good looking. 0.99

02:29:53.000 The back doesn't look that bad, but...

02:29:55.000 Eh, you know, it's a place to put your dog and, you know.

02:29:58.000 So, anyway.

02:30:00.000 I forget that.

02:30:00.000 You can't drive with your dog in the back of your truck out here.

02:30:03.000 We do that all the time.

02:30:04.000 Was it illegal out here?

02:30:06.000 Somebody would turn you in, right?

02:30:08.000 Somebody would say, how could you dare put your dog out in the back of your truck and drive down the street?

02:30:11.000 I was in Northern California this weekend.

02:30:13.000 Some guy was driving around with this dog in the back of the car, and my daughters were freaking out.

02:30:17.000 They're like, The dog's just running around in the back.

02:30:21.000 That's what they do.

02:30:22.000 We drive down the street and I see kids in the back of pickup trucks.

02:30:25.000 Do you remember that car?

02:30:26.000 Hello, Idaho.

02:30:26.000 Remember that car that had the plastic seats with the handles in the back facing towards the rear?

02:30:33.000 What the hell was that?

02:30:34.000 That was like a Subaru. 0.99

02:30:36.000 What the fuck was that thing? 0.99

02:30:38.000 It had plastic little seats in the back where you could put the kids, and they had little handles. 0.99

02:30:41.000 That was the safety feature.

02:30:42.000 It was little plastic handles that the kids could hold onto as you drove down the road at the highway doing 70 miles an hour after having a couple of martinis at the old club.

02:30:49.000 Is that a Subaru pickup truck thing?

02:30:51.000 I don't remember.

02:30:52.000 I feel like it was.

02:30:54.000 I had a Volkswagen station wagon that had.

02:30:56.000 I got a picture of one.

02:30:57.000 A Volkswagen station wagon?

02:31:00.000 Oh, wow.

02:31:01.000 Yeah, the rear-facing seat in that.

02:31:03.000 My dad had a Chevy that had the rear-facing wagon seat, and me and my brother would fight over it.

02:31:10.000 And we literally would go to the officer's club.

02:31:12.000 My dad would have a few drinks, and then he'd pile all the kids back in the Chevy wagon and barrel down the highway as we're all flying back and forth over the seats arguing with each other and fighting about who gets the rear-facing seat. 0.98

02:31:23.000 And there was not a fucking seat belt to be had. 0.82

02:31:25.000 Well, you remember those Toyota Land Cruisers that had the seats that faced each other? 0.99

02:31:30.000 Right, the side-facing seats.

02:31:31.000 Yeah, the FJs?

02:31:31.000 Yep.

02:31:33.000 FJs 40?

02:31:35.000 Yeah, it was FJ 40, right?

02:31:36.000 I forget what it was, but it was not that long ago.

02:31:39.000 Because they had those in the Land Rovers for years and years and years. 0.98

02:31:44.000 And including, you know, I want to say like 10 years ago, they were still building those things in the back.

02:31:48.000 Really?

02:31:48.000 Yeah, I think so.

02:31:49.000 It's not that long ago.

02:31:50.000 No, I don't think so.

02:31:51.000 I remember it was an option on a, because I got a Land Rover one time and it was probably, okay, to be fair, it was more than 10 years, it was probably 15 years ago.

02:31:59.000 But I remember that was an option to get was the back seats.

02:32:03.000 And I thought, at what point am I ever going to use these?

02:32:05.000 Yeah, maybe the FJ40, but that was way more than 10 years ago. 0.98

02:32:10.000 See, the FZJ80 was a classic Land Rover, and now it's like, I think they stopped making that in 97 or 98, and that's a classic one because it has a solid front and rear axle, and those motherfuckers can drive over everything.

02:32:27.000 They just, you know, to this day, people refurbish them.

02:32:30.000 Land cruisers are a great vehicle, too. 0.97

02:32:32.000 We used to put those things through all sorts of shit overseas. 0.97

02:32:35.000 The Osama Bin Laden special. 0.99

02:32:36.000 Exactly.

02:32:37.000 All the Taliban had those land cruisers because they never broke down. 0.96

02:32:40.000 You build that exhaust pipe up over the top of the roof for crossing the fjords.

02:32:44.000 Yes.

02:32:44.000 The fjords.

02:32:45.000 All the fjords in the desert.

02:32:47.000 The fjords.

02:32:49.000 The snorkel.

02:32:50.000 The desert snorkel.

02:32:51.000 The safari snorkel, they would call it.

02:32:53.000 Bin Laden.

02:32:54.000 We just released more documents from Bin Laden.

02:32:56.000 Yeah?

02:32:56.000 More documents?

02:32:57.000 Yeah, the CIA released about 110 documents from the Bin Laden raid.

02:33:01.000 Oh, that's right.

02:33:02.000 It was all about what he wanted to do with his money when he died.

02:33:05.000 He wrote a will for his $29 million.

02:33:08.000 He had $29 million when he died?

02:33:09.000 Yeah.

02:33:10.000 I'm surprised he didn't have more, frankly.

02:33:12.000 His dad was worth billions. 0.98

02:33:13.000 Well, it's just weird that he was living in some fucking strange compound and everybody kind of knew it. 0.99

02:33:19.000 Yeah, I know. 0.99

02:33:20.000 That was bizarre.

02:33:22.000 We're having dinner tonight.

02:33:23.000 Should we invite Osama? 0.98

02:33:24.000 No!

02:33:25.000 Are you kidding me?

02:33:26.000 He was in that weird compound in that house, like hiding out.

02:33:30.000 Yeah.

02:33:30.000 That's so strange.

02:33:33.000 And we got lucky because he was looking to move.

02:33:34.000 He was looking to get on the move again.

02:33:36.000 I think he probably sensed, in part because he'd had some problems with one of the One of the facilitators that he had, and he was looking actually to replace one of his people that actually dealt with him, sort of his liaison guy between the Pakistanis and Al Qaeda and him.

02:33:52.000 And so, you know, if we'd held off or if we hadn't found him and then only had a month to plan, you know, it could have gone completely the other way.

02:34:02.000 We could have shown up and it would have been an empty place.

02:34:05.000 Because he was actively looking to move to a different location.

02:34:09.000 Well it's kind of funny that the way they had to do it was do it in the middle of the night, land helicopters, one of them crashed, break in, and then shoot them that way.

02:34:19.000 But really they knew where the house was.

02:34:21.000 If we were really evil...

02:34:23.000 If we were evil, yeah. 1.00

02:34:24.000 Just drop one right in the house and fucking incinerate that thing. 0.99

02:34:26.000 Well, and they talked about that as a scenario, and the decision was, look, there's women and children in there. 0.99

02:34:31.000 How many people were in the house with him?

02:34:32.000 He had his extended family with him.

02:34:34.000 You know, there were...

02:34:37.000 There were, I don't know, seven or eight plus guards, but the women and children were there.

02:34:42.000 And the decision was made, no, we can't do that.

02:34:44.000 We can't fire a rocket down there because we don't want to take out all those people. 0.99

02:34:48.000 That's an indication, you know, again, people are going to say, well, fuck you, you just want to go after the oil, but, you know, trying to do the right thing. 0.99

02:34:58.000 Designing an insanely complex operation like that. 0.99

02:35:01.000 Just to save those people that were with him, essentially.

02:35:04.000 Right.

02:35:04.000 And to do the right thing.

02:35:06.000 And the idea being, well, maybe we can recover him alive.

02:35:10.000 Maybe we can actually get him out of there.

02:35:10.000 Is he the only one that died in that raid?

02:35:12.000 Or other people died, too, right?

02:35:13.000 Guards died, yeah.

02:35:14.000 Did you ever see photos of him?

02:35:16.000 Did they let you look at the photos?

02:35:18.000 Of his dead body?

02:35:21.000 Allegedly.

02:35:21.000 Is anybody listening?

02:35:23.000 No.

02:35:23.000 No?

02:35:24.000 It's just between you and me?

02:35:25.000 Just us.

02:35:25.000 No, no, I didn't see.

02:35:27.000 But if you did, you could do something to let me know that you did.

02:35:32.000 You could just look to my left.

02:35:34.000 Act weird.

02:35:37.000 Act like you're trying to hide something. 0.99

02:35:39.000 Right as I asked you the question, I'm like, he can't fucking answer this question. 0.95

02:35:42.000 But no, it was an insanely complex operation. 0.96

02:35:46.000 Full-size mock-ups put together of the Abbottabad compound.

02:35:52.000 Again, talking about what we were talking about before, muscle memory. 0.98

02:35:55.000 How many fucking steps do I have to go? 0.99

02:35:58.000 I'm here. 0.99

02:35:58.000 How many steps do I have to get to the end of this wall? 0.99

02:36:01.000 You have to know exactly how his place is laid out, where he could possibly be.

02:36:05.000 How do they do that?

02:36:06.000 Well, that's all that work.

02:36:08.000 People think that somehow we just rocked up on his place.

02:36:11.000 That was eight plus years of insane effort trying to locate him and then confirm it was him and then You know, design this operation.

02:36:24.000 And so there were a lot of moving parts.

02:36:26.000 It wasn't just like we said, oh, look, great, you know, now we got them. 0.93

02:36:29.000 Pretty fucking impressive that he was able to hide for that long. 0.94

02:36:32.000 Yeah, it is. 0.98

02:36:32.000 But there were a lot of accomplices. 0.98

02:36:35.000 Yeah.

02:36:35.000 And mainly, like, the Pakistani intel service.

02:36:39.000 The, you know, incredibly duplicitous had someone actually as his liaison officer within the Paki intel service.

02:36:46.000 Mm-hmm.

02:36:48.000 And there were a lot of people, yeah, that had a vested interest in making sure that he stayed hidden.

02:36:55.000 And so I know people say, well, he was a tall, bearded dude.

02:36:59.000 You should have been able to find him.

02:37:01.000 Well, it ain't that easy.

02:37:03.000 And it's not as easy as in the feature films.

02:37:06.000 It just doesn't work that way.

02:37:08.000 It's not?

02:37:08.000 No, I know.

02:37:09.000 I know.

02:37:10.000 That's disappointing for a lot of people to hear.

02:37:11.000 But it was a great operation.

02:37:14.000 But it's interesting that they've released these documents at this point in time.

02:37:18.000 And it's fascinating to see kind of inside his mind a little bit more and understand to what degree he did or didn't have sort of operational understanding of what al-Qaeda was doing at the time.

02:37:30.000 Yeah, so anyway, for those of you that are looking for something to read...

02:37:34.000 Zero Dark Thirty, that movie, how accurate was that movie?

02:37:41.000 They make up people?

02:37:43.000 Yeah.

02:37:43.000 Like the girl who was in charge of everything and over there telling Navy SEALs?

02:37:47.000 Yeah, it's a composite of people.

02:37:49.000 It's like Hollywood does.

02:37:51.000 They do some things really, really well.

02:37:53.000 They do the military recreations very, very well.

02:37:56.000 I mean, it's incredibly well.

02:37:57.000 And then they take bits and pieces and turn them into a character, which is what they do.

02:38:03.000 And that's the nature of it.

02:38:05.000 A dramatic representation of what kind of went on, but not really.

02:38:10.000 They make it juicier so they can do it in 90 minutes.

02:38:12.000 Well, you've got to make it a story.

02:38:12.000 You've got to condense it down.

02:38:14.000 If you showed what actually happened, the audience would kill themselves out of boredom because you'd be watching eight years worth of surveillance and eight years worth of struggling to understand what one credit card receipt meant in Relation to something that was happening over across the other side of the world.

02:38:27.000 Right.

02:38:28.000 All these things that go into this that nobody ever sees.

02:38:31.000 So they condense it down.

02:38:32.000 It turns into a movie.

02:38:34.000 And then up on the hill in Capitol Hill, they get confused and they don't realize that maybe it's a movie.

02:38:41.000 I don't know if you remember that kerfuffle they had after they released it where they called them back and said, well, maybe over the interrogation program, maybe you didn't tell us everything. 0.99

02:38:51.000 And you think, well, no, they just made a fucking movie. 0.98

02:38:53.000 And there were people that were upset with Zero Dark Thirty because they thought it put too much importance on interrogation, and there were people that thought it didn't put enough importance, and I'm thinking, it's a fucking movie. 0.99

02:39:04.000 Part of it's just entertainment. 0.93

02:39:06.000 You're not watching a documentary, but anyway.

02:39:09.000 Well, there's a movie that they made, I don't know if you saw it, the Foxcatcher movie that's based on Mark and David Schultz, the wrestlers. 0.99

02:39:19.000 That movie is just filled with bullshit. 0.95

02:39:22.000 And it's a real problem for Mark Schultz, who was an Olympic gold medalist, one of the best wrestlers the United States has ever produced. 1.00

02:39:29.000 And that guy's alive, okay? 0.96

02:39:33.000 His brother got shot by that crazy DuPont fuck, but Mark's alive. 1.00

02:39:37.000 And they changed all sorts of shit in that movie that doesn't make any sense. 0.99

02:39:41.000 Historical shit about his career as a wrestler, his career as a UFC fighter. 0.99

02:39:46.000 They even changed the time where the UFC was invented. 0.97

02:39:51.000 They made the UFC, they made him watch the UFC like...

02:39:55.000 Almost like six or seven years I think before it ever really existed and then on top of it the guy he watched fight was a historical character Big Daddy Goodrich Gary Goodrich was one of the original pioneers of MMA and he in the movie is watching Gary Goodrich fight Paul Herrera when in reality he fought Gary Goodrich in his first UFC fight Also,

02:40:21.000 in the movie, Mark Schultz isn't fighting in the UFC in his first fight.

02:40:25.000 He's fighting in some small organization and it's like kind of sad and he's fighting a white Russian dude.

02:40:32.000 He fought a black guy named Gary Goodrich.

02:40:35.000 Gary Goodrich is a historical figure.

02:40:37.000 It's like it's historical fact in the world of mixed martial arts that Mark Schultz was like one of the greatest talents from wrestling to ever compete in MMA. And Gary Goodrich was a real pioneer, a guy who was very dangerous, and Mark took him down at will,

02:40:53.000 and it was kind of crazy to watch how good of a wrestler he was.

02:40:57.000 Well, in the movie, they bullshitted their way through all that.

02:40:59.000 He didn't even fight Gary.

02:41:00.000 Was there somebody who served as a consultant?

02:41:02.000 Who knows?

02:41:03.000 But Mark went crazy after the movie was released and went on this Twitter rampage.

02:41:07.000 We were supposed to do a podcast about it, but he's an odd guy.

02:41:12.000 He's very elusive.

02:41:14.000 He's talked about doing it, and I said, look, man, let me know when you want to do it.

02:41:16.000 I'll fly you out.

02:41:17.000 We'll talk about it.

02:41:18.000 But he went on this rampage about it on Twitter, and then someone compiled a website where they talked about all the things that they got wrong in that movie and all the stuff they made up in that movie to make it More interesting.

02:41:31.000 But the story itself is fascinating.

02:41:33.000 Anytime anybody releases a story, or anybody signs over something, or anybody picks up a book and says, I'm going to make a movie out of this, and that's it.

02:41:42.000 It becomes an editorial process.

02:41:44.000 It's like saying, how does raw intelligence get out of the field and then suddenly become something that's not?

02:41:48.000 Well, it gets into this editing process, and you've got a bunch of people taking a whack at it over at the National Security Council, and eventually, they've got a spin on it.

02:41:57.000 What?

02:41:57.000 You can kind of understand that if you're talking about someone who died before things were recorded.

02:42:01.000 Right, right, right.

02:42:02.000 Like if you're making a movie on Lincoln, you don't really know what he said.

02:42:05.000 You got to kind of put words in his mouth.

02:42:06.000 Fill this in a little bit.

02:42:07.000 Yeah, what did he say to his wife? 1.00

02:42:08.000 Let's make up some shit he said to his wife. 1.00

02:42:10.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:42:10.000 But Lincoln's dead. 1.00

02:42:12.000 Mark Schultz is alive.

02:42:13.000 Yeah.

02:42:13.000 And he's not that old.

02:42:15.000 I mean, I think he's probably 50 or something like that.

02:42:17.000 Did they talk to him about it?

02:42:17.000 Did they...

02:42:18.000 Oh, yeah. 0.98

02:42:18.000 Well, whatever they talked to him about it, he fucking wasn't happy when the movie was released. 0.98

02:42:22.000 So I don't know. 0.99

02:42:23.000 They made him look gay in the movie.

02:42:26.000 They alluded to some sort of a weird gay affair with him and DuPont. 0.90

02:42:30.000 They gave him frosted tips. 0.52

02:42:32.000 It was very odd.

02:42:33.000 It was very odd what they did.

02:42:35.000 I'm impressed you know what frosted tips are.

02:42:37.000 Well, I've seen them before.

02:42:38.000 Frosted tips, I don't know.

02:42:39.000 They're out there.

02:42:40.000 Sounds like a strip club saying or something.

02:42:44.000 Yeah, I know.

02:42:45.000 You know.

02:42:45.000 I know.

02:42:46.000 You know.

02:42:47.000 We all know.

02:42:48.000 Yeah, who hasn't had frosted tips?

02:42:49.000 Let us pretend we don't know.

02:42:50.000 That's right.

02:42:51.000 I don't know what the hell that is.

02:42:53.000 Where's my El Camino?

02:42:54.000 I never had frosted tips.

02:42:56.000 But I could have.

02:42:57.000 I could have been talked in.

02:42:58.000 I could have fallen into the wrong crowd of people in my 20s and I could have wound up with frosted tips.

02:43:03.000 You could have been walking to the sea after that game at Fenway and walked upstairs to a hairdresser and said, that's it.

02:43:09.000 That's for me.

02:43:10.000 And we saw the perfect guy with frosted tips.

02:43:13.000 And this would have been a completely different conversation that you and me are having right now.

02:43:16.000 Like Iceman from Top Gun.

02:43:18.000 Remember?

02:43:18.000 Val Kilmer.

02:43:19.000 Val Kilmer.

02:43:20.000 Oh, Kilmer.

02:43:21.000 He's not looking as good as he did back in the Top Gun days.

02:43:23.000 He kind of slimmed down a little bit.

02:43:25.000 Oh, good.

02:43:25.000 He got back to a more manageable form.

02:43:28.000 Form.

02:43:29.000 He definitely...

02:43:30.000 Shape.

02:43:31.000 He went full Trump for a while.

02:43:33.000 He just ballooned up to this strange sort of... 1.00

02:43:36.000 That's odd because he was a fucking beautiful man. 0.99

02:43:39.000 That was a hell of a movie. 0.99

02:43:41.000 He did Tombstone.

02:43:43.000 There's the frosted tips, baby!

02:43:45.000 There it is.

02:43:45.000 Look at that.

02:43:45.000 Come on, Iceman!

02:43:47.000 Look at that. 0.99

02:43:47.000 Oh, he's fucking in the Air Force wearing that hairdo. 0.99

02:43:50.000 How does a guy go from that to, have you ever seen that photo where it's like, LOL? Remember when I used to be Batman? 0.99

02:43:56.000 Ever seen that picture?

02:43:57.000 Oh, no. 1.00

02:43:58.000 Where his fucking face looks like a giant pie. 1.00

02:44:01.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

02:44:01.000 I saw him one time over at the Chateau Marmont. 1.00

02:44:04.000 I was sitting there working on my laptop, and I look up, and he's across the room, and I thought, is something familiar?

02:44:11.000 But it was during his large stage.

02:44:13.000 Yeah.

02:44:13.000 I remember staring, thinking, there's something familiar about that dude.

02:44:17.000 And it took me forever to figure it out.

02:44:18.000 Finally, I was about to close my laptop and I thought, aha! 0.77

02:44:21.000 It's a Huckleberry guy.

02:44:22.000 There he is.

02:44:23.000 Hey guys, remember when I was Batman? 0.98

02:44:27.000 What the fuck did he do? 0.98

02:44:28.000 Did he just get into booze? 1.00

02:44:30.000 Was he just boozing it?

02:44:31.000 Donuts.

02:44:32.000 Donuts and booze.

02:44:33.000 That'll bring a lot of people down. 0.97

02:44:34.000 Oh my god!

02:44:36.000 Just stop doing this.

02:44:38.000 Bring up some pictures of the Camino.

02:44:39.000 He got so big.

02:44:41.000 Look at his belly up there.

02:44:43.000 Look at that one.

02:44:43.000 Go up.

02:44:44.000 Look at that one.

02:44:44.000 Wow.

02:44:45.000 To the right.

02:44:45.000 Look at his belly.

02:44:46.000 To the right.

02:44:47.000 Oh my Jesus Christ.

02:44:48.000 Now I'm turning that roll down.

02:44:49.000 I don't want that roll.

02:44:50.000 Well, actually, look at his face there.

02:44:52.000 He's not as fat with his face as he was in that...

02:44:55.000 Remember when I was Batman...

02:44:57.000 Oh my God!

02:44:58.000 He's got a Travolta look there a little bit. 1.00

02:45:01.000 What the fuck, man? 0.99

02:45:03.000 I wonder what he did. 1.00

02:45:04.000 People need to age better out in this town.

02:45:06.000 People need to age better.

02:45:06.000 They need to learn to age gracefully.

02:45:08.000 It's hard.

02:45:09.000 Well, you know what?

02:45:09.000 The doctor just tells you, hey man, I'll just give you a little nip and a little tuck and we'll be fine.

02:45:15.000 We'll be good.

02:45:16.000 Talk about a slippery slope.

02:45:18.000 You're a good looking man, but we can make it a little better.

02:45:22.000 Get some frosted tips and pull those eyes up a little bit. 0.99

02:45:25.000 It's going to make your mouth look a little bigger?

02:45:27.000 That's a weird one.

02:45:28.000 That's not a good one.

02:45:29.000 It's going to make your mouth a little bigger.

02:45:30.000 That's the weird one that women develop this mouth that looks like they could eat your head. 1.00

02:45:35.000 Yeah.

02:45:35.000 They get this joker mouth because they're pulling your face and in pulling your face they do something crazy where they're stretching your mouth.

02:45:45.000 They tighten the vagina and they enlarge the mouth. 1.00

02:45:49.000 Nothing wrong with tightening the vagina. 1.00

02:45:50.000 I know. 0.98

02:45:51.000 I guess I just realized what I was saying.

02:45:54.000 Some medical procedures make sense. 0.99

02:45:56.000 If I had a vagina, I'd want to tighten. 1.00

02:45:58.000 I know this is exactly what people would expect us to be talking about when I come in on an afternoon. 0.99

02:46:03.000 Well, on this podcast, yes.

02:46:05.000 Because this podcast will go south.

02:46:08.000 Well, will, will?

02:46:10.000 It has and will.

02:46:11.000 I think it might have.

02:46:12.000 I wanted to ask you one question before we get out, because I think we're closing in on the three-hour mark.

02:46:16.000 The interrogation school that you were talking about, like, what do they do to you when you're in an interrogation school to try to get you to understand what it's like to break?

02:46:24.000 Are you allowed to talk about that?

02:46:25.000 To some degree, yeah.

02:46:27.000 I mean, what you go through is a lot of what the enhanced techniques are.

02:46:30.000 Yeah, I mean, waterboarding is done to us, to our people.

02:46:33.000 So you got waterboarded?

02:46:35.000 Is anybody listening?

02:46:36.000 No.

02:46:37.000 Okay.

02:46:38.000 Why do you keep telling me that?

02:46:39.000 I keep imagining...

02:46:40.000 Because we're probably actually just recording this.

02:46:42.000 You're just being nice to me.

02:46:43.000 Actually, you're not even recording it.

02:46:44.000 This is just happening and it's going to go in the dumpster.

02:46:46.000 We're streaming live.

02:46:47.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:46:47.000 Anyway, the point being is, yes, that enhanced interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, which is probably, at the end of the day, sleep deprivation, white noise, stress positions...

02:47:02.000 An interrogation facility is a very finely controlled, very labor-intensive place.

02:47:12.000 And it's not like...

02:47:12.000 People think, wow, it's like Abu Ghraib.

02:47:14.000 Well, Abu Ghraib wasn't an interrogation facility.

02:47:16.000 Abu Ghraib was a military holding cell run by people that didn't have the experience.

02:47:23.000 They basically turned it over to junior officers and people that Shouldn't have been in there running a facility like that.

02:47:28.000 And it was completely wrong.

02:47:30.000 But an interrogation facility, you go in and it's all about doing your homework.

02:47:37.000 You don't ever go in and sit down with a detainee unless you have done all your homework.

02:47:43.000 You know where you want this conversation to go.

02:47:45.000 You know the questions you want to ask.

02:47:47.000 You don't want to appear to be wavering.

02:47:48.000 You don't want to appear to be unsure.

02:47:51.000 And if you don't do your homework, it's like a polygraph. 1.00

02:47:54.000 If the polygraph operator doesn't do his homework, lie detector, if he doesn't do his homework, that exam is fucked. 0.99

02:48:00.000 Do polygraphs work? 0.99

02:48:02.000 You know what?

02:48:03.000 In a way.

02:48:04.000 It's not a science, so it doesn't work in the sense that, yes, it will tell if you're lying or not.

02:48:09.000 It's a tool in the kit bag.

02:48:11.000 Of understanding what kind of person you're dealing with.

02:48:14.000 So for some people it works because they feel guilty about everything, right?

02:48:18.000 Right.

02:48:18.000 And so they remember that in 1902 they stole a pen and now they feel bad about it so they're going to, you know, and so the physiology of it is starting to react.

02:48:28.000 And that allows for the operator to go, well, there's something strange about that question.

02:48:32.000 They reacted a little bit differently.

02:48:34.000 They're breathing, you know, whatever it may be, the sweat.

02:48:36.000 They had a reaction.

02:48:37.000 They had a reaction.

02:48:37.000 Now let's go in on that a little bit.

02:48:39.000 But I guess my point being is that or interrogations or even negotiations or interviews.

02:48:44.000 I mean, if you're out there and your job is to interview people, well, then...

02:48:46.000 You know what it's like.

02:48:47.000 You've got to know who you're talking to.

02:48:49.000 And that's how it becomes effective.

02:48:51.000 But in training, yeah, you go through all these things and it can be fairly intense.

02:48:59.000 But the idea, again, part of it is to show, well, look, this is what it does.

02:49:03.000 This is how you can deal with it.

02:49:06.000 This is how you stay close to something that's plausible.

02:49:13.000 It's like an alias or a backstory, whatever you want to call it.

02:49:17.000 You want to try to keep it close to the truth.

02:49:19.000 The problem that people have in interrogation sometimes is they'll say something that's not true.

02:49:24.000 Now they've got to remember that.

02:49:25.000 Then they go back in for another session.

02:49:27.000 They got to remember what they said before.

02:49:28.000 Now if they say another lie, now they got to remember those two things.

02:49:30.000 And it's pretty soon after three or four interviews, they're trying to remember this string of lies where what you really want to do is you want to try to keep it as close as possible to, you know, whatever the truth may be so that you don't have to spend all your time struggling to remember what was the hell I said last time.

02:49:46.000 So like if you lied to someone that you're interrogating, that's what you're saying?

02:49:50.000 No, if someone's being interrogated.

02:49:52.000 Oh, okay.

02:49:52.000 Yeah, I mean, that's...

02:49:53.000 Or, you know, the interview process.

02:49:55.000 I mean, it's just...

02:49:56.000 So anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that other than to say that it's...

02:49:59.000 And whether it's military, whether it's my old outfit or whomever, it's an important part of training because, you know, again, you have to understand what's possible now.

02:50:09.000 It's a changed world, right?

02:50:11.000 The DOJ and the White House and everything came out and said...

02:50:13.000 Can't torture people anymore.

02:50:14.000 Well, you can't use enhanced techniques, you know, and...

02:50:17.000 That's a funny one.

02:50:18.000 Yeah.

02:50:19.000 So, you know, there you go. 0.99

02:50:21.000 And now people are screaming, that's fucking torture. 0.99

02:50:23.000 That's all you do. 0.98

02:50:24.000 But I mean, the idea being is all you can use is the field manual, the military field manual.

02:50:28.000 What does that mean?

02:50:29.000 Well, it means I couldn't break my daughter with a military field manual.

02:50:32.000 You couldn't?

02:50:32.000 I don't think so.

02:50:33.000 What does the military field manual allow?

02:50:35.000 And what I mean by that is I don't mean to be...

02:50:37.000 I don't mean to be...

02:50:40.000 Dismissive.

02:50:40.000 Flip, or dismissive.

02:50:41.000 What I'm saying is, once people out there know what can and can't be done...

02:50:46.000 They know how much they can take.

02:50:48.000 They know exactly what they can take.

02:50:50.000 They know exactly what's coming down the pike, and they're just going to keep their yap shut. 0.98

02:50:53.000 And people say, well, but you can develop a relationship with them. 1.00

02:50:55.000 Well, no shit, Sherlock. 1.00

02:50:56.000 That's what we did. 0.99

02:50:57.000 Most of the time, all the information we got, basically, if people took the time to go through DOJ memos and look at the actual information...

02:51:04.000 Most of what we did was based on conversing, based on knowing who you're talking to, doing your homework, figuring out how the pieces fit together, and talking to people. 0.96

02:51:14.000 But those people don't have much incentive to talk sometimes if they know that, well, you can't do shit to them anyway. 0.98

02:51:19.000 Right. 0.99

02:51:20.000 All they have to do is keep their mouth shut and you're saddled down by the rules.

02:51:24.000 The advantage of enhanced techniques- You should do air quotes when you say that.

02:51:29.000 Enhance techniques.

02:51:30.000 Do air quotes.

02:51:31.000 And what I mean by that is...

02:51:33.000 Enhance techniques.

02:51:35.000 That seems like the perfect representative.

02:51:37.000 Yeah, I know.

02:51:38.000 And there you go.

02:51:39.000 And I know that's also...

02:51:41.000 It's like everything else, right?

02:51:42.000 It's like all the other discussions we've been having in terms of...

02:51:46.000 You know, people base this on their experiences, and so there's people that you're never going to shift off this position, you're never going to shift off of this other position.

02:51:52.000 It was all torture, or it's not, and there's some things that exist between talking to a detainee and what is torture.

02:51:59.000 The United States is knowable when we don't torture people.

02:52:01.000 Yeah, well, yeah, I want them to think that we do.

02:52:05.000 I don't want to, but I want them to not know what's in the kit bag.

02:52:08.000 Okay, so enhanced techniques.

02:52:11.000 So when you say enhanced techniques, is sleep deprivation in the enhanced techniques thing?

02:52:15.000 Yeah, sleep deprivation.

02:52:15.000 So you can't do that anymore?

02:52:16.000 No.

02:52:17.000 What?

02:52:17.000 No.

02:52:18.000 What?

02:52:18.000 If you read what took place, people read those DOJ memos and realize how much, if they actually took the time.

02:52:27.000 We're good to go.

02:52:43.000 And yeah, okay, it's not supposed to be nice, and it's not pleasant.

02:52:47.000 And we can argue, and obviously people do.

02:52:50.000 Torture is wrong, and we shouldn't do it, but do I think that there were some things like a sleep deprivation or stress positions or noise?

02:52:56.000 What's a stress position?

02:52:57.000 Well, you know, like put your forehead against the wall and walk back.

02:53:04.000 Lean your head against the wall and walk back and stay in that position for 15 minutes or whatever.

02:53:11.000 You make them do that?

02:53:13.000 What if they don't?

02:53:14.000 In the old days, people are pretty compliant in an interrogation facility back when they didn't know what was coming down the pike. 1.00

02:53:21.000 And that's why I keep saying the same thing.

02:53:24.000 I agree.

02:53:25.000 You shouldn't be torturing, but at the same time, we shouldn't also be telling the hostiles what we can and can't do.

02:53:30.000 Alright, you say you shouldn't be torturing, but what if you have someone who knows that a 9-11 is about to take place and you've got to get information out of them?

02:53:38.000 What other ways are there if you have a small window of time?

02:53:41.000 It's not really.

02:53:43.000 The unsatisfactory answer is it's not really.

02:53:45.000 Torture doesn't really produce information.

02:53:46.000 I agree with...

02:53:48.000 Senator McCain and lots of other people about that.

02:53:50.000 People will say whatever they need to say to make whatever that horrible torture is to stop.

02:53:56.000 Again, I understand there's a moral aspect to it.

02:53:59.000 I tend to just look at things from an operational efficiency point of view.

02:54:03.000 It's not good.

02:54:03.000 You can't count on information.

02:54:05.000 So beating somebody up doesn't get information out of them.

02:54:07.000 Cutting off their fingers doesn't get information out of them.

02:54:10.000 But does sleep deprivation?

02:54:12.000 Not that our hostiles out there.

02:54:14.000 Not that people that are after us wouldn't do the same.

02:54:16.000 Of course they do that.

02:54:16.000 Of course they would.

02:54:17.000 But they're not really after accurate information.

02:54:19.000 They don't care.

02:54:20.000 It's a different world that they exist in.

02:54:22.000 If we're after actionable intelligence that you can count on, then it's just a very, very labor-intensive process.

02:54:28.000 Well, there's ways to get people to talk, right?

02:54:32.000 Well, yeah.

02:54:32.000 I mean, there's...

02:54:33.000 Up to a point?

02:54:34.000 Psychologically speaking, sure.

02:54:35.000 I mean, there's ways to get them to comply.

02:54:37.000 And that's part of the process is, you know, in a well-controlled environment, sleep deprivation or white noise.

02:54:44.000 And how do you keep them awake?

02:54:45.000 What do you have to do for sleep deprivation?

02:54:47.000 You keep them standing or you keep moving them from place to place or you pump in some Arabic music or baby crying or whatever it may be.

02:54:58.000 And you just keep them awake.

02:55:00.000 Again, it's labor intensive because you've got to keep checking on them, making sure they're awake.

02:55:03.000 But you do that in a controlled environment.

02:55:05.000 We're not talking about five days of this.

02:55:09.000 And again, if people took the time to understand or read, they would realize there were a lot of doctors, psychiatrists involved that were saying, yeah, you can or you can't do this.

02:55:17.000 It wasn't, you know, again, I get conflicted because I understand why people are so emotive about it, and I get that.

02:55:27.000 And I do agree there's...

02:55:30.000 You know, you have to look at what you can and can't do, and you have to be very, very critical about that, and you have to be very careful.

02:55:37.000 But I guess I keep coming back to the same thing, is we've kind of given up to Ghost.

02:55:40.000 You know, from now on, going forward, everybody out there knows what we can and can't do.

02:55:45.000 And so whether we were going to do it or not, which we weren't in terms of the torture side of things, they didn't know that.

02:55:51.000 And so you could speed the process up of getting them to comply to some degree, because they didn't know what was coming down the pike. 0.91

02:55:57.000 And you keep them on the back foot, and you keep them guessing.

02:56:00.000 And that's your advantage in a situation like that.

02:56:05.000 But yeah, again, I keep going back to the same thing.

02:56:09.000 I get it.

02:56:09.000 I understand why people are so...

02:56:11.000 And to be fair, the left really did a great job of framing the argument.

02:56:16.000 They really took it and said, you're either talking to somebody or it's all torture.

02:56:20.000 Well, if torture doesn't really produce actionable information, then it makes sense to not torture people.

02:56:25.000 Right.

02:56:26.000 Absolutely.

02:56:26.000 That's my point.

02:56:27.000 Yeah.

02:56:28.000 That's my point.

02:56:28.000 But you can't give them ecstasy and hookers either.

02:56:31.000 No, it's not. 0.91

02:56:32.000 Exactly.

02:56:32.000 You can't give them nice things.

02:56:33.000 Yeah.

02:56:33.000 It's not supposed to be a pleasant situation.

02:56:35.000 And so people say, well, I can't believe you would put somebody in a stress position, or you would make them uncomfortable, or you would keep them awake for 36 hours.

02:56:43.000 I can't believe you would do that.

02:56:44.000 Really? 0.99

02:56:45.000 I mean, what the fuck do you want to do? 0.98

02:56:46.000 Of course, and we'd always try. 0.95

02:56:47.000 You'd always try to develop relationships with people.

02:56:48.000 That is, in fact, the best way to do it.

02:56:51.000 Find out about their psychology.

02:56:54.000 Try to find ways to get them on side, to get their sympathy or to bring them on board.

02:57:00.000 Whatever you can do.

02:57:01.000 But to just say, we're taking all these other things out of the kit bag, whether we're ever going to use them or not, and here's all we can do.

02:57:09.000 You're pretty much guaranteed that there's a lot of people out there who are walking around in Syria and Iraq for ISIS carrying a field manual in their back pocket who know exactly what we can do and we can't do now.

02:57:20.000 But isn't there ways we circumvent that by not doing it on American soil?

02:57:24.000 No.

02:57:24.000 No, no, no.

02:57:26.000 I know people like to think that.

02:57:27.000 They like to think that there's like some secret CIA holding place that you could take people on the moon.

02:57:32.000 Of course. 0.99

02:57:32.000 They could stick rockets up their ass and they start talking. 0.99

02:57:34.000 On the moon. 0.99

02:57:35.000 That would be costly.

02:57:37.000 That would be a lot of money involved.

02:57:38.000 Too much money.

02:57:39.000 A moon station.

02:57:41.000 Like Guantanamo, for instance. 0.99

02:57:43.000 A lot of dark shit has gone on in Guantanamo, right? 0.99

02:57:47.000 No, actually, you know what? 0.99

02:57:49.000 Here's where people would say, I can't believe it.

02:57:53.000 Guantanamo has always been more about...

02:57:57.000 A holding facility.

02:57:59.000 And you could argue that the, depending on how you want to frame it, if you want to say it was all torture, fine, then the torture or the enhanced techniques, whatever, for the most part took place overseas in facilities that, you know, we were running that were temporary or our host countries were running.

02:58:15.000 And that's where I would much rather have, we treat people a lot better than some of our allies do, frankly, and particularly a lot of our Middle Eastern allies.

02:58:25.000 Yeah, I could only imagine.

02:58:26.000 There are a lot of guys in Guantanamo who would like to stay in Guantanamo right now, frankly, than go be repatriated to the Middle East.

02:58:36.000 Really?

02:58:37.000 Yeah.

02:58:37.000 Oh, yeah.

02:58:38.000 Are you kidding me?

02:58:38.000 Rather than go back and face Egyptian justice?

02:58:41.000 Yeah.

02:58:42.000 Or the Jordanians? 0.54

02:58:43.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:58:45.000 I mean, again, I know people are going to say, well, they're not clamoring to stay in Gitmo.

02:58:49.000 Don't get me wrong.

02:58:49.000 I'm saying that they are treated better in that facility than they would be if they find themselves suddenly in an Egyptian prison.

02:58:57.000 If they were interrogated by our allies.

02:58:58.000 But haven't there been people that have been found to have been detained there that really were innocent?

02:59:04.000 Let's put it this way.

02:59:06.000 Did we throw out a big net?

02:59:09.000 And err on the side of caution when we're picking people up off the battlefield?

02:59:14.000 Yes.

02:59:17.000 Did we do a lot of good by removing a lot of these people and some of the key players off the battlefield and out of the operational system within Al-Qaeda and some of their supporting elements?

02:59:29.000 Yes.

02:59:29.000 So it's not a satisfying answer because it's not black or white.

02:59:34.000 It's not all bad.

02:59:35.000 It's not all good.

02:59:36.000 Again, like we were talking about before, the gray...

02:59:39.000 It's unfortunate, but a part of reality.

02:59:42.000 I don't know.

02:59:43.000 And yes, what are you going to do?

02:59:44.000 Close it down and say, well, we're sorry.

02:59:46.000 The recidivism rate for people coming out of Gitmo is up in the 30 percentile rate.

02:59:51.000 It's a third plus. 0.96

02:59:54.000 Well, you think that actually going to Gitmo would probably encourage them to want to fucking hate America more, wouldn't it? 0.98

03:00:00.000 Well, yeah. 0.98

03:00:01.000 I got no problem with that.

03:00:03.000 I think that's probably a fair statement.

03:00:06.000 Do I want them back out on the battlefield looking to kill us or our allies?

03:00:10.000 No.

03:00:12.000 But again, what's the answer?

03:00:15.000 Are we going to close Gitmo and bring the 46 or so that we're never going to repatriate over to U.S. soil?

03:00:22.000 Who knows?

03:00:22.000 I mean, if the president gets his way, I don't think he's going to get it past Congress.

03:00:25.000 But again, it's one of those things...

03:00:27.000 He wants to close it down, right?

03:00:28.000 He wants to close it down.

03:00:29.000 And what does he want to do?

03:00:30.000 There's 46 people that are being detained?

03:00:32.000 Well, there's 91 there, but by the time you get to the ones that just aren't going to find a home...

03:00:37.000 I mean, look, the Bush administration and the Obama administration, we've spent years and years trying to find places for these people.

03:00:42.000 It's not like anybody didn't want to try to get these people sent somewhere else.

03:00:46.000 That's been a goal of this administration and the previous one.

03:00:51.000 Some folks just aren't going to find another home.

03:00:53.000 So there's about 45, 46 of them.

03:00:55.000 And the idea would bring them back to the States, I guess. 0.97

03:00:59.000 Jesus.

03:00:59.000 So how do they catch these people?

03:01:02.000 I mean, it's all various different ways, right?

03:01:04.000 Right, right.

03:01:04.000 And that was old days.

03:01:06.000 You don't hear us talking about catching a lot of people anymore.

03:01:09.000 And part of the reason why is because you'd rather just paint that target and blow the fuck out of them than risk your career Picking up somebody and then getting accused of mishandling a detainee or all the crap that can happen because suddenly they've decided a program for capturing somebody and bringing them back to Guantanamo or wherever is not possible.

03:01:33.000 So what you've found over the years, recent past, is it's a lot easier to just smoke them than to pick them up. 0.51

03:01:40.000 I hate to say that.

03:01:41.000 I mean, that's a sad thing to say.

03:01:44.000 And so what does that mean?

03:01:45.000 From an operationally efficient point of view, that means your pipeline of potential intelligence is drying up.

03:01:50.000 Because you're not picking these people up live.

03:01:53.000 It's just easier to whack them. 0.95

03:01:55.000 That is a harsh reality. 0.58

03:01:57.000 Well, it's part of the way it works. 0.94

03:02:01.000 Everybody was getting their ass kicked for being involved in an approved program, whether it was rendition or an interrogation program or whatever part of that or periphery.

03:02:16.000 People look at the drone program and think, wow, that's really expanded under Obama. 1.00

03:02:19.000 Well, no shit, because just take him out. 0.99

03:02:23.000 We don't want the heartburn. 0.98

03:02:24.000 So that's why the drone program has expanded, because capturing detainees is more problematic politically.

03:02:30.000 You think this administration wants more people to put in Guantanamo? 0.98

03:02:33.000 Isn't that fucked up that it's easier to kill someone politically? 0.99

03:02:37.000 Like to have civilian casualties, and the civilian casualties are pretty fucking high with drones, right? 1.00

03:02:41.000 Yeah.

03:02:42.000 Well, yeah, I mean, again, under the theory that nothing's going to be perfect, they try everything they can to limit that.

03:02:48.000 But yeah, of course, there have been civilian casualties, no doubt about that.

03:02:51.000 Isn't that something crazy, like 80%?

03:02:53.000 No, no, it's not that high.

03:02:55.000 You could argue even one's too high, right?

03:02:58.000 Right.

03:02:58.000 But it's not, you know, again, once again, the same thing.

03:03:01.000 Numbers get thrown out on one side, and so it's not 8%, it's not zero.

03:03:06.000 We've had unfortunate instances, no doubt about that.

03:03:10.000 And like I said, one's too many.

03:03:15.000 Right.

03:03:26.000 Right.

03:03:34.000 What if they come up with a way one day to actually...

03:03:37.000 I mean, I know that they have something called FMRI, functional magnetic resonance imagery, I think it's called, where they've used it, I believe, in India.

03:03:47.000 It was a real problematic case because they convicted someone for murder because they had functional knowledge of the crime.

03:03:57.000 I talked to this neuroscientist who was kind of an expert in fMRI, and she said there's a huge problem with that and that would never fly in the United States because functional knowledge of the crime could have been established through her interrogation process,

03:04:14.000 through questioning, through asking her about the case.

03:04:18.000 She could have functional knowledge of the crime scene.

03:04:20.000 So, like, proving it through an fMRI, she's like, it doesn't work.

03:04:25.000 So what they're convicting someone on is something that would never fly in America.

03:04:29.000 But what if they could?

03:04:30.000 If they could one day figure out a way...

03:04:33.000 Sounds like Minority Report or whatever that movie was with Val Kilmer before he gained weight.

03:04:38.000 Was he Val Kilmer?

03:04:39.000 No, it was Tom Cruise.

03:04:40.000 No, it was Tom Cruise.

03:04:40.000 Same guy.

03:04:41.000 Yeah.

03:04:42.000 It's the same one.

03:04:43.000 We've never seen them photographed together.

03:04:44.000 You know what I said?

03:04:45.000 It's like Yasser Arafat and Ringo Starr.

03:04:47.000 I think they were in a movie together, man.

03:04:49.000 They were in Top Gun.

03:04:50.000 Of course they were.

03:04:51.000 What am I talking about?

03:04:52.000 I forgot.

03:04:53.000 I had my memory wiped clean by seeing fat Val Kilman.

03:05:00.000 Oh, well.

03:05:02.000 You know what?

03:05:02.000 I've got to tell you.

03:05:04.000 I'm sure the viewers are tired of it, but I've had a great time.

03:05:08.000 I've had a great time, too.

03:05:09.000 Thank you very much for doing this.

03:05:10.000 I really appreciate your candor and your openness and exploring some uncomfortable and difficult subjects and giving us some inside information that It's very difficult for people to get any other way.

03:05:22.000 Unless they're talking to a guy like you.

03:05:24.000 A lot of it is speculation and bullshit and posturing and reading websites that might be completely inaccurate.

03:05:31.000 So I think you've helped us a lot.

03:05:33.000 I really appreciate it.

03:05:35.000 I just encourage everybody.

03:05:35.000 Just read everything you can.

03:05:37.000 Don't settle on one source of information.

03:05:39.000 The right and the left make that mistake. 0.98

03:05:41.000 And again, we're getting to a point where it's pretty fucked up. 0.89

03:05:45.000 We've got to find a way to get back to You know, the center. 0.99

03:05:49.000 And get shit done. 0.90

03:05:50.000 Otherwise, I don't know where we're heading. 0.96

03:05:51.000 But anyway, that's my last little bit.

03:05:53.000 But this has been a great experience.

03:05:56.000 Love the show.

03:05:57.000 And I really appreciate it.

03:05:58.000 And I'm going to check with you about my middle boys' martial arts training.

03:06:02.000 Yes, please do.

03:06:02.000 Please do.

03:06:03.000 I'll help you out.

03:06:03.000 Thanks, brother.

03:06:04.000 I really appreciate it.

03:06:05.000 All right, folks.

03:06:05.000 See you tomorrow.

03:06:06.000 We'll be back with Ian McCall.

03:06:08.000 We're going to preview this weekend's UFC and have some fun.

03:06:11.000 See you then.

03:06:11.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 01, 2016

Joe Rogan Experience #767 - Mike Baker

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Summary

Transcript