The Tucker Carlson Show - Dave Smith on how neocons wrecked the country

00:00:00.000 welcome to tucker carlson show it's become pretty clear that the mainstream media are

00:00:13.840 dying they can't die quickly enough and there's a reason they're dying because they lie they lied

00:00:19.660 so much it killed them we're not doing that tucker carlson.com we promise to bring you the

00:00:24.540 most honest content the most honest interviews we can without fear or favor here's the latest

00:00:30.820 i mean it's a little weird for me because you're a libertarian and in fact you could even wind up

00:00:37.960 on a libertarian ticket at some point if not this cycle no but i'm just saying it could happen right

00:00:42.560 so you're you're literally a libertarian and but for some reason we have the same instincts on

00:00:49.060 almost everything i would say um there are a lot of people in conservative media who i always have

00:00:57.480 felt like i had a lot in common with and now i don't and it's not because i've gotten liberal

00:01:01.080 i've gotten way less liberal i see them as way more liberal so what like what happened to

00:01:07.620 conservative media not all of them i have a million friends in it but like

00:01:11.560 a lot of the big names seem very liberal to me yeah i mean i think that it's kind of the same thing

00:01:18.120 that happened to libertarians i think they're in washington dc and that's not where you're

00:01:23.940 supposed to be no that's right and so the best like the best libertarian uh organization in the

00:01:29.600 world is the mises institute and it's based in auburn and they alabama yeah and they specifically put

00:01:36.280 it there because they like want no part of washington dc and then you see all of the uh the you know cato

00:01:43.320 and guys like that who are based out of dc they get very corrupted and they and you can look at it

00:01:48.920 it's like it's the same thing uh we were just talking about donahue calling out chris matthews

00:01:52.880 back in the day you're having cocktail parties with the fed chairman but you're a libertarian

00:01:57.700 you shouldn't be doing they're actually doing that yeah oh yeah yeah absolutely doing that

00:02:01.700 and i think a lot of that's the same problem with the kind of conservatism inc or whatever they've

00:02:07.980 been they've been corrupted and power is seductive and i'm sure you know that from like being in dc for

00:02:13.220 so many years that you i'm not saying like you're kind of an anomaly think about all the people in

00:02:18.360 washington dc and how much all of them wanted to suck up to power almost right like what 90 something

00:02:24.320 percent at least that's why they're there right and so it's a it's a difficult thing i didn't get

00:02:30.120 that for some reason for so long i was living in the middle of it i don't know i'm not a super

00:02:33.900 genius so i didn't i didn't realize how corrupt it was everyone always said it was corrupt it felt

00:02:38.700 like a really nice place to me i raised all my kids there and but when you realize how corrupt it

00:02:44.120 is i mean it's horrifying yeah but that's also i think there's something like the uh the the nature

00:02:49.880 of conservatism or the conservative movement in america has always just been to lose like there it's

00:02:57.800 like built into them like every generation just loses and then moves on to the next

00:03:03.740 thing to lose i like the the old right the um you know robert taft right right way they uh they were

00:03:11.220 largely in opposition to the new deal that was they were fighting back against the fdr's new deal

00:03:16.580 we're in opposition to that and then you know you cut forward uh 20 years and and it's fdr democrats

00:03:24.220 are the new republicans right ronald reagan it's like it's it's nobody would dare question the new deal

00:03:29.680 and then of course there was a movement pushing back against the great society and yes and now of

00:03:35.040 course no entitlements are like no one would ever dare question medicare and look just recently i saw

00:03:41.360 uh donald trump who's not a traditional conservative but he did the most traditional conservative thing

00:03:46.320 when he said uh he said when we get in there again we are gonna fix obamacare and i'm like okay

00:03:53.160 right all right so that's where we're at now right the last it's a no more repeal and you don't even

00:03:57.500 hear republicans talk about it anymore right so it's always like the next round of big government

00:04:03.000 increases the next round of centralized power in dc they will put up a little fight they will lose

00:04:09.400 they will then a few years later accept this as something that we is is consensus amongst all of us

00:04:14.220 but but you see we're against whatever the next thing is you know transing the kids or you know

00:04:19.880 student loan bailouts we're against that now you know but they'll lose and then eventually accept

00:04:25.060 that why why would you so that what does that suggest about them they don't it's this is a

00:04:30.560 performance this is not sincere yeah i mean conservatives typically have played the role of

00:04:38.260 being against consolidating power in dc right um but that's you know that's obviously that's going

00:04:45.900 against the wind not with it and so it's almost like it almost seems like a professional wrestling

00:04:51.100 thing where they're like they're the ones who are supposed to lose at the end of the day

00:04:55.140 they kind of say the right thing never really mean it you know and then ultimately acquiesce

00:05:01.680 i i have to say i was disgusted by the lack of fight in a lot of professional conservatives during

00:05:10.720 covid like disgusted by it you know banning freedom of movement freedom of speech bodily autonomy like

00:05:19.600 the whole thing was like so mind-blowing to me if this actually was the totalitarianism we've been

00:05:25.060 worried about or talking pretending we're worried about for a long time it came and a lot of them

00:05:29.940 didn't say anything about it but i was totally bewildered by the libertarian response which was

00:05:37.220 also kind of silent i thought cato would be i don't know camped out in front of the white house

00:05:42.840 or the cdc or like what what was that well it shows you i mean it's um well just and and because you use

00:05:48.880 the word totalitarian and i think sometimes when you use that word it's it's perceived as like being

00:05:54.160 somewhat hyperbolic but it's really like what else could describe lockdowns well that's what i mean

00:05:58.640 that that is totalitarianism you had american citizens turning on their tv every morning to find

00:06:04.900 out from their governor what they were allowed to do well exactly like i mean the most you couldn't

00:06:09.660 imagine like if the question was like can i have a funeral for my dad and they're like sorry no we've

00:06:13.660 decided you can't you know i mean like the most intimate details yes liberties that we would all

00:06:18.080 have taken for granted um and so okay to your point right not only did conservatives uh not fight

00:06:25.740 against it i think the majority of them cheered it on or went along with it i noticed um and as far as

00:06:31.640 the you know the point about libertarians there are kind of like there are these moments um and i

00:06:38.840 know you experienced this a lot when you you were on your fox show there are these moments where there's

00:06:42.500 like a storm where there's something's like a white hot issue you know and it becomes very easy later

00:06:49.280 after that passes to be on the right side of that like everyone's on the right side of iraq now you

00:06:55.040 know what i mean john mccain wrote in his memoir that iraq was a mistake so even john mccain

00:07:00.980 could admit many years later but the thing is that didn't that doesn't really matter as much

00:07:06.100 as if you were opposed to it when it was happening because like in 2002 if you were like hey i don't

00:07:11.660 i don't think he has weapons of mass destruction you were everybody knew that well that just means

00:07:16.620 you're a queer basically you know and you hate your country and you're weak and you're and so

00:07:20.960 you know there's there's little thing you know the example i like to use a lot because i remember

00:07:25.300 you broadcasting through this so you'll remember it well uh but was when um when donald trump

00:07:30.220 announced that he was going to pull out of syria and for like two weeks it was like the kurds

00:07:35.020 remember we're abandoning the kurds but our allies the kurds like by the way if there's

00:07:40.280 our ancient allies yes yes if there's one thing that has been consistent in american foreign policy

00:07:44.940 in my lifetime is that we always screw over the kurds but for whatever whatever state i mean yeah i

00:07:50.440 mean we uh george hw bush encouraged them to rise up and overthrow saddam hussein and then went nah

00:07:56.060 you know i thought about it again i don't think so this is obviously just slaughtered all i mean

00:07:59.580 you know but why am i laughing it's such a consistent theme well it's not we're not laughing

00:08:04.800 rise up plight of the kurds we're laughing at the hypocrisy of the media but for like two weeks if

00:08:09.760 anyone said they wanted to you know they supported trump pulling out of syria it was like you're a bad

00:08:14.600 person you hate the kurds by the way has anyone checked in on the kurds since then has the media ever

00:08:18.940 talked about them again like it just it was totally just used in that moment and that's just a little

00:08:22.860 example like that's not the big one but like like our historic enemies the houthis right yes man i

00:08:27.840 remember growing up in la jolla in the 70s hearing about the houthis and my father said i just want

00:08:32.540 you to grow strong and resolute so we can fight the houthi hordes your one purpose in life is to get

00:08:38.760 strong enough to take on these houthis when the day comes and it will where these houthis challenge

00:08:42.760 our freedom you must be prepared right it's it's so ridiculous but like look i remember so uh you

00:08:49.340 it was either in it might have been april or may of 2020 but i remember you covering on your show

00:08:57.700 and i also covered this on my podcast at the time got to a smaller audience but you covering the the

00:09:02.800 lab leak yeah you're like hey this is a really like plausible yeah theory of where and in fact it seems

00:09:08.200 to make a lot more sense because already there was it's not that we had like um a conclusive

00:09:13.000 case that you could take to court but there were like big pieces of information that were really

00:09:19.880 narrative shattering well and there were also the bats weren't close enough to where the wet

00:09:24.420 markets were also a wet market is a seafood market so why were they selling mammals in a seafood

00:09:28.660 market just pangolins and bats and then there was a group of chinese researchers who in december

00:09:33.520 in january of 2020 wrote this paper they said no we think this was a lab leak and then they all

00:09:39.580 disappeared yeah that was on the internet and there were like four scientists from the lab that

00:09:44.140 were hospitalized in november with covid like symptoms and you were like that's i don't know

00:09:48.680 my eyebrow is raising is yours not raising you know but at the time this was and i know you were aware

00:09:55.400 of this this was a crazy controversial thing to say you were racist somehow it's more racist to think

00:10:03.420 that the chinese had like a lab than to think they were like biting bat heads off or something like

00:10:08.680 eating pangolins yeah but by the way now as i say this to you now this is not controversial at all

00:10:14.880 oh this isn't a white hot issue it was then but it's not now and so a lot of a lot of just what

00:10:20.860 back to your original point about like the libertarians who failed on the job a lot of it

00:10:26.660 is simply comes down to be a matter of courage it's just a matter of like hey when the issue that

00:10:31.520 might make everyone hate you and all of the powerful people call you the worst names which

00:10:36.560 naturally human beings have a tendency to not want that we don't want to be ostracized you don't

00:10:40.920 want to be called these names right some people just kind of have this personality trait and this

00:10:45.460 isn't like whether you're on the left or right it's something that you have it's something i have

00:10:49.060 it's something uh um alex berenson has yes he's kind of like i don't care i'll say it right now when

00:10:55.460 it's going to get me called all well it really is i remember about 15 years ago it was in july and i was

00:11:01.200 in maine and i my kids were playing on the dock and it was like the happiest day you know it was

00:11:06.600 like perfect bluebird day sound of laughter of children it was like just i was like oh i was in

00:11:11.960 such a good mood and i was looking at my kids and sort of walking along and i stepped on a beehive

00:11:16.580 and a whole swarm of bees flew up my shorts and just attacked me in my nether regions and i went in

00:11:25.580 about no exaggeration 10 seconds from being placid and happy to being in agony and on fire and i

00:11:32.200 jumped in the lake wrecked my cell phone that is the experience of these hysterical moments right

00:11:38.660 all of a sudden it's like being stung by a swarm everybody's against you everybody's saying exactly

00:11:43.620 the same thing you go from like placid happy calm clear thinking to totally unable to think clearly

00:11:48.320 and on all these issues the day navalny died in custody russian custody it's like we decide of course

00:11:53.820 putin killed him or whatever and to be able to see and think clearly in that moment like that's the

00:12:00.440 key right there when you're getting swarmed you may have come to the obvious conclusion that the

00:12:04.560 real debate is not between republican and democrat or socialist and capitalist right left the real

00:12:12.340 battles between people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth it's

00:12:18.380 between good and evil it's between honesty and falsehood and we hope we are on the former side

00:12:24.500 that's why we created this network the tucker carlson network and we invite you to subscribe to it you go

00:12:29.520 to tucker carlson.com slash podcast our entire archive is there a lot of behind the scenes footage of what

00:12:35.360 actually happens in this barn uh when only an iphone is running tucker carlson.com slash podcast

00:12:43.060 you will not regret it who's the guy um who is the uh he was the science editor for the new york

00:12:49.160 times at wade nicholas wade right i mean that guy was like nature and and you know like all of the

00:12:56.000 biggest scientific publications was the new york times guy and it's like that like that you're done

00:13:01.100 and they called him racist yeah yeah and it's not just it's not just like oh you lose your job or

00:13:06.840 something like that oh yeah it's like you we're going to smear you in the most vicious ways to

00:13:11.640 like all of these and and we're social creatures we're we naturally respond to that but but how does

00:13:17.660 that happen well like you've watched this carefully how i mean it's speaking of bees it is the hive mind

00:13:23.440 at work but it's it's so like perfectly and like with great discipline executed it's like in a space of

00:13:33.940 four hours the entire machine turns on one guy and destroys them like how what is you can see why

00:13:40.120 people come up with conspiracies to explain that right sure yeah and and they are quite possibly

00:13:45.240 right i mean i don't know exactly what the conspiracy is but i it is quite possibly is one um but no

00:13:51.220 dissent at all yeah but then i my thing is just that i do think and i think this is something i've

00:13:57.520 benefited from i know this because i hear this back from my audience a lot that it's like oh

00:14:02.700 when you were right on those issues when it really mattered you kind of gain credibility well that's

00:14:09.280 and i also think that like you know let's say there's like um i don't know like a a right wing

00:14:14.660 or conservative uh um commentator who's telling you how you have to feel about the new storm right now

00:14:21.960 it's like well just tell me how did you do on the last three storms you know like like were you

00:14:27.080 were you telling dopes to get the vaccine were you telling everyone to be socially distanced

00:14:32.240 or were you like on the right side of that where were you on ukraine you know were you saying that

00:14:36.140 like oh you know like they can win or whatever the story is you know what i mean like it's and

00:14:41.660 and i do watch a lot of people who like got everything consistently wrong it's the same way

00:14:46.880 is the neoconservatives right like even if i mean i i hate them so much i it's hard to uh speak

00:14:52.820 about them like with any type of sense of fairness but how do you listen let's just say you got six

00:14:59.260 wars wrong and you were wrong about every single one like let's just say you were for the war in

00:15:03.960 iraq and then you were for you know regime change in afghanistan against the taliban who did not attack

00:15:09.360 us um and then you were for overthrowing gaddafi and then you were for overthrowing assad and then

00:15:14.420 you were for backing the saudi war in yemen and like all these things and and it's just nothing

00:15:18.540 but disaster every one of them okay but then you're going to come out and confidently be like

00:15:23.840 and i'm for this next war and let me tell you why you have to be too and you don't have like

00:15:28.500 enough just like you don't feel humiliated enough that like you couldn't come out even if you were

00:15:35.320 for this you'd be like man i really think we should fight this war but i can't come out and say we

00:15:38.740 should fight this war because the last six times i said it it was nothing but a disaster

00:15:42.200 but the same people who were like you see tucker when we overthrow saddam hussein democracy will sweep

00:15:47.940 the region and you see we're going to be greeted as liberators we won't be fighting off a 20-year

00:15:52.040 insurgency you see they'll greet us as liberators because they love us and then democracy will

00:15:56.000 sweep the region and then iran will lose influence in the region and then hezbollah will start being

00:16:01.380 nice to israel and like all these grand predictions and every last one of them oh it'll be paid for in

00:16:05.940 oil do you remember all the things they very well i mean it's um it's you know it's a cakewalk it's uh

00:16:11.780 it's a slam dunk that he has weapons of mass destruction so every single one of these things you

00:16:16.100 were wrong about you get to now be the person advocating the next one but you wouldn't ever

00:16:22.500 allow that kind of behavior in your children of course can't let a lie stand kids lie you catch

00:16:27.600 them lying and the whole point of the exercise is to get them to admit to your face yes i did this

00:16:33.080 no i won't do it again like that's a that's an integral step right you have to go through that

00:16:37.880 or else you don't improve as a person you become shittier as a person yeah that's right and i would

00:16:42.540 also maybe this is me adding my libertarian bent to this but i would also say that in the in the

00:16:49.940 private sector and i mean not like the crony connected to government right sector but like

00:16:55.060 in true business you also don't get away with that stuff of course you can't just fail over and over

00:16:58.800 again and then this only happens either in the government or in you know companies that are

00:17:05.320 essentially the government but you know like live off no big government contracts or something like

00:17:09.400 that um but yeah it's it's uh and it's it's the major problem is that look like at least there are

00:17:16.580 problems with free markets and they're it's made up of human beings so there's always problems but

00:17:21.260 there's at least like a cleansing mechanism there's like profit and loss yes if you lose too much you

00:17:25.760 go out of business in in with government the the worse you do the more funding you get but so this

00:17:32.640 is if the kids can't read we need a higher education i completely agree with you

00:17:36.300 and for all i piss on libertarians and of course i was one for most of my life i'm gonna bring you

00:17:42.260 back give me time no it's it's just interesting i think the reason i'm mad at libertarians is

00:17:48.620 because i don't see a free market in the united states oh of course not yeah right and so i mean

00:17:54.880 i look at green energy or the defense space and like there's that that bears no resemblance to a

00:18:02.660 market at all well and and a lot of finance yes but i would also point out that like look there

00:18:08.080 are just like with every group just like conservatives there are different camps within

00:18:11.640 libertarians yes so just to point out like the thing i said about the last five storms

00:18:15.220 if you go listen to what ron paul was saying throughout the entire cove i love ron paul he was

00:18:20.920 perfect tom woods lou rockwell jeff dice like there's there's this group of libertarians who were

00:18:26.400 great the entire time well i totally agree i've never stopped loving ron paul so so the difference

00:18:30.880 between say like the ron paul the ron paulian libertarians which i would consider myself to

00:18:35.200 be one of and say like the cato or groups like that is that uh those the cato types tend to like

00:18:43.340 almost have this academic discussion of what it would be like in a free market and then talk as if

00:18:48.580 that's what we're living in right now but that you know i mean i was a fellow at cato so i remember

00:18:55.140 this very well that organization that foundation 501c3 is run by an oligarch actually yeah it's run

00:19:03.460 by charles coke that's right right so he kicked out the old head he brought in the new head and you

00:19:08.520 sort of wonder if you're a libertarian it you can't you're not for the you're not for government

00:19:13.560 power but you're also suspicious of oligarchs right aren't you well of course and particularly

00:19:17.620 like say the same oligarch who's not only funding the cato institute but is also funding

00:19:22.880 the republican party in general exactly and the the party who consistently is growing the size of

00:19:29.060 government every bit as much as the democrats are i mean it's almost like you know it's almost it's

00:19:33.480 become a thing where if a republican were to ever say uh you know say we need smaller government or

00:19:38.880 like nikki haley was talking about smaller government you just roll your eye because it

00:19:42.620 never means anything they've been talking about this forever there's never been one time and there's

00:19:47.160 been several times in my life where the republicans have controlled the congress and the the white

00:19:51.880 oh yes never once been a cut in spending of course spending always goes up there's been some

00:19:55.780 cuts in top marginal tax rates right you know not even drastic cuts but they're but yes we'll have

00:20:01.760 rich people pay less taxes there's never a cut in spending because that's a cut in the power of the

00:20:07.960 federal government and they're not for that and so the if the guys who are funding that are also

00:20:14.220 funding this libertarian institute to write policy paper for recommendations that are never going to be

00:20:20.820 implemented anyway it's it does raise some eyebrows i i would say like look to to the bigger question

00:20:28.260 of of you know libertarians in the side like like i've heard you say before the the u.s federal

00:20:33.560 government is the biggest most powerful government in the history of the world by far there's not a

00:20:39.060 close second it's a government that can snap its fingers and overthrow regimes anywhere in the world and

00:20:45.260 does it regularly um and so that is look as the country is kind of spinning out of control and

00:20:52.520 everything has just gotten more and more corrupt that's directly related to the fact that dc has

00:20:57.300 gotten more and more powerful and this is to me like i've i've been saying this for a while it's not

00:21:02.480 my original thought this is something hans herman hoppe said back in the 90s um where he he basically

00:21:07.500 said that libertarians need to learn a conservative lesson and conservatives need to learn a libertarian

00:21:14.180 lesson and what he meant by that was that libertarians basically need to learn that okay just because

00:21:20.820 we might believe that the government ought to not bash someone over the head and lock them in a cage

00:21:26.860 for doing something doesn't mean we have to celebrate it you don't have to celebrate degeneracy

00:21:31.440 you don't have to be on the side of that yes in fact a functioning society needs good family values

00:21:37.020 and that's just like a fact now that doesn't we don't believe that should be enforced at the point

00:21:41.460 of a gun but we that doesn't mean like you know like even if you think say like um whatever you

00:21:46.720 think prostitution should be legal you could still have a feeling that it's horrible and yes represents

00:21:52.020 a tragedy on all sides um and so that's like kind of the the conservative lesson that libertarians need

00:21:58.400 to learn i think a lot of libertarians in the ron paul kind of school did learn that um and the

00:22:03.920 lesson that i would say that conservatives or or trumpian populist types need to learn is that

00:22:10.180 if donald trump's going to say drain the swamp it's like okay but what does that mean like what

00:22:15.040 what does that look like how do you actually drain the swamp and it's really actually very simple

00:22:19.720 it means cut government spending as long as washington dc is the most powerful organization

00:22:24.600 in the history of the world and they're spending over six trillion dollars a year that is by definition

00:22:29.320 a swamp that's why more millionaires live in the suburbs outside of washington dc than anywhere else in

00:22:35.180 the world they don't make anything except weapons you know what i mean that are purchased by the

00:22:40.020 government it's i've no i've heard you talk about this before they don't even make them there right

00:22:43.800 right i mean there's no there's not a single act of creation yeah in the entire dc the dmv as they

00:22:51.620 call it right well no and it's it's literally not only are they not creating but they're parasitic

00:22:57.780 by nature they're taking americans money and this is what i mean i think this is kind of the

00:23:04.340 central source of why the country is spinning out of control and why we're uh so incredibly corrupt

00:23:11.080 at every level is because there is this parasitic force in washington dc that's grown bigger and bigger

00:23:17.600 and more i agree i absolutely agree with that and i i do think i saw it change i remember the moment it

00:23:24.840 changed and it was the moment when the democratic party subverted the business the so-called business

00:23:31.860 community which was always a kind of counterbalance against this because the idea was the government

00:23:36.620 makes it actually harder for people to conduct business it stifles free markets and we're against

00:23:42.180 that so the chamber of commerce and business roundtable were always sort of pushing back against the growth

00:23:46.960 of government bill clinton changed that and he changed that by declaring a ceasefire between the

00:23:53.580 democratic party and the rich and he did it during the tech boom i'll never forget this democrats were

00:24:01.540 always saying and i thought you know i didn't agree with him but i sort of thought it was important

00:24:05.000 for the purpose of balance to have this they would say they were suspicious of people with too much

00:24:08.800 money there's too much power like what about the value of labor right you got the value of capital

00:24:13.740 value of labor they're kind of in conflict with one another and we're on the side of labor all of a

00:24:18.360 sudden bill clinton's like no there's nothing wrong with being you know making a billion dollars at 32

00:24:23.980 for creating an app you know running web van or e toys or pets.com and doorknobs.com it was just

00:24:32.200 everything it was just everything you could think of totally and it was so smart he did it for the

00:24:36.420 purpose of fundraising and all of a sudden the democratic party became far richer than the

00:24:39.660 republican party and all the formerly republican leafy suburbs around the country you know greenwich

00:24:46.840 connecticut and mclean virginia they all went left actually it was brilliant and evil but its effect

00:24:54.380 was to completely wreck the country because there was no counterbalance against power at all so once

00:24:59.920 the government you know the people with the nuclear weapons and business the people with the largest

00:25:04.880 bank accounts are aligned that leaves everybody else like who's defending them yeah and then you said

00:25:11.140 something last night when we were having dinner that i thought was so interesting i was thinking about it

00:25:14.980 after we left but you were talking about how like traditionally the rich people were in suits and

00:25:20.940 ties yes right and then your uniform matters i mean that's why we have uniforms right and that's why

00:25:26.580 the bus driver wears a uniform and your airline pilots have their stupid outfits and your your

00:25:30.560 stewardesses are dressed up like they are because it says a lot about their role in your society and

00:25:36.040 rich people used to spend a lot of money on clothes and the whole point of that was to say

00:25:40.280 we're rich we're in a separate class and that comes with tons of advantages but it also comes

00:25:45.920 with obligations no bless oblige was a thing and all of a sudden in the 90s you notice the richest

00:25:50.520 people in america start dressing you know in like t-shirts and hoodies and like what's the message of

00:25:56.340 that and the message of that is we're just like you which is another way of saying we have no

00:26:00.740 obligation to anyone but ourselves actually we don't owe you anything and it comes out of this mindset

00:26:06.320 that they do have and i know them of course well so i know that they feel this way that we're the

00:26:10.640 we're the richest because we came up through this credentialing system that we claim is a meritocracy

00:26:16.320 and we won we won all the prizes because we're superior it's it's something it's so fascinating

00:26:21.520 this is why i don't like chess and why i prefer backgammon because backgammon has probably 30 or 40

00:26:28.260 percent of a luck element to it just like life right right just like life like why didn't i get

00:26:33.680 leukemia and diet five tons of five-year-olds do i don't know but i should be grateful for that so

00:26:38.560 like i've been relatively successful in my stupid little category that's not all my doing like show

00:26:46.460 some be magnanimous about it well this is why i was thinking about that because i think it's such a good

00:26:50.360 point because there is something kind of counterintuitive to it where you'd be like oh but

00:26:53.280 if they're dressing like the people then maybe they'd feel more connected to the people but in fact

00:26:57.300 it's actually the opposite because it is it reminds me in a way this is what i was thinking about

00:27:01.040 literally last night in my hotel i was thinking about you making this comment and it was reminding

00:27:04.740 me of um when the lockdowns first started and um there there were all the celebrities would come

00:27:11.460 on and be like we're all in this together and you're like ellen degeneres you're in a mansion

00:27:17.140 you're not in the same situation as a guy there's a guy out there who's got three kids and makes 60k a

00:27:24.040 year and he's was just deemed non-essential and he is like terrified about the future of how he's

00:27:30.700 going to support his family and ellen's sitting here and her messages we're all in the same boat

00:27:34.780 man you know like we're all in the same i know one of my servants got covid and couldn't come in today

00:27:39.240 so i only had a team of five you know and you're like so in a sense you're like while the message

00:27:44.460 is we're all in this together and that kind of superficially sounds like a nice message it's

00:27:49.960 actually the the worst message that a much a much better message would be to acknowledge exactly that

00:27:55.820 i'm not in this situation that you're in at all that for me it's actually fine to be

00:27:59.560 but if you're in the leadership class you have and i i mean i've been at my whole life i know

00:28:04.620 you have a moral obligation to admit it yes because once you admit it out loud then you realize there

00:28:12.360 are you know massive benefits to it but there are also massive obligations to it they're shirking

00:28:17.100 their duty that's right that's what they're actually doing and that's actually and that's

00:28:20.940 actually the opposite of being noble that's it's it's fraudulent it's it's disgusting yes and it's

00:28:26.940 it's a lie your your whole thing is based on a lot it's disgusting sam bankman freed of course

00:28:31.640 oh i just drive like a shitty little toyota it's like oh actually you're defrauding michelle obama

00:28:36.540 goes to princeton for free yeah and has been the ruling class her whole life yeah and she's still

00:28:41.400 lecturing you about how she's a victim of racism hillary clinton exact same thing goes to wellesley

00:28:46.740 spends her entire life in the ruling class and she's still whining about how she's discriminated

00:28:51.480 against why are they doing that yeah and did you ever see um they'll have like pictures of uh

00:28:56.360 um side by side but it'll be like pictures of like uh jimmy carter's house yeah and obama's house

00:29:02.080 and it totally represents something about the like corroding of our soul that you're like we would allow

00:29:09.260 people who call themselves public servants which of course is ridiculous they're not but but still

00:29:14.820 they don't even have to pretend to keep up a facade of that like you get to live in this insane

00:29:19.300 like mansion yeah off what because you were president and you get to cash in on that now

00:29:24.580 you know white neighborhood you should be required to live in the hood if you're if you're barack

00:29:29.240 obama and you if you're using that card you use that card you the only reason you got elected

00:29:33.440 was because of your race you spent your entire eight years inflaming race hate in our country and

00:29:39.740 then you go to martha's vineyard the whitest zip code in the world not allowed yeah you're not allowed

00:29:45.060 to do that well it also i mean it did it did so much damage his inflaming racial hatred and and i'll

00:29:51.900 say after you know barack obama's campaign in 2008 there first of all it was a just leaving how you feel

00:30:00.100 about the guy aside it was a an amazing campaign it was unlike anything that had ever been run before

00:30:04.920 genius yes it was totally brilliant it was um his now of course it wasn't what they presented it as

00:30:10.960 it wasn't like a grassroots campaign it was he was approved of by the powers that be he didn't

00:30:16.700 he didn't just happen to as a junior senator get like a prime time speaking slot in 2004 where he

00:30:22.180 gave that speech he wasn't even a senator yet was he a state senator still i i that's when i first met

00:30:28.000 barack obama yeah yeah walking down the street smoking a cigarette in boston on my way to dinner at

00:30:32.580 the palm i'll never forget it and i met him and jesse jackson jr they pulled over to say hi to me

00:30:36.780 really i'd never heard his name and i covered politics for a living right and he gave the

00:30:41.720 keynote at the end of that week that was sunday night he spoke on thursday and yeah he was not a

00:30:46.820 u.s senator that was that was the campaign it was great it was absolutely so crazy okay so it

00:30:51.780 was clearly kind of orchestrated by some powerful by the pritzker family of course but listen his

00:30:57.040 the speeches that he gave and much of the message first off i actually there's probably a lot of

00:31:01.360 things that i would have agreed with him that he was running on um i agreed with a lot of things

00:31:05.220 george w bush ran on in the year 2000 i'll tell you what i agreed turned around and didn't govern

00:31:08.880 like that at all let's sort of like elect the black guy and get past the race stuff i loved that well

00:31:15.000 especially because that was his message that was his message and let's get past the race i love that

00:31:19.740 he goes oh and and even and there was a broader more unifying thing i mean i remember the because

00:31:24.500 he was such a powerful you know like public speaker i mean he never really said anything but it would

00:31:30.320 still be beautiful the way you know yes i remember in his uh acceptance speech at 2008 at the dnc we

00:31:35.860 had this whole line where he was like uh he was like i love this country and so do you and so does

00:31:40.460 john mccain the men and women who have fought for this country have been republicans and democrats and

00:31:45.680 independents but they fought together and died together not defending a red america or a blue america

00:31:50.780 the united states of america and then it's like oh what i mean he didn't really say anything there but

00:31:55.640 you know but it was beautifully put i'm 100 for that yeah the message was great and great and look

00:32:01.160 he also was uh very critical of the george w bush administration's excesses and i'm going to end the

00:32:06.060 war in iraq i'm going to reinstitute habeas corpus we're going to end torture we're going there were a

00:32:10.460 lot of i didn't do any of that um i mean i guess he ended the war in iraq eventually and then reinvaded

00:32:15.460 the country because uh the isis fighters he was arming invaded the country it's but but then i think

00:32:21.820 essentially what happened uh and it was around obama's re-election campaign this is where things

00:32:26.780 really went off the rails in this country was that he got in there and continued and expanded all the

00:32:32.920 worst of the bush policies oh of course and so they almost had nothing to run on and so they decided to

00:32:38.880 pivot to a culture war instead and this is this was a decision and again i don't know exactly what the

00:32:45.000 conspiracy is but this decision was made from the top down that i think it was a response to obama's

00:32:50.840 failures it was a response to these movements like the tea party and occupy wall street which

00:32:56.180 we're getting a little bit too close that's right a little bit too close to the target and all this

00:33:00.420 you know i'm sure you've looked at this before but where there's these nexus charts and you can chart

00:33:04.520 out like um how many times all the woke terms are used you know transgenderism all that and it's all

00:33:09.920 like right around 2012 that it's all of a sudden like you know uh uh systemic racism goes from being

00:33:15.820 mentioned like this many times throughout history to like shooting like the new york times and

00:33:19.360 the washington post it's a very famous graph and i've used it many times and trying to explain

00:33:23.840 this but that's exactly right like fight amongst yourselves yep and i think it was the finance it

00:33:29.000 was the hangover from the financial crisis yeah well that was a huge part of it for sure um and also

00:33:33.480 that obama's um you know like so in the year like from 2007 to 2010 um the the median net worth

00:33:42.940 in america shrunk by like 40 percent yeah like people lost like 40 percent of american wealth

00:33:47.360 was lost um and you know you can imagine especially now like having kids you know at the time i didn't

00:33:52.880 have kids and i was young i was like whatever you know bad economy oh that sucks but you can appreciate

00:33:57.760 now like oh what that would be like if you just lost 40 percent of your net worth and you got little

00:34:03.340 kids like how destabilizing that is and obama's solution to this right the obama recovery

00:34:09.140 was uh okay it was record high government spending and record low interest rates this was right this

00:34:15.780 was the solution was this is how we're going to save the economy we're going to bring interest

00:34:18.920 rates down to zero and so we're going to bring government spending higher than it's ever been

00:34:22.860 before at that time and so what so you can say on paper there's a little bit of a recovery here but

00:34:27.840 what really happens in that environment you know it's like all the politically connected people in

00:34:31.460 washington dc they make more money and the speculators have a field day because now everybody

00:34:36.780 on wall street's making more money because you have to invest now right because you're losing

00:34:40.900 money if you just save and so this this ultimately is what built then they throw the culture war in

00:34:47.580 there to like you said fight amongst yourselves and the result of that was donald trump the result

00:34:52.100 of all of that was the condition for trump zero interest rates that had a greater i think negative

00:34:57.900 effect on the country than any war we've ever fought it for one thing it just asset prices ballooned

00:35:03.500 yeah i mean this is fake everyone knows what happens over time uh with free money the money

00:35:09.940 becomes worth less and so there's a rush to assets and now you can't buy a house right that's right

00:35:15.220 and then and then the boom is always followed by the bust and so you have all of this malinvestment

00:35:21.520 because the like the way it works and this is this is where austrian economics which i heard you

00:35:25.620 disparage no i have never disparaged i'm just mad about the results

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00:37:10.700 but it's not a result of austrian economics or libertarianism it's a result of abandoning

00:37:18.500 all of that right i agree so it's but look the the basic thing is that like interest rates are a price

00:37:24.160 they're a price just like anything else it's the price of money of course the price of borrowing money

00:37:28.280 and so just like every other price there's information given in these prices so if if steel

00:37:34.100 becomes very very cheap that gives information to a businessman that like hey we're producing a lot

00:37:40.340 of steel very easily now right if you wanted to do a project that requires a lot of steel now's the

00:37:44.800 time to do it because we're producing steel now that works when you have real prices because oh

00:37:50.600 there's a big production of steel so you can but if if the government just came in and said

00:37:54.300 you know we have price controls and we insist that the price of steel is very very cheap what's going

00:37:59.560 to happen is people are going to start building projects with steel and then realize we're out of

00:38:03.900 steel pretty soon because it wasn't a real signal exactly so what happens when you when you make

00:38:09.280 interest rates zero for a decade it's a signal for people to say borrow money when they wouldn't

00:38:15.920 have otherwise borrowed like maybe you wouldn't borrow if rates were eight or nine percent but at

00:38:19.380 zero this is a good time to borrow this money but again it's a fake signal we're borrowing all this

00:38:24.420 money so maybe i am a libertarian because i i got all kinds of advice from i'm not sophisticated at

00:38:29.680 all with money but all kinds of advice borrow money it's free and i never did yes not one dollar

00:38:35.540 yeah well it's a really bad idea um i i feel like the amount of debt that people carry is the

00:38:42.240 untold story in the united states yeah and i don't know why we're like in favor of the credit card

00:38:47.920 companies or people are getting rich from the it's just bad having a lot of debt is bad i don't know

00:38:51.780 why that's like if you say that by the way it's considered super radical but like i don't why is

00:38:55.960 that radical well yeah i think about the idea that we have all of these policies designed to get

00:39:01.360 people to gamble their life savings like why would you're penalized for not carrying debt

00:39:06.200 when i made money in not that long ago when i was like finally could pay off my the first thing i did

00:39:12.120 was pay off my mortgage that's the first thing i did and my college roommate who's really much

00:39:16.420 smarter than i am has made a ton of money he's like that's crazy you have to pay i forgot what it was but

00:39:22.300 like you lose the the tax shield and it was like 18 grand i had to pay 18 000 a year for the

00:39:28.880 privilege of not being in debt right to a bank yeah what yeah and and that the system is like

00:39:35.460 artificially designed to be that way you know what i mean that it's like oh these are the tax laws

00:39:40.000 that will encourage people and also wait you're you're penalizing me for not being in debt it's

00:39:45.160 like that's who wrote these laws look i think about just think about what the income tax is they

00:39:49.900 penalize you for working i mean it's a crime to work the punishment is a fee the more the more

00:39:55.360 productive you are the more punishment so let me ask you this question as an austrian economic

00:39:59.620 economist why why the disparity between um the tax on labor and the tax on capital

00:40:07.420 well because that's the rules that the government made so well let me say right because i think

00:40:12.560 you're totally right about this right that it's like look i've heard you talk about this before so

00:40:16.620 like if the capital gains tax is 15 but then someone working pays 30 so like what are you saying

00:40:22.740 we would rather exactly but so here's the next level to that this is all i think that you're

00:40:28.040 missing in that because i think you're completely right in your like your your critique of that

00:40:31.720 but okay so if we were let's say to fix that that disparity there's basically two ways we could do that

00:40:37.180 one would be to raise capital gains taxes up to 30 okay so the result of that would be that i guess

00:40:45.580 we would disincentivize certain types of investment maybe the government let's say it works out

00:40:52.200 perfectly and these we we are able you know like the the people on wall street don't have an army

00:40:57.380 of tax lawyers and accountants who can get them out of this stuff as they always end up doing um

00:41:02.240 so then dc gets more money so then the corrupt most powerful government in the world gets a little

00:41:08.420 bit more money they will then leverage that to borrow three times as much and just of course it will

00:41:15.020 go it will go to politically connected cronies right it'll be however let's say the other option to

00:41:21.400 that is we could lower exactly individual taxes to 15 and now give every working uh family in this

00:41:28.160 country a huge raise a huge raise that they would really appreciate strongly so that's all i'm saying

00:41:33.860 you're right about the discrepancy there and it's totally corrupt but it's like what what's the

00:41:37.920 solution to the solution is look if you tied them to get legislatively and just said but you know

00:41:43.560 they're going to be the same the tax on capital will always be the same as the tax on labor

00:41:47.140 then the average person and which includes me i don't have any investments i just work on my salary

00:41:53.060 right so like most people um the average person would benefit from the lobbying power of wall street

00:41:59.840 right right so right so they're always giving me the same but like all of a sudden i have an army of

00:42:05.300 bank lobbyists and private equity lobbyists keeping my income taxes low yes look in theory i would love

00:42:12.080 that idea it's just if the the answer there is to just like you know it's unbelievable to me that

00:42:18.620 particularly like people like um you know like bernie sanders types will say that they care so much

00:42:25.360 about working people and they want to do whatever they can to help these working people and yet the

00:42:30.260 biggest bill for working people is their federal income taxes and it and i mean the irs i mean i know

00:42:37.920 stories from good friends of mine they are ruthless i mean they go back 20 years and ruin people and

00:42:43.980 this isn't just like it's like people kind of have this idea that there's like economic issues over

00:42:48.080 here and social issues over here as if they're different but they're really not i mean you go

00:42:53.040 back 20 years on somebody and say you know a guy who's making 30 grand a year and they go back and

00:42:57.760 maybe it's only just like you know a few thousand dollars a year that he owes but they go back 20 years

00:43:01.820 on you and you owe three grand a year and so now you owe 60 000 dollars oh yeah you know what i mean

00:43:06.480 this is what leads to divorces suicides putting pistols in their mouth yeah you know kids growing

00:43:11.400 up without their dad around i mean it's like these things are interconnected and you see that just

00:43:15.380 over the last few years um with the price inflation how bad it's been i mean like this

00:43:20.360 this ruins people so why isn't that a news story i don't understand if everybody i mean and i will say

00:43:26.980 you know because of my age and income i'm a little cut off but i try not to be cut off and people i talk

00:43:32.460 they all complain about grocery store prices yeah like a lot and they're shocking but i never hear

00:43:37.580 anybody say that yeah well i mean i certainly talk about it a lot i think that there's um

00:43:42.780 it's not it's a it's not in anybody's interest i guess like it's not in in any partisan interest

00:43:50.060 to really talk about that because both parties are totally complicit yeah and so it's you know

00:43:54.420 no matter who you know people because we live in this weird like two-party system and everybody

00:44:01.460 becomes partisans especially in an election year and they're all just trying to kind of get their

00:44:05.580 guy over and no one's really you know i mean there are trump supporters who like to talk about

00:44:11.360 the inflation under obama but i don't really want to talk about it too much because it all started with

00:44:16.200 the money that was being printed in 2020 that's donald trump was championing the whole time right

00:44:20.540 actually and and and smearing thomas massey for for daring to say hey we should have a vote on this

00:44:27.480 before we spend more money than we've ever spent when we're broker than we've ever been

00:44:30.840 and he's and trump of course bragging that it was the the biggest bill you know because it's so trump

00:44:36.240 because it's the biggest because a lot of other people had spending bills mine's the biggest spending

00:44:40.400 bill you know and like look i'm not trying to you know there are trump is like the most entertaining

00:44:45.060 uh character and he's hated by all of the right people and a lot of his instincts are correct

00:44:51.420 and he was also framed for treason by his own intelligence agencies and so there's a lot of

00:44:58.240 of donald trump that i can sympathize with and relate to his supporters but the truth is that

00:45:04.240 it was such a disaster to lock down the economy and to say we're just going to print our way out of

00:45:09.000 this was such a disaster i agree and he totally got rolled by all the people around him and just did not

00:45:14.920 have the wisdom or the courage to stand up to them and he kept fauci on that task force through all

00:45:21.940 of 2020 i mean he just kept so many people who hated his guts around him um and it's really it it

00:45:29.120 was a tragedy nikki haley mike pompeo mike pence oh yeah no i agree i mean all of them you know mike

00:45:36.200 pence is a guy he was in his 60s and if he were to go this is the guy who he was going to leave us as

00:45:40.940 president of the united states it's mike pence there's something really there's something wrong

00:45:45.620 with him yeah there's there's a lot wrong you can feel it i really appreciate you ruining his

00:45:50.540 political career no it wasn't personal i mean i feel sorry for pence he's not comfortable with himself

00:45:54.980 at all uh and that's the vibe the strong i've known him for over i've known 25 years i know him

00:46:00.780 since he got to washington um and he's got some talent and i don't think he's evil or anything but

00:46:05.660 there's something really damaged and i always felt that he was put in there um he wouldn't be the

00:46:10.500 first vp to be in this position but he was put in there by permanent dc to keep an eye on trump

00:46:14.720 yeah obviously yeah but that's always how it works right like that's the same thing that happened with

00:46:18.220 reagan and george hw bush being there you put in the guy of course we're gonna have our cia director

00:46:23.800 nixon and gerald ford i mean this is like this is the oldest story there is so trump is coming to

00:46:31.300 libertarian convention yeah so let me just ask at the outset you're you're involved in libertarian

00:46:36.760 politics like actual policy party politics um would you ever be on the ticket you know so

00:46:43.060 just for people who don't know it's kind of like inside baseball but so my there was kind of a civil

00:46:50.060 war it's more inside baseball is too broad it's more like inside pickleball yes yes that is actually

00:46:55.960 a really good uh thing but in this very irrelevant corner where i have a lot of sway um but so there

00:47:02.480 was basically like a kind of civil war within the libertarian party over the last few years and it

00:47:07.240 was about a lot of the stuff that you were talking about at the beginning like uh basically there was

00:47:11.840 like you know as you know because you covered it there was what was called the ron paul revolution

00:47:16.000 yeah and that's what i was i was one of the young people in that ron paul revolution that totally

00:47:20.220 changed you know the way i look at the world and i became obsessed with all of this stuff

00:47:23.820 and so there were a bunch of us and a lot of us had hoped that um ron paul was kind of gonna yes

00:47:31.600 carry the mantle and continue this this ron paul energy and now i'm not saying anything against ron

00:47:36.020 paul i think he's one of the best senator probably the best senator he was great during covid grilling

00:47:41.200 fauci and all that stuff but for whatever reason there's there's several it didn't work out that way

00:47:46.680 and donald trump came in and stole the republican party and it stole i mean he won it but anyway so when

00:47:52.580 that happened um there were a lot of us who were like kind of disappointed about ron paul and then

00:47:57.180 the we had ron paul running in the republican party but then a lot of us started looking to

00:48:01.460 the libertarian party like oh they were the third party candidate and they ran gary johnson and bill

00:48:05.620 weld we were very disappointed with that campaign uh particularly with bill weld who's just horrible

00:48:10.900 um sad defeated guy and and also just he was like a raytheon lobbyist who was like what are you

00:48:16.640 doing total fraud what's the point if we're gonna have a third party and putting that guy up

00:48:20.660 and then during uh 2020 the people who were running the libertarian party completely failed

00:48:28.200 and didn't oppose the lockdowns and and then started like virtue signaling during the black

00:48:32.380 lives matter riots about how we must be anti-racist for real yeah it was horrible so basically then

00:48:38.600 there was this uh group called the mises caucus uh that i joined i was led by this guy named michael

00:48:44.460 heiss and uh angela mccardle who ultimately is she's currently the chair of the party and we

00:48:49.040 basically went and took over the whole party we for in the name of ron paulian's like if there's

00:48:53.300 going to be a libertarian party it's going to be represented by libertarians and so anyway cutting

00:48:58.680 to so once that happened it was kind of my group who took over and they they wanted me to run for

00:49:05.400 for president on the libertarian ticket and i was considering it for a while ultimately it just

00:49:10.820 wasn't the right time for me i got two little kids i got a lot going on in my career it's like

00:49:14.400 it just wasn't the right time for me but so now to what you said angela mccardle pulled this off to

00:49:20.960 her great credit that she's got donald trump coming and speaking at the libertarian uh national

00:49:25.860 convention uh it looks like rfk jr when and where is this this is at the end of the month it's uh may

00:49:31.620 may 24th through 26th i believe in washington in washington dc that was a decision made by the old

00:49:37.700 guard we would not have had our convention in washington dc do you know where it is in dc

00:49:41.440 yeah it's at um like uh at some hotel i i'd have to look it up yeah yeah it's some hotel in dc um

00:49:48.800 but anyway i mean rfk just challenged donald trump to debate him there which i don't think is going

00:49:53.900 to happen but would be very interesting if it did happen and so it is at at least to me it kind of

00:49:59.860 represents the libertarian party who is this third party trying to engage in relevance of of some sort

00:50:08.360 and trying to at least look obviously we're not in a position we're not going to win the white house

00:50:12.840 or even win any senate seats or anything like that but i do think the libertarian party could

00:50:17.940 effectively be used to put pressure uh particularly on the republicans yes to be better and to not run

00:50:24.180 like awful neocons and run better candidates um i certainly prefer the kind of america first

00:50:31.720 strain of republicans to the neoconservative strain and and i think right now there is

00:50:37.200 well i mean there's kind of been a civil war in the right half of america since donald trump

00:50:43.540 came onto the scene but i don't even know if you'd call it a civil war because donald trump just won so

00:50:47.800 dominantly you know it's not like the republicans were split between jeb bush and donald trump or

00:50:52.860 something like no like it was 95 to 5 percent but particularly and i know you've talked about this a lot

00:50:58.080 since the the war in israel or i should say the war in gaza or i don't even know if i should say

00:51:04.640 the war the the attack of gaza whatever you call it i don't know if you can call it a war when one

00:51:09.580 side doesn't have a military but whatever you call that um since that you've seen this kind of divide

00:51:14.440 grow uh where i think largely neoconservatism had been rejected in by the by the voters yes republican

00:51:24.260 voters but when israel came up it's a little bit different and i i don't know exactly well

00:51:29.980 neoconservatism neoconservatism is like chicken pox like you think you defeat it and then when

00:51:35.100 your defenses are down it comes back as shingles you're like oh crap they're democrats now jesus

00:51:39.840 no i didn't see how does that come it just lays dormant it's always there and but when it comes

00:51:45.240 back in its second iteration when it manifests again it is disabling and that's what we're watching

00:51:50.440 like i if there's one thing i wanted to help do is get rid of that world view but it seems stronger

00:51:56.920 than ever well i think you have done a lot i mean i i really not really i mean it's like everybody in

00:52:04.460 the republican party is completely on board with the idea that wars non-essential wars make america

00:52:11.060 better or something that's so nuts it's what's what's so wild to me about it is just after the 20 years

00:52:18.500 of terror wars that have just been such a complete disaster that america would still be entering

00:52:24.740 these conflicts that are very clearly wars of choice like there's no i mean i i'm i know they

00:52:29.560 can make an argument like they were making the argument that putin if he takes ukraine is gonna take

00:52:34.460 poland and then is gonna take which is nothing he's ever said he there's not one thing putin's

00:52:39.440 ever said that you could point to in fact when you interviewed him he explicitly said if poland

00:52:43.460 attacks us that's the only scenario he's got the largest country in the world it's the biggest

00:52:47.920 land mass on planet earth it's incredibly complex to run it's 20 muslim they have all these sort of

00:52:54.000 semi-autonomous zones throughout the country he wants more land i don't think he wants more land

00:52:58.140 no look he's always like insane it's been very and it's not just that he's said it but like

00:53:03.520 almost everyone who was being honest has said it at the top levels of the american government as well

00:53:09.620 as at nato as well his issue was ukrainian entry into nato that was always his issue and we kept

00:53:15.360 pushing that and kept pushing that and that's what got him to react and even the head of nato

00:53:19.880 himself strostenberg whatever said that vladimir putin said that if you just signed a deal put it

00:53:26.480 in writing that ukraine won't join nato i won't invade and nato refused and so he invaded but is

00:53:32.500 there a single news story even now that doesn't describe reflexively describe almost like it's like

00:53:36.940 a block text in you know in the in the computer program the unprovoked invasion of ukraine right

00:53:42.980 they always have to say that there's never been a more provoked invasion well i mean they did it

00:53:48.320 on purpose they pushed russia to invade ukraine well let's just say i mean like let's say we had

00:53:54.300 um like a fairly pro-american government in mexico that um and russia wanted to get them to do an

00:54:01.740 economic deal with them and then we were trying to convince them not to do that economic deal but to

00:54:06.560 do an economic deal with us and ultimately we convinced them that they're going to be in an

00:54:10.260 economic partnership with us and so then russia came in and overthrew the democratically elected

00:54:15.240 government and installed a pro-russian government and then that led to a civil war where 15 000

00:54:20.100 people died and like the pro-american side was getting you know what i mean like would you go

00:54:23.680 it was so unprovoked yeah and then and then russia said we're going to get mexico to join our defense

00:54:31.900 alliance and we're going to put missiles in tijuana right oh and no by the way that had been floated

00:54:36.680 out for years and in fact in 2008 we had formally announced that that russia had formally announced

00:54:43.040 that mexico would be joining their military alliance then we went i'm sorry for people out there you're

00:54:47.280 right it was a totally organic uprising made on revolution victoria newland happened to be in the

00:54:52.120 middle of handing out sandwiches that don't let that you know like john mccain and they were going

00:54:56.900 there a lot and like yeah sure it was soros backed ngos that were funded but whatever that's a

00:55:02.020 it was totally organic movement you know um and so yeah no it was a a series of provocations

00:55:08.700 very unnecessary ones and not just like not just ones that like libertarian doves like me or something

00:55:15.560 like that were against but what george kenan uh the cold warrior right the founder of the containment

00:55:22.220 strategy what he said which is a great piece with him and thomas friedman in the new york times and i think

00:55:26.640 it was in 1999 i mean he laid it out right there when we first started the first round of nato expansion

00:55:31.340 and he said the people advocating this expansion are going to keep advocating it until there's a

00:55:35.620 russian uh response and then when there's that response they'll say see this is why we were right

00:55:41.160 to to expand nato but that's all wrong obama even made noises that suggested he understood what you

00:55:48.580 just said yes well he refused to send weapons in well i know right i mean he was you know he was

00:55:53.860 there when the government when yanukovych was overthrown but he wouldn't send the weapons in

00:55:57.740 and then trump ultimately did and i think you know i think my you know like that was the big

00:56:03.300 scandal about ukraine gate right was that uh donald trump kind of did this you know kind of like a very

00:56:09.900 trumpian kind of gray area thing where he's like you know i'd really like you to investigate the

00:56:14.280 biden's maybe you don't get these weapons if you don't investigate the biden's now you the reason

00:56:18.820 why that was so ridiculous to impeach him over was because it was totally legitimate to want to

00:56:23.460 investigate what the biden's were doing in there by the way but it was very corrupt involvement in

00:56:27.180 ukraine but that being said what no one ever talked about in the story was that trump caved

00:56:32.180 of course didn't get the biden investigation and gave them the weapons and like that never that was

00:56:37.120 the other reason why the impeachment was so ridiculous because there's no prid uh quid pro quo

00:56:41.820 when you don't get anything for anything you know what i mean like you could argue it was an

00:56:45.880 attempted quid pro quo you know what i mean but he never got anything but he sent the weapons in and i do

00:56:50.280 think part of this and this was the really you know effective the way that the intelligence agencies

00:56:56.660 really won was that because a lot of people would look at it like okay so the the russia gate was an

00:57:04.760 attempted deep state coup and essentially it was i mean uh andrew mccabe admitted on 60 minutes that

00:57:11.820 they debated at the justice department invoking the 25th amendment and then they ultimately settled on a

00:57:17.080 special prosecutor you know i mean like they were trying to overthrow the guy but so on the surface

00:57:21.140 you could say oh it failed it failed but you know in another sense donald trump explicitly ran in 2016

00:57:28.820 on detente with russia yes like let's work with russia let's work together to kill the terrorists we all

00:57:34.380 don't like terrorists who cares about overthrowing assad that's not in our national interest like we

00:57:38.740 don't who cares so let's be friends with russia let's get along with them and at and then when

00:57:44.080 you're being called a russian spy every day in on on the news and you know then when he went to

00:57:50.400 helsinki and said you know i believe putin right you know i don't i don't think he interfered in the

00:57:55.540 the 2016 uh elections by the way there's still never been a shred of evidence presented that he did

00:58:00.980 they've got like one company that they claim had russian ip addresses because no one can fake an ip

00:58:06.320 address you know it's like the most ridiculous claim who was once at a party with putin or something

00:58:11.140 like that they've nothing and so trump just said yeah i agree with him and they were like so you

00:58:15.680 don't trust your intelligence you know everyone was freaking out so much that it got to a point where

00:58:20.500 he couldn't have made a deal with russia because if he had that would have just been proof right like

00:58:25.520 imagine in that environment when trump russia collusion was being said all day long if donald trump

00:58:30.240 had made some deal with russia it'd be like see proof he's a russian puppet and so donald trump i think

00:58:36.120 went out of his way to prove what a russian puppet he wasn't it was like here's how much i'm not a

00:58:40.420 russian puppet i'll send weapons into ukraine well and that happened on a bunch of different issues

00:58:44.240 unfortunately but the problem i would say at this point is like the desire to go to war with russia

00:58:50.360 has been pretty much the animating thought in our foreign policy um establishment for over 20 years

00:58:57.940 so now we actually have a hot war with russia we are conducting a war against russia using our proxy

00:59:03.900 ukraine totally destroyed ukraine in the process we're losing that war so ukraine's not going to win

00:59:10.200 that i can i don't see how ukraine right it's impossible

00:59:13.760 so what happens when that becomes really obvious that all we've achieved is destroyed this country

00:59:27.080 and killed a million of its young men and like how does the state department and the atlantic council

00:59:34.080 and the aspen institute and joe scarborough and the whole sort of blob like how do they respond to that

00:59:39.780 i mean i'm sure look i mean i think basically it's it's over and i don't think anyone even i mean

00:59:46.640 this latest round of funding is just it's an election year and biden's trying to kick the can

00:59:50.740 to not let this fall right now you know what i mean be be totally obvious also it's easier to steal the

00:59:55.940 money when it's out of the country well that's for sure that's that's for sure i mean we have no idea

01:00:00.180 where all this money has been going but we know ukraine is a totally trustworthy government um you know

01:00:05.840 no corruption there um but i i think look i'm sure they will attempt to spin it in some way where

01:00:13.640 if zelinski still controls like the western portion of ukraine they'll be like he didn't lose the whole

01:00:21.080 country and putin would have been in poland if we hadn't fought this of course it'll all be

01:00:25.340 completely ridiculous we could have avoided this war by just by just saying we're not gonna admit

01:00:32.020 ukraine into nato and putting that in writing we could have avoided this war this is not according

01:00:36.140 to me according to the head of nato we could have avoided this war by doing that and these whatever

01:00:40.680 the number is and who knows you never know in the fog of war i mean it's not until they really test

01:00:45.260 the excess mortality rate no that's right but it's clearly in hundreds of thousands i mean they've got

01:00:50.420 50 year olds fighting for them at this point so that tells you something they're forced

01:00:55.020 conscripting men with down syndrome yes yes it's that means a lot that means all your boys are dead

01:01:00.400 essentially for sure and the ones who couldn't you know manage to flee um and so yeah it's it's a

01:01:06.880 total disaster it's the like incredibly dark irony of it is that all the people like cheering on

01:01:12.920 ukraine have just as um as john meersheimer said in 2014 which aged very well unfortunately said we

01:01:20.360 were leading ukraine down the primrose path and that's what we did you act like you're cheering them

01:01:24.800 on but you're leaving them to their demise and uh it's it didn't need to happen it's terrible and

01:01:31.760 i'm not absolving putin of responsibility i i he was certainly put backed into a corner but there had

01:01:38.560 to be another answer other than this you know it's just horrible um but i know at the end of it it'll

01:01:44.640 be another disaster and the hawks in dc will try to spin it as best they can and then they'll all get

01:01:50.760 promoted and have better jobs that seems to be the track record it does feel though that we're coming

01:01:56.200 to the end of something it's like this was the last effort to exert a certain form of american power

01:02:03.880 abroad it failed does that make them desperate and crazy i feel like a loss in ukraine increases the

01:02:12.280 chances we use tactical nukes against russia for example well i mean i hope i'm wrong well here the

01:02:19.140 thing is it decreases the chances that russia uses them so there's that i mean you know there's

01:02:24.140 joe biden always pretended that the war in ukraine was a must win you know like that we couldn't allow

01:02:31.880 vladimir to win the war and you could but that's all just an act it doesn't it's not i'm just saying

01:02:36.540 however you feel about it it's not actually vital to u.s survival whether we whether russia controls

01:02:43.620 ukraine or not that's just that's absurd but vladimir putin really believed it was a must win and

01:02:48.660 that actually is a much more reasonable case that you can't lose a war on your border that's a proxy

01:02:54.960 war to you know even in the cold war we never had you know we fought in vietnam but that's not on

01:03:01.560 russia's border you know what i mean like that's right this is a whole different game and so the the

01:03:07.320 to me the real fear from the very beginning was not that vladimir putin might win the real fear was

01:03:13.220 that well what if the west wins like what if vladimir putin is humiliated right on his border

01:03:18.260 and feels that his death is imminent because that's that's the time when nukes might fly

01:03:23.540 and so in that sense you know it's quite possibly the better outcome i mean no nuclear war is always

01:03:29.860 the better outcome um i do think and i i gotta say i think you're a huge part of this i i think that

01:03:37.340 if you look at like say 2002 when the war drums were beating for iraq there was just nothing like

01:03:44.140 what we have today i mean like the the biggest shows in cable news the big they were all for it

01:03:49.440 they were all i was for it yes well i was for it until i went to iraq in 20 in 2003 i immediately

01:03:56.760 apologized i would say in my defense yeah what what is it that what about the trip made you change

01:04:02.500 your mind oh i was so shocked by the whole thing so the invasion was in march of 03

01:04:09.320 and i mean i was hosting a chat show a debate show crossfire and actually it's a true story i

01:04:18.000 was at lunch with my father had lunch with my dad every week at the same table in this place and

01:04:22.520 in this men's club in washington and we were sitting at the table i'll never forget this

01:04:27.840 in the fall of 2003 and he goes when are you going to iraq and i was like i don't i don't know

01:04:35.560 i don't think i mean i don't plan to go to iraq i've got a daily show i have to host he goes oh so

01:04:40.860 you're a journalist and there's a war but you're not going to cover the war and i was like no i've got

01:04:48.540 you know like four kids and a daily job he's like oh so but you just kind of kind of sit this one out

01:04:55.040 and he like shamed me into it it's true story he was like so unimpressed that i wasn't going

01:05:02.760 to see it and um i was like okay you're right i should go so i went i took leave of my show and

01:05:10.240 went um for a couple weeks with some friends who were contractors defense contractors of all military

01:05:15.820 guys a buddy of mine called kelly mccann and a bunch of a bill frost all these really impressive

01:05:21.320 contractors and we went to iraq and the first well the first thing that happens we got to kuwait we're

01:05:27.380 going to fly in and the insurgency shot down a dhl plane coming into biop or you know the baghdad

01:05:35.480 airport and so we couldn't fly in i was like so we've occupied the country now i went in december

01:05:41.740 early december so that was i don't know nine months and we had at least unequivocal victory over saddam

01:05:48.900 right he was hiding and in fact he was captured into crete the day i got there so we had just won

01:05:53.520 and we can't control the airport right so then we we drive in from kuwait immediately got like it was

01:06:00.720 out of control people were shooting it was it was chaos it was full chaos and then we stayed outside

01:06:05.260 the green zone for um in this just this house that they had rented and one night i'm sitting on the

01:06:11.980 roof on a sat phone trying to talk to my wife back in washington taking our dog to the vet

01:06:15.620 and someone starts shooting at me and then all these people start shooting at our house there's

01:06:20.240 a gun battle at the house like what um do you have a gun when you're over there oh absolutely i almost

01:06:27.760 got fired for it really actually amazingly um you were you were told to carry a gun it was so out of

01:06:36.380 control when i was there that journalists and ngo workers or i don't know certainly me you had to go

01:06:43.300 get a certification from the state department i still have my badge it's hanging in my office

01:06:46.920 right there that um you qualified with this it was an ak-47 well i actually had an ak-47 already not

01:06:53.260 fully automatic but just my range so i knew how to operate it but yeah you're required to carry it

01:06:58.240 that's how out of control it was so and then a buddy of mine got killed there a journalist was killed

01:07:03.920 there a guy called mike kelly was a really great guy and um the bottom line was we're not good

01:07:10.440 at colonialism yeah because we don't have the self-confidence we're not sort of bringing

01:07:15.880 christianity and civilization there's no like clearly defined goal for this and we're bad at it

01:07:21.960 and the armed forces is not designed to do that and the effect was super obvious it was chaos and the

01:07:26.980 one thing i cannot deal with and i hate and i think all people hate instinctively is chaos people can

01:07:31.480 handle repression they live under repression of regimes you know all through history they have

01:07:35.100 they can't handle chaos and we brought chaos to iraq and i just thought this is the opposite of

01:07:42.000 what a great power should be doing this is disgusting and i saw really really clearly

01:07:46.000 that it would never get better and and i'll just add one more thing to this which i've never forgotten

01:07:51.060 we went into the green zone one night and had dinner with some generals i did and this and i'd always

01:07:59.620 sort of liked my dad was the military i sort of respected the military i didn't realize how

01:08:04.100 corrupt and disgusting and feminized the officer class was and politicized just repulsive people

01:08:09.680 actually at the flag officer level so we're sitting at dinner and this general is telling me about i saw

01:08:14.900 something really touching today i saw we had this female officer um and she was killed her legs were

01:08:23.060 blown off by an ied and her husband was there and uh he you know they've got three kids back in

01:08:29.400 virginia but he held her hand as she died of this ultimate sacrifice for america and i was like

01:08:34.420 what you're like celebrating this a girl got killed a mother i thought we fought wars to protect

01:08:41.700 mothers and children first of all if you're sending girls to fight your wars you're disgusting

01:08:46.760 yeah because you're violating the most basic agreement there is which is the man protects and in

01:08:53.940 exchange for that the willingness to sacrifice his life he gets to be revered as a man it's at the

01:08:59.340 head of the table and all the benefits of being a man and there are many but if you're sending your

01:09:04.960 children 100 yeah if you're sending women to protect you if there's a home invasion at your

01:09:09.520 house at three in the morning you're like honey i dealt with the last one go go defend us i hope

01:09:13.820 that she leaves you and she will by the way yes so if you're sending women to defend you it's not a

01:09:19.620 civilization worth defending that's how i feel you imagine i mean going with the mother of your

01:09:24.020 children a mother going to war with a mother gets her legs blown off and you think that's a good

01:09:28.800 thing and i lost control at the table with this guy and said almost exactly what i think it's

01:09:33.660 disgusting and it's not because i i don't think women should be defending our country not because i

01:09:38.740 don't love women it's because i do love women they're above that we should we should be defending

01:09:42.320 our women yeah i don't know how supporting women getting their legs blown off exactly become the

01:09:46.780 pro woman position exactly and this guy accused me of being like a woman hater or something here

01:09:53.420 i've got a wife and three daughters who i revere who i would die for without thinking and i'm like i

01:09:59.120 hated him i don't think i've ever hated a man more than i hated this general i wish i remember his name

01:10:03.720 um and the pio the fairly well-known sort of spokesman for the provisional authority

01:10:09.620 dan senor was sitting at the table he was very offended by my behavior

01:10:13.680 and but i was outraged and that rage has sort of never it's just exploded on you sorry but it's

01:10:19.160 never left me and i really enjoyed it i came back to washington and i was like and i did an

01:10:24.920 interview with the new york times i said i cannot believe i supported something like this is totally

01:10:28.020 evil what we're doing and i've never moved from that position i lost all these friends for saying

01:10:32.720 that whatever i'm not i don't want to talk about myself continue talking about myself but yeah

01:10:36.060 you asked well because i've just i've heard you say several times that your trip over there you

01:10:40.860 know like turns you against the war but i would never like heard you really like say what

01:10:44.040 specifically it was celebrating the death of a mother yeah and then getting mad at me because

01:10:48.880 i don't i'm not going to celebrate the death of a mother what about her children and her husband

01:10:52.400 like this is disgusting and it's it's it's so dark and horrible that we dress it up with ideology

01:11:01.500 well the thing that's almost like to make it palatable right well the thing that's almost more dark

01:11:06.360 and horrible then just that is when you add on the fact that this was a small group of people

01:11:12.680 who wanted this war going back into the 90s and that they used 9-11 as the excuse to you know what

01:11:22.020 i mean be like oh yeah now we can go get our bonus war oh look at this right now we've got a blank

01:11:27.780 check from the american people which they did that you tell us you say the word terrorist in point and

01:11:32.540 we will support you bombing the crap and i knew it was bullshit even at the time and i i went over to

01:11:39.220 the white house for something to see bush or cheney um or somebody i think i was seeing cheney whatever i

01:11:46.660 was on the white house he's a really warm guy great guy and right and so i was there and it was like

01:11:54.380 maybe the fall of 2002 and they'd been talking about this invader rock stuff but i didn't take it

01:12:02.100 seriously because i thought it was so crazy it was like a non sequitur it was like it was just not

01:12:08.040 connected in any sense to 9-11 obviously and guys like you know paid liars like steve hayes or someone

01:12:13.820 write these books like al-qaeda did it and i work with steve hayes and i was so embarrassed by that

01:12:18.400 it's like he's dumb so he didn't know but i just felt i was like this whole thing was like so nuts

01:12:22.900 so i never thought we were going to invade iraq i never thought that and i show up and i'm whatever

01:12:28.360 like having a cigarette on the lawn outside where all the all the sticks are all the stand-up guys

01:12:33.060 the tv cameras are and i run into mike allen he's an old friend of mine from washington post reporter

01:12:39.240 now runs axios and a really nice person and has this like clarity of vision that i don't have because

01:12:44.720 he isn't caught in the weeds on shit and i said we're not really going to invade iraq he goes of course

01:12:48.600 we are and i said how do you know that he goes well because it's all the machinery is moving in

01:12:54.220 that direction like if it's going to happen i was like that can't really happen he goes oh no that's

01:12:57.280 going to happen he wasn't endorsing it yeah he could just see that like if everyone starts talking

01:13:01.980 about something like they will convince themselves that it's true and it will happen like we should

01:13:07.300 remember that yeah don't overthink things if something really obvious is happening it's happening

01:13:13.380 yeah sometimes sometimes yeah sometimes it's almost too hard to accept intellectuals people

01:13:19.200 like you yeah and to some extent me have a lot of trouble seeing that because we're like well actually

01:13:25.020 no no the obvious is real yeah and it's almost like if you just if you like you know remove yourself

01:13:32.960 like if you transcend the moment it's like yeah it's so obvious exactly like of course this is

01:13:36.600 happening and there's you know what's unbelievable to me that really like what what what's woken me up

01:13:45.540 about the warfare state is you know like how much it's all based on lies and that you see that

01:13:52.500 there's only like a few and i you call me an intellectual i'm really not an intellectual you

01:13:56.380 know like i'm a i'm a comedian who likes to read no no but you think about why things happen sure sure

01:14:00.560 but i just mean that i'm not an expert in any of this stuff but you know i just know enough

01:14:05.660 to know that the supposed experts are completely full of shit like all all i have to know is these

01:14:11.460 four like narrative shattering things and so like like just a few of them are like look you could

01:14:16.880 read and anyone can go read this you'll find it's called a clean break a new strategy for securing

01:14:21.880 the realm it was a letter written by uh richard pearl and david wormser and a few other oh i remember

01:14:27.720 this became very powerful in the george w bush administration i knew all those guys so this was

01:14:31.280 written in 1996 and it was not written to bill clinton it was not written to bob dole who was

01:14:37.160 running for president that year it was written to benjamin netanyahu who had just become the prime

01:14:42.240 minister of israel and the clean break the strategy was a break from this whole peace process nonsense

01:14:49.060 that yitzhak rabin and them had had agreed to and basically it was like well look it was the beginning

01:14:55.800 laying down of what the net and yahoo doctrine was ultimately to be which has culminated in a wild

01:15:00.400 success as you know um and so uh basically the idea was like well look forget all of this like

01:15:06.060 this peace process where you focus on land exchanges and whose land belongs to who that's all kind of

01:15:12.020 lame and so what really you should do is reach out to the broader arab world kind of make arrangements

01:15:17.560 with them so you don't have to go through this this peace process and that starts with overthrowing

01:15:22.440 saddam hussein and like that's our first step here and then there's several other steps but it's

01:15:27.560 why we want saddam hussein overthrown and so then this was for israel's interests we wanted this

01:15:35.240 this war in 1996 now by the way there's other things i'm not like saying like israel is 100

01:15:40.720 pulling the strings of the american government i think a big part of the reason why the war ended

01:15:44.780 up happening was also because george w bush had a personal beef against saddam hussein who tried to

01:15:49.400 have his father uh killed but these neoconservatives then who get into as soon as 9 11 and in the project

01:15:56.180 for a new american century when they talked about how they wanted to fight wars on multiple fronts

01:16:00.360 they explicitly said they probably wouldn't be able to do that unless there was like a new another pearl

01:16:05.820 harbor type event where there'd be enough popular support too now the 9 11 truthers that alex jones

01:16:12.500 guys for a while they would hang on that as evidence that you know whatever cheney did 9 11 or

01:16:20.620 something like that were something elements within our government i think they're overplaying their hand

01:16:24.320 there i don't actually think that but it certainly is evidence that they recognize what it was once

01:16:29.100 it happened what do you think that now i should say what you already know which is we don't really

01:16:33.640 know that much about 9 11 because so many documents remain classified yeah 23 years later and why would

01:16:40.240 that be there's no excuse for that they should every one of them should be released this afternoon

01:16:44.340 they won't be so we can only speculate to some extent but like what should we be suspicious of the

01:16:50.280 official explanation for 9 11 i think you should always be suspicious of of any government explanation

01:16:57.120 for anything i mean like that that should always be your starting point like i'm not saying you

01:17:00.920 should jump to a conclusion about what happened but and i think this is by the way this is my

01:17:05.920 worldview that has served me very well uh over the last like i i kind of like i basically my podcast

01:17:12.860 kind of took off and a big part of well a big part of that is like joe rogan and stuff like that but

01:17:17.160 i've just kind of been consistently right on the biggest issues i have a good track record now yes

01:17:21.760 like i was in real time like calling out how obviously trump was not a russian agent and in

01:17:26.720 real time i was saying the hunter biden laptop was real and in real time i was against lockdowns from

01:17:31.020 the very beginning and i was again and it's all because i just i operate from a worldview of recognizing

01:17:36.380 the government as essentially a criminal gang yes they're basically the mafia who won and now they

01:17:43.000 just rule you know what i mean and like so having taken out the real and much less benign actual

01:17:47.860 mafia and that's also and that's part of the reason why they they don't like the mafia because

01:17:52.020 you're a competing gang you're not allowed to be the gang yeah we're the gang and so when you look at

01:17:56.640 things through that frame yes they're all a bunch of liars and they're they're power brokers and so

01:18:01.200 yeah i don't trust anything they say i try to just go off what i know um so we don't know exactly

01:18:07.300 what happened on 9 11 we do know at this point that there was pretty high level saudi

01:18:11.160 involvement and that the saudis have that the government knew that and had no interest in

01:18:17.740 punishing those people and in fact still wanted to continue doing business with them we do know

01:18:22.440 that we were comfortable enough fighting on the same side as al-qaeda in libya in syria and in yemen

01:18:29.440 um so it didn't seem like al-qaeda fighting al-qaeda wasn't really the motivating force and like i said we

01:18:35.380 we know that these this group of neocons who hijacked the federal government wanted these

01:18:41.080 wars and after 9 11 used that opportunity to get them they used that opportunity but anyway so the

01:18:47.560 point i was making about not being an expert but being able to shatter this narrative it's like

01:18:51.480 wait so do you just to be clear though do you think it's possible that people within the u.s

01:18:56.240 government were aware this was going to happen before sure absolutely that's possible yeah i mean

01:19:00.740 you know i wouldn't put that past them it's kind of listen these are people who are and and i think

01:19:06.660 this is one of the things that people have been waking up to a lot more recently and this has led

01:19:11.060 to some wild conspiracies um some of which are not true some of which might be true um but people have

01:19:17.240 been waking up more and more to recognizing like who are these people you know what i mean like these

01:19:24.860 people who have like real power in our government like who are these people i mean you know you take

01:19:29.060 someone like hillary clinton um so it's like okay so your husband is a rapist i mean he's been accused

01:19:38.420 of rape by multiple women clearly a sexual predator you know i mean a man who even just the stuff we

01:19:43.680 know confirmed this was a man who when he was a married president was like fucking a 20 year old

01:19:49.700 intern in the white house like a sexual predator of so you know what i mean um and okay your best

01:19:56.160 friend her husband also is a sexual predator who's sending naked pictures to underage girls like

01:20:03.620 hey that's weird like how many it is how many people do you know who are married to a sexual

01:20:07.760 predator whose best friend's also married to a sexual predator like i you know like i'm not even

01:20:12.000 going i'm not saying what is that no you're like i'm not drawing any more a bigger conclusion but you're

01:20:17.200 like who are these people and these are people who are like you know bohemian grove is real

01:20:22.720 they're doing really weird stuff there jeffrey epstein was real there was a like pedophile ring

01:20:28.860 that a lot of the most powerful people were connected to at least knew about and didn't feel

01:20:34.080 like blowing the whistle on it um these are people who are comfortable making decisions where babies will

01:20:40.360 die you know like mass slaughter will happen and they can sleep at night and like i'm not saying like

01:20:48.040 a situation where either our babies are going to die or their babies are going to die and there's

01:20:52.540 a horrible decision but i have to make this a decision where like no we're choosing this to

01:20:56.420 happen and they're kind of okay with that and you kind of wake up to like so when you say like is it

01:21:01.480 possible that they'd kill americans or be complicit in that like yeah of course of course that's

01:21:06.520 possible i don't have enough evidence to like prove that that's the case but i can prove that they

01:21:11.900 wanted these wars and then when the opportunity to get them came they lied through their fucking teeth

01:21:17.300 in order to sell the wars look general wesley clark he said as i'm sure you you've seen his uh

01:21:24.100 democracy now interview where he said that he saw the plans in late 2001 that it wasn't just that we

01:21:29.380 were going into iraq but that we were also going to have regime change in syria and several other

01:21:33.400 countries but then when they go to start the regime change in syria 2013 or whatever they were

01:21:40.140 they started in 2012 but then they go oh we have to overthrow Assad because you know he's killing

01:21:44.100 all of his own people it's like no no no no you wanted to overthrow Assad over a decade ago don't

01:21:50.700 give me this bullshit that this is some new plan now so i do know that they will lie through their

01:21:55.400 teeth to the american people like this i know for certain that they will lie through their teeth to

01:21:59.260 the american people to get enough public support for mass slaughter campaigns because they want those

01:22:05.440 campaigns for completely different reasons and i'm again like i said before this isn't speculation

01:22:11.640 they wrote this in their own words one of the reasons they wanted to remake the middle east in

01:22:17.180 this way is because they thought it was in israel's interest and that to me is like just totally

01:22:24.380 unacceptable as an american that you're first off you're lying to the people of this country and

01:22:29.520 you're doing something with a foreign country's interest in mind that's just like so appalling

01:22:35.080 that i think people should be like publicly hung for it but it's after a trial after a fair trial

01:22:39.920 i mean it it's not america first i would say that it's kind of hard to it's kind of hard to

01:22:46.340 what's interesting is it's so many people who talk about america first or whatever

01:22:59.100 they're fully on board with this they attack anyone who's not i had a thoroughly bizarre

01:23:04.500 experience the other day and maybe you can shed light on what it means because i don't fully

01:23:07.660 understand it but i was doing uh rogan's podcast at your urging that's a thank you for that i had a

01:23:14.480 great time i i loved the podcast yeah it was super super fun but you know it's very long it was like

01:23:19.280 three hours long so and i can't stop talking so i'm right another thing and i'm going out of it

01:23:24.040 whatever you know and um at one point i just blurted out for like 15 seconds something i've

01:23:29.520 thought about recently which is the use of the nuclear bombs which they have been used

01:23:34.280 in august of 1945 against hiroshima and then nagasaki complex topic a lot of it's not publicly

01:23:42.340 well known okay but just the bottom line fact that we dropped this particularly bomb on nagasaki

01:23:48.200 which was the christian capital of japan by the way that bomb was dropped on a church and killed

01:23:53.420 you know three quarters of the christians in the city um which bothers me as a christian but

01:23:57.720 leaving even that aside it killed civilians it wasn't dropped on a military base it was killed

01:24:03.120 killed civilians and like i get why people did it or maybe i don't get it but i think 80 years later

01:24:08.600 we can say not something to brag about incinerating civilians i don't care what the context is

01:24:13.660 that's evil that's all basically all i said holy shit did i get attacked from the right and i thought

01:24:21.140 and i don't even follow the attacks on me ever but i kept getting texts from people i can't believe

01:24:25.420 you said that or people are mad at you for saying that and i thought of all the dumb cruel untrue

01:24:30.980 things i have said over 30 years of just talking in public a lot of which i regret and i hope i've

01:24:36.580 apologized for every bad thing i've said but i've said a lot of really things are impossible to defend

01:24:41.900 that's what they attack me on yeah what is that well and just the fact like even as you're saying

01:24:48.000 like again if you want to attack you on something like hey you supported the war in iraq oh shit

01:24:51.960 like there's a thing like i really got this wrong and it was how is what a like twisted society i

01:24:57.420 defended mit rotney when he ran yeah i mean but guys all of the people who got all of these wars wrong

01:25:03.140 don't receive as much outrage as you for saying after the war was won and by the way like if you

01:25:09.700 know anything about i'm aware five star general dwight eisenhower was against the nuke he said it was

01:25:15.660 unnecessary where they were ready to negotiate a surrender we didn't need to do this inside but

01:25:20.360 also there's just no but i didn't even get into the details of the of that specific thing on its

01:25:24.820 face then exactly i was just the principle of using nuclear weapons against a civilian population

01:25:30.220 you could construct in your mind a scenario where you could justify it i guess but it's still sort of

01:25:35.960 in the cold light of day hard to defend incinerating civilians by the way with incendiary bombs too

01:25:40.860 or conventional bombs as in dresden or it's just bad why would that make people on the right

01:25:47.360 so mad what is that so this is my kind of theory on it is that if you you'll kind of notice um world

01:25:55.500 war ii which is a long time ago at this point yeah generates this enormous you know you said the

01:26:02.140 thing i love when you said that about how you could tell there's an infection because you touch it

01:26:06.360 yes people recoil yes you can tell something's infected there right yes and i could sit here

01:26:11.060 all day long and talk about how we shouldn't have fought world war one and which we shouldn't have

01:26:15.420 fought yeah that's for sure that's for sure this will generate no controversy i could say this all

01:26:19.460 day long and go through how woodrow wilson was completely wrong to get us involved in world war

01:26:22.420 one and this was bullshit yes yeah nobody cares this will not i will not hear anything on twitter

01:26:28.520 tomorrow about saying this i could talk about how vietnam was a complete disaster or also lied into

01:26:33.720 that war and how many people died in it korea iraq all world war ii is the one that is but what's

01:26:40.860 so weird about that is clearly the most important we talked about this last night the most important

01:26:44.540 thing in your life is your marriage and your children yes so if i said to you dave smith i think

01:26:48.580 you have a shitty marriage you would be like no i don't actually i have a nice marriage that wouldn't

01:26:55.160 like you wouldn't be mad about that you'd be like i don't think you really know i because you're not

01:26:58.760 hiding anything right so like well so here's right well here's what it is right and like i want to be

01:27:07.260 very clear just when i say this i'm if you're like trying to read between the lines here i'm not saying

01:27:13.340 that the holocaust didn't happen or something like that it did happen and well yeah yes those people

01:27:19.300 are dead my family was involved in it was one of the worst things that's ever happened i agree but

01:27:23.080 look world war ii is the origin story of the american empire that's when we really became the

01:27:31.200 world empire and it's the justification for the entire empire it's why every single neocon every

01:27:37.040 single hawk goes back to world war ii anytime there's a war because that's what's used to justify

01:27:42.020 every other war we stopped hitler okay we'd all be speaking german if it wasn't for the american

01:27:47.760 military so how dare you question the next thing that's why stamm hussein was hitler

01:27:51.860 milosevic was hitler putin's hitler they're all hitler i can't tell you how many people

01:27:57.280 i've heard uh and i've debated some of these people who are defending israel's uh attack on gaza

01:28:03.460 by going well we killed a lot of civilians in world war ii you know so just like that as if hamas are

01:28:10.060 the nazis it's anything comparable but the thing is that so when you talk about world war ii you're only

01:28:16.900 allowed to have the official narrative on it and here it is we all know what it is right

01:28:21.360 who are you neville chamberlain you mean you don't want to go to war you want to appease

01:28:26.060 as that's the only lesson of history that you're allowed to learn is that appeasement doesn't work

01:28:30.220 presumably we should have started the war earlier i guess is the story but every by the way you can

01:28:35.300 never learn the lesson of history that sometimes like preemptive wars don't work sometimes you know

01:28:39.820 like ruthless power doesn't work maybe sometimes appeasement would be better than that you know

01:28:44.420 it's like there's only one you know and so that's the lesson by the way same thing with

01:28:47.880 putin everybody who if you didn't support the war i know you got called this i watched you get

01:28:52.120 called this um you were never chamberlain for not wanting to back ukraine immediately in the war

01:28:56.420 right it's the only lesson in history now you can't look at world war ii and say hey maybe danzig

01:29:00.540 was the lesson maybe maybe war guarantees were the lesson i'm not even saying they are maybe not but

01:29:05.720 objectively speaking if we want to be honest about world war ii world war ii is the worst thing that

01:29:11.840 ever happened in the history of the world yes by definition worst thing that ever happened

01:29:16.180 more people killed the holocaust happened in the middle of it tens of millions of people died

01:29:21.200 in european uh conflict brutal conflict on all sides destroyed the greatest continent yes

01:29:26.740 now the right exactly now um okay if you want you know they say winners of wars write the history

01:29:34.880 and man did the nazis and imperial japan make it really easy because they were so evil they were

01:29:42.220 like they were like caricatures of evil you know and they really were now it's a little more

01:29:47.400 complicated than that because stalin's army wasn't like high-fiving everybody on the way in

01:29:51.880 to uh to germany raped every woman in germany right i mean it's like there's a lot of you but

01:29:56.740 any sane person if you look back at world war ii and you recognize the worst thing that ever happened

01:30:02.860 you would try to say how could we have avoided this exactly what could we have done to not make this

01:30:07.980 happen the lesson should be like oh my god we imposed versailles on the germans and insisted on

01:30:12.920 humiliating them internationally and look at the backlash of this and then you know whatever there's

01:30:18.120 all this a lot of it comes down to entering world war one and world war ii was really an extension of

01:30:22.220 that's right but it's like the only lesson you're allowed to take away is this but you know i really

01:30:26.040 liked the way you put it on rogan and it was just kind of a quick aside but look it's just so evil

01:30:31.560 on its face that i know human beings are amazing at doing mental gymnastics to justify anything

01:30:36.860 i've been doing a lot of debates on the topic of israel and i've been watching this firsthand

01:30:41.180 you know it's like you could watch uh videos every day on twitter of babies you know like

01:30:47.500 suffocating to death under building under rubble and like someone will justify that someone will say

01:30:53.080 well actually we need to do this because whatever all of hamas must be destroyed why exactly like why

01:30:58.700 is it absolutely necessary you're telling me israel the fortress of the world can't just not drop the

01:31:04.100 ball again you know what i mean like there's not some other answer other than this and of course

01:31:07.820 america must fund it for reasons um but it's like no actually that is just evil and and and the onus

01:31:16.280 is on you to exhaust every single other option before doing it it's just interesting it's like i've

01:31:21.460 done a lot of evil things in my life and i really regret it i think all of us are capable of evil i've

01:31:25.960 never committed genocide or anything but i mean i've been pointlessly cruel or deceptive and you know

01:31:31.080 and i'm ashamed of it so i'm not judging even harry truman for this but it's like why can't why

01:31:38.560 is that so offensive and the other question i haven't maybe you've got insight into this i don't

01:31:44.220 know that much i've read a lot about world war ii i'm not an expert but like the this worship of

01:31:50.340 churchill i think is very odd there's a lot about churchill i think that was impressive erudite guy

01:31:56.260 fluid writer um had a kind of style that i like used tobacco which i love i mean there's a lot

01:32:02.200 about churchill right that's in the pro is cool for sure but here are the facts like he sold his

01:32:09.360 country on a war using the idea that we must defend the territorial integrity of poland there are other

01:32:15.960 reasons that was the main reason right poland okay maybe that's a reason then four years later

01:32:23.740 he hands poland to the soviets after a bloodbath yes this country that we went to war on behalf of

01:32:33.700 i'm handing it to a worse master a more totalitarian master or at least as bad yeah i mean the only

01:32:39.240 other one who or one of the only other two who rival right exactly that's right i don't know i guess

01:32:45.380 you could say if hitler had won the war could he have then killed more people than stuff i guess we'll

01:32:48.780 never know but yeah still up there okay so that's a huge problem that's a huge problem jordan and

01:32:53.840 kobe exactly you could debate who but clearly you don't care about poland if you just handed it to

01:32:59.100 stalin or clearly it didn't work you know or something there's like there's a massive disconnect

01:33:03.860 so that's the first fact the second fact is he was rejected by his own voters right after the war

01:33:09.140 so they actually weren't still impressed by his leadership and the third fact is that war destroyed

01:33:14.980 britain and that country is a depressing husk right now i go there a lot unfortunately i don't want to

01:33:21.220 go there it's the most depressing place i can imagine it's totally defeated in some deep spiritual sense

01:33:28.620 and um it's embarrassing to go there so you destroy your country on behalf of poland and then you hand

01:33:36.780 it to stalin like i don't those are the bottom line facts about churchill there are a lot of other

01:33:40.640 things to say about him but those are the salient points how could anybody think that's good well

01:33:45.280 you know in uh in pat seriously like what is that 100 you know pat buchanan's book uh uh churchill

01:33:51.260 hitler and the unnecessary war the unnecessary war is in quotes because that's not pat buchanan saying

01:33:56.780 it it's a churchill quote that churchill after the war said it was the most avoidable unnecessary war

01:34:02.380 afterward he took britain from being the most powerful nation in the world to being totally defeated

01:34:06.500 they lost that war as much as anybody else but look at it now yeah it's disgusting by the way

01:34:11.780 there's so many there's so many like ripple effects of this too because they also you know the whole

01:34:15.620 situation with israel palestine this is also a result of the british empire of course right and

01:34:20.820 being driven out so there's so much uh to this but why defend it that's the way look i'm not even

01:34:27.180 judging churchill i may have made similar decisions i right i've made so many bad decisions in my life i'm

01:34:32.140 not even judging i'm just saying 80 years later when we can see clearly the aftermath how could

01:34:37.080 you possibly defend that right and why would you want to and also i just you know like there's a

01:34:41.760 reason i mean there's lots of reasons why america was so successful as a country but part of the reason

01:34:47.660 really was the brilliance of our founding fathers and the system that they created i mean that's a

01:34:51.740 huge part of it and there's like a you know it's like when they george washington's farewell address

01:34:56.300 where he warns about entangling alliances yes and there was something really profound that they saw

01:35:01.600 there and this this idea and this this is a real problem with like it's like why would we even want

01:35:06.520 ukraine and nato why do we want to make war guarantees for countries that we have neither

01:35:13.000 the resources nor the political will to actually defend in the case of a nicely put you know look i

01:35:19.800 mean like first off we're broke we're 34 trillion dollars in debt we can't afford we can't afford our

01:35:24.680 own wars let alone everybody else's we're literally it's it's so cartoonish we're borrowing money

01:35:30.100 to the you know it's like if you were like if i was giving my sister money and my my cousin's money

01:35:35.600 and all of them but i'm putting it on a credit card you know what i mean like i'm just i don't

01:35:39.700 have the money but i'm i'm such a great guy i'm helping my whole family it's like no you're not

01:35:43.880 in a position they're not even our family right they're not even our family i'm just helping some

01:35:48.420 random guy literally some junkie you met at safeway yes that's a better analogy that is a better

01:35:54.040 analogy for ukraine than my sister to be honest yes um and so like it's just totally absurd but

01:35:59.800 then also at the same time like look war's horrible there's always some type of conflict

01:36:03.140 going on in the world and it's awful but like are the question is like would you be willing or would

01:36:08.480 you be willing to send your kids to go fight and die over between you know to determine whether

01:36:13.960 you know the donbass region is ruled by kiev or moscow like was is that important enough to you

01:36:20.500 because to me it's a very easy answer which is no i would not be but would it be worth killing a

01:36:26.100 million ukrainians yeah right right yes but i'll put a flag in my bio and support my politicians

01:36:31.240 printing money to to send over them or i should say printing money to then buy from weapons companies

01:36:37.200 weapons to then send over to them a mix of weapons and cash or whatever but yeah i mean like so to me

01:36:43.160 would you mind though not referring to them as weapons companies but defense manufacturers i'm sorry

01:36:47.880 yes that's right the defense department the the defense manufacturer the intelligence community

01:36:52.960 that's my favorite one the intel the community they're all just like gardening with each other

01:36:57.300 and stuff you know so you you described yourself as a comic who likes to read yeah which i love let me

01:37:04.740 ask you about about comedy so i went and had dinner with rogan last month and was not my world i had no

01:37:11.880 idea that austin texas had become like the world capital of comedy yeah what he made it the world

01:37:19.660 capital so he used you described him as the johnny the modern johnny carson 100 so how like how does

01:37:26.140 it work the system now it's like well i mean rogan so he was doing the podcast in la for for many

01:37:32.200 years that's when i first met him he was living out in la and he left i think during the lockdowns

01:37:37.260 slash riots you know when california's you know very well is falling apart it's one of the great

01:37:43.160 tragedies it really is yeah it's awful um and so he decided to take it down to austin where they had

01:37:48.560 kind of like opened up and it was flourishing and austin is it's like um it's one of the last

01:37:55.320 like great liberal cities in this country you know which is and and like i know a lot of people on

01:38:00.480 the right who kind of have this attitude of like well screw them they voted in these policies and all

01:38:04.680 that but i just think that is wrong that is the wrong attitude to have you need liberal cities

01:38:08.700 and for to have a healthy country you kind of need that dynamic as much as you need beautiful

01:38:14.000 country you know liberal cities are all that we have well of course right functioning liberal

01:38:18.980 cities that's what i mean yeah yeah you need them to not be hellholes which many of them have turned

01:38:23.700 into but so rogan it just started because there was something about you know just like the stars

01:38:30.940 aligning you know in a very similar way to i i heard you talk about i think you were talking to me

01:38:35.060 about um how look there's something to the fact that say you get fired from fox news and it happens to

01:38:40.920 be at this point where elon musk bought twitter and turned it into pretty amazing everyone's there

01:38:45.700 and you're protected there they're not going to ban you and you know when bill o'reilly got fired from

01:38:50.520 fox news there just there was nothing like that no that's that's totally right you go to a relevance

01:38:55.440 rogan happened to kind of like come up as this internet world was exploding and he's just such an

01:39:02.700 interesting guy such a genuine guy that his podcast just took off and he became kind of like in this

01:39:10.800 situation where he anybody who kind of comes on or if you come on and you do well you know it's just

01:39:18.580 like the biggest opportunity and he's such a genuinely like generous person that i think he

01:39:23.740 loves that i think that's his favorite thing of all of it out of owning the comedy club the podcast

01:39:28.880 like everything he does i see it in him what he really loves what really makes him happy is that he

01:39:34.500 gets to kind of bring all of his guys with him and you know i i know a lot of friends who joe has

01:39:41.720 changed their lives you know like he's been it's the johnny carson thing it's i remember jerry seinfeld

01:39:46.960 hearing him i don't know him but hearing him describe doing carson oh yeah and he said it was uh he said

01:39:53.180 it was an experience like having kids where you go in one person and come out another person you know

01:39:59.240 what i mean which is really is the experience particularly that first kid because you literally like it's

01:40:04.140 like you and your wife go to a hospital as a couple and then you leave that hospital as like

01:40:10.280 wild we're mommy and daddy now and it's really weird it's a really weird feeling like you go in

01:40:15.160 focused on your wife and you come out obsessed with her the baby yeah yeah and then your wife's like

01:40:19.800 hobbling in the background and you're like yeah i'm just kidding kind of but anyway but uh it's but

01:40:25.400 it's this amazing you know it's like um you know it's like you're on drugs basically like you're high

01:40:30.840 when you first come out with a new baby you kind of can't believe it and you also you don't know

01:40:34.540 what you're doing with the first one you know and you but you figure it out but anyway he said

01:40:39.240 carson was like that like you go into nobody and then you come out and you're a somebody and it's

01:40:44.120 kind of like that with rogan like it's just and and it's there's all these similar dynamics like

01:40:49.180 he'll kind of go you know like he'll go like two hours and 15 minutes with some people and then

01:40:54.220 he'll go like three and a half hours sometimes if he really likes the conversation and you never know

01:40:58.140 as you know when you're in there you have no idea how long you actually went for or whatever but

01:41:01.660 it's um and that like my experience with him was he heard me on a mutual friend of ours ari

01:41:08.600 shafir's podcast who i love also hilarious that guy's talented he's so funny he's like and also

01:41:13.300 just a great person and an insane person but one of the best people i've ever known um and so i was

01:41:18.620 on his podcast and rogan heard it and he goes i think this guy's awesome i want to have him on and

01:41:23.360 it was just like that like he loved what i was saying so he's like oh i want to make this guy like

01:41:27.420 successful and it's just like amazing and what happened to your life well i started making money

01:41:33.720 so that was that was pretty so it was that it was kind of that simple it was i mean it was like

01:41:39.640 it wasn't exactly just that but immediately the like i was already doing my podcast and then

01:41:46.440 immediately as soon as the first one with rogan was out my numbers like shot up like all of a sudden

01:41:50.640 i had a big audience i went from having a tiny little audience like having a big audience and then

01:41:54.740 every you know i've done it a lot of times every time you do it your numbers shoot up your numbers

01:41:58.760 shoot up and so like yeah it's just unbelievable and you know one of the things about rogan is um

01:42:04.740 and i i gotta say i don't really mean this i think you have this quality too and i kind of knew this

01:42:10.260 about you like i've i've watched you for many years at this point i watched you i mean a little

01:42:14.940 bit when you were on crossfire but i watched your so your show on msnbc a lot and then i always

01:42:19.540 watched you're the only you're the only one the msnbc one that might be true that's not true for

01:42:23.720 fox that's not true at all for fox but you might be right about msnbc it was me i was i had msnbc on

01:42:28.880 all day long um for whatever reason i kind of just to like piss me off for most of the time but also

01:42:33.860 getting off on a tangent msnbc was a very different thing back then it was so that is so night and day

01:42:39.280 i know to today i mean you just can't even it was so much smarter and more thoughtful there was still

01:42:45.880 a lot of propaganda to it there was still a lot of bullshit um i think you've gotten better over

01:42:50.040 the years yeah for sure but as a network they got so much worse i mean like but morning joe used to

01:42:56.220 be like um like you and pat buchanan oh yeah and rachel maddow oh yeah and uh dylan radigan even

01:43:04.480 who was kind of totally i kind of liked dylan radigan yeah well i had something to say sometimes

01:43:08.020 that you'd be like okay that's kind of and i mean it's become but like every single host

01:43:14.300 has the same opinions as the last hour precisely there's not one area now occasionally there'll be

01:43:20.820 the guy like um what's his name i'm blanking on his name who just got canned because he was pro

01:43:25.580 palestinian oh exactly right so occasionally you'll have one guy who has a different opinion and then

01:43:29.840 oh he's out pretty quickly my favorite part of msnbc is all the black people on the air have exactly

01:43:34.500 the same opinions too it's like what's the point of diversity if everyone went to princeton and is a

01:43:40.020 neoliberal well there's nothing there's nothing more they gotta get some rappers on msnbc well

01:43:45.100 they would never be allowed right right because but there's something about um like being

01:43:50.560 ideologically possessed that's very unpleasant you know what i mean like and there's something

01:43:56.520 one of the things that was great about your show on fox news is that like you would on many key

01:44:00.800 issues have a completely different opinion than everybody else at fox news oh yeah and it'd be kind

01:44:04.140 of crazy to watch the whole news day not that i watched the whole news day but i knew what their

01:44:08.080 guys take and everybody is like yeah we got to go attack uh you know asad because he just gassed

01:44:14.040 his own people and then like you would like come on at 8 p.m and by the way i remember because i was

01:44:18.780 doing uh this show with se cup at the time i worked for cnn very briefly as like a contributor um and i

01:44:25.720 remember having it was the first week after the the gas attack now this was poison gas against his own

01:44:33.200 people but now this was before the opcw whistleblowers had like come out and so i didn't

01:44:38.380 like have any like evidence i could feel it didn't have well i mean you just look at it and you go okay

01:44:44.200 so so you're telling me that this is we're in 2018 now 2017 2018 um assad has been fighting a civil war

01:44:52.020 since 2012 uh fighting for his survival fighting to not go out like gaddafi like to not get sodomized

01:44:59.040 100 percent donald trump announces that we're pulling it he announces that you won you're gonna

01:45:05.840 live you're not gonna be sodomized to death by a mob right okay and then assad decides a week and a

01:45:13.080 half later i'm gonna do the one thing that would turn international opinion around to keep me at risk

01:45:20.480 of being sodomized that he's just like right away on the face of it like no i don't think so and like

01:45:25.020 the onus is on you to but anyway but everyone else at fox news the whole day would be saying that

01:45:28.600 then you'd have something different to say yeah there's something incredibly boring about someone

01:45:33.860 you just tell me don't even tell me the name but it's an msnbc host someone who hosts the show

01:45:39.340 you could pick the name in your head and i'll tell you their opinion on everything climate change it's

01:45:44.820 an existential crisis and we have to well you know racism well we have to confront systemic racism we

01:45:50.020 have to we need to have a conversation about race like a real conversation i was like really i'd love

01:45:54.300 to yeah yeah exactly right i don't think you want that well that's right and it's and no and it's

01:45:59.980 just so boring so boring to care anyway where i was but also can i just also say soul destroying

01:46:05.160 yes like what you were saying earlier i thought was so right on about repeating lies is such an

01:46:12.200 offense against you like where's your self-respect having you no dignity yeah like are you just like

01:46:17.840 an animal who can be you know hit with a shock collar and forced to perform tricks like

01:46:22.020 don't and there's something dude there's something it's like a universal law where you kind of um

01:46:27.200 like the way i think jordan peterson said it was like uh you get to choose your suffering you don't

01:46:32.000 get to choose no suffering exactly you get to choose your suffering that's right and this is true across

01:46:35.540 everything like we you could sit down and have a fat piece of cheesecake or you could jump on the

01:46:41.860 treadmill the cheesecake feels awesome yes the treadmill fucking sucks yes you know what i mean yes but

01:46:47.940 you're paying a price you're just kind of choosing and by i'm not saying you should never sit back

01:46:51.840 and have cheesecake like sometimes you got to do that but it's like you're choosing your suffering

01:46:55.600 yes like i'm and there's this choice where i'm going to choose to suffer up front now

01:46:59.440 so that i have some benefit later and it's always kind of that dynamic and when you lie to yourself

01:47:04.480 it's like okay you're choosing this kind of short term yes you know this lie will have whatever

01:47:08.960 positive effects exactly right this person might believe i'm a little bit cooler than i really am

01:47:12.980 or whatever but there's a long term there's never not a cost you can never get away from that

01:47:17.540 without paying some type of price it's just so degrading

01:47:20.340 and it's interesting and all the the people with self-respect have are gone they've been purged

01:47:32.960 yeah but then there's also okay so part of that price too and this is what i was getting at which

01:47:37.180 the thing that you and rogan have in common is that so many of those hosts and i don't know all

01:47:42.040 of them you know i've done a lot of shows at fox news met a lot of people over there and i did a

01:47:46.740 lot of shows at cnn when i was working uh there and so i met a lot of those guys i've never i was

01:47:51.880 one time in the msnbc studios and just met a few of the people there but they're like so many of them

01:47:57.600 are totally phony like they're just not i mean i've had things where like i've gone and grabbed beers

01:48:02.900 with people after like a show at fox news like after doing kennedy or doing gut or something like

01:48:07.180 that and at one time there was a green beret i won't name him but he's uh he was a green beret who

01:48:13.060 served a couple tours in afghanistan and he was on when we were on the show he was talking about

01:48:17.720 you know how supporting the surge i think i can't remember this years ago i think it was trump's

01:48:22.940 first surge and there's that and then we go out for beers afterward and he just he was like listen

01:48:28.780 there is no army over there that we've been building up there's nothing they'll fold in a day

01:48:33.280 and he goes let me tell you and he would tell me about like the you know he goes dude we would we

01:48:37.140 would give them uh you know like some machine guns we'd go out on a mission come back they used

01:48:42.380 them to rob everybody in the village there's no afghan army that we're building up the taliban will

01:48:46.860 run right through them there's like oh well why didn't you just tell everybody that you know what

01:48:51.700 i mean like why did you totally lie when we were on tv and it's just there's a lot of people who do

01:48:55.800 that and you can smell that you can smell that on them though like even if you don't know that

01:49:01.280 over time people kind of know people kind of know like oh these guys are and there is something

01:49:06.900 having watched you for a long time and now having met you um and this is joe rogan too you are

01:49:13.300 exactly the same person off camera that you are i hope so and there's no now with both there might

01:49:18.060 be something you'd say off camera that you wouldn't say on camera but there's nothing you're saying

01:49:21.440 but there's nothing you're saying on camera that you don't believe i would i would never do that and

01:49:26.240 so that's like i think that is you don't have to say everything you think you cannot lie right right

01:49:30.980 exactly and you never say everything you think i don't think you should actually because i have a lot

01:49:35.300 of dumb opinions too or that are just rooted in meanness or irritation or mocking people's

01:49:41.240 appearances which i have a weakness for don't don't do that i know well you're a comic i'm gonna keep

01:49:46.820 doing it i get i get your point but i'm i have no intention of stopping that but there is something

01:49:51.260 that i think is part of um what i love so much about joe and i think part of what why he has blown

01:49:56.520 up and been so successful is that you know because people ask me all the time they'll be like

01:50:00.460 what's joe rogan like you know and i'll be like you already know you already know what he's like

01:50:06.320 and you know this because you went and hung out he's exactly that guy totally exactly the same guy

01:50:10.400 you know i love that that works i love i'm thrilled by his success and yes the money too i'm not that

01:50:18.760 interested in money but i understand that like unless something is a real business it won't continue

01:50:23.880 right and so i love how successful he's been because it means it's just inspiration everyone else

01:50:29.500 yes right if you're an honest person you can actually make a good living being an honest person

01:50:34.160 how great is that yeah well that's that's awesome no that's right and that that is the part and i

01:50:38.680 don't like i'm i'm not the biggest fan but that is the stuff where iron round was really correct

01:50:43.120 about oh i agree the idea that like no like kind of there there is this connection between like

01:50:47.860 uh which she would call selfishness which i don't think is the right word for it but like

01:50:52.580 but there is something between like like success and the humans are weird psychological creatures

01:50:59.020 sometimes you can have the desire to not succeed to not outshine somebody else you know and but

01:51:04.140 actually you're doing a much better thing if you like succeed if you're great at something and then

01:51:09.800 you're like an inspiration to others to be well sure if rogan gets rich because he's brave and honest

01:51:16.300 how is that bad yeah i mean you see all these other people getting rich because they're craven

01:51:22.140 and dishonest and that's very demoralizing actually well and also i mean there's so much there's so

01:51:28.140 many things to be down about in our our country particularly right now like our country is not

01:51:34.360 in a very good place no it's not like i you know i'm uh like i got a wife and two little kids and i

01:51:39.960 put on a very strong face for them like in front of them i'm never like worried about anything that's

01:51:44.460 right no matter what it is and that's just the way it's like don't buy gold in front of your wife

01:51:48.060 do that secretly she sees the bars but the point is that yeah but i'm very but you know the truth

01:51:54.740 is like between me and you and the millions of people on the internet like i'm terrified about

01:51:58.380 the future of our country i'm very very concerned about it and there's a lot of like you know look

01:52:02.060 i mean obviously like we're in um we're in 34 trillion dollars of debt we can never stop fighting

01:52:08.660 these wars we've turned world opinion completely against us we have the worst um political and social

01:52:14.760 and racial divides of my lifetime yes the um the culture is more insane than any time in my lifetime

01:52:20.860 i mean the fact that we're debating over whether five-year-old boys can transition to be girl the

01:52:25.780 fact that that's even a a real thing and it's not a joke that wouldn't work because everyone goes that's

01:52:31.500 too absurd to be funny you know what i mean like i mean that's just like a sign in itself but there is

01:52:37.960 also something else going on and it's much bigger than me and i don't understand it i don't pretend to

01:52:42.900 understand it but we are living through some type of major paradigm shift and where lies are being

01:52:49.920 exposed quicker and people are being exposed more than ever and honesty and integrity are being

01:52:56.680 rewarded in certain ways and that's like i kind of have to cling on to that because there's so much to

01:53:02.680 be you know to feel despair over but there's something really positive about this i couldn't agree

01:53:08.840 propaganda is not working the same way it was do you find i just i've had this conversation i this

01:53:14.000 i ask everyone i have dinner with this question which is do you find in the midst of all of this

01:53:18.140 sadness and chaos and decline um rapid decline that your personal relationships are deeper and more

01:53:26.120 fulfilling oh yeah totally i mean for me you do feel that oh yeah i mean there's no question about

01:53:31.360 it for me i mean i've like my i have little kids i've my oldest is five so i've just in the last few

01:53:37.520 years you know started like having kids so yes and and i have great friends and um through this weird

01:53:44.500 internet world where we are i've kind of cultivated like a really great audience of a lot of really

01:53:49.560 cool people yes um and yeah i think that there's you know so you think you're relating to people

01:53:56.320 in a deeper way than you did say five or six ten years ago i think 100 um yes it's also it's been

01:54:02.380 there's been a big period for me kind of growing up you know i had a very like prolonged adolescence

01:54:07.500 kind of i was a stand-up comedian yes living a degenerate life for many years and then i settled

01:54:12.980 down and got married and had kids um so that's just aside from the craziness of the world i think

01:54:17.980 whenever you go through that you're just living in a better way how blessed are you though very very

01:54:21.860 very very because that's like your i mean that's your fortress against in that protects you from

01:54:27.160 everything else exactly because it well it's and it's just um you know it's it's whatever your you

01:54:35.000 know this is the thing that was kind of i know you sent me uh when i tweeted something about this but

01:54:40.140 where like when you don't have god whatever's next highest in line becomes in effect your god

01:54:45.700 and there is something about um i did not have god or family and my own family you know i had

01:54:52.480 family members who i love but i didn't have my own family and my whole life i kind of like i was like

01:54:56.600 a 90s kid i i grew up in i was born in 1983 i grew up in the 90s um none of us nobody i knew was

01:55:04.140 religious yes nobody i and we we did not have um you know like all of the traditions that many previous

01:55:10.640 generations grew up with where they're like god country chivalry these things you wear this

01:55:15.920 uncomfortable outfit here because that's what's expected of you around other people when you go

01:55:19.900 to church you know you strap on these boots it was like no we just grew up in blue jeans and sneakers and

01:55:24.860 the point of life was kind of like to get through school to go play you know what i mean when you

01:55:31.680 were when i was a teenager it was like to like smoke pot or you know like try to get laid or something

01:55:38.040 you know what i mean like it was all just kind of like revolved around what's fun and it wasn't

01:55:42.280 until i uh got married and when we had my first kid and i found god um also at that same time that

01:55:49.020 i'd been living a totally different life where my life is kind of centered around this purpose that

01:55:54.800 there's meaning to it and it's not really about me and whether i'm having fun like i still like to

01:55:59.260 have fun sometimes but it's like what that's really not that important like what's really important is

01:56:03.720 that like i'm being a great husband to my wife i'm being a great father to my kids

01:56:07.680 and ironically to some degree you just find much deeper uh much deeper happiness it's when you're

01:56:13.820 not living just for happiness no we were talking about this off camera i really wish this had been

01:56:18.560 on camera because it was so interesting what you were saying but you didn't grow up in a conventional

01:56:23.420 two-parent household no right no my parents were got divorced when i was three that's young yeah um so

01:56:29.700 you grew up in a single-parent household but you seem to have kind of figured out the formula so

01:56:37.000 well and i said well how did you know that how did you well i mean look it's it's a mix of a few

01:56:43.340 things um my mother was a really great mother so i only had one parent but i did have a really good

01:56:48.580 parent and she did instill a lot of you know like good values in me um and i don't mean if that kind

01:56:54.740 of contradicts what i just said before like she did instill good values in me even though we didn't

01:56:58.460 have kind of like you know god or anything like that um and it was something that was just

01:57:04.320 instinctually in me when i when i first had kids that i just wanted to give them that

01:57:08.500 and the other major fact there is that my wife is just like the best person i've ever met and she

01:57:13.600 was i got very lucky again and just met a really great girl yes and that is uh there is nothing

01:57:19.160 better than being in a great marriage and i would imagine i've never experienced it but nothing worse

01:57:24.080 than being i think that's exactly i think it's like burning to death yeah the people i know who i've

01:57:29.280 known people like that who are like with a really crazy chick and they can't even think straight

01:57:32.900 because they're in agony all the time yeah it's horrible but it's just it's just interesting i

01:57:37.340 think maybe i'm very distressed by the number of kids growing up in single parent households i grew

01:57:43.120 up in a single parent household when i was a kid so i'm not judging anybody yeah yeah but it's

01:57:48.600 in retrospect i think well maybe if you grew up that way as you did and i did you don't take

01:57:54.800 things for granted yeah and you're more you're more intentional in the way you structure your own

01:57:58.780 family because you said to me off air you're like i wanted this yeah and i also just have

01:58:03.660 the attitude that like um well i think that and i blame the baby boomers for almost all of our

01:58:10.200 problems i do too and i don't i'm i don't obviously when you speak in about a group that big i'm painting

01:58:15.040 with a broad brush there are exceptions to this rule and i you know i love my mother very much and

01:58:19.180 she's a good person um but as a generation they just ruined everything and they're totally selfish

01:58:25.240 yes um completely so but jeff dice who i love this guy is so brilliant um but he uh he said he gave a

01:58:31.980 speech about it and he was going through the things of like all of the slogans of the baby boomers and

01:58:37.820 how self-serving they all were like it was like don't trust anyone over 30 until they got into their

01:58:43.420 30s you know and then it was like and then like you watch it all the way through uh like covid it's

01:58:47.980 like we got to do everything we can to protect like the baby boomer generation yes yes it went

01:58:53.660 from don't trust anyone over 30 to being like screw your childhood i don't want to get this

01:58:58.500 keep your hands off my medicare by the way you know like all everything is just and um but one of the

01:59:04.600 major things that they changed about the culture was like normalizing casual divorce yeah as if that

01:59:09.860 should just kind of be an option like i'm just not feeling it anymore so like we can get divorced

01:59:15.260 and like there's no sense of like no no no like look i'm there are exceptions there are cases where

01:59:19.800 there's an abusive spouse or something like that but generally speaking the idea like you took an

01:59:24.560 oath before god and everyone you love and then brought children into this world i know that is

01:59:30.640 that is your obligation i know and that's that's like my attitude toward marriage is that it's like

01:59:35.600 listen me and my wife um we've we've faced some hurdles in our marriage like things in the outside

01:59:41.580 world that have happened um and i think we've done a very good job of them we've had that serious

01:59:46.980 issue like we had major health concerns with one of our kids um and got through that we've had

01:59:51.740 been through lockdowns and been through you know oh yeah and there's more ahead there's a lot more

01:59:55.680 ahead but one thing that is uh for certain is that that's it yeah it's us for the rest of this

02:00:01.820 like this is we're living this life together now and to me that's what being married is well if

02:00:05.380 you're if you're not that you're not really if you're trapped you'll make do by the way

02:00:08.320 that sounds grim but it's not grim i've never i mean i have the same kind of marriage i've had a

02:00:13.340 happy marriage for 33 years one of the reasons is that this is what we're doing yeah that's right

02:00:19.160 and i grew up with divorce i remember as a child my brother my only brother feels that we would talk

02:00:23.580 about this when our kids like fuck adults like fuck them yeah having kids and then getting divorced

02:00:29.480 you can go find yourself in france fuck you i knew and i knew people in my in my listen in my

02:00:34.840 parents generation there were so many people like that so many people i know oh yeah and totally

02:00:39.640 fucked up the kids and did it because like right like i gotta be happy as if somehow that's a noble

02:00:44.500 thing of like i gotta be happy and they but they never turned out happy no because you have because

02:00:49.580 because the key to real happiness i mean there's different ways to measure happiness or like

02:00:53.320 whatever again like you know there's someone training for a marathon and there's someone sitting

02:00:57.780 having a bag of potato chips and in the moment the guy having the bag of potato chips might be happier

02:01:02.460 than the guy training for the marathon but like ultimately who's going to feel better about

02:01:06.120 themselves is going to be you know what i mean so like there's um but we how do you want to die

02:01:12.060 you have obligations and responsibilities yeah and if you don't fulfill those you're not going to

02:01:16.780 find long but also take the long view like the neighborhood i grew up in had all kinds of rich

02:01:22.360 divorced moms and every one of them was crazy and unhappy every single one of them and you wonder

02:01:28.900 where they i've thought in the years since like where are they now you know what i mean living in

02:01:33.220 some condo in scottsdale with parkinson's unvisited by their kids like it you'd get old and die in the

02:01:39.680 end and when you do i'm gonna i really hope i'm surrounded by all my girls and my son and like

02:01:44.580 yeah oh he was such a good guy like yeah that's all that matters that's how i feel about it you know

02:01:50.280 what i mean and they like talk about you at dinner when you're gone oh i miss him you don't want

02:01:54.400 people i've seen people die who mistreated their children i've lived it actually it's like

02:01:59.580 fuck that person you know what i mean yeah i don't want that well and also look i mean that

02:02:04.440 kind of um the the absence of having that feeling or the the baby boomers kind of not feeling that way

02:02:12.000 it's kind of like i mean look what it's what it's led to i mean you know it's very easy for um

02:02:16.780 you know uh say popular conservative you know pundits to kind of dunk on college kids and stuff like

02:02:23.940 that which is like fun and i i've enjoyed videos of where you know like ben shapiro is like destroying

02:02:30.560 19 year old and some college campus and you know it's like uh you know he's she's like you know some

02:02:37.540 some trans kid or something like that and is like well i'm you know i i was born a boy but why can't

02:02:43.860 i live as a woman and he's like why can't you live as a cat and it was like ah and it's like ah the

02:02:47.780 intellectual prowess of destroying this and like yes okay that is stupid that kid was an idiot but

02:02:53.300 you also kind of like peel a little bit deeper and you're like so what was this kid's situation

02:02:58.760 really because you're talking to a 19 year old you know what i mean and let me guess uh came from a

02:03:02.720 broken home i'm trying not to pound the table here because i agree with you so strongly was medicated

02:03:07.260 i bet you know like as a young kid staring down the barrel of a grim life yes has no conceivable path

02:03:13.040 toward like independence and toward what you have and what you grew up with which is that's all that

02:03:17.800 really you're in charge of the society by the way you're in charge of the study of influence in the

02:03:21.780 society you're in the privileged class and there's no shame in that by the way yes but it does carry

02:03:26.400 with it the obligation to see that the next generation has a decent shot and you haven't

02:03:30.740 done that you've wasted it all on foreign adventurism and your stupid economic ideas and

02:03:35.600 this is the result and you will take no responsibility for it it's like oh stupid kids

02:03:40.440 no your job is to create another generation of smart kids and then they wise kids and they mock them

02:03:46.620 and they're like oh well maybe maybe if you don't have your avocado toast and your lattes then you'd

02:03:51.000 be able to buy a house or something and you're like look okay it is true you're making me mad i

02:03:56.420 totally agree it's look it's true that this generation is in many ways softer and more

02:04:01.520 privileged and part of that's because they they grew up with technological wealth that previous

02:04:06.100 generations never had it's also partly because their parents never instilled like values in them to

02:04:12.280 care about kind of more than just avocado toast but the fact is that baby boomers could go to college

02:04:18.680 and get a summer job and pay for their college okay and then if they didn't go to college they

02:04:24.900 could go to high school and then go wait online and get a job where you could support a wife and kids

02:04:28.880 off of that job that's what my you know like and that was the way of the world previously that my

02:04:33.240 grandfather worked in factories his whole life and his wife didn't work and that was that he and and he

02:04:38.380 he owned a house he sent kids to college he had two cars like they had a nice life and these kids

02:04:44.020 today come out with six figures of debt and are getting a job at you know starbucks and houses are

02:04:51.880 going for like 600 grand for you know what i mean for that same humble house that my my grandfather had

02:04:57.240 and and the baby boomers all got rich by the value of their house just going up and never and it seems

02:05:03.600 like not a one of them ever went hey but aren't we kind of like pulling up the ladder on the

02:05:09.020 helicopter here like if my house is like skyrocketing in value that's nice for me i got a heloc and i got

02:05:15.020 like some money coming in now that i can invest in the market that's going up and make this income

02:05:19.160 coming in but what about the next generation how are they ever going to buy a house they don't care

02:05:23.860 like no one seemed to care about they don't care

02:05:25.520 i'm trying not to interrupt your wonderful description with amens uh and hosannas but i

02:05:39.360 just i so strongly agree with what you're saying and i have a bunch of kids they're all actually

02:05:45.820 thriving i would say inside um they're all good people clear thinking they love each other most

02:05:51.040 important um but i'm around a lot of college age kids like a lot like way more than most people my

02:05:56.240 age i'm 54 and i don't think they're soft at all i'm not saying my kids i mean they're friends or you

02:06:02.480 know i'm around it a lot they're hard-edged actually right they know how i mean they're they may be wrong

02:06:08.660 they may be confused but they're they're actually pretty tough in a way and they're pretty angry and

02:06:15.440 they sort of get what's going on and i have deep sympathy for them deep deep they've been completely

02:06:22.360 screwed over by the people injured they don't have any power even if you're a 19 year old columbia kid

02:06:26.780 like i may not agree with your slogans or down with white people whatever i will of course i hate that

02:06:31.540 i'm a white person but i do sort of like think whose fault is that it's the people who run everything

02:06:39.040 it's your your stupid boomer parents yep it's the administrators at the school it's our politicians

02:06:45.500 i mean i'm sorry to blame society for the crimes of young people but actually society does deserve

02:06:50.380 the blame and the leaders of the society deserve the blame yeah 100 that's not a liberal perspective

02:06:54.640 that's a conservative perspective i care about the next generation that's how if you don't care

02:06:59.440 about how your grandchildren are going to live here how are you conservative what are you conserving

02:07:05.920 you're not at all you're just a freaking grifter shut up right and like what has and this is why

02:07:11.400 you know when uh um we when you were on my podcast we set the uh the internet on fire by uh because i

02:07:18.320 trashed bill buckley and they were like i completely agree you're not allowed to have that i said he was

02:07:22.780 one of the great villains of the 20th century that he was a gatekeeper for sure right i mean people

02:07:27.440 started they were like wow did that stall it and mouse say tongue and i'm like okay fine he was third

02:07:31.580 but the point the point is okay there were there were like five ahead of him okay fine but he was

02:07:36.040 but i think part of this is that you know a lot of the kind of um conservatism inc people who who

02:07:41.640 criticized uh us for saying that and they're kind of like well how would you you know this was the guy

02:07:47.160 who was the most prominent member of the conservative movement and it's like okay and so like what exactly

02:07:52.520 was conserved in his movement what like just explain was it the constitution was it what classical

02:07:59.520 liberal values was it religion was it tradition was it the definition of a woman like what exactly

02:08:05.400 was the big conservative win here i mean like like i'll give you something we still we still have some

02:08:10.100 gun rights okay you know like i don't know but like you lost everything you lost the united states of

02:08:15.680 america and part of the reason a major reason why is because the whole national review um like takeover

02:08:22.840 of the conservative movement was to drive out all of the all of the non-interventionists

02:08:28.720 all of them all of the isolationists i watched it demonize them as racist every single time it

02:08:34.460 happened and the weird yeah i don't even i'm holding back um no because that's like i would you

02:08:41.320 know i was adjacent to that world my entire life and i and i watched it um happen and you know i knew

02:08:48.260 bill buckley and he was perfectly nice to me i you know didn't hate him or anything but it was very

02:08:52.120 charming and very smart i guess you know i was playing the wasp you know it was all a pose it

02:08:58.600 was completely fake and the only people who sort of bought it are people who didn't know any better

02:09:02.920 and right that was like upper class or something fake accent weird homoerotic stuff and it was like

02:09:08.640 all just kind of sad actually i thought i thought that was always my view of it because it was he was

02:09:12.460 posing um but you know i think he had good qualities i love sailing so i kind of you know i'm with him

02:09:17.280 on that um but in the end you judge the tree by its fruits and the fruits are just absolutely rotten

02:09:23.400 and so i think it's important to be honest about that well i think the fruits were a transformation

02:09:28.320 of the right wing in america from being the old right um which was really i mean they were fairly

02:09:37.700 isolationist um but certainly non-interventionist i mean like you know robert taft was the one who

02:09:43.120 didn't want us to be in nato i mean this was like the old and they they were big on like um

02:09:47.640 immigration controls sound money and not getting involved in wars these were the people who opposed

02:09:53.400 world war one and world war two they didn't want american involvement in these wars right

02:09:56.800 and this the the effect of bill buckley was to transform what became the conservative movement

02:10:02.080 into being cold warriors that what we do is we go everywhere around the world looking for a war to

02:10:06.880 fight so in other words the people who really loved america not the idea but the physical reality

02:10:11.340 of america and her people the people who actually live here and their homes and their little towns

02:10:16.200 and their dumb little jobs and all the stuff that makes up a civilization at scale the people who

02:10:22.700 cared about that somehow became anti-american right yeah and the people who would lecture you about how

02:10:29.640 america is an idea it doesn't really matter who lives here what those people are for america i mean

02:10:36.600 that's like a complete inversion of reality actually yeah and so again it's nothing personal

02:10:40.920 against bill buckley who i you know play the play the mean harpsichord but um sorry not to be catty

02:10:46.780 but uh you know but like that's a lie yeah the people who care about actual america are the people

02:10:56.000 whose side i'm on and i care about actual america not because i'm a good person i'm really not an

02:11:00.100 especially good person because i got a lot of children who live here yeah that's what i care about

02:11:03.900 and like because it's look at this this was a really great country and i mean there are still

02:11:10.460 a lot of great things about it but it's deteriorating and why you know why should we be for

02:11:16.960 that and you know one of the crazy things about america is that there is kind of this uh this idea

02:11:23.920 that we are the united states of america and have been this whole time whereas there's really been like

02:11:30.300 several revolutions yeah in the country and and you know what look i mean i i think the george double

02:11:38.260 george w bush years and the war on terrorism was a revolution of sorts in the country that's where i

02:11:43.640 grew up a kid in the 90s we are not the same country as we were in the 1990s in the pre-war on

02:11:48.320 terror there before the patriot act in the department of homeland security and the tsa i mean the experience

02:11:52.620 at an airport is a different thing we are a different country than we were before that i think

02:11:57.040 covid has changed everything you know that but even before that i mean you know as you've talked

02:12:01.560 about a lot like the in the wake of world war ii the creation of the cia this was a revolution

02:12:06.440 in the country where it's it changed who's running the government and we think of the position of

02:12:11.460 president of the united states of america being the same position that like you know that

02:12:16.900 woodrow wilson occupied or something like that and it's not it's a totally different position donald

02:12:22.540 trump did not have the same job fdr had they were very very different you know and so there is when

02:12:28.720 people say oh you love america it's like yes i love this country i don't like the direction the

02:12:33.080 government's going in i don't care totally agree and the bush thing i have to say i could feel it

02:12:39.320 at the very beginning i knew him before he became president i did not want to vote for him

02:12:43.280 um and didn't i just didn't vote i did vote from the second time because you always get caught up in

02:12:50.000 the other guy and i knew carrie and i just thought carrie was not impressive but also i voted for

02:12:54.300 for bush but you know i see bush still i had a meal with him not that long ago and talk about a

02:12:59.840 defeated sad guy actually bitter insecure you know given to lecturing everyone around him about what a

02:13:09.560 great president he was and i thought you know that really is no but that's the fruit of the tree

02:13:14.360 kind of like if you've had a successful successful life if you've done the things that you you know

02:13:20.440 if you've fulfilled your obligation and done the right thing you're not lecturing people about what

02:13:25.560 a great person you are right at all are you no i don't think no that's failure and and like i mean

02:13:31.540 just he knows i mean yeah he knows to try to spin the george w bush years as anything other than like

02:13:37.660 an absolute failure i mean you know dude you celebrated mission accomplished and then we stayed

02:13:44.800 in the war for 20 years you know just a disaster and left the country and and i mean look the not

02:13:52.240 only was it all completely unnecessary i mean like we had like the special ops response to al-qaeda

02:13:57.940 cells in afghanistan in late 2001 totally justify that of course um we had an opportunity to trap

02:14:03.500 osama bin laden and torah bora in late 2001 and they i believe intentionally let him go so they

02:14:08.080 could continue these wars um but fighting the decision do you think do you think that's what

02:14:13.080 happened yeah yeah um and there's um i highly recommend to anybody scott horton uh wrote a book

02:14:19.460 called enough already which is like a masterpiece a history of all the terror wars and it seems

02:14:25.240 it seems overwhelmingly likely that they already had their eye on iraq and that they knew that if

02:14:31.580 they captured osama bin laden it'd be very difficult to sell another war because we got the

02:14:36.640 guy if that's really true i mean that's that's unspeakably evil yeah well look it was a it was

02:14:42.620 you know you can read like through the details of it but there were a bunch of they knew he was in

02:14:46.500 torah bora and they were requesting i remember that and they were and they didn't give it to him you

02:14:50.340 know like it's it certainly seems to be what it looks like and then it was a decision that we're

02:14:56.780 going to kabul then it was a decision that we're gonna overthrow the taliban and fight a regime

02:15:02.240 change war there and then go fight the regime change war in iraq and the i mean look the like

02:15:07.200 you said judge them by their fruit i mean the the results of george w bush's wars were uh there

02:15:14.340 were trillions of dollars uh wasted hundreds of thousands of people in these countries died

02:15:19.660 and our bravest young men blowing their brains out by the tens of thousands i know those are the

02:15:26.640 tangible results uh of what happened and it's not even like we sacrificed that so that these countries

02:15:32.560 are much better places to live they're actually worse than they were much worse yeah so there you

02:15:38.400 go you know so great administration okay so let me end on this question um because that's so

02:15:45.800 depressing what you just said because it's true yeah it is true and no one was ever punished for

02:15:50.440 it and in fact rewarded they were all rewarded for it name the three things that give you hope

02:15:56.600 outside of your own family in america right now okay so well the first one was kind of what i was

02:16:03.900 touching on before that there is this there is like a seismic shift in the way people are um being

02:16:10.460 exposed the part of the reason and i know you've you've talked about this a lot and i think

02:16:15.700 explained it very well but what you're seeing out of the establishment what you see out of msnbc when

02:16:21.560 they talk about donald trump or when they talk about you for that matter is not a ruling class

02:16:27.040 that is confident that they have power no they are they are like you know a a cockroach that's trapped

02:16:34.500 you know what i mean that's yes you know like uh and there's a reason for that and there's a reason

02:16:40.220 why they're so hysterical and it's because for the first time in certainly in my lifetime and

02:16:45.220 well beyond that the um the monopoly over the control of information has truly been broken

02:16:51.320 and that you watch this during covid where i mean like you and joe rogan had a huge impact on the

02:17:00.260 the nation during covid because you were like the two biggest people with the biggest audiences

02:17:04.980 completely exposing how insane the whole narrative was and how insane all of the the covid restrictions

02:17:10.560 were and eventually it got to a point where people just weren't taking it anymore they weren't

02:17:13.740 listening to fauci like yeah we never had anything like that before we never had like someone like

02:17:19.480 joe rogan or someone like you doing this show where you know like in the run-up to say in 2002

02:17:23.580 the run-up to the war in iraq there was just no one like that who was like blowing the whistle with

02:17:28.600 tens of millions of people listening to them and explaining how this is all lies we have that now

02:17:33.840 and they're freaking out about that and this is really why all the uh attempts at tech censorship

02:17:37.920 happened since 2016 because they recognize that like oh donald trump can tweet his way to the

02:17:43.080 white house he doesn't even have to go through us so we better control twitter and you know youtube

02:17:47.640 and facebook and all of these and google and all of this and even in their attempts to control it

02:17:53.080 it's net they've never been as good as they were at controlling when there were just three networks

02:17:57.480 that's right a few big newspapers and now i think elon musk really threw a wrench in their plans by

02:18:02.500 buying twitter and so that so i'm very encouraged about that um i'm very encouraged about the fact that

02:18:08.700 you know their people are kind of have access to the truth in a way that they never did before i

02:18:13.860 think that i think ideas are powerful and i think that all governments rely on propaganda it doesn't

02:18:20.080 work without that and there's something in that that's really encouraging in a way it's like oh they

02:18:26.080 have they have to convince us huge before they can just do it you know like every okay there's two

02:18:33.140 things that are seemingly contradictory but they're not uh number one democracy is an illusion

02:18:38.000 it doesn't really exist yes you don't really ever have democracy you know oh we get to vote

02:18:42.780 the presidential election like even assuming all the votes are counted in the right way or something

02:18:46.160 like that it's like yeah you get to vote when these two parties these private entities decide who

02:18:51.820 the candidate is and then you can pick between the two of them you know what i mean like that's not

02:18:55.700 really democracy but in another sense there's always democracy and every nation no matter how

02:19:03.880 whether they have free and fair elections or not there's always like that there has to at least be

02:19:08.860 tacit acceptance by the people of course and if there's not you know if there's 500 000 people

02:19:13.920 out in the streets screaming at a dictator about how they want policy x that dictator is like you know

02:19:19.780 i've been considering it and we will be implementing policy x you know what i mean like it's because at

02:19:23.760 the end of the day there's way more of you than there are totally right and so when you can spread

02:19:27.960 ideas we have a fighting shot i think um so that's very encouraging to me i think there's also been

02:19:34.740 um a huge move away from u.s hegemony internationally which is both very scary um but is also i think

02:19:44.860 necessary i think that the american america spiraling as a country i think started with us getting off of

02:19:51.520 the gold standard once government could print as much money as they want to they make people rich for

02:19:55.920 just trading in paper or being politically connected and you're not earning anything to

02:19:59.800 become rich and it's it's devastating yes and then i think the unipolar moment was the worst thing that

02:20:04.140 ever happened to america right you need counterbalance winning is often losing right and so you need

02:20:10.560 there i don't i want to see it happen in the best way possible um i think it it it's very bad in some

02:20:16.940 ways for our country if we're not the world reserve currency anymore but it's ultimately the solution

02:20:21.100 like it's no good of us being the the fact that we can just export paper and then maintain

02:20:25.620 our standard of living isn't the right way i i hope it's a smooth transition but like i do think

02:20:30.400 there's something positive in the fact that that's all changing um so i i think all of those things

02:20:36.000 make me happy i don't know did i hit three yeah you did and let me just just ask you follow up on one

02:20:40.520 losing our privilege our unique privilege as the holder of the world's reserve currency

02:20:46.160 i mean i that's going to happen of course it's in progress the ukraine war accelerated it yes

02:20:52.380 um but i haven't looked at the upside of that at all and i think it's inevitable so it would be

02:20:58.880 nice to know what the upside is well i mean if you think about look all the stuff that so we we got

02:21:05.800 this privilege after world war ii yeah right the brenton wood agreement um and a lot of the stuff

02:21:11.780 where you talk about our soul as a country being destroyed it happened in large part as a result of

02:21:16.720 that yes you know because we didn't have to earn our place in the world anymore we could just export

02:21:22.100 paper right and of course we immediately started cheating and this is why nixon took us off the

02:21:26.160 gold standard it's not that you know nixon went off the gold standard it's that the french called

02:21:30.760 his bluff we were saying we'll exchange uh dollars for 35 an ounce and they went okay we'll take our gold

02:21:36.180 and we're like oh wait i'm sorry what was that and they're like no no i just saw you did this whole

02:21:40.860 like you had this whole space program and you fought a war in vietnam and you just started all

02:21:45.180 these entitlement programs you know it does seem like you've been printing a lot of money i think

02:21:47.940 we'll take our gold and then nixon was like this was an attack against the u.s dollar it's like what

02:21:52.240 do you mean we had a contract and they were like live up to your end of the contract but once we

02:21:56.600 were once there was no more pretense then we could just print money like crazy yeah then you have

02:22:01.220 everybody in wall street getting rich in the 80s you have the tech boom in the 90s i mean this is all

02:22:05.840 and so i'm just saying i think that i don't know that it's been great for our country to be the

02:22:11.880 world reserve currency i think it's been great for the military industrial complex i think it's

02:22:15.420 been great for wall street i don't think it's been good for our soul and so if i handed you a

02:22:20.160 billion dollars unearned do you think it would improve your life no i think it would probably

02:22:23.560 destroy my life you know because because what do you you know if you actually start thinking that

02:22:27.540 through so then i go like okay so all right fine so initially okay i could buy a bunch of cool

02:22:32.760 stuff that's great we all know that's not really what matters anyway but it'll for a moment you

02:22:36.920 know feel really it'll distract you for sure for sure right and then it's like okay so what am i

02:22:40.760 gonna do for my family now like my obviously my my kids my wife are my responsibility but then like

02:22:47.100 okay what i got a brother i got a sister i guess i gotta hand them a bunch of money too you know my

02:22:50.980 brother's like just coming out of grad school um it's like am i gonna hand him a huge and just take

02:22:56.220 away all of his drive to like go make it on his own now am i gonna give him nothing and be a brother

02:23:01.180 who has a billion dollars and gives him nothing i mean that's not an option either i don't know this

02:23:05.920 things get like way more complicated very quickly where you're like no actually that's not

02:23:09.940 the right answer and also it's not as if i have like the respect from my family now like oh my god

02:23:16.200 you're taking care of all of us you were handed a billion dollars you didn't earn anything you

02:23:20.560 didn't create anything it's like no that's not no longer the man in your house yeah you don't

02:23:24.240 actually want that i want to have a nice house because i work to get my family a nice house you know

02:23:30.120 so yeah no i wouldn't want that i don't know how i don't know you're one of the rare

02:23:35.860 people i just share with all the same instincts so yeah i don't quite know how that happened but

02:23:40.200 um thank you that was i love that dude thank you so much i've really really enjoyed being out here

02:23:45.880 me too dave smith thanks thanks for listening to tucker carlson show if you enjoyed it you can

02:23:52.780 go to tucker carlson.com to see everything that we have made the complete library tucker carlson.com

02:23:59.520 you

The Tucker Carlson Show - May 17, 2024

Dave Smith on how neocons wrecked the country

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